What in God's word, what does that poor
guy in prison do?
Does Jim Baker laugh now that he used
to get a million and a third salary?
He had one and two Rolls Royces, any
good now?
He's a mocking thing for the world.
What does Swaggart do?
I don't know, I pray for the men
every day.
I doubt God will restore them, they never
had much message anyhow.
They hung on to one thing.
You see what we preach, we sing, Wesley's
great hymn, all for a thousand tons, and
then he says he breaks the power of
cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free.
We don't preach about that.
Forgiveness is all we preach, we don't preach
about break the power of cancelled sin and
set the prisoner free.
I had the privilege of preaching in a
wonderful church, you can remember this, in Orange
Grove in England.
It was a church where a top lady
used to preach.
I put my hands on the desk like
this and said to myself, top lady, by
the way it wasn't a bit like this
desk, this junk wood here.
It was a very elaborate, beautiful thing, but
I put my feet behind it.
I looked at the stained glass windows and
I said, top lady, used to be the
pastor here.
He wrote Rock of Ages, cleft for me.
He wrote Be of Sin, the double cure.
As somebody prayed in the morning, Jack started
it first, reading what, Ezekiel 46?
You've got a stack of bones, the bones
begin to move and instead of a valley
full of bones, you have a valley full
of skeletons.
Then there's a sinews on the skeletons, then
there's flesh on the sinews, then there's skin
on there.
But what does it say?
God said, I breathed into them and then
he said, I put my spirit within them.
He breathed on the disciples in the upper
room.
They didn't receive the Holy Ghost at Pentecost,
they received the Holy Ghost before Pentecost.
He breathed on them.
They didn't need the Holy Ghost to do
miracles.
They raised the dead and cast out demons
before Pentecost.
We've got to move up.
Lots of you people got out of Egypt,
but you're not in the promised land yet.
You've got rid of lousy habits and lousy
ways, but there's still the promised land.
And I reminded you yesterday again, only one
disobedience, cosmoses, 40 years of joy in the
promised land.
So here is this man, he's angry now.
There is a holy anger, there is a
holy jealousy.
We need to know that jealousy.
We need to know the anger.
Holy anger is pure.
In my simple thinking, in the natural, jealousy
is love that goes sour.
But on the other hand, jealousy for God
is love that's ablaze with holy indignation and
holy revelation.
So here the man, the house is filled,
3,000 in the gallery, 10,000 people
altogether.
And he hears and he's so tired of
hearing the mockery.
It's amazing how many people in the last
week particularly have said, Lord, I'm at the
end of the line.
This is no Christian life.
I don't have power.
I don't have an endowment.
I don't have a broken heart.
I don't have vision.
I'm mediocre.
You have to come to the end, as
David said, and I want to finish that
off in a minute.
What did he say?
Here's a blind man, he doesn't even have
the jawbone of an ass in his hand,
but he prays.
I've never heard anybody include Samson as a
man of prayer.
And he prayed one of the greatest prayers
in the world.
He's totally blind.
He's in prison.
His nation is destroyed by the enemy.
And he says, he prays, Lord, what?
Strengthen me just once.
He doesn't pray, give me my eyes back.
He doesn't pray for healing.
He doesn't pray, deliver us from the enemy
who's destroying our young people.
He says, strengthen me just once.
What did he mean?
Give me an anointing just once.
Just once anoint me.
That's all I'm asking for.
And I'll tell you, he meant business.
He said to the boy that had his
hand, put me between the pillars.
I've been in this place on a tourist
trip.
There are two pillars, lead me up.
He can't even find his way.
The boy takes him up and he prays
this awesome prayer.
Strengthen me just once, I pray thee.
How?
Verse 30.
I said before that Israel began in the
miraculous.
She's going to end in the miraculous.
The church of Jesus Christ began day by
day with anointings in the power of the
spirit.
And yet there's going to be a super
Pentecost where we'll see and understand God more
and see more of God's power than ever
in history.
But listen, he makes a bargain with God.
Strengthen me just once, even if I die.
Are you prepared for that?
Are you prepared to die as David said?
To get the real wine skin that God
can fill from here to eternity?
You see, it's very easy to talk about
revival.
I think this book is on sale.
I hope it is.
John G.
Lake.
He was an American.
He's a Canadian.
Okay.
Listen to this, would you a minute?
You see, every work, every work has to
have its Gethsemane.
Every work has to have its Calvary.
God's going to test it right to the
ground.
C.T. Studd went through agony because people
at home let him down.
Hudson Taylor had trouble with his staff in
China, but he had more trouble with the
people at home.
They cut down his funds and little by
little, he's driven to God.
Not many of us are driven to God.
America's the easiest country in the world to
raise a testimony.
There's plenty of money if you want to
beg for it.
People are very tender and gracious.
