Abraham, Intercessor — Leonard Ravenhill

To anybody else's. You know why? He's so busy looking after yours, he gets tired of looking after his. Although as they used to say in Ireland, the cobbler, we call the shoe repairer the cobbler. The cobbler's kids usually have no shoes on their feet.

Faith and Prayer as Interdependent Strength

And so forth and so on, we use these analogies. And again, thinking of this great man Abraham, it says in the fourth chapter of the wonderful epistle to the Romans, you needn't look at it right now, let me remind you of it, that Abraham was not weak, and then it goes to the other side and it says he was strong in faith.

Well I don't believe a man can be strong in faith and weak in prayer. And he can't be strong in prayer really and weak in faith, the one blends with the other. We develop the one in the atmosphere of the other.

The word of God gives us a tremendous range in the area of prayer. I was thinking earlier today, we could spend months in this area. Now I had been thinking about Abraham, standing in intercession, and then I got a phone call from a man, I got a letter from him actually, and he kept saying I want to come and see you.

He's the young man I told you about that about two and a half years ago, and as a result of that dropped his job, and with no backing from any church, with no backing from any people, with no financial resources, with no Bible school training, he stepped out on guard.

And he's been halfway around the world and right now in a few weeks he's leaving to go into 32 other countries. Seems almost like a modern, I don't know, George Muller. Going into 32 countries without this financial backing and all the other kinds of things.

But in his letter this week he said this, I want to bring with me so and so, and then in parenthesis he put another Father Nash. Father Nash was one of the two intercessors that always accompanied that very wonderful revivalist, I think America's greatest revivalist, Charles G. Finney.

Nowadays men don't take prayer warriors with them, they take pretty panty waist boys that can sing, play guitar, or a couple of girls or something, but nobody that I know of takes prayer partners with them.

You can say well here's the towering figure of Finney, he's one of the colossus in American history, spiritually. But on this hand he has Father Nash and on this hand he has Father Clearing. Now they were not fathers in the sense of the Roman church, but they were bearded men.

Even the young men are wearing beards these days, they were young men. But each of them prayed 12 hours a day. When one quit the other prayed, when one quit the other prayed. I did a stint as an assistant pastor to the man who I think is the greatest preacher in Scotland today, Dr. Fawcett, in a town called Bolton in Lancashire, England in 1931, 32.

And there was an old, old lady there who remembered when Finney came to town. And she remembered when these two men came down the street and were asking, as we would say, for lodgings or apartments, and couldn't find them.

Bathroom facilities are outside, but what's this little piece of glass across the door? Oh that's a cellar, not a basement, a cellar. You know those two praying men rented that cellar for 25 cents a week.

That wouldn't buy the average evangelist a coke to get into the cellar these days, but for 25 cents a week. They stained the floor of that, it was stone, they'd have no covering on it. They just had little palliuses to lie on.

They lived on a minimum of food and a minimum of seeking other people and they just prayed and prayed and prayed. Because they had the privilege of being intercessors. And the lady called me from the other side of town the other day and said, I want you to share something with you because it all began through your ministry when you came to a certain college and I got a burden to pray and in essence become an intercessor.

I don't know who these women are and I don't know where they're meeting, except they're meeting five mornings a week here in Baton Rouge and have pledged themselves, and I hope they keep by it, to pray until revival breaks through in this city.

Now they won't get any blessing for that in the sense of this. You see, somebody has to do the traveling. They're not told much about this, the sweet hour of prayer, the beautiful hymn. The phrase I like in that, since he bids me seek his face, it always gives me a thrill.

I never get tired. I've sung it for, oh, a few years, but anyhow. But I always get excited. He bids me seek his face. I don't pray to a blank wall. You see, all people pray. I've been in temples in foreign countries where people were on the floor fighting and striving and looking up to a stone image and I always felt so angry about it.

That they bring hearts of flesh to images that are hearts of stone. That they're able to call on a deaf, dumb thing that can't help them. They'll bring a gift they can't afford to give. They'll do a pilgrimage that bodily they're not able to take.

Why, this very afternoon, somewhere up a sacred mountain in Japan, an old lady climbs on a rickety stick and she's so aged, you'd think the wind would blow her away. And she throws some grains of incense to the wind and hopes they'll fall down in an abyss where the gods are.

