Let's go to chapter 64, please.
I've said before, I'll say it many times,
I guess, I think every preacher should read
Acts 26 on his knees every week, where
Paul outlines what the preacher is there for,
to turn people from darkness to light, the
power of Satan to God, they may have
forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance amongst them
that are sanctified by faith that is in
me.
And then when you've digested that, go to
the 40th chapter of Isaiah, and get the
concept of God that this amazing man has.
You'll never get depressed.
Now some people have worn the page out,
the corner of the page, Romans 8, 28,
that's all they know.
What does it say here, in Isaiah 4?
Verse 13 says, "...who has directed the Spirit
of the Lord, or being his counsellor, taught
him, with whom took he counsel, who instructed
him, and taught him in the path of
knowledge, and showed to him the way of
understanding."
Verse 17, verse, sorry, 15, "...behold, all the
nations are as a drop of a bucket,
and a small dust in the balance."
Verse 17, "...all nations before him are as
nothing.
They are counted to him less than nothing
and vanity."
Now verse 18, do you question, to whom
will he liken me, or what likeness will
he give me, says the Lord?
Then 22, "...it is he that sitteth upon
the circle of the earth."
In another picture, verse 26 is more astounding.
"...lift up your eyes on high."
Who has created these things?
He's talking about the stars, the sun, the
moon.
Who has created these things?
"...that bringeth out the greatness of his might,
that he is strong in power."
Oh, I skipped one thing that's important.
"...he bringeth out their host by number."
I heard a statement again on TV this
week, that what we thought there was one
Milky Way, a way back somewhere in infinity.
You see, the scientists don't believe in eternity,
but they believe in infinity.
The smart boys just now are deciding what
position to give Jesus in history.
He's already decided where to put them in
prophecy.
No uncertainty about that in any shape or
form.
Oh, I've forgotten how many trillion stars they
said there were the other day.
I enjoy a scientist saying that, he thinks
it's baffling.
And then the next thing they say, they've
invented a new chip for, what do you
call them, computer?
It's as big as your fingernail and you
can store 250,000 statements on a chip.
Well, God doesn't need fingernails, but he knows
the name of everybody that lives inside them.
Isaac Watts has a hymn in which he
says, He made the stars, those heavenly flames.
He counts their numbers, calls their names.
His wisdom's vast and knows no bound, a
deep where all our thoughts are drowned.
What is a creature's skill or force?
The sprightly man, the warlike horse, the piercing
wit, the active limb, all are too mean
delights for him, but saints are lovely in
his sight.
I don't think God enjoys the sun and
the moon and the stars.
They can't respond.
He enjoys the man that's been digging ditches
down the road all day, but he had
a heart in tune with God all the
time when he was praying.
You know, the salvation of America does not
rest on the White House.
I don't care who gets in, only one
care I do.
The salvation of America does not depend on
the White House, it depends on God's house.
And before God does anything, he'll clean up
the church.
When he was on earth, he cleaned up
the temple.
If he comes again, he'll clean up the
pulpit.
Judgment must begin at the house of God.
Judgment must begin with the preachers.
I think the most awesome task in the
world tonight is not to be the president
of the United States or the king of
an empire, but to be a man who
stands between a living God and a dying
people.
Somebody quoted to me again the words of
Richard Baxter in 1500.
Richard Baxter went to Kidderminster.
My precious wife and I used to drive
through that town.
There's an oversized statue, I suppose, about 15
feet high.
There he is with a book in his
hand.
When he went into that town, there was
not one family that had devotions.
And when he died, there wasn't one family
that didn't have them.
They had to put five galleries up.
Wouldn't that be something?
Five galleries to accommodate the crowd every Lord's
Day.
And he said the secret was that he
was, he says, I preached as if to
never preach again, and as a dying man
to dying men.
I reminded the crowd last week, crowd, all
you thousands there.
The greatest soul winner in England, maybe ever,
was neither Whitfield nor Wesley.
It was Spurgeon.
When he was still only 22 years of
age, he preached to 3,000 people every
Sunday morning, 3,000 every Sunday night.
A newspaper critic says more people are healed
when he prays.
He never had the healing line.
He never sold worn-out handkerchiefs and dusters
that he blessed.
More people are healed through Spurgeon's praying than
all the hospitals in London.
He led tens of thousands of people to
Christ.
Listen to this, you evangelist fellows.
And he never made an altar call.
He said, God has troubled you this morning
about your soul's salvation.
And he said the same at night, I'll
be in my office tomorrow morning at six,
and I'll deal with you.
And there was a procession, and he stayed
three hours every Sunday morning, pardon me, Monday
morning, and three hours every Monday night, dealing
with people.
When he finished, Dr. A.
D.
Dixon went.
He was a gradual orator, maybe, than Spurgeon.
And the first day he was there, he
shocked the congregation by making an appeal, will
you come forward and accept Christ?
A newspaper reporter wrote, asked him afterwards, why
did you, Mr. Spurgeon, never ever in 20
years made an altar call and eat thousands
of people genuinely born again?
They left the world of flesh and the
devil and the filthy language.
They became new men with new hearts and
new hopes and new spirits and new wills.
People don't get saved like that anymore.
They come to the altar and weep a
few tears, crocodile tears, and live like crocodiles
the rest of the week, biting and devouring
each other.
Well, the newspaper man said, Mr. Dixon, I
don't think Spurgeon would have enjoyed, sorry, don't
think Spurgeon would have enjoyed your altar call
last night.
He never made them.
Oh, he said, I believe in striking while
the iron is hot.
The newspaper man, bless him, said to Dr.
Dixon, you know what Spurgeon would have said?
If the iron was hot with the Holy
Ghost at 8 o'clock on Sunday night,
it'd still be as hot next morning at
8 o'clock.
I believe in that kind of salvation.
If we don't get that preaching back, you
may as well sell America out.
We've got to get some hellfire preachers.
We won't find them in the cemeteries, but
we'll find them somewhere.
I mean seminaries.
But God's going to find them.
I mentioned last week that the most amazing
move of the Spirit of God was in
about 17, what, 34?
Through that gravel-voiced, sour-looking man by
the name of Jonathan Edwards.
Do you know the New England revival began
as a cut out of an ordinary meeting?
It wasn't staged.
There weren't converted film stars and broken down
footballers on the platform.
No choirs, no singing.
There was a consistency about the man that
preached.
And people said, yes, he read with a
candle in one hand, and he had bad
eyesight, didn't have good glasses, so he had
to skip over his notes.
His daughter said, you complain of my daddy
being severe, but you should live in the
house with him and hear him weeping.
I'd like to send a notice to all
the deacons of every church in America.
If your preacher doesn't weep over the congregation,
weep over your preacher.
Jeremiah, I said last week, was a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
He goes on to say later in the
book, I'll weep over your sins in secret.
We used to live in a town nine
miles out of Manchester, England.
There was a block of stone half the
size of this wall here, on one side
of a doorway, a great big arch, another
big lump of stone that side.
And it says this Salvation Army Corps, as
they called it, was opened in 19, I
think it was 1910, William Booth died in
1912.
Because they had a revival, they built the
largest Salvation Army Hall outside of London, in
a small industrial town.
There were two girls there by the name
of Jackson, the Jackson sisters.
Well, they went the usual Salvation Army way,
you know, gave out food, gave out all
clothes, gave out furniture.
