Well, Junior did well this morning, didn't he?
What will he do ten years from now?
I'll be watching from upstairs.
Or maybe not.
You know, it's very wonderful what people say
about preachers.
I want to talk on Samson this morning.
And a lady said to me the other
day, I hope at this conference you'll be
the jawbone of the ass.
Very nice.
But better than that, a young man's been
writing to me for about a couple of
years, telling me how much good my books
have done in his life.
Changed his life around, changed his vision.
And he says, it's all one way.
You're doing everything for me and I love
you so.
Can't I do something for you?
So he called me on the phone.
I want to do something for you.
I said, like what?
He said, be one of your pallbearers.
Pass it over.
I told him to wait about 15 more
years.
OK, the book of Judges, chapter 16.
Judges, chapter 16, dealing mainly with verse 6.
And Elilah said to Samson, Tell me, I
pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and
wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee.
In one of the European versions, I think
it's a Swedish version, there's one word added
to the text, which is implied anyhow.
Tell me wherein the secret of thy great
strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound
to afflict thee.
This is a question of a woman of
the world to a man of God.
In my judgment, it'd be a great day
when the world begins to ask the Church
of Jesus Christ again, what's the secret of
your great strength?
Right now, I think she, as I said
last night, she thinks we're tumbleweed tossed around
by the winds of adversity in this world.
You know, it's rather an amazing thing with
all the literature that's poured out of America.
You know, 40,000 books, new books are
published every year in America.
And yet, whatever country you go into, there's
one story that's preeminent.
Russia, anywhere you go.
They know one story above every other.
They don't have it straight any more than
we do.
It's a story of Whitman Winkle.
It was written by who?
Washington Irving?
Who says, votes for Washington Irving?
Oh, he doesn't get any, okay.
Well, I may as well say I wrote
it, but I didn't.
Do you remember the story?
It happened somewhere near New York on the
west side of the Hudson River.
Martha and I saw a little town called
Sweepy Hollow.
You may remember that this famous man, Whitman
Winkle, that's quite a name.
I guess you've no children called that.
Whitman Winkle went up the hill and he
slept, some say 20, some say 30, some
say 50 years.
My teacher was, she was very suspicious of
me.
She thought I wasn't smart and I thought
she wasn't.
But she told me Whitman Winkle slept for
20 years.
But that's not the point of the story
at all.
The fact is when he went up the
hill, there was a sign hanging outside on
the tavern and it was the head of
who?
George III.
Because England had a lot of investments in
America.
You know, you think the Japanese are buying
up America.
England owns far more stock in America than
Japan does.
But I don't have any of it, unfortunately.
But anyhow, the point is not that when
he went up the hill, the face of
George III was on that sign, because while
he was sleeping, they erased the sign and
put the face of another partly Englishman, George
Washington.
The point of the story is this, that
while he went up the hill and slept,
there was a revolution and he slept right
through the revolution.
And I think David implied that this morning.
That's what the church is doing now.
She's sleeping through the greatest revolution in history.
And it's time to wake out of sleep.
One of the greatest military strategists in history
was Napoleon.
I understand that in World War II, they
studied his strategy.
He was only a little guy about the
height of Wesley 524, but he was a
genius in his trade.
He went through so many victories, victories, victories.
And then he met his Waterloo, we say.
He met a British officer on the 18th
of June in 1845.
That's my birthday, not the year, just the
day, June 18.
I can't even remember when I was born.
But when he had a series of reverses,
he gathered together his warlords.
And on the wall of his great office,
he had a huge map of the world.
And he got the attention of the officers
with his tremendous command attention.
And everybody stood still and looked.
And he walked to this great map on
the wall and he rang his finger around
a great country.
And then he said, gentlemen, look there.
There lies a sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
Because he said if that country ever wakes
up and harnesses its natural power, its resources,
its manpower, that country will take the world.
He said that in 1845.
