Lord, we bless you for your holy word.
We bless you for martyrs who died at
the stake to give us this word.
We thank you for the Holy Spirit's enabling.
We thank you that he who wrote this
book is here to interpret it beyond our
understanding this morning.
So, Lord, we pray.
Give us ears to hear what the Spirit
is saying.
Lord, make this a birth chamber today.
Make it a graveyard.
May people remember that this day they got
tired out of their bondage, sorrow, and night.
Out of sickness into thy health.
Out of poverty into thy wealth.
Out of sin and into thyself.
Lord, do some revolutions.
Lord, I think again and again it echoed
in my mind during the night what Brother
Mike suggested.
There are five billion people in the world.
Some of them were up before daylight this
morning, bowing down to idols of wood and
stone.
Tears were running down their eyes, and yet
the gods they spoke had no tears.
They cried out of broken hearts, but their
gods had no ears to hear.
They cried for help.
Their stone images could not help.
But, Lord, we pray you'll make us realize
again you are the living Christ.
Lord, we bless you that with all the
testimonies remain, you stand at the end of
the chapter and say, I am he that
liveth and was dead, and behold, I am
alive forevermore.
Lord, you bless you who said, I have
the keys of death and of hell.
The Pope doesn't have them.
Organizations don't have them.
You are jealous.
Lord, I'm waiting to hear about the jealousy
of God tonight and tomorrow as Brother Paul
comes.
Prepare him.
Give him a new anointing.
Lord, take us this day from strength to
strength, from revelation to revelation, from anointing to
anointing, from understanding to understanding.
Lord, let everybody who's spiritually bankrupt here leave
this place as multimillionaires in the spiritual life.
I pray for those who are crippled, crippled
by the fear of man, crippled by the
fear of death, crippled by the fear of
an unknown tomorrow, crippled by the prophecies that
are going around, that this is going to
be a tragic year and the years ahead
of us are full of tragedy.
So what?
Lord, you've told us in your holy word,
I am the Lord, I change not.
Lord, I bless you, you're not concerned about
the weather, you don't change with governments, you
don't change with the rise and fall of
the Wall Street.
You don't even change by the shabby opinions
of theologians.
Lord, I bless you for your holy word
as I anchor my thoughts for a moment
here in that wonderful word in Hebrews 11
6, God is.
I thank you that giving does not impoverish
you and withholding doesn't enrich you.
Lord, if you give us a double portion,
or a hundredfold today, there are oceans of
supplies in God, revelations we've never dreamed of,
authority we've never speculated upon.
God, open our eyes that we may behold
wondrous things out of thy law.
Lord, make this blessed book live today.
The fire our brother spoke about, Lord, increase
it.
Turn up the furnace as it were seven
times hotter, that this dying world may know
this meeting took place.
Lord, write it in your book of remembrance
that there are people here who crave the
presence of God more than anything in this
perishing world.
We want to bear the brands of Jesus
Christ as Paul said, I bear in my
body the marks of the Lord Jesus.
Lord, I think again as we bask as
it were in the very sunshine of your
presence, I think of the dear precious Christians
who are prisoners in Russia, or in China,
or in Afghanistan, or Albania, those areas where
they've been prisoners for years.
Grant some miracle may happen.
Give them a foretaste.
Maybe Lord, maybe they're 10 miles further up
the road we are.
We've got drug with us, with creature comforts.
We've got mesmerized by materialism.
We're trapped in trivia.
Lord, what our brother spoke of, make it
real.
Before this meeting soon start a bonfire.
Let every failure be consumed.
Let every fear be consumed.
Let every doubt be consumed.
Prepare the way of the Lord in our
hearts.
We're responsible for this generation of lost people.
And Lord, we haven't the equipment unless you
come in the power of the Spirit of
God.
So have your way, guide our thoughts, give
us understanding in Jesus name.
Thank you.
Be seated.
I was getting into bed this morning and
Martha said, well dear, what time is it?
10 minutes to 3.
I thought there was somebody outside.
I think there was, and I think it
was David, the guy that just spoke.
He stole my sermon notes.
Well he only gave you one barrel, so
I'll give you the second barrel, because my
subject is fire.
