Welcome to from the pulpit and classic sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have Leonard Ravenhill with his
message, A man of God, part one.
I've often said that I didn't come to
Jesus as an old English hymn like we
used to sing so often.
I came to Jesus as I was weary
and worn and sad.
I didn't because I was fourteen and I
didn't understand my father's zeal for God.
I didn't come because I was convicted of
sin.
I came because of the blanks in my
life, like he relished reading the word of
God and he relished going to prayer meetings,
even half nights of prayer.
And also, more than ever, he relished being
a street corner preacher.
And that, do you remember the hymn My
Faith Looks Up to Thee, Thou Lamb of
Calvary?
Well, the last stanza says, May thy rich
grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my
zeal inspire.
And my daddy had inspired zeal.
God lifted the beggar from the dunghill.
He completely changed my daddy.
He'd been to a certain system of religion
which made him fearful and terrified of priestcraft
and all that.
And he got marvelously born again as a
result of hearing David Matthews, who went through
the Welsh Revival.
Then he wrote the classic, it's still a
classic, on I Saw the Welsh Revival.
And my daddy had never been in meetings
like that.
And the fervor and the joy, particularly I
remember seeing David Matthews when I was five
years of age.
I'd never seen anybody preach like, he sang
like, his mouth like an oval.
And he had a shock of black wavy
hair.
And he had a zeal and he had
a joy in the Lord that stirred and
my daddy got saved.
Well, as a result of that, as I
say, he became fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord.
I never saw him downcast.
I never saw him suggesting about giving up.
But I mean, when he got saved, he
tossed away his interest in professional football and
everything else, which of course became a style
in England.
After you're saved, you never go to a
movie, you never go to a professional match.
There's so much profanity and so forth.
And when I saw that, and I saw
the joy and we lived in comparative poverty,
we had much money, my daddy was a
laborer.
And as a result of that, as I
say, at 14 he took me to a
half night of prayer.
There were three other men there and they
prayed.
And my daddy's a big husky man, taking
his coat off at one o'clock in
the morning in a room that had no
heat and praying with tears and further.
From that very day, I recognized there's something
far beyond what the average Christian had.
And then after that, of course, I went
to the Methodist class meeting till I was
14 and that was full of the joy
of the Lord.
I mean, people spoke as though God lived
with them all the time and he did.
And there was that same kind of zeal
there.
I mean, even in those days back in
the 19-odd, well, that'd be around 1912,
just before World War I even, there was
a half hour song singing before the Sunday
night service, but they didn't sing choruses except
choruses from hymns.
Or they sang great hymns like, And Can
It Be and so forth.
And you had men who would explode in
a meeting when he was singing, And Can
It Be.
My chains fell off.
One old boy would jump at the tears
all down his face.
He'd strike it up at the end.
There's a woman to the left of us.
I used to watch her because her neck
would go red and then she'd suddenly burst
with a hallelujah, you know.
We talk about the joy of the Lord.
I'd never seen anything like it.
Well, at that time, Samuel Chadwick was preaching
in the, he had revival on the local
level in Leeds.
And of course, the conversation in our house,
we hardly ever had a newspaper.
There's no talk about films, of course.
We were just coming out then.
It was all about God and mysteries and
so forth.
Daddy took me to see Padgig Wilkes, who
founded the Japan Rescue Mission.
I was about 12, I think.
I heard C.T. stood to give a
lecture one morning and later saw Miss Cable
and Miss Francesca, friends that walked through China
and the Gobi Desert and all that kind
of, my daddy, wherever there was anything foreign.
I'll tell you, at that time, Doncaster was
25 miles away from us.
Well, there was a Pentecostal fellowship there.
And I forget the name of the Bible
teacher, but my daddy might get on a
bus to town, another bus from town to
Doncaster, and then walk the rest of the
way to the fellowship and stay there a
weekend and come back radiant as though he'd
been in the upper room, which he just
about had, because Smith Wigglesworth was one of
the teachers there and all those guys.
And nobody in those days scornfully said that
faith healing is fake healing.
I mean, there were living evidences of people
spontaneously getting out of wheelchairs and so forth,
but it wasn't that.
Really, it was a transformation in personality.
I mean, they went back to the churches
and had prayer meetings.
And in our town, we had a little
man, he's only, I don't think he weighed
about 110 pounds.
And for years, he fasted and prayed.
He was a Pentecostal, which was despised.
In fact, his wife said to hear him
pray, he'd be praying in another room.
It was like, you know, a man having
a personal encounter with God, he'd wrestle with
God.
Well, then George Jeffress came along in 1927.
The whole city was swept in three weeks
with the Holy Ghost.
And the church is there today.
It's called Bridge Street in Leeds, England.
That church is still, it's in its third
enlargement.
When other churches are going down, they still
have that same.
They were born in the fire, they maintain
the fire, but they maintain prayer all the
time.
Well, then from there, I was in a
factory, working in a factory one day, and
I heard a voice say, follow me.
And I turned, it was so real, I
took my tape off my neck, I was
a tailor's cutter, put my shoes down and
prayed.
I remember saying clearly to the Lord, Lord,
not only will I not go back, I
won't even look back.
And that day I applied to go to
Cliff College.
And then when Chadwick was the principal there,
well, Chadwick, the birds both had a flock
together.
So the great character in America at that
time was A.
B.
Simpson, founder of Christian Mission Alliance.
And also in Scotland, there was a man
by the name of MacIntyre, I don't know,
have you read his little book, Hidden Life
of Prayer?
It's one of the classics.
It's still published, better than it just re
-published.
Well, those three men, of course, across the
Atlantic there was no telephone in those days,
and mail was slow, but they corresponded all
the time because they were all on one
level.
Well, Chadwick went out, and right opposite his
church in the middle of Leeds, there's an
obituary statue of Queen Victoria with a big
spread in front of it, and men used
to stand there and preach.
Well, an atheist stood there, and he laughed
at people coming after church and scorned them,
and told you, a man standing in a
coward's castle, a pulpit, he talks one way,
you can't answer, listen to me, and they
listened.
Well, Chadwick went out and listened to this
man scorning the Bible and everything, and one
day he said, listen, I've listened to you
three weeks, you didn't come and listen to
me.