In fact, it used to be a skit,
a skit, you go to the Salvation Army
for soup, soap and salvation.
And they tried everything, and nothing worked.
They were desperate, they were bearing no fruit,
so they sent a letter to William Booth.
He was half Jew and half Gentile.
And he didn't want to waste words on
the telegram, so he sent two words back
to the young ladies, try tears.
They did, and revolution came, spiritual revolution.
They packed that auditorium that seats over 2
,000 to the rafters, every Lord's Day.
They had prayer meetings every Saturday.
I would not be a member of a
church that doesn't have a prayer meeting Saturday
night.
Saturday night from 9 o'clock till midnight.
Or Friday night 9 o'clock till midnight.
You do it, it will revolutionize your church.
They tried tears, brokenness, and God in infinite
mercy came.
Now let's get to this chapter again, I
keep trying.
I suppose the most thankless task in the
world is to be a prophet of God.
When God is angry with a nation, it
has no prophets.
I don't know a prophet in America today.
Somebody sent a brochure out with my picture
on it and said, Leonard Raven is another
Jeremiah.
I never said that, I wouldn't sanction a
foolish thing like that.
I'm not fit to lose his shoes, never
mind be a prophet like Jeremiah.
But you remember again in the 16th chapter
of Matthew, verse 16, that Jesus said, ask
the people, who do the people say that
I am?
Some say thou art Elijah, some say you're
Elijah, some say that you're John Baptist, risen
from the dead.
But some say thou art Jeremiah.
What's the point of contact?
Because Jeremiah was a man of tears, because
Jesus was a man of tears.
Oh yes, he whipped the people when he
went into the temple, but wait a minute,
read a few verses back, he wept before
he whipped.
And if you're going to whip them, weep
over them.
That makes all the difference in the world.
Do you think he looked at that temple
as you look at it, and want to
take a picture?
No, the camera's not thinking of that.
Do you think he looked at it with
human eyes?
Don't you think he remembered the time though,
this was Herod's temple, the old one had
gone.
Don't you think he looked there and saw
Jeremiah preaching, and Isaiah preaching, and all the
prophets?
And this stupid people don't know he's the
last, he's the prophet of prophets, as much
as he's the king of kings and lord
of lords.
And this is God's last call.
I think you might take that scripture and
change it, where it says, Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
thou that killest the prophets.
Why don't we say, America, America, this is
your last chance.
I say to America what I say to
you, God doesn't owe you a single thing.
The reason you're a dwarf spiritually is we
won't eat the word of God, you won't
wait on him, you won't hear his voice,
and you won't obey him.
The secret of revival is obedience.
But you can't obey what you don't know.
I don't remember that Isaiah talks about his
tears, anyhow.
I'm trying to recall the statement, I didn't
memorize it, but anyhow.
The essence of it was, it's by an
old Jewish scholar in America, that became a
Christian, and he said, No man who has
ever seen the blazing light of God's glory
will ever backslide.
You just didn't do it.
You'd be afraid of missing eternal glory.
Well, let me go a bit further and
read the text.
Isaiah 64 and verse 4.
All that thou wouldst rend the heavens.
It's an admission we can't do it.
The Catholics will say, Gabriel, will you rend
the heavens?
Or Michael the Archangel, will you rend the
heavens?
No, no, no, no.
They have no power.
This is the man who knows the living
God.
This is the man who has seen God
sitting on the circle of the earth.
He writes about him as the one who
inhabits eternity.
Go back into previous chapter 63 and look
at verse 15.
Look down from heaven and behold from the
habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory.
All that thou wouldst rend the heavens and
come down, that the mountains may flow at
thy presence.
Now that's a reference, of course, one translation
of it, that the mountains may quake.
Do you remember the holy mountain when they
didn't go near to it because the glory
of God was there and they didn't even
stand near it?
And he says, come again in that majesty,
come in that glory again.
But the mountains might flow down at thy
presence when the melting fire burneth, and the
fire again causeth the name, causeth the waters
to boil, to make thy name known to
thine adversaries, and that the nations may tremble
at thy presence.
He likes that word.
Do you remember what he says earlier about
preachers?
To this man will I look, to him
that trembleth.
He doesn't mean your knees not together like
the first time you stood in a pulpit
and never found your knees so friendly.
He's not talking about that, he's talking about
an inward trembling.
To handle the word of the eternal God,
to stand as a communication between the living
God and the dying people.
Again, I ask you in God's name, is
Jesus Christ risen?
Does he stand in the midst where two
or three are gathered together?
Well, if the living Christ is in the
midst, how in God's name can he have
a dead meeting?
It's impossible.
If the meeting's dead, he isn't there.
We're going through motions, we're going through actions.
He's asked that the mountains may flow at
thy presence.
Look at verse 3.
When thou didst terrible things which we look
not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed
at thy presence.
For since the beginning of the world, men
have not heard or perceived by the ear,
neither have I seen, O God, beside thee,
what he hath prepared for them that wait
for him.
Do you know what the Hebrew says?
They're those who soak themselves in God.
Those who saturate themselves with his holiness, with
his majesty.
Let me ask you, when in your fellowship
did you ever tiptoe out of the sanctuary
without saying a word?
Because glory of God had been there so
much.
You go to the average church in Dallas
this weekend and you can't get off the
steps without saying, well, do you think the
Cowboys will win today?
Oh no, it's World Series.
Christians are worried about World Series, but they're
not taking the world seriously.
I asked you last week, when in God's
name are we going to get serious about
being serious?
See, the prophet doesn't see the world as
a politician sees him, or the industrialist, or
the educationalist.
The true prophet of God sees the world
as God sees it.
In verse 6 he says, we are all
as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness
are as filthy rags.
You know, people say that to say, oh,
I'm just a saved sinner.
That's like saying you're a married bachelor.
That's like saying you're an honest thief, or
a pure harlot.
You can't be a saved sinner.
You're either saved or you're a sinner.
He came, thou shalt call his name Jesus,
he shall save his people from their sins.
He saves us from sins, that we've committed,
and from committing a thousand more that would
meet us at the judgment.
You know, we're living a day when we're
more afraid of holiness than we are of
sinfulness.
We accommodate ourselves to iniquity, not only in
the world, but in the fellowships round about.
I agree.
Look back a minute, chapter 59, number 16,
would you do that?
Hmm.
The chapter begins, Behold, the Lord's hand is
not shortened that it cannot save, neither his
ear heavy that it cannot hear.
But your iniquities and your sins have separated
you from God.
You can't see his face, he's hidden his
face from you.
I went to a little college in England,
just 35 men there.
Samuel Chadwick was the wonderful principal, and he
loved and said over and over, Our people
don't know the 80th psalm.
O thou that dwellest between the cherubim.
Our people don't know where God is, so
how can they call on him?
He dwells between the cherubim, shine forth.
Let's find it a minute and read it.
Three times in the psalm he says the
same thing.
Go to verse 2, Psalm 80, verse 2.
Turn us again, O God, and cause thy
face.
Not we'll turn ourselves, it's going to take
omnipotence.
Turn us again, O God, cause thy face
to shine upon us and we will be
saved.
O Lord God of hosts, how long will
thou be angry against the prayer of thy
people?
Verse 7, Turn us again, O God of
hosts, cause thy face to shine upon us
and be saved.
