We have a legitimate right to sing as
we sang earlier tonight, My Jesus, I love
Thee.
I know Thou art mine.
We bless You for that security that we
have.
We thank You, Lord Jesus, that when You
look down from the cross, You said it
is finished, and there remaineth no more sacrifice
for sins.
Your Word says, once in the end of
the age, He appeared to put away sin
by the sacrifice of Himself.
Your Word tells us, by one man's transgression,
sin entered into the world, and because of
sin, death.
But we thank You that by one man,
not the second Adam, but the last Adam,
was able to undo all the first Adam
did.
We thank You that he lived a righteous,
spotless, holy life.
We thank You for the cleansing of the
blood tonight.
If we hadn't have had that, we would
have entered this house defiled tonight, embarrassed.
But we thank You for that fountain filled
with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners
plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty
stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see the fountain
in his day, and there have I, not
may I, but there have I, though vile
as he washed all my sins away.
The Lord, let this meeting contribute to Your
praise and adoration.
We can't give You anything.
You own the world.
We can't give You the advice.
You're the essence of all wisdom.
We cannot counsel You in righteousness.
You're the very essence of righteousness.
But You desire our praise.
You desire our worship.
We would worship You tonight in spirit, and
in truth, and in the very beauty of
holiness.
We thank You for Your mercy to us.
As we sang tonight, great is Thy faithfulness.
Pardon for sins.
We thank You You've given us that.
We thank You that the strength for today
and grace for tomorrow.
We thank You You haven't made any miscalculations.
We think about how often the automobile people
withdraw their automobiles for defects that have been
there for years.
But we thank You that You made a
perfect offering, Lord Jesus.
We thank You that You can make us
perfect in holiness, in obedience, in righteousness, in
love.
God, put a grudge in our hearts, lest
we become an embarrassment to God.
Don't let us misrepresent You in this evil,
perverse generation in which we live.
You've told us in Your Word that whatsoever
we do, we're to do all to the
glory of God.
We ask tonight, in the words of the
psalmist, that the words of our mouths and
the meditation of our hearts may be acceptable
in Thy sight.
O God, our strength and our Redeemer.
Anoint Your Word tonight.
Take the veil from it.
Take the veil from our eyes.
Take the veil from our understanding.
May we go from this house with a
deeper assurance, a greater determination to do the
will of God.
Because You've told us that He that doeth
the will of God abideth forever.
So we thank You for Your presence in
Jesus' name.
Okay, take your seats please.
All right, Exodus, the book of Exodus chapter
20.
Exodus chapter 20 in verse 19.
I'm reading, obviously, the King James version.
The proper version.
You know, people laughed at the old lady
in England.
She said, I read the King James version
because the Apostle Paul read it.
Well, he wrote most of it anyhow.
She's pretty smart, wasn't she?
Not King James version, but she read the
scriptures that are here.
Okay, Exodus chapter 20.
Verse 19, And they said unto Moses, Speak
thou with us, and we will hear, but
let not God speak with us.
You know, I think that's typical of many
services to which we go.
We want to hear a preacher, we don't
want to hear God.
Particularly a preacher who presents something we've always
believed, it's merely an echo in our hearts.
We don't want to know what God is
saying, we want to know what the popular
theology is saying.
Don't speak to us, don't let God speak
to us.
You speak to us.
It's rather a change of tune.
They said unto Moses, Speak thou with us,
and we will hear, but let not God
speak with us, lest we die.
You know, if you go back to the
17th chapter, Exodus 17 verse
1, And all the congregation of the children
of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin,
after their journeys, according to the commandment of
the Lord, and pitched in rephidim, and there
was no water for the people to drink.
Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and
said, Give us water that we may drink.
Moses said, Why do you chide with me?
Wherefore do ye tempt the Lord?
The people thirsted for water, and the people
murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this
that thou hast brought us apart of it?
Notice they don't recognize God has done it.
They don't say here that you brought us
up with a strong hammer and a stretched
out arm.
Moses brought it.
Moses did nothing of the kind.
Sure enough, he was the leader.
He brought them out, but he couldn't get
them in.
The trouble with the church today, in my
judgment, is this.
Most of us have come out of Egypt,
but we're not living in the promised land.
The church has halted somewhere between Easter and
the resurrection.
No, don't speak to us, God.
But now look at the change again in
that 20th chapter.
Verse 18.
And all the people saw the thunders, thunderings,
and the lightnings, and the noise of the
trumpet, and the mountain smoking.
And when they saw it, they removed, and
stood afar off, and said unto Moses, Speak
with us.
And we hear, but let not God speak
with us.
Moses said unto the people, Fear not, for
God is come to prove you, that you
may, that his fear may be before you,
before your faces, and that ye sin not.
You see, as we would say, God put
on a show there.
They murmured, they complained, we have no water.
We, back in Egypt, we had onions and
garlics.
Why in the world they wanted that junk,
I don't know.
But they want to go back to onions
and garlics.
Ever get near somebody with garlic?
Don't they smell horrid?
But they want to go back to Egypt.
And so the Lord shows them now, he
does a display of thunder and lightnings, the
earth shakes.
Read the Hebrew, in the epistles of the
Hebrews about that.
They were terrified when they saw the majesty
of God in the skies.
When they felt the shaking of the earth,
when they hear the noise of the thunder.
Well, if that's what God does, what would
he do if he spoke to us?
And Moses says, don't be afraid, he's not
wanting to destroy you.
He wants to speak to you.
And that led me off on to thinking
of the voice of God.
You remember that God, well, the story is
so familiar, Adam sinned.
What can you say about it that's new?
