Pineland - Part 3

You're probably tired tonight because it's been such an intense weekend, and sometimes people say to me after a weekend like this, I, on a Sunday night, I'm really tired, and I say, well, you haven't done anything, you've just sat there. I've been doing the speaking, and then they would say, you don't understand, we have to do the listening. So, anyway, it's been tremendous.

If you've not been with us, we started on Friday night, and then yesterday morning we had two sessions on the Old Testament theology of prayer. If you are interested, you know, sometimes when we are in seminaries, and Bible colleges, and in conferences for pastors in different countries, and we have the ability all the time to go into the intensity and the details of what I've just tried to share, of the cream of the material. In fact, what we've tried to do this weekend is probably to take out the cream out of eighty to a hundred hours of just material on the Old New Testament theology of prayer.

Yesterday morning, we mentioned about those eleven Hebrew words that he's speaking to us about prayer, and how the prophets in the Old Testament were so affected by the Messiah that was going to come, and that He was going to be a man of prayer, Christ, and how three times in the Old Testament, the prophets would use one of those Hebrew words, and look upon Christ, and refer to Him as a prayer. Those sixteen moral imperatives of God as they relate to prayer, more than two hundred Old Testament prayers, eighteen classic Old Testament prayers, the understanding that we cannot look at the Old Testament prayers and just study them in their essence and their meaning as such, but that we need to go to the lives of the people that pray those prayers. And in order to understand the Old Testament prayers, you need to come to grips with the revelation of God upon the lives of those people.

And so when God gave him a revelation of Himself, the consequences of that revelation is the fact that they had an encounter with God. And the combination between understanding Old Testament theology as it relates to prayer is this revelation of God that brings them to an encounter with God, and the consequences of that is that they did exploits for God. And when you bring those three factors together, it's a building up of seventy-five percent of the sins of reality that takes you to their prayer.

And so when they pray that prayer, you need to study that prayer. And what that prayer will do is it will take you right back to their encounter with God, and their revelation of God, and that which they did for God. And a classic example is what you would find in the life of Elijah.

In James chapter 5, when James said, Elijah was a man just like us we are. He prayed, and as a result of his prayer. And the Bible says, The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much.

And if you take those statements, When does prayer become effectual? When does prayer become fervent? When does prayer come from a life that is righteous before God? When does prayer availeth much? And you study those four statements, and then you go to the Old Testament. You discover those great characteristics in the life of the Prophet Elijah. But, if you go to 1 Kings chapter 18, and you look at the prayer of Elijah at Mount Carmel, only fifty-six words in the Hebrew language, you will discover that that takes you back to his revelation of God, how God took him from one place to the other, what Elijah did for God, and then how he prayed it.

And so that's how we would be able to understand the Old Testament's prayer. I'm just sad, you know, because I kept saying to people that we've really just scratched the surface. I wish I could take you with me to the land of Peru in February of next year, when in the city of Lima we are bringing sixty Christian Missionary Alliance churches together in a stadium for a week of prayer.

Some of those churches, if you go to those churches, it's incredible what God is doing in the land of Peru. I don't know how many years ago, there were only about three percent evangelicals in Peru, and today they're heading towards twenty percent of people who are evangelical Christians. And you go to churches there, I was in a church in Linci in Lima in the beginning of this year, they have seven services of more than a thousand people in every service.

And so for seven times, I had forty minutes to preach the same message. You say, what happened to you? I was still preaching at three o'clock the next morning, you know. And so when you go there and spend a week in prayer with those people, and so in the evenings we have concerts of prayer, and I've asked Pastor Steve, he would allow me tonight to mention to you that if you want to receive our prayer letter, because God has opened for us doors in between thirty and forty countries.

The Asian continent, in Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and in South America, the African continent, and Eastern Europe, fascinating what's happening. Kosovo, there's villages in Kosovo that you can go to where there used to be two thousand people. And the pastor would take me and say, you don't realize that there are about two hundred people in this village.

A thousand of those people were found in a mass grave. Eight hundred of them were never found. And there are only two hundred people left.

You know, we sit here in Canada, we have no idea. But if I take you to the land of Peru and for a week of prayer with these Latin American countries and these Spanish speaking Christians, brother and sister, they are so hungry for God. I mean, it blows every circuit in your mind.