And she comes down weary and worn and can hardly make it to bed. She said her prayers. What has she got? Nothing. In other countries, you've seen them, some of you that have traveled, whether you've traveled in the army or anywhere, you've seen these shrines to which people go, the gifts that they bring.

A bowl of rice to the grave of an ancestor. I remember being in Thailand, getting up early one morning and at four o 'clock in the morning, the priest was going around and they have high boards, six or eight feet high, around their houses, teak that doesn't deteriorate, the bugs can't get in it.

And they have a little cutting there and a shell. And people are opening the little door and putting a brass bowl of rice down the street. They're coming, the big fat priests. This is a day of fat preachers and centiology, but they were coming down the street, gathering the rice.

And I know yeah, it's the placate of God. Now we don't have to bring those gifts. We don't have to bring down thorn graves. We don't have to cut ourselves or pull our hair. We have the good old book here, it reminds us again that we have one who ever delivers to make intercession for us.

Revival Requires Hidden Intercession

And you see that there's always in every, you can't find a revival in history that hasn't been pre-birthed by spiritual pregnancy. Do you know what I mean? Somebody's got to carry the baby. You don't produce revival by talking about it.

You can sweat and storm and shout and do all the, you know, gesticulations and all the histrionics and weep and all the rest. So what? The devil don't carry the baby. As long as we don't travel in birth.

Paul talked about traveling in birth until Christ was formed in men and women. I've heard people say that prayer changes things. Well, I guess that's right because we've experienced that, but mainly prayer changes people and they change things.

A lot of us would like God to pull a switch and change the situation. He says it isn't the situation that needs changing. You need changing and then the situation will be taken care of alright, you see.

But it's a costly business. I remember years ago reading a tract where it said Christians are being washed, but not ironed. Because you don't need that in wrinkle proof shirts and things these days. You don't need irons, but in the old days my mother used to hang the stuff out and it used to get as dry as a board as she forgot and big wrinkles in it.

No steam irons you know, you have to put as much water in. I used to wonder why she took it out as something wet and then wet it through, but anyhow. And she tried to get the creases out. I think that's true in a lot of cases.

All of us somewhere need some ironing. God has to do a lot of straightening out with us. Prayer to me is a language of the poor. The rich don't pray. I don't mean socially. I don't mean if you're a million in the back.

I mean people who are in poverty pray. Notice, if you will, going through the Psalms, how many times the Psalmist says, bow down thine ear and hear me for I am poor and needy. Now he was a king, but he was poor and needy.

People have said to me sometimes, say, I don't want to scare you, but the fellow sitting over the right is in the space program at Charlottesville. The fellow over there is the manager of the First National Bank.

The guy over there. So what? As far as I'm concerned, when you come through that door of the house of God, you're a saint or a sinner, and I don't care a hill of beans about your social standing or your intellectual standing or anything else.

You won't unnerve me by it. As they said to Stair Martin Lutheran, he said, if there were many devils as there are tiles on the roof, I'd still go. And that's how I feel about it. Not in my own strength, in his strength.

Poverty is a language of the poor. Bow down thine ear and hear me. I'm poor and needy. We think the strong man does it. Reverse logic in the Bible. The lame take the prey. You never think of putting a lame man in the Olympics.

Ridiculous. A fit man couldn't make it. But in the Bible, it's the lame that take the prey. And those who have no might, he increases strength. And I have another one. Threefold code isn't easily broken.

He takes the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence. Now, we're living in strange days, sure enough. I don't care which way you look, where you try to start evaluating, everything's upside down.

And therefore, I think this, we're going to need more than ever to know how to pray. If there is such a thing, I don't know how to pray, I'll admit that. I've been a bit added. I spent nights a bit sometimes, a week added at a time and so forth with some godly men.

Some of the most outstanding experiences of my life have been in prayer chambers. I've been in meetings with six or seven thousand people, but so what? Doesn't prove much, except you organize pretty well and have somebody smart to run ahead of you.

But when it comes down to the confrontation, to the real issue, the issue is in the prayer chamber. The Apostle Paul said that we should pray without ceasing. He never said we should preach without ceasing.

I'm sure you think I nearly get there sometimes, but he said pray without ceasing. And the disciples had seen Jesus, the greatest preacher in the world. They heard him preach the greatest sermon in the world, that marvelous sermon that we call the Sermon on the Mount.