Well, let me stress this anyhow, Adam sinned.
Did he go looking for God?
No, he didn't.
What did he do?
He hid.
He tried to cover himself.
Cover himself in the bushes, cover himself with
leaves, made an apron to cover his nakedness.
And God went after the man who had
disobeyed him.
God is the offended one, and yet the
offended one goes after the offender.
You get the same thing, God goes after
Abraham.
God went after Jacob.
God went after Moses.
He's always pursuing, he's always seeking.
What did Adam do?
Well, he went and hid himself.
And he heard a voice.
I wonder how he felt.
It's like the voice that says, what doest
thou hear Elijah?
He said, what are you doing here Adam?
I'm hiding.
Why are you afraid?
He gave the game away, because he was
disobedient, because his conscience was lashing him, because
he was afraid of the majesty and awesomeness
of God.
And yet God comes to him.
What did he do when the angels transgressed?
He put them in hell forever.
People say demons are those angels that fell.
Well, that's not scriptural.
The angels that fell are locked up, Jude
says, they're locked up there in eternal darkness
till God wants to release them.
That's where the angels are.
Where do demons come from?
Find out for yourself, do some homework, don't
be lazy.
The demons, well, I was going to say,
I won't say it anyhow, I'll let you
work sweat over it a bit, do you
good.
But God, as soon as the angels transgress,
he casts them out into darkness.
He doesn't do that with Adam.
He isn't a policeman, he's a counselor.
He comes to rescue them, he comes to
deliver them, he comes to tell them he's
going to make a propitiation for sins when
he gets to the third chapter, something that's
going to happen centuries ahead.
I find it very interesting to think again
about the voice.
I did a little homework myself, I don't
do too much, but I did some today.
I went through the book of Revelation and
found that the voice is spoken of 40
times, maybe 42 times in Revelation, the voice
is spoken up.
Do you remember what this wonderful man John
did on the isle called Patmos?
You can see Patmos if you were at
Ephesus, the ruins are still there, you can
look over the sea and see a piece
of rock out of the ground, and that's
out of the ground, pardon me, out of
the water, out of the sea, and that's
the isle of Patmos.
If you've gone to Ephesus and said, well,
I'm on a trip, I'm on a tour,
and I would like to see your pastor,
is he preaching at home?
No, he's not at home today.
Well, he's in the isle of Patmos, and
you take a boat and you go there,
and you see the little fellow there on
a rock, and you come up behind him
and say, are you John?
He says, I sure am, yes.
Well, he wouldn't say sure, because he wasn't
American, but anyhow, he says, yes, I'm John.
I never thought I'd find you in Patmos.
He said, I'm not in Patmos.
What do you mean you're not in Patmos?
Where are you?
I'm in the Spirit.
And remember, will you, a bit further up
in the book, in the same chapter, he
says that when he saw the Christ of
God, his hair as white as snow, his
feet like burnished brass, his face like the
sun in its strength, his eyes like living
coals of fire, his tongue as sharp as
a razor, I felt his feet as dead.
That's the only case I know of in
a scripture where anybody's ever been slain in
the Spirit.
He was in the Spirit on the last
day, and he goes down.
What did he do?
I'll tell you what he did, nothing.
I don't read he ever said a word
to the Lord Jesus.
The woman brought her alabaster box of ointment
and broke it at the feet of Jesus.
Why did she go to see Jesus?
She went to worship him.
How do you know?
Because, number one, she took the most precious
thing that she had.
You cannot worship God without sacrifice, and your
sacrifice may be kicking the bedclothes off at
two o'clock in the morning.
I went into my office at quarter of
one this morning, to work.
I usually go between now two and four
o'clock, and have such wonderful times.
You know, all those crazy people don't phone
you at that time.
The mailman doesn't come, and those pestering preachers
don't come asking for counsel that they won't
accept anyhow.
So nice to be quiet, you know, as
the old hymn says, alone with God, the
world forbidden.
Alone with God, O blessed retreat.
Alone with God, and in him hidden, to
hold with him communion sweet.
The woman washed his feet.
She never said a word, as far as
I know.
There's no evidence anybody ever took a bite
of food at that banquet.
They were so magnetized with a person of
Jesus.
John, this is the man who had laid
his head on the bosom of Jesus.
I hear preachers say, well, you know, he
loves us all.
He loves everybody.
God has no favorites.
If the man tells you that, find a
new church.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
God has favorites.
I'm one of them, but apart from that.
He does have favorites, doesn't he?
He went and raised Lazarus from the dead.
He went and raised, was the daughter of
what?
Jairus, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, he
took with him who?
Peter, James, and John, every time.
I wonder if the others griped about it.
Oh, off they go again.
He favors those three.
Then John, who is perhaps the most humble
of them all, writes that that disciple whom
Jesus loved.
There was an intimacy between Jesus and John
that the others didn't know a thing about.
You know, one of your problems, if you're
going to walk with God, you better watch
out you don't get more spiritual than your
pastor.
That's awful embarrassing to him.
He may be the laziest guy in the
country, doesn't have any discipline, doesn't have to
go to bed at a given time, doesn't
have to get up at a certain time,
he makes his own life, and before long
he's moldy.
I read a smart thing, you know Americans
do say some smart things, not as good
as the English, but anyhow.
I read where an American said we're all
made in the same mold, but some are
moldier than others.
Doesn't matter how moldy you are, the Lord
can get you into shape anyhow.
But you see, there's an intensity with some
people.
In every church you find that, to use
a common phrase easy, quality people.
You find some people are an inspiration to
you in their walk with God, in their
talk with God, in their actions for God.