They can afford to give.
They can't do that in other countries.
Well, listen to this man.
This man goes out in the power of
the Spirit of God.
He goes out into Africa, which was darkest
Africa at that time.
But he says, after I'd been there a
while, somebody misrepresented me.
They sent a letter through Africa.
They sent it through England.
They sent it to America.
This man isn't straight.
The things he's doing are not according to
the scripture.
So what did he do?
You see, I've said before, the trouble with
many of our church's pastors appointing the way,
not leading the way.
This man led the way in sacrifice and
hardship and difficulty.
And so these young men see him.
And this man now has multiplied.
He has 120 men working like him.
But suddenly all the resources are cut off.
He can't send them money.
So he consults his wife or somebody and
he says, we need to bring these 120
preachers back to headquarters.
But darling, we don't have the money.
Everybody sell your watch.
Everybody sell your possessions, sell your furniture.
Let's get these 120 men back again.
They must get the anointing of God.
And we must bring them here at any
cost.
So they sold everything he had, they had.
Then he got these men together.
And he said, God has to come and
move on us again.
When these men arrived, he said, I poured
out my heart to them as I do
to you today.
And after they said, Brother Lake, we'd like
to be alone for a little while.
You ask us to retire.
Will you retire when we make a decision?
And then they did an awesome thing.
I've never read this in history before.
These people came forward.
They cleared the chairs, made a circle and
put 120 chairs for the 120 preachers.
That's like the 120 in the upper room.
And they said, Brother Lake, we made our
decision.
We're going back to our fields if we
die.
If our wives die, if our children die,
we will never reduce the ministry that Jesus
has established through the work in Africa.
And then they took bread and wine in
the middle of the table.
And each man came forward and took a
piece of bread and drank the wine.
And this is what they said.
He said, I took my place at the
head of the circle as they brought bread
and wine.
And every one man said this.
And I believe God understands it.
There are bankrupt people in a foreign country
where there's witchcraft and devilry and every hellish
thing opposing them.
Living men and every conceivable hardship.
We're not going to let the standard down.
If you sacrifice like that, we will.
So what did they say?
They took the bread and the wine.
And this is the pledge they made.
Every man said, this is the New Testament
in my blood for South Africa.
Isn't that a commitment before all the angels?
Before each other saying, we don't care.
This is the last final thrust.
We're reduced to helplessness, but it's the lame
that take the prey.
And to those who have no mind to
increase the strength.
People at home are criticizing them.
People that don't know a thing about facing
the devil and the hardships.
But they said, brother, we have a request.
The request is this.
If you die, will you please bury us?
Now listen to his word through his tears.
We pledged ourselves as need be to die.
If our wives die, if our children die,
here's the report.
They said, if we die, come and bury
us.
Now listen to this.
12 times in that year of hell, I
stood beside the finest men, 12 of the
finest men and 16 of the greatest prayer
intercessors that God ever let live on the
earth.
14 women, was it?
And 12 men, no, 16 women and 12
men pledged themselves to die.
And he said, I buried every one of
them.
They couldn't live on the money that we
were sending for those white people.
But they said we'll die and die they
did.
And he said, I saw my labors.
I saw the men that I thought were
the strength of the next move of God.
And I buried them.
I stood in tears at the side and
said, God, I don't understand.
This woman has the power of anointing.
When she prays, that man has been used
in apostolic strength and there he's buried.
And then we took the children and had
to bury the children as well.
But he says here a bit further, all
the heroes of Jesus do not live in
the first century nor in the fourth.
He said, I want to tell you my
soul was touched.
My soul has been touched by the soul
of this people.
My heart felt a new lift in God
and a new response from the depths of
my heart.
Now listen to this, I can't quote it
exactly here.
But one of the men was a thin
black man.
He got filled with the spirit of God.
And he said, I went and I saw
him under a tree and he was there
for 30 days.
Praying for a new move of the spirit
of God.
He said, I took him food and he
said, no, I have to fast and pray.
You've been there 10 days, it doesn't matter.
You've been there 20 days, it doesn't matter.
That's getting serious, isn't it?
I can't live by little people dying to
go to hell.
But he said, eventually that man came forward.
He prayed as nobody has ever prayed and
I know of in my lifetime.
For days he remained under a thorn tree.
When I passed in the morning, I would
hear him in prayer.
When I returned in the evening, he was
still praying and he wouldn't take any nourishment
of any kind.
Then he says he had to go on
a mission himself.
Here was a man kneeling under the tree
but I had to go away for a
while.
And 150 feet away, my eyes were open.
I saw a scene I'd never seen before.
A multitude of demons like a flock of
sheep.
The spirit of the Lord came on him
also.
He rushed ahead of me, cursing the demons
and they were driven back to hell.
There's a scourge where hundreds of people have
died of fever and these demons were blocking
the Lord.