The last verse, 19.
Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts,
cause thy face to shine upon us and
we shall be saved.
We say, you know, dispensation, we say this
is the dispensation of the Holy Ghost.
I looked in an old edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica that I have.
There were three pages on the Holy Spirit.
There were 33 on the papacy.
Wesley has a hymn in which he says,
Stay thou insulted spirit, stay.
I believe almost every church in America insults
the Holy Ghost every Sunday.
Jonathan Edwards said, We got together, we preachers,
and I guess you would mean shepherd, remember
there are a vast number of intellectuals.
Jonathan Edwards, I believe, was the greatest brain
America ever had or ever will have.
He went to university at seven.
At 13 years of age he was voted
the, what do you call him, valedictorian.
A little later he became, when Yale, was
it Yale, it was Yale, he became president.
Then he had a very bad time after
that.
But he said, We have made up our
minds, we preachers, listen to it.
Excuse me, I keep saying that, listen to
it, I know you're listening with both ears.
Some of you with your eyes too.
Thank you.
We made up our minds, we would never
pluck any unripe fruit.
The curse of American evangelism, we're plucking unripe
fruit.
We're asking people to be saved, they don't
know they're lost.
The preacher hasn't much power in his own
life, so he can't say what power he
can be reached by this man.
Do you know why we don't have revival?
Because we're content to live without it, number
one.
And the second thing is, the price is
too high.
And the third thing, we couldn't handle it
if it came.
Usually, you don't put a newborn baby in
a refrigerator, do you?
What's the good of God getting thousands of
people saved and putting them, you know, a
fine old Baptist preacher, Vance Havner, I like
old Vance.
He wrote the foreword to my last book,
he did a good job.
That's a good book.
But anyhow, he said, some people down where
we live got refrigerators.
He said, we've got them all over our
town, they've got steeples on them.
Well, that's about it, isn't it?
Go back, please, into chapter 63.
We'll come to the other in a minute
for sure.
He's talking about Israel and he says in
verse 9, in all their afflictions, he was
afflicted.
He was with them through the wilderness, he
was with them in every step of the
way.
In all their afflictions he was afflicted and
the angel of his presence saved them.
That's verse 9.
In his love and in his pity he
redeemed them.
Listen, he redeemed them, he bared them up,
he carried them.
Did you hear it?
He saved them, he redeemed them, he bared
them up, he carried them.
And verse 10, but they rebelled.
What a dirty crowd.
They yelled like mad to get out of
Egypt.
And when they got out, they said, can't
you take us back?
We're missing the onions and the garlic.
I'm going to emphasize that again.
You preach, you fellows preach on it.
Please.
The angel of his presence saved them, he
redeemed them, he bared them up, he carried
them.
As in David, but they rebelled and vexed
the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, he turned to be their enemy.
I'm not scared of Russia.
Why should I be?
Show me one scripture where God tells me
to be afraid of my enemies.
You can't show me one.
I don't believe number one enemy of America
is Russia.
Number one enemy of America is God.
I'm scared to death that, to use that
phrase, that God one of these days will
cut us off and walk out from us
like he walked out of Russia in 1917.
We're blessed, we're overloaded.
You're going to a store, you don't know
which kind of bread to get.
There's ten kinds of brown bread and whole
wheat bread.
More sausages, you could link them from New
York to California, nearly.
This brand, that brand, the other brand.
Forty kinds of cheeses, good night, we've got
everything.
In a world that's starved, are we grateful?
You see, this man makes a statement that
not many people like.
I think it's at the end of the
58th chapter.
This is linked in with revival.
I don't care what you say.
I say it, and so it's right.
Because it's my conviction.
Isaiah 58 and verse 13, If thou turn
away thy foot from the Sabbath, I say
that because all our football matches on the
Sabbath, so God got ahead of us.
Take thy foot from thy Sabbath from doing
thy pleasure on my holy day, and call
the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the
Lord, honorable, and shalt honor him not doing
thine own things, nor finding thine own pleasure,
nor speaking thine own words.
Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.
You know, you're having trouble in your family,
maybe the trouble is you're breaking the Sabbath.
Oh, well, there's not much in breaking the
Sabbath.
Well, your neighbor thinks there isn't much in
committing adultery either.
You choose to break the Sabbath, you're as
guilty as he is.
You don't like your other neighbor, he steals,
but he only steals about once a year.
And the Lord says, keep my day.
Ten commandments, only one of them has remember
in it.
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
God is always taking Israel back and says,
remember thou was the bondsman in Egypt, remember
this, remember that.
We've got awful short memories.
How many times have you made a vow
to God and broken it?
I've heard of so many women when they
were having a baby delivered and they thought
they were going to die and they made
vows to God and two months after found
they hadn't kept any of them.
A year after found they hadn't kept any
of them.
We were saved in an accident, we were
delivered from this or the other.
And we forget, we've short memories.
You know, we don't have a holy God,
we have a utility God.
He's there to answer your prayers, send you
money, send you gifts.
God pities.
Yes.
Verse 6 in 64.
This isn't a sermon, obviously, it's just commenting
on things that are burning in my heart.
We are all as an unclean thing and
all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
But listen, wait a minute, why don't we
go to John and John says, he that
doeth righteous is righteous even as he is
righteous.
He didn't come to break a few filthy
stinking habits in my life and change my
cursing lips to blessing lips.
He came to do more than that.
I believe, again, the greatest miracle in the
world is 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.
That takes all the blood of the cross
and all the power of the Holy Ghost
and your will in total submission to God.
A world famous preacher was in my office
not long ago.
I said, tell me this, you cross the
world, you've been through many cities in America.
Can you give me the names of ten
holy men that you know?
No, I can't.
Well, think about the holy preacher.
I can't.
You know, holiness is not a luxury, it's
a necessity.
One of the most astounding verses I never
preached on is where God says we can
be, in Hebrews, what, 12 or 13, we
can be partakers of his holiness.
And then two verses after is the most
shattering verse, it says, without holiness no man
shall see the Lord.
How many people do we die at burial
of black slidden?
And we say some nice holy words over
them.
Some people put what they call holy water.
They die black slidden.
Without holiness, no.
Is the sanctification in the sepulcher?
Does some miracle take place between there and
the resurrection?
No servant, you're right.
As a tree falls, so it lies.
Let's go to verse 7 in 64.
There is none that stirreth up himself, that
stirreth up himself to take hold of thee.
For thou hast hid thy face from us,
and hast consumed us because of our iniquities.
My definition of a prophet is that prophets
are God's emergency men for crisis hours.
We don't need a prophet in America.
We need a prophet in every pulpit.
Elijah says, gather all the people of Israel.
He was a prophet.
There were less people in Israel than there
are in Chicago today.
Less people in Israel than there are in
New York City.
That poor doomed damned city down there called
Mexico City.
Where the priests have run it.
I thought about those poor people trapped there
for days.
I couldn't sleep some nights.
Not only trapped because a man has a
big, what do you call it, block of
stone over his legs, or his arms are
pinned down, he can't move.
Do you know what it is?
Despair wasn't physically, it was spiritual.
Because he'd been tortured as a Catholic, he
must die either holding the crucifix or kiss
it, and the priest must pronounce his last
rites to him.
And the poor man's in a place as
black as hell, and he's suffering pain, and
there's no cross to kiss, and there's no
priest to talk to him.
