Most preachers seem to have an incurable habit
of buying books.
And I have suffered from this habit a
long while, I think.
People come to my home and say sometimes,
you have a lot of books.
I have maybe two thousand, but I don't
think I have many.
I know preachers who have five.
I know a preacher who has twenty-five
thousand.
That means you invest a lot of money.
But there are many great lives of outstanding
men that are written in two volumes.
Begbie wrote the life of the founder of
the Salvation Army, William Booth, in two very
interesting volumes.
There are two very large volumes on the
life of Mrs. Booth, the wife of the
founder of the Salvation Army.
There are two very fine volumes on the
life of Hudson Taylor, the founder of the
China Inland Mission.
And the first volume is called The Growth
of a Soul.
It explains God's dealings with Hudson Taylor himself.
And the second volume is The Growth of
the Work, which shows the expansion of the
work of the China Inland Mission in China.
I don't think it's very difficult if you
can manipulate words.
When I've been preaching the other week, a
fine-looking man came to me.
He said, you preachers have a way with
words.
Well, you need to have a way with
words if you're going to write and get
truth through.
I don't think it's difficult to write if
you have enough information to put a life
in two volumes.
But I suggest to you that only God
himself could put the life story of a
man in two words.
Particularly a man who is identified with supernatural
work.
A man who can strangle the economy of
a nation.
A man who can change the atmosphere.
A man that can subdue kingdoms and raise
the dead.
And yet God has put his name in,
put his history in two simple words.
He prayed.
That's really the epitaph of this amazing man
that we call a prophet, Elijah.
Now prophets come in all shapes and sizes
like most people.
We have major prophets in the Old Testament,
minor prophets.
And this man Elijah is one of the
most outstanding men in history.
And I'm quite sure in a day when
we're very generous with adjectives and flamboyant.
And we like to pay tribute in lots
of words.
That we would never reduce the phenomenal lifespan
and life work of a man of this
character in two simple words.
He prayed.
And yet God does.
He was a very normal man.
The Bible says he was a man of
like passions as we are.
To prove how natural he was, he stood
up to 800 men and ran away from
one woman.
That's some ratio, isn't it?
He could face 800 men but not one
woman.
That's pretty sensible.
But this man Elijah came onto the stage
of Israel.
Do you remember when he came?
How he came?
You remember how he went?
He went up in a whirlwind and then
he went up in a chariot of fire.
Everybody that goes to Sunday school knows that.
But where did he come from?
Nobody knows.
We don't know his father, his mother.
We don't know his history.
We don't know where he came from.
It doesn't matter where we came from.
It doesn't matter where we're going.
But it matters what we do while we're
here.
He was a man of like passions, the
word of God says, as we are.
And he prayed.
I was arrested in reading the New Testament
recently to discover what you may have discovered
a long while ago, that the disciples never
asked Jesus to teach them to preach.
They never said, Lord, we're fascinated.
You stun us with your miracles.
Show us how to manipulate and produce the
miraculous.
I think I was more stunned when I
realized that there is no record in the
New Testament that Jesus ever prayed with his
disciples.
Do you ever realize that?
In the last critical hours of his life,
he said to the disciples, you stay here
and I'll go pray yonder.
I think the outstanding privilege I've had in
my Christian life, apart from my relationship with
the Lord, was the privilege of going into
Dr. Toza's study at any hour that I
was passing through Chicago.
I took that opportunity many times.
I wish I'd done it more often.
He died fairly young.
And I can remember time after time as
we met together, he talked about prayer and
intercession and traveling.
Talked about men that he knew and said
that very scarcely do you find a man
who really is an intercessor.
Elijah was an intercessor.
Came onto the stage in the most critical
hour of the history of this great nation
of Israel.
Without wearying you, I remind you that it
was 58 years after the dividing of the
kingdom.
There had been a succession of seven kings.
And the second king did more evil than
the first.
The third did more evil than the second.
The fifth did more evil than the fourth.
The sixth did more evil.
And finally, Ahab did not exceed the iniquity
of the king before him.
He exceeded the aggregate iniquity of all the
kings before him.
And in the language of the Bible, the
enemy had come in like a flood.
You can find a summary of the events
at the end, not now.
But when you go home at the end
of the 16th chapter in the first book
of Kings.
The whole nation was flooded in impurity and
idolatry and iniquity and incest and evil.
And when the enemy had come in like
a flood, the preachers ran helter-skelter there
into the caves.
They hid away.
I was going to say, and I digress
a little there, concerning the prayer of Jesus,
I'll go back to this other in a
minute.
When I went to Dr. Tozer's church the
first time, I said to one of his
deacons, an outstanding artist in America, one of
the greatest commercial artists, Mr. Chase, I'm looking
forward to prayer meetings to pray with Dr.
Tozer.
He said, well, Tozer never comes to a
prayer meeting.
I said, why not?
Well, he did come for a number of
years.
He would give a dissertation on prayer.
And then he would say, now for the
next 15 minutes you can pray, anybody pray.
Nobody prayed.
They all waited until Dr. Tozer prayed.
Nobody dare pray, wait till he prayed.
And after he prayed, nobody dare pray because
he prayed.
He had a language, he had an intimacy,
he had a relationship with God, that made
everybody else feel how withered and helpless they
were.
Now I've listened to some pulpit orators in
my day, some of the greatest.
I've been preaching myself more than 50 years,
I'm getting old and wrinkled.
And I've heard in a forum in England
some of the greatest preachers that have preached
in the last half century.
And some of them were very dazzling, very
fascinating.
They were masters.
They had elastic vocabularies, they could stretch their
words, they could paint pictures, they could make
something up and down your spine, they could
chill you, they could give you a fever.
Because they knew how to put words together.
But I've met very few men that disturbed
me when they prayed.
Nobody wanted to pray after Dr. Tozer.
He had a language, he had a, he
had shall we say a disposition in prayer.
This in my judgment is why Jesus says,
you stay here while I go pray young.
They would never have understood his grief, his
anxiety, his sweat, his sweat as it were
great drops of blood.
They didn't understand this.
They were used to saying their little paternosters,
their little prayers, Our Father which art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name.
But beyond this they didn't know much about
intercession at all.
All right, let's go back to Elijah.
Elijah has come on the stage.
The enemy has come in like a flood.
He could have said then, I even I
only am left.
Instead of that, we discover that he faces
up to the issue.
He was a very lonely man.
I get a bit nervous when I hear
somebody's a popular preacher, there's something wrong with
him.
Jesus never was, Paul wasn't.
The man who's a popular preacher is missing
the beat somewhere.
Well, you can have it your way and
say there are popular preachers all right, but
I'll tell you one thing, you never find
a popular prophet.
And I believe the hour is so late
in America and England right now, in fact
on God's clock I think it's a few
seconds to midnight.
And not because of them, but in spite
of them, in spite of million dollar, multi
-million dollar crusades for a month or so
now that we have.
I can remember when certain men were terrified
that they spent a quarter of a million
on a crusade, they can spend a million
and a quarter now and it doesn't faze
them that much.
Now not because of these men, but in
spite of these men, America is worse off
tonight than it was 25 years ago, morally,
economically, spiritually, I don't care which way you
take its temperature.
Prophets are men that God produces.
They don't roll off the assembly lines of
Bible schools.
They're made in God's university and that's the
university of silence.
Elijah can do like everybody else, he can
quit, he can run away.
But reformers, prophets, a Savnarola, a Wesley, faces
up to the awesomeness of the day in
which he lives and he says either my
nation goes to hell or that God there
is asleep or somehow he can't get through
to this generation, I'll find the reason why.
I can hear Dr. Tozer saying again one
day, he said, Len, I'll tell you one
thing, I can't visualize a prophet in a
grey flannel suit and a college tie.
They were pretty rugged men and pretty ragged
men.
Prophets are God's emergency men for crisis hours.
And I think it's reasonable to suggest tonight
that you as a fine group of people
to come out Monday night or summer night,
you could be swimming or boating or something,
must have a little concern at least and
realize it's a grave hour in which we're
living.