Fire.
Okay.
I've got a great preacher friend here, Bishop
Bracey.
Bracey Grin.
I ask him each week, how do you
get on on Sunday?
He said, I had a very slow start,
but I got going.
So I used to have a slow start,
and sometimes I'd get going.
There's a piece of railroad track near our
home in England.
It's only about 50 feet long, but it's
a tourist attraction, because it's the railroad that
the first train, a little locomotive was made
by George Stevenson, and it ran on that
track.
And there was a great celebration.
The great people of the earth came to
see a carriage that would run without a
horse.
Everybody ridiculed that.
So he came, and they had this wonderful
old, as I say, automobile train.
It had a great big chimney belching smoke
out.
He had a tall hat, a tailcoat, you
know.
And he said, we're going to start at
two o'clock.
Two o'clock came.
He pulled a switch here, and a switch
there, and the thing didn't move.
So he got out and messed around with
it, readjusted it, and got up again and
pulled the switch.
It wouldn't move.
He did this three or four times, and
each time he got his hands dirty, you
know, he kind of wiped his forehead.
He looked, he looked like anything but a
gentleman.
And he tried about six times, and the
chorus started, it'll never start, it'll never start,
it'll never start.
Well, then he pulled it once, and it
shot down the track, rode away at eight
miles an hour, and on it went, on
it went.
And the crowd that shouted, shouted, it will
never start, shouted, it'll never stop, it'll never
stop, it'll never start.
So people do that when I start preaching
and say, it'll never start, it'll never start.
Then they say, it'll never stop.
Well, I got that from the Apostle Paul.
He said that, didn't he?
He says, finally my brethren, he preaches two
more chapters.
So we're in good company.
I very, very much enjoyed that message of
David's a few minutes ago, anyhow.
He said some very awesome things.
I hope you'll get the tape and listen
to it again and again.
I'm always fascinated between the gap between Malachi
and Matthew.
It's a period of 400 years of darkness
without any prophetic light, 400 years of stillness
without any prophetic voice.
We need to remember this.
Christianity was not born in a vacuum.
The man that began to speak after that
400 years of stillness, according to Jesus Christ,
the greatest character reader that ever lived, he
said of John Baptist, he was a burning
and a shining light, but also he said
he was the greatest person ever born of
woman.
In fact, he said, what did you go
into wilderness to see, a reed shaken by
the wind, a man that changes without political
move, an opportunist?
He said he's not a reed, he's the
opposite of being a reed.
He's not a reed shaken by the wind,
a prophet.
He's more than a prophet.
The prophet spoke about invisible things, but this
man is speaking about someone who's visible.
In many ways, he was the most extraordinary
man.
I went to a church last Sunday to
preach.
It was a lovely building.
The pastor met me at the door and
he said, you know, this used to be
a funeral home.
That's different from the churches I usually go
in.
It usually is a funeral home.
And my job is to raise the dead.
The most unique men in the history of
the world are not men who walked on
the moon.
They're not men who walked on the bottom
of the sea when they were looking for
the pieces that fell out of that rocket.
They showed pictures of men on our TV
walking on the on the on the sands,
under hundreds of feet of water off the
coast of Florida.
If you had told your grandfather, you'd sit
in an armchair and watch a man walking
on the moon, and not only that, hear
him talking, he'd have said you need to
get your brain examined.
But the very extraordinary things have become so
ordinary to us.
But the most amazing men in the world,
in the past, or now, or the future,
are not men who walk in the scientific
realm, but men who walk with God.
They're in a little bracket called the prophets.
There was a very brilliant Jewish scholar in
America some years ago.
I have one book of his on Isaiah.
His name was Dr. Bux Basin.
He was a distinguished scholar in Hebrew, and
he knew the Hebrew language, and he knew
all the Hebrew history, and he classifies a
prophet in this way.
He says the prophet, by the very nature
of his calling, is a tragic figure.
He has a fierce loyalty to God, and
he has a broken heart over the sin
of the people, and he's pulled by both.
The prophet suffers for the people, he suffers
with the people, he suffers by the people.
There's no such thing as a popular prophet.