Well, I ask you, how will those priests
escape the damnation of hell?
They won't.
The biggest fraud the devil ever imposed on
mankind is the Roman Church.
We're not laboring for wages that, down here,
if we do, we're idiots.
I've been praying and groaning one night, and
I said to Martha, I woke up, I
said, are you awake dear?
Yes.
I said, do you know what?
I said, a man that chooses to be
a preacher is an idiot.
They should give him a certificate.
Or let him have a pin in his
lapel.
I'm crazy.
If you've chosen to be a preacher, you're
crazy.
But if God has chosen, you don't let
go of it.
If the deacons get as mad as the
devil, let them get mad.
It's the greatest honor in the world to
be able to declare the whole counsel of
God.
But isn't it a shocking thing?
Oh, let me go back a minute here.
You know, people have said so often, you
see, in the Old Testament they didn't know
the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit was with them, but he
wasn't in them.
Forget it.
What does it say in this 63rd chapter
in verse 10?
They'd rebel and vex the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, he was turned to be their enemy.
You know, one of these days we're going
to discover the Holy Ghost is gone.
And he'll go out of mercy and leave
us alone.
We'll preach the same.
We'll gesticulate the same.
We'll shout the same.
And the meeting will be as flat as
the floor.
And God will do that in order to
drive us back to the place where we
realize there's nothing in our flesh, nothing in
our theology, nothing in our doctrine, nothing in
our terminology.
It must be the Holy Ghost.
He wrote the book.
He inspires it.
He interprets it.
OK, verse 10 in 63.
But they rebelled and vexed his Holy Spirit.
Therefore, he turned to be their enemy.
And he fought against them.
God now, instead of what was delivered them
out of the hand of Pharaoh, he brought
water out of the rock, he sent manna
from heaven, he gave them quails, and now
he turns and becomes their enemy.
Brother, listen.
If God is your enemy, you've no friends
anywhere.
It doesn't matter how rich you are, how
famous you are, how big your church is,
how big your denomination is, whether you have
a TV program.
If God goes out, brother, you're sunk.
Verse 11, Then he remembered the days of
old, Moses, and his people, saying, Where is
he that brought them up out of the
sea with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is he that put his Holy Spirit
within him?
The Holy Ghost was in Moses.
That's clear enough, isn't it?
He's called a prophet.
Do you think a prophet was ever void
of the Holy Ghost?
Now we're in 64.
Verse 7, There is none that calleth upon
my name, that stirreth up himself to take
hold of thee, for thou hast hid thy
face from us, and hast consumed us because
of our iniquities.
You know what, people?
There'll be people in hell fire screaming the
name of their pastor forever and ever because
he had a Holy Ghost fire.
Why did Isaiah have this concept of God?
Because he saw the Lord high and lifted
up.
What did he do?
He fell at his feet.
What did he pray?
Help me, I need power to preach.
No, he didn't.
He said two statements, I'm undone and I'm
unclean.
And if you can get people to the
altar and get them to confess in brokenness,
I'm undone, I'm unclean, you can get somewhere.
If they only want God to forgive their
lousy sins and make them a little nicer
to live with, forget them, I wouldn't even
bother with them.
God's business is to make us holy.
When Saul had an evil spirit, he did
evil things.
Jesus says when a man has an unclean
spirit, he does unclean things.
On that basis, a man with a Holy
Spirit does holy things.
If you have the Holy Ghost, you'll live
a holy life.
If you have a holy life, you'll be
easy to live with.
If you have a holy life, nobody on
earth or in hell can offend you.
Once you get a clean heart, a sanctified
heart, I like to call it, it won't
make a hill of beans who likes you
or dislikes you.
Psalm 119 verse 156 to 65 says, Great
peace have they which love thy Lord, and
nothing shall offend them.
I've got one or two friends I know
who were never offended.
Well, why do we get so offended?
Because somebody hurts our pretty little ego or
something?
I love that verse of Jesus, he says,
The prince of this world, he admits that,
the prince of this world and findeth nothing
in me.
Well, that's where I want to live.
Because the devil's smart, but I'll tell you
what he can't do, he can't hit nothing.
And the only thing you retaliate is there's
something in you.
There's some pride and somebody hurts it.
Some bitterness and somebody touches it.
And immediately you spring out like a lion,
a tiger jumping out of a ditch.
Great peace have they which love thy Lord,
and nothing.
You know, it's a great joy in having
nothing, do you know what it is?
You can't lose anything.
Isn't that profound?
If you've no opinion of yourself, nobody can
rub your nose into dust.
Wasn't it Luther said, Either is low, need
fear no fall.
You sit on the floor, you can't fall
anywhere, can you?
If you've written yourself off, you don't want
to be of any reputation, doesn't matter what
people say about you.
A great joy in having nothing, you can't
lose anything.
I remember somebody walked up to a friend
of mine and said, You know, I don't
like your preaching.
He said, Shake hands.
He said, Why?
He said, I don't like it either.
So the poor guy didn't know what to
do.
He's embarrassed.
He thought he'd defend himself.
He said, But I don't like it.
It should be a hundred percent better than
it is.
If you've no pride, nobody can get worried.
Touch it.
But there's a great embarrassment in having nothing.
A friend of mine came at midnight and
I had nothing to say before him.
That's why the church is today.
She's nothing to give this world.
Let's come down here to a shocking chapter,
pardon the verse here, in Isaiah 64 and
verse 10.
Well, I've heard preachers again say, You know,
Isaiah doesn't have to.
Are you going to try and persuade me
you'll waste your time if you spend two
years doing it?
Are you going to tell me that a
man whose people have known the holiness of
God and deserted it, the protection of God,
he's been a wall of fire and now
he's moved out?
Are you going to tell me this man
had dry eyes when he said, Oh, that
thou would surrender heavens.
It's the same oath said in the same
tone that Jeremiah says in chapter 9, Oh,
that thy head were waters.
It's the same oath that broke the heart
of Jesus and he looked on Jerusalem and
he says, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
You can't learn it by elocution.
Okay, verse 10 in 64.
Thy holy cities are a wilderness.
Zion, the chief part of Jerusalem.
Zion is what?
A wilderness.
Jerusalem, a desolation.
Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers
praised thee is burned with fire and all
our pleasant things are laid in ruins.
You're going to tell me he said that
without tears?
I won't believe you.
I won't believe Gabriel if he told me.
A man doesn't look over desolation and waste.
He doesn't see the mounting condemnation that's going
to come against his people without grief, without
tears.
I was looking at that.
Let me see if I can find it
here.
In Jeremiah.
No, in Lamentations.
Lamentations chapter 1.
You know, the old Methodist used to sing
a hymn.
Blessed are the men of broken heart who
mourn for sin with inward smile.
Not mourning for their own sin, necessarily.
Mourning for the sin of the nation.
Now, if this isn't a broken man, tell
me whether it is one.
Lamentations 1 and verse 20.
He says, Behold, O Lord, for I am
in distress.
He's distressed about what?
Himself?
No, his people.
My bowels are troubled.
My heart is turned within me.
I've grievously rebelled, or we have grievously rebelled.
And therefore the sword bereaveth.
Look in chapter 2 and verse 11.
This isn't some hot flush this man has
when he's in a meeting and he suddenly
feels, Oh, I've been rather naughty.
I haven't been good.