You come and listen to me, he said,
I'll come next.
So he came, and there's a big horseshoe
gallery, and right opposite the preacher was a
clock, and this man, the leader, sat behind
the clock, and the other ten men sat
with him, and they came to the altar
the first night they were there, and it
wiped out the whole testimony of the atheists.
Then it wiped out all the devilry in
the community on a local level, and it
was all prayer.
I mean, he wrote the book The Way
to Pentecost, and after that he wrote the
book The Path of Prayer, and that's where
he lived, and that's where it rubbed off
on so many of us, that we saw
a living example of a man who walked
in the power of the Spirit.
Well, then I could go on for long
enough, but I won't.
All the time I've tried to feed myself,
and I've gathered books out of a rack
of books on prayer, and a whole stack
of books on historic revival, which we don't
have anymore.
America hasn't had a revival in the last
70 years that I know of.
I mean, revival that closes their shops, and
as soon as people get home, they want
to get to the sanctuary, and they don't
stay till seven o'clock till eight.
They stay till eight till midnight and after,
when the Holy Ghost really comes.
I think very often we're praying in ignorance.
We want the Holy Spirit to come, but
what do we want him to come for?
Just to increase our numbers?
Just so our kids won't go to the
devil?
I mean, are we jealous for God's glory?
And to me, that's what revival is all
about.
Revival is an invasion of God by the
Spirit, and if America doesn't have one within
the next 10 years, it's going to be
horrible living in this country.
Crime is out of hand now.
Immorality abounds.
Herpes, AIDS, every devilish thing is prospering.
Plus all the power of the cults save
multi-million dollars.
So it's inevitable that we have revival.
Paul said, would the God you could bear
with me in my following.
Yeah.
Indeed bear with me, for I'm jealous over
you with godly jealousy.
For I have espoused you to one husband,
that I may present you as a chaste
virgin to Christ, but I fear less by
any means as the serpent beguiled thee through
his subtlety.
So your mind should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.
For he that cometh preaches another Jesus, whom
we have not preached.
Or if he receive another spirit, which he
have not received, or another gospel, which he
have not accepted, you might well bear with
him.
Is there another gospel that we're listening to?
It's not the gospel.
What is that gospel?
Well, in England we used to call it
modernism, or you call it liberalism here.
That, I mean, the Baptists now, for a
long time they've had contention about the Bible
is the very word of God.
I mean, can't we alter it?
And as I say very often, we've revised
it, but God never has.
And I still think the King James Version
is nearest to the best.
And those old-fashioned guys preached it.
I think, brother, there's, we've almost no preachers
in America.
Everybody's teaching, teaching, teaching.
I think I have 500 tapes in there
that people, I think I got 40 tapes
in the first month of this year.
You must read my interpretation of Revelation.
You must read my story.
There is, there's at least 50 John the
Baptists in the country.
So they think they are.
If a guy tells me I'm a John
the Baptist, I say, have you increased your
insurance?
They say, why?
I say, you've only got to live six
months.
He goes, oh no, no, no.
But we're not preaching the gospel.
What are we preaching?
Well, there's one, there was two groups.
There's one group now that's preaching signs and
wonders all the time.
There's another one that says it's love and
signs.
If it's signs and wonders in God's name,
what did he do for Judas?
He saw everything Jesus did, then look what
he did.
And what if some of the guys have
been preaching about the Holy Ghost and miracles?
Where are they now?
One's in jail, the other's in the gutter
comparatively.
We've got to get back to the cross.
If I've been lifted up, I will draw
all men.
You get the Emmaus road, going down the
Emmaus road, it says that Jesus opened unto
them the scriptures, then he opened their eyes,
then he opened their understanding.
But then you think after they, and read
the last chapter in Luke, and it says
the most awesome thing there that they sat
and talked with Jesus and had breakfast with
him.
One of them broke bread and he gave
him bread.
The other one broke a honeycomb.
Well, can you imagine you giving Jesus personally
honeycomb, and he puts his hand out, there's
a nail hole through it.
And they saw the most astounding miracle in
history, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
And wait a minute, he says, come with
me.
And they went to order for the next
most astounding miracle, the ascension of Jesus into
heaven.
Couldn't they live on that?
Couldn't they live?
There isn't a devil in hell who will
ever move us.
We had breakfast with Jesus, we talked with
Jesus, we shared a meal with Jesus.
Couldn't you live on that forever?
Jesus says, no, you can't.
Well, we saw him ascended into heaven, not
many of us, but we saw him.
The two most outstanding things, and yet Jesus
says, tarry till you be endued.
You can't live on the emotion of it.
That's the trouble with the most horrible thing
I know that happens in evangelism today.
We don't value the human soul.
When are we going to get serious about
being serious about the most serious thing in
the world, the birth of people at the
altar.
I watched the close of a service in
Dallas a few weeks ago.
At the end, about 15 people came in
four minutes.
They said a prayer and gone away.
Well, my reaction to that brother was this,
I can't get my car through a car
wash in four minutes.
Can they pass from death unto life?
Can they put off the old man and
put on the new man, as you Jews
have figured?
Can they get married to Christ in four
minutes?
Of course not.
In fact, when you read Seven Pentecostal Pioneers,
which everybody should read because it's still printed,
it tells you there that they had one
place where they had meetings for three weeks,
and I forget the number, something like 964
people came and everyone was dealt with personally.
We used to go to a city without
money and pitch a tent and stay there
12 weeks.
The churches are still there 60 years after.
But everybody came to the altar.
If you came, I'd come with a bible
at the side of you and ask you
what your problem was.
You wanted to be saved, we took you
through the scriptures.
If we spend an hour, so what?
I don't often watch TV.
I watched a special, there was a special
about three years ago, of all the things
they were going to show on one of
the, what is it called now?
Well, it was a special on animals, the
birth of a giraffe.
Now I said to Martha, well darling, I
want to see this.
So anyhow, the guy said, now listen, I've
already gone through this once, but let me
show you.
And he brought in this female, he said,
look her head is 14 feet from the
ground, which I thought was a long way.
Now here's the male, his head is 19
feet from the ground, now watch.
And he said, I've been through this, so
watch.
And he said, well bring the camera right
in front of the giraffe.