And there was something about John that magnetized
Jesus, and something about Jesus that magnetized John.
Here is a man who had laid his
head on the bosom of Jesus and heard
that divine heartbeat.
He'd look into the eyes of the Eternal
One, and now he sees him with eyes
like a flame of fire, and his feet
like burnished brass, his face like the sun
in its strength.
I think it was Fanny Crosby, she wrote
more hymns than any other American, over three
thousand.
I think I've got them all at home.
I think she wrote that, the verse anyhow
that says, and I shall see him face
to face.
How will we bear it?
Oh, Revelation says we will.
Well I remember, I've got a speaker, not
that I want you to come, the pastor.
I always want to say the agape for
us, but anyhow, who are they now, the
Christian tribe up the road?
The pastor's here tonight.
Brother Dave Wilkinson came to see me two
days ago.
He was so overwhelmed with what God was
being saying to him.
He's trying to finish a book right now.
I'll give you the title of it.
The title is, Put the Trumpet to Thy
Lips.
It's from the prophecy of Hosea.
My wife and I have read it through
three times, and maybe tonight we'll read it
through again.
And you know, you've got background music almost
everywhere you go.
The background music, as we have read that
over and over again, has been the sound
of the trumpet, sound and alarm.
Where?
On my holy hill, not in the taverns,
not in the brothels.
Again, God's problem in America tonight is not
Mormonism, humanism, Spiritism, Seventh-day Adventism, any other
ism you like.
God Almighty's problem in America tonight is a
carnal church, a church that's choked up.
You can put all the other things together,
humanism, communism, Mormonism, Romanism, Spiritism, Seventh-day Adventism,
Mormonism, you can roll them all in one
big ball.
They are not the number one hindrance in
America or any other country.
The hindrance in America tonight is as it
was in the Old Testament.
God's problem in the Old Testament was not
Amalekites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites and the otherites.
It was Israel.
God's problem tonight in America is an unsanctified
church, a church that's still carnal, worldly, fleshly.
It hasn't been severed.
That word's been on my mind today.
I preached last Sunday morning, or tried to
anyhow, on Galatians 6, 14, where Paul says,
the world is crucified to me, and I
to the world.
Now you've seen a lot of stuff you
folk that have traveled, but you've never seen
a crucifixion.
You mean they're saying something bloody like a
bullfight.
Nobody here has seen a crucifixion.
I found something in making that study.
I may be wrong, but I'm sure I'm
right.
Right in the middle of the most beautiful
poem on love that was ever written, 1
Corinthians 13, Paul, you remember, suddenly sidetracks and
he says, when I became a man, I
put away a child.
When did he become a man?
When did he put away childish things?
I believe, you have to step back into
Galatians 2.20, he was crucified with Christ.
I cannot find any record anywhere wherever a
child was crucified.
The Romans were wicked, but they did not
crucify children.
There is a place in his, I do
not believe anybody enters unconsciously into a transaction
with God, forget it.
God has given you a brain, given you
a mind, give you emotions, given you understanding.
He doesn't ask you to sign a blank
paper without knowing what's on it in the
deal.
It's open in his word, you've got to
study the word to find it, sure enough.
But he says, when I became a man,
you know, he's an amazing man.
I think the only thing that Paul didn't
like about himself was he never got to
do what John Baptist did.
John Baptist did the greatest thing in history,
presented, I introduced you Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of
the world.
Count how many times in Revelation the Lamb
of God is mentioned.
I'm going to speak Sunday morning, I think,
about the bride of the Lamb.
I like talking about weddings.
I'm going to live long enough to go
to Ronnie's, I hope, but anyhow, that's a
good, at least a year away, anyhow.
If Jesus Christ is the King of kings,
and the Lord of lords, and the judge
of judges, isn't he going to have the
bride of brides?
Do you think he's coming for a crippled,
limping church that we have today?
A church that has to have a family
center next door, so the kids can be
brought up like heathens, so they can play
pinball and see all the junk, and the
poor, weary folk that couldn't bend the in
prayer, they thought that, they thought the scripture
said, play without ceasing.
When, of course, it said, pray without ceasing.
Just like these TV preachers were reading of
the scripture one day, they thought, they thought
it said, fleece the flock, and it's, it
says, feed the flock, you see.
You need to have good eyes when you
read the scripture.
Do you know, the one thing that holds
the revival back is immaturity.
We're not mature enough to handle it.
We don't have mothers and fathers in Zion
that God can trust.
There's a time when a girl is too
young to bear children, there's a time when
she's too old.
I remember saying that in a church, the
first time I came to America, and the
preacher walked down the aisle on his hands
and knees, there was an old-fashioned altar
right there, raised his hand and cried, please
God, don't let my church get too old
to bear.
Don't let us get too old to be
spiritually pregnant and bring to birth.
You see, God wants to get through to
us in a special way.
When this new book of David comes out,
I don't know when it will come, but
I'll tell you what, it's red hot.
I hope you'll buy as many copies as
you can.
He won't make a penny out of it.
The money will be given to missions and
whatnot.
But he's waiting on God, crawling into his
bed at three or four o'clock in
the morning.
Burdened as I've never seen him burdened in
the 20 years I've known him.
Something's going to come forth that's going to
be most disturbing.
It'll cost him a thousand pulpits in America.
People say of him, as they said, as
these men say, they said to Moses, speak
thou with us and we will listen, but
don't let God talk to us.
Now David is determined that God is going
to speak through that book if it costs
him his life.
It will shut thousands of doors in his
face.
Ministers, seminaries, Bible schools will not want him
because it's a prophetic word, it's a burning
word, it's a blistering word, it's a burdened
word, it's a breaking word, it's a blessed
word.