What was the country outlined?
China, which is the headache of all the
nations of the world right now.
At the end of the road where we
live, there's a small town or a village.
NBC used it last year for their sports
arena.
They used it for the lake.
And various other things.
Recently, some Chinese came along and made an
offer to buy the whole thing because they
said we're fleeing.
They've come from Hong Kong.
Do you know last year 30,000 people
left Hong Kong area?
And it's predicted this year 60,000 people
will leave because of the invasion of the
wickedness of the people of China.
So this man says in 1848, there lies
a sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
Because if it ever wakes and harnesses its
manpower to its resources, it will shake the
world, will change the character.
Instead of seeing a map of the world,
see a map of the ages.
Instead of Napoleon, see the devil.
And the devil outlines to all his demons.
He runs his finger around something.
He says, there lies a sleeping giant.
Let it sleep.
Because if ever it awakes, it will shake
the world.
What is he outlining?
The church of Jesus Christ.
Sleeping.
And Satan says if the church of Jesus
Christ ever rediscovers the resurrection life of Jesus
and the power of the Holy Spirit, it
will shake the world.
There is no other way to shake it.
We've tried formality.
We've tried education.
We've tried theology.
We've tried treatment.
But the world is still unmoved.
But it's not going to stay that way.
This very conference is a part of the
resurrection life, as David was saying this morning.
And God is going to move through this
next two weeks and spread this tremendous message
right through the world.
Here is a woman of the world asking
a man, what's the secret of your great
strength?
You know what happens with that?
You've told these stories many times to your
children, haven't you?
When I've traveled the world, I've gone in
art galleries.
I like to go in art galleries.
They're free.
And I usually ask them, do you have
any religious pictures?
And they'll tell me of this, that, and
the other.
Every time I've seen a picture of this
amazing man, Samson, he's way up there.
You know, the average man in Israel was
this height.
Saul, the king of Israel, was head and
shoulders above him.
And Goliath, this man, Samson is head and
shoulders above the greatest man.
That's pure nonsense.
Now women ask some strange questions.
I'm after the women again.
But can you imagine a woman looking up
to a man 15 feet high and say,
buddy, what's the secret of your strength?
What do you think he's going to reply?
Wheatish?
You see, there are three pictures here.
There's a story of Samson himself.
He's a picture of the church of Jesus
Christ.
He's a picture of Israel.
Israel began in miraculous power.
She's going to end in miraculous power.
She's seen miracles already.
What about the six-day war?
Nobody believed she would ever win that war.
But she blasted the enemy.
I was thinking as David was speaking this
morning, there are some things we have to
do.
If I'd been Moses, God, if I'd seen
the glory of God parting the Red Sea.
But wait a minute.
What did he do?
He cried unto the Lord.
The Lord says, quit crying.
Take your staff and divide it.
There are times when he says, you do
it.
It's true, it's not by might nor by
power, but it is by obedience.
It doesn't matter how ridiculous it looks.
What do you think Israel thought when he
got that staff and said, I'm going to
part this like I part my hair.
He'll never do it.
Ridiculous things, as David was talking this morning.
Not that he was ridiculous, but some things
he reminded me of.
Can you imagine the people looking over the
wall?
You mentioned about them having a box of
the presence of God.
Can you imagine those people looking all over
the walls of Jericho and say, hey, come
on, look at this crazy crowd.
They're carrying a box of gold.
Everybody's a ram's horn in his hand.
Isn't this insane?
Every day they went to see this performance.
And the last day they went, they were
all on the wall and the wall went
down.
I guess they felt let down too.
The whole world went because they did not
consider the opinions of men.
If God says it, do it.
No matter how mad it looks.
So you have the picture of Israel beginning
in glorious miracle.
The dividing of the sea, the splitting of
the rock and the water went out.
Manna coming from the skies and so forth
and so on.
But now she doesn't count spiritually anyhow.