It's your new release on life just to sense the hunger. We've got with us tonight Dr. Arnold Cook and his wife. Arnold was the president of Christian Missionary Alliance for a period of eight years.

We've been dear friends for many years. Arnold was a missionary in the land of Peru. The sense of hunger.

We sat with six thousand pastors and leaders this year in the city of Lima. Meeting in two different places every night because there wasn't a church large enough. And just pouring to them these concepts of prayer.

So the evenings we spend in prayer together. And it's a wonderful thing. You know what we have said these days? We haven't said that prayer is everything.

But brother and sister, what we have said is that everything needs to come through prayer. You see, if we can't get through to God, is there no way that we are going to make an impact upon the society? The burden of my heart I shared yesterday with the folks in January when we were in a Korean speaking church in the city of New York. Do you know that there are close to three thousand Korean churches in North America that have prayer meetings between five and seven o'clock, six days of the week.

I was in what they would look upon as the largest Korean Presbyterian church in the state of New York. There are about five hundred just in the state of New York. And here is a church of about six thousand people.

And every morning from five o'clock to seven o'clock they would get up to a thousand people that come to pray. And from five o'clock to six o'clock I had to lecture to them on the subject of prayer. And I have this one passion.

You know what they say? We just don't want our church to be a church. We want our church to be a soul saving agency. And they say, we don't want a church full of people.

We long for a church that will be full of people that will be full of God. And brother and sister, it's tremendous. I want to say to you tonight, I've had the privilege to be in Revival twice in my life.

And Revival is not a series of special services. You don't bring Revival in your pocket. You can't bring the power of the Spirit of God down.

You can't manufacture it. You can't work it up. And there is no power without purity.

And when God sends Revival, you know, I think that God will pour out His Spirit upon us tonight in this little gathering. I don't think any one of us should be able to get out of this place. But if God would send Revival, you know, in a movement of the Spirit of God, in twenty minutes, I think more will happen than that which we have tried to accomplish for God in twenty years.

And I remember years ago, the eight years in Scotland that I was allowed to spend. One of the things I was allowed to do was to go and speak at the High Church of Scotland in Stornoway on the island of Lewis on the Hebridee Islands. And in 1948 to 1953, two elderly ladies, I've got a picture of them in my library with a man with the name of Duncan Campbell.

And they made a covenant with God. And they said, God, You are a covenant-keeping God. You are the God of Revival.

And we are going to pray that You will send Revival. And we are going to pray from ten o'clock at night until three o'clock in the morning. And no one knew how long those two elderly ladies prayed.

But you know what, brethren and sisters? There was a night when they got through to God. And that night when they got through to God, the next morning, they sent for the minister, the Church of Scotland minister, and they said to him, we've prayed through for Revival. And the minister said to them, what is it that you want me to do? And he said, we want you to call this man Duncan Campbell.

And there was nothing extraordinary about Duncan Campbell. Nothing. I can tell you that.

But Duncan Campbell came to the island of Lewes. And when he arrived in the island of Lewes, the elders of the Church of Scotland met with him. And when they met him as he was coming down from the ferry, they turned to him and they said to him, Mr. Campbell, we just have this one question for you.

And he said, what is it? And they said, Mr. Campbell, do you walk with God? And Duncan Campbell turned to them and said, well, in the life that I have, I'm trying to walk with God. And so they started with these services, special services. And you know, the first night, nothing happened.

Brethren and sisters, I want to tell you something tonight. God doesn't need us, you know. God doesn't need any one of us.

In fact, I would say to you this evening, God can do His work far better without us. It's like Elijah sitting under the juniper tree and after the great victory on Mount Carmel and when he sat under the juniper tree, you remember God came to him and said, Elijah, what are you doing here? And he said, I'm the only one left. You know what the Hebrew language says? God said, so what? That's what it means.

You see, brethren and sisters, God can do His work far better without us. But let me tell you something, He doesn't want to do it that way. He wants us to be part of that.

And after the first service, nothing happened. And as they came out of the church, if you go to the island, in the highlands of Scotland, and you walk down, and I spent 14 glorious days there speaking in the island. And as you, people were walking down to their houses when they came out of the service, Duncan Campbell and the elder, one of the elders was standing outside of the church and he turned to Duncan Campbell and he said to Mr. Campbell, I trust that you are not disappointed.