And yet the disciples never said Lord, teach us to preach. They never said Lord, teach us to do miracles. Don't you think that's interesting? I would imagine they said Lord, that the other day, that sermon you preached, oh that's Sermon on the Mount.

People thought about Moses being on the Mount, but nothing compared to the Sermon on the Mount. And yet there was never a desire in their hearts to equal him without preaching to Lord Jesus. They could have said Lord, look at the miracles that have been done.

Teach us to do the miraculous. They didn't say that. I can't find any record where Jesus ever prayed before the disciples. He prayed for them. I don't know when they ever prayed with them. Because again, I don't think they would have understood his language.

I have an analogy to make here, but let's say this. If they had gone into that chamber where he was praying in Gethsemane, and seen him sweat as it were, great drops of blood, and heard something run, just like he takes something and, you know, they're twisting somebody's arm and they squeal and he's feeling all the weight of human sin on him.

If they'd heard Jesus almost screaming there in his pain, in his agony. If it be possible, let this cup pass over me, according to the words of the Psalmist, all thy billows are done over me. Ah, wasn't it a little American girl that wrote the hymn, they were 99, and she says in it, none of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through, and he found the sheep that was lost.

But you see, this is the greatest battle in history. People say the greatest battle in history was 1914 at Vimy Ridge of Passchendaele, Amman. No, no, no. The greatest battle in history was Vietnam. No, no, no.

The greatest battle in history was fought by one man, the Lord Jesus Christ, away there in the garden of Gethsemane, and the greatest victory that was ever wrought was wrought by one man, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the disciples did not say, Lord, teach us to pray, and teach us to do miracles, they didn't say, Lord, teach us to preach, they said, Lord, teach us to pray. You see, the self-sufficient person never prays.

If you're self-sufficient, you don't pray. If you're self-satisfied, you don't pray. You may say pray, but not pray. And the self-righteous can't pray. Do you know this is the most, when we talk, as we do, all of us, I guess somewhere along the line, we talk cheaply, easily about prayer, this is the most restricted area.

Do you ever go to a place and say, sorry, you can't come in, it's a restricted area. I like that hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers. It was written about 14 miles from my home in England, a place called Holbury.

A little Church of England preacher wrote it. One week, they were going to have a Whitsuntide. Whitsuntide is Pentecost Sunday, White Sunday, Quit Sunday, it's called, because they were all white, they were purified in the upper room.

And he said, I'd like them to march, they march with banners, and the little girls wear white, and they carry flowers, and they carry texts. And the main street there is about, it's a big city, it's like going through Main Street in Zagreb, it's about Ravidas there.

And he wanted them to march down triumphantly, so he got out, give me something, and he wrote right off the radio, Onward Christian Soldiers marching us as to war. And now, many times when I go to prayer, I think of that word that's in that wonderful hymn, Brothers, we're treading where the saints have trod.

This is holy ground, it's blood-stained ground, it's tear-stained ground. The conditions for prayer are put down by God himself in Psalm 15 and Psalm 24. In Psalm 15, who shall ascend into the hell of the Lord, even have clean hands and a pure heart?

Our hands are symbolic of our relationship with the world outside. We do our trade, we do our business. And our hands must be clean if we're going to come into the entrance with God. Clean hands and a pure heart, where our affection is.

Set your affection not on things which are beneath. Brother, if you get your roots too deep in here, there's a crisis, it'll break your heart. We'll have the biggest rash of suicides when the drop really comes.

And we've never had it in any period in history. Why? Because people have set their affections on things that are beneath and not things that are above. And this is true of many believers too. And Psalm 24, again, who shall ascend into the hell of the Lord?

He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. The 15th Psalm, he that that biteth not with his tongue. I hear people say, we had a great prayer meeting last night. Well, how do you know? You can't tell if you've had a prayer meeting until you see whether your prayers are answered.

You may have let off a lot of steam. You may have found a lot of relief. That could be psychological. Some people don't pray, they go to a psychiatrist and tell him all the woes and come out feeling better.

But when it comes down to this issue, it says that you can't enter the hell of the... You can't gossip one minute and then go use those same lips. Do you remember what Isaiah said? He said, I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

John went on to say that the prevailing sin of his day was gossip among Christians. Now, I've known people who use prayer meetings for gossip. People have said, would you pray for my son, Jack and John, Jack and his wife?

I would never pray for anybody publicly like that. You know why? Because somebody listening will gossip it. You just say there are two people who are at tremendous need of prayer and God knows who they are.