Prophets are fierce men.
Prophets are faithful men.
Prophets are fruitful men.
The evangelist looks for people.
He likes company, popularity.
The prophet likes privacy.
The school of the prophets is a very
difficult school.
So let me just jump in here and
say, here is a man.
There was a man sent from God.
He had a divine commission.
I like to write a little aphorism every
day.
I wrote one a little while ago in
this fashion.
The man who is intimate with God will
never be intimidated by men.
There's nothing on earth or hell will scare
him.
He has a divine commission.
John comes in after this gap of 400
years.
There wasn't one man on earth that had
ever seen a prophet.
He hadn't seen a prophet.
The prophets are lonely men.
The prophets are radical men.
In the eyes of the world, they're foolish
men.
I have a book that God has used
called Sodom Had No Bible.
I'd like to write another one.
Sodom Had Its Witnesses.
The first man we read of was Enoch.
He walked with God.
There's a book on Enoch.
The old English writer Samuel Coleridge said, get
the book of Enoch if you have to
sell your bed in order to buy it.
Don't bite it.
If somebody gives you it, throw it away.
It has 108 chapters.
But if you read two verses in the
Old Testament and two verses in the New
Testament, you'll find out more about Enoch than
the 108 chapters of imagination.
Enoch, and to some degree, this man is
very much, John Baptist, is very much like
Enoch.
He comes onto the stage.
Do you know what prophets are?
The God's emergency men for crisis hours.
This is the gravest hour in American history.
And if holy fire doesn't fall, I'll be
a very disappointed and disgusted man.
Let me give you a little history of
this man, John Baptist.
Look in the gospel recorded by Luke.
The story is told by each of the
evangelists, of course.
In Saint Luke chapter 1 and verse 10,
it says, the whole multitude of people were
praying at the time of incense.
Doesn't that warm your heart, Mike?
A multitude of people waiting in the temple.
There appeared an angel of the Lord standing
on the right side.
Why does he stand on the right side?
Because he has a message for an individual.
Otherwise he'd stand on the left side.
Last Sunday as I preached in this morgue,
there was a young fellow there, his face
was radiant.
I imagined, I don't know what he was,
maybe Mexican or something.
And afterwards I talked with him.
I said, what are you doing?
He said, well, I've just retired.
He only looked about 25.
He was a clear military man in the
American army.
And somebody said, touch him before you leave
the place.
So I said, hey, tell me about yourself.
He said, well, I've been in the Philippines
and I've come back to America.
I can't tell you how distressed I am.
I can't walk the streets without grieving.
I go in meetings, there's no anointing, there's
no power of God, there's no revelation.
There's nothing that moves me.
I said, what about the Philippines?
He said, well, I've been in the Philippines.
You know, you go to a meeting, if
a man gets an anointing, they never think
of going home.
You're there at one o'clock, two o
'clock, three o'clock in the morning, in
the power of the Spirit.
And he said twice in the last year,
about two o'clock on both occasions, while
the people were in travel, two angels actually
stood in the congregation.
And he said, the people are awed.
Here is an angel, he comes to, and
notice who he is.
The angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias,
thy prayer is heard.
Thy wife Elizabeth, who was this angel?
Gabriel.
John Baptist was born of a barren woman.
You see, we're barren and we're too embarrassed
to own it.
I was thinking a hundred things while David
was preaching.
You know, Hannah had a gift.
She prayed for what?
A child.
She didn't.
She prayed for a man-child.
She got a man-child.
She didn't.
What did she get?
She got a prophet.
And you know what?
It broke her heart every year.
Can you imagine her taking that baby to
the temple every year, taking him a new
suit, and hoping God would say, take him
home with you?
And she sees him growing year by year.
God!
You see, once you put a thing on
the altar, you can't take it back.
That's your trouble.
That's why you lost the fire.
That's why you lost the vision.
Something, you didn't lose it.
Even Dave Wilson sent in some pretty powerful,
what do you call them, letters.
He sent one out last year about those
who have lost their first love.
There's no word in the Bible that says
that.
It doesn't say you lost your first love.
It says you left it.
You love something else more than Christ.
You love something else more than this word.
