What would you perceive, Brother Ravenhill, to be
the greatest need in the Church in America
specifically today?
I won't give you my opinion, I'll give
you a Bible opinion, from Jeremiah chapter 2,
verse 13, My people have committed two evils.
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living
waters, and hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns
that can hold no water.
It's amazing to me when every pastor that
comes, oh, I'm in a mega church, you
know, we get four thousand Sunday mornings, it's
got nothing to do with your church.
Every church in America nearly is filled Sunday
morning.
How many people do you have in your
prayer meeting?
The prayer meeting has almost died.
Not just in Presbyterian churches, but in Pentecostal
churches, in Baptist churches.
I have a prayer meeting Thursday morning for
pastors, about twenty come.
Some come 200 miles, some come 300 miles
round trip, and the last five or six
weeks we've all ended up on the floor
in tears praying for one thing, revival.
Nobody's praying for his church.
I believe the spiritual condition of America at
this moment is lower than it was in
the revival of the 1700s with Jonathan Edwards.
We've forsaken God, particularly we've forsaken the prayer
meeting.
What would happen if you had a choir
like, say, you had First Baptists or somewhere?
I First Baptised in Dallas or Good Brothers
First Baptist Church in Atlanta.
I stayed there a month once.
You have about 200 people in the choir.
What if only 10% turned up for
choir rehearsal on a Friday night?
Do you think you might get the resignation
of the choir master?
But supposing a guy with 26,000 members
had 10% come to the prayer meeting,
he'd die of shock.
You see, we have had people last, just
a year ago now, we finished our 500th
prayer meeting every Friday night, and it was
a prayer meeting.
In most churches now the preacher preaches Sunday
morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.
Forget it.
One of the young pastors that comes to
us, he got moved by the power of
God.
He went to his church and said, look,
I'm going to preach Sunday morning, Sunday night,
but not Wednesday night.
We're going to pray.
He's in a country church.
He went from 60 Wednesday night to 6.
They don't want to pray.
We had a prayer meeting where people drove
four, five, and six hours, and there were
people that came, and they belonged to famous
churches in California, and they came over and
said, look, we know why God's brought us
in this area.
We need to learn to pray.
We went to a very popular church.
It's attended by dozens, hundreds of film stars
and others, but there's no prayer life there.
But do you know what happened?
When they come three or four times, they
quit.
Do you know why?
Because we had men that used to mumble
in their prayers, and it pleased God to
educate them in the Spirit, and I would
go on Wednesday night.
I'd go Friday night.
There was one full-blooded American Indian.
He was dying in the gutter, snow falling
on him.
He was a victim of drugs and drink,
and God awakened him, and he got wonderfully
saved, and he got an anointing in prayer
to hear that man pray for the American
Indians.
They're the most neglected people in America today,
and the Indians somehow don't go after them.
You can't go on the reservations.
They kill you.
All they say, listen, you stole our land,
you stole our oil, you stole our mineral
rights, you stole our fishing rights.
Get out of here.
And I've told him, stay with it.
Stay to your people, with your people.
Don't let somebody else wear your crown.
You see, some of us, we're walking around
eternity, and God is going to put a
crown on my head, and I didn't do
the job, so he passes it to Dale,
and he's going to wear it for a
billion years.
Every time I see him, I say, that
should have been my crown, but that's my
fault.
It's not the devil's fault.
No man take thy crown.
That's a warning against deacons, but anyhow.
Not any man take your crown.
God has given you a job.
Do it if you die.
That's what it takes.
Brother Leonard, what is the nature and the
content and the direction of those prayer meetings?
For the average layperson who has not been
able to attend, where do you begin, what
do you pray for, what do you target,
what happens in those prayer meetings that are
so unusual, and what are the kinds of
prayer meetings that we need to start having
in our churches?
Well, we have different targets.
I call it target praying.
For instance, one week we pray for all
the husbands of the wives or fathers of
the children who were there whose daddies were
not saved.
Maybe not even church members.
We concentrate on unsaved fathers, unsaved husbands, and
at the time we concentrate on teenagers.
You see, there's something about covenanting in prayer.
I went to Dr. Toto's church, thank you,
and I stayed there for two weeks, and
I had the privilege of praying with him.
He's a wonderful man.
He wasn't the greatest preacher I've ever heard,
but he had an intimacy with God like
nobody else.
I remember one day he said, Len, don't
let anybody diminish your appetite or zeal for
prayer.
He said, I'll tell you what happened.
In World War I, the finest young men
in our church went to war.
They were drafted, 30 of them, and we
covenanted with their parents and their wives.
We covenanted in prayer that not one of
those men would get killed or seriously injured,
and every man came back.
The only one that was lame was his
own son.
But he said, if we can covenant in
prayer like that, why can't you covenant in
prayer in your churches?
Not one of our girls in our churches
is going to get pregnant.
Not one of our boys is going to
go in to drink.
We're not just going to raise nice, healthy
children.
We're going to do more than that.
We want to produce spiritual offspring.
And the reason those superstars that came to
our prayer meetings didn't continue, well, they heard
men that were praying with anointing.
Again, they heard this fellow crying with tears
for the different tribes in America.
It's astounding that two and a quarter American
Indians, where's David Brainerd today?
There isn't a Brainerd there.
How do we have a right to pray
for revival when in the 20th century there
are so many people who believe theologically that
things are just going to get worse and
worse and worse, and God certainly is not
going to send a revival.