What's this man going to do?
Join the gang?
Get a job?
Settle down?
Or is he going to lift up his
voice like a trumpet?
Is he going to face hell or high
water as the poet says?
Is he going to take everything that comes?
What's he going to do about it?
Well again you see, Elijah is not a
college boy.
He's not a seminarian.
Elijah is a God made man.
Elijah is so big and I remind you
again, he raised the dead, he strangled the
economy of a nation, he changed the weather,
he did a thousand things.
And yet despite his majestic faith, Elijah is
not found in Hebrews 11.
If I'd written Hebrews 11, I'd hardly put
anybody in it.
They're a dirty bunch anyhow.
I used to stand back and say, Abraham,
Moses, these majestic characters.
Then one day I sat down and just
thought it out a bit, Abraham.
Oh, he was the father of the faithful.
He stepped out in faith.
He stepped out in disobedience.
Read the second verse of Isaiah 50.
I called Abraham alone.
Did he go alone?
No.
He leaned on the young man and he
leaned on the old man.
And he got stuck with the old man
for 15 years and then after he died,
he got stuck with the young man a
bit later on.
What about David?
He's in the chapter.
David was an adulterer.
What about Noah?
He got drunk.
What about Jethro?
He made foolish vows.
What about Samson?
We'll talk about him tomorrow night.
He had his problems.
Do you think if I wanted to illustrate
faith, I'd take a harlot, write Rahab?
I'd put some people in that chapter of
faith that aren't there.
I would put a man that commanded the
sun to stand still on Gibeon and the
moon in the valley of Adullam because he
hadn't got enough time to finish a job
he was doing.
And so he changed the day, stretched it
a few hours.
But he isn't mentioned in Hebrews 11.
And Elijah isn't mentioned in Hebrews 11.
Here is a man who is a giant
amongst giants.
And again, when the enemy had come in
like a flood, he doesn't back off nervously.
He had discovered what we need to rediscover,
that one man with God is a majority.
Now if you don't have God on your
side, get some millionaires, get a committee, get
everything you can get.
You'll need them.
But if you're linked up to an omnipotent
God, which the prophets were, you don't necessarily
need these others.
Elijah is a phenomenal man.
Oh, somebody usually comes up and says, well,
I enjoyed your little talk.
Boy, that's bad when you sweat over a
sermon and they call it a little talk.
But somebody says, I enjoyed your little talk
on Elijah, but you failed to mention Elisha.
Well, I don't have to talk about Elisha.
I don't remember that God, the mighty God,
the everlasting Father, the God who sustains all
things by the word of His power and
hangs the world on nothing.
And remember, He's still saying to us, Thy
throne, O God, is forever and ever.
Maybe I mentioned yesterday, if I didn't, let
me mention tonight that in reading Hebrews, I'm
staggered to find that God has not a
single word to say to lost men and
women in Hebrews.
You can preach on Hebrews 2, chapter 3,
which preachers evangelists often do.
How shall we escape if we neglect so
great salvation?
But that is addressed to believers and not
to sinners.
There is not a word in Hebrews addressed
to sinners.
And there isn't an epistle in the New
Testament addressed to sinners.
God's problem in the Old Testament was not
the Amalekites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and any otherites
you have.
God's problem in the Old Testament was Israel.
God's problem tonight is not communism, or Romanism,
or any otherism.
God's problem has been, it is, and it
always will be, His church.
As the hymn writer says, with His own
blood He bought her, and for her life
He died.
And Elijah, this fantastic man.
When John the Baptist came, you remember that
they said, well, this, this, this, this must
be Elijah.
When Jesus died on the cross, they said,
He calls for Elijah.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, there was two
people with Jesus.
One was Moses, and the other was...
And in the end of the book of
the Revelation, there are two final men going
to testify to this world, and one of
them is...
Same man.
Elijah.
If you were to go into a Jewish
home at a festival season, you would find,
if they had six people around the table,
you would find seven chairs.
You would find the door open.
If you went to shut the door, they'd
say, leave it open.
And you'd say, well, well, there are six
of us eating the meal, why do you
have an extra chair?
Because Elijah is going to come back.
One of the most phenomenal men in history.
He had to be.
You don't have scales big enough for theological
knowledge, great enough for anything else.
That you can measure a man of the
caliber of this amazing man, Elijah.
He's got nobody to lean on.
Prophets never have.
They're lonely men.
If you aspire to be a prophet, you
better get ready, brother, to sell out to
everything else, because it's going to be a
lonely path.
You can be a jolly good boy, a
jolly good pastor, a nice guy, and all
the rest of it.
A young man told me last night, after
the meeting, he disobeyed God a few years
ago.
He wouldn't answer the call to preach, but
he's answering it now.
And he told me his age.
Well, I said, you're all right.
After all, isn't it Deuteronomy 4 that says
you can't be a preacher until a priest
until you're 30 years of age?
You could be a Levite.
You could be a soldier when you're 25.
You don't need brains to kill anybody.
I mean, you could be a soldier when
you're 20.
A soldier when you're 20.
A Levite who served in the Outer Court.
Run around after everybody.
But the man who's going to minister with
God could not minister until he was 30
years of age.
How old was Jesus when he began to
minister?
30.
How old was John the Baptist when he
began to preach?
30.
How old was Joseph when he began to
minister?
30.
How old was Joshua?
30.
Doesn't mean you have all the brains in
the world when you're 30, but this was
a restriction that God put down.
Now, I do not care.
I have never found, you can disagree, and
I don't care if the pulpit committee is
here or not.
If you are, bless you.
And if you aren't, same thing.
But I'm going to tell you this, that
you very seldom find a good pastor who
is a good preacher.
And a good preacher is usually not a
good pastor.
Nobody drew the people in Chicago like Dr.
Tozer.
But I stayed in a home of a
lady who taught in his church for 25
years, and she said in 25 years he
was only in my home about five times.
In 25 years.
I used to tell my people that when
they were healthy, they should be in church.
And if they were sick, it isn't my
job to visit you.
That's the job of the elders, read the
sixth chapter of Acts.
It's their job to minister to the sick.
It's their job to care for the dying.
It's their job to dispense the money that
the church gives to the poor, not the
pastors.
One of the greatest preachers of all time
in England, the king of the pulpit in
the north of England, was Dr. Alexander McLaren.
I've been in his great, fantastic church.
He packed it to the rafters every Sunday,
morning and evening.
And after they had said they would give
him a lovely manse, and in those days
a carriage and a horse, or horses, give
him one of the outstanding salaries in the
country.
And they thought they'd just got him tied
down.
He looked at the elders, in those days
they were all rather grey-bearded men, round
the table, and he said, Gentlemen, I want
to ask you just one thing.
I believe I'll take this pastorate.
Do you want my head or my feet?
You can have one or the other, but
not both.
Well, they had an idea, he didn't have
any brains in his feet, I suppose, so
they said, Well, we'd rather have your head.
He said, All right, you can have my
head, but I won't run around after the
church.
We don't build churches, usually, on great preaching
anymore.
Some, not many.
But I'm quite sure of this, wherever you
spread the table, people are so hungry in
these days, they come a hundred miles to
a Sunday morning service.
We were in a meeting, my dear wife
and I, not very long ago, and a
man came up after the meeting and he
said, Well, thank you, I have to get
off, I can't stay as these other people,
I must go.
I said, All right, have a good trip.
He said, Yes, he said, I drove three
hundred miles to hear you tonight, and it's
ten o'clock, I have three hundred miles
to drive back, but I'll be back tomorrow.
I'll be back the next night.
I'm not saying you have to drive three
hundred miles to hear me, but you see,
if people are hungry, and God is there,
and the food is there, they'll come.
And I pray, I've been praying.
I've prayed many weeks about this church.
In fact, I think I've prayed months for
it.
I've preached with a number of times, with
Adrian Rogers, and heard the church was vacant.
Decided I didn't want it, but I prayed
for the church, and I'm praying God will
send you the right man, an ambassador.
Preacher of the Word.