It doesn't burn as it used to.
You love something more than prayer.
You love something more than testimony.
You love something more than tears.
You love something more than brokenness.
And God, as dear Mike said, is on
the outside trying to come in.
Isn't it awesome that before this, what we
call the canon of New Testament was closed,
Christ was outside of his church.
I sometimes wonder if he ever got in.
The only time he gets in the church
is when there's a Holy Ghost revival, when
all the dross is burned.
So John comes to an old woman.
He says in verse 18, Zacharias said unto
the angel, whereby shall I know this?
I am old, and my wife's a stricken
woman.
I suppose part of the speaking of brother
Paul, I hope he'll tell him about the
time he was born.
His mother was 45 years of age.
Both her breasts were withered.
She had three, what do you call them,
three tumors in her body, three terminal illnesses.
But an angel stood by her and said,
the child in your body is a male
child.
Call him Paul.
And he's going to see the salvation of
God.
And did she say she'd see before she
died?
Well, he told me that.
He said, my mother isn't going to die
until the glory of God is revealed.
Dear Lord.
I said, how old is your mother?
He said, 103.
She's 104 now.
So as my dear Martha says nearly every
day, Lenny, can't be far off.
She's not going to live another 10 years.
The first time I saw Rick Joyner, he
came to me in a meeting, he said,
you're Simeon.
And then we saw Paul, and he said
the same thing, then somebody else.
In other words, all the years you've prayed,
now I've prayed nearly 60 years for revival,
over 60 years for revival.
And I believe I'm going to live to
see the heavens rent.
I'm going to see a Pentecost that will
out, Pentecost, Pentecost.
Jesus had 12 disciples, yet 10 times that
number in the upper room will have a
thousand times that when the next move of
the spirit comes.
It's not going to be a Pentecostal revival.
It's going to be an apostolic revival.
It's going to be God's revival.
There'll be no flesh in it.
It's going to be spirit total.
A stricken woman.
Was the church of God ever more stricken
than now?
People laugh in the streets.
They talk about Swaggart and PTL.
I'm no Christian, but I never go with
harlots.
I'm no Christian, but I don't beg and
rape the bride every week for money.
We're the most mixed up crowd in history.
But listen, there's something pure coming.
Terrifyingly pure.
We were listening to a tape just recently
of a woman from England, so it must
be good.
Even if it is a woman, but anyhow.
Do you know what she says?
She's been shut away with God.
And she says, the Holy Ghost is going
to come with such power that when you
open the door without anybody preaching or singing,
the presence of God is going to be
resident in the sanctuary, that if you come
through the door and you're living a double
life, you'll drop dead.
I don't know if you're shouting amen for
your husband.
I'll tell you if there's a return to
Pentecost, there'll be a return to Pentecost.
Pentecost in the Bible is marriage to prisons,
persecution, privations, poverty, and pain.
Pentecost today is fun.
Pentecost today is prosperity.
And that's absurdity in the light of the
Word of God.
John the Baptist comes.
What does it say of him?
Look a minute with me here.
Well, his mother was stricken in years.
His father was very old.
And so he's totally cast on God.
Now there's something very painful here.
It came to me while David was speaking.
When did John Baptist leave his parents?
Jesus, at 12 years of age, in the
temple, knew he was about his father's business.
Well, John Baptist was his cousin.
I imagine at that very day, they hugged
each other and said goodbye.
John Baptist went into the wilderness.
This is what it says at the end
of chapter 1.
Look at verse 80.
The child grew and waxed and waned, strung
in spirit.
Doesn't say a thing about his body.
He waxed, strung in spirit, and was in
the deserts.
He's in the wildest places that there are.
He's alone.
Do you know the thing that most of
us can't stand is to be alone?
Or you say, boy, I'd like a quiet
hour.
You get the children off the school and
you turn the TV on, the crazy thing.
Listen to somebody babbling about the Bible and
prophecy.
Instead of getting alone with God, God takes
all his men and they're alone.
Moses was a brilliant man.
What does the word of God say?
The 7th chapter of Acts says of him
that he was a statesman.
He was mighty in word and in deed.
He was a statesman.