So why are you wasting your time praying
that God will send one?
Well, you get a nucleus of people who
get together and talk with the deacons and
others, but it says here, they have forsaken
me.
So what?
How many of you deacons come to prayer
meetings?
One night I was standing on the platform
with Charles Stanley.
There were maybe over a thousand people there.
I think you have 50 deacons.
And I said, Charles, where are your 50
deacons tonight?
He said, well, I can count 15.
I said, well, fire the rest.
What did they do in the upper room
when the Holy Ghost came?
They gave themselves continually to fundraising, did they?
What did they do?
Give ourselves continually to prayer.
I like the figure, I'm going to speak
maybe one day, I think Hannah is the
best type of an intercessor that I know.
That all the qualifications, she had grief, she
suffered, she mocked, and yet year by year,
it wasn't once they scorned her.
But when she got pregnant, she didn't care
a hill of beans about anybody.
Well, let me say this too.
I think there's a danger of seeking revival
to justify my ministry, to prove we're the
best people in town.
We mentioned it with Paul this morning.
What does it say in Malachi?
The Lord whom ye seek.
We're not seeking him.
We're seeking revival.
We're seeking healing.
We're seeking miracles.
It's not that we need.
If we get God, we get all that's
needed.
And revival is when God comes down.
Pick up the book for me, please.
Here's a little book I hope you'll all
get.
It's Come Down, Lord.
It's a good book, of course.
It's from England, but apart from that.
Get a copy if you can.
It's published by Banner of Truth, but I
mark this page 23.
Now this is revival.
I think revival is the most prostituted word
that we have in our vocabulary today, either
revival or faith.
We don't know much about either.
Revival stops the traffic.
As dear Tozi used to say, Leonard, when
revival comes, it changes the moral climate of
a community.
Taverns close down.
Nightclubs close down.
I mean, there's a war going on now.
Dear God, if anybody needs to run a
whole armour of God, it's today.
How many of you may know the book,
The Whole Armour of God, by Goebbels?
Do you have it?
Let me see your hands.
Oh, good.
Only two out of all of you.
It's a wonderful book.
It's 1130 pages.
It's $36.
We can send dear Nancy an address, we
can get it for $18.
It was written like most of the classics
in the 1600s, and it's the most stirring.
I gave Wilkerson a copy of that five
years ago.
When I came back, he said, hey, while
you're at it, we had a vacation in
the Bahamas.
We should be there now.
We got a free flight and free holidays.
But this glorious atmosphere here, you know, where
you can freeze every night is more attractive.
How do you address the people who say
that we are living in a day and
age where everything is getting worse and worse
and worse?
There is no way God's going to send
revival.
Let's hang on for dear life and pray
for the rapture.
But you have no right to believe and
to storm the throne of heaven in faith,
believing that God is going to send a
revival.
He tells you in the Bible things are
going to get worse and worse.
How do you answer those people?
Well, I answered it this week this way.
When the world population was five million, did
God love it?
Yes.
Does he love it less when it's five
billion?
If God isn't willing that they should perish
when it's five million, is he more willing
that many should perish now?
You see the trouble in the world today,
the stagnation, the moral desolation in America and
the stagnation in America is not due to
the strength of humanism.
It's because of the weakness of evangelism.
People don't get born again when they come
to the altar.
They leave it, they come damned and they
leave it damned.
They're not born.
People can't be born in five minutes, put
off ten million sins and transgressions and violations
of the law of God.
They can't change the way of life, put
off the old man, put on the new
man by just standing there in tears, as
I told you last night.
When I heard that guy say on TV,
come forward, it won't take a few minutes,
I went to bed and cried.
I say that he's a leading evangelist in
America, telling people who are dead in trespasses,
they're not bad, they're dead.
The prodigal didn't say, my son is bad,
he says he's dead.
It's no fun to look on a congregation.
Maybe I said yesterday, a hundred years ago,
that great, that great art critic in England,
what was his name, John, John Ruskin said,
preaching is thirty minutes to raise the dead.
I thought that was facetious, it's scriptural.
All those lovely people you have, executive people,
deacons, nice people, wealthy people, poor people, hippies,
yuppies, what have you got, there they are,
they're dead.
And we're the ones that transmit life.
But dear brother, I believe we're going to
see a Pentecost that will allow Pentecost, Pentecost,
I'll tell you what, nobody's going to stick
his name on it.
Swaggart's had his chance to evangelize the world,
messed it up, all the rubbers, they've got
millions of dollars, what have they done?
They've brought disgrace to the name.
People ridicule it, that God is a jealous
God.
God's going to raise up, I mean, I
pray for Romania and behind me I come
every day of my life.
People want to tell me now that God's
bypassed America, don't waste your time.
Why?
Was it as dead in the days of
Jonathan Edwards?
What is revival?
Well, I think it's an old America, I
think it was E.M. Bounds said that
E.M. Bounds is the breath of God
on the situation that threatens to become a
corpse.
We're very near death in America.
There's no time for a new reformation in
a denomination.
He's going to raise up new men with
new vision.
I want to preach on vision tonight, God
willing.
And we've got to have vision and passion.
God's got to upset our whole schedules, our
lifestyle, our way of eating, our way of
living, our way of socializing in the church.
God help us.
Sure you can get a hearty church, if
you put a chicken supper before the prayer
meeting, they'll come for the chicken supper.
You've got the chickens, you've got the crowd,
because they're all chicken, but anyhow.
