The Burdens of Ravenhill - Part 6 (Compilation) — Leonard Ravenhill

Our jails are so full and there's this permissiveness and so much sin and rottenness they're going to put their hands up before too long and say God send us deliverance from somewhere and the church of the living God will come in then and you know what God will do?

He's going to anoint your sons and your daughters, not your bishops, no I'm sorry bishops. He's not coming for the guys that came out of the, well I nearly mentioned the name of a theological seminary there but I won't, but He's not going to look for the learned brilliant men.

He's going to look for little men who love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength and God is going to restore the years the canker worm, the palmer worm and the caterpillar have eaten all those things that modernism and liberalism and every other reason has eaten.

God is going to embarrass those people and He's going to show us the church anointed again in the spirit of the living God. Oh that day can't come too soon. It's healthy, tight and sensed and she's sound when she has the anointing of the Holy Ghost, hell trembles.

A Spirit-Empowered Generation Beyond Religious Elites

I think hell must have had a half theology when Paul died because again I remember the demons said Jesus we know and Paul we know and we won't be seeing a Paul around for a long while but I want to tell you that I believe in these last moments of this dispensation is God's going to raise up young men and young women your sons and your daughters so they must be young people, servants and handmaids they must be working class people, not the elite, not the kings, not the bishops, not the men at the head of the hierarchy of different things.

He's going to bypass them because in the days of his flesh what did Jesus do? Did he go looking for princes? Did he go looking for the intellectuals? The Sanhedrin were mad because he never went and asked the members of the Sanhedrin to become disciples.

He went to the fishermen of Galilee, he went to a taxpayer and he found those men and they followed him and they left A-L-L all and followed him and then they went to the upper room and because they had left all that they had he gave them all he had.

The Cost of the Anointing and a Life of Prayer

But we want to get everything from God at a cheap rate. I'd like the anointing. I'd like a broken heart to weep for the lost. I'd like to pray and preach in the Holy Ghost but brother it might cost you a golf average and you'd love your darling golf game don't you?

And you'd like to pray in the Holy Ghost but oh how long you like to go fishing it's so relaxing. Well I'll tell you something if you really pray in the Holy Ghost that's more relaxing than any sport you ever tried and it'll build you up more than anything you've ever tried.

You just tried for a year, just tried for a year will you? Have one day in your life preacher when you're not available to your wife or anybody else and you shut yourself in and you prepare for one whole day every week you're not available to anybody and if anybody dies all right you'll see them tomorrow anyhow.

You're not available even to visit the sick. You see our poor preachers have become beasts of burden but preachers in the New Testament didn't visit the sick. The elders visited the sick. The elders that were anointed in the New Testament didn't get a job because they had two gas stations and owned a bit of property.

They were made elders because they were filled with the Holy Ghost. Yes sir when we do God's work God's way we'll get God's power and God's blessing and God's anointing but we want to do it our way and pull the string and expect him to come down.

No no no no he doesn't do that. I think again if you got in the basement you'd have heard poor Samson groaning. Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul refreshing dew of Jesus?

I've lost the anointing, I've lost the power. We're going to see men in our generation that have never been on the earth. God's going to pull us, his spirit and all flesh. I think a dear brother here told me the other week there's a man in western Texas and I'm not going to I'm not going to find the man I'd love to see but he's probably the most anointed man in America.

Humble Servants and the Burden of Psalm 51

He has no degrees that's an advantage. He hasn't been to he hasn't been to Bible school I think that's a great advantage nobody's messed his mind up. And you know what he is this anointed is a sharecropper.

There is some super holy men, men that don't grieve for money, that don't care about popularity, that don't want to be listed with the great people. I shun most invitations to preach at conventions and go around the world because people aren't ready.

I felt a burden to deliver my soul on Psalm 51 to a handful of people why not? What do crowds mean? I've turned down I've turned down three world conventions for next year. I've turned down three national video TV things across the nation.

Why? Because folk don't want my message anyhow. I'm not going to talk to folk that don't want it. We're stuck to the ears. We're so self-righteous we can't hear God. We're so satisfied. You preachers, I'm not a broken heart.

Gabriel couldn't find the tea you shed for the lost and he tried. You become a machine. You can recite your psalms. You can recite your sermons. You've done that so often you can do it in your sleep. There's going to come another upper room.

Brokenness, Tears, and the Next Upper Room

There's going to be a moving of God. You young men are my hope. I've had no wages. Of course I've had wages. We've got a bunch of men that could hardly pray. A few years ago now they pray with tears and I believe that's more precious to God than you giving a million dollars to missions.

This man said to me today, this famous author, Brother I need to pray so I can pray with brokenness. I got a letter yesterday from a young man that we met in 79 in Fort Smith. He was a bus driver and God got hold of him and he wrote such a letter this week.