She's still a thorn in the side of
all the nations of the world and will
be for a long while.
But then you have the picture of the
church of Jesus Christ.
It began in miracles.
They came out of the upper room steaming,
if you like, with the power of God.
They went to the beautiful gate of the
temple.
There was a man crippled.
Jesus Christ passed him a hundred times and
never touched him.
Why?
Because it would have been an ordinary thing
if Jesus healed the sick and then gone
and raised that man up.
It was normal.
There was a time when it would glorify
God the best.
There are some miracles that God is going
to do.
They've been praying for one up there at
Kansas City for years in the raising of
Brother Bickle's brother who was a professional footballer,
got kicked in the neck and he's crippled
and has been there for years.
And people ask why.
Because there's going to be a moment when
it will glorify God if that young man
is shaken, the whole of Kansas City will
shake.
It will be headline news in every paper.
And you know the difficult thing for those
who believe God's going to do the supernatural,
I've prayed about that nearly 70 years, is
patience.
Does it say let us run with patience
the race that God has set before us?
So here you have this amazing man.
David does the other half of this story.
Maybe you'll preach it this week.
It's far better than my half.
Anyhow, he's a Nazirite.
His mother was told to keep him as
a child.
And remember again, this superman is born of
a barren woman.
David, I believe, moved many hearts last time
he was here preaching on the barren woman.
It's amazing that some of the greatest men
in history were born of barren women.
Who was the fellow?
Abraham was our old.
75 years old when God started working on
him.
175 when God finished.
So cheer up, you have a long way
to go.
100 years.
He goes to his wife one day and
says, Darling, a miracle is going to happen.
He's 90.
What was he, 90 there?
How was he?
85?
She was 90.
I'm not going to ask these.
Kansas City.
I mean these.
What am I saying now?
No, Kansas City pastors aren't here anyhow.
The vineyard sellers, they always say, No, it
doesn't matter what you ask.
And they say, No, okay.
So I'm not asking them.
Can you imagine Sarah, 90 years of age,
writing to a mother?
Mother, I've got news.
What's the news?
I'm going to have a baby.
A what?
I'm going to have a baby.
A baby?
Adopting?
No, I'm going to have it.
Mother.
Mother wrote back and said, I told you
never marry a preacher, they're crazy.
But she had the child, a super child.
Do you remember that woman that one day
got to the end of the line?
She didn't part her hair nicely and put
on the best perfume and the best dress
she had.
She throws herself at the feet of her
husband, Jacob.
She's tired of being mocked.
She's tired of being scorned, just like Hannah
was.
And she throws herself at the feet of
Jacob and says, Give me children or I
die.
And when the vineyard is prepared to die,
she'll bring the child forth.
But not while we hang on, as David
was saying to our little petty ideas, our
little standards, our little interpretations, they'll have to
go.
There's a world outside waiting to see a
supernatural move of God.
It's going to see it.
And it will be greater than all the
revivals in history put together when it comes.
And no man will get glory for it.
It's going to be the production and the
control and the direction of the Holy Spirit
of God.
Well, here this fella is a pretty impatient
guy, isn't he?
He, he takes up lodgings in the Holiday
Inn at the entrance of the town.
And they give him an apartment and everything.
And the spies say, Samson's in town.
So they say, All right, well, he's going
to be sleepy.
We'll get him tonight.
And this fella gets up.
He's a bit of a joker.
He likes a joke.
I do too.
So he picks up half of the town,
picks up the Holiday Inn and the gates,
carries them up on a hill.
And then there's a good laugh.
He says, It's not by might, no by
power.
You'll never get these things back.
Do you know, God Almighty, maybe we'll wreck
the economy of America to get glory for
his son.
He doesn't care a hill of beans about
Wall Street.
He owns a cat on a thousand hills.
I remember going to a prayer meeting one
night.
The pastor said to me, These farmers here,
they pray such funny things.