He wasn't on an orator because he stammered.
But he had to go to school 40
years on the backside of the desert.
Jesus was 40 days in the wilderness.
John the Baptist, maybe 20 years in the
wilderness.
The greatest brain the world ever had, I
believe the apostle Paul.
And he has to go back into Arabia
for a number of years to be quiet.
But we're afraid of that.
Look at verse 15 here.
This is what it says of John.
He should be great in the sight of
the Lord.
Do you know what?
That's the only greatness there is.
Every other greatness is a fallacy.
Every other greatness will vanish.
We're going to see John Baptist to the
throne of God receive rewards of incredible glory.
Because he was faithful in every inch of
the way.
He was able to ride through the loneliness.
But look at verse 15.
He should be great in the sight of
the Lord.
He should drink neither wine nor strong drink.
Now listen to this breathless thing.
He should be filled with the Holy Ghost
from his mother's womb.
Look at now, that's John Baptist, filled with
the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.
Look at verse was it 28?
No, wait a minute please.
Verse 20.
There's one verse here, I haven't marked it
properly.
Is it verse...
Well it says his father was filled with
the Holy Ghost.
Anyhow, his mother was filled with the Holy
Ghost.
And then it comes the next chapter, verse
67 of the same chapter, says his father
was filled with the Holy Ghost.
And then it says his priest was filled
with the Holy Ghost.
His father was filled with the Holy Ghost,
verse 67, and he prophesied.
And then, yes, oh thank you, verse 41,
he came to pass, Elizabeth heard the salutation
of Mary.
The babe leapt in a womb, and Elizabeth
was filled with the Holy Ghost, when?
When she came into the presence of Jesus.
Jesus was there, and the Virgin was carrying
him, and immediately he came into the presence
of Jesus, she was filled with the Holy
Ghost.
And you can't be filled with the Holy
Ghost without meeting Jesus, there's no way it
can be done.
In fact, the Bible makes it clear, the
Holy Spirit has no gifts, the gifts are
all purchased by Jesus.
What did he do?
The Spirit of him that raised up Jesus
from the dead, he gave gifts unto men,
they're purchased by the blood, they're given in
honor of the resurrection life of the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Let me take
a minute here, because there's so much in
this, it could take us all day and
tomorrow.
Thank you.
Where's the verse that says he should baptize
you with the Holy Ghost and fire, have
you got that Mark?
Matthew 3, oh
that's right, thank you, yeah Luke 3.16,
it should be known as well as John
3.16, I can't remember it myself.
John answered saying unto him, I indeed baptize
you with water, but he that cometh as
mighty than I am not, I can't even
loose his shoes, he shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire.
Well you had a tremendous exhortation just a
little while ago about fire, didn't you?
From brother David?
Why did Jesus come into the world?
You say to save sinners, well listen to
what he said.
In Luke chapter 12 and verse 49, I
preached all over the world, conferences England, Ireland,
Scotland, Wales, India, New Zealand, Australia, that's right,
I've never heard this text preached on, the
49th verse of chapter 12, I am come
to send fire on earth, if it be
already kindled.
What will I, what if it be already
kindled?
I have a baptism to be baptized with.
Now I say that book, this is never,
never mentioned, one of the best selling books
that Billy Graham ever, ever wrote was, what
was it, World Aflame?
Yet he never mentions this text, he mentions
texts about fire, he never mentions this.
One of the most stirring books in my
generation I believe was that book of Bonhoeffer's
when he wrote about the cost of discipleship,
he quotes hundreds of scriptures, he never quotes
this text.
There was a great preacher when I first
came to America, Shoemaker, Sam Shoemaker, was he
a, either a Presbyterian or a, was he
a Presbyterian, or Church of England, well he
wrote a very fine book called the Incendiary
Fellowship, but he never mentions it.
You've heard a hundred sermons on the baptism
of John in the water, you've heard a
thousand sermons on he should baptize with the
Holy Ghost, did you ever hear one on
this?
Verse 49, I am come to send fire
on earth, what will it be already kindled?
What about this?
I have a baptism to be baptized with,
did you ever hear a sermon on that?