I believe, but I didn't believe there was
going to be an awakening.
Okay, God has given me the privilege of
knowing praying men.
There's a little fellowship of people in a
town called Zion, Illinois, you know where that
is?
And it's still there.
There's one or two original people that were
there with Dowie.
And I went there, they asked me to
talk with a man, he's upstairs in bed,
normally.
He speaks with a mic to the congregation
downstairs every morning.
Do you know what happened to him?
I walked in, he thanked me, he said,
Mr. A, you do me an honor, I've
read your books.
I said, please don't say a word.
My mother said, if ever you go into
royalty, you never turn your back.
And when I backpedaled to the door, I
said, I want to thank you.
Do you know that man, Andrews?
God called him to go to Israel, and
he mastered Hebrew.
And when he got there, God said, go
back.
He said, but people gave him a...
Do as I say, go back.
Intercede for America.
What did he do?
For 30 years, he prayed from 10 o
'clock in the night till 5 o'clock
in the morning by himself.
Oh, you talk about David Brin, and I'm
talking about our day, I'm talking about the
one I talked with.
When they carried him in his little wooden
casket out of that room, it was the
first time he'd been out of the house
in 12 years, never out of the house.
How does a man retain his fire?
He's not only seen men are lost, men
are not merely lost in your church, they're
robbers.
They're robbing God of the right to use
their personality.
They're robbing God of the right to use
their time.
They're robbing God of the right to use
their tongue.
Dear God, Saturday, they shout till they're hoarse.
They're frantic on Saturday at the sports arena,
they're frozen on Sunday.
And here is a man, he said, listen,
I am not a bit weary.
And this is a staggering thing to me.
He said, Mr. Rainer is going to be
in awakening before Jesus comes.
And I forgot it till Martha reminded me
the other day, he said, there's going to
be a revival that will sweep one billion
people into the kingdom of God.
Well, that's a lot.
But there are five billion in the world.
Are the other four billion going to hell?
There's a man around the country now, I
don't know if...
Manly, have you met Paul Kane yet?
Well, Paul, I've ministered with him a few
times lately.
He's an amazing man.
He used to get 30 and 40,000
people in his meetings.
He deputized for Bill Brunham.
And then he disappeared.
I heard of him in 1950 when I
first came to America.
I didn't meet him till about 20 years
after.
And then I met him recently.
And he said in a meeting we're in,
he said, God has revealed to me there's
going to be a moving of the Spirit
of God.
And what?
And one billion people will be born again.
And he mentioned your country, dear brother.
What did he call him, son?
He mentioned your country.
Those other countries have been the belly of
Russia now, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
Dear God, when I was a boy, we
had a family who used to come from
Estonia.
I think there were what, about 10 in
the family.
They all played different instruments.
And they set our church on fire.
Well, where did they disappear to?
Dear God, you say my church had never
prayed.
Get some conditions from this brother about what's
happening in their country.
You know, the two most pleasant looking men
in the world right now are the two
biggest enemies of the cross.
One is the Pope, another is Gorbachev.
And they fooled us.
They fooled us.
We may not have a collision with Communism.
We'll have one with Romanism.
It's a deadly enemy because it says Mary
is chorydentrix, and Mary is a mediator before
God.
But going back to this, there never has
been a situation in the world as difficult
as today.
We've never had all the cults that we
have now.
I see the nations being squashed like this.
This wall is moving in this way.
It's cults this way.
Wall is moving this way.
It's the occult.
And these things are rampant.
My dear country of England again, in the
last 25 years they've closed 600 branch churches
of the Church of England alone.
Leave out the Methodists and others.
But in the place of 600 churches, we
have now 600 mosques.
The greatest revival in the world right now
is amongst the Muslims.
Why?
Because they're prepared to die.
You can't scare them.
We're prepared to die.
Our folk are not prepared to live.
Sure they'll come to a camp.
They think, right, horses have played tennis or
some other thing.
I know there's nothing wrong in that.
But where's the passion?
It's young men that see vision.
I'm not trying to escape it.
I'm going to tell you before God.
I'm in my 83rd year now.
I have a bigger fire burning in my
belly, if you like, and my heart than
ever in my life.
And I'm determined by the grace of God
to wage war.
And I say I've got young men coming
300 miles to our prayer meeting.
That's my consolation.
I know that Manly's stirring people in his
area, Bill in his area.
Still God has a remnant, but the remnant
is not enough.
We've got to return to the old ways.
The fire has to burn.
Dear God, the prayer meeting has to become
the most attractive thing in the church.
You fire the deacons.
If they, when I went to the last
church I was in, they said, listen, every
deacon has to meet me half an hour
before the service, any meeting.
Friday night we meet at 9 o'clock
and pray till midnight.
You tell me about Spurgeon.
Paul was showing me a little book the
other day.
Yes, sure he was a great man.
Do you know in all the 20 years
he was in that church he never once
made an altar call?
Do you know what the deacons did for
him?
They went in the side room where he
prayed and wept and groaned before God.
Every time he went in the pulpit, the
deacons put their arms under his armpits and
carried him to the door to get him
on the platform.
One old lady that visited him, knew him,
told me about his prayer life.
It's amazing.
And no man is greater than his prayer
life.
I don't care how many church members he
has.
Somebody told me the other day you like
a favourite verse.
I don't know, I'm jumping around a bit.
But you know I think the greatest honour,
I don't have any doctorates.