He said the other night, a man said,
We need that money for missions.
Another man said, Lord, the cat.
What did he say?
What's the whole text?
Oh, I know.
I know you're not sleeping now.
OK.
What did he say?
The silver and the gold is yours, Lord,
this old farmer says.
And the cat on a thousand hills.
So the old farmer said behind, Yes, Lord,
the cat on a thousand hills are yours.
Drive them all this way.
But you know what I like about this?
I want to emphasize, I don't have that
much time.
You see, here is a man with the
anointing of God.
He's an absolute embarrassment to his enemies.
They think they've got him in a trap
and he gets out.
They suffer more than he suffers.
He goes home and has a big laugh
about the whole thing.
Because he has what is the most precious
thing in this side of eternity.
You can't buy it.
You can't merit it.
It doesn't come with diploma.
It doesn't come with a degree.
He had the anointing of God.
The Spirit of the Lord was upon him.
And that's the greatest jewel this side of
eternity.
Some of you would sell your house and
your stocks and your cars to get it.
You can't.
The Spirit of God is not available for
anything but obedience and submission.
And there's a cost to it.
So repeatedly you have this statement.
The enemies of the Lord of the Philistines.
I mean, the Lord of the Philistines, verse
3, said unto her, Entice him, and see
wherein his great strength lieth, and wherewith he
might be bound to afflict thee.
You see, she knew he wasn't a normal
man.
The enemy knew he wasn't a normal man.
And he wasn't a normal man.
But he trifled, fooled about with this wretched
woman.
Entice him.
Listen to what he says, verse 7.
Sam said unto her, If they bind me
with seven green whisks that were never used,
then shall I be like another man.
No, I wish it said that.
He isn't decent even.
He says, You bind me, I shall be
weak like other men.
I'm sick to death of mediocrity.
I'm looking for God to render heavens and
come and give anointings to nobodies that nobody
knows.
Nobody has educated them.
Nobody's trained them.
They come out of the woodwork, if you
like.
But they come in this phenomenal power of
the Spirit of God.
He says again in verse 10.
Behold, thou hast mocked me when the trick
didn't work, and told me lies.
Now tell me, I pray thee, wherein thou
mightest be bound.
He knew that they were going to bind
him.
It says again in verse 11.
He said unto her, If they bind me
fast with new ropes that were never occupied,
then again he underlies it, then shall I
be weak like other men.
The latter therefore took new ropes, but they
didn't work.
Then in verse 15, she comes up with
an old trick.
She said unto him, How canst thou say,
I love thee?
In other words, you know, that tremendous weapon
of woman.
Oh, you don't love me.
Boy, you can get anything.
A fur coat or a car, we're saying
that.
You don't love me.
Tell me the secret, but listen.
She doesn't give up pestering him.
Entice him, yes.
What's it say?
Verse 16.
When it came to pass, she pressed on
him daily with her words, and urged him
so that he was vexed.
He began to lose control.
He isn't relying on the power of God.
He's more conscious of the enemy around about
him.
I remember Dr. Chaucer said to me one
day, Len, be careful of men who talk
more about Antichrist than about Christ.
And today we're talking about difficulty.
What a difficulties to God.
I don't think they're in his Dictionary at
all.
When Delilah saw that she called, okay, verse
18.
Delilah saw, he told her all his heart.
She sent and called for the Lords of
the Philistines, saying up at this one, Here
are these men embarrassed.
Here is a man, every report that comes
out.
This man that has no army behind him.
This man who isn't super high.
I think it was normal in every aspect.
Not an inch taller, not an inch broader.
But somehow there was a mysterious power.
You can't define God.
You can't define the power of God any
more than you can define what electricity is.
When Delilah saw, he told her all his
heart.
Do you notice that?
She got down to his heart.
She sent and called for the Lords of
the Philistines, saying come up once.
He showed me all his heart.
The Lords of the Philistines came upon her.
And she made him sleep on her knees.