Elijah comes on the stage when everybody else
has quit.
The enemy has come in like a flood.
I don't know how it happened, but I
like to think that maybe they were in
the garden, cutting flowers, and suddenly this little
rugged, ragged man comes up, and he says
to this wicked Jezebel, who'd just got the
nation in her fingers.
She chased the preachers.
And then, like putting the lights out one
by one, she got the nation into darkness,
and under cover of darkness, there was an
invasion of priests.
And they built groves to ashtaroth and to
Baal, and every day, the stinking incense went
up to God.
Well, that troubled Elijah.
It doesn't trouble us.
You can go down the street and see
a Jehovah Witness church, or in these days
of sick ecumenism, and some rather sick charismatic
stuff too, you sit down with priests and
others who rebel against God.
And I expect you to kiss them one
night when you go to a meeting, and
tomorrow night they'll be contradicting all the Bible
says.
Elijah didn't do this.
Elijah stood up against the enemy.
Paul went down the main road in Athens,
the intellectual capital of the world, in his
den, and as he looked at this temple
and that, he says he, the sleepy Elizabethan
English says he was stirred, but the Greek
actually says, and here for once I agree
with the Amplified, he was angry.
That doesn't make us angry.
You go to Washington, most likely you'll go
see a 30 million dollar church the Catholics
have raised, and say, isn't it beautiful?
Oh, isn't it lovely?
As far as I'm concerned, it stinks like
a manure heap in God's nostrils.
It's an abomination.
Our trouble is, we get angry about things,
your little child upsets you, you get angry
and shout your head off, and things that
ought to disturb us, do not disturb us
anymore.
They were offering us sacrifices to Baal and
Ashtaroth, and every day God was smelling this
incense and nonsense, and he was angry, and
so was the man of God.
And he went up to this man, to
the king, and he says, listen, I want
to tell you something.
I'm going to tell you this, that God
is angry with this nation.
He's going to send judgment to this nation.
Well, I don't know what the man thought,
pardon me, I don't know what the woman
thought, but I know what the king thought,
because he knew what power these prophets had.
And Elijah says, I'll tell you how angry
God is, and he reached, as it were,
in his pocket, and he said, look, I'll
shut up, I'll shut up heaven.
There's going to be no rain according to
my word, not God's word, my word.
And he shut up heaven like that.
That's why it says in the next verse,
after it says he prayed, it says he
prayed again, otherwise we might not have had
rain till now.
There's going to be no rain according to
my word.
If I were to say to you tonight,
do you really seriously think that number one
need, number one priority here in America tonight
is real Holy Ghost revival, not this false
stuff that's going around now, not this which
is the imitation of that which is really
to come.
Because when God comes, he isn't going to
just touch a few charismatic people, when God
comes, he'll shake this nation from center to
conference like a terrier shakes a rat.
And he'll shake England too, because we're the
modern Sodom and Gomorrahs.
As I reminded you last night, I intend
to put my books out, but I never
want to commercialize, anyhow the money goes to
mission.
I don't even, I haven't made enough money
in the last few years even to publish
them, never mind make a profit.
What we have had has gone to our
boys or others on the field.
But in my new book, that Sodom had
no Bible, as I reminded you last night,
that Sodom had no Bible, it had no
church, it had no prophets, it had no
priests, it had no primates, but it perished.
How long do you think God's going to
put up with our iniquity, our sin in
England and America?
We've had the greatest revivals in history, we
produced the greatest teachers of the word of
God in history.
We've launched the greatest revivals in history.
There's never been a revival that superseded the
Methodist revival.
John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed at a
quarter to nine on the 24th of May,
1738, and immediately God dropped a life call
in the heart of that man, he changed
the character of the world.
I reminded you last night that Wesley preached
600 sermons in a row, and only six
of them inside of churches.
We raise our hat to him now, they
raise their boot to him in the day
he lived.
He finds a place in history as one
of the greatest of theologians and hymn writers,
he established schools and colleges.
Through the Methodist revival there was a purging,
cleansing flame went throughout the world.
You could say the same about Finney in
your revivals here in America.
I don't think America ever has had a
preacher like Finney.
I sometimes said to preachers they don't like
me for it, but I never set out
to be liked.
The Lord never told me I had to
be liked.
But I told the preachers sometimes that I
think evangelists are about the most stupid people
in the world.
They want to break up the fallow ground
and sow the seed and water it and
reap a harvest in 20 minutes.
Nobody else expects to do that but a
preacher.
Do you know that Mr. Finney preached 28
nights in a row and never made an
altar call?
He didn't preach God's love, he preached the
wrath of God.
He didn't say you're a nice little person,
God loves you, but he hates your sin.
He says God is angry with the wicked
every day.
He didn't preach love, he preached judgment.
He didn't preach mercy, he preached judgment.
He didn't preach God's love, he preached God's
wrath.
He didn't preach heaven, he preached hell.
He didn't preach grace, he preached law.
Night after night he pummeled those people and
they listened until they were in a state
of almost mental exhaustion and finally the fire
of God would break out.
Remember he went to a city like Rochester,
New York and had a crusade there for
about two months and left 100,000 people
genuinely born again of the Spirit of God.
That changed the character of that city.
And as I reminded you yesterday, a true
revival, I don't care how many people come
to the altar or how much you give
the evangelist, if it doesn't change the moral
atmosphere of the community, it's not revival, it
may be evangelism.
Revival is the work of the Spirit of
God in the church, evangelism is the work
of the church in the world.
Elijah says there's going to be no rain
according to my word.
I've said this many times, my dear wife
will tell you that if God laid all
the gifts of the Spirit out, and there
are about seventeen, not nine, all the gifts,
including ministry gifts, of the apostle and the
teacher and the evangelist and the prophet, if
God said, Ravenel, you can have any one
of these but only one, and he said
you can have that ministry of prayer, there'll
be nothing public about it, I'd choose that
ministry.
You see, when we talk about prayer, we
talk about a young man who really killed
himself praying.
David Brainerd died at the age of 28.
Prayed sometimes kneeling in the snow, when the
snow was up to his chin, he said,
and he could only reach it with the
tips of his finger at the end of
the day, when he'd wrestled for ten hours
in prayer.
And he had a tubercular disease, and when
he sneezed he sprayed the snow with the
blood that came off his lungs, and if
you thought that was a petal from a
rose and you took it and stretched it,
it would stretch like that a piece of
his lungs.
He literally prayed himself to death.
Payson of Portland.
The man who didn't have wall-to-wall
carpeting in his bedroom, he had a hardwood
floor like this, and after he died they
found that floor had grooves in it, two
grooves at the side of his bed, long
grooves, and as they washed his body to
bury him they discovered he had big hooves
on his knees, and somebody put one and
one together and said this is where he
used to pray, and he used to pray
interceding this way until he wore the very
grooves in the floor of his bedroom.
Oh, I could give you a list of
a lot of men in history, I have
a lot of books on my shelves, of
men that soaked themselves in prayer, men that
used to spend days and nights and wrestling
in prayer and tying up principalities and powers.
About four years ago my dear wife and
I were in a place not too far
from Chicago, and I hoped to escape, which
I don't go to churches where they ask
me to preach, I hope to be quiet
sometimes, it's difficult.
And they said Brother Rayden will give us
a talk before he leaves this morning, so
I shared something that the Lord had given
me.
As I left a man said to me,
would you like to see Brother so-and
-so, and I said I sure would.
I'll see if he's available.
He said yes, you can see him, and
I said come on Martha, let's go.
Oh, I'd heard about this man, this is
three years is it now, three years since
we were there?
Five, four, five?
A Scotsman, 83 years of age.
Well, I've seen many a Scotsman, 83 years
of age, just about as wrinkled as a
prune and looking as though he was ready
to go to the next world.
I went into the room of this man,
and he had a complexion most of you
girls, even 16-year-olds would envy.
He had a flawless skin, he had beautiful
pink cheeks, bright blue eyes, smiled, radiant.
Oh, come in, I've read some of your
books.