He said, now look, she's spreading her legs
at the back.
You see that black thing hanging?
That's a little baby and it's going to
fall five to six feet, according to the
height of the animal, onto a bed of
straw.
So what's that got to do with the
gospel?
It broke my heart.
Why?
Because I watched that thing.
And he said, now watch the next, now
you see the thing's coming now.
Now watch, watch, he said.
There.
And the thing dropped onto the big bed
of straw.
And he said, now this takes between three
and four hours.
And he said, now watch.
And the little thing tried to get up
and it rolled over.
It tried again, it rolled over.
It tried up again, it rolled the other
way.
Now watch carefully, he said.
And the next time it tried, the mother
put a hoof behind its backside and lifted
it up and it stood up.
And she turned around and nodded.
And the little thing nodded.
And he said, that's almost four hours.
So I went to the room to pray
and mother said, what's wrong?
I said, darling, I said, it takes four
hours to get a baby giraffe born.
It doesn't take four minutes for somebody to
get born at our altars today.
Oh, well, Graham said it more than once,
just stay a few minutes, stay a few
minutes in God's name.
What do you mean stay a few minutes?
Was Gethsemane a few minutes?
Was a temptation in the wilderness a few
minutes?
We're trying to get people in.
I guarantee that not five percent of people
in America or England are genuinely born again
of the Spirit.
They're born again of a decision.
They give up a few lousy habits, some
of them.
And some of them don't.
They go right back.
And then you tell you there's nothing in
it.
Dear brother, I was at a certain place.
I preached on the new birth.
I thought there was pretty much liberty.
And I said, if any of you want
this experience of birth in Christ, come forward.
The men come down the aisle and go
to the room on the right.
Women go down on the left.
So there were half a dozen in each
group.
Well, that was that was nine o'clock.
And we stayed in that room till ten,
helping men.
And they were really broken before God.
Then at ten o'clock, there's a knock
on the door.
And I said, come in.
And it was the pastor.
He said, can I bring this lady in?
Will you pray with her?
I said, well, if you stay, she's a
big, gorgeous looking blonde.
She knows when I hit the ground and
she bursted.
And she said, I want to tell you
something, Mr. Ramey.
I said, well, tell me, I'll listen.
She said, this is the 14th time I've
come out for this.
I went to a certain Bible school for
three years.
We had three revivals a year.
And each time I went, that was nine
times.
And he said, since then, I've been to
other meetings.
Somebody slips their arm around me and says,
don't worry, dear.
Jesus paid it all.
He knows when you said you're sorry that
that's all that matters.
And I said, that's not true.
And I said that we'll stay with you
while you really get a real relationship with
God.
So we stayed.
And she passed from death to life.
How do I know?
Because two years after I was passing the
church, she was coming out with the Bible.
And I said to her, he said, that's
a good woman you prayed for the last
time you were here.
She's the best Bible teacher we have.
But the thing was, before she got saved
and back to Bible school day, she got
married.
She got divorced.
She had a child.
She had a broken heart, a broken life.
It would have been avoided if she got
saved the first time.
But she didn't get saved.
She made a mental decision.
She wanted to be better.
She wanted to go to heaven.
But how many people really want to know?
I mean, isn't the essence of Christianity Christ
in you, the hope of glory?
There's no other religion in the world where
a man's God comes and lives inside of
him.
And we've made it appear as though if
you get saved, of course, you're going to
give up all your joys.
You give up these crazy habits.
You don't go to movies.
You don't go to ball games.
You're Christ is all you want.
But what on the other hand, what about
peace that passes all understanding?
What about a home eternal in the heavens?
What about the eternal aspect?
We don't present that.
I got two fellows in here the other
week, and they came from a certain, I'd
like to say, came from Criswell Seminary.
And one of them said immediately, I know
how to put a sermon together.
I know how to get words together, but
I have no power.
The other man burst into it.
I said, I just opened a paper and
your picture's in there.
He said, well, I didn't put it somewhere.
I said, but you're a preacher.
He said, I've had 300 people saved in
the last three months.
How do you know?
And he hadn't an answer.
Well, he said, I don't know.
I've often wondered.
They'll come out and say a prayer and
go out and live the same.
I said, they don't.
If they're born again, you become a new
creature.
If any man anywhere at any time being
Christ, and there's no better example of that
than Dave Wilkerson with all the people he
covers, unless I don't know if you know
Jackie Pullinger.
You know Jackie?
Well, she was here to see me.
And I mean, she goes, she doesn't go
out till 10 o'clock at night.
She goes to the gutters.
She goes to the outcasts.
She goes to the prostitutes.
She goes to men that have smoked opium
for 50 years.
She goes to women that have prostituted for
40 years.
You've got to have a gospel.
You can't give a mental flip to those
people.
And she stays with them until they're born
again in the Spirit of God, as one
of the most amazing works in the world,
as far as I'm concerned.
But where are the people?
I mean, you add up all the people
who made a profession of Christ in the
last few years of our crusades, or let
me put it here and then quit.
I had a veteran missionary from South America,
and he said, before I came up with
the Raymond, I was talking to a veteran
missionary, and he said, brother, if you add
up all the crusades in South America, and
all the people, everybody in South America has
been saved five times in the last 15
years.
Well, is it the same in this country?
Are we talking about how many people came
to the meeting?
How many people came forward?
Why aren't the churches increasing?
I had a lawyer call me from one
of the greatest churches in the country.
So Mr. Raymond, at least a thousand people
walk down the aisle in our church every
year.
And after three years of doing that, he
said the church is still the same size.
We still have the same seating capacity.
The prayer meetings haven't grown.
There's no evidence except that these people come
forward every Sunday.
Why haven't they?
As I said to you earlier today, brother,
the darkness of this day is the gift
of the church to the world.
The street meetings have gone.
Dear God, with all kinds of ministries around
here, but Tyler goes to hell.
How many churches do you have, the mega
churches in Dallas?
I guess you can't find one street.
I spent 50 years of my life in
street meetings.
Every Saturday night, I went out at 9
30 till midnight.
And after every night, whether it was snowing
or raining or what, we went out to
the same place.
And people came out of taverns and out
of movie houses at 10 o'clock and
stayed an hour and two hours in the
cold.