You know, you're going about.
What's he doing?
Putting down strongholds.
Chasing, tying the tails of foxes together.
And this man's getting tired.
So she comes to his natural resources.
You're tired.
Put your head on my lap and go
to sleep.
As I say, if it stayed on his
knees, it never got on hers.
Every man that was fallen that David mentioned
politely this morning.
More politely than I do.
Whether it's so-and-so or so-and
-so.
Every one of those men that landed up
in a mess and threw away their life's
work.
A guy put 200 million dollars and 20
years of sleepless nights, really, to build the
Christian Disneyland called PTL.
Where did he fail?
He stopped praying.
He stopped reading the word.
He stopped getting along with God.
All those men that fell.
Swaggart, him and a bunch of others.
I can give you the name of a
neighbor of mine who went to them two
years before they collapsed and said, you're heading
for destruction.
They laughed at him.
It's no good saying they had no friends.
They had friends.
But it's very difficult when you're managing a
multimillion dollar corporation.
For somebody to come up that only has
10 bucks in his pocket and he's going
to tell you what to do.
But listen, we better take counsel from the
weakest and the least person in our fellowship.
They may have more wisdom than we have
very often.
But this man didn't want to hear.
And so he closed his ears.
When Delilah saw that he told her all
his heart, the Philistines came.
And then he slept on the knees.
She began to cut off his hair.
Why?
Because there were three things an Azrite could
not do.
He could not drink wine, a sign of
worldly pleasure.
He could not touch anything that was dead,
a sign of worldly people.
And he must let his hair grow, which
in those days was reproach.
As I thought about this last night, I
remember preaching a message on this, not the
same, about 25 years ago in Minneapolis.
And I said, you cannot touch worldly things.
You cannot be married to worldly people.
And it's not just marriage that we're unequally
yoked.
We're unequally yoked in business.
So you preachers are equally yoked with deacons
that you put in office because they have
money, not because they have anointing.
People talked about today the Restoration Church.
Show me one.
Show me one church in America where all
the deacons are like the deacons in Acts
6.
Because what did they do?
Stephen was elected because he was full of
what?
Wisdom?
No, full of faith and of the Holy
Ghost and he did signs and wonders and
miracles as much as any apostle who's only
a deacon.
That's the deacon standard in the sixth chapter.
In the eighth chapter, you find the same
thing where it says, Philip, a very ordinary
man, he went down to a city and
again the anointing of God was on him.
That anointing doesn't come by cleverly reshuffling your
congregation.
It's something that God endures.
So what did he do?
They cut off his hair.
Again, that was a reproach.
He became like others.
And it says in verse 20, when she
said to the Philistines, be upon thee, Samson,
he woke out of his sleep and said,
I will go out at other times like
David was saying.
He didn't know that glory departed, never put
his hand up.
If he'd been 15 feet high and he
woke up and he was only four feet
high, he'd know something had happened.
But he's still the same height.
He's still the same muscle.
He's still the same environment.
The only thing is, and it's everything, God
has left him.
It's again true that one man with God
is a majority.
God never raised up Methodism, he raised up
Wesley.
And out of Wesley came rivers of living
water.
He didn't raise up the Salvation Army that
touched the world in 70 countries in 90
years.
He did not raise up the army.
He raised up a man who was half
Jew and a half Gentile, William Booth, with
a wonderful wife who had the anointing of
the Spirit.
But this man wished not that the Spirit
of the Lord had departed from him.
Come on, you go to church, the same
thing happens.
You know, some people scorn the old-fashioned
churches.
The Church of England, some of the greatest
hymns we have were born in the Church
of England.
Some of the greatest mysteries we have was
never a greater mystery than Henry Martin.
He had a colossal intellect.
There was a man in America dying at
29 years of age, and he weighed less
than 100 pounds.
He threw the torch of his testimony, as
it were, across the Atlantic, and it fell
on the desk of a young man by
the name of Henry Martin.