My, they've been a blessing, I'm honoured to
have you in my room.
I said sir, you're not honoured to have
me, I'm nobody.
I'm honoured to come in your room.
What's unusual?
He's living tonight, he's 88.
He looks about 48.
What's unusual about the little Scotsman?
Well, I think it's unusual.
When we went into his room, my dear
wife and I, and tonight, of course, it's
five years after.
So now, that man hasn't been to bed
one night in the last 28 years.
Isn't that amazing, you've got a man like
that in America?
They won't build an epitaph, they won't put
an image to him at the side of
George Washington or Booker Washington or anybody else.
88 years of age, and for the last
28 years, that man every night at ten
o'clock goes into his room and he
gets alone with God and he prays till
five or six in the morning whenever the
burden lifts.
I'd like to write his story, he won't
let me, I'd like to take his picture
and publish it, but he doesn't want it,
he says, this is a business deal between
God and myself, I'm not after rewards or
honours.
That man knows God's voice, do you know
why?
He went to the mission field, when he
went to the mission field, God said, go
back.
Go back where?
Go back to America, I want you to
intercede for America.
Oh yes, he'd raise money to support him
on the mission field, and people would say
he didn't know his own mind, but he
didn't have to, he knew God's mind.
The news in Northern Ireland isn't very good,
but if you went to Northern Ireland tomorrow
morning in a town called Portadown, I preached
in it many times, by five o'clock
as the grey skies begin to roll the
clouds back, you'd see people lined up at
the door of a little Irish woman, she
has little thin fingers and she isn't educated
and she doesn't know anything about theology or
philosophy or psychology or anything else.
She's just a little country woman.
Every morning at five o'clock she has
a line, as we say in England, a
queue, a line of people at her door,
with their problems and heartaches and diseases and
sicknesses.
They don't go after the preachers round about,
some very brilliant preachers in Northern Ireland, some
of the finest preachers in the world.
There's a Baptist preacher there, has a mid
-week Bible class of 400 people and has
had it, I guess, for 15 years.
There are great towering Gothic churches there, run
by the Presbyterians, but people don't line up
there, they go to a little woman, that
knows how to pray.
Elijah knew how to pray.
If I were to say to you tonight,
do you think the number one problem in
America is that we should have revival?
I guess you'd say yes.
Do you mean you want revival at the
price of standing in bread lines at four
o'clock in the morning?
That's what we've had in Europe.
Would you like revival at the price of
gas not just going up to a dollar,
but going till there is none and you
can't afford it anyhow?
And the machines of industry stop?
And the TV programs are just about vapor?
Would you like revival like that, would I?
Elijah prayed, and everybody knew when he prayed.
He shut up heaven and there was no
rain.
And if you shut up heaven, it means
you've no crops and you've no cattle.
Do you remember later, when he was going
down the road, he said to a woman,
make me a cake, and she said, why
should I make a cake?
Well, what are you going to do?
I'm going to take a little handful of
meal and a little drop of oil and
put them together and make a cake and
eat it and die!
Like everybody else.
If I could get my hands on that
money, Elijah, I'd strangle him.
She didn't say that, but I guess she
thought it.
Shut up heaven that there be no rain.
Oh, Jezebel must have gone home blazing mad.
Why don't he do something about it?
Isn't it really a marvelous credit to this
man Elijah that had no money and had
no governments behind him and had no banks
behind him and had no armies behind him
that they turned an army out to find
a man who hadn't got a weapon on
him?
I say, reverend, say, my God, I'd like
to see God give me a weapon.
I'd like to see God give you somebody
in this church, whether he be the pastor
or deacon or somebody else who could pray
like that until hell is afraid of him.
Elijah prayed.
Jezebel got mad.
The armies were searching for the man of
God.
His life is very simple.
Read the story.
What does it say in the next chapter?
God said to him, go hide thyself.
In the next chapter he says, go show
thyself.
It's wrong to hide yourself when you should
show yourself.
It's wrong to show yourself when you should
hide yourself.
Come on, Elijah, he says, you and I
are in business together.
You go down to a certain place.
I have commanded.
You just commanded the rain to stop.
You just took command.
Now I take command.
I have commanded a raven to feed thee
there.
Now, of course, you've been to a seminary
and juggled with a bit of Hebrew.
You know that the Hebrew word for raven
and the Hebrew word for Arab, it's the
same word.
Somebody says, you see, it wasn't a bird
that went and took him breakfast.
And by the way, this is a good
argument for two meals a day, isn't it?
God said, I'll send you bread and flesh
in the morning and bread and flesh in
the evening.
So some of you should cut a meal
out.
But anyhow, I'll send you bread and flesh
in the morning and bread and flesh in
the evening.
You say, it wasn't a bird, it was
an Arab.
Well, you've still got a miracle on your
hand.
You don't often find an Arab feeding a
Jew, do you?
Maybe it's a greater miracle.
I've commanded the ravens to...
I don't care what you say.
But I'll tell you this, that when Elijah
went and hid himself, he didn't lead a
forwarding.
Do you ever hear these preachers on TV
say now, now this is the end of
the month?
And dear friends, as you know, this is
a work of faith and begging.
I mean, this is a work of faith.
And will you please write to us before
next week?
You say, shouldn't I write?
Sure, send them a postcard.
That's all he asked for.
He didn't ask you for money.
You thought, now that's naughty.
You've got a bad mind if you think
he was after money.
He was after a bit of encouragement.
He just said, write to me before the
week.
No, no, no, no.
Elijah didn't say, send me, you know, he
didn't go round any back alleys.
You know, you know, this is the biggest
test in the Christian life, isn't it?
Go hide thyself.
This is where the preachers fall down.
They run after everybody, particularly if they have
money.
Go hide thyself.
I preached a while ago and a lady
said to me, what university did you go
to?
Boy, I felt tall.
And I said, Bush University.
She said, Bush University.
Do I know anybody that went there?
I said, well maybe, a fellow called Moses.
She said, Moses who?
I said, Moses.
God's ways aren't our ways.
Read the seventh chapter of Acts.
Moses was learned in all the wisdom of
the Egyptians.
He studied astrology and I don't know what
he didn't know.
The mystery of the pyramid.
Maybe did his homework at the base of
it.
And he had a chest full of medals.
He commanded an army.
He was 40 years of old, full of
life, ready to go, deliver a nation.
And God says, go hide thyself.
Not for 40 hours or 40 days or
40 weeks.
40 years.
That's not sensible.
You take a fully developed man, trained in
psychology and all the other, psychologist, theology, and
every other thing you can imagine.
He's the prince.
He's going to be another Ramesses.
He's going to be a man that everybody
bows down to.
And God says, get out of here.
You're no good to me.
Brilliant and self-satisfied and dependent and arrogant
as you are.
Go be a slave.
Hide thyself.
It's a long while, isn't it?
You know, the first Baptist preacher went to
college for 30 years.
John the Baptist didn't start preaching until he
was 30.
And he only lasted six months.
I know some Baptist preachers should have lasted
six months and got out.
But now fellows want to go to college
six months and preach 30 years.
Think of it.
I'm not going to do all your homework
for you.
But let me just say this.
Have you ever been to a church?
Have you ever considered Jesus?
30 years of age.
The son of God.
Going home every night and brushing the sawdust
off his legs and getting the bits of
wood out of his toes before he went
to bathe and have his supper.
30 years of patience.
30 years and he saw a nation oppressed
by the enemy.
They were slaves of the Romans.
And they had a massive decadent theology.
Men that had a form of godliness.
They knew all the new moons and Sabbaths
and everything else.
But God was far from them.
And Jesus watched it all.
It would have killed me.
He saw people buried and he knew he
was the resurrection and the life.
He saw people oppressed and he didn't raise
a finger.
And will you remember this please too.
That as far as I'm concerned I don't
think a diploma under one arm and a
trumpet under the other makes anybody a preacher.
The son of God never did anything.
He never said anything until the Holy Ghost
settled on him there in the Jordan.
How dare any other man go until he
knows the Holy Ghost is upon him.