No air-conditioned buildings.
No nice, no attractive singers.
Just testament to that.
One man said this man was in jail.
This man used to run around with women.
This man has a prison record.
This man over there used to beat his
wife in the transfer.
This girl was a prostitute.
And put them out living flesh and blood.
Nobody could argue.
People would stand and say, why are you
the only preacher in the town does this?
I don't know except God told me to
do it and I do it.
Well, that's where the lost people are.
A man would be an idiot to buy
a hundred dollar fishing gear and fish in
his bathtub.
And that's all we do in church.
We're fishing with the same people every week.
And people are dying without God.
I'm glad, dear brother, I was raised in
a church where we had another preachers off
and boarding.
I devoured the Methodist in book 80 years
ago and I can recite still dozens and
dozens of hymns.
And one was a hymn by Andrew Bonner,
Go labor on, spend and be spent.
Thy joys do the master's will.
It is the way the master went, should
not the servant tread it still.
Men die in darkness at your side without
a hope to cheer the tomb.
Take up the torch and wave it wide.
The torch that lights time's thickest gloom.
I go to the prayer meeting.
Somebody will pray that.
After that, somebody will pray the prayer of
one of the modern women there from India.
What was her name?
Amy Carmichael.
Yeah, thank you, Amy Carmichael.
You know, give me a love that leads
the way, a faith which nothing can dismay,
a hope, no disappointments, tired of passion that
will burn like.
Let me not sink to be a cloth.
The woman in way over a hundred pounds.
Make me thy fuel flame of God.
She never married.
She took a one-way ticket to the
mission field.
People go now, there's plenty of money in
our church.
Oh, we'd love you to come back for
Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Do come back.
So they break off and come back.
They go back.
They run to and fro.
They have to go with a camera.
They have to go with a load of
stuff.
You don't find the old-fashioned missionaries going
like they used to do.
Jackie went on a single ticket to Hong
Kong when she was 19.
She's 44 now.
She's still there.
She's shed a million tears, but she's had
some of the greatest characters, infamous characters saved
there.
How many people come forward in your church,
and you can go back afterwards and say,
well, you came to the altar.
Well, what happened in your life?
I think that everybody that comes to the
altar, we should visit them during the week
and be sure that they did pass from
death unto life, because what happens?
They say, well, I've been out twice and
never got anything.
Well, they can't, because so to do so
mentally.
I don't see any brokenness.
I see kids come forward in a crusade.
They're laughing and joining hands.
They go out, and the first thing they
do is stop at a hot dog place
or something.
They don't go home to grieve and read
the Word and find out if it's true.
They go back full of jollity, and they
sing on the bus.
We had a wonderful time, but what are
we doing?
The summer's gone.
The harvest has passed, and we're not saved.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, well, I'm saying, dear brother, I don't
believe that we reach the conscience like some
people, like one of the classic things Dr.
Tozzi used to quote to me often.
He used to say, well, Len, remember when
our famous American preacher, D.L. Moody, went
to London, the first day he preached, he'd
laugh at his Yankee clothes.
The second day, they laughed at his style.
The third day, Cambridge University men were there
laughing, and he stopped them.
He said, gentlemen, laugh at my style.
Laugh at my Americanism.
But he said, in God's name, don't laugh
at the Word of God.
He says, the Word of God, I would
just as soon handle fault-lightning.
But what happened?
He's an illiterate man, comparative with no education.
He goes to London.
He goes from London to Scotland, where Alexander
White was the king of the pulpit at
that time, and Alexander White sits on the
edge of his chair with his mouth open.
Well, what has this man got?
He doesn't know history too well, doesn't quote
scripture very correctly, but there's something about him.
So much so that across town, there's a
man, I don't know if you know a
book, written by Henry Drummond, the greatest thing
in the world, it was one of the
greatest classics ever.
And Alexander White says to Drummond, hey, come
over and hear this fellow.
We haven't had an evangelist like this.
And they were spellbound.
What would have happened if he'd gone to
London for three days?
He didn't.
He went for eight months.
He went to Scotland, and the tent hall
is still there.
I think they called it a tent hall,
because people came out of the tent that
Moody had and went in that hall.
Also, one of the greatest Bible schools ever,
Glasgow Bible Institute, was founded because of that.
And the money was given to him.
Well, I'll tell you, you talk about a
background.
One of the most wonderful men I ever
saw was C.T. Studd.
Well, C.T. Studd's daddy used to buddy
with the King of England.
When I used to do, in World War
II, I went to one of the largest
air force camps in the nation, and I
had to go up a hill and to
the right, in the moonlight, I could see
this estate where C.T. used to live
with a private racecourse.
Well, C.T.'s daddy went to London, mixed
up with all the society, and he had
about this Yankee preacher, well, let's go.
Well, when he got there, somebody asked a
man to pray while, what do you call
him now?
Well, Moody was on the platform going to
preach.
They sang to him and said, pray.
This guy went on and on, and Moody
jumped up and said, let's sing a song
while this fellow finishes.
So immediately, they were happy.
You know, the guy wasn't tied up to
formality.
Well, they listened, and C.T., and I
think his father got saved there, as a
result, he took the three most famous cricketers
in England.
C.T. was the Babe Ruth English critic,
cricket.
Well, they went, and the whole society like
that went.
Well, C.T. joined up with the other
six, and they formed the Cambridge Seven, and
went to China.
I mean, there's all kinds of things happened
out of that.
One revival of an illiterate man that didn't
care if they laughed at his clothes and
everything, and he received opposition.
Well, nothing happened like that till the 1920s,
or 26 or something like that, when George
Jeffreys went to Holcruise Edge in England, and
Stephen Jeffreys had greater work than that, and
they got to a time without a penny,
and believe got to fill an auditorium with
3,000 people in a week, and they
did it.
And they weren't great expositors.
Brother Reagan Hill, in Jeremiah, the prophet says,
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the
ways, and see, and ask for the old
paths.
Where is the good way?
Walk therein, and ye shall find rest for
your souls.
But they said, we will not walk therein.
Well, going back, Brother Larry, I said, we've
turned the light out in the street.
We've no more street meetings.
We've turned the light out Sunday night.