That God didn't come tonight. And then he stopped and he just said, Mr. Campbell, look. And suddenly, brethren and sisters, the Spirit of God came upon the island.

And they were in the midst of an organized disorder. It's great when God sends revival. You know what, Jonathan Edwards, I love Jonathan Edwards, you know.

He was the young man that didn't want to go and listen to Whitefield when Whitefield was preaching in the open air. And Whitefield was the man that used to pray and say, God, give me souls or take my soul away. And in the last three years of the life of Whitefield, he died at the age of 56.

The last three years of the life of Whitefield, he was so ill that they had to give him a young man that was able to nurse him back to life after he preached. They would say that after Whitefield would preach that he was so weak and he was physically and emotionally and spiritually so drained that he could hardly say a word. And they would carry Whitefield and they were putting him on the bed of straw and they would pray over him so that God would just touch him that he would be able to preach again.

He spoke to more than 27,000 people in Cambus Lane in Scotland without a microphone. An amazing man that's used of God, George Whitefield. There's a thick book written about the life story of Whitefield by Ian Murray.

It's just a classic. He does not present Whitefield as a super saint, but he presents him as a man that was intoxicated and saturated to the presence of God. And they would lay Whitefield down and pray over Whitefield that God would raise him up again so that he could preach.

And many times they would say, we don't think that he's going to be able to raise tomorrow morning. And the young man that looked after him the last three and a half years of his life when Whitefield died at his funeral, he stood up and he said, I need to say something. And when he rose to his feet and he turned to the audience and he said to them, this man Whitefield, I need to tell you something.

Everything that you heard of him is true. I watched him for three and a half years. And he said, there were times that we would lay him down in his bed of straw.

We would pray over him and he said, we were convinced that he was not going to rise the next day. I thought he was going to die during the hours of the night. And he would say, three or four o'clock in the morning, he said, I would go and lie down and then I would fall asleep.

And he said, three or four o'clock in the morning, I would hear something. And he said, I would look over to the bed of straw where the great Whitefield was trying to rest. And he said, I would see this frail figure slipping down on his knees.

And he said, I would hear him crying to God, give me souls or take my soul away. What a prayer and what a life, you know. And so Whitefield was preaching in the open air and Edwards wouldn't want to go and listen to him.

And someone went to Jonathan Edwards and said, I want you to go and listen to him. And Jonathan Edwards in New England was a congregational minister would stand in a distance, quite a distance away under a neat tree, listening to the great Whitefield preaching. And as he was listening to him, the Spirit of God came upon that gathering.

And the young Jonathan Edwards was so affected that he turned around and went back to his church. And for three days and three nights he was virtually on his face before God. And God gave him that sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

He had a church of more than 850 people. And that Sunday morning, and Jonathan Edwards, if I would be allowed to say that, because I love to read Edwards. Jonathan Edwards was no great dynamic preacher.

He was one of the greatest expositors of those days. But that Sunday morning he got up and he had just his sermon like that in his hand. And he was standing in the pulpit of that church.

And all he did was to read his sermon. And brother and sister add, as he was reading that sermon, suddenly the Spirit of God came upon that gathering. You know what people said? I love that statement of Iain Murray.

He said, they said, it was as if we were looking into the eyes of God. Men and women were clinging to the pillars of the church, felt that they were slipping into the eternal flames of hell. And on one Sunday morning service, you know what happened? Four hundred and thirty-seven people were swept into the kingdom of God for an experience of regeneration when God came.

Dear Duncan Campbell, you know, I remember hearing him saying, I never brought revival to the island of Lourdes. But those two elderly ladies, both in their eighties, one was so crippled with arthritis she could hardly walk. One was virtually blind.

But you know what? They climbed underneath the burden of God. And yesterday morning when we tried to explore this Hebrew word, masah, which is the word that the prophets in the Old Testament used when they said, the burden of the Lord is upon me. May I say to you tonight, if you sit here as a Christian and you have no burden, you need to get alone with God and ask God, what is the reason for your existence? And ask God, why is it that He has come into your life? But when you study this Hebrew word, masah, and you see it in the life of Moses in Exodus chapter three, when God revealed Himself to him, because the Hebrew word, masah, is based upon revelation.

