Before he retired as the founder editor of
Christianity Today, Dr. Carl F.
Henry sent out a questionnaire to, he said,
twenty intellectual preachers in the nation.
I didn't know there were so many, but
he sent his questionnaire out and the question
was this, what do you see for the
Church of Jesus Christ by the year 2000?
I remember two of the answers, particularly one
of them, was given by the Quaker philosopher
Elton Trueblood.
I don't like a lot of his theology,
but he says some very, very acute things.
And he said that by the year 2000,
the Church of Jesus Christ will be a
conscious minority surrounded by Narragansett militant paganism.
I swallowed that, I went to bed, I
woke up with a kind of mental indigestion
about two o'clock in the morning, and
the other thing about that statement, by the
year 2000 the Church will be a conscious
minority surrounded by Narragansett militant paganism.
Then I did a little backtracking and asked
myself if it is not true that the
Church of Jesus Christ today, that we're surrounded
by Narragansett militant paganism.
And then I went a little further back
and asked myself if it wasn't true in
the day when the Church was born.
The Church of Jesus Christ was not served
to the world on a silver platter.
It was born again in a Narragansett militant
paganism.
It was born in a sophisticated totalitarian society.
And then I'm standing on the southern lips
of the greatest hall in the world, which
of course is the Grand Canyon.
There's a legend there on a brass plate
or a bronze plate.
It describes the view that seven miles ahead
of you, that yellow ribbon that's flowing is
actually the Colorado River, which I think is
about 450 feet wide and 45 feet deep
at that point.
If you're down in the basin, you'll be
walled in with a wall on the left
-hand side and one on the right-hand
side, each of them a mile high.
As I gazed at that, there suddenly came
to my mind this question.
Supposing you put a child a year or
two years old in that canyon, how would
he make it out?
He sure couldn't swim across that fast-flowing
river.
He certainly couldn't climb up the side of
the steep canyon there.
And then I translated that to this.
How did the Church of Jesus Christ get
out of a situation like that?
It was walled in on one side with
the greatest military machine in the world, the
power of the Roman Empire.
It was walled in on this side with
the intellectual splendor of the Greeks.
And the roadblock ahead was nothing less than
the monopoly, at least, the Jews thought they
had on God.
And here you have a bunch of unlettered,
unknown men in the upper room.
They pretty much had a pretty bad record
for failure and doubt and fear.
And they were the men who were going
to penetrate both the intellectual splendor of the
Greeks and the power of the Romans, and
they did it.
I want to talk tonight about being washed
with fire.
The message of God to the world is
given in John 3.16, for God so
loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son.
The message of God to the Church is
in Luke 3.16, which unfortunately is not
known quite as well.
But this is what it says.
In Luke 3.16, it's the same as
Matthew 3.11, by the way.
John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed
baptize you with water, but one mightier than
I cometh.
The latchet of his shoes I am not
worthy to unloose.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
Now I've got another text.
It doesn't mean I'll preach twice as long.
Don't worry, you'll be home for breakfast anyhow.
But the second text is this dividing page
between the Testaments.
It's a white page.
It covers a period of 400 years of
almost unparalleled darkness.
It has no message, it has an eloquent
message.
This is at least the second time that
this nation has been into captivity.
And suddenly across that 400 years of darkness,
like Halley's meteor flashing over the sky, we
get the incandescent personality of the greatest character
Jesus said that ever lived.
And then again by the name of John
Baptist.
I believe we're heading for the most disastrous
days, not only in American history, but all
history.
As I said this morning, our problem is
not economic, it is not moral merely, it
is a spiritual problem.
The answer is not N.O.T. in
the White House.
The answer is in God's house, if we
get that house cleansed and all of us
move up to our birthrights in Jesus Christ.
The background of the life of Luke, pardon
me, of John Baptist is given in the
Gospel recorded by Luke.
I confess I like to study John Baptist,
he's like me, he's odd.
The background is this, his father is a
priest of the Cross of Abir, it says
in this chapter.
And he was going to perform a duty
that he performed only once in all his
priestly life.
He never rehearsed it.
There are 2,000 other priests in line,
2,000 Levites too.
And each of them wanted the honor of
going into the temple and making the offering
that again he was only going to make
once in his life.
You can see him perhaps coming down the
aisle of that great place, it held at
least 6,000 people according to history.
It says that the people were in the
outer court, because the time of the sacrifice
was announced about 9 o'clock in the
morning when priests, 3 or 4 of them,
stood on the porch of the temple called
Herod's Temple.
He financed it, it was a government job.
And the priests stood there with their long
trumpets, gave a blast, and immediately they did
that, the temple was opened, the priest was
allowed to come in and the others were
allowed to follow him.
Now here he is coming down the aisle,
nervous, he hadn't rehearsed this before, he might
fall over that long skirt he was wearing,
his garments were heavy, so was the mitre
he was wearing.
And as he comes up to the altar,
let's read about this man in Luke 1,
verse 5.
They were in the days of Herod, the
King of Judah, a certain priest named Zechariah
of the Cross of Abia.
His wife was of the daughters of Aaron,
and her name was Elizabeth, and they were
both righteous before God, working in all the
commandments, walking in all the commandments, and the
ordinances of God blameless.
Verse 8.
It came to pass that while he executed
the priest's office before God and they ordered
his course, according to the custom of the
priest's office his lot was to burn incense
when he entered into the temple.
The whole multitude of the people were praying
without, they had not yet come into the
sanctuary, they were outside.
They would follow him as he came up
to the front to make this office.
And verse 11 says, there appeared unto him
an angel of the Lord, standing on the
right side of the altar.
Now why does it say that?
Does it matter whether he stands on the
right or the left, or it does?
If he stands on the left side of
the altar he has a message for the
nation.
If he stands on the right side of
the altar he has a message for an
individual.
Here is a man already troubled, he's already
nervous about the whole situation, and of all
things there's an angel waiting for him.
And so it says that, I guess I'd
be troubled too, that verse 12 says that
when Zacharias saw him for the angel he
was troubled and fear fell upon him.
The angel said unto him, Fear not Zacharias
for thy prayer is heard.
Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son,
and thou shalt call his name John.
Verse 15.
And he shall be called great in the
sight of the Lord.
Do you know there is no other greatness
than that?
The greatest thing in the world is to
be great in the sight of God.
All other greatness vanishes.
Here is a prediction upon this child, that
he's going to be great in the sight
of God.
But look at this astounding thing.
He shall drink neither wine nor strong drink,
and he shall be filled with the Holy
Ghost from his mother's womb.
It doesn't even say that about Jesus.
He was filled with the Holy Ghost from
his mother's womb.
If you go a little further into the
chapter, it says that in the 41st verse,
it came to pass when Elizabeth heard the
salutation of Mary, the babe leapt in her
womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Ghost.
But not if she wasn't filled with the
Holy Ghost until she got into the presence
of Jesus.
She couldn't see him, but he was there.
He was there in the womb of his
mother, and immediately she came into the presence
of the Lord Jesus, she was filled with
the Holy Ghost.
And then in verse 67 it says, And
his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy
Ghost, and he got some gifts of the
Spirit.
He prophesied.
That's pretty good going, isn't it?
He was filled with the Holy Ghost the
day he was born.
Do you think he spoke in tongues that
day?
I'm only asking the question because I didn't
look up the Amplifier to see what it
said about it, so I thought you might
know.