I haven't begged or borrowed or burned or
anything else.
I have no degrees.
You can have 32 and still be frozen.
The one thing I covet, I want to
be one of the ten most wanted men
in hell.
I want the demons to say, Jesus I
know and Ravenel I know.
Jesus I know and Del I know.
That's why the devils opposed him.
Namely last night moving to tears I was
trying to come to the platform.
I whispered it is thereafter.
I said you and I have one thing
in common with the apostle Paul.
When in death's aft, dear Lord my wife's
been to my funeral half a dozen times,
not at my bedside.
Lots of people like to see me die,
but I'm not going to die, I'm going
to live.
They actually threw a white sheet over me
and the doctor said you won't last four
minutes.
And I was going to die.
I had my hands folded and he said
you won't last forever.
Me?
I said you're talking about me.
Then the doctor said you won't, he said
by another 11 years from now you'll be
crippled and paralysed, your back's broken, your feet
are broken, your legs are broken, you'll be
useless.
Well I may be useless but I'm still
hanging on.
But the thing is this, I've been privileged
to share in prayer.
And I don't remember great pulpits, I've preached
some of the great pulpits of the world.
I don't remember them, I've talked with great
preachers.
But when men have let me pray with
them I remember all of them.
I can tell you how we pray.
I remember Manly at the, what was the
national conference we had in, no, when, no
when Bertha, no Bertha Smith was there.
No Bertha.
Philadelphia.
That night of prayer we had, we said
have a night of prayer and we got
in the bedroom and boy after about ten
minutes the door kept going out and I
thought my I'm going to be left by
myself as usual.
And folks weren't going out, they were coming
in.
So I look round, about six pairs of
legs, the guys were under the bed, the
guys under the bed at that side and
at this side and we prayed till, I
don't know what, two or three in the
morning.
And somebody said God came down that night.
Well that's where revival is born.
You can't schedule it.
The stupid thing, we're going to start a
revival next Sunday night and finish there.
Who, who gives orders to the Holy Ghost?
Sensitivity to the Spirit of God isn't there.
In the middle of the Welsh revival and
remember there's a guy, 26 years of age
and he's already prayed 13 years for revival.
They wouldn't allow people to photograph him.
The greatest preachers in England were there at
the time.
William Booth was there.
He left his office desk to go listen
to this 26 year old guy.
The greatest Bible teacher in the world was
there.
G.
Campbell Morgan, he left his office at Westminster
and came to hear this young Welshman.
F.B. Meyer came from the Baptist church.
They were all flocking to Wales to hear
a man who was anointed in the Spirit
of God.
He comes into a meeting, the biggest hall
in town, 800 seats, everyone was packed an
hour before time and in comes a young
man, everybody's waiting for him to come.
There's one seat on the throne.
He went to the front seat, bowed his
head and he prayed for three hours.
What do you mean?
Do you think our congregation would do that?
They say, hey he's fallen asleep.
For three hours.
Until he felt the rich and then he
stood up and preached for 15 minutes, the
glory of God came down.
And did what happen?
Nobody dared leave the place.
He went out at 10 o'clock and
prayed the whole night for the anointing for
the next day.
The people stayed till 2 and 3 in
the morning.
They did that week after week.
You see we take our little revivals to
South America.
What do you call him again?
Swaggart went, he took the formula he had
here, turned it on at 6, turned it
off at 7.
It didn't do a thing.
It failed.
Because it was American?
No, because it wasn't biblical.
Another big shot did the same thing.
But the faith was having revival in South
America now.
I was reading one report, it said they
go to a meeting, it starts Wednesday, they
have Wednesday night, they have Thursday night, they
have Friday night.
Friday night, the people, particularly teenagers, prayed the
whole night through, prayed all day Saturday, prayed
all Saturday night into Sunday and the glory
of God filled the place.
You see we've got to get an appetite.
You know the nitty-gritty of the whole
thing is this, we don't know God.
We don't know God.
We know theology, we know about Him.
Why did Jesus come into the world?
To save sinners.
That's not what Jesus said.
What did Jesus say?
I am come that they may know Thee.
Every man that comes in my office, and
I get them worldwide, I don't know why
but they come, and I say first tell
me, do you know God?
Well I have a degree.
I didn't ask you about that.
Do you know God?
When was your last encounter with God?
When were your last prostrate in His presence?
When did you last sit spellbound at His
majesty?
You don't know God.
Because we don't know God we don't know
how to worship.
We don't know how to enter into His
presence.
We're content to know a few theological shibboleths
that other people have taught us.
Dear God, one of the leading men in
the Southern Baptist Church, a very dear friend
of yours, I won't give you a clue
after that, my dear brother, he said to
me recently, he said, listen, forget our seminaries.
There's no anointing in them.
Those professors are teaching the lessons on Romans
they taught ten years ago.
You can shake the dust off them.
And every year they go back and saying
the same thing, Romans chapter one and then
chapters eight to eleven and chapters to, to,
to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to,
to, to, to, to, to, to Have you
noticed so often God says, I look for
a man.
Have you noticed in the middle of his
great, the greatest poem ever written on love,
1 Corinthians 13, that's 13 verses, he suddenly
stops talking about love and he says, when
I became a man, what does he mean?
Tell me manly, think it over.
When did he become a man?
What does he mean?
When did he step out of spiritual infancy?
When did his parents move out of spiritual
immaturity?
When did that vision come?
I want to preach on him one day
before I go, I hope.