And didn't the prophet say in Isaiah 61
the spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he has anointed me.
I'll tell you something for nothing.
If God the Holy One anoints you it
doesn't matter if all hell opposes you.
If he doesn't anoint you I don't care
if you follow Mr. Criswell into his famous
church or pastor this church or any other.
You'll fizzle out before long anyhow.
As I'll say tomorrow night the two most
elusive things in this world tonight are not
the lost island of Atlantis and the abominable
snowman.
The two most difficult things in this world
to get and sustain are number one personal
anointing by the Holy Ghost and number two
Holy Ghost revival.
You can get other things by organizing and
money and scheming and the genius of man.
You can't make a Savonarola, you can't make
a Wesley, you can't make a John Hush,
you can't make a John Knox.
By sitting down and asking him to answer
72 questions and giving him a diploma.
The hour is too late in American history
we could well get rid of 10,000
preachers.
As I said at the Southern Baptist Convention
and at the state convention I guess in
Florida and the state convention in Texas that
with all your busing I don't know a
pastor that wouldn't be glad to send a
busload of people out of his church every
Sunday.
Get rid of a bunch of carnal people
that won't shift one way or the other
they've been holding the church back all these
years.
Go hide thyself.
Wouldn't that be pretty dramatic when you shook
a nation from senators at conference and you
go back and whistle to the birds every
morning and you wash in a little stream
and lap up the water and that raven
brings you bread and flesh and you eat
it and then you settle down to pray
and seek God.
And Tosie used to say to me, Brother
Len remember this if you're going to see
God get on your belly and see God
face downward.
I don't see any sign here about your
Sunday school but I say this everywhere I
go anyhow so swallow it or reject it.
I don't make any bones about it, I
say it because I believe God wants it
say.
But I'm not interested in a number that
come to Sunday school, I'm not interested in
a missionary budget.
Primarily it's true in America if you want
to know how popular a church is you
go Sunday morning.
If you want to know how popular the
preacher is you go Sunday night.
If you want to know how popular God
is you go Wednesday night to the prayer
meeting.
And no church under God's heaven is stronger
than it's prayer meeting, not one.
This is the heartbeat, this is the powerhouse.
This is where the work is done.
I'll be mentioning something along this line tomorrow
night.
Let me just say this, this is the
biggest test.
There's a remarkable man in India and I
talked with him for hours.
His name is Bakht Singh.
And in the course of talking he said,
Brother Ravenhill I like America, those people are
so great.
They're wonderful people.
They're full of genius when it comes to
inventing things.
They have a dozen inventions or a hundred
in the kitchen and I don't know what
they don't.
And if they don't improve a thing, pardon
me, if they don't invent it they improve
it as they did with the steam engine
and the jet engine.
They didn't invent them but they improved them.
But he said, you know brother, pardon me,
I've never been in a church in America
where they knew how to worship God.
I said, oh no.
And he said, I haven't been in a
church in England where they know how to
worship God.
Well, I said this is very interesting, Brother
Singh, would you?
Well, I said, tell me this, if I
came to your church Sunday morning, what's the
procedure in the service?
And without batting an eye he just looked
up very pleasantly and he said, Brother Ravenhill,
the first three hours of our service Sunday.
Did you get that?
The first three hours is given to praise,
worship, adoration, thanksgiving, ecstasy.
And then what?
Oh, the second three hours we give to
prayer, intercession, supplication.
And then what?
The third three hours we have breaking of
bread.
One man has a hymn, another has a
song.
A woman gets up and says she's just
finished twenty days of fasting.
A man here says God dealt with him
here.
A man says the spirit awakened him and
told him to go put something right, something
it's stolen.
We give the whole meeting over to the
saints for each of them to make their
contribution.
Well, I said, Brother Singh, that's nine hours.
Do you have a service nine hours every
Lord's Day?
He said, no.
Oh, well, I said I wasn't thinking about
conventions or camp meetings.
I was thinking of the normal Sunday.
Well, he said, I'm talking about the normal
Sunday, except that the meeting doesn't last nine
hours always.
Sometimes the glory comes down where they're eleven
hours, twelve hours, thirteen hours, fourteen hours.
We don't know a thing about that, do
we?
I can remember Dr. Tozer, I can hear
him now saying, Len, I think I'll have
gone from this scene, but maybe before you
die you'll see people coming from foreign countries
to show us what New Testament Christianity is
all about.
Not a skimpy little hour from eleven to
twelve and telling the Holy Ghost he'd better
get off because some of the men in
the church want to get home and get
their feet up and get a Coke and
watch the Rams play the Goats.
I think sometimes we're about the most impudent
children God's ever had.
The Holy Spirit is welcome to take control
of the meeting, but not till the choir's
sung and we've done all the prayers and
taken the offering and then from twenty to
twelve, the preacher can have his say, but
don't go too long, brother, we don't like
long-winded preachers.
Come back tonight, Holy Spirit, at seven o
'clock and leave at eight.
And come back Wednesday night, Holy Spirit, at
seven o'clock and leave at eight.
It's got to that almost, as facetious as
it sounds.
When I talked with Duncan Campbell, a man
who has had revival, he died last year,
two years ago now, talked about the revival
in the Hebrides and he said, Brother Ravenhill,
the first six months of that revival in
the Hebrides, I went to church at eight
o'clock at night, every night.
After the men came in from fishing, they're
fishermen in the Hebrides, that little bunch of
islands off the west coast of Scotland, and
he said, I would go at eight o
'clock at night and I never left the
sanctuary before four o'clock any morning for
the first six months.
Some night I'd just give out the text
and it was as though I just took
a side and cut the people down and
they fell down off their seats.
These were very good Orthodox Presbyterians.
You know up in those islands where people
are not born again, you can't find a
family that breaks up in the morning without
daddy reads the Bible and says prayer, and
they don't break up at supper time without
daddy reads the Bible and says prayers, and
they're not even saved.
And if you told them you bought a
Sunday newspaper or bought anything on Sunday, they'd
put you on the prayer list even though
they're not saved, they'd say you're a pagan.
I'm convinced this is the reason they had
revival, because those children have had God's word
pushed into their hearts from since they were
this size, breakfast and night time.
And the seed has been there and then
the spirit, Paul may plant a pollis water,
God gives the increase.
And suddenly those islands were ablaze.
In one meeting one night, God seemed far
off.
Duncan Campbell said to a boy 17, I
think his name was John Smith, will you
all bow your heads, let's ask our friend
John to pray.
The church was packed.
That boy was 16 years of age then,
John Smith.
The deacons were there from the church, the
kirk as they call it, the kirk.
The church was crowded, but God was a
far off.
Duncan Campbell says the heavens were brass.
And I said, Lord I can't preach, there's
something wrong, bow your heads, pray.
The boy just began to recite the 24th
Psalm, who shall ascend, ah he says, ah
in his Scottish way, ah he says it's
humbling to pray if we're not right with
God.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord, he that hath clean hands and a
pure heart.
He that hath not lifted up his soul
to vanity, he that baptise, he that baptise
us not with his tongue, he read it.
And then he began to pray, and that
boy prayed for 45 minutes.
And when he finished praying, it was as
though a bomb burst, as though the heavens
burst.
And God descended, not merely on the kirk,
but on the tavern down the street, and
the dance hall.
Oh, I've written some books, I'm trying to
write some more, but brother, and I've seen
some experiences of God that almost terrified me.
But brother, I'd rather pray like that boy
prayed if I died five minutes afterwards.
That boy under God triggered off revival in
that area that transformed lives.
And there are men there in the bush
in Africa, and there are men in stately
churches who were born again, filled with the
Holy Ghost.
A big strong man, six feet three, was
staggering down the road, blind drunk, at three
o'clock in the morning.
And he slipped and fell in the shuckers,
they say, or in the ditch.
Three o'clock in the morning, a blind,
drunk, healthy young man slipped into the ditch,
and wonder he didn't drown.
He got out of that ditch at six
o'clock in the morning, leaping and praising
God, and was genuinely born again of the
Spirit of God.