See, children want to choose everything for themselves.
Moses said, speak with us that we, and
we will hear, let not God speak with
us lest we die.
Isn't it amazing that people will send millions
of dollars to these TV boys that tell
them lies and kick you out of pulpits
if you tell the truth?
A man came to see me this week,
do you remember coming to our church down
in Alabama a few years ago?
I said, tell me the church.
Yes, I remember.
Oh yes, oh you really disturbed the church.
In the next business meeting that they had
they said, we're not having that old charismatic.
That's disgraceful, I'm not an old charismatic, I'm
not even old.
I mean, I'm getting older but I'm not
old.
Charismatic?
I'm not rheumatic.
Let's hear the voice of God.
Don't let us hear the voice of God.
The voice is a great, it amazes me
when I phone someone, even when I call
my son in West Africa or the other
son in down South America or the other
boy in New Zealand, immediately they come and
I can tell their voices.
I'm amazed at the perfection of a telephone.
Didn't used to be like that 20 years
ago.
You used to say something and say, would
you repeat that?
Would you repeat that?
And your telephone built as long as you
talk.
It isn't like that now because it bounces
off a satellite and it's pure, it's beautiful.
The voice.
Remember Jacob tried to pull a fast trick?
On who?
No?
Come on, who did he try to pull
a trick on?
His father?
Isaac?
His mother helped him in the deal, you
know.
She took some skin off a goat and
put it on his wrist and round his
neck and the old man goes and he
bends over to his father.
And his father says, well okay, I know
those hairy wrists and that, but the voice
is Jacob's voice.
Remember when Peter was standing at the fire,
the woman said, I know you, you've got
a northern accent.
We know you by your speech.
One man is identified always with a rolling,
rumbling, marvelous voice.
I mentioned his name there.
I said, I think Paul would have liked
to have done just one thing he couldn't
do and that was introduce Jesus to the
world.
John Baptist did it.
How is a voice crying in the wilderness?
How in God's name did he do it?
He had nobody to sponsor him.
He had no friends in court.
He didn't even have a newsletter, would you
believe that?
No offense, no offense, Martin.
If you're under convicts, I'll talk with you
after.
Okay.
Here is a man suddenly hurled.
From where?
I had a young man see me this
week.
He wants to be another George Whitefield.
Mercy on us.
I'd like to be a John the Baptist.
Well, go live in the desert, somewhere, Navajo
desert, somewhere between here and California, where there's
only rattlesnakes and a lot of stuff out
there.
John Baptist lives with the wild beasts until
the day of his showing forth and then
he tamed wild beasts when he came out.
What happened?
A voice crying in the wilderness.
That voice rolled down that valley.
It rolled down every valley in hell.
I believe every demon shivered as soon as
John said, behold the Lamb of God.
The devil and his cohorts said, now we're
finished.
Don't think you're smart because you believe the
Bible.
The devil believes a lot more than some
of the preachers do.
He believes in the virgin birth.
He believes in the resurrection.
He witnessed them.
Your poor dumb preacher maybe has nothing but
a degree.
Well, maybe by degrees he'll get better.
A voice crying in the wilderness.
If you do some homework, you'll find that
John the Baptist was more than a hellfire
preacher, more than a blazing evangelist.
You'll find 27 different points of doctrine.
He was a theologian in his own right.
We never think of him as a theologian.
But his voice, in Matthew chapter 7, verse
21, it says, or verse 16, pardon me,
chapter 7 of Matthew, verse 7, pardon me,
chapter 7 and verse 14, okay.
Because straight is the great and narrow is
the way which leadeth to life, few there
be that find it.
Beware of false prophets which come to you
in sheep's clothing, but inwardly ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Do men gather grapes of thorns or pigs
of thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good
fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil
fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good
fruit.
Every tree that bringeth forth good fruit is
hewn down and cast into the fire.
Verse 20.
Wherefore by their fruit ye shall know them.
Now here it is.
Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
he that doeth the will of my Father.
Many will say to me in that day,
Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy
name?
Didn't we get big crowds?
Didn't we have a super show on TV?
Didn't I build monuments in my name?
It's got my name plastered over it.
Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
In thy name we cast out devils.
In thy name we've done many wonderful works.
Then will I profess to you and say
I never knew you?
Depart from ye, ye that work iniquity.
You say, well, how does that work?
Doesn't God know everything?
Didn't God know what they were doing?
Yes.
Didn't he know their works?
Yes.
Why does he say he doesn't know them?
He doesn't say he doesn't know their works.
He said, I don't know you.
You never had a love relationship with me.
You were never married to my will.
I wasn't number one in your life.
You didn't give me priority in your thinking
and your acting.
You were so occupied with your ministry.
What a devastating thing.
You get the same thing in Matthew 25
and verse 11.
They told Cursed.
Let me read that to you.
No, it's not verse 11.
What verse is it?
21?
41?
Okay, thank you.
I marked it in my testament, not there.
Yeah, then shall they say also unto them
on the left hand, depart from ye cursed
into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and
his angels.
What are they done?
The righteous, verse 37, shall the righteous answer
him saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungered,
or fed thee, or thirst and gave thee
drink?
When saw we thee as a stranger, and
took thee in, or naked and clothed thee?
When saw we thee sick, or imprisoned?
And the king shall say, Beverly, I sent
you in as much as you have done
it unto the least of these, you have
done it unto me.
You know, when you gave that man a
raw deal, you didn't give him a raw
deal, you gave Christ a raw deal.
When you did something for that man that
nobody knows, you didn't do it for him,
you did it for Jesus Christ.