Many churches turn up at Sunday night meeting,
Wednesday night.
That's about the biggest tragedy.
People say, don't you think we should get
the Bible back in school?
I said, that's not the first problem.
Get it back in the home.
Why don't, how many people meet, ask the
deacons in your church, ask the pastor, how
many of you have family worship?
They don't have it.
As soon as supper's over, they have to
go and get on TV and leave it
till the kid has got to bed.
They don't know the Word of God.
I had a man here, and his daughter
came to bring me some mail, and she's
14.
I said, well, dearie, how much scripture have
you memorized?
Oh, I haven't memorized any.
I said, can you memorize the Ten Commandments?
He couldn't say the Ten Commandments.
Two days after, a young guy came, he
lives across town.
He has seven children.
The eldest boy is 13.
He's memorized every word of chapter in Proverbs.
And the other boy is 10, and he's
memorized 12 chapters of Proverbs, every word.
The man gets up with his wife at
4 to 4.30 in the morning.
They have an hour together with the Word
of God.
They get the children up just after 5,
and then teach them the Word of God
and prayer.
And then the children have a rest, and
the mother teaches them the rest of the
day.
She's homeschooling them how they do it.
But those little kids are walking Bibles.
We don't know the Word of God.
Two things we don't know.
In fact, I said to the seminary men,
do you know God?
Well, I didn't know, no.
I answered, yes, I know.
Oh, I learned Hebrew.
I didn't ask if you know Hebrew.
Do you know God?
You ask 10 young people in your church
to answer in less than 50 words, why
did Jesus come into the world?
To save us from hell, to save us
from sin.
And so they go on.
But what does Jesus say in John 17
too, that they may know thee, the only
true God.
And that's the answer.
We don't know God.
If we knew God, we'd set the world
on fire.
If we knew God, we wouldn't beg for
money.
We know things about God, but we don't
know God.
We don't know God.
But I want to tell you then, in
1932, I preached in Swansea, South Wales, in
a little upper room, and there's a lady
there with white hair.
And she said, do you know my husband?
I said, I didn't know you had one.
She said, well, my husband is Major Russell.
I said, well, who's Major Russell?
In the British Army?
No salvation on me.
She said, would you come up and have
a meal with us?
I said, well, this is a crusade.
And she said, I only have Friday off.
I said, I'll take the bus and come
up to places called Rovina.
I'll come up Friday afternoon.
She said, well, come and have some tea
and we'll talk.
So, here's a grey-haired fellow sitting.
I said to him, well, it's a privilege
to come and talk with you.
How old are you?
He said, well, I'm 82.
And he said, I'll tell you some things
that when you're my age, I said, I
never lived to be 82, and I'm 84
now, nearly 85.
But he shared the office with William Booth,
the founder of the Salvation Army.
I said, what were the days like?
Days like heaven on earth.
He said, God, the Holy Ghost came.
They mentioned a certain place which is on
the Strand in London.
He said, now it's a theatre.
In those days, it's a hall you're hired.
And movies weren't houses and theatres weren't open
on Sundays.
So, you could rent them on Sundays.
So, you used to rent them Saturday and
Sunday.
And he said, I've been in that meeting.
He said, people won't believe you when you
tell them.
And that was 1932, so it's almost 60
years back.
And he said, when you tell them, they
won't believe you.
I said, well, they'll believe me, not tell
me.
I said, I want to know.
I don't care if it puts my nose
in the ground.
I don't care what you say.
As long as you realize that just as
you're a link with the past, at my
age of 82, I'll be a link with
another generation that doesn't know God.
So, I said, well, I'll tell you what
happened.
He said, William Booth could preach like nobody
else from Jeremiah.
The harvest is past, as somebody said it.
Oh, his favorite was, and he had a
gruff voice, if those run with a footman
and they have worried thee, I will now
do in the swelling of the Jordan, fire
of Ollie, which meant say hallelujah.
So, they all wrote hallelujah, you know.
And he said that what William Booth could
do, he could get men trembling, he said.
He said, as a matter of fact, you'll
give them a hymn book of maybe 25
pages and they'd sit with it on their
lap and shred it while they were, they
were so disturbed.
He said, you could see where these men
have been, all the back pews were full
of shredded hymn books.
The same thing happened in 1926.
I talked with the greatest revivalist Ireland's ever
had, W.P. Nicholson.
He said, by the way, he said, people
used to shred the hymn books when we
listened.
They were under conviction.
They were so nervous and sweat would run
off their noses, not that it doesn't happen
anymore.
Anyhow, going back to this, he said, the
old William Wood Peach hellfire boy, he said,
he could make you shake.
And he said, but he couldn't make an
altar call.
So, he would say, now come to the
mercy seat, come to the mercy seat, come,
run for your life, you're going to hell.
And he couldn't get anywhere.
He'd shout out, where is Lawley?
Where is Lawley?
Well, Commissioner Lawley was one of the stalwarts
of the Salvation Army, like Bringle.
And he said, he was under the platform
and it would come out.
And they used to hand clothes to each
other, you know, like somebody gave me your
suit, it would be hanging down on me.
And Commissioner Lawley's coat was down to his
ankles.
But he said, it'd come out on all
fours and do this, there'd be a cloud
of dust.
And then Lawley would begin to make an
appeal, you know, come to the mercy seat.
And he said, the altar would be lined,
but sometimes they wouldn't come.
He said, the general would turn around and
roar at us, you know, pray.
Everybody looked down and prayed.
And usually there's a break, but he said,
this day they prayed and nothing happened.
So he said again, pray.
He said, everybody's nervous.
Hey, what's happening to the old boy?
He's angry, he's angry.
Well, let's pray.
And he said, Lord, Lord, move right now,
move right now.
And he said, nobody came.
So a third time he'd roar, you know,
get hold of God.
He said, this meeting is going to go
to hell.
These people are perishing.
Some of them are wealthy, some are poor,
some are ignorant, some are backslidden.
Pray.
And he said, the Holy Ghost would take
all the men on the backseat and lift
them bodily over the congregation and drop them
on the altar.
I've said to Pentecostals, you saw that, you'd
run for the door, you'd say spiritism or
something.
I said, but there was an unwritten law
in the Salvation Army.
