Audio Sermon: Elijah, He Prayed

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 a 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 and 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 into the onto the stage of Israel.

Do you remember when he came? How he came? Oh 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's 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 them 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. 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. Tozer'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 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 with impurity and idolatry and iniquity and incest and evil. And when the enemy had come in like a flood the preachers held a 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 dared pray until he prayed. And after he prayed nobody dared 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 auditors 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 run 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, shall we say, a disposition in prayer. This in my judgment is why Jesus says, you stay here while I go pray on.

They would never have understood his grief, his anxiety, his sweat. He 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 Sadnerola, 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 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 gray 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 along. Did he go along? 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 Jephthah? 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 by throne of God is forever and ever.

Maybe I mentioned yesterday but 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 shall 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 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 Revelation there are two final men going to testify to this world and one of them is the 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 say well there are six of us eating the meal why do you have an extra chair? Because Elijah is going to come back. He's one of the most phenomenal men in history.

He had to be. You don't have scales digging up a 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 right. After all is 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. Ran around after everybody. But the man who's going to minister with God could not minister till 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 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. And 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. 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 McCarran.

I'd 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 gray-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, I'm 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 300 miles to hear you tonight, and it's 10 o'clock, I have 300 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 300 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 uh, 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'd 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 ashtoreth 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 uh, in these days a sick ecumenicalism, and uh, some rather sick uh, charismatic stuff too. You'll 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 day, and as he looked at this temple and that, he says he, the sleepy Elizabethan English says he was stirred that the, the Greek actually says, I'm 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 heaping 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 Ashtoreth, 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 and 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, but, pardon me, I don't know what the woman thought, but I know what the king thought, because he knew that what power these prophets had. And Elijah said, 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 until 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 the terrier shakes her 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 there, I never want to commercialize, anyhow the money goes to missions. 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 prophet, it had no priest, it had no primate, it was very 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 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 book to him in the day he lived.

He finds a place in history as one of the greatest 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 said 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 them all to come? 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 you. He said 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 war. 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, 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 said 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 17 not 9, 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 in 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 10 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 was stretched like that a piece of his lungs, he literally prayed himself to death.

Pace in the 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 to where they ask me to preach, I hope to be quiet, sometimes it's difficult, and they said brother Rayner will give us a talk before he leaves this morning, so I shared something that the Lord had given me.

As I left the 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, 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, smile radiant.

Oh come in, I've read some of your books, my they've been a blessing and 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 the 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, so now that man hasn't been to bed one night in the last 28 years. Isn't that amazing, you get 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 10 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've preached in it many times, by five o'clock as the grey skies begin to roll the clouds back you'll see people lined up at the door of a little Irish woman, she's 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 that has a midweek 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 that 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? I've done that 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. Everything was there.

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 mead 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, let there be no rain. Oh, Jezebel must have gone home blazing mad.

Why don't they 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, reverency, my God, I'd like to see God give you somebody in this church, whether he'd be the pastor of Deacon or somebody else who would 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. You've got to read the story.

What does he say in the next chapter? God says 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 have commanded, now I say, 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 forward.

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, 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 a, 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 learning 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 he 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 ologies, theology and every other thing you can imagine. He's the prince.

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 of them 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 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.

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 closes 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 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 Hatch, you can't make a John Knox, by sitting down and asking 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, 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 center to the conference? When 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.

I'm told you 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 said. 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 its prayer meeting, not one. This is the heartbeat. This is the powerhouse.

This is where the work is done. I'll be mentioning something on this line tomorrow night. So let me just say this.

This is the biggest test. There's a remarkable man in India. I talked with him for hours.

His name is Bakht Singh. And in the course of talking, he said, Brother Rayneal, I like America. Those people are so great.

They're wonderful people. They're full of genius when it comes to inventing things. They've a dozen inventions or a hundred in the kitchen, and I don't know what they don't.

And 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, 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.

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 Rayneal, the first three hours of our service Sunday. 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 20 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 he'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 cat 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 11 hours, 12 hours, 13 hours, 14 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 11 to 12 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 12 to 12, 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's 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 palace 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 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 said, 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 baptised 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, there was always a bomb burst, there was always a 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 of 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.

And 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 radically transformed. For a man who 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, their labor and their sweat. I don't care a hill of beans whether anybody comes to an altar any night I speak.

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 13, 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 steady ride crusade.

I phoned the 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 all right, it's all right, come. He said, this is God. I went to his church, it wasn't, was it much bigger than the platform? I said, 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're coming with a large box like this. Sunday morning it was packed.