And he read, does God still do this?
Does God still get men?
Does God still control men?
Are the men that yield to God so
that your spirit, soul, and body may be
His?
If God can do it in the life
of that young man that died, He can
do it in me.
So Henry Martin was a senior student.
He was the most prolific brain in England.
He was the best eligible bachelor.
He took his genius to India.
What did he do?
He took the Greek New Testament and the
other New Testament, and he translated out of
the Greek New Testament, the whole New Testament
into Hindustani.
And when he finished that, he translated the
whole of the New Testament into Arabic, a
more difficult language.
At the same time, the anointing of God
was upon him.
Do you know he did all that in
less, in about three and a half years?
You see, God can shorten time like that.
We still have to see the super work
of God.
We've not seen it.
I'm a bit tired of going back to
the day of Pentecost.
I don't want to see, I don't want
to, I could quit reading church history, except
it troubles me.
I want to see history made this week
I want to see history made in my
generation.
I want God to raise up these supermen,
men like Samson.
Doesn't it say in Daniel 9, the people
that do know their Bible shall do exploits?
Doesn't it say that?
What does it say?
The people what?
That know their God.
We've substituted knowing God for knowing our Bibles.
Do you know America's drowning in millions and
billions of teaching tapes?
I get papers time and time again.
You must get these 20 new revelations of
ours.
And they're as old as Adam nearly, except
he didn't have the tapes.
But they're old fashioned anyhow.
But everybody's getting teaching tapes, teaching tapes.
Well, there's a place for teaching, but there's
a place for thus saith the Lord.
Where suddenly our God shoots his arrows into
us.
You feel as though something has come from
eternity and struck you and you then put
it out.
You see, that's why we need the word
of God in our hearts.
Thy word have I hid in my heart
that I might not sin against thee.
Why?
Because if the word is hid in my
heart, the spirit can quicken it.
Then it becomes a sharp twedged sword.
It's like somebody sticking a javelin into me
and twisting it round and round.
You know, when these fellows talk about how
they've fallen into sin, do you know some
of it's lying?
One man says he's had trouble with pornography
three or four years.
Somebody says he's had it 10 years.
Listen, that's a lie against the Holy Ghost.
He convicts of sin.
How is it these men have talked more
about the Holy Ghost than anyone in history?
Then they've made the biggest mess.
The Pentecostal Testament is defiled, damaged, degraded, not
by its enemies, not by its opponents, but
by its exponents.
They brought it to shame.
And so it's time to reverse the order
and raise up a holy people, a pure
people, a sanctified people.
I say it's difficult.
The Holy Spirit of God is faithful.
He is the Spirit of truth.
And before you commit sin, He'll even stop
you.
To commit sin, you have to do a
lot of things.
Number one, you have to deny the Word
of God that's in your heart.
Number two, you have to resist the Spirit.
Number three, you have to grieve the Spirit.
Number four, you have to quench the Spirit.
Again, David in misery cries, Oh God, take
not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Why?
Because he'd seen Saul anointed.
Saul was anointed with the power of God
and he prophesied, but he died a suicide.
It's a dangerous thing to get the anointing
of God.
We presume it's going to be there forever.
We still say the right words.
We still do the same things.
We still don't greet the deacons.
We don't bring worthiness into the church.
But the power is gone.
We're not raising another generation who have what
we've got.
If I can't communicate life and power, I
don't want to live.
My day is nearly gone.
You've got all these great preachers on this
program this week and I'm glad they're here.
Distinguished preachers.
I preached in Wales at a wonderful time.
I could tell you some marvelous things about
that two weeks.
It's still living.
But the lady I stayed with had just
one son in a little cottage and she
made the most wonderful food you could dream
of.
And she got the fire so hot, it
was unbearable.
When I got home, she sent me a
wonderful letter.
I said, Martha, dear, listen to this letter.