When you were talking last night about Hebrews
11, you know I read that chapter as
I tell you, when I read Hebrews 11,
I follow my phrase, because not one person
in Hebrews 11 ever had a Bible, and
when I've read all about achievements, I'd like
you to preach on this sometime manly, there's
a verse there that staggers me and it
says what?
It says, they did by faith subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of
lions, and then one verse says, not accepting
deliverance.
What does it mean?
I'd rather die than fail Christ.
You can't imagine it, can you?
There's a woman standing over there, feeding a
baby, and the judge says to her, look,
listen preacher, you take three grains of incense
to that, at the feet of Caesar, and
all you do is say, Caesar is Lord,
you can go back to your darling wife
and precious baby, if not, those lions are
going to release them, the next thing you'll
find a lion chewing your baby up, another
one tearing the breasts off your wife.
Do you love your wife?
I didn't tell me you're going to love
a God you can't see, to the wife,
and he stands there and watches it.
We've forgotten all about that.
There's a book called Fair Sunshine, it's about
the young men that were put to death
in Scotland, until 1665, and as you read
them waving their hands and saying, have three
more days before I see the king in
his beauty.
You see, what our generation of preachers have
managed to do, we've failed to make sin
diabolical, we've failed to make sin offensive, and
we've failed to make sin attractive, Christ attractive.
You know, the only time you can sing
the hymn of Wesley, thou O Christ art
all I want, the only time you can
say Christ is all I need, is when
Christ is all you have.
We're propped up with everything, our refrigerators are
full, I don't have many clothes, but I
have at least, I have two suits at
least, and I have at least two pair
of shoes, I'm only one preacher's place, he
had 35 sports coats and 25 pairs of
shoes, in nearly as many books.
Does a devil care what we have?
All he's worried about is that you catch
fire, and then your church catches fire, and
another thing, let me say this, I've gone
round a bit, I know, but I've got
to get wound up and say what I
want to say.
You see, the great revivals of Methodism were
not in buildings, they were in the streets.
The Salvation Army set England on fire.
Wow, not by buildings?
The Bishop of Gloucester said, don't ever let
John Wesley, or Charles Wesley, in any of
our churches.
They were both certified men of impeccable morality,
scholars, read Hebrew and Greek, don't let them
in the churches, and don't let that man,
George Whitfield, in the church at all.
Tell me, who was the bishop at that
time?
Nobody knows, don't care a hill of beans,
but we know the men that got kicked
out.
You know, some of you guys, if you're
faithful, you'll be kicked out.
At least that's my prayer.
I pray you all get fired for being
fired, Amen.
But God's going to do it.
Don't lose sight of that with all I've
rambled on.
You see, God used the same material before,
they were flesh and blood, many of them
were fallible.
Paul was saying this morning, some of them
made great mistakes, but God looks on the
heart, and they were able to see great
movings of the Spirit of God.
America is harder today than she's ever been.
We've no vocabulary anymore.
Nobody commits adultery now, they just have an
affair.
There's no fornication, it's premarital sex.
Nobody's messing with spiritism, it's just channeling.
We've taken the sting out of all the
words, we don't talk about hell.
We've got to get back to biblical theology.
And listen, we've got to do the essential
thing.
Jesus says, if I be lifted up, we're
not preaching Christ, we're preaching drugs, we're preaching
abortion, we're preaching crime, we're not preaching Christ.
Our fathers, I've been reading very much lately
again, well, partly the apostolic fathers, and the
men up in the Puritans, and the other
people in that area, how they exalted Christ.
It was Christ first, Christ last.
You see, we've lost sight of the majesty
and holiness of God.
We don't tiptoe out of the sanctuary subdued
by God's almightiness and power and mercy.
It's just a ritual, it's a formality.
People know where we're going to start, how
we're going to start.
But let's go back to the main issue
again.
The main issue, the church should vibrate.
Boy, if I live within a hundred miles
of this place, I'd be here every, I'd
be here every week at least once to
pray with these guys.
I wouldn't pray in the day when it's
coming to about nine o'clock till three
in the morning, and see how men would
come.
They'll come.
There's nothing more attractive on this earth than
fire.
Whether it's physical or spiritual, fire is the
most attractive.
Our God is a consuming fire, and the
only answer to hellfire is Holy Ghost fire.
Brother Leonard, let me ask you another question,
and you make interviews very easy.
This is my third question now.
What do you believe is the greatest hindrance
to genuine revival in the church here in
the West?
The number one hindrance to revival in America
is evangelism.
We've made it easy for people to come
forward and say a little prayer and go
out.
Stop them and ask, ask it.
You ask teenagers in your church.
Number one, are you saved?
Yeah, from what?
Oh, from hell.
Are you saved from lust?
Are you saved from pride?
They don't know.
Talk about the witness of the Spirit that
John Wesley preached on more than anything else.
They don't know what you're talking about.
They'll sing blessed assurance and they've no assurance.
The hindrance, number one, is we've made it
so easy for people to come forward.
They go out at the door.
I watched some recently.
They had to get out of the door.
They were lighting cigarettes.
They weren't going home under anguish.
Do you not, dear, what's his name again?
Spurgeon said when he was 15, he was
under conviction of sin for weeks and weeks
and weeks.
He couldn't sleep.
He couldn't eat.
Dear God, our people, they're a bit upset
in the meeting.
They go out.
They go back to sin.
They go back and sit before TV till
midnight.
There's no concern.