Don't ask me how it happened in the
mystery of his unconsciousness, whether he heard Gabriel
speak, or God speak, or he heard again
the voice of God, or something revived in
him of a sermon he'd heard.
But he stood up and he said there
on that dirty road, dusty road, with all
the filth on it, I'm yours for here
to eternity, every beat of my heart, every
thought of my mind, all I have.
And he's turned out to be one of
the greatest modern preachers in Scotland.
We sing it, don't we, but we don't
know much about it.
I know not how the Spirit moves convincing
men of sin.
We just want folk to walk the aisle
and not saying that that's wrong.
Maybe it is sometimes.
But I'll tell you it's something when God
gets his hook in men, and they wriggle
and they squirm for six months, and I'd
rather a man get so blazing mad that
he tells the church to go to hell
and everybody else.
But at the end of six months that
man has an experience with God, and he
never backslides one minute after that.
He's radically transformed.
But a man doesn't say because he quits
a lot of lousy sins and says he
wants to join the church.
If a man is really genuinely converted, the
Christ, whom the Holy Ghost put in the
matrix of the Virgin Mary, immediately that man
is born again.
Christ is born in him.
And if he isn't, he can give up
his drinking, his lusting, his lousy women, his
sin, his gambling.
I don't care what he gives up.
He's only reformed.
He's not regenerate.
And once the Spirit comes, and we don't
know much these days about prevenient grace.
Evangelists must get everybody to the altar in
their little meeting.
Somebody else might get their labor and their
sweat.
I don't care a hill of beans whether
anybody comes to an altar any night I
preach.
If God, the Holy Ghost works, they'll come.
We were in a meeting a few weeks
ago.
I should have gone out to Chesapeake to
thirteen, what were they there, Presbyterian churches.
And I'd look forward to going, and they
said, we've read your books, and we're selling
them, and we've given them out, and asked
people to read them, and we believe God's
going to work.
And a week before I went, they cancelled
the whole citywide crusade.
I phoned a fellow, and I said, you
said if I had a cancellation, you wanted
me to come.
He said, yes, yes.
I said, well, it's next Saturday.
He said, it's alright, it's alright, come.
He said, this is God.
I went to his church.
Was it much bigger than the platform?
I don't think it was.
Just about as long, as square as this.
Oh boy, this is something you preach to
a couple of thousand folks.
You come in a little orange box like
this.
Sunday morning it was packed.
Sunday night they had a truck, sticking chairs
in the place.
Monday night we took the foreign legion hall,
packed that.
Sunday night we packed the church.
Monday night the foreign legion hall.
Tuesday night, where'd we go?
A Baptist church, up on a hill.
Wednesday night the church was nearly full.
Thursday night it was packed.
Friday night it was packed.
There were Pentecostal preachers there, Presbyterian preachers there,
Methodists, and don't mention this, a few Baptists.
And Salvationists, and I don't know who were
there.
Just before we left on this tour, we'd
been over in the islands, in the Bahamas,
the last about seven weeks.
And just as we were leaving, I got
a letter from this young man, and he
said, Brother Ravenhill, I hope you'll come back
this fall.
I can't tell you what God's been doing.
He said, two nights before you finish the
meeting, there's a very fine, cultured, well-educated
Methodist preacher there.
And he listened, and he got angry, and
God got down in his spirit.
And he went to his stately church on
Sunday morning, and they went through all the
trimmings, you know.
Miss Jones gargled to music, and the choir
sang, and they had the other trimmings.
And then he said, it's time for the
sermon.
I'll have to dismiss you, because that's all
I've been doing for the last few months,
preaching sermons, but I've had no voice, no
message from God.
And I'm not going to preach till he
talks to me.
God bless you.
Well, that didn't go down too well with
Deacons, a few others.
The second Sunday they went to church, God
bless you, he said, God hasn't spoken to
me yet, so I can't preach.
Well, the Deacons were nearly climbing the walls.
What are we paying for anyhow?
He's been a good fellow, we like what
he's said.
Sure.
You usually like what men say, we don't
like what God says.
They went to church the third week, and
the pastor smiled, and opened his Bible, he
said, well, it's the same as last week
and the week before, I haven't heard from
heaven.
Good morning.
What's gone wrong with him?
He's been a good pastor, a good preacher
till now, I mean, what got in his
head?
They say he went to hear a crazy
Englishman that was around here the other week,
and something got into him.
Well, I'll tell you what, he's going to
have to change this, or else he's going
to get out.
They went the next Sunday morning.
Nobody left the church saying the pastor came.
They left the church saying God came.
He opened his Bible, he said, I have
a word from the Lord.
This is the cry of the people, is
there any word from the Lord?
I have a word from heaven.
Do you know that man hadn't preached ten
minutes before that stately church exploded, and people
began to run to the aisles, and cry
to be saved, and cry to be filled
with the Spirit, and God began to manifest
himself in that meeting.
The whole thing had a spiritual earthquake.
I'll tell you, when God speaks, something happens.
I spoke last year at the National Council,
pardon me, at the National Council, yes, of
three World Baptists, about 800 of them in
that stately auditorium there in Fort Worth.
We had a wonderful night.
I preached about half an hour over time,
but that's not bad for me.
And I got a whole shoal of letters.
I got one just the other day.
This young man said, I went home, I
was very disturbed.
You know, I'm a seminarian, and I do
things decently and in order, and I had
a nice church, and things were going well,
but, but, but.
We had an Englishman whose church was doing
well, Edwin Hatch.
His church was packed.
The bankroll was packed.
He was the most popular man in town.
One night he went home, and he got
over the chair in agony.
He said, God, I've got everything I wanted
as a young man.
A packed church, plenty of money, prestige, everybody
likes me.
But somehow the atmosphere isn't instinct with deity.
You don't drood in the sanctuary.
And he says, I grabbed my pen, and
he said, he began to write.
A hymn, I think, one of the loveliest
hymns we have.
Do you know what he wrote?
He never altered it after he wrote it.
This is what he wrote.
Breathe on me, breath of God.
Fill me with life anew, that I may
love what thou wouldst love, and do what
thou wouldst do.
Breathe on me, breath of God, till I
am holy thine, till all this earthly part
of me glows with thy fire divine.
In the introduction of his book, and I
must hurry now.
In the introduction of his book, Bowne's book,
Path Through Prayer.
Tomorrow night I'll have some books out.
Bowne's wrote eleven books.
I took seven of them, and I tried
to take the overlapping parts out.
And gave you a book called, The Treasury
of Prayer.
But Bowne says in his book on prayer,
one of the most used books in the
world, that while the church is looking for
better methods, and better machinery, and more money,
and more of this and the other, God
is looking for better men.
That's all he's looking for.
Let's rush through Elijah now.
Shut up heaven, go hide thyself.
Oh, that's hard.
That's hard.
One of the things that makes us feel
pretty good is this.
We've been taught, taught, taught, to tithe.
To tithe.
And we do it religiously.
You make a hundred dollars, you take ten
out.
Maybe you give God a little bit more.
And you say, well that's right isn't it?
I don't know.
Where do you get it from?
The Bible.
What does it say?
Bring the tithe?
No, no, no.
Bring all the tithe.
And that's the trouble.
It's easy to tithe your money, isn't it?
In an affluent society.
You give God a tenth of your money,
you say, I do that every week.
I'm going to keep doing it.
I'm not arguing with you.
Keep doing it.
But if you're only giving God a tenth
of your money, you're cheating.
He said, bring all the tithe.
Do you give God a tenth of your
time?
You give God a tenth of every twenty
-four hours.
A tenth of twenty hours is two.
Four hours over, four sixty minutes is twenty
-four.
It means you give God two hours and
twenty-four minutes every day.
And on top of that, you give Him
a bonus.
Because if you only give God a tenth,
that's only paying God's income tax.
It's what you give after that.
Bring the tithe and offerings.
It's the offering which shows how much you
love Him.
How much do you give Him over two
hours and twenty-four minutes?