Rolled and here is one man and he
rebukes the demons.
And immediately there's a release of power and
health and the people get restored in health
and the glory of God comes again.
But the thing that gets me again, as
I thought of the point as David put
it this morning again, we want new wineskins,
we want to go buy them somewhere.
You want to come to the conference and
get one when you buy your books.
You want to have one sudden infrastructure of
joy.
And God says, no, it's not by might
nor by power but by my spirit.
Samson says, just give me that supernatural anointing
once more and the spirit of the Lord
came upon him mightily.
He pushed out the pillars and the record,
divine record here says, he killed more in
his dying than in his living.
Well, isn't that God our God?
We don't want to die, do we?
We don't want to die to our plans.
You plan what you do the next three
years, die to it.
As David said, you can't bring somebody to
God and say, bless it.
You see, many of us think what we
have is so good.
All we need is a bit more power
behind it to shake the world.
God says, no, get rid of your confidence.
Get rid of the works of the flesh.
Get rid of your leaning on your education
or leaning on this or the other.
Be willing to die.
That's the hardest thing in the world to
do.
We'll come forward for blessing.
We'll come forward for gifts.
We'll come forward for anointing, but die?
Well, it's the only way Jesus made it.
It's the only way the apostle Paul made
it.
With all his genius and all he had,
this man is the most amazing man ever
in history.
He went to heaven and had a journey
up there, a vacation up there.
The demons in hell knew him.
How did it happen?
Well, this is what he says.
God revealed himself to me.
Then he had three years in Damascus and
God revealed himself in me.
Then he comes out.
There's no failure after that.
It's triumph.
God's going to raise these men up.
I'm absolutely sure.
It's not easy to die to your career,
to die to your plans.
Self doesn't want to die.
It fights for my resources.
What God can know, serene.
It's a terrible thing.
Dear Dr. Chaucer talked to me often about
that.
He'd say, Leonard, remember, when you see a
man going down the road with a cross,
you know one thing, he's not coming back.
Did you die at the altar last night?
Did every ambition of yours perish?
Do you say, Lord God, I don't care
how you reorganize my life.
I told God in the early hours of
this morning, I didn't sleep much.
My precious Martha, didn't I?
I said to God that the Queen of
England, Queen Victoria loved to go over the
English Channel to Calais.
Calais, you may call it.
She liked the castle she had there.
She liked the climate there.
And she said, when I die, you'll find
buried on my heart, Calais.
This may seem funny to you.
I don't know.
And I don't care.
I said to the Lord this morning, as
I lay across the bed in the dark,
I said, Lord, stamp on my heart what
you want.
I don't care what it is.
This heart, as Wesley wrote 200 years ago,
take my poor heart and let it be
forever closed to all but thee.
Seal thou my breast and let me wear
a pledge of love forever there.
Enlarge in flame and fill my heart with
boundless charity divine.
So shall I all my strength exert and
love them with a zeal like thine and
turn them to a pardoning God.
Wesley died.
His family was next to the royal family
in England.
It didn't make any difference.
He died to his scholarship and his attainment.
He had to die even to Methodism.
After he was born in a holy fire,
it went down.
And it nearly broke his heart.
He said to Charles, give every young preacher
that we have in Methodism a copy of
the life of David Brainerd, the young American.
And they read it.
And there was a revival through that.
Wesley himself lived in total sacrifice.
If he'd stayed on as a Church of
England, he would have been the Archbishop of
Canterbury.
If he'd gone into politics, he would have
been the Prime Minister of England.
If he'd gone into business, he'd have died
a multimillionaire.
He died almost broke.
But look at Methodism.
It's down now.
It may come back again.
I don't know.
But I believe with David this morning, God
wants a new thing.
He's not going to pour wine into your
old ideas and your formality and your creed
and your ritual.
It has to be consumed.
I told you last night, say again, I
believe the destiny of millions of people in
the world tonight today hang on this meeting.
It's a fearful thing.
Hebrews says to fall into the hands of
the living God.
Robert Louis Stevenson said it's a more fearful
thing to fall out.
God knocks and knocks and knocks.
As I said last night, even the dirty
church that you have, backslidden and dirty, Laodicean
Church, he has mercy.
He stands there.
Strengthen me just once.
I'm tired of the world mocking the church.
I don't find it funny when I say
to some young people, they go to church.
I go to a Pentecostal church of this.
But Mr. Ravner, there's more fun at a
Tupperware party than going to church.
I don't think church should be entertainment.
And I do believe the glory of God
should be there.
That sometimes I want to walk out on
my hands and knees because deity has come.
Because God's lifted the veil and show me
into eternity.
Here is a man that's known power and
might and success.
And he's the sport of the world.
He no longer embarrasses the world.
The world embarrasses him.