And when God revealed Himself to Moses, and said to Moses, take off the shoes from your feet, because the ground that you are standing on is holy ground. And when the revelation of God came, as it came in the life of Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six, and God met with Moses, and we discover how this burden of God, this burden of God, how in the Old Testament understanding of systematically exploring the burden of God, how the burden of God would bring brokenness. And how when God begins to break us, a work of cleansing and purification begins to take place in our lives.

I love Robert Murray McChain. The young man that used to say, how can the Holy Spirit in me criticize the Holy Spirit in you? The young man that used to say, I love to live on the brink of eternity. The young man that used to say, so much of my time of praying is preparing myself how to pray.

And so when this burden of God comes, it brings this brokenness. And this brokenness brings cleansing. Ninety-nine references to the efficacy of the blood in the New Testament.

A glorious umbrella in the New Testament understanding of the blood. What is it? It is redemption through the blood. And underneath that umbrella of redemption, we discover reconciliation through the blood, cleansing through the blood.

We discover victory through the efficacy of the blood. And brother and sister, when the burden comes and the brokenness comes, there is a work of cleansing that is taking place in the life of the intercessor. And that cleansing and the essence of its meaning with this beautiful concept that God is not just able to cleanse us from the guilt of sin, but is able to cleanse us from the pollution of sin.

God is able to cleanse us from all conscious sin. That's not sinless perfection, you know. That's just an understanding of the possibility that in the light that I have, as we walk in the light, as God is in the light, what is the Scripture saying to us? We have fellowship one with another.

And if we have fellowship one with another, what are the consequences? The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sins. Precious in the structure of the Greek language, you know. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, present in imperative mood, keeps on cleansing us from all sin.

You say, so what does it mean? How does it work? Brother and sister, it's like the stone that we put in the river. And how do we keep that stone clean? How do we keep it separated into the river? There's a process that is taking place in that stone, and the stone is being cleansed by the river. The moment when you take it outside of the river, the process of cleansing ceased to exist.

Now Jesus came in John chapter 15, and He gives us this beautiful description of the biblical doctrine of submissiveness to God and obedience, saying unto us that partial obedience is disobedience. And He said, every branch in me that is bearing forth fruit, what is happening to that branch? He said, He cleansed it, He purified it, He purged it. Why is He doing that? He's doing that so that it will be able to bring forth more fruit.

And then He made this incredible statement. And He said, He that abides in Me, and I abide in him, he shall ask whatever he will, and it shall be given to him. And He gives us the revelation of Him being able to say, Father, I thank You that You always listen to me.

Of Him being able to say, the son can do nothing unless he sees the father do it. Of Him being able to say, My father will give it to you. And He said, so do I. And what's the essence of that understanding? He said, if you abide in Me... You say, what does that mean? That means, brother and sister, God has come and put the sentence of death upon the self-life.

And so when God has come and put the sentence of death upon the self-life, we discover the possibility of abiding in Christ. And when we discover the possibility of abiding in Christ by the way that Andrew Murray wrote a wonderful book, I'm spending a year, because I've been reading Andrew Murray's books onto cassette over the last two years, 48 wonderful books. That wonderful little book, The Power of the Blood of Jesus Christ, because I find myself 80 days of the year sitting in planes and airports, and I must have listened to that little book probably 150 times easily.

And I spend a year with six of Andrew Murray's works. Absolute Surrender. You need to get these books.

Absolute Surrender. With Christ in the School of Prayer. Abide in Christ.

A little book on humility that Andrew Murray wrote. With Christ in the School of Obedience. And six of these glorious works of Andrew Murray.

Don't you try and read Andrew Murray if you cannot read him on your knees, because you're wasting your time. The only way that you're going to come to grips with it is when you're right on your knees before God. And you know what? It's going to grab you by the throat.

It's going to advance upon your soul. It's going to wash through every aspect of your relationship with God. But here comes the secret.

If you abide in Me, and My Word abides in you, what will happen? You will discover what it means to pray in the will of God. When does God answer prayer? When we pray within His will. Now, I can't pray within the will of God, brethren and sisters, if I have not learned the secret of what it means to live in the will of God.

So I need to find the will of God. I need to follow the will of God. And I need to finish the will of God.

And I cannot allow the Spirit of God to be grieved in my life. And when Paul said, Grieve not the Holy Spirit, in the structure of the Greek language, he was speaking about the deity of the Holy Spirit. And so we grieve the Spirit of God through His sanctity.