I haven't read my Bible enough.
I haven't given enough permissions.
Forget it.
That's sheer rotten emotion that preachers work on.
Tell me, if you will, after this, or
send me a post.
Do you know a man that lives in
this situation?
In verse 11 of Lamentations 2.
Mine eyes fail with tears.
My bowels are troubled.
My liver is poured out for the destruction
of the daughter of my people.
Because the children and sucklings swoon in the
streets.
Verse 11 says, All that pass by clap
their hands at thee, and they hiss and
wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem,
saying, This city is the city that men
call the perfection of beauty and the joy
of the whole earth.
It was a very embodiment of God's holiness.
I think again, when Jesus stood there at
the temple, he was thinking back to the
time when Solomon had built that temple.
And when they prepared an altar, when they
prepared the sacrifice, and the glory of God
came, and all the priests backed out.
They couldn't minister for the glory of God.
Ever been in a meeting like that?
Do you want to be in a meeting
like that?
Do you want to get your church to
pray that someday the preacher will go and
he didn't say a word?
John Knox, the great reformer, when he preached
in St. Giles Cathedral in Scotland, I stood
outside of it and looked at it there
in Edinburgh.
He went through it one day and he
went through the whole performance, about 3,000
people in the sanctuary.
The choir sang, somebody else sang, somebody read
a scripture and so forth, and he stood
up, raised his hand, and he said, God
be with you till the next Lord's Day.
I have no message.
Do you know if a preacher has the
guts to say that, he'd have dug up
some old whiskery sermon, wouldn't he?
Some note he has in the back of
his Bible he's preached a thousand times.
He dares to say, I have no message.
And people remember that as much as when
he was at his peak as an orator.
Go back a little there if you're in
Lamentations to Jeremiah, chapter 4.
One of the most, best known verses in
scripture, I guess, is in chapter 4 and
verse 3.
Thus saith the Lord to the men of
Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground
and sow not among thorns.
Over to verse 8.
For this, gird yourselves with sackcloth and lament
and howl.
Do anybody preachers doing that?
We don't do that anymore.
People love to quote the second chapter of
Joel, you know.
He's going to pour out his spirit and
all flesh.
But there's something important before that in chapter
1 of Joel.
Verse 11.
Be ashamed, O ye husbandmen, if you like,
you preachers, howl, ye vine dressers, for the
wheat, for the barley, because the harvest of
the field is perished.
The vine is dried up, the fig tree
languishes, the pomegranate tree and the palm tree
and the apple tree, even the trees of
the field are withered because joy is withered
from the sons of men.
There is no joy.
Joy reaches its highest peak when there's a
Holy Ghost revival.
Not when we clap our hands and try
and bring God down.
We try and work up an atmosphere but
God comes down.
Joel 1.
Verse 13.
Gird yourselves and lament ye, priests, howl ye
ministers of the altar.
Come all night in sackcloth.
I was invited to a conference this past
year.
I got a fantastic brochure with the names
of I don't know how many professors and
doctors and leaders of movements and what have
you got on revival.
I didn't go.
We're going to move this.
I said, listen, I don't scorn scholarship.
I have a son who has an earned
Ph.D. and his wife has and the
other boys are pretty smart as far as
I'm concerned.
I wrote back to the man and said,
sir, you've sent me about 60 names.
This doctor is a professor of something at
a certain university.
This man leads a certain movement.
This man is one of the best known
Christian philosophers.
I said, you've sent me all those men.
I've never heard of them.
I'll tell you who are drawing the men
to God.
Not just because they have no degrees.
Dave Wilkerson has no degree.
Billy Graham has none of what was given
to him.
The men that are pulling the crowds in
America today are men who have no degrees.
They've been to the university.
I went to Bush University.
I told a lady when she asked me,
what university do you go to?
I said, Bush.
Well, do I know anyone that went there?
I said, Moses.
She said, Moses who?
Maybe she thought it was a basketball player,
Moses.
I preach in a big college and seminary
and I said to the professor sitting there,
I was preaching on Hannah actually, in her
travail, and I quoted this.
It says, the priests weep between the altar
and the doorpost.
I said, do you have a graduation class
here for those who howl?
And if they learn to howl, can they
get another degree in weeping between the altar
and the doorpost?
It's foreign to us.
We want revival our way.
Go to hell.
If you're depending on some way you're going
to work it, it'll never come.
The Christian life will only work one way,
that's God's way.
Revival will only come one way, that's God's
way.
Billy Graham is going to have another gathering.
Last time he had it in Lucerne in
Switzerland.
They sent free tickets for men in Philippines
and Borneo and Timbuktu and what have you
got.
And they came and had a nice vacation
and they had a good time I guess.
It cost 14 million dollars.
I'll tell you something in presence of God,
revival doesn't cost a penny.
It costs obedience, broken hearts, writing the world
off and say, I don't care, I hang
about the world, the flesh and the devil.
If some of you guys could get your
church to say, listen, we won't watch TV
for a month.
We'll meet every night in the sanctuary for
prayer, for intercession, for our town.
Everybody's a success away from home.
You preachers go to somebody else's church, have
a great time.
You left a bankrupt church behind, so you
kicked your heels in somebody else's pulpit.
But Jerusalem is the place, the home base
is where revival must come, beginning at Jerusalem.
And that's the hardest place.
They were most despised, discredited, disappointed, disillusioned men
in the world.
You wonder why people don't believe you.
They didn't believe Jesus, so forget it.
Even when he was risen from the dead,
going down the road, going to Emmaus, we
trusted, it was in the past tense.
They didn't believe then.
Went to the upper room, there was Thomas
and they said, you missed it, he'd just
been, who, Jesus, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I heard a woman screaming up the road,
saying, he's risen, he's risen, he's risen.
You know, those high-powered women that scream
their heads off.
You won't get me to believe.
Until I take my finger and put it
in his side, and I put my finger
in the nail print.
Boy, if ever a man lived to regret
it.
Next time I went to the meeting, Jesus
turned up.
That's why Thomas missed it, because he went
to a meeting late.
That's why you miss it so often.
Sometimes the blessing is in the first hymn
or in the prayer.
I get more out of hymns than out
of preaching, usually.
Except my own, of course, but anyhow.
There never has been revival without intercessory prayer
and tears.
I thank God I've got precious friends that
I can pray with and weep with.
Billy Graham's going to repeat in Amsterdam what
he did at the other place.
One of his closest friends wrote to me
afterwards, he said, I wrote to him, I
said, what was it like in Lausanne?
Did you have a night of prayer?
Was there brokenness?
Did the fire come down?
No, no, Len, you'd have been disappointed.
I sure would.
It'll be the same thing this next time.
If it costs 50 million dollars.
Obedience, trust and obey, there's no other way.
As the old Englishman said, I'd have trust
and obey or rust and decay.
It's as simple as that.
Gird yourselves, lament ye priests, and howl and
lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of
my God.
There you've got it.
What do you say, that's for ministers?
Wait a minute, come on.
I heard Dr. G.
Campbell Morgan preach often, and I remember more
than once he said this, one of the
saddest days in the Christian church is when
we divided the professional ministers from the laymen.
There's no difference in the sight of God.
Because I'm 12 inches above you here, doesn't
mean I'm any bigger in the sight of
God.
He's made us a kingdom of priests unto
God.
We're a royal priesthood and we're a holy
nation.