They called their churches a core, you know,
like the army does, C-O-R-P
-S, core.
And it was an unwritten law in the
Salvation Army that when you finished your street
meeting at nine o'clock Saturday night, you
go to pray till midnight.
And he said to me, we had men
that would pray.
And one old man particularly would say, he'd
jump up, maybe 12 or one, and raise
his hand and shout, victory, victory.
There'll be 10 tomorrow.
And he said, there'll be 9 or 10
saved.
Or he'd say, there'll be 15, there'll be
13 or 14.
He said, it was only one or 12
every time.
But he said, remember, we had street meetings,
we got baptized with rotten eggs.
In those days, there were no houses with
bathrooms.
They kept a, what they call a pot
under the bed, and they'd know it was
empty.
And people would run out and throw it
from a window and throw urine on them.
And he said, we kept two coats.
He kept an old one with eggs.
And you went home and scraped them off,
and then you put your Sunday best on.
And he said, Bert, he said, who cares
when there's revival?
As I said to you, you don't have
to advertise a fire.
Colonel Bringle was the biggest orator in America.
And I don't know who it was, or
the multimillionaires offered to build him the biggest
church in America, give him the biggest salary
if he would stay.
He said, I'm going to London.
Why?
Because there's a fire.
There's a man called William Booth, he was
a Methodist, they got rid of him.
And he's having revival, and he went and
had revival.
And he gathered all kinds of people to
him.
But the secret again, that they had a
burning.
You went in a prayer meeting, you know,
you felt the glory, the majesty of God.
And now you don't do that.
Like I was with a team not long
ago, well, before the meeting at night, we
went in a side room and they'd hot
tea and cold tea and drinks and fruit
and everything, and trivia talking and straight off
there to the platform.
How do you suddenly turn off and suddenly
become spiritual?
We traveled the country, but I walked the
length of England, walked the breadth of England
with five college fellows.
We slept in fields at night, we slept
in churches.
We didn't get a penny wage in six
months, and nobody ever said a word.
Because at night, we'd kneel in the street
at ten and eleven o'clock at night,
and people get saved in the street.
You don't care who where you sleep.
We slept in sleeping bags for three years,
slept on the floor of churches.
Anyway, they'd take us in, but we had
revival.
The churches are still standing today.
But now I go to a meeting and
everybody says, oh, nice to see you.
And they want to talk.
I say, leave me alone.
Well, we went, brother, we had a solid
hour of prayer together, eleven o'clock to
twelve in the morning.
Then we had a bit of a rest
in the afternoon and mostly went to prayer.
Then we had a prayer meeting one hour
before the night service, went on the platform,
charged with the power of God and full
of expectation and faith.
And night by night, the elders were lined
with people.
We don't do that today.
We've got Miss so-and-so, she's number
one on the charts.
We've got so-and-so.
And it's humanism, we're depending on something we
have.
I mean, you clap, you go to one
charismatic meeting, you've been to them all.
You stand and sing for thirty, forty minutes.
We're trying to work something up when God
has to send something down.
I can remember, dear brother, when you went
to a holiness meeting in England or a
Pentecostal, there were more people at the altar
before the service than after.
I used to fear going when I was
fourteen.
I used to go, my daddy used to
take me to a Pentecostal meeting and the
whole row, the throng before, and they'd be
praying with energy and crying to God.
One old man particularly would say, come Lord
and walk in our midst.
And I used to think, I hope he
doesn't because I'm scared to death he would.
But God used to come in the meeting.
And then at the end he didn't have
to beg and sing emotional songs, there's room
at the cross.
Forget it, there's room on the cross.
Forget there's room at the cross.
Get on the cross.
And as Joseph said, a man going down
the road with a cross, you know, one
thing about him, he wasn't coming back.
Our people don't want to die.
There's only two kinds of people in the
world, those who are dead to sin and
those who are dead in sin.
And we're in one of the two.
In fact, you talked about victory, they laugh
at you.
Oh, you can't live in victory?
Well then, why don't you be a Buddhist
to somebody?
What do you do with somebody that says,
look, I don't just want to get sick,
I want to be pure in heart.
You can't be pure in heart.
Who says so?
One of the latest books off the press
says you can't.
Who cares a hillaby?
What does the Word of God say?
What did Jesus say to the bad woman
that came to him?
Go and sin less.
He says that to a woman who's been
spending in immorality before the cross.
What does Paul say?
Let him that stole steal less.
No study, it's cut off.
What we need in America, dear brothers, is
more than ever, we need people to go
forth with a new birth message.
Forget all about tongues, forget all about miracles
and signs and wonders, in case they're not
happening anyhow.
Let's get back to real genuine conversion.
Why?
Most of our kids, our teenagers, they go
to a Christian camp.
Well, Christian camps are not much better than
others.
I mean, Adam Israel here, one of the
few men I really respect in the world,
he came from India and he came through
Hawaii, so he went to a very famous
Bible school there.
What do you think of it?
He said, well, he said the girl's shorts
were so bad when they came toward me,
I was disgusted.
When they went the other way, it was
worse.
So he said to the world famous leader,
you've no dress code here.
He said, what do you mean?
He said, well, the girls come towards me.
He said, you can't tell their shorts on
the social.
When they go the other way, they're terrible.
And the reply he got from the famous
leader was, as long as their cheeks are
not showing, they're all right.
So as a girl's backside to be showing,
you can't even not preach holiness, you can't
preach modesty these days.
Because kids are used to getting saved and
going straight back to the old way.
They go mixed bathing in some of the
meetings around here.
They'll have two missionary groups go to wet
and wild.
But what do guys want to stand with
half naked women, women in bikinis or as
near as they can to there.
I had a man came to see me
a few weeks ago and he said, he'd
been to a ministry near here.
And he said, I went to the meeting
last night.
It was very good.
I enjoyed it.
But then he said this morning, they said
we were meeting at the swimming pool.
He said, there was my wife.
For the first time in her life, my
five children saw the mother almost naked, standing
in a pool.
And I realized this is not for me.
And he left it.
And another man left not after.
And he said, if you can't have modesty,
where can you have it?
And they don't want to pray.
They have no appetite for prayer.
But the old salvation army thrived on prayer.