For safety, you'd give Him three hours a
day.
Hmm?
Any of you behind in your tithes?
Not money, time.
Do you tithe your conversations so you can
speak?
Do you tithe your lips so you don't
speak?
You see, when you talk down this line,
everybody has an excuse.
It's either bondage or legalism.
You can't find any man in the Bible
or out of the Bible who hasn't been
a disciplined man.
What did Jesus get?
Twelve disciplines.
No, twelve disciples, but that's what it means.
Discipline.
We're not disciplined anymore.
We get up when we want, go to
bed when we want, spend what we want,
do what we want, go where we want.
You never find a man who's moved his
generation for God who's been of that caliber.
I have a lovely son.
I got three marvelous boys.
As a matter of fact, if you don't
know, three best in the world.
And they're all in distant countries.
Now remember, we talked with Paul.
Sixteen years of age, going to the finest
school in Ireland.
The Eaton of Ireland.
Went to Royal Patora School.
The three boys did.
God made it possible.
I've been serving God on the road since
1949.
I've never asked anybody for a dime.
I never will.
Never send out begging letters.
Don't tell people what great crusades I've had
or I haven't had.
It's not their business anyhow.
I work for God.
And I don't owe anybody a dime.
God's paid all the bills.
Thank you for the offering tonight.
If it's only a thousand dollars, it will
help.
As long as you make another thousand tomorrow
and another thousand Wednesday night.
No, I've never asked people for money.
Why do I?
When my little boys were at home, they'd
sometimes sit with a leg up doing like
this.
And Martha would go...
Little fella had his shoes all up.
He didn't run and tell me his shoes
were through.
I'm his daddy.
I understand him.
You think my Heavenly Father doesn't have to
take care of me and know what I
have to do?
I made a couple of trips around the
world.
Never asked anybody for a dime, but I
made it.
May have to make one next year.
I don't know.
We've got a great God.
But going back to Paul, he was at
this grammar school.
He's a pretty brilliant fellow too.
Do you know that little fella said one
day to his mummy, what was it, Martha
dear, about 10 or 11?
He said, I'm not going to eat any
more candy now.
Why not?
Well, maybe I should start disciplining myself because
I believe I'm going to the mission field
and there won't be any candy on the
mission field, so I think I should start
right now.
Well, he started with candy.
We used to go out to prayer meetings
in Ireland, the meetings on the back of
a bug, come home at 2 o'clock
in the morning.
We lived in the part of an old
castle.
It had a big courtyard, about as big
as this room, and as we came in
this old place, there would be a light
burning upstairs and Martha would say, Paul's light's
still on.
Well, I'm addicted to tea, you know, I
have to have a cup of tea before
I go to bed, so I'd take a
cup of tea and then Martha would say,
do you think you should see Paul?
I said, darling, look, Paul can pray till
6 o'clock in the morning, I'll never
interrupt his prayer, but he'll be cold, there's
no heat in the room.
We'd get into bed and wake up at
3 and you could see a light, the
light shining in the yard and I'd go
in the corridor and open the door quietly
and say, Paul, and you know what, he'd
hold the bed, he'd pull all the clothes
off and the big comforter, you could only
see the top of his hair standing up
and there was a little guy, he's very
frail, weighed about 120 pounds and here's this
16 year old boy, he'd been praying from
8 o'clock at night and he was
still praying at 2 in the morning.
Not one night a week, every night a
week.
Take his Bible, but I tell you, God
made a man out of him, I didn't.
I tried to help him, I tried to
counsel him, I didn't try to get him
to wear my sackcloth, I didn't ask him
to share my tears over a lost world,
I didn't say, look, most of these preachers
are playboys anyhow.
I said, Paul, you get to the word,
read it and pray and seek God's mind.
All men are born equal, you know that's
not true.
They have equal rights to freedom and a
lot of other things, we're not born equal.
The boy that was child born in a
ghetto this afternoon isn't equal to the boy
born in a Rockefeller home, he'll inherit millions.
We're not equal intellectually, there are a thousand
ways we're not equal, but I'll tell you
one thing, if you're genuinely born of the
Spirit of God, we're all born equal here.
You have every right to everything that anybody's
ever had in history if you'll seek God,
but he's not going to give you it
because you read a book on the weekend
of Watchman Nees or Leonard Ravner or anybody
else's.
Young fellows, we've got a bunch of them
coming to our house this summer, looks as
though we're going to have a seminary there.
Some very brilliant men, some of the best
in the country today.
David Hill that's going to speak over at
St. Petersburg.
Go hear him you teenagers, if you have
to borrow the money to get there, go
hear David.
Six foot two, handsome man, faced the devil,
being instructed in the deep things of the
occult more than maybe any man on earth
and was just going to hand his soul
over to the devil and realize that was
the price.
And he screamed out in that great monastery
on top of a mountain there, where was
it, Peru?
In Peru.
Sitting before three of the most learned men
in the occult.
Men that practice levitation, get out of the
bodies and go away.
Men that would say to him, come here
David, come here, look I want to write
this.
This is what's going to happen in your
life tomorrow.
Ten o'clock in the morning you do
this, twelve this, three o'clock this, and
they give him a whole program of his
life for the next week, know everything he's
going to do, and it would all work
out.
They said, David you've got great potential, you
can be one of the world's leading men
in this cult, but there's a tremendous price
to pay, and he knew it was a
case of handing his spirit over, and he
said at that moment, my God, Jesus have
mercy on me, he shattered the stillness of
that monastery, and he fled.
That boy has been talking for six hours
straight with Billy Graham in a chair, talking
about world conditions, talking about the underworld they
live in, talking about the leading society people
in Paris, where he used to sit down
with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and
gamble and play cards, and the cultured people
of England, and he's been in and out,
up and down, and that man has the
anointing of God, and you pray for David
Hill, I do every day, never miss.
David Hill is coming, a bunch of other
fellows, we're going to spend the next two
months, what, June, July, July and August at
home.
I could go out and make money in
missions, crusades, revival meetings, conferences.
I don't find anything in the Bible about
making it, it says have bread and water,
and I'll supply your need.
The greatest need of this hour is that
God find some young men.
Jesus didn't knock at the door of the
seminary.
Jesus didn't go to the high priest and
say, do you know any young sociable young
men, that have education and little culture and
refinement, that would really adorn the gospel.
He went to a swearing, blaspheming man like
Peter.
He went to a hated tax gatherer like
Matthew.
He went to a couple of fishermen, and
got them, and shaped them, and they weren't
much good after he spent three years with
them.
And he says, go out, turn the world
upside down.
Boy, that sounded great.
Go into all the world and preach the
gospel, and before they could start, he says,
stop, tarry.
Till you'll be endued with power from on
high.
Let me say this simple thing before I
finish.
A church, that has apostolic success, never has
to argue that it's in the apostolic succession.
You know what the apostolic success is?
Chapter 2 of Hebrews.
The foundation of the gospel, signs, wonders, miracles,
divers, gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Let me wind up with two things.
Dr. J.B. Phillips, a stuffy Englishman, sitting
by his desk a few years ago, reading
the authorized version.
Sleepy Elizabethan English, and he thought, oh boy,
I don't know, this thing seems so stale.
And he just reached back on his swivel
chair, and reached for his Greek New Testament,
and opened it like that, and he began
to read the Acts of the Apostles.
Boy, that's a fiery book, isn't it?
Fifty-two times in the Acts of the
Apostles, the Holy Ghost is mentioned.
Forty times, prayer is mentioned.
Because if your life ever gets touched with
the Holy Ghost, one proof that you're filled
with the Spirit of God is this, according
to Jude, praying in the Holy Ghost.
And he began to analyze it, he says,
this is the norm of Christianity.
After all, God never designed any backsliding for
his church.
This is the norm of Christianity.
This is the church, before it became rich,
and short of breath, by prosperity.
This is the church of Jesus, before it
became muscle-bound by over-organization.
This is the church where people did not
sign articles of faith, they acted in faith.
This is the church where people did not
say prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost.