This lady says she's had many of the
visiting preachers staying in her home.
But she said, Mr. Rayner, I think you're
the most extinguished preacher I've ever heard.
Boy, I wrote her a letter of thanks
immediately.
No, I say, David has seen Saul, the
king of Israel, anointed with pomp and circumstance.
And then he sees him losing his anointing
and he goes crawling on his feet to
the feet of a dirty spiritist.
He sees a man who's panic stricken.
The servant of God comes along and says,
King, the Lord hath departed from me.
And he thought, well, this guy won't dare
say anything against the king.
And bless God, he was faithful.
He says, the Lord hath departed from me.
And David said, don't take your Holy Spirit
from me.
I said the other night, you won't hear
me say this quickly.
The town I met my dear Martha in,
I preached on Psalm 51 one Saturday night
and the whole crowd went out.
The whole crowd's about 120.
So they all stampeded out of place.
And one lady stayed at the back.
She was about six feet high, dressed in
black, miserable.
She could have been a witch without any
makeup.
I've seen some wretched looking women in my
life, but I never
saw anybody like her.
And we had a little altar there and
she knelt there and put her elbows down,
put her hands up and she sobbed.
She didn't just cry, she sobbed and she
shook and she shook.
Everybody had gone except one guy.
I said, stay there a minute.
This woman's so ferocious.
But anyhow, she knelt there and cried and
cried and cried.
And I said to a lady, the meeting's
over, the people have gone.
What's your trouble?
What's my trouble?
She said, tonight, when you read the Psalm
of David, cleanse me and restore unto me
the joy of thy salvation.
And the tears came in torrents down her
cheeks.
She said, Mr. Raymond, that's the first time
in 40 years God has spoken to me.
I lost my joy.
I lost my temper one night after a
meeting.
I was working with another lady in the
Salvation Army as an officer.
We'd been having great blessing, but we quarreled
who should lead the meeting that night, who
should choose the hymns.
And at the end, she said, I got
angry.
And she said, I went home, I took
off my tunic, as they called, the coat
she had.
I cut it up, took off my skirt
and cut that off, put them on the
fire, tore my bible up and put that
on the fire.
I finished with everybody and everything, just because
I was depressed and the devil attacked me.
And she said, I forfeited my ministry.
And she said, after that, I heard William
Booth.
I heard Commissioner Lawley.
I heard Colonel Bringle.
And not one man ever moved me.
God has never spoken to me till tonight.
And she said, I won't.
And as you preach there, I said, Lord,
restore unto me.
I'm 40 years barren, 40 years of wasted
life.
40 years of chosen blindness.
40 years of chosen darkness.
40 years of loneliness.
Mr. Red, you have no idea what it
means.
It's more than being a widow.
It's more than being an outcast.
When God leaves you, I took the Bible,
but it didn't mean a thing.
I prayed, it didn't mean a thing.
But she said, oh God, in mercy, came
tonight and restored the joy.
And you know, it did come back.
For the simple reason, she never missed a
prayer meeting after that.
I went to church one morning at seven
o'clock, Sunday morning, we had a prayer
meeting.
And the snow was deep.
And she's standing with snow halfway up her
legs, waiting for the prayer meeting, and then
pouring her heart out in prayer.
You see, the tragedy of meetings like this,
they seem fun at times.
But you know, in every meeting where God
is, somebody dies or somebody lives.
This is God's last call to some of
you.
That wineskin isn't gonna be offered to you
for 50 years.
You better do it while God is calling.
He says, I'll go out as at other
times.
And he wished not, or he wasn't aware,
the Spirit of the Lord departed him.
Now I could summarize the whole story like
this.
The Philistines got hold of this superman.
They don't know his next move.
They know it will be something that's unreasonable,
something you can't calculate, something you can't esteem.
And so they're watching every move.
So what did they do?
He's given away the secret.
The first thing they do is bind him.