Jesus has to be baptized into death, he
has to tread underfoot principalities and powers, the
whole hell has to shake, the whole of
heaven has to rejoice.
You know, I think the most disgusting, disappointing
day in the life of Jesus, was with
those stupid disciples, he told them over and
over again what would happen, he said I
shall die and rise on the third day,
what did he do?
I've told you before, there's a stone over
the body of Jesus, there's wax over the
stone, there's seals over the wax, and then
there are soldiers and wax and the seal,
and then the demons put all the sin
of the world against that stone, and then
every demon in hell puts his shoulder against
that stone, and it looks as though hell
is going to triumph, and the devil counts
down, he gets from 30, he gets down
to 8, to 7, 6, 5, 4, 3,
he's going to say 1, and then the
whole world is forever a slave to sin,
and Jesus rose from the dead.
You see, one thing that grieves me, I
can't preach on it here at the moment,
one thing is how lightly we esteem the
power of the Holy Ghost, let me say
it this way to you, the Holy Spirit
is N.O.T., he's not the junior
partner in the Godhead, he's equal with the
Father, he's equal with the Son, the world
was, this world was a ball of mud
shut up in the womb of the universe,
and he took hold of it and brooded
over it, and it changed from cosmos, from
chaos to cosmos, to order, from death to
life, he came on some men in the
Old Testament, and breathed on them, holy men
of God, because they were moved by the
Holy Ghost, he came to a little woman,
do you ever think of the agony that
she had?
She's the holiest little girl, she never misses
coming to a conference, she comes to the
Feast of Tabernacles, she comes to the Feast
of Pentecost, she's always so sweet and kind,
I've just seen her now, this holy girl,
pregnant, I asked Joseph about it, I don't
know a thing about it, what do you
mean you don't know, she's your girlfriend, you've
been with her long enough, she's carrying your
child, she isn't, well whose child is it?
What about the reproach?
We don't like reproach, some of you don't
like being called a Pentecostal, I can understand
that after the lousy things the Pentecostals have
done in the past few years, but listen,
I'm going to tell you this, God never
abrogated this message, the only message to turn
this world upside down is the real baptism
with the Holy Ghost and fire.
You talk about the baptism, you leave the
fire off, that's why you have none.
I can give you some problems you can't
solve maybe, I'll ask David and the geniuses
around here, there's a very wonderful book called
Azusa Street, have you read it?
How many have read the new book on
Azusa?
Did you notice on the first page, and
I think Brother Bracey was in my office
when, who's the theologian you brought?
Fjordback, is that how you say it?
Fjordback came.
So I said to him, Dr. Fjordback, I've
been reading again, I don't know how many
times I read that, history burns me.
I'm going to be, you think I'm arrogant
or innocent or foolish, I don't know one
Pentecostal Church in America today.
Do you know a church where all the
deacons are full of the Holy Ghost?
Where the past can step out of the
pulpit and it is away for two months,
the church is still rolling in power and
revelation?
So here's this little woman, bearing the reproach,
obviously getting more obvious of pregnancy, and the
Lord won't let us say anything about it.
You see, when the Lord whispers a secret
to us, we tell everybody, that's the trouble,
he won't come back again.
But anyhow, she brings to birth, but let
me skip over this a moment.
Jesus says, I have a baptism to be
baptized with.
Go back again a minute, all, none of
the disciples were waiting for him.
When he rose from the dead, I thought
they would have been lined up.
I thought Peter would have said, I'm going
to be the first, but he wasn't there.
Thomas wasn't there, the others weren't there.
Then the ladies come in and say, well,
the women went.
Do you know what they went?
To see him risen?
No, to embalm him.
That's all most preachers do every week, they
embalm him.
They don't want him alive, he's dangerous.
Of course he's dangerous.
He invades all our privacy.
He destroys all our ideas.
I have a baptism to be baptized with.
I said to Dr. Fordbeck, I'm puzzled by
that book.
There's another book called Seven Pentecostal Pioneers.
Get it, it will set you on fire.
It will drive you to the dust.
It makes me weep.
It makes me cry.
Where is the God of Elijah?
Where is the God of Smith Wigglesworth?
Everybody talks about Smith Wigglesworth.