You see, if we kept that in focus,
it would change our lifestyle.
What a shocking thing when it comes to
the final day, and we stand there again,
as you will do, as I will do,
before a billion people.
You say, I wouldn't like to stand up
before this crowd.
You'll have to stand up one day before
billions, and give an account of the deeds
done in the body, every one of us
will.
A judgment for the believers, a judgment for
the sinners.
And in that great day, some of these
ministries, God is going to say, I never
knew you.
David was telling me, one of the outstanding
preachers in the country, talked with him not
long ago, and said, what time do you
spend in prayer?
I've 3,000 members in my church, do
you think I can spend time in prayer?
Huh?
It's like saying, I'm running so fast, I've
no time to breathe.
You see, there goes some awful revelations at
the judgment seat.
Again, not what we did, but why did
we do it?
Not why didn't we, not what we didn't
do, but why we didn't do it.
God is going to judge motives more than
the action that we've done.
What motivated us to do it?
I told a story often, when I first
came to America in 1950, I would dash
home after preaching at night, sat at Sunday
night, switch on the little box, it only
had two little stations on it, here and
here, and listen to a preacher up in
the northeast, northwest of the United States in
Portland, packing in about 2,000 people every
Sunday night.
He would say, we had a marvelous Sunday
night.
Last Sunday, we had 35 people saved, 20
people received the baptism of the Spirit, and
11 were healed.
Come on, so and so, they're coming down
the aisle now.
And I visualized what was happening, it wasn't
on TV.
When that man finished his amazing ministry of
25 years, he had been to Africa and
had pictures, you know, everybody with their hands
up.
He reported, we saw Pentecost two nights in
succession.
Two nights, we had more decisions than they
had on the day of Pentecost.
It didn't last as long.
We had them.
He was very seriously ill the year before
he died.
He said one night to his wife, his
wife brought him his usual glass of warm
milk and kissed him good night.
In the morning, he called her to his
bedside.
He often made prophecies about himself, about the
church, about the nation.
Called his wife to his bedside and said,
call my assistant, and call the deacons, and
call pastor so-and-so, and they all
got around his bed.
Wife thought he's going to say, you know,
he'll die at four o'clock tonight or
tomorrow.
He said, last night when my wife went
out of the room, Jesus stood there at
the bottom of my bed.
His eyes like a flame of fire.
Just as he's pictured in red, his hair
as white as snow, his feet like burnished
brass, his face like the sun in its
strength, his tongue had sharp twedged sword, and
he pointed to me and said, son, your
25 years of ministry are wood, hay, and
stubble, and when I torch them, all you'll
have is ashes up to your knees.
25 years of ministry, there are six things
that can happen in your life.
You can have a Christian life which is
made up of wood, hay, and stubble.
They're all above the ground, aren't they?
They're all inflammable.
Silver, gold, and precious stones are hidden in
the ground.
You can take silver, or gold, or precious
stones and put fire to them, you won't
change them.
You'll purify the gold, you'll purify the silver,
you won't consume the jewels.
And he said, your ministry is wood, hay,
and stubble.
Oh yes, you've written books, of course you've
had some of the greatest evangelistic meetings in
history, but your ministry was not to me.
There was no love relationship.
I tried to woo you into the secret
place.
I tried to make love to you in
the spirit, but you were so busy, you
ran off, you planned, programmed.
I preached to the ministers in the, of
the Southern Baptist Church, about three or four
years ago, in Alabama, hundreds of them.
Usually if I give a word to preach,
I say, Lord, what will I preach six
months ahead?
When I said I would go, the Lord
said, preach on the judgment seat of Christ
in the morning.
Lord, the people are gathering in the morning.
At night it will be packed out, at
night.
No, the Lord said in the morning, so
I preached on it.
When I finished, I gave the illustration of
this famous preacher.
The chairman of the board came up, the
chairman of the group of the Southern Baptist
Convention in that state came up, president, and
he said, when I came in this morning,
I had a pain from the crown of
my head, right down to my shoulder here.
He said, now after that sermon from Brother
Raven, I've got a pain from my head
to the soles of my feet.
What can I do about it?
He said, that's about the most awesome illustration
ever heard, that a man who has invested
25 years of time and money and travel,
and God says it's ashes.
So much showmanship today, it won't stand the
fire of God.
The gold is hidden.
There are so many wonderful hidden ministries.
A lot of intercessors in it.
David said to me the other day, he
said, Len, I'm getting more and more news
from groups that are heading away, praying, interceding.
We have a dear little lady has been
to see us, I think, once Martha, I
don't know, twice, and she with a group
are away in the Rockies, about 30 miles
up inside the mountain there, outside of Pass
Denver.
They worship every day, I don't know, she
has a paper round.
Imagine a paper round in the Rockies, at
four o'clock every morning, and they pray
for hours and hours and hours a day,
in an old disused Methodist church with a
pot-bellied stove.
And they struggle to throw the deep snow
up to their waist, but they go every
morning and have done that for 16 years.
What are these under the altar?
The prayers of the saints.
You notice in Revelation, there are no sermons
under the altar.
Most of them shouldn't be preached anyhow.
What are these under?
Prayers never die.
There's a remnant in America today, stronger in
prayer than any period I've known.
I've been coming to America since 1950 anyhow.
I get wonderful news of young men, teams
of young men, who pray every Friday night
on the basis, if you can do it
there down in Lyndale, we'll do it in
our church.
One young man went back and started a
prayer meeting.
Three months after he called me, he said,
do you know two-thirds of our church
praying every morning for two hours, afternoon three
hours, evening two hours, seven hours a day?
In busy America?