The next thing they do is blind him.
The next thing they do is grind him.
They put him there, give him the job
of a donkey.
He's going round and round and round and
round, breaking up the chaff and the wheat,
as you heard earlier.
He's doing a donkey's job.
He's become a tourist attraction.
The greatest joke's being told now.
I don't watch TV, but a brother told
me this week with sorrow.
They're still cracking jokes about Pete, Yellen, and
Swaggart.
These fellow having a fine time.
Wait a minute.
Let's see what happens here.
The Philistines put out his eyes, verse 21.
They bind him and send him down to
Gaza and bound him with fetters of brass.
And they did grind him in the prison
house.
They put the donkey off and that thing's
going round and he's tied to it, pushing
it round.
And it's grinding the corn.
You see, he destroyed their crops.
He took the corn out of their mouths.
They said, you'll put it back.
And they made a slave of him.
He would mean the slave of God.
Then what does it say?
The lords of the Philistines gather themselves together
before Dagon, their God, to rejoice.
For they said, our God hath delivered Samson.
Our God.
What the New Age people say now.
They've changed their language from New Age to
being born again.
They mock us, but it's only for a
season.
They only mock this man for a season.
Again, can you imagine him going round and
round day by day and people laughing and
saying, you mean that that man once slew
2,000 of our men with a jawbone
of an ass?
You mean that that man once did exploits
that have never been precedented or anteceded since?
They were not done before.
They won't be done after.
Is that the man?
Can you imagine his misery?
Every day they come and scorn him.
And he thinks of the days when they
had the anointing of God, and now they're
making jokes of him.
And it says, verse 24, when they saw
him, they praised their God.
For they said, our God hath delivered Samson
into our hands, the destroyer of our country.
Notice that, our God, our enemy, our country.
He's through many of us.
And it came to pass when their hearts
were merry that they said, call for Samson,
that he may make us sport in the
prison house.
And he made them sport.
They put, they humiliate him and drown him
in humility every day, humiliation every day.
All the enemies of God are laughing.
A lot of people are laughing at us
now.
You can't mention evangelism.
Every evangelist is a crook.
They're laughing at us.
But God is hearing that in heaven.
I think David mentioned, or was it this
morning, earlier?
It was Todd that mentioned there are millions
of prayers going up for this conference.
This is the most prayed off conference in
history, I believe.
I believe every demon in hell is afraid
of this conference.
I believe the angels of God are waiting
for a new celebration of the power of
God.
So what did they do?
Verse 27 says, the house was full of
men and women and all the Lords of
the Philistines were there.
And they were upon the house.
They were upon the roof, 3,000 men.
That's, in the gallery, there were 3,000.
And usually the auditorium holds twice as many
as a gallery.
So I figure, I think pretty reasonably, there
were 10,000 people here.
And Samson is there, alone.
This is their day.
As I say again, let me emphasize that.
Samson had become an embarrassment to them.
I pray God Almighty will so rest on
the vineyard if we know for two things,
a fighting faith and a joyous Jesus.
Joy in Jesus and fighting the good fight
of faith.
That the enemies of God will have to
say, we don't know much about the other
churches here.
But this church we do know, there's a
power that doesn't rest anywhere else.
That God is in residence there.
It's not stained glass windows.
I don't think this building looks a bit
like the Crystal Cathedral.
What's a Crystal Cathedral if they don't have
no living God?
It's not by might nor by power, but
by my spirit, what's it say?
This man is just worn with humiliation.
They're making merry, they're making sport.
He's become an object of tourist attraction.
And inwardly he says, oh my God, if
only I could get revenge.
Look at verse 26.
Samson said unto the lad that held him
by the hand.
You see that?
One little 16-year-old boy can take
the mightiest man in the world by the
hand.
Once he wouldn't have gone near that hand.
That's the hand that picked up the jawbone
of an ass.
And wiped out the enemy.
And now a boy can hold him.