I'm embarrassed to be part of a world,
a church that embarrasses God.
I live in the most tragic situation in
the world.
I live in a world that has lost
its way and a church that has lost
its voice.
God has no voice but men.
He doesn't use angels to yell through the
sky.
Some of you men this morning can be
cleansed and endued.
I'm not offering you a bargain.
I'm saying, listen, you've got to die.
Don't come out for blessing.
I don't want you to come out for
blessing.
Don't come out for help.
A person said to me recently, I've been
to the altar three or four times asking
God to help me with my temper.
He'll never do that.
Because he says in Romans 7, the carnal
mind is enmity and there's no law God
has for it.
All he has for carnality is crucifixion.
But crucifixion precedes life.
Crucifixion precedes resurrection, life and power.
Again, as I began at the beginning, the
church has to recover, not by formula, not
by recitation, the mysterious power of the Holy
Ghost on unlettered and ignorant men that scared
the devil, that went into the Roman Empire
and turned areas upside down.
Without money, without backing, because God indwelt them.
The most glorious thing this side of eternity,
let me tell you, is to be filled
with the knowledge of God's will.
It's to be filled with his power.
It's to be more than conqueror in this
twisted, perverted world.
Jesus didn't die to save us.
He died that we may be partakers of
his holiness.
Isn't that fabulous?
Well, that's okay.
It won't do me good to God.
I'm going to ask you a simple question.
Do you tell God you want to die?
Do you go on record as the eternal
God looks down here and you come forward
and say, I died to self, I self
-seeking, self-interest, self-glory.
I don't care if you make me a
janitor in the Holy Ghost.
I'm not concerned about going in a pulpit.
As I said to you the other day
and say again, the Holy Ghost was on
William Burns when he shook the whole of,
what was the city in Scotland?
Well, he followed Robbie Murdoch and Shane.
When William Burns went and the city was
shaking and the power of God, God took
him out of that, put him in China
where men followed him and said, you yellow
devil, get out of here.
Grow a pigtail.
And he went through terrible suffering.
And he'd come from the greatest revival in
Europe at that time.
But he needed the Holy Ghost to be
in silence and bear the loneliness and bear
the accusation of the devil and bear the
ridicule of people at home who said, why
didn't he go on from city to city?
Because God told him to go listen.
And he went and ploughed his life into
China.
After him came Jonathan Goforth and had revival
there.
After him came Watchman Nee.
After him or with him came John Sung.
In that very area, the greatest thing is
not ministry, but the presence of the living
God in my life to control it in
any way he wants.
But I have to take hands off and
say, Lord, from this moment to eternity, my
spirit, soul and body are yours.
My emotion, my will, anything.
A glorious abandonment.
So long as you use me in some
way, whether it's behind the scenes, we've got
to stop this onslaught of our young people
of a couple of minutes, as I told
you last Friday night.
Last Friday was a prayer meeting.
I'll, if I live a thousand years, I'll
remember two women prayed before lunch at night,
half past 11.
The man prayed till nearly 12.
By the way, we're going to meet in
that next room, Saturday night at what, seven?
And I'm going to extend it.
I hope you'll come.
Don't come to preach.
Pray before you come and find what God
wants.
Next week is the most urgent week.
We've only another week to go and the
glory is yet to be revealed.
But this young man stood up Friday night
with a holy indignation.
I've never seen anger upon a young man
since 1930.
That's 60 years ago.
And here's a young American saying, oh God,
help us oppose the power of the devil.
Why are our young boys getting tied up
with drugs?
Why are they dying with drugs?
Why are our girls getting venereal disease or
girls having babies?
There's a holy indignation there.
I believe that anger is the other side
of the coin or joy or jealousy is
the other side of the coin of love.
You cannot love God without your heart, without
being jealous for his glory.
And that's what Samson wants.
He doesn't say, give me my eyes again.
He doesn't say, give me my freedom from
these rotten Philistines.
He said, give me one anointing that will
glorify you.
Are you prepared to go on record like
that?
I'm not offering you a bargain.
I'm telling you angels are looking on.
I'm telling you there are men in the
graves who would love this opportunity today.
We don't value life and the privileges that
God wants to put upon us.
We're so narrow and limited.
Let go and let God.
Can Jesus see the trouble of your soul,
his soul right now?
Do you want to come as we close
and say, brother Ray, now I'm going to
tell God I'm willing to die to plans.
I'm willing to die to everything.
Some besetting sin.
These limitations.
Lord, I want to die.
This is my burial place.
I'm going to die and never, never go
back to those things again by the wonderful
power of God.
I say again, I'm not going to sing
and move you emotionally.
Make up your mind to do it.
Make up your mind to be God's man,
pure from your head to your feet, that
he can control your emotions, your life, your
will and everything.
Come and die.