But without being facetious about it, it says
he was filled with the Holy Ghost.
That's the momentous thing.
His mother was filled with the Holy Ghost.
His father was filled with the Holy Ghost.
And the preacher of the day, it says
in the next chapter, in verse 25, There
was a man in Jerusalem whose name was
Simeon.
The same man was just and devout, waiting
for the consolation of Israel.
And the Holy Ghost was upon him, and
revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that
he should not see death before he had
seen the Lord's Christ.
And he came by the Spirit into the
temple.
If that isn't an advantage, tell me what
is.
A fellow comes into the world filled with
the Holy Ghost from the moment he was
born.
His mother filled with the Holy Ghost, his
father filled with the Holy Ghost and prophesied,
and his preacher filled with the Holy Ghost.
You couldn't have a better start than that
in a rotten world like this, could you?
He got it going for him.
This rare, strange character was filled with the
Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.
It says in the 80th verse of the
1st chapter, The child grew and waxed strong
in spirit, and was in the desert until
the day of his showing unto Israel.
Remember later, Jesus is going to say about
this man that of all the men, and
he must have included Jeremiah and Isaiah and
the others, that there was no man ever
stood greater.
There was no greater man ever lived than
John Baptist.
Now there is a kind of a veil
over his life.
There are a lot of things we don't
know.
We do know this, and it's a great
clue as far as I'm concerned, that he
was in the days of the wilderness until
the time of his showing forth.
I can't prove this except by inference and
I think common sense.
I believe that this man was the man
of sorrows until the man of sorrows came.
I don't know what time of his life,
maybe he was 12 years of age, maybe
older, and he went into the university where
God likes to take men, the University of
Siloam.
He took Moses there.
Moses was loaded with intellectual power.
He got acres of culture.
He'd been trained as a prince.
He's 40 years of age.
He's a statesman.
He makes law.
Read the 7th chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles.
And he seems to be a fully accomplished
man.
Forty years.
Learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.
I think he learned more the second forty.
He lived with his mother-in-law.
And then when he was 80 years of
age, 40 years shut there in the stillness.
Not learning, unlearning.
Not finding out how great he was, finding
out what impossible task he had.
Now John the Baptist comes into a situation
like that.
Now look, this man is no dumb man.
He's still in the spirit of God.
All the gifts he had, I don't know.
But no man is going to be there
in the wilderness, talking with God, reasoning with
God, thinking about God.
A man who knows everything about the law
and the prophets.
This man has not come to establish a
new denomination but to explode an old abomination.
That's all the ritual.
Here is a man who is going to
appear there in the wilderness.
What a character he is.
I don't know how he made it.
He had no mailing list.
He had no sponsors.
He was an unusual and wanted, unpredictable, unreasonable
kind of man.
If he'd gone down the street in Jerusalem,
somebody would have said, oh look at the
high priest.
The word of God says that he wore
garments of glory and of beauty.
And in case you don't know, he didn't
buy them at Sears Roadblock either.
Every thread was put in by hand.
All the exquisite, delicate work was put there
by hand.
All the precious stones on his breast had
to be shaped and fashioned by hand.
All the engravings, it took years and years
and years.
And somebody said, you see there, the garment
of the high priest.
Garments of glory and beauty.
You see, he's our high priest.
We have a monopoly of God.
John Baptist turns up in the wilderness the
very opposite of that, sartorially.
A leavened girdle about his loins.
He must have looked like a hippie.
Well, at least he's leathered around his hippies
anyhow.
But anyhow, the fact is there, he's a
strange contradiction.
I'm going to suggest to you that this
man was versed in the law and the
prophets.
He looks on a bankrupt, decadent nation.
He sees forms of godliness.
He'd heard over and over and over the
high priest reciting the thirty-fifth chapter of
Isaiah, that when he is come he'll do
all this and that and the other, you
know.
He looked in the eyes of the blind.
But this nation that had been called for
holiness unto the Lord was bankrupt and derelict.
It had no spiritual power.
For four hundred years it had deteriorated.
And then suddenly you find one man.
Maybe we still need to learn that one
man with God is a majority.
He didn't need financial backing.
He didn't need an advanced man.
He didn't even have a guitar.
And he had all the accessories that we
have.
Isn't it staggering how little we do with
all the stuff we've got today?
We broadcast more gospel in one day to
America than the rest of the world does
in a month.
We've got more Bible schools in this nation
than the rest of the world put together.
We've more billions of dollars invested in poverty
and most of it stinks anyhow.
But there's a strange feeling amongst people today
that it's time for an awakening.
I spent most of the last two or
three years in Southern Baptist churches.
Big ones.
They didn't have it in the church the
other week with seven thousand members.
Went to another one with six thousand.
I found a deeper hunger for God and
deeper hunger for prayer.
I'm startled when I go into those churches
and find they have a 24-hour prayer
meeting.
It never stops year in and year out.
But when the preacher stands up Sunday morning
a bunch of men go out into a
room and there they lay hold of God
and hold up that preacher.
At night a bunch of women go out
and they pray all the time the preacher's
preaching and they're seeing marvelous powers of God
manifested.
Not just physical miracles but spiritual and moral
miracles.
There's a capacity right now, pardon me, there's
a cavity in the religious life not only
of America but of the whole world that
even the modern charismatic good as it is
has not filled.
And I believe the one answer that's going
to release the power of God, the one
thing that's going to change as this nation
was trained on the power of God, is
a baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.
That's the only thing that will melt the
ice.
John comes into the wilderness.
Well that's about the worst place in the
world to start a crusade isn't it?
I'm having a congregation and no seats for
them to sit up.
No publicity.
He's nothing going for him.
Well of course he could say he was
a pastor of the fastest growing Baptist church
in the world.
The only one there was anyhow.
So he got up on his side.
I preached in a certain place and a
brother came to me and he said, Rayden
if you would continue preaching like that and
then ask God to give you the gift
of healing you could, well you could just
about fill any auditorium in America I think.
Well I said that's very good.
You know in this nation we've had more
miracles of healing through Oral Roberts, Catherine Truman
and the rest in the last 40 years
than all the nations on the heavens.
And we're nearer hell at this moment than
ever we've been since we became a nation.
Not because of them, in spite of them.
You see there's a strange magnetism about this
man.
He's filled with the Holy Ghost from his
mother's womb and I'm going to tell you
that I believe with all my heart that
he was a man of sorrows.
I believe one day you'll find that he
prayed day after day all about which when
the heavens and come down.
I believe there's one simple reason we do
not have revival in America.
Do you know what it is?
Because we're content to live without it that's
why.
When it's more important for you to see
God when the heavens and baptize the nation
with mercy and see people by the thousand
turns of God than to make a dollar
or become a famous guy or the best
dressed man in town or the finest church.
When we get desperate about it.
I'm convinced God does not answer prayer.
God answers desperate prayer.
Did you notice something about this woman that
bore this child?
She was a barren woman.
Have you noticed the barren women in history
produced the greatest sons?
Remember Abraham's wife?
She bore a marvelous son.
Remember that Samson's mother was barren?
Remember Hannah?
Oh she got more of a husband's affection,
more of his income maybe.
There came a day when she said this
won't do anymore.
For years and years and years she'd gone
to temples, she'd gone to conferences, she'd gone
to other places and her adversary provoked her
year after year but there came a deadline.