If you're born again of the Spirit and
the Holy Ghost is in you, you've as
much access to God as I have.
You see, the thing again that troubles me,
as I've said often, I'll still say, I
read Hebrews 11 with all those fantastic, that
vast scope of men and women.
All they had was not money and prestige.
Every one of them had a faith.
They subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped
the mouths of lions.
Come on!
And not one of them ever had a
Bible.
What in God's name, what excuse do you
have?
Suppose you died tonight and went straight to
judgment.
You won't do that.
See, when a man's dead he isn't dead.
Spurgeon's dead.
Thousands of Baptist preachers will resurrect his sermons
Sunday and preach them.
He still lives.
And he's going to get payment at the
end of the journey for every sermon you've
preached of his.
Do you think God's going to reward you
for preaching Spurgeon?
Forget it.
Oh, fellows say, I've been preaching so much...
Good!
I preach through my Revival Charities.
I preach a message wall over...
Great!
Keep laying up treasure in heaven for me.
They say, what, for you?
I say, why, do you think God's going
to reward you for a sermon you stole?
There's going to be some trouble up there
I'll tell you.
Sanctify a fast and call a solemn assembly.
People scorn the Pharisee that stood.
He went up to the temple.
He went up to the front.
He lifted up his voice and he said,
I thank God I'm not as other men
are.
Extortion is unjust or even of this public.
I fast twice in the week.
You can't get Christians to fast once a
week, never mind twice.
He fasted twice every week because of what
the law said.
You remember that hymn that says, fasting alone
in the desert?
There was Jesus alone.
No sirree, we don't know how to fast.
Call a solemn assembly.
Get the elders and the inhabitants of the
land.
This chapter in Joel here for a minute
again.
Verse 11 says, The Lord shall utter his
voice before his army for his camp is
very great for he is strong that executeth
his word and the day of the Lord
is great and very terrible.
Therefore now, not tomorrow, the choice in America
lies either we either we concentrate in praying
or we pray in concentration camps.
Make a choice.
Most preachers spend more time in bed than
they do out of it.
If you're under 40 years of age, I
don't see any reason why you should be
in bed after 4 o'clock in the
morning.
John Wesley met with his friends and they
were friends.
John Newton that wrote Amazing Grace.
William Cowper that wrote There is a Fountain
Filled with Blood.
And a bunch of other intellectuals and they
met at 4 o'clock in the morning
unless he said we prayed at 10 at
night till 4 in the morning and then
we stood up and raised our hands and
sang the doxology.
You don't need to do that now when
you're a popular church, do you?
When people are tired and you can spend
anything you like on the church, do as
you like, get some nice soft seats so
they'll sleep better during the sermon.
Where are the fasting, weeping, praying pastors?
Verse 12 Therefore also now saith the Lord
turn ye even to me with all your
heart and with fasting and with weeping and
with mourning.
Are you reading verse 13?
Gird yourself Lament ye priests and howl ye
ministers of the altar come all night in
sackcloth.
Is there anybody that mourns?
Sackcloth is indicative of mourning, of grief, of
sorrow.
Our preachers have to go to the best
suits they can get.
Sackcloth And not only sackcloth but it talks
about ashes.
That means that something has been consumed.
Now he doesn't let them off again.
He says that word in verse 12.
Then 15 he says blow the trumpet in
Zion.
In Zion, not to the world.
I'm not worried about a revival in the
world.
I'm worried about a revival in the church.
Getting cleaned up and purified and sanctified and
getting all the dumb things that take up
your time.
You can always tell a church that's bankrupt
it has a sign outside in another building
family gathering.
Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.
There's a king in America I'll tell you
his name the king of America and I'll
tell you the name of his queen.
The king is called sport and his wife
is called entertainment.
And come on now between them sinners don't
tithe don't give God a measly tenth of
what they earn.
They'll spend every penny in that too.
And borrow money to get drunk and borrow
money to go to oh this weekend World
Series some of these guys will shout their
heads off they couldn't squeak Amen in church.
But they're screaming like Comanche Indians.
Brother.
That brother is a full-blooded Indian bless
him I love him.
I'm asking you when are we going to
get serious?
People write to me Are you writing another
book on revival?
I've almost made a vow today I won't
go to any gathering of men about revival
unless they lay all night between the altar
and the door post.
Are we trying to improve on God?
Oh well Raymier's arrogant he talks revival he
won't come and no I won't go why
should I?
This is God's prescription it's not Wesley's it's
not Finney's it's not Spurgeon's it's God's recipe
if you like you can't tell people to
weep they weep when they're heartbroken they weep
when they're terrified I don't wonder Paul said
knowing the terror of the Lord you see
today we are all so sweet and sugary
Dear God we're in bad shape skip down
to verse 17 a minute before I leave
this I'm not supposed to preach Friday nights
you know the verse 17 says let the
priests the ministers of the Lord weep between
the porch and the altar and let them
say spare thy people oh God I believe
the shortest cut to hell is down the
middle aisle of the average church why did
Jeremiah stay with it to the end of
the road because he says your word burns
like a fire in my heart why did
Isaiah go on with all the opposition he
had because he says when he cried to
God the Holy One a cherubim took a
live coal from off the altar and put
it on his lips and said after he
confessed I'm unclean I'm undone then the angel
came on the cherubim with a pair of
tongs took a live coal and he touched
him where he was unclean on his lips
Wesley said in his day gossip is the
curse of the church gossip slander criticism ridicule
I've been to ministers meetings where they told
borderline jokes then somebody gets a bit bolder
and tells a blue joke and everybody laughs
I've never been to a dinner with ministers
yet with any intelligence there they don't talk
about God they talk about football talk about
their Sunday school numbers watch a golf handicap
we got dirty preachers like that in the
pulpit no wonder the church is dirty let
the priests and ministers of the Lord weep
between the porch and the altar let them
say spare thy people O Lord and give
not thine heritage to reproach that the heathen
should rule over them I'm going back to
64 now if I can find it somewhere
here you
know we talk about Jesus living to make
intercession for us I'm just thinking of this
word here in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah
where we have a picture of his crucifixion
it says therefore in the last verse will
I deliver him a portion with the great
he should divide the spoil with the strong
because he has poured out his soul unto
death I'm maybe off my horse here I
think the dying thief suffered as much as
Jesus did physically the Catholic church has made
a lot you see you go and see
a plastic Christ with blood running down his
forehead and his hands and his side ripped
open but this is very clear it says
his soul was made an offering for sin
all thy billows the wrath of God came
upon him he tasted damnation because God blew
the sun out and wouldn't let men see
the crucifixion his disciples forsook him God forsook
him my God my God he cries Eloi
Eloi lama say back to me why hast
thou forsaken me he was separated from his
father for a moment so that you and
I didn't have to be separated from him
for eternity that's why that same verse 12
of 53 therefore will I divide him a
portion with the great he should divide the
spoil with the strong because he hath poured
poured out his soul unto death and he
was numbered with the transgressors and he bared
the sin of many and made intercession for
the transgressors didn't he pray for them every
crisis in the life of Jesus read the
life of Jesus in the gospel according to
Luke and you'll find the prayer life of
Jesus it says that when he stepped down
into the water he was praying when the
spirit descended upon him it says he was
on the mount of transfiguration and the spirit
descended upon him there in every crisis you'll
find the spirit descending on Jesus he's praying
oh dear I'm going to just talk a
little about this 64th chapter verse 10 again
I can't think of this man saying this
with dry eyes our
holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised
thee the Pentecostals talk about the Holy Ghost
coming on Mazuza street that nobody's ever been
in a meeting like that since and it's
not God's fault it's our fault we're satisfied
with clapping our hands and you refuse songs
and tap our feet our holy city I
remember when the bombs came on England and