This is the place where they didn't gather
together the intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicines, they
healed the sick.
If you go to a commissioning service, where
they commission young men and women to go
to the mission field, and they don't read
the whole riot act, ask them why.
What did Jesus say?
He says, go into all the world, heal
the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead.
I don't believe that's ever been abrogated.
We're trying to cut the Holy Spirit down
to fit a little form.
Now I'm against all the weird, wild, false
fire, and all the subtle things that Satan's
spreading these days.
But I want to tell you, I stand
100% behind that book.
God has never withdrawn one of his promises.
Go hide yourself Elijah, he went and hid
himself.
I'm tempted to tell you a story of
a man in Africa that did that at
Baptist, I won't, maybe another night I will.
Then God said, go show thyself.
I've commanded a raven to feed thee there,
I've commanded a widow to feed thee there.
Who wants to sponge on a widow?
I don't know anybody that does, except evangelists.
Who wants to sponge on a widow?
Hey lady, would you make me a cake?
Make you a cake?
I've a handful of meal and a drop
of oil, putting them together, make a cake.
For my boy and myself, we're going to
eat it and die.
Make me a cake.
Well, I suppose I may as well die
today as tomorrow.
She made the cake.
Make yourself a cake.
And when she went back to that battle,
it was full to the top.
The crews of oil were shooting oil like
an Oklahoma gusher.
No, no, no, no.
Right until God rent the heavens and they
had a harvest.
I believe that woman took that last handful
of oil out of that barrel.
And she took the last drop of oil
out of that crews every day.
Because faith has to be tested if it's
going to be trusted.
I think I count about twenty millionaires and
multi-millionaires amongst my friends.
They never give me a dime.
I don't want them to.
Because when I start looking, all they said,
anytime you need money, write.
I've never written to one of them.
Ask my dear sweet wife, in twenty years
I've never written to one of them, ask
for a dime.
Why should I?
Because as soon as I lean on them,
God will pull the support up.
If I lean on the arm of flesh,
why do I need God?
If I have God, why do I need
them?
He may use them at times, sure he
may.
Make a little cake.
They had a little room for the prophet.
The lady had a little boy.
One day the preacher came in and the
lady says, Well, I've been wondering about you.
You're a nice kind of fellow.
Boy, I've given you a home, I've given
you food.
I've shared everything I have with me.
And here's my baby, he's dead.
Oh, he said, don't you worry.
You don't know who I am, do you?
I'm the greatest revivalist in the world.
I'm a man that can raise the dead.
You watch this, give me your body.
Here, Lord, you see this kid healing.
There you are, catch it, baby.
That's the way we do it on TV.
You know what it says, Elijah?
He took the child in his arms and
he ran up into a loft.
Have you got a loft in your life?
Or a basement?
Or the back of an old barn, where
your knees have been rubbing there in the
sawdust, maybe in your tears, and washed out
floor?
I know an old man in Ireland, my
old prayer partner Tom Hare, and they've refurnished
his house, but he had an old beaten
up chair, he said, don't touch it.
The print in that chair was all stained.
That man spent two whole nights a week
in prayer for about 20 years, every night
by himself, and that chair was stained.
Don't touch it.
He ran up into a loft and he
prayed, and nothing happened.
He prayed again, nothing happened.
And when we pray a couple of times,
nothing happens, what do we say?
Usually it's not God's will.
But the third time he prayed, he stretched
himself on the child.
And he prayed.
If I could paint, I'd like to paint
that picture.
Nobody's ever painted it as far as I
know, not one of the classic paintings.
Elijah coming down and giving the woman a
little baby, the little thing has its fingers
in his whiskers, and he says, here, here.
And she says, oh, marvelous.
He says, here's your child, alive.
Do you remember what he said?
By this, not by the oil, not by
the cruise of oil, not by the batter
of meal, by this I know the heart
of man of God.
By what?
By the fact that he raised the dead.
Isn't that the ministry of the church?
You hath equated to a dead, in trespasses
and in sin.
This is our mission.
To push the powers of hell back, as
I'll talk about tomorrow night.
To demand that men and women, I don't
care if it's some whore on the street
tonight, selling her body for five dollars.
Or like girls I used to talk to
in New York, that sold theirs for a
thousand to some of your famous ballplayers.
I don't care if they're boys, like one
I talked to about 25 years of age,
who was in a murder when he was
eight, a double murder when he was twelve,
a beating, so many murders he'd lost count,
and had been ten years in Sing Sing,
and Jesus Christ got hold of him like
that.
Do you know what?
There's no place on God's earth more exciting
than the church of the living God, when
God is brooding there, and there's no place
on God's earth more boring when he isn't
there.
Finally, I kept you a long while, but
then you gave me a lot of money,
so I have to pay you back, you
see.
I often say my prayers, but do I
ever pray?
Prayer is so simple, a child can do
it, prayer is so profound, that the greatest
prayers in the Bible had no language at
all.
It will exhaust your vocabulary, it will exhaust
you.
And God being my witness, my dear wife
will tell you, I try to spend time
in prayer, but in the last few days
I've been meditating.
I'm not upsetting my plan when these boys
come.
If they're going to come, they're going to
get up in the morning.
We'll most likely be up before the birds,
four o'clock, three o'clock some morning.
I'm not young, the only thing I envy
about people is neither the brains nor the
money.
If I could turn the clock back and
be thirty again, I'd like it.
I can't.
But I made up my mind I'd be
sixty-six.
I don't know when, week Monday I think.
If you want my address, I'll give you
it.
I'll be at Peter Lord's.
But I'm determined more than ever by the
grace of God to, as far as I
can, not just be a weekend Christian, and
you can spell weekend whichever you want, W
-W-E-K or W-E-A-K,
not to just serve God to escape hell
fire and try and get a bit of
a reward, but to live for things that
are worth Jesus dying for.
And resolved by the grace of God that
day by day, He'll get my share, a
share of my life.
God's looking for men, many men He's going
to offer tonight, a blessed prayer life.
Would you like the baptism?
Nobody wants, everybody talks about baptism of the
spirit.
Nobody wants a baptism of suffering.
I can't find anybody who wants a baptism
of suffering.
A baptism of a broken heart.
A baptism that'll throw your golf clubs away
and your bowling alley maybe and you say
there's not long from here to eternity.
After all, if America doesn't have revolution, pardon
me, if she doesn't have revival, she'll have
revolution.
Don't make any mistake about that.
I'm going to ask you to sing a
verse of the hymn that we sang last
night.
Holy Spirit breathe on me until my heart
is clean.
It's 174.
174.
We'll sing the second and the third stanzas
and if tonight God's talking to you about
your bankrupt prayer life, whether you're a preacher
or a deacon or a big shot or
no shot, you say, Brother Raven, I don't
want to leave this meeting as I came
in dry, withered prayer meeting.
Dry, withered prayer life.
No man, I don't care who he is.
And Dr. Billy Graham and I respect him
very highly.
Down to Mr. somebody here that nobody knows
even if you're a garbage collector.
No man is greater than his prayer life.
You can have 50 diplomas, PhDs and the
devil will laugh at the whole bunch but
I'll tell you what, if you know how
to pray you'll make him suffer.
Maybe we could start reviving your life tonight
by saying my prayer life is bankrupt and
I own up to it.
I'm going to tell God about it.
I'm going to apologize to him and repent
of it.
I'm going to ask you to sing these
two verses.
I'm not going to beg.
I'm not going to coax.
If God has spoken why should I talk
anymore?
If he hasn't I'm wasting my time.
As you say I want to put it
straight with God tonight.
We'll stand.
We'll sing these two verses straight through then
I'll pronounce a benediction but if you want
to meet God walk right down the aisle
come and kneel.
There's two empty benches here.
Tell him you're a Sunday school teacher with
no passion for your class.
Tell him you're a professional preacher without any
broken heart for lost men and women.
Tell him you give permissions but you've no
vision for a lost world.
Be honest about it.
After all you're going to be found out
one day.
Verses two and three one seventy four shall
we sing?
You rise to sing.