You find the same thing there in the
30th chapter of Genesis.
Rachel had received more attention from her husband
than the other wife.
She's the queen of the tribe.
Everybody admires her.
I guess her hair was never out of
place and her dress was beautiful and her
personality was charming.
One day she comes in and says to
that husband, I don't think her hair was
done very well.
I think her eyes were sore with tears.
She throws herself at his feet and says,
Jacob give me children or I die.
Do we pray like that?
Isn't it time we changed the prayer of
Patrick Henry Fogg?
Give me liberty or give me death and
say to a holy God who may take
us at our word and give us revival
or let's die.
Because if we don't get revival we're sure
going to die anyhow.
We watch the deterioration of the nations, we
see the corruption in the nations, we see
the paralysis of the united nations.
Who in the world are they united?
I'll show you what they're divided.
Other help us fail and comforts flee.
If the church of Jesus Christ has anything
to say, well now's the time for her
to wake up, stand up, speak up or
shut up.
Because there's no other hope in any other
direction.
All the women that were barren brought abnormal
children.
Here is a child that's going to be
born and the prophecy given shall be that
he's going to be filled with the Holy
Ghost from his mother's womb.
Can you imagine people going to church or
going to the temple and saying you know
what, a lot of empty seats.
Oh yeah it's getting worse too.
Worse?
You know why?
No.
Oh there's a fellow down the road a
few miles away started a new coat.
He's a strange man.
You see when God wanted to do something
he wasn't going to dress him up like
the other guy up there.
He couldn't have been a greater contradiction could
he?
His hairy chest, bit of an old camel
skin around his neck.
We'd have sent him out in double knits
and alligator shoes and a big diamond ring
on here you know on his hair teasled
and you know how pretty these evangelist boys
look these days.
When they go past you say that lady
up there, I mean that man was wearing
something there.
No no no.
This is one of the rarest breed of
men in the world.
I believe today the tragedy of our pulpits
is that most of them are filled with
puppets instead of prophets.
Prophets are God's emergency men for crisis hours.
The prophet by the very nature of his
calling is a tragic figure.
He has a fierce loyalty to God.
He has a strong devotion and love for
the nation.
He's torn between the two.
He knows that God is of holier eyes
than to behold iniquity.
I know some people get a little upset
because I have an English tongue.
I was in a meeting, a lady came
to see me, blonde, beautiful.
Of course the beauty went down the sink
every night but she made a pretty good
job of it and she brightened her eyes.
Lovely blonde hair, you know what we call
a suicide blonde, dyed by her own hand.
And she said you know I don't like
your preaching.
I said well shake hands, I don't like
it either.
I wish it was 10 times hotter.
She said I don't like the thing you
say about our nation.
I said it's no good preaching about England
when I'm in America or America when you're
about England, let's face it.
I left my nationality at the cross with
my sins.
I'm an Englishman, no no no, I'm a
Christian.
The other paraphernalia doesn't matter very much.
I said again that we need this breed
of man, this man again is a tragic
figure.
You see he senses the wrath of God.
He wants with God, he talks with God,
he lives with God.
He has his dwelling with the wild beasts.
Here is a man of chronic austerity, of
vulgar tongue, merciless against those in high places.
You know in that awesome terrible day that's
coming before long when God pulls the blinds
out and blows the lights out and every
man that lived from Adam until that moment
is going to stand at the judgment seat
of Christ.
I think at that moment we'll discover that
Watergate was not a political tragedy or just
a moral tragedy, it was a spiritual tragedy.
Do you know why?
Because 18 different preachers preached to Nixon and
not one of them got through to him.
Do you think John Baptist would have got
through to him?
If only some man had gone and endured
with power and dared to say the thing
that needs to be said, he might have
repented there and then.
John Baptist comes into a situation, he can't
quote the scripture if two of us agree
because there weren't two of them there anyhow.
He doesn't have a revival party with him,
he has no solarists, he has none of
the backing that we seem to need these
days.
But there he appears after the darkest period,
400 years of darkness and then suddenly a
flashing, blazing personality.
400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice
and then just like a thunderclap going down
the valley they hear the word repent.
That's a dirty word in evangelism today, you
don't talk about repentance.
I hear a little bit about the fruits
of the Spirit and sometimes I hear a
little bit about fruits unto righteousness from Romans
chapter 6.
I hear very little about bring forth fruit,
meat for repentance.
Now John the Baptist, I don't care how
you measure him with your little instate, geographically,
socially, politically, spiritually, doesn't matter how you measure
him, he was a giant.
If you want to know the background of
his life, look in the third chapter of
the gospels recorded by Luke.
It says now in the 15th year of
the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being
governor of Judea, Herod being the Tetrarch of
Galilee, his brother Philip the Tetrarch of Arturia
and of the region of Trachonitis and Lysanias
the Tetrarch of Abilene.
That's about as refreshing as a mouthful of
sand, isn't it?
Do you care of the Tetrarchs?
What's a Tetrarch?
Mr. Brooks will tell you after the meeting.
He lost the blocky in between but that's
all right.
When the world cares about Tetrarchs and rulers,
but I'm showing you the setup into which
he came.
And then he gets from back to us
as the Irish and says, Annas and Carth
has been the high priest.
It's illegal to have two high priests.
The word of God came unto the son
of Zacharias in the wilderness, his name was
John, and they came into all the country
about Jordan preaching the baptism of repentance and
the mission of sin.
Verse four says, he was a voice crying
in the wilderness.
That's all he did.
Nobody went after John saying, have mercy on
my son, he's a lunatic.
He wasn't straightening with the dams, he had
no healing line.
He didn't raise a dead man, he raised
a dead nation.
This man has had a volcano building up
in his spirit thirty years.
He'd wept, he'd groaned, he cried over those
which rend the heavens.
And he knew that God was the omnipotent
God.
He knew that they'd come to the end
of an era.
He knew that he was a fire-baptized,
God-energized man to stand in the breach.
He stood there in the valley preaching and
crying, prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Verse five says, every valley shall be filled,
every mountain and hill shall be brought low.
The crooked shall be made straight, and the
rough places shall be made plain.
And all flesh shall see the salvation of
God.
Then said he to the multitude that came
forth to be baptized of him, all generation
of vipers who had warned you to flee
from the wrath to come, and so forth,
bring forth fruit, meat for repentance.
Now discover how effective his ministry was.
They came from Jerusalem, you'll have to read
the different versions in the gospels, let me
bridge it for you.
They came from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
So geographically he was a success.
Socially he penetrated every level of society, because
it says, that while he preached, verse nine,
the axe is laid to the root of
the trees, every tree therefore which bringeth not
good fruit is hewn down and cast into
the fire.
The people asked him, you know the difference
between revival and evangelism?
You see, most of them have never seen
the revival.
They've seen somebody stick a notice outside of
a church, revival begins Wednesday night, finishes a
week Thursday.
The Holy Ghost never read it, so he
never came.
You know, I think that about the most
stubborn, pitiable Christians God Almighty has ever had
to raise.
I don't care how much Greek you know,
can you tell me any version of the
scripture, get the 24th, where it says the
Holy Spirit comes 11 o'clock Sunday morning,
leaves at 12, comes back 7 o'clock
Sunday night, leaves at 8, and you don't
need him until Wednesday night.
I never saw that anyway.