What an awesome thing if God has to
say to us.
Depart from ye, ye cursed into everlasting fire.
I was a hunger, you gave me no
meat.
I was thirst, you gave me no drink.
I was a stranger and ye took me
in, naked and ye clothed me not, sick
and ye in prison and ye visited me
not.
Then shall they answer and say, Lord, when
saw we thee unhungered, or a thirst, or
stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison?
And he shall answer them as I answer
you saying, inasmuch as he did it not
to one of these little ones, he did
it not unto me.
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment.
Now figure it out yourself.
I'm not talking theologically, I'm talking about the
fact here.
If there's one book I'd like to write,
I'm trying to write one now, I'd certainly
like to finish what I have of only
part of it on the judgment seat of
Christ.
Surely is the most awesome thing, almost the
most awesome thing, that lies ahead of us.
Of the whole ministry.
I can give you the names of the
five, six, seven, eight leading men in the
country.
I can tell you how much they get
every week.
There's at least five of them drawing a
million dollars a week.
Every dime of that they have to answer
for at the judgment seat.
It isn't their money, it's God's money.
They say, send me God's money, send me
God's tithe.
The voice.
The voice of Jesus, I think, in anger.
The first time we hear his voice is
what?
Matthew 11, 28.
Where Jesus says, come unto me, all ye
that are weary and heavy laden, I will
give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly of
heart and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.
Why do you want rest when he's told
you have it?
Figure that one out.
Ye shall find rest.
This is the most restless age in history.
Nobody can find rest or peace or joy,
not outside of Christ anyhow.
But when you hear his voice say, come
unto me, how wonderful.
Think of the anguish.
As I said before, we quote so often
from the book of the Revelation at funerals
and whatnot, oh well, there shall be no
tears.
But the scripture of the same book says,
he wipes away all tears from their eyes.
Where does he wipe the tears away?
I believe at the judgment seat.
When all of us will be an open
book, just as I can open this book
anywhere and read it, your life will be
an open book to God.
Nothing will be hidden, everything shall be revealed,
the word of God says.
And how wonderful if he says, well come
to the right, well done thou good and
faithful son.
Look at the redeemed.
I'm going to dwell on that Sunday morning.
All the things that lie ahead of us,
there are four outstanding things I think ahead
of us, that will supersede every other thing
in history.
You know the world outside has a pity
for us.
It says, you know where my son is
tonight?
He's with a crazy bunch, they go to
prayer meetings.
What do you think about that?
Your dad's boozing his head off, he'll be
an idiot tomorrow morning, but he thinks he's
smart tonight.
Or somebody else.
Just because we've got things in right perspective,
just because eternity has become real to us,
just because we're finding, as Isaac Watts said,
the hill of Zion, yields a thousand sacred
sweets before we reach the heavenly field.
You can find peace in Jesus, no sedative
can give you.
You can find such courage in Jesus, and
no electric shock can give you.
They can find such power in him.
You know most of this book, to most
of us, is totally unexplored.
We just go up and down to one
chapter, one chapter, two chapters.
Instead of getting the vast horizon of God's
revelation.
We need to hear that voice every day.
I guess if I were to press you,
you'd surely say, I don't want God to
say to me in that great day, depart
from me.
I want to hear him say, well done.
The only way you can keep on track
is to hear God's voice day by day.
Sometimes it's an inward impression, as John Wesley
said.
Other times it's the word of God that
leaps out and grabs you.
This is the revelation he's given.
He's got nothing more to say.
How firm a foundation these saints of the
Lord.
What more can he say than to you
he has said.
I like to rub some of the guys
that come to see me, rub their noses
in the floor, you know, in my kindness.
Why?
Oh, you know what my church was when
I took it over?
It only had 600 members.
Now we have 4,500.
So what?
What have you done?
Maybe they're all castaways from another denomination anyhow.
They couldn't put up with the pastor and
soon they won't put up with you.
They'll go two blocks down the road somewhere
else.
It's easy to build a congregation without building
the kingdom.
You know, some of you young preachers, you
don't have maturity.
But let me tell you something, you can
have authority.
Maturity comes with years.
Authority comes by abiding in his presence, by
listening to the voice of God, by doing
the will of God.
He that doeth the will of God abideth
forever.
I believe God's going to raise up in
this generation some men greater than any in
history.
I don't think God put his plan on
one side after Finney and Wesley and all
these other amazing men.
It's a bigger task.
It's a bigger demand on us.
It's going to take men with greater vision,
greater passion, greater unction.
It's not just the result of my will,
it's abiding in the will of God.
It's being near to the heart of God.
It's knowing the timing in the things of
God.
Sure, it's an awful day.
But I'll tell you, when David does get
his book out, there are some people going
to have sleepless nights.
There are more lost people in the world
tonight than there have been in any period
in history.
The world population is teetering on five million,
and five billion, and I don't believe there
are half a billion, say, people in the
country.
And then asked me this week, how many
people do you think are really born again
in the nation?
I said, two percent of all professing Christians.
A hundred and twenty from the upper room
filled with the Holy Ghost.
Now we're supposed to have 75,000, 75
million charismatic, spiritual people below me.
If a hundred and twenty could turn the
nation upside down, what should seven million do,
or 70 million?
I said that in church last Sunday, Monday.
One of the big shots from Christ for
the nation was sitting under my nose.
I said, what about your bunch?
You've 1,500 students there, and nobody knows
you're in Dallas, except you.
How many students do you have at Springfield?
Assembly of God, big outfit there.
Two thousand students.
Anybody know they're in town?
Oral says we have 4,000 students filled
with the Holy Ghost.
Oh, shut up, Oral.