You'd think David Brainerd or somebody wrote it. He said, I've moved into a depth of prayer I didn't know existed and just when I thought I got there, God showed me I'm water to the ankles. I need to get to the knees.

I need to get to the loins. I need waters to swim in. I heard a man say a daring thing this week. He said, Lord I want to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. After strutting around and all this stuff, where do you turn?

Sacrifice and Death to Self

If the church is empty, where's the light? If the church is still, where is the voice? You see God wants some people crazier than I am. But you see there's no way of blessing without sacrifice. No way.

It's basic to the Christian religion. Oh cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee. I lay in dust, lights, glory dead. When a person dies, they're not conscious maybe at that moment, they're passing into death.

But Paul says you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. You see God's looking for dead men, not able men, not clever men, not church organizers, church agonizers. What did Paul say? He said you're dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.

There was a day when your fathers needed water and the roast was smitten. And as I said last night, the great need of this hour, that I've got to send this morning, all ye that are hungry and thirsty, the need of the hour is water.

We're in a dry and thirsty land. There's not a spot of revival in America today. There's not a spot of revival in England today. The only countries in the world that have any semblance of revival are not civilized countries, they're uncivilized countries.

God is bypassing us, provoking us. Like Joel never did want to go there, I don't want to go there for the people of the river. To be revived I work, God says go. I've stirred up this nation of mine, I've given revival there and I've bypassed Israel.

And God will send revival, don't you make any mistake about that. If he can't get away to send it in America, he's flying away. But God loves my generation as much as he loves any generation. Grace is still flowing like a river and millions there have been surprised.

Christ as the Water of Life

Jesus emphasized this here, I'm the water of life. What if a man has had a mountain before he won't fly? What if he will flock to Polydeuphore or on the other hand go away to the Pacific Coast, to Hollywood or somewhere else there seeking life?

And he will set out setting Simon out of his belly. It's there that we pray. You remember the apostles said, some of you, your God is your belly. And we live in a generation of belly worshipers. We never had more food and we never had more hunger.

The craving that in a man, Jesus said, I'll give him a little piece of his craving and satisfy him. And when I satisfy him, I'll be a well in him that goes out to the most parts of the earth. Everywhere Jesus emphasized that he was life.

That's why my dear friends, you need to ask if the spirit of life that I said last night is brooding over your family. If he is, then he will be in sync with life. God is life, as well as life. And life begets life.

The Word Without the Spirit

And life is power. And life is reproductive. And the church of holiness today, and I won't pull that word back either for any of you. The church of holiness today will have no life. We've got the lack of a no life.

We've got the word, but no spirit. We've got the terms, but no production. Experimented at Cornell University some years ago by putting a frog in a dishpan of boiling water and he jumped out. And then they put a frog in a dishpan of cold water and they turned the jet at the bottom and then they turned it up one degree, two degrees.

And you know what that frog did? He stayed in there till they cooked him to death. When they put him in the boiling water, he got out because he said, I can't live here. But when they, by degrees, they changed the thing and he adjusted and he adjusted and he adjusted and they still killed him anyhow.

The Church’s Gradual Accommodation to Carnality

And you know we've got some things in our churches, if not in our lives, that a few years ago we never would have had. And old Satan didn't pour the boiling water on, he put this little thing and then that little thing and that little thing.

And before very long the churches become so carnal. The glory of the Lord doesn't fill the temple. When did you last tiptoe out of your particular tabernacle saying, surely God is in this place? I say again with all the power of my being, I do not believe that modern Christians go to church to meet God.

They go to church to hear a sermon about God. They don't expect deity to invade the place. God's going to bypass organized religion and systems before very long. I believe that many denominations are breathing their last right now.

They're struggling to try and plug the hole up and stick the hole up here and stop something else. And the world says, but you've got nothing real and vital and living and powerful. I'm not going to study the ark.

A New Work and a New Revelation

I'm convinced God's going to do a new work. I've talked the last two or three days with a brother I love very dearly. And these are the crossroads in his life and I know others who are. Men that you think are at the top of the tree.

You think they should be satisfied with what they've got. And they're not. They're suddenly realizing there's a new dimension that God wants to bring to our generation. A new revelation, a new unfolding of the word of God.

We said at the beginning of the meeting, it's good to be in a meeting like that. It sure isn't. It's bad too. You know why? Because the Holy Ghost may not come back to you for the next six months or six years or the rest of your life.

He doesn't have to. He faces up with you with your bankruptcy tonight. Some of you preachers are preaching a theology and you're sheltering behind the denomination. You're scared stiff to preach the revelation God has given because again it immediately hit the high road.

But do you know what I find? I find some of the holiest, saintliest, anointed men in America today are men that are being kicked out of their denomination. It's the kind of day we're living in and we better face it.

Preparing for God’s New Thing

God's going to do a new thing in this generation. He sure is.