There has to come an awakening in the
church to the peril.
Those loved ones of yours at the end
of the table, they don't go to church.
No, they're going to hell.
Why don't you say it?
My boy's a good boy.
He's quarterback.
Who cares a hell of beans?
He's quarterback, a fullback, any other back.
Where are your children?
What's your ambition for your boy?
I have three boys.
Two of them, two of the best preachers
in America today.
The other one's the head of one of
the new sects in that multi-million dollar,
what do you call it now?
Smithsonian Museum.
And these boys, they've got prayer lives.
Two of them have got tremendous prayer lives,
and they're my joy.
I would be totally unhappy if they were
anything else.
They'd never be millionaires.
They'd never be rich.
But they know God.
They're laying up treasure in heaven.
And our young people, you see, it's not
a case of getting the family, getting the
Bible back in the schools.
Get the Bible back in your home.
We were talking, I was talking to your
brother Bill here about, um, what's his name
now?
Duncan Campbell.
I spent many hours in prayer with Duncan
Campbell.
He used to pray and weep and groan.
The amazing thing, Billy, I don't know, he
never had revival except when he preached in
Gaelic.
I preached, you know, the first day of,
I remember the first day of World War
I.
It was the 4th of August.
My cousin went to the army.
He came back crippled.
I remember the first day of World War
II.
I was to preach at the head church
of Nazarene Saturday night.
In the afternoon, I went to a mission
hall in the center of Glasgow.
And I didn't know, they said, this is
Duncan Campbell.
And he was always known as Duncan Campbell
of the Argyle Revival.
I'll tell you about that.
Till now, he'd lost his anointing and became
nobody.
But I said to him, well, what was
the condition?
He had, what, Revival 1949.
He said, well, by the way, at that
time, after breakfast in the morning, they lifted
all the dishes off the kitchen sink, off
the table, put them in the kitchen sink.
And Daddy got the Bible and he read
a psalm, or a psalm usually, commented on
it.
And the children had to memorize the, what
do you call it, the charter catechism.
You see, maybe the greatest hemorrhage we ever
had was Isaac Watts.
He wrote, When I surveyed the wonderous cross,
he wrote, Joy to the world, the Lord
is come.
He wrote, We're marching to Zion, wonderful man
of God.
But, you know, he had a catechism, catechism
for children under seven years of age.
And you couldn't move up in a, in
a class in Sunday school until you've memorized
it.
Then he had another catechism for children from
seven to 14 years of age.
Then he had another catechism for people 14
and up.
What does a good book say?
Thy word that I hid in my heart,
that I might not sin against thee.
And so I said, well, you give me
the secret of revival.
The seed had been in the hearts of
those children for 10 and 15 years.
Then the Holy Ghost comes and sends somebody
along, and that seed begins to germinate.
The word of God is quick and powerful.
Where is it?
It's first in my heart, but then the
Holy Ghost breathes on it.
It's like I have a little spark in
my heart.
The Holy Ghost breathes on it.
It comes into a flame.
Your number one concern should be your family.
I went to preach at a certain college.
I had a good time.
The second time I went, a guy came.
He said, I want to thank you for
coming.
He said, God moved on my heart last
time you were here.
Fine.
And he said, I believe in you.
I said, what do you mean you believe
in me?
He said, because you've raised three boys that
are a credit to you.
Two wonderful preachers.
My precious wife did most of it.
I was away touring in prayer, but I
spent hours in prayer for them.
And my number one, even if I was
in a big church in some other country,
number one today, Lord, the first thing I
cover my family with the precious blood, I
believe the Holy Spirit will talk to them.
Dear God, when Paul was 16 years of
age, he prayed more hours than I prayed.
We were prayed till one and two in
the morning in an old part of a
mansion we had in Ireland.
And all the men I've known have been
men of prayer.
And it costs something.
But you see, your ambition should be to
see your spiritual offspring in your home, your
spiritual offspring in the church.
If I were in a church, I would
have a nucleus of about 10 young men
every week and talk to them about the
things of God, particularly in the life of
prayer.
I'd read some of the great characters that
God has made, because they did the same
stuff as us.
I wouldn't be bothered about a big church.
Why didn't Jesus take the 5,000?
He fed them.
They didn't follow him.
He didn't feed the 5,000 in a
church.
He didn't feed the 4,000 in a
church.
He manifested his power.
He had 12, and they weren't all good.
Thomas doubted.
Look at the mess that Judas made.
But prayer is the secret.
You know that.
You make up your mind you're going to
give time to a prayer.
The devil will fight it more than anything
else.
Your phone will ring off the hook.
Visitors will come.
Somebody will say, come and preach at our
church.
Why did you conduct a revival in somebody
else's church when your own is dead?
That's nonsense.
Brother Avonhill, if you knew that God was
going to remove you from the scene and
you only had one message left that you
could communicate to the church in North America,
what would that message be?
What's the burden of your heart right now?
There will be two things.
Number one, the sad thing we don't know
God.
Years have come that they may know thee,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
thou has sent.
And if we know God, we don't have
to know anybody else.
If we don't know God, we need to
know everybody else.
And the other thing that's obscure, I'm going
to use it when I preach on the
indestructible man.
We've lost, totally lost sight of the judgment
seat of Christ.
Totally.
Suppose the Lord is coming today.
As you as a pastor, would you welcome
him and say, Lord, my church is the
cleanest church in town.
We're without spot or wrinkle.
We've dealt with divorce.