We grieve the Spirit of God through His sensitivity. And we grieve the Spirit of God because of His sufficiency. And so if I love a spiritful life, which is possible in my life as a Christian, what will happen? I will discover the will of God in prayer.

And so when I discover the will of God in prayer, you say, what is going to happen? I'm going to pray according to the will of God. And He said, if you abide in Me and My Word abides in you, He said, you shall ask whatever you will and it shall be given unto you. And sometimes when we are in seminaries, and forgive me for saying this, but sometimes I feel I'm in a symmetry amongst those places.

But these students who come and the arrogance of their understanding of the fact that after years in a seminary, they think they know absolutely everything, and then six months out in the ministry they discover they don't know a thing. But they would come and they would say, isn't this great? I can ask whatever I will. And I say, you have no understanding the arrogance of a staggering statement like that.

And I say, what do you mean? He said, if you abide in Me, do you know the crucified life? Crucified with Christ, Paul said. What are the consequences? Nevertheless, I live. And yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, how do I live it? I live it by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and who gave Himself for me. You will only be able to comprehend the process of the manifestation and the fulfillment of the crucified life on the basis of your understanding of the sufferings of Christ and the supremacy of His resurrection and His ascension sitting down at the right hand of the Father. What is He doing tonight? Ever interceding for us.

You shall ask whatever you will. So, can I ask you this evening, I mean, we are strangers to one another. Is God in the process of sanctifying us as His people? The church is a distinctive society, you know.

Brother and sister, God doesn't want us to have worldly friends. But I tell you what, we need friends in the world. But He carries with us a fragrance.

We carry with us a presence. We need to live a Christian life that demands a supernatural explanation. A statement coming from the lips of Christ saying, As my Father has sent me, so sent I you.

So, what is it? Here is this fragrance of the Christian life that demands an explanation. What does it mean? It's the life and the holiest of all. God has opened it for us.

God has given it to us. And brother and sister, it's our inheritance of living a life that is totally submissive to God. And so when this burden of God comes, ah, you say, what happens? The burden of God brings brokenness.

Brokenness brings cleansing. What does cleansing do? Cleansing, when God purifies us as His people. You know what happens to the Holy Spirit of God who is a person? And when I received Him into my life, I didn't receive a little part of the Holy Spirit.

Because He is a person, I received Him in His totality, the mind of the Spirit, the will of the Spirit, the emotions of the Spirit, and the Spirit who never speaks of Himself. But what does He do? He brings us to the supremacy of the life of Christ. And so now He's in my life and He's resident.

But you know what? He wants to become president. And He wants me to live His life in the Spirit. And when I live His life in the Spirit, ah, you know what happens to me? The fullness of the Spirit of God brings upon my life a spirit of prayer, a spirit of prayer.

How do you know when there is a spirit of prayer resting upon your Christian life? Do you know how I know it? When anyone can ask me any time of the day or the night to pray with Him, and I will not feel uncomfortable. And so when the Holy Spirit came upon the life of Christ in the form of a dove, why did He come in the form of a dove? Because there was no sin. Sin is in His birth, supernatural in His life.

And when the Spirit of God came upon Christ in the form of a dove, do you know what happened? It's so wonderful in the structure of the Greek language. Christ was in a spirit of prayer. Do you remember in Luke chapter 11? One of those disciples came to Him as He was praying in a certain place.

And they asked Him and they said to Him, Lord, will You teach us how to pray? And those early disciples, you know the question, never asked Him how to preach. They never asked Him how to plant churches or how to raise funds. They never did that.

And He said, what did they do, Gerard? The only thing that they ever asked Him, they said, teach us how to pray. And He asked, did Your children come to You and me? He said, Mommy and Daddy, will You teach me how to pray? And you remember that great statement that He made. At the end of that passage, when in the 248 prayer passages that is coming out of the 7,957 verses in the New Testament, you discover the tabernacle of New Testament prayer, six words in the Greek language that are used again and again.

And they become the pillars in this New Testament tabernacle of prayer. And those six words in the Greek New Testament taking us to 12 other words in the Greek New Testament that relate to the understanding of the roof of this tabernacle. They are not used as many times as the six words.

And then you discover that there are six other words. And so we are dealing with 24 New Testament words in the Greek language. And those last six words are used not often, but they become the ropes of this New Testament tabernacle of prayer.