As Dr. Tovey used to say to me,
Len, you can be sure when revival comes,
for a number of reasons, the lights don't
go out in a sanctuary, maybe for weeks.
And the other thing is, there's a change
in the moral climate of the community.
This man attracts people like a fire attracts
the bugs at night or the moths and
things.
You know there's one thing for sure, you
never have to advertise a fire.
Whether it's physical or spiritual, you never have
to advertise it.
While he's preaching, now nearly every meeting finishes
with an altar call.
There are no altar calls in the New
Testament.
Tell me where there is one, will you?
The difference between evangelism and revival is this,
that in evangelism we give out the call,
in revival people do the calling.
Look at the context here.
He's preaching about the axe being laid to
the root of the tree, and it says
in verse 10, the people asked him, saying,
what shall we do then?
Verse 12, the publicans came to be baptized,
and they said, Master, what shall we do?
And of all things the nation was invaded
with those Roman soldiers who wore their breastplates
and their plumes, and they stood round, they
were heathen, they were the lesser breeds without
the law, if you want Kipling's word for
it.
They'd watch the priest go into the high
place, they'd watch the Feast of Tabernacles, Pentecost,
and all the other anniversaries the Jews had,
and it never fazed them.
And somebody said, if you want to see
real religion, a man on fire, a man
that somehow has something strange we can't define,
when you have a day off go down
into the wilderness, and even the Roman soldiers
were there, soft as they were in their
heathenism, and even as he preached he said,
the soldiers said, what shall we do?
Now remember that's preaching.
When before you get through preaching somebody says,
what shall we do, what shall I do?
Do you wonder it says there in Hebrews
chapter 12 that the Lord makes his ministers
a flame of fire.
Well listen, you're not going to upset the
apple cart, you're not going to shatter the
theology of the day, you're not going to
interfere with organized religion and get away with
it.
A few days after a bunch of the
big fellows came down from Jerusalem, and they
watched and said, this is a strange thing,
people are filling the trees, standing on the
bank, look at the crowd he's got, derelict,
morally derelict, he's got prostitutes, thieves, liars, Roman
soldiers, hey there's some people from our church
down there too, all listening to this man.
Well we'll soon straighten him up.
See John was strange in every way, he
was strange in his dress, he didn't wear
a cladical attire.
I don't think there's too much cladical about
an old skin around his neck and a
pair of leather shorts, that's what he wore.
He was strange in his dress, he was
strange in his diet.
Morning, noon and night he ate locust burgers.
That's all he had to eat, there was
nothing else around.
He caught those big flies, they're huge things,
pulled the wings off, put them on a
rock, and boy he enjoyed the locust burgers
and the wild honey.
They said he's a strange man, he never
begs for offerings, he doesn't do any miracles,
and yet he's magnetizing people, and I hear
all kinds of testimonies about people being changed
by the by the power of this man's
ministry.
Strange in his dress, strange in his diet,
strange in his doctrine.
The only thing he held like a thunderbolt
at them was this, repentance.
There's not much said about it anymore these
days.
This is a day of easy believism.
I think it was Paris Reidhead that first
said to me today, the evangelist says come
here and say a prayer like this, God
be merciful to me a sinner, and this
is what you get.
Eternal life, a mansion on the main street
of heaven, a five-decker crown, a free
ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb,
rule over five cities and immunity from judgment.
You couldn't get much more for five minutes
at an altar could you?
Except it's a lot of rubbish, it's not
true.
No longer it seems do people feel the
exceeding sinfulness of sin.
It's said that Finney would preach as many
as 28 nights and never make an altar
call.
He did not preach the love of God,
he preached the wrath of God.
He did not preach mercy, he preached judgment.
He did not preach grace, he preached the
law.
And night after night people would go home
bewildered, confused, and wondering the world was ever
going to happen.
W.
P.
Nicholson was the prophet of Northern Ireland, I
met him many times.
Nicholson would preach until sweat would run off
the end of men's noses and off their
chins, and they'd be doing this with their
handbooks, and they'd shred their handbooks, and he'd
stand up and sing, say, stand up, sing,
God save our gracious King.
People would say, are you crazy?
Not that I know of, he'd say, not
that I know of.
Well don't you realize those people were just
ready?
He said, listen, I want to tell you
something.
Why you left them on the edge of
hell?
He said, if they stay in hell 24
hours they'd be glad to get out tomorrow
night at the altar call.
We don't do that, we're afraid the fish
will get off the hook, if they were
hooked.
John comes with his devastating power, seems to
be setting up a rival organization.
The big shots come down and say, we'll
soon squash this.
One of them walks up and says, hey
fellow, I want to ask you a question.
Where do you get your Bible school training?
Who signed your diploma?
They asked him, who are you?
I like his answer, I think it's choice.
I think it stood over that for 30
years.
He said, I'm a voice.
Most pictures only echoes.
I'm a voice, I come with authority.
Do you remember the Apostle Paul with his
acres of theology?
Ever a man was baptized with the Holy
Ghost?
If ever a man had a confrontation with
God, he says, going down that Damascus road,
God revealed himself to me, in the wilderness
he revealed himself in me.
And he had dominion over demons.
He did more than a hundred ornery men
could do at a thousand creatures.
And yet in his life, late in his
life, he says, pray for me.
Boy, I think everybody wanted him to pray
for them, but he says, you pray for
me, that utterance may be given me, or
that I may never preach the word of
God without that authority.
I don't offer you a suggestion tonight, I
offer you to an ultimatum.
You either meet God or perish.
You either say, Lord, fill me with the
Holy Ghost, or on the other hand, drift.
They said, well, you must be the Messiah.
No, not now.
Listen, he said, you don't get big ideas
about me.
You listen to those little dwarfs that you
hear preach.
You know, sometimes when I read John Baptist,
I think my preaching compares to his preaching
like candy floss to prime rib.
I don't think there's much authoritarian preaching around,
or some doctrinal preaching.
I don't think there's much that brings God
under assembly, and people tiptoe out of the
place, and for hours they don't speak, but
you get that in the Bible.
You get that I'm convinced in the days
of John Baptist and others.
So they flocked unto him from Judea and
Samaria.
They came from all the social castes, and
one day he had the greatest privilege of
all men that ever lived, I think.
He had been tall, but somewhere in his
ministry, and I guess just like Jesus died
between two thieves, I think he lived with
most of them, and I think he was
baptized between maybe a prostitute and a drunkard,
or a prostitute and a murderer.
And John baptizes this man, and suddenly he
comes to the most amazing person the world
has ever seen, and suddenly the heavens open.
Mark uses a special word because, of course,
it's referred to in each gospel, and Mark
gives a special word.
It's the same word that was prayed by
Isaiah when he says, oh the bowels ring
the heavens, and God rang the heavens, and
the spirit has a dove.
The spirit is not a dove, he was
likened to a dove.
Then John gave them to the greatest statement
ever made since creation.
He'd never seen him before.
He sees this man in all his moral
and spiritual grandeur.
He thinks of the decadent nation that's only
beginning to stir, and he lifts his voice
and he says, behold, I suggest to you
that voice not only echoed down the Jordan
Valley, it went down every cavern in hell.
Here is one who is greater than the
Lord and the prophets, and every preacher the
world has ever known.
Here he is.
He's going to do what the law could
not do.
He's going to do what mountains and bodies
and beasts and rivers and blood could not
do.