We've dealt with drunkenness.
I have the most godly bunch of deacons
in Texas or in America.
I have the finest group of young people,
Lord.
I've spent my life preparing the bride.
Why doesn't he come?
Because the bride hasn't made herself ready.
She's filthy.
She's unclean.
It isn't rape and all the damnable things
in the world that keeps Jesus away.
The church is filthy.
He's not coming for a bride.
Therefore we have to revive a revival of
true holiness, Bill.
I believe with all my heart.
You do, I believe too, Manly.
Holiness has to come.
There are three things missing in modern preaching.
Immensity, intensity and eternity.
There are two things missing in the pew.
One is integrity and the other is honesty.
But you read about those old Puritans.
They had immensity and intensity.
There was no dodging the Word of God.
You felt you were almost being crucified with
it.
It's the Word of God that's living, as
my dear brother said last night.
It's not an illustration.
You build a doctrine on it.
You can't do that.
These guys that have all these visions, they
trouble me in one sense.
You have a vision.
It doesn't help me.
It's my personal relationship with God.
And as you taught last night, I was
thinking how often I've preached on that chapter
of Manly.
And it's a wonderful chapter on faith.
And the key in that chapter to me
is, is Hebrews 11, 6.
How does it begin?
Yeah.
And he that cometh to, who?
He that cometh to God must believe that
he is, that he is what?
That he is able to save to the
uttermost.
That he's able to keep you from falling.
He's able to make you pure in an
impure world, as I said the other night.
The greatest miracle in the world is God
can take an unholy man out of an
unholy world, make him holy, put him back
in that unholy world, and he can walk
in truth and righteousness from here to eternity,
walk through hell.
Jesus didn't die to save us from sins.
He tied us to.
What did he die for?
To get a peculiar people unto himself.
You know, many people in your church want
to be good, but not many want to
be holy.
Who wants a drunken husband?
Who wants a rotten, unfaithful wife?
Who wants kids that are the smartest dressed
in town?
Who cares?
Ask your children, do you want to be
holy?
Do you think they might turn around and
say, Dad, are you holy?
Do you live like Christ in our home?
You see, that's where it comes down to
role models, as we say.
We've got men who are models.
I think you centralised it last night, when
you were talking about Christ being in us.
You see, a man isn't saved because he
gives up his lousy sins and confesses sins
and believes Jesus rose from the dead.
The devil believes that.
The devil believes in the virgin birth, he
witnessed it.
The devil believes in the resurrection, he witnessed
it.
But there's no Christ in the devil, it's
Christ in you.
Paul says he revealed himself to me and
then he revealed himself in me.
You'll never forget that if you have that
crisis, I'll tell you that.
You can argue as much as you like
about the second blessing.
You come into a crisis where the Christ
becomes different, the Word of God lives and
vibrates, the losses of men, you see men
robbing God every day, some of your deacons
do it.
They rob God of time, they rob God
of his testimony, they rob God of his
authority on them.
There has to come a revival of purity
in the church.
So the two most urgent things to me
will be to preach that you may know
God.
Say for the next month you say I'm
going to do nothing but study about Jesus
Christ who he is and what he is
and I'm going to study about the judgment
seat of Christ.
I've preached on the judgment seat of Christ
for more than 20 years.
I've been working on the book for nine
years.
But you know what, it terrifies me.
I try to go to bed at nine.
One night I was late, I went to
ten.
I woke up at two o'clock and
went to the end of the house to
my little office and I opened Revelation.
I began to read the Revelation 20 and
it's as though the book suddenly left alive.
What did I read?
I read there the second death and suddenly
I said I've heard a hundred sermons on
the second coming, I've heard a hundred on
the second blessing, I've heard a hundred on
the second coming, on the second birth, on
the second blessing, and never heard one on
the second death.
And it's just a voice like that I'm
sure just said to me hell has no
exits.
And I turned around.
What do you think I did?
Go back to sleep?
A million roads into hell and nowhere.
Well preach it.
Tell me when did you last?
Come on don't believe it.
Cut it out of your bible.
You've cut it out of your preaching.
What's the difference?
In God's sight you cut it out of
your bible.
Boy you're going to get into trouble man.
You won't be in the southern baptist.
Did you say we should do what Jesus
did?
You see kids come to me and say
well I'm going to the Philippines for three
weeks.
Can you speak the language now and give
that tract?
Why?
To fulfill the great commission.
What was a great?
Well the last words of Jesus.
Tell me what were they?
As manly says what were they?
Well the last word of Jesus was going
into all the world and not in my
bible.
That's the last word to the disciples.
The last word of Jesus is three times
over in Revelation repent, repent, repent.
And he didn't say go into all the
world and preach.
He said make disciples.
You can't make disciples in five minutes at
the altar.
You can't make disciple by giving tracts on
main street every Friday night.
Bring them in.
Even if you bribe them with coffee or
a donut or something and say we're going
to have instruction now.
We're not going to go through the catechism.
The pastor's made a catechism.
We're going to teach you the fundamentals of
the faith.
Our kids don't know it.
I guarantee there's a big church in the
south where the pastor says we're called to
the 11,000 college students in this town.
And then he says I'll give you the
name of it in the back of my
bible.
And he says in this town in their
sophomore years and the baptist.
I'll give you his name.
He says the sophomore students in the colleges
here as soon as they get away from
home in the second semester or what do
you call them?
Sophomores.
They quit church.