The greatest revivals in history, the Shang Tung
revival.
When Munson was there.
And the woman that died last year of
a hundred years old, Bertha Smith with the
Southern Baptist.
She was born again.
She was filled with the Holy Ghost in
that revival.
And they expected God to move in phenomenal
ways.
They didn't advertise it.
We don't have to advertise it.
What we need is God in the midst.
If God is in the midst, a lot
of our stuff would never take place.
Just let God come.
His very presence.
That happened in the Welsh revival.
You know, when you go to a revival
now, the big guy gets up, they sing,
then Bev Shea, somebody's going to sing, then
something else and it's all programmed beforehand.
How can God come in?
I went with that Welshman who went through
the revival with William Booth.
But then I said, what about the Welsh
revival?
He said, I'll tell you what happened in
the Welsh revival.
He said, I was with William Booth in
his office.
We were having meetings in London and somebody
sent me a note.
My wife.
Revival has broken out.
There's a young man in his twenties, Evan
Roberts, and he's packing everywhere he goes.
He won't even let them publicize him.
He won't let them put his picture in
the paper.
They'll just announce he's coming to Swansea and
every church in town is filled because they
don't know where he's going.
So he said, well, I knew Friday afternoon
I could leave Friday afternoon and that's Saturday
free and I can come back Sunday and
get to the office for Monday morning.
So I said, I went there.
Meeting was crowded.
In one meeting, Evan Roberts comes in.
There's 800 people, which isn't big for America,
but there it's the largest hall in town.
And Evan walks down to the front seat,
sits down, bows his head and prayed for
three hours.
Our people walk out.
But then he stood up for 15 minutes.
He said, yeah, I don't like it in
your life.
The Holy Ghost came upon him.
He was a big man.
When he prayed, God just came down as
though he'd jumped in the audience.
And that happened more than once.
But he said, once I had that young
man.
And of course, the Welsh can sing like
nobody on earth.
God me, O thou great Jehovah, these are
the great hymns.
And he said, at the end of the
meeting, he said, no, no, no, no, no,
no.
He just, after he'd prayed for three hours
and spoke for 15 minutes, he went out.
At 10 o'clock at night, he'd prayed
the whole night for the anointing for the
next day.
Our guys don't do that.
They go sit and talk and say silly
jokes.
We want to be spiritual and calm, a
spiritual carnal, hot and cold, all out for
God, all out for the cowboys.
God says, no.
And you've done it for 25 years.
Why not quit and start something different?
OK.
So then he said, I stayed the first
day.
Boy, he said, I was hooked.
Here's this young man preaching like nobody had
ever preached in my life.
Praying as nobody had prayed.
Tears.
And he said, I listened the first day.
I thought, well, I can still get the
train overnight and get back to my office
Monday morning.
But boy, he said, Sunday night was better,
so I stayed the next day.
And then I thought, well, I'm in trouble.
Any other general will be after me.
Oh, no, no, because I can use this
other day as my day off for this
week.
And he kept bargaining with himself like that.
And he goes home on Saturday, Friday night.
He goes in the office.
He said, William Booth just turned around and
said, Russell, where have you been?
You know, barked at me.
And he said to himself quietly, General, I've
been to heaven.
You've been where?
I've been to heaven.
What do you mean you've been to heaven?
He said, sir, the Spirit of God is
on a man in Wales, a young man,
almost without tutoring.
He hadn't been to a Salvation Army college,
but God is upon him.
He's been in hiding for 13 years.
Dear God, he's only 26 years old and
he prayed for 13 years.
I said to preachers, when I get the
chance, I said, listen, you say I need
a vacation and you need a cave.
I said, can you go for three?
Surely you can't go for three hours without
turning TV on.
You don't need grace to pull down strongholds.
You need grace to stop TV.
That's the devilish thing.
It's not the devil, it's your choices.
Anyhow, he said, the General said, well, tell
me about it.
Tell me about this.
He said, the General just relaxed.
And I told him how God had worked.
And he said, there's no begging people.
They come and rush to the scene and
cry.
And he said, the police are not arresting
anybody.
The judges are not, the courts are closed.
The taverns are closed.
They have prayer meetings in the coal mine.
They used to take a little tin, you
know, with the, what do you call it,
a food tin you take.
And they call it, I mean, they're snapped.
You've only a little time.
And they'd eat the snap before they start
working.
And then they'd spend the rest of the
time praying in the dinner hour or singing
in the coal mines.
And he said, I went on to tell
him what miracles were being done.
He said, the General put his finger up.
He said, remember Russell, he said, in the
very early days, the very first days of
the salvation, I mean, it was just like
that.
The glory of the Lord came down.
We're getting too commercial.
We're getting too mechanical.
We'll have to go back to the glory
of the Lord in the same way.
And all the Bible says is pray without
ceasing.
It doesn't say preach without ceasing.
It doesn't say do miracles.
It says pray.
And somebody may ask me, if I know
you fellows, well, I'd say, well, I've met
them, but I don't know anybody.
He said, I've prayed with him.
I don't care who he is.
And I know some of the outstanding personalities
in the world today, but I haven't prayed
with them, so I don't know them.
But once a man opens his heart, and
it's one thing for us to stand between,
uh, stand before God on behalf of people.
It's a great thing to stand before God
on behalf of people, and stand before God,
and stand before people on behalf of God.
As I quoted the other day to some
people, uh, what, in about the 34th chapter
of, of Exodus, where Moses had been on
the mountain, and God says, let me alone.
I said, that's God saying to a man,
leave me alone.
I said, did God ever say that to
you?
I said, it's wonderful when a man lays
hold of God.
It's a wonderful, wonderful thing, in one sense,
when a man lays hold of God, but
when God lays hold of a man, and
God says, let me alone, and I'll absolutely
destroy these people.
But I was not there.
John Wesley preached on Romans 8, 16, more
than anything else, the witness of the Spirit.
Oh, well, I want the Spirit to bear
witness.
I'm walking in holiness.
I want you to bear witness.
I'm speaking truth.
I want you to, I said, do you
want to, do you want to borrow his
language in Romans 9, where Paul said, I
call the Holy Ghost to bear witness that
I lie not.
Can the Holy Ghost bear witness?