And you know what they do. They take you to 248 possible prayer passages in the New Testament. And that divides themselves up into 12 aspects of New Testament prayer.

And when you take those 12 aspects of New Testament prayer, and we would be able, if we would have had time, and put them on a board here this Sunday night, and I would be able to take you into the New Testament and discover that the Apostle Paul who gives us the New Testament theology of prayer, because out of those 7,957 verses of the New Testament, 2,033 of those verses is coming from the pen of the Apostle Paul. And here was a man who never heard Christ pray. No.

But, ah, what happened to him, he sat at the feet of the great Hebrew scholar Gamaliel. And when he sat at his feet, he was saturated in the Law and the Prophets and the Writings. And as he sat at his feet, and when he found Christ in the way of Damascus, and Christ became real in him.

And so when Paul begins to speak about prayer, do you know what he does? He brings the whole of the Old Testament together. And when he comes to us in Philippians 4, and he said, be anxious of nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And you go to those four statements, brother and sister, in the Greek New Testament, you discover that those four statements become the four pillars of understanding Paul's theology of prayer.

And he brings the whole of the Old Testament together. And so you see what happened. You go to the Gospel of Luke.

The Gospel of Luke, 1,151 glorious verses. The Acts of the Apostles, 1,007 of those 7,957 verses. And so what is Luke doing? Luke was the physician, you see.

More than 50 technical medical terms that is coming from the writings of Luke. He was an historian. And what did he do? He gives us the humanity of Christ in prayer.

That's why in the Gospel of Luke, you've got 59% more information about prayer than in Matthew and Mark's Gospel together. Why? Because Luke is giving us the humanity of Christ in prayer. Why is he doing that? Because, brother and sister, deity do not have a necessity to pray, but humanity have a necessity to pray.

And when you bring that 1,151 verses and the 1,007 from the Acts of the Apostles together, you will discover Christ, the humanity of Christ in prayer. Now you've got the theology of the New Testament in prayer given by Paul. You've got the humanity of Christ in prayer given by Luke.

Now you've got the Apostle John. The Gospel of John, 879 verses. Revelation 404, glorious verses.

By the way, every one of them is inspired. Why don't you memorize the New Testament and let it become part of your life? And you'll realize how those verses will advance upon your life because 75% of your growth as a Christian is depending upon what you read. You're born with a personality, but God is building up Christian character.

And, brother and sister, He used His Word. 879. I'm so glad my wife is with me.

She can't stand it when I give you statistics. She says, people are not interested in it. And I say, but so am I. 404 verses in the Revelation.

105 in 1 John 13 and 14. Why do I say that to you? Listen, John gives you the deity of Christ in prayer. Brother and sister, here's the full picture.

The Apostle John, look the physician, the greatest of the Apostle Paul. You know what they are doing? They give you almost 80% of New Testament information. They give you the fullness of the picture.

And so when you come to those 248 prayer passages, you know what I feel? I mean, we started on Friday night. I feel we're just starting, brother. What a wonderful place.

Wouldn't it be great this week if we would have had time just to explore all these biblical truths. You say, oh, it will kill me. No, we will saturate them in hours of prayer.

And you know what? They will just live in your heart because they are so precious. So how does that relate to that? Let me close, because we want to break up in a little group to pray together. And then if we have time, I want to share with you just one of those 12 aspects of New Testament prayer.

How does this relate to revival? Ah, you know, I visited the island of Lewis 35 years after the Lewis revival. Do you know what I discovered? I didn't find one single backslider. Maybe there were some, but I never found one.

The minister of the High Church of Scotland, Roddy Morrison, is a wonderful man of God, took me right through the island of Lewis. And during the day and evenings I was speaking in his church. And during the day, he took me from place to place where God poured out His Spirit in revival.

We sat down with some of those people in the islands of Scotland. And I asked him what happened in the revival because of the passion in my heart to understand this concept of what is revival all about. And brother and sister, as we sat with those people, after 35 years, you know what? I couldn't find one single backslider.

In fact, I remember hearing Duncan Campbell saying, and he made this statement, it's beautiful, you know, there are about 16 cassettes available of messages by Duncan Campbell in North America. And I heard Duncan Campbell saying that he could count in his one hand the people that he counseled personally that were saved during the Lewis revival. 75% of the people were saved.