Do you know he wasn't a Pentecostal?
Do you know every Sunday morning he went
to the Salvation Army prayer meeting at 7
o'clock to pray, because nobody in town
will pray with him.
And then he went to the Episcopalians at
8 o'clock to have communion, because there's
a godly man there.
There was no fellowship.
I met that man.
But traveling back a minute, I'm going round
and round here, I know.
But I said to Dr. Fordbeck, I've been
reading this book, and it says on the
first page there are 70 million Pentecostals in
the world today.
Do you remember that?
Then I said to him, sir, does that
mean the classical Pentecostals, it says?
Does it mean they're filled with the Holy
Ghost and they speak in tongues?
He said, yes.
But there aren't 70 million.
I said, I'm sorry, the book says there
are, but that's five years old.
He said, Mr. there are 120 million people
in the world have the baptism with the
Holy Ghost.
So rudely I reached over and nearly pushed
my thing in his eye.
And I said, listen Dr. Fordbeck, were there
120 million in the upper room?
He said, no.
Well how many were there?
120.
What's the difference with their baptism and ours?
God is the same, I change not.
Sin is the same.
We live in a crippled society.
We've got the two most peaceful looking men
in the world smiling on us now.
Gorbachev, what a quiet lovely grandfather he is.
He hates God, he hates the devil, he
hates Christ, he hates America, and we're trying
to make a friend of him.
The other quiet looking guy is the Pope,
and he hates Christianity.
That'll get me into trouble, so what?
You see, we're in for trouble in America
as never in history.
If we don't have a Holy Ghost revival,
we won't survive ten more years.
If you can get it, get last week's
United States, was it?
News?
No.
U.S. News and World Report of last
week.
Do you know what it says?
It says we not only have Lebanon's, what's
the city it speaks of?
We have Beirut's in cities.
The police will not go into certain areas.
They refuse to go in.
Why?
I didn't hear everything on intercession.
I love these fellows because they pray.
Not once a week.
These churches have three prayer meetings a day,
and have had for five years.
Two hours in the morning, two in the
afternoon, two at night.
Do you know what?
They're all stored up in heaven.
What are these under the altar?
The prayers of the saints.
The dam is going to burst one day.
The Holy Ghost who inspired those prayers is
going to bring them to life, and people
are going to start walking are dead.
People are going to see who are blind.
People are going to give utterance whether it's
in tongues or not.
They're going to speak with holy authority.
People say the church is on trial.
Maybe it is, but God isn't.
He's not running for office.
He's just looking for servants.
That's all he's looking for.
He's looking for some people to be cleaned
out of everything.
We want to be filled without being empty.
We want to be somebody's without being nobody's.
And God says no.
It doesn't say John the Baptist was a
theologian.
God bypassed all the theologians.
But let's see John the Baptist for a
minute.
I'll give you the background, the historic background
here.
If you'll turn back for a minute, I'll
try and get through it in a hurry.
Not through the message, just this part.
I've got my teacher here today.
Do you want to come and preach?
Now look at the background here.
Again, Christianity was not born in a vacuum.
Christianity was born in a period of hostility.
The people, the intellectuals, were still talking about
Plato and Socrates, these guys that David studied.
They were arrogant.
With Abraham to our father.
There were false Christs.
There was a hundred false religions.
And John Baptist comes.
Listen what it says in Luke chapter 3
and verse 1.
In the 15th year of the reign of
Tiberius Caesar.
There was Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Tiberius Caesar.
He was the most abominable, wicked, perverted man
of all the Caesars.
He cultivated iniquity.
He encouraged immorality.
He scorned at everything that was righteous and
holy and pure.
Somebody said he's the most infamous human that
ever lived.
But then go on in the same verse.
It says Pontius Pilate being the governor of
Judea.
And Herod being the Tetrarch of Galilee.
His brother Philip was the Tetrarch of Aeturia
in the region of Aeturia.
And the region of Trachonitis and Lysanias the
Tetrarch of Abilene.
Ananias, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests.
That's illegal.
You can't have two high priests.
Everything that's illegal is prospering.
This concludes side one.
Please turn the tape over.