They go off out on Sundays.
Why?
Because they've been baptized and everything but they
never make Christ.
They've gone through a ritual and a formula.
Few of our young people are generally born
again of the spirit of God.
Boy I'm glad when I got saved I
got saved.
I know sooner got saved.
Boy I got an appetite for prayer.
I owe a lot to America.
He owes a lot to me too.
But somebody gave me a limited edition uh
of the life of uh of David Brainerd.
When I read it I cried.
I said people told me that all finished
with the new testament.
Listen if miracles finish with the new testament,
prayer finished.
You show me why God the Holy Ghost
abrogated giving gifts unto men.
You can't show me.
A professor told you.
Who told him?
Not God.
The devil told him.
It's an amazing thing.
You can be in a church and commit
adultery.
You shouldn't do but if you do that
or some other thing they'll let you stay
as a pastor.
You'll get filled with the Holy Ghost and
speaking tongues they'll kick you out.
I had dinner the other day with Dr.
Jack Reed.
You know Jack Reed?
Beautiful man of God.
Knows Hebrew through and through.
Knows Greek through and through.
Was teaching in Dallas.
No sorry Jack Deer.
Thank you dear.
Jack Deer.
And I sat with him.
Well he was teaching Greek and Hebrew.
I won't mention the the seminaries.
A whole lot of these cemeteries.
I mean seminaries in Dallas.
And uh he didn't get the gift of
chance.
He went to see what was happening in
these other churches.
When he saw it he became alarmed.
You know guys say to me I've read
your books.
One thing sticks in my mouth.
What is it?
You said one day somebody's going to read
the bible and believe it and when they
do we'll all be embarrassed.
That's what they do in some of these
foreign countries.
They get the bible and they read it.
They stare and say hey who's this Jesus?
Is he there?
Oh no he lives up there.
They don't get a hill of beans if
he lives up there if he's not living
in you.
Life action became new to me today.
I'll tell you.
You can believe dear brother.
I know you do on your team.
But people don't just get interested when your
van goes down the street with the life
action.
How much life do you leave in churches?
How much life is there?
Does somebody say Dalin is team?
They don't preach like ordinary men.
They preach as though they've got something they've
got power that we've never measured.
I'm going to keep saying.
I'll stop.
I will right now.
But you know what?
All of us are thermometers.
We have a big thermometer at the back
of our window and I say to them
out in the morning.
Darling what is it?
Do you know the last few mornings before
we came here it was almost 80 at
7 in the morning.
And what's it going to be today?
100.
But you know that poor thermometer.
Well the poor thermometers around there were at
80 the other day.
Boy they went down like the stock market.
Down to 40 or something last night.
But there inside the door you have a
what do you call it?
A thermostat.
Well it's only a thermometer.
The difference is this.
The thermometer outside gets opened down with the
changing of the world.
The thermostat taps into some power and it
doesn't say I'm going to go up and
down.
I'm going to control the atmosphere.
The atmosphere doesn't control me.
I control the atmosphere.
Well listen either the world, the flesh and
the devil control you or God the Holy
Ghost controls you.
We don't go up and down.
We're God controlled.
We're God inspired.
We're God energized.
We're not serving a denomination.
We're serving the living God.
And brethren listen.
Every one of us here this morning we're
on probation.
We're clamming for our finals.
I'll tell you a thought of the judgment.
See when I preach on Paul that absolutely
floored me when a brother wrote it to
me recently.
But you see you start preaching.
Every time you make this sermon put your
notes down or whatever you have and say
Lord I'm just going to preach this in
the light of the judgment and I answer
for every word before a billion or 50
billion people I have to answer for this
message.
Keep a record of your prayer life and
at the end of the week say Lord
this is it.
If you can't control your TV every time
you go to the TV put a chair
at the side invite the Lord to sit
there and you make a note of how
many minutes you spend how many hours and
at the end of the week keep a
list on your praying and see how much
time.
I know the football season coming and all
the other crazy things.
You know what I've in my mind entertainment
is the devil's substitute for joy.
The more joy you have in the Lord
the less entertainment you need.
When you can say thou O Christ art
all I want.
But listen be careful he may strip you
of everything else you have.
You may lose some of your best friends
that think you're fanatical.
They don't mind you being kind and good
but you become holy and zealous and immediately.
Have you got friends think you're crazy?
Good well I've got some too maybe the
same friends.
Brother Ravenhill I know you've got to go
and prepare for tonight and on behalf of
all of our participants here I want to
thank you for giving so much of yourself
and what God has taught you this afternoon.
Well it's been lovely to meet you brothers
and there's nothing on God's earth secondary to
preaching.
The job in the white house is peanuts
compared to being a man of God in
God's house.
God's house is going to change America not
the white house.
It's full of corruption.
It's like Washington.
It's like Wall Street.
It's down the drain and the church is
in the same condition.
There's going to be revival.
I'm looking tonight for some men that maybe
there's one man in that meeting tonight.
I keep saying to myself and I've got
a word from God I know that maybe
there's one man who's going to be transformed
tonight and only 10 years from now we'll
know what God did.
I've seen that happen more than once and
that's my desire.
I love you all.
I love you dear brother.
Pray for every day.
You have been listening to the From the
Pulpit and Classic Sermon Series.
This week you heard Leonard Ravenhill with his
Revival Forum Q&A session.
Tune in next week to hear William Blackbird
talk about Hell is Real on From the
Pulpit and Classic Sermons.