Brother and sister, not in the services. You say, how did they come to Christ? They came to the services. The conviction of the Spirit of God was so vivid.

Now, it's a great word in the Greek New Testament because in the Acts of the Apostles there are two words that speaks of the conviction of the Spirit of God in sin. Acts chapter 2, they were pricked in their hearts. What was the consequences? They said, what must you do to be saved? Acts chapter 7, when Stephen preached his only recorded message, what did they do? The Bible says, they were cut in their heart.

That's a different word in the Greek language. What did they do? They stoned Stephen. But Duncan Campbell said, when the conviction of the Spirit of God fell, 75% of those people were saved.

Not in the services. They were saved when they were on their own. When I was in the island of Lewis, they told me about a man who was a drunkard, you know? I mean, a total drunkard.

And Duncan Campbell and one of the church's Scotland ministers spoke to him. And spoke to him about his relationship with God. He was a total drunkard.

And on his way one night during the revival, he was so drunk and he was walking to his house in Lewis and he fell into a ditch in his drunken state. And just fell asleep in that ditch. And do you know what happened? He had a dream.

And in his dream, Duncan Campbell and this minister spoke to him about Christ. And he trusted Christ in his dream. And he woke up soundly converted.

He became a church's Scotland minister. He said, thank God he didn't become a Baptist. Anyway.

And you know, those islanders, they would say to me, you know, they're very, very strong Calvinistic. I mean, some of them you could smell them from a distance away, you know. They would say to me, don't you understand the sovereignty of God here? And I said, no I don't, you know.

Ah, 35 years after that, they couldn't find one backslider. Let me close to this because I love it. A man that greatly impacted my life was a man by the name of Dr. Stephen Alford.

Just a total block of discipline and commitment. Sold out and intoxicated with a great sense of passion and unction. And Dr. Stephen Alford was in Duke Street Baptist Church in London.

And in the revival, Duncan Campbell lost his voice. You know, in the revival, brother and sister, the Spirit of God don't need rest, you know. So people would go till the early hours of the morning.

They had cottage meetings. I have in my study the reports, the actual written reports, copies of the written reports, I should say, of the reports that Duncan Campbell sent during the Lewis revival. And if I read them to you, they will just break your heart, you know.

And so the Spirit of God don't need to rest. And so these people were going hour after hour after hour after hour during the Lewis revival. And Duncan Campbell, just about physically and emotionally, just was so strained that he just about collapsed.

And so they had to take him away. And he went to stay in the house of Dr. Stephen Alford. And Stephen Alford, who is gone to be with the Lord now, Stephen Alford was the Senior Minister of Duke Street Baptist Church in London.

And Stephen Alford sat at Duncan Campbell's feet. And Campbell couldn't speak because his vocal cords were just gone. And Stephen Alford just sat at his feet and he said to him, Mr. Campbell, he said, could you just speak to me? And he could hardly, he could just whisper.

And he said, what do you want to know, Stephen? And he said, tell me about these people that were saved during the Lewis, during the revival. Tell me how God was working because Alford was so hungry. And he said, I sat at the feet of Duncan Campbell and with a voice that could hardly whisper, he was trying to explain to me these moments when God came and hundreds of people were gloriously saved.

And Stephen Alford turned to Duncan Campbell and he said to him, Mr. Campbell, he said, when all those people were gloriously saved, brother and sister, they weren't half born, you know. I mean, these people were born of the Spirit of God. And he said, when all these people were saved, he said, Mr. Campbell, how? How did you do follow-up work? How did you disciple them? How did you encourage them? And Duncan Campbell in his typical way just turned to him and he said to him, Stephen, you don't understand.

He said, what do you mean? He said, we never, ever, ever did follow-up work. He said, what do you mean? He said, they just followed us. That's what breaks my heart today, you know.

You know what's happening to us? We are producing people who are just like us. You say, do you underestimate the sovereignty of God? Not one single moment. But there is not an understanding of the sovereignty of God that's going to nullify my responsibility.

And he said, we never did follow-up work. They just followed us. That's what I mean.

I want us to spend some time in prayer. You know, our time is virtually gone. And I didn't intend to say this to you this evening.

I've got something else. If there's time, we don't have to do it. We can do it in four or five years' time from now.

But I want us to spend some time in prayer together. And I know that we don't have chairs here. But I just feel it's so vital, especially for those...