I said, in essence, what Paul says, then
I'll be damned, if need be, if only
you'll just render heavens and come down.
And I said, you get, you keep praying
again.
I said, well, 64, for all that thou
would render heavens and God shoots back, render
your hearts and not your garments.
Don't put a one-hour prayer meeting on,
make it a lifestyle.
I used to, I told the deacons, the
last church I had in England, I said,
listen, I'll take the church on this condition.
Number one, that you meet with me at
least a half hour to 40 minutes before
every service.
Number two, you abolish offerings, so we don't
have to beg from the poor people, and
that you meet with me Friday night, nine
o'clock till midnight.
We did and God turned that church around.
And I don't know any ministry that's had
the same time in prayer.
Have you read, have you read George Burns
at all?
Well, you read Robert Merrimack?
No, George Burns.
Have you read Robert Merrimack Shane?
Yes.
Well, Merrimack Shane, I stood outside of his
church in, in, anyhow, it's on the coast
of Scotland, Aberdeen, Scotland.
Well, he was a man that prayed and
wept and prayed and wept and prayed and
wept until his health went, so he went
to be a missionary.
He's a brilliant man in Hebrew, and he
went and had a rest in what was
Israel then, or Palestine.
And while he was there, W.C. Burns
came in the church and the Holy Ghost
was upon him.
Of course, it spent days and weeks in
prayer, and the whole town was rocked with
the revival.
The whole city was moved.
There'd never been revival before or since.
That's how they killed Scythe's revival.
So, anyhow, W.C. Burns has this tremendous
move of God, and we would book him
up for London and book him up for
Manchester.
Oh, the anointing is on him.
Open the way, let the guy go.
Out of that, God picked that man up,
dear brother, and took him to China and
dropped him in China, and he died unknown
from a modern Pentecost.
Go and pray.
And he went and prayed and fasted and
wept in that area.
So, what happened?
After him, Jonathan Goforth went.
Mrs. Goforth says, they will go to a
meeting in the morning at nine and stand
and sing and praise God, and they'll still
be praising him at five o'clock.
Nobody sat down, even though they were tired.
You go the next day, there'll be no
singing.
It will be prayer the whole day.
You go the next day, there's neither singing
nor prayer the whole day in the quietness,
she said, and in the quietness was more
productive than the other meetings.
I told the people this week, we've forgotten
how to be quiet.
Be still and know that I'm God.
He's as real as be filled with the
Spirit.
Anyhow, Jonathan Goforth went.
The whole ground was broken up and teared,
tear-stained by W.C. Burns.
Jonathan Goforth went.
After him came Watchman Lee, and I don't
know if you read the life of John
Sung.
Have you read his life?
That's the most fabulous thing I've read outside
the New Testament, I think.
Well, I quoted him as being the most
distinguished scholar, foreign scholar ever came to America.
He learned English.
He learned German and did his PhD in
German.
He took his BA degree, his MA degree,
learned a new language, took his doctorate in
three and a half years.
And finally, he went to Union Theological Seminary
in New York.
And when he was there, a young man
said to him, you look more like a
preacher than like a scientist.
Well, five different nations begged him to come
on their payroll and be their leader in
nuclear fission, even those years ago, and he
refused them.
Well, to cut a long story short, one
night he knelt down.
He said, well, Lord, my dad is a
Methodist preacher, and I'm not born again.
I don't know God.
And right there, God came upon him.
He jumped up, opened the door, ran down
the corridor in Union Theological Seminary, like the
one in Acts 3, leaping and praising God.
The next day, they certified him insane and
put him in the white, in a institution.
And there the Lord said to him, I
can get you out of here, but stay
here, I'll forget the number, like 195 days,
I'll teach you my way.
And he learned, dear brother, how to analyze
a chapter eight different ways.
And then he went back to China.
He threw all his diplomas overboard in the
China Sea, and he began his ministry, married
the girl that the neighbor had said they'd
marry when they were kids.
To cut a long story short, I was
preaching in a meeting, and I quoted the
story.
And a big oversized woman at the organ,
and she'd been playing, and tears rolling down
her face.
So afterwards, she said, well, that was a
lovely meeting.
I said, I noticed you were weeping.
I said, that story of John Sung, did
you hear it before?
She said, no, Mr. Ray, I used to
play in his meetings in revival in China.
I said, well, did I exaggerate?
She said, you couldn't exaggerate that man, doesn't
know what you're saying.
But she said, I'll tell you one thing,
that I went after he died, and he
died as a young man.
He died of tuberculosis.
She said, he would come from a meeting
at night, and he never did like the
others.
He didn't get western clothes, and he wanted
an American jacket and a white shirt.
He just had a fitted tie on his
shoulder, and a lock of hair that fell
down.
And she said, he stayed in the home
of a friend of mine, and he would
leave a half door open, you know, to
get the air.
And she said, he would come in after
the meeting, and his shirt sticking to his
back, and he would be heeding like a
dog.
And this lady said to her after, you
know, of all the preachers I've ever had
in this country, I've never seen a man
like John Sung.
He lives and moves as his being in
God.
And she said, he comes home every night
sobbing and weeping, and his shirt stuck to
his back.
And she said, one scripture only leaps to
my mind when I see him.
She said, what's that?
This is my body, which is broken for
you.
And she said, that was where he lived.
He didn't tell other people who lived there,
but he lived economically, and he lived all
the time.
Well, his book is written, Tan Inman Mission
published it, and if you see it, buy
it.
It's worth a thousand dollars.
I mean, I've tried to contact men that
like that have lived moving out there, being
in God.
They have theories.
There's all kinds of theory.
In fact, right now, I should be in
Australia with a team that will go on
to Hong Kong and China and everywhere.
But the thing is, there's a hunger now.
Young men in this country have never seen
revival.
They never see meetings that go until two
or three in the morning.
People that won't go home, or if they
do go home, say, I can't eat.
I can't turn on my TV.
I'm so hungry for God.
I'm so tired of my neighbor's going to
hell.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermon series.
This week, you heard Leonard Ravenhill with his
message, A Man of God, Part One.
Tune in next week to hear Part Two
of A Man of God with Leonard Ravenhill
on the From the Pulpit in Classic Sermon
series.