He's going to bear the sin of the
world.
I wonder if John didn't explode when he
said that.
I think I would.
A few days after, they said, hey, you
know, the man you baptized the other day,
have you noticed your crowds going down?
His is going up.
He said, that's great.
Well, aren't you envious?
No, that proved my point.
You see, John knew this, that when Jesus
came, that just as I put my hand
up and when I do that, I cover
my pencil, you can't see it.
Well, he knew that immediately Jesus came, he
was going to be excluded, or what you
call it, eclipsed.
Not only eclipsed, he was going to be
exiled in jail.
Not only exiled, he was going to be
executed.
Boy, we could do with a few preachers
like this around these days, don't you think?
Well, he knew that immediately Jesus came, he
was going to be excluded, or what you
call it, eclipsed.
Not only eclipsed, he was going to be
exiled in jail.
Not only exiled, he was going to be
executed.
Boy, we could do with a few preachers
like this around these days, don't you think?
You know, he meant business.
He really lost his head over the business.
Do you think that God somewhere whispered to
him, do you remember that story of John's
song, where God said to him, I'll keep
you in prison and reveal myself to you,
and he read through the Bible, what, forty
times in a hundred days or something?
And then God said, John, go to it,
you're going to live just fifteen years.
You know, preacher, if you knew you'd only
six months to live, do you think it
would have changed your preaching style?
If you knew that that economy is going
to collapse, I have a secret feeling that
maybe God is going to strangle the economy
of America, and other nations, but we're in
America, he's going to strangle the economy of
the Merica, of America, to get the church
back on track.
The church, the sin of the church is
going to make the world suffer, not the
world make the church suffer.
We're so far removed from apostolic Christianity.
We're so satisfied to play church.
We can go without any signs of supernatural
power.
I tell you, I believe John had turned
over in his mind when he thought of
how God manifested himself in the Old Testament,
and he said, my God, is this frozen
thing, this decadent, dying religion I'm in, is
that related to what our fathers did?
Why, at one time, if a child got
nervous, he would lift the tent he was
sleeping in, he'd see a pillar of fire
and say, that's God's presence.
If the church isn't supernatural, obviously she's superficial.
And I'm very glad, amongst other things, that
you can't buy an endowment of power from
on high.
God still says your money perish with you.
John was filled with the Holy Ghost.
Every sermon he preached was packed with Holy
Ghost life and energy and wisdom and power
and authority.
He drew people like a magnet.
And when they wanted to crown him, he
said, no, no, no, don't, don't you even
touch me.
You know this one who's coming?
I'm not even worthy to get down and
take the shoes off his feet.
Now, I have baptized you with water.
There are two baptizers.
One is John, one is Jesus.
There are two areas.
One is the body, the outward body washed
with water, and the other is the inner
man.
And one is a water of baptism, and
the other is a baptism of fire.
You know, back in his day, which happened
to be, I don't know, I think, what,
1500, John Owen and those boys around, they
were some preachers.
John Owen said this in his day.
The sin of men in the Old Testament
was against the Father.
The sin of men in the New Testament
was against the Son.
The sin of men, in my day, he
said 400 years ago, is against the Holy
Spirit.
You know, a thing that troubles me deeply
is this.
The Holy Spirit, H-O-L-Y, is
neglected in the charismatic generation.
The emphasis is not holiness.
The emphasis is power and gifts.
I say John did no miracle.
We've lived through a period, the last 40
years, of more miracles than anybody in history.
And yet the greatest miracle in the world.
I've seen miracles there.
I've seen miracles here at Bethany.
I've seen paralyzed people get out of chairs.
I've seen blind people get their sight.
All kinds of folk with diseases get healed.
And yet the greatest miracle in the world
is this.
That God can take an unholy man out
of an unholy world, make that unholy man
holy, put him back in an unholy world
and keep him holy.
Well, I thought you just said amen, but
it is warm.
Takes all the redemptive work of Jesus Christ
and the power of the Holy Spirit of
God.
The great snag in the day in which
we live is this.
That we have thousands, tens of thousands even
of ministers, and the only thing they have
to prove that they're a minister is they
got a piece of paper about 10 inches
long and 9 inches deep stuck on their
office wall.
And the devil never read it once.
Well, I hear people say, well I believe
this, that when you're really born again, you
receive the baptism of the Spirit.
I believe that.
According to the 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians,
if a man is born, when the Spirit
of God works on him, when he's been
redeemed, when the blood has cleansed him, when
the Holy Spirit has come upon him, the
Spirit baptizes him into the body of Christ.
And when people say, have you received the
baptism of the Spirit?
You can say yes, if you're born again.
This is not the baptism of the Spirit,
it's the baptism of Christ, John says.
He shall baptize you.
It's an upon baptism, it's an endowment.
Isn't it really awesome that Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost.
He had no natural father.
People say, I can't understand that, it baffles
me, it troubles me, that Jesus, the last
Adam, was born without a father.
That shouldn't puzzle you at all.
The first Adam was born without a mother.
Where's the problem?
Jesus was born of the Spirit, but he
never ministered until he was anointed with the
Holy Ghost.
John Baptist did not minister until he was
30 years of age.
A priest could be a priest at 25
years of age in the outer court.
He could not go into the Holy of
Holies until he was 30 years of age.
Jesus did not minister until he was 30.
Neither did John Baptist, neither did the Apostle
Paul, neither did Moses, neither did any great
Old Testament character.
In other words, they had to come to
maturity before they were allowed of God to
have this endowment of power.
I'm not saying it obtains the same in
this day in which we live.
I am saying that the baptism of the
Spirit is into the body of Christ, but
the endowment of power.
Jesus was born of the Spirit, he walked
in the Spirit.
Remember the prophecy of Isaiah 61 says, the
Spirit of the Lord God is upon me
because he has anointed me to preach good
tidings.
In the fourth chapter of the Gospel of
Luke it says, Jesus being full of the
Holy Ghost returned from Jordan and was led
by the Spirit into the wilderness.
And he didn't come out of that wilderness
experience on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
He came up and licked the devil on
every level and was still filled and anointed
with the Spirit of God.
I don't believe there's a ministry tonight in
the world adequate enough to meet the generation
in which we're living.
We've all kinds of excuses.
Again, I don't think it's any more difficult
than the day of John Baptist.
I don't know where he did his training.
Maybe he went to one of those, you
know, communities that were there the other side
of Jordan.
I don't know.
For this I know when he came out
he was set on course and for six
solid months he preached like no man had
ever preached on earth, I believe, before.
And yet he says this is only the
entrance into something greater.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and with fire.
Mr. Chadwick used to say to us at
Cliff College, remember this, the symbol of the
Church of Jesus Christ is not a cross.
The cross is a cruel thing.
The symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ
was a tongue of fire that sat upon
each of them.
Have you noticed how often in the Lord
of God fire is mentioned?
You go to the third chapter of Exodus
and you'll find a flaming sword, the fire
of judgment.
Lest they should go back into the Garden
of Eden.
From Genesis you go to Exodus and there
you have the fire of consecration.
That was the fire of condemnation in the
first place.
This is the fire of consecration.
You go through the three chapters, the first
five books, and read the first, in each
of the three chapters there's fire.
Fire of condemnation, fire of consecration, false fire.
You come down to Malachi.
Malachi is the last prophet.
He's looking down that long tunnel of 400
years of darkness.