the bombs hit indiscriminately one of the great
pictures of World War II was the cross
on top of St. Paul's Cathedral with a
background of terrible black clouds but all around
the buildings they never hit the house of
God in that sense but they're talking historically
here the beautiful house where our fathers praised
thee we don't have to praise I've never
been in a church in the world where
they know how to worship I've been in
meetings where they say let's all raise hands
and worship that's not worship that's praise praise
is the gateway to worship worship is the
gateway to adoration adoration is what you do
in prostrate on the floor Dr. George used
to say to me often now brother Leonard
if I go before you remember you and
I worship God face downward you can't be
distracted looking at the rug that man would
lay 3, 4, 5 hours on the rug
he showed me the rug and he said
Leonard I can stay there on my face
3, 4, 5 hours without saying a word
of prayer without saying a word of praise
I've just worshiped I might be turning over
in my mind Faber's marvelous words how beautiful
how beautiful the sight of thee must be
thine endless wisdom boundless power and awful purity
oh Jesus, Jesus dearest Lord forgive me if
I say for very love thy sacred name
a thousand times a day burn, burn within
me love of God burn fiercely night and
day till all the dross of earthly love
he said I get there 3 or 4
hours I gaze on his holiness one day
I gaze on his incredible majesty another day
I gaze on his ineffable love another day
I move to tears and brokenness as I
meditate the mercy of God why didn't he
cut us off the commandments of Jesus, of
God ten commandments have been broken ten million
times in America today and God seems to
relax and do nothing about it but he's
going to do it why doesn't he judge
now because he's appointed a day Paul said
that to the philosophers didn't he it happens
what is it 16th, 17th of Acts 16
the Epicureans and Stoics and philosophers and poets
and he said you worship an unknown God
I want to tell you about that unknown
God I hate the devil every day more
that I live I remember in Thailand that
brother Steve was here last week he gone
to Thailand I remember going up a street
at 4 o'clock in the morning and
they have great wooden fences there made of
teak it doesn't rot they don't paint it
and there's a little door and a shelf
and they put a big bowl of rice
and there's a big hefty priest coming down
and a boy goes and takes the rice
and throws it in the bag and off
they go I went to the great temple
with a reclining Buddha 120 feet long covered
with gold and people bowed their noses to
the ground and were crying there to a
God who can't hear to a God who
can't feel to a God who can't move
himself never mind anybody else millions of them
in damnation tonight doesn't move the church you
get more people to your church with a
chicken supper than you get ever a night
of prayer for people in Russia the beautiful
house where our fathers praised thee it's burned
with fire and all our pleasant things are
revised version says ruined are you going to
say that they could look at all that
waste and destruction they could see their history
and now they see all that their fathers
built and the prophets built has been destroyed
and it's crumbled away and nobody's moved to
tears I think it's very near the day
that we're living in there's a wonderful book
by J.I. Packer not because he's English
but he's a great preacher it's called Knowing
God I copied this from it today well
I paraphrased it a little myself this generation
has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of
greed I put a sign there greed in
Christian circles today is called prosperity but it's
still greed anyhow this generation has sold itself
without blushing to the gods of greed and
sex and pride and self will but the
church is mumbling on about the goodness of
God and we're as near hell as a
nation as ever we've been oh preach the
goodness but listen there's another side to the
coin it says the goodness and severity of
God I won't take you to the reference
remember Moses was up on the mountain and
he preached with God turn away from my
fierce wrath he says and later in the
chapter Aaron says to Moses you turn from
your fierce wrath you see he lived in
the presence of God till he's like him
you'll get like the people you live with
if you live with a holy goat you'll
become a holy man if you live with
a bunch of backsliders you'll get like them
if you're not careful Moses had been with
an angry God and he got angry the
trouble is we don't know how to be
angry we get angry over something a child
does and when you do that you're the
child and he's the father do
you think somebody will have the courage you
know Methodist Baptist what have you got Church
of God I'm going to preach there some
night Church of God the other end of
town do you think any denomination dare call
its ministers together to fast and pray you
go to a conference and ministers are talking
hey we're going duck hunting you know one
of our deacons has a hut up on
a hill and there's a lot of ducks
they'll go duck hunting they'll go deer hunting
but God held them at the judgment bar
they'll sing let the whole realm of nature
mind they'll give hunting three days they won't
give God three days on their face before
God fasting and praying we've lost the fire
our God is consuming fire where did Moses
get his life revolutionized at a burning bush
Ezekiel says the fire burned him Jeremiah says
I have a fire burning in me we
quote people slang terms I hate people asking
questions at the baptism what in the world
do you mean he shall baptize you with
the holy in the Greek it's he shall
baptize you with holy ghost fire there never
has been a moving of God without God
the holy ghost the fire of the holy
ghost coming first consuming sin and then enlightening
intellectually in every other way the holy word
of God yes we sold ourselves out to
sex things that used to be done in
the back street now you can see on
TV show if you're stupid enough to watch
it nobody grumbles about adultery anymore my friend
my neighbor couldn't come tonight his little boy
is sick he just came back from Sweden
you know sex is a sport there kids
fornicate on the way home from school but
while they're the most reckless kids in the
world remember this that they have the biggest
suicide rate too of all the nations of
the world mercy
I think of all the gimmicks and everything
else we have in evangelism today and yet
those men came out of the room without
money without prestige without a purse just power
rejected by men on every level but accepted
by God rejected by orthodox religion the temple
crowd wouldn't acknowledge them but they went out
anointed with the Holy Ghost and what happened?
they turned the world upside down it says
we turn nobody upside down I'll
just go back and quote this and finish
again in Joel 2 in 12 verse 12
it says therefore also now saith the Lord
turn ye even to me with all your
heart no divided heart with all your heart
not a heart that's half interested in sports
or even business with all your heart and
with fasting and with weeping and with mourning
and rend your hearts and not your garments
in other words don't put a profession on
outside when there's nothing inside that's really moving
I don't know how people live today that
don't know God you know a few years
ago we blamed all the trouble of the
world on Mussolini the wicked fascist and Hitler
and the old Georgian Stalin we had about
four or five men Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin if
we get rid of them we'll clean the
world up we've got a bigger madman than
all of them by the name of Gaddafi
right now the devil isn't short of captains
for his army they're not short of funds
they're not short of courage to do the
most wicked violent things in the face of
the world but why in God's name are
we so timid oh
dear we've got
a precious brother here, an Indian a real
Indian not a dime store Indian he was
telling me last week about the condition you
know one of the greatest mission fields in
the world is on our doorstep it's neglected
the black people often say they've been neglected,
not like the American Indian if the American
Indians had been as violent as some of
the blacks they'd have burned this country up
years ago I thank you for this dear
brother here are the American Indians this is
the percentage of alcoholism in the Navajo tribe
it's 50% in the Sioux tribe it's
80% in the Shoshone Arapaho is that
what you call it Arapaho it's 90%
in the Apaches it's 95% in the
Kiowa tribes it's 30% the mortality rate
amongst the American Indians is 4 times the
rate of whites and blacks that's the mortality
that's the death rate they die mad in
drink I'm sure there are hundreds of murders
never reported the suicide rate among Indians is
4 times higher than that of the white
people now here's the thing that makes me
kick and get mad the Mormons and Jehovah
Witnesses continue to make Indian converts all over
the nation what in God's name have they
got?