Nobody knows in town that you're there.
There's as much prostitution as when he started
20 years ago.
There's as much drunkenness, there's as much wickedness,
there's as much crime.
I ask honestly in God's name, what's wrong
with us all?
But they're sitting and go rotten when you
profess with 4,000 people filled with the
Holy Ghost.
Nobody dare face the question.
I asked that professor from CFN, Christ for
the nation, last week, he had no answer.
I asked all these different men that come.
You see, somewhere we've got away from printing
the menu.
You ever go into a restaurant and give
you a gorgeously polished thing, you know, big
thing this size.
You look at it and say, I'll have
number one.
Oh, I'm sorry we ran out of that
half an hour ago.
Well, my wife wants number three, but that's
only Wednesdays and Fridays.
Oh, we'll take number six, but that's only
evening after six o'clock, and you can't
get a bite.
But that's all the church is doing today,
we're printing the menu.
You know, a little guy let you read
to him so long, and then he says,
show me daddy.
I believe the world outside is saying you
yell, and you shout, and you scream, and
you have all your fancy shows.
Show me!
Where is the glory of the Lord?
Where are the beautiful garments of holiness the
church should wear?
Where is the authority?
Where is the power?
God sought for a voice.
That's all we know about John Baptist.
The only thing he tells us about, what
kind of clothes he wore.
Isn't that interesting?
I'd like to see some Baptist preacher in
the same clothes, if he had the same
anointing.
Imagine the pastor of the fashionable church down
in Tyler, Sunday morning, going in with a
leather girdle around his lungs, and the smelly
old camel skin around his neck, with fleas
popping off here and there.
Boys, the deacons would arrest him before he
got in the pulpit.
But God's going to find his name.
Friend, listen, it's no good having a heart
as wide as this, if your heart's as
shrunk as that.
God doesn't measure our heads, he measures our
hearts.
He doesn't measure us by our theology necessarily,
he measures us by our relationship with him.
Our love relationship.
I preached once in that famous church on
Northside there on Boston Common.
It was there that that wonderful hymn was
written.
The organist and a member of the church
wrote that hymn, My Faith Looks Up To
Thee.
Thou Lamb of Calvary.
I said, would you sing it before I
preach, which they did.
I love that stanza that says, May thy
rich grace impart, no, yeah, may thy rich
grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my
zeal, inspire, as thou hast died for me,
so may my love to thee pure, warm,
and changeless be.
God help us, we go up after we've
sat four days in a seminar, about as
useful as going to a cemetery.
Very often.
We've got a bit more knowledge.
Most of us here are choking up on
knowledge.
We've knowledge, we can't work it out.
We don't want new theological books.
We don't need new seminars.
We need a new wave of obedience in
the church of Jesus Christ.
We're going to hear him say, sell all,
and that will mean maybe postponing a marriage.
Sell all, it means giving up a business
career.
Sell all, it means severing relationships with friends
or your church that you've loved and been
brought up in since you were this height.
The greatest thing in the world is to
hear the voice of God, as far as
I'm concerned.
My heart dances for joy when I hear
his voice.
I would rather hear God's voice in rebuke
than anybody else's voice in flattery.
If he rebukes me, he loves me.
If I'm coasting on and it's all so
easy, forget it, you must be sick.
We should be able to kiss the rod
that he chastises us with.
His correction is to move us to perfection.
Perfect in love.
Perfect in obedience.
Perfect in doing his will.
Well, you know what?
This is a prayer meeting.
What do you think about that?
We're going to pray.
I'm going to ask you to pray especially
for dear brother David.
I know he's got an awesome task.
He's got to finish off that book.
There aren't many guys go to bed at
three and four o'clock in the morning
as David has been doing.
You sit and talk to a little machine
and your secretary goes and he's sweating and
bleeding over that thing.
And I need prayer for Sunday morning for
ministry.
We need to pray for these other fellowships
around the country.
I said to Martha today, there are the
dear Browns at the back.
They're the patriarchs of this area.
If you don't know what patriarchs are, look
up in the dictionary, but anyhow.
They're the, oh my, should I say?
Betty, would it be all right if you
say you're the old timers?
I mean, they're the original papa and mummy
of this prayer meeting.
And I still get people, somebody called Martha
today and said, the prayer meeting is held
where?
Last day.
Oh, well, you weren't born here, were you?
You're here tonight.
You've moved around a lot.
You're here.
We've moved around a bit.
Finally, we're here.
There are people around the world that have
come as a result of that prayer meeting
in the house there and they've gone out
and they've given birth spiritually.
You take on the atmosphere in which you're
born.
You'll get born in a worldly church.
You'll be worldly all your life till the
Holy Ghost gets hold of you.
Isn't it something now when we have a
sanctified bowling alley next to the church?
They open a bowling alley and ask somebody
to pray over it.
I think they got mixed up.
You know, I read about Peter.
It says he was bald.
They got it all mixed up.
I'll tell you what, all those things are
going to dry up before long.
There's going to be a sudden surge into
maturity.
When I became a man, you remember the
day when you gave up every blessed thing
which tonight is an hindrance to you and
you won't give it up.
Don't pray about it.
You don't need to pray about it.
All you have to do is be obedient.
You don't have to ask God if you
should keep the Ten Commandments.
You could better keep them.
You'd be in trouble.
I'd say some of you thought you don't
keep the Sabbath.
Don't you pray for a loved one or
someone else if you're fooling around on Sundays
in Canton Fair.
Forget it.
Some of you go to movies.
You've told me you went to movies.
Some of the students around here.
We go to movies Sunday night.
You keep the Sabbath day holy.