He comes out with that amazing statement, but
when he comes, who shall abide the day
of his coming?
Who shall stand when he appeareth?
He's like the refiner's fire.
Come into Matthew chapter 3, verse 11, he
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and
fire.
Come into Luke chapter 3, verse 16, he
shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and
fire.
Come into 1 Corinthians chapter 3, the fire
shall try every man's work.
Go down to Revelation chapter 5, God says
either be hot or cold and get out
of here.
Go into the 12th of Hebrews, our God
is a consuming fire.
He makes his angels ministering spirits, and his
ministers a flame of fire.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost
and fire.
Part of my enjoyment is reading hymns.
I like to read them in the old
versions.
First Baptist book is a fantastic book.
The Salvation Army book is great.
And so very often you find that the
writer wants to express his longing, his yearning.
There's something in him that cries and can
hardly become articulate.
There's a preacher in England by the name
of Edwin Hatch years ago.
Finally he finished up in a Bible school
in Canada.
He had no problems financially.
He had no problems with the cloud.
But he said, I went home one night
and said, God, the atmosphere is not instinct
with deity.
The people can listen to eternal truths, and
as we would say, they never turned on.
You walk out of the sanctuary this Sunday,
thousands of churches and folk will be saying,
do you think the cowboys will pull it
off?
They were talking about holy things a few
minutes before listening to them, and they switched
off like that.
Edwin Hatch said, I went home, I didn't
think about my success, about the money, about
the crowds, about my popularity.
He said, I just knelt there and I
snatched a piece of paper and he began
to write a hymn.
I don't think he ever corrected it.
The hymn was this, breathe on me breath
of God, fill me with life anew that
I may love what thou wouldst love and
do what thou wouldst do.
And he finishes by saying, breathe on me
breath of God, till I am wholly thine,
till all this earthly part of me glows
with thy fire divine.
A hymn I think Charles Wesley wrote, see
how great a flame aspires, kindled by a
spark of grace, Jesus loved the nation's fires,
set the kingdoms on ablaze, to bring fire
on earth he came.
Kindled in some hearts, it is all that
all might catch the blaze, all partake the
glorious bliss.
And when William Booth stood on the streets
of England with no money, his only assets
a wife who had a curvature of the
spine and a bunch of little children.
He went home and wrote the battle song
of the Salvation Army, one of the finest
hymns I think there was ever written.
And they still sing it, they still have
on their diner blood and fire.
And he wrote that marvellous military hymn that
always stirs me, Thou Christ of burning, cleansing
flames, send the fire.
Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, send
the fire.
Look down and see this waiting host, give
us the promised Holy Ghost, we want an
appendicast.
I'm not as sure that we want it,
but God in heaven knows we need it.
He finishes by singing, to make our weak
hearts strong and brave, send the fire.
To live a dying world to save, send
the fire.
O see us on thine altar, lay our
lives, our all this very day, to crown
the offering now we pray, send the fire.
My dear friend Pastor Brooks stole my thunder
tonight, sang that hymn written by a little
Irish woman who had a curvature of the
spine 30 years.
Pastor Hegery went to a fellowship away there
in India, the Donovo Fellowship, maybe Wilson Carmichael
wrote it I think.
Give me a love that leads the way.
Here is a woman who in the last
three years of her life was lifted out
of bed.
There came a day in Ireland when the
Holy Ghost fell upon her, and from that
day she said to her friends, listen I'm
going to India, there'll be no furloughs for
me, I'm not coming back, I don't want
glory and praise, I don't need any rest,
I really want resurrection life.
And she nursed that little weak sick body
through more than 30 years of her adventures
there in India.
I like the last stanza about him, give
me a love.
He's a little sick woman, can you imagine
her, she weighs about 90 pounds.
Give me a love that leads the way,
a faith which nothing can dismay, a hope,
no disappointments, a passion that will burn like
fire.
Let me not sink to be a trod,
make me thy fuel flame of God.
Look in America tonight we're in a more
broken condition than we've been since this nation
began.
We've more broken homes than ever we've had,
we've more people broken mentally, we've more kids
broken on drugs, we've more girls last year
had babies with broken bobbies now.
We've got more broken people in drugs, we've
got more people in drugs, everything's broken except
the hearts of God.
I don't find many tears in prayer meetings,
do you?
David has said to me more than once,
well daddy these Baptist churches we've been in,
man I've been in prayer meetings that lasted
3-4 hours after midnight, and people sobbing
and groaning for revival.
Why do you think the sinner has any
right to repent and break his heart over
his sin if he doesn't break my heart
that he hasn't got a broken heart?
I'm not sure if Amy Wilson Carmichael when
I'm finished wrote this verse, no it's in
the hymn Lest I forget Gethsemane.
The last stanza isn't in many hymn books
anymore.
Fill me O God with thy desire for
all who know not thee, then touch my
lips with holy fire, to speak of Calvary.
He shall baptize with the Holy Ghost and
fire.
What does fire do?
Well there's one thing for sure, if this
building got on fire, those pillars that look
so strong, they'd sure bend.
And there's a lot of stuff in us
needs bending, but only the fire of the
Holy Ghost will bend.
This much is sure, if you're going to
take dross and impurities, you need to put
it there in a, what do you call
it, I've forgotten the name of it for
the moment, in a crucible, put it in
an inductive crucible maybe, and there you press
the buttons and that gold begins to melt
and melt and the dirt flows up because
gold is heavier than metal, and the gold
goes to the bottom and a man sits
there scumming the dirt off, throwing the dirt
off, throwing the dirt off, throwing the dirt
off, and finally quits.
And you say well why did you quit?
He said it's pure.
How do you know it's pure?
Because he said I can see my face
reflected in it.
We used to sing maybe years ago, you
know, about the face of Jesus.
We'd like to see the face of Jesus.
And part of the hymn said that all
thou spirit divine, all my nature refine, until
the beauty of Jesus is seen in me.
You know, you burn out the dross, you
burn out the impurities, you burn out the
pride, you burn out the lust, you burn
out all the excuses we have.
We burn out all the failure.
I'm convinced in my spirit there's one reason
why the gold goes to hell fire tonight,
and that is because the church has lost
holy ghost fire.
It is fire we want, for fire we
plead, says William Booth.
The fire will meet our every need.
Fire is the most destructive force nearly that
we know.
After all, atomic energy, you see those awful
explosions, what is it?
It's fire.
You see those rockets going up, what is
it?
We've learned to channel fire into certain areas.
There is no power on earth like the
power of the Holy Spirit of God.
There is no other power that can change
the condition of men, except through the blood
of Christ, the cleansing, and then this endowment
with power from on high.
There's no releasing like the power of fire.
We had a meeting in another country, came
out of a lovely church, the lady said
to me, you know I've sung that hymn,
I guess for 60 years that we sang
this morning, trust and obey, and I never
knew what it meant until we sang that
stanza, but we never can prove the delights
of his love until all on the altar
we lay.
For the favor he shows and the joy
he bestows are for those who will trust
and obey.
People say no, the fire, the fire falls
on the altar.
Oh no it doesn't.
The fire falls on the sacrifice.
You can build the altar, the fire doesn't
fall on the altar, the fire falls on
the sacrifice.
So where, so Mr. Booth says, oh see
us on thine altar, lay our lives on
all this very day.