Sunday night they, 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 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 Radner, I hope you'll come back this fall. I can't tell you what God's been doing. He said, two nights before you finished the meeting, there was 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 goggles 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 of us. The second Sunday they went to church, God bless you, he said, God hasn't spoken to me yet, so I can't preach. Now the Deacons are nearly climbing the wall.

What are we paying for anyhow? He's been a good fellow, we like what he's said. Sure. We 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, 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 a cry of the people.

Is there any word from the Lord? I have a word from heaven. You know that man hadn't preached ten minutes before that stately church exploded, and people began to run to the eyes 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 all the 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. I'm a, 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, uh, uh, uh, 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, 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 instinctive, deity, you don't groove in the sanctuary. 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, that 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, eh? 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 tent 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, keep doing it.

But if you're only giving God a tent of your money, you're cheating. He said, bring all the tithe. You give God a tent of your time.

You give God a tent of every 24 hours. A tent of 20 hours is two, four hours over, four 60 minutes is 24. It means you give God two hours and 24 minutes every day.

And on top of that, you give him a bonus, because if you only give God a tent, 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 24 minutes? For safety, you'd give him three hours a day. 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'll 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, you don't know three best in the world.

And they're all in different countries. I remember we taught with Paul. Sixteen years of age, going to the finest school in Ireland, the Eton of Ireland.

Went to Royal Petora 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 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, another thousand Wednesday night. No, I never, I never ask 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, his shoes saw that. 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 made it. May have to make one next year, I don't know. You've got a great God.

But going back to Paul, he was at this grammar school. He's a pretty brilliant fella too. Do you know that little fella said one day to his mummy, what was it, Martha, about ten or eleven? 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 Isle, and the meetings on the back of the bog, come home at two 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 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 six o'clock in the morning. I'll never interrupt his prayer, but he'll be cold. There's no heat in the room.

We get into bed and wake up at three, and you can see a light, the light shining in the yard, and I go in the corridor and open the door quietly, and say, Paul, and you know what, he'd all the bed, he'd pull all the clothes off, and the big comforter, you can only see the top of his hair standing up, and there was a little guy, he's weighed about 120 pounds, and here's this 16 year old boy, he'd been praying from eight o'clock at night, and he was still praying at two 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 were 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 Ragan 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 realized 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, 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, everything he was 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, 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, they'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 needs. 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's office and say, do you know any young sociable young men that'll have education, and a little culture and requirement 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'd 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, hurry, till he 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 scribble 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 truth 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, high prosperity.

And this is the church of Jesus before it became muscle-bound by all their organizations. And 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 medicine, 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. They'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 that I stand a hundred percent behind that book. God has never withdrawn one of his promises. Go hide yourself Elijah, he went and hid himself.

Tempted to tell you a story of a man in Africa that did that of 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 are 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 barrel, it was full to the top. The cruise of oil was shooting oil like a 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 cruise every day, because faith has to be tested if it's going to be trusted.

I think I count about twenty millionaires and multimillionaires amongst my friends, they never give me a dime. I don't want them to. Because when I start looking, all they've 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 and asked 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 Christ, why do I need God? If I have God, why do I need them? He may use them at times, show him it. 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 a body. Here Lord, you see this kid, heal him. There you are, I'll catch you baby.

That's the way we do it on TV. You know what he 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 that floor? I know an old man in Ireland, my old prayer partner Tom Hare, and they'd 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 with this.

Don't touch it. Elijah 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, and 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, a little thing out of his fingers and his whiskers, and he says, here, here. And she goes, oh marvellous! 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 battle of Nile, by this I know the heart and mind 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 chastisement and sin. This is our mission, to push the powers of hell back as I'll talk about tomorrow night.

To demand that men are ruined. I don't care if it's just 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 for some of your famous ball players.

I don't care if a boy is like one I talked to, about twenty-five 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, a holy 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 had 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 have 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 30 again I'd like it. I can't.

But I made up my mind the rest of the journey I'd be 66. 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. Any men here going to offer tonight the under-revolutionized 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 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 a hymn that we sang last night. Holy Spirit breathe on me until my heart is clean. It's one seven four.

A hundred seventy four. 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 Raymond 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. From 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're not a prayer 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 him.

God has spoken why should I talk anymore. If he hadn't I'm wasting my time. As you say I want to I want to put it straight with God tonight.

We'll stand we'll sing these two verses straight through and 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 permission but you've no vision for a lost world. Be honest about it. That's only going to be found out one day.

Verses two and three one seventy-four shall we sing?