Somebody who used to come here a lot
said, I don't think I have to keep
the Sabbath day.
It's Old Testament.
I said, your neighbour doesn't think he has
to keep the other commandment.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
And you can't stop him committing adultery.
You're breaking one commandment.
He breaks the other.
And if you break one, you're guilty of
all.
God has hinged revival onto keeping the Sabbath.
Read the fifth date of Isaiah.
Take your foot from my Sabbath.
That's for footballers, see.
Take your foot from doing your pleasure on
my holy day.
The Sabbath, not half of it, the Sabbath
is God's tide on your time.
It's his 24 hours, not, not giving God
that Sunday morning service and an extra buck
in the offering and then dashing off to
Canton Fair amongst all the junk.
Now I talk straight, you notice that, and
I walk straight.
You won't have to get somebody to interpret
the Greek while you're around here.
I can tell you without the Greek.
It may make you weak, but that's all
right.
Do you know the Christian life will only
work one way, and that's God's way.
God is not committed to bless anything you
do that's outside of his word and his
will.
Whether you like it or not isn't the
point.
He has said it.
And he says if you love him, doesn't
say you'll give extra in the offering or
do some other thing.
He says if you love him, you'll do
what?
You'll keep his commandments.
And I believe that means what they call
the Decalogue, the ten commandments as well as
the new commandment that you should love one
another.
There's a needy world outside.
I'm hoping that if you do go out
of this area, you'll go with a spark
of fire that God put in your heart
in this prayer meeting.
I mean these prayer meetings every Friday night.
As the old poet said, more things are
wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.
We do need to pray for these prayer
groups.
We need to pray for that group I
told you about in Urbana in Illinois last
week.
Young group of young men that have met
for eight years.
They've had street meetings.
They've had meetings in the parks.
They've been punched, pushed around.
They've been bruised.
Some of that group have been kidnapped in
America for preaching.
They've been lampooned in the national newspaper as
being a sect.
You see they're so near to God that
everybody thinks they're idiots.
The fool is that everybody outside that group
are the idiots.
I don't mean just their number.
I mean who are not walking in the
light as most people.
They've severed themselves from radios, from tv, from
worldliness, from worldly habits, for worldly customs.
They meet every day for prayer and intercession.
I'm sure as God looks down from heaven
he sees these groups.
That little bunch up behind the rock is
there.
Meeting every morning at four o'clock.
A group up in Illinois there, suffering for
his name's sake.
A group in Virginia that are praying.
A group in Kansas City came down to
see me.
That's the church where they pray two hours
in the morning, three hours in the afternoon,
and two hours at night.
And they're not writing a book about it.
Tell you what you'll never...
Here's a word of wisdom if ever I
gave you one.
You never see a prayer meeting on tv.
Now wasn't that worth coming to this meeting
to get to know that tonight?
I'll tell you what, that every prayer meeting
is a tv show in hell.
Every prayer meeting twists the thorn in the
side of the devil's flesh.
He hates prayer.
He fights you on your prayer life more
than anything.
Now face up to it.
You give a time to prayer and everybody,
your cousin you haven't heard from in 20
years will phone you.
Somebody else will call you up.
Somebody else wants to tell you some nonsense.
You know God is a...
all he's looking for is a bride.
That's what he's after.
Well if you want to come Sunday morning
you're welcome, if you can get a seat.
Go up to Brother Dunn's first and if
you can't get in with Dunn come down
to us and you may not get in
with us we don't care.
But God is looking after pure people.
Purity precedes power.
Purity means purpose.
Purity means progress.
Purity means passion.
Purity means victory.
If you haven't got it cry to God
for it here tonight.
You've got a sympathetic audience.
Tell God to take out the unclean thing.
Purify you.
Ask him for a passion for souls.
Don't if you don't mean it.
He may turn the heat on you till
you can't sleep at night.
I'm happy I don't know.
I slept one night, I don't know, slept
two hours last night and I'm a bit
older than most of you.
And if I can do it you can
do it.
You can't find me a man that's moved
his generation to God that hasn't been a
disciplined man.
Wesley went to bed at nine every night.
I go to bed every night at nine
now.
Won't get it tonight but normally I do.
Get up at four or three.
Got up yesterday morning I thought my I
feel so fit it's marvellous.
Oh maybe I should make a cup of
tea so I put some water on and
look at the clock it's 10 minutes past
12.
Where have I been?
Got up this morning it was uh What
was it?
Friendly past.
I got five minutes extra this morning.
I saw a statement by Follet.
He was a real old time assembly of
God preacher.
One of the greatest men this nation's had
and nobody recognized him much.
By every book you can buy him.
By Follet.
F-O-L-L-E-E-T-T.
His family came over in 1666 when the
Huguenots were driven out of France.
He's a marvellous man intellectually every way.
And he had a saying in a book
I think Martha read it to me there.
What was it?
What did he say?
Lord help me to live until I die.
Isn't that good?
You say well I'm going to live to.
No you're not.
Some of you are only existing you're not
living.
There isn't enough in the world to magnetize
you.
There isn't enough in Jesus to magnify you.
You're in no man's land.
Until you get severed from the world, the
flesh, the devil, all the trivial things, all
the vain things which charm me most and
help me least.
You get no progress.
Well I better quit talking.
Let's go to prayer.
Cry to God.
Let's cry that God will give us a
new incentive.
Give you a new vision.
Give you a new power.
Give you total purity in your heart and
your will, your emotions, your life.
Deliver you from the vain things, empty things
that charm us most and help us least.
Let's believe God.
Let's kneel in prayer.
Please feel free to pray.
Pray.
Thank you.