You know sometimes you're tempted to kind of
hold back a bit, there's some lovely people
here, and be very careful you might offend
them if you talk about a second blessing,
a second baptism, or sanctification, or the baptism
with the Holy Ghost.
Can you show me a man that didn't
have a crisis experience after he was born
again, that ever moved a generation for God.
I challenge you to find me one, even
Spurgeon.
Somewhere there's a longing, somewhere there's a realization
that there's something more in the Christian life
than the average person has.
And he longs for inward purity, and he
longs for inward power, and he longs for
inward piety I'm sure.
Fire releases, they took the three Hebrew gyllen
and tossed them in the fire, what happened?
Well I guess the poor guys didn't have
a penknife to cut the ropes off, so
the fire burned them up.
All that happened in the fire was, the
fire burned up what the world had put
on them.
That's all it did.
It didn't slay them, it released them.
Years ago there was a great old holiness
preacher in America, there were a lot of
great holiness preachers from America.
Shel Haymer and P.D. Watson was preaching
in England.
It wasn't a very large fellowship.
And he preached about a crisis experience after
we were born again, which would purify the
heart, the Holy Ghost and indwell, give you
victory where you had defeat, give you purity
where there'd been impurity, give you power where
there'd been weakness, give you zeal where you'd
been full of lethargy.
Get rid of your ambition just for wealth
and material things, and being mesmerized with the
world.
And he said I looked at that congregation,
I think there weren't more than 30 people,
and thought no, these very well dressed Englishmen,
they had immaculate clothes on, you know, and
their big gold watch chains, and he looked
at them and thought, I think maybe I
shouldn't make an altar call here, because they're
good preachers these guys.
But he made an altar call.
Three men staggered to the altar.
Oh they were good preachers.
One of them after that, he'd such a
dramatic experience of being filled with the Holy
Ghost, he got so released he was a
king's counselor.
His name was Reader Harris, he founded the
Pentecostal League of Prayer, which afterwards dropped its
title to League of Prayer for certain reasons.
But he was one, he became a leader
of one of the great movements in England.
The only man by the name of John
David Thomas, he became the leader and the
guard of a society called International Holiness Mission.
Then there was another little fellow.
What was his name?
Oswald something.
What was it?
Oh Chambers, I knew, I thought somebody knew
him around here.
Oh what is in the eyes of many
people, one of the most outstanding men.
But he said there was something inside of
me I longed, I longed for power, for
victory over the flesh, even this flesh that's
so lazy, over attacks, over secret ambitions and
jealousies and pride, and my indifference to a
lost world.
Years back I went to a place in
Dundee, lovely Dundee, famous for its cakes.
I went with a man called James Baxter
MacLagan, he was a Nazarene pastor and it
was in a church called the Terryfield Mission
at that time, it's now a church of
the Nazarene.
We came out of the train depot here
and there was a big sign outside of
the church, James Baxter MacLagan will preach the
anniversary sermon Saturday afternoon at three o'clock.
He was a little fellow and I said
you know that notice is nearly as big
as you are.
I understand this place gets packed.
He said oh you'll be filled, they come
from all over for this great anniversary service.
I said well that's great, you're a good
preacher.
He said I'm not going to preach.
Oh I said that's interesting, who will be
preaching?
He said you.
Oh I said I didn't know that.
I said you can't do that, but he
did it somehow.
He sang a solo and we had a
good service and then he said now I've
got a friend, Leonard Raymill from England, he's
going to preach.
Well I was caught on the spot but
I said some things out of this very
text about being baptized with the Holy Ghost
and fire and I said you know this
is not an experience just for missionaries and
it's an experience for every believer.
Now I can't prove this and you can't
disprove it.
You know I've often wondered where all the
bunch went out of the upper room.
I don't know where they went.
About 120 filled with the Holy Ghost, they
were dispersed, where did they go?
Well you can trace about five of them,
but not long ago I was asked to
dedicate a baby, a lovely baby.
The mother was a lovely lady whose mother
was a lovely lady and suddenly it came
to me like this.
Oh I like to get a verse when
I have to dedicate children and the verse
I got was this.
Paul says to Timothy, I know the unfamed
faith that is in thee which dwelt first
in thy mother Lois and in thy grandmother
Eunice and I suddenly realized, at least I
think so, that maybe his grandmother was in
the upper room.
It wasn't that far away.
His mother was a devout woman whose mother
was a devout woman.
Here's the grandmother, here's the mother, here's the
little guy.
You know we need an awful lot of
holy mothers in America right now.
We need an awful lot of godly fathers.
We're heading for trouble quicker than I can
tell you.
I'm not a racist in any way.
I love all, I've preached all over the
world to different people.
I love them all.
I never see a man's skin, it's his
heart that troubles me.
But say have you ever thought even outside
of the Church of Jesus Christ, the mess
we're in, you realize every new nation that's
born is a colored nation and a new
white nation is being born.
When I was in New York and editing
the paper for Dave Wilkerson, I used to
go into the United Nations and you know
the stuff's all free.
Government always gives other people stuff away and
I went there and got all kinds of
material for a magazine and going down the
corridor I'd see a man with beautiful robes
on and a gold chain and other things
and they'd say hi and I'd say hi
and I suddenly realized boy we're on the
way out.
We're on the way out.
Every new nation that's born is a colored
nation and many of them are full of
resentment and bitterness the way we've treated them.
And we've fallen down over the job.
We got so lost in materialism that our
first glory and ambition is was not to
spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We're going to suffer for it.
And you know we're moving along as though
with another thousand years to do the job.
I don't know if Mr. Hickley went to
the Curacao conference I did in Japan.
After I preached a mission he said to
me Brother Abel, we white missionaries have been
in Japan 113 years.
That's 12 years ago so it's 125 years.
In that period half of one percent of
the population is nominally Christian and that includes
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Catholics, and what have you
got.
Half of one percent in 125 years.
I said gentlemen listen it's easy for me
to say but I'm going to remind you
of this.
The way you're going at it is going
to take another 125 years to reach a
half of one percent.
I suggest to you that when John the
Baptist was filming waiting patiently for God to
anoint him and put him in the wilderness.
He was thinking that millions of people have
been lost in darkness.
They did religious theology.
They did theology and religion and formalism and
keeping Sabbath days and they died without God
and without hope.
When you go to bed tonight friend there
will be more lost people in this world
than when you got up this morning.
And this generation of believers is responsible.
Oh yes he's responsible for this generation of
lost men.
Let me go back to the meeting.
As I finished the meeting I said time's
up.
We've five minutes to get a train.
Look I want to tell you something.
I don't care who you are.
If God is going to seal the travel
of his soul in your life.
If God is going to do what he
wants to do, inhabit you by his spirit,
control your life, you're going to have a
spirit-filled, spirit-controlled, spirit-directed, spirit-inspired
life.
Well he won't come whether still.
Peter remembered the upper room not by balls
of fire and rushing mighty wings or gifts.
He recorded in Acts 15 at night God
purified his heart.
You never find him backsliding after that.
And I said if you want this experience
raise your hand quickly and they put their
hands up and I counted 12.
I said is there a 13th that's not
unlucky.
A little woman on the back seat went
like that and I said I saw it.
I said now let's sing spirit of the
living God fall afresh as we do.
You come down here and and pray.
And I left the platform.
That little woman shot down the way she
went.