he's most likely a clean cut handsome looking
Mormon when we were in England there wasn't
one mosque today we left in 58 today
there are 500 Muslim mosques in England they're
building a university there they're building what they
call their Bible school that teach the Quran
and send out missionaries and they say to
people oh you're a Christian nation you're the
most drunken nation on earth after America you
see we do not okay we do not
drink we do not have any pornography in
the Islam faith and they go and parade
all their virtues and people say well they're
better than Christians I've got neighbours that profess
to be Christ but they're drunk we've got
a man next door and he keeps showing
me copies of Playboy and they boast of
their morality there's nothing wrong with good morality
except Nicodemus had impeccable morality but he's as
lost as he could be but the thing
is that they're going after the American Indian
the Indian tribes are steeped in spiritism and
witchcraft they desperately need preachers and teachers to
commit it for life it's more attractive to
get on a boat and go across the
sea isn't it a doctor friend of mine
a few years ago decided to go see
up the west coast of Canada he went
in a small boat that almost terrified him
and he said we've pulled into little narrow
necks of water and there was an Indian
tribe they were dancing they were mad they
were half dressed, some of them they were
committing adultery they were doing every evil thing
you could imagine and the most drunken man
in the whole tribe is the priest we
went from one to the other and they
said in some of these camps the Royal
Mounted Canadian Mounted Police didn't even come here
we've had two murders in six months and
never been investigated what in God's name are
we doing what population of Indians are there
if you put all the tribes together brother
do you know two million two million lost
people in witchcraft in superstition while you're polishing
your car or having some stupid thing in
your church we ought to get some of
our young people and take them out in
the summer I think Dale go to some
of these camps and see how they live
see the degradation see the poverty see the
ignorance see the witchcraft see the terror in
which they live what makes me mad is
they live in hell before they get to
hell it doesn't bother people at all I
wish before God we'd spent as much time
teaching people to pray as we teach the
choir to sing if 10% of the
choir missed a rehearsal the choir master would
give up if the pastor saw 10%
of his so-called you know church house
like Mr. Chrisworth 26,000 members half of
them never been in the place Billy Graham's
one of them when does he go we
build these colossal numbers up they'll meet us
at the judgment no church anywhere under God's
heaven is stronger than its prayer meeting and
no life is stronger than a prayer life
but you see you don't get hit in
a weekend when the man says my bowels
are moved my heart is broke my liver
is out of order he's saying my whole
being is being disintegrated by God I quoted
a verse last week I couldn't find it
today where in Jeremiah he says God has
torn me apart he's torn apart with grief
his eyes are always swollen with tears you
can't interest him in material things in the
old economy a priest couldn't own anything I've
got preachers doing I went to one place
and I said boy this preacher is an
iceberg he said he sells refrigerators I said
it's obvious this is a total job
demands all our time we can't be thinking
this way and thinking that and looking for
ourselves if we don't weep between the ox
and the doorpost we'll be weeping in captivity
before too long I'll tell you that I
know our friend over the road there Dave
Wilkinson says he believes America is going to
be wiped out with the bombs I don't
think that I wrote the foreword to his
book but I told him I didn't agree
with that America is disintegrating just tonight in
the 6 o'clock news they said now
there are possibly 2 million people in the
armed forces with AIDS or some form of
it and it will be more than that
and if you have AIDS when you test
it to go in the army you can't
get in the army now and they're going
to start isolating you know what we'll do
in a few years we'll take people with
AIDS and put them in institutions like we
used to put people in with smallpox and
they ought to do that and half starve
the rascals to death they're asking for government
help they didn't ask the government if they
could get AIDS did they?
what was the guy they buried the other
week a film star Rock Hudson we treat
him like a national hero the dirty rascal
he got it himself you read the news
and there's a sign for beer and somebody
comes on and says if your husband is
an alcoholic remember he's got a disease well
that's the only disease you go and buy
in a bottle in a shop isn't it?
you think anybody goes round and says I
want a cancer I want a large one
from my mother-in-law we don't buy
disease alcohol isn't a disease it's a filthy
rotten habit that ruins and damns people I'll
shout hallelujah if you hear somebody shouting louder
than anybody else at the judgement when all
those brewers come boy I tell you what
every broken home is going to be charged
to the brewers the bottom line when they
get to the judgement they'll squeal like hell
itself and God will kick them into the
bottomless pit the only barrier between our national
destruction oh let me say this this AIDS
is terrible there's another disease out now it
only goes to women you can get it
at 16 you won't have a rash on
your face you won't have a mark you
won't know a thing about it from 16
maybe at 22 you want to bear children
you won't bear any of them because it
withers the womb maybe it's God's vengeance on
us for pushing babies down the jam we
don't want them now when we do want
them you won't be able to have them
and there's no surgery will help you there's
nothing scientific will help you see God is
a God of vengeance but he waits his
time I'm deeply troubled about this business I've
asked you some Friday nights pray for the
what 2 million you say Indians drunken mortality
rate 4 times that of the whites suicide
4 times higher than the white people and
the Jehovah's witnesses are getting in on them
and winning them to their rotten religion while
we sleep you know we ought to weep
because we have no tears we ought to
blush that we're unashamed we ought to get
down before God and repent with no broken
heart I don't want to put you on
the spot not that I'm afraid I like
to get people embarrassed I wonder how many
of you this week when you look back
over your prayer life have prayed for the
American Indians dying on our doorstep terrified with
witchcraft the witch doctors they're all you've got
and yet the Mormons are going and offering
them a false peace America is in the
gravest situation it's been in since 1734 the
Great Awakening but the God who started that
Great Awakening is my God tonight He wants
me to be humble enough and broken enough
well you're old you've lived your life somebody
asked an old man 95 have you lived
there all your life he said not yet
well what do I start my 80th year
next year so what I'm still a young
man Wesley said he preached better at 85
than 35 so I'm going to try and
copy him I know you think there's a
lot of room for improvement on my preaching
so don't look so sympathetic but God is
going to pour out his spirit God cannot
lie the conditions are ours when we're broken
enough and humble enough and tearful enough and
serious enough get serious about being serious and
saying this is number one my number one
proposition in my life to get a touch
from a holy God so that wherever I
go I'm disseminating truth and righteousness and the
beauty of the Lord our God that's what
he wants we're not going to sing my
watch goes too fast Friday night we're going
to go to prayer I'm asking you to
concentrate tonight if you can remember the name
of the tribe do it or pray for
the American Indians don't let God say I've
been looking for somebody to lift up holy
hands today and not one person out of
a hundred in America has prayed for the
Indians they've prayed for India they've prayed for
Afghanistan and that's okay but what about these
people who perish on our doorstep we've stolen
their land we've stolen their mineral rights we've
made millions out of what they should have
had some get compensation for sure but their
greatest need obviously is spiritual pray for this
precious brother as he goes back to his
tribe give me a chair