15 years after we were in a meeting,
a WIC meeting, Worldwide Evangelization Crusade meeting in
Manchester.
We got there late.
We had been delayed.
It was a wet, dirty, horrible day.
We got in the back of the building.
It was too hot.
Folk were sleeping.
Everybody blamed the devil and it was a
janitor.
Poor devil gets blamed for an awful lot
of things he's not responsible for.
And people were sleepy and tired and you
know the preacher couldn't make it.
He quit.
There's a little woman sitting on a chair
there and the legs didn't touch the ground.
She kept doing this like this.
I thought yes I'd like to kick him
too.
But anyhow she just kept those legs going
and then at the end the preacher said
now we've got 15 minutes before tea or
supper you would say.
Would you like to hear a testimony?
Yeah we've been bored so far.
Let's take a little bit more of it
kind of thing.
And he said will you come?
And that little lady jumped off a seat
like this and you know in two minutes
she had that congregation just sitting on the
edge of the seat.
She was telling about her work in Africa
where she lived in a jungle area in
an old beaten up place that was made
of bamboo or something, twigs and mud and
everything and she said in the middle of
the night something goes at the door and
I just turn over and say I'm not
on the menu tonight you can go.
And then she said somebody knocks at the
door and I go there there's a man
about six feet six and he says oh
missy my wife very sick she'd die please
come.
She said you know I got to turn
my wife around in the meeting on Wednesday
afternoon in the Cherryfield Mission and I thought
boy that's interesting.
Yeah I remember being a check.
Could you have been a little squirty thing
at the back with red hair that red
hair that went like this and I thought
that must be that must be that woman.
And she said you know when I worked
in Dundee if a mouse ran over the
floor.
Now I never, nobody understands women but I
don't understand how a mouse that weighs an
ounce and a half can knock a woman
over weighing 150 pounds.
But they jump on chairs and howl and
scream as though the house is on fire
and she said if a mouse came I
was terrified.
Now she said I can go through the
forest I can hear the roar of a
lion and it does not worry me he
shall give his angels charge concerning thee.
I come to a log and the man
takes my light and and and he balances
over the log and there's a guy in
the water and he's only got one cavity
and you're welcome to fill it any time
you like.
There's a big hippopotamus and then she looks
at the other side there's a crocodile and
she says you know it doesn't worry me
a bit mice used to worry me wild
beasts don't worry me hippos don't worry me
nothing worries me.
I go and deliver a baby I stay
with a woman or she has a fever
and the man says I take you home
and no no don't take me home.
Well it's dangerous oh no no no I
go through the forest singing blessed assurance and
I get to that log a little bit
shaky sure enough but I you know it's
a bit greasy and one drop pretty strong
poison one drop and uh I make it
home she said.
It all happened one afternoon I'd gone to
meetings on the deeper life I'd gone to
holiness conferences I'd gone to Nazarene conferences and
the devil always said but this is only
for prospective missionaries this is only for those
who are going into the ministry.
I may exclude him myself.
Then she said Len Radnil said this if
you come to the altar put everything you
have on the altar and let God's fire
you know when God's fire upon the altar
of my heart was set ablaze my ambitions
plans and wishes at my feet like let
him burn everything up he'll do more with
the ashes than you can do with a
total personality.
She said it gave me hope I I
had almost no education I I just swept
the floor of a factory.
Could that really be true that I'm a
candidate because I'm born again but that same
holy spirit that has come on so many
could come in and dwell my life and
turn it round that if I get let
go and say fire of God burn up
all this grass in me but he'll take
the ashes well that's all I did with
the first money ever made anyhow I was
on the ash I'd make me a new
personality and fill me with the holy ghost.
I'm going to try.
She said I shut down that aisle I
thought yes you did I I'm a witness
to that.
She shut down that aisle.
She wrote to Birkenhead Bible School went there
for three years and she said this poor
dumb girl that could hardly write at all
I came out in the top 10 students
and then I went to a language school
in Paris I came out with the top
10 students then I went to a mission
field and I learned another language on top
of one language I already learned and I'd
been a bit more at English and I
learned a third language and I'm learning another
one and you know what?
God has kept his word because it says
in the twelfth of romans there he's not
going to give us a new heart but
he he talks about the renewing of your
mind and she said that day I'll never
forget it I sure think you wouldn't forget
it either when all the helplessness cease again
we're living in the most critical hour in
history you say yes you're pretty gloomy about
it oh forget it I'm not I'm not
I think we may be shocked when the
holy ghost does invade if you read the
life of William Bull he said that when
the holy ghost struggled with men that were
sitting on the back seats in the exit
to hall London and they wouldn't yield to
God the holy spirit lifted them by the
scruff of the neck and carried them over
the audience and dropped them at the altar
call how would you want to see that
tonight that would shock some of us wouldn't
it doesn't fit our pattern I've got news
for you the lord isn't going to give
you a phone call and ask you if
he can do it well how he can
do it or what pattern he's going to
do he's sovereign he doesn't have to copy
any other method he's ever done but I'll
tell you what again the greatest need tonight
we need preachers filled with the holy ghost
we need deacons filled with the holy ghost
we've got a world going to hell quicker
than any period in history that is one
answer and only one answer a fire baptized
church the last thing I remember Norman Grubbs
saying I'm in one meeting I'm so old
I remember actually seeing C.T. stood on
one occasion I remember Norman Grubbs saying this
the last letter we had from C.T.
I think before he died was this don't
send me any missionaries don't send me any
missionaries that have not been filled with the
holy ghost I ought to use the word
actually that have not been baptized with the
holy ghost for they surely fail as Paul
said the other day I didn't hear what
he preached this morning he preached at the
Agape forest last Sunday morning there's a tremendous
anointing there and he said sometimes in Argentina
you feel as though you've come up to
a wall of demonism and heathenism and darkness
do you ever wonder if Jesus still weeps
over his church so much to be done
so little being done man alive the world
the communists are eating this world up so
fast and we're treading water comparatively oh I
know there are spots of fire here and
there no I'm not hanging my harp on
the willow do you know I believe that
just as he did in the days of
his flesh Jesus did not knock on the
door of the Sanhedrin he didn't go to
the temple he didn't say I'd like to
choose some of your best men educated philosophers
learned men men of social prestige he didn't
say that he went for fishermen and the
tax gatherer he seems to have done that
down the ages here's the word and I'm
through with it do you think there's going
to be another Pentecost not quite I think
there's going to be a Pentecost that will
out Pentecost Pentecost I base it on Joel
2 again he's going to pour out his
spirit on all flesh your sons and daughters
prophesy your young men see visions your old
men dreams and on my servants and handmaids
not my bishops not my very learned wealthy
my servants and handmaids I'm tired of seeing
some phases of revival where men get the
glory the next one is not going to
be a Methodist revival a salvation only a
Pentecost it's going to be God's and
he's
suddenly come to his temple well are we
seeking the Lord are we seeking blessing or
help or revival that fills empty seats the
Lord whom he seeks shall suddenly come and
they were keeping watch over their flocks by
night and suddenly there was a sound of
a heavenly host and they were sitting in
the upper room and had been there for
days and suddenly there was a rushing mighty
wind and God has come suddenly unexpected ways
unexpected time to unexpected people he's going to
do it again but before power there has
to be purity the fire will purify the
fire will empower the fire will liberate because
it's a person who comes the person of
the Holy Spirit himself