You can make a prayer meeting into a scandal shop and they should care that the old enemy would love to do it. Well, how did you get to know that? Somebody was praying for you and so on and so on. Oh, oh, you see?

This is holy ground. If we're going to enter into the hell of the Lord, we must have clean hands. All our business relationships and other relationships must be as pure as humanly possible. And a clean heart, my desire is toward him and toward him only.

The Four Dimensions of Prayer

We could, of course, ransack history. It wouldn't be very difficult to ransack history and talk about the people in prayer. But let me remind you again here, in the first epistle of Timothy and the second chapter, verse one, he covers all the ground here, I think, when Timothy says, I exhort you, therefore, that first of all supplications, prayers, intercession and giving us thanks be made for all men.

Now, what's the difference? Does that cover the whole range of prayer? I think it does. Supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgiving. Now, I'm not sure that's the right order. I'm not concerned about that.

I think that they, I don't remember where it was, was it in the case of Jeremiah? No, it wasn't Jeremiah, it was somewhere further on, where it said that nobody was allowed to go into the king's presence with a sorrowful spirit.

It didn't matter if your heart was breaking, you had to say, hey, king, live forever. Remember they said that to Belshazzar? He went in and to the feast everyone said, hey, oh boy, great, you're the greatest king in the world, live forever.

Do you know it says at the end of the chapter, that night the king died. I'm sure you'd better watch out if everybody else says live forever, that may be meaning your numbers up. But, we're to make intercession for kings, it says in this very next verse, and all that are in authority.

Now, what's the difference between prayers, supplications, intercession? Well, prayer covers the whole range of prayer. You offer prayers for all kinds of needs. You make supplication for special situations, on behalf of somebody else.

Intercession is the thing I want to get to today, is altogether different from prayer and supplication. Look, here are two people, they're busy talking, and I go butt in. What do I do? Well, I interfere.

I project my personality between two people. Two people are talking, and I say, just a minute, I want to tell you this. What do I do? I interrupt. I project myself between the two. Now, you may say we had a great, and God answered our prayers.

Great, I'm all for it, hallelujah, thank God for it. But, you notice what you said, he answered our prayers. But, intercession, he answered my prayers. You see, the intercessor is the one who stands alone.

He's never arrogant about it. He doesn't feel he's the top boy in the class. In fact, the very opposite. He humbles himself, and he seeks the face of God. The classic example of this, again, is Hannah.

Hannah prayed. Prayed why? Because she was barren. What happened? Well, she got what everybody gets. Some spiritual people look down on her and say, you know what, they tell me she's praying two or three hours a day.

I bet she thinks she's everybody. Thinks nobody else, you know. You know what it says? Eli, the man of God, thought that she was dranny. Boy, that's rough when the preacher isn't going along with you, isn't it?

Well, you won't have any trouble with this preacher. You may have with some things, but not if you're praying. If you're really praying, I'll back you up. Tell me and I'll back you up, for sure. Why did she pray?

She was barren. And the barrenness had gone on year after year after year, and adversary provoked her. People scorned her. Wouldn't you think in the church, the mess the church is in right now, it will get under our skin a bit and get us to the place where we're in trouble, that the world outside didn't care a hell of beans about the church, speaking generally.

But, you see, it was her barrenness, it was her reproach, it was her prayer, and it was her baby. She came back a little later in the chapter, and she says to the priest, so sweetly, for this child I pray.

Now then, you know, you pray when you can produce the baby. When you say, this was the burden of our heart, and God did this. But you know this, the one thing that hurts. You see, somebody will give up on you.

Now, it's nice if you can find a prayer partner, if two of you should agree. I think it's one of the blessings of married life. It can work outside, but Martha and I agree about everything, I guess. If two of you agree as touching anything in my name.

Look at the prayers of the greatest intercessors in the world of God. They're so totally pure, they're so void of any personal interest. This man we're going to talk about, get to in a minute, I hope, Abraham.

What does he do? He prays, but he never prays for a thing for himself. Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel. What did he pray? He was the only man with truth, and around him there were a million abominations.

And he said, let it be known this day that I'm your servant of it. No, he didn't. He said, let it be known this day there's a God in Israel. You see, when you're praying, and you're not concerned about yourself in this thing, or your denomination of church if you have one, but you're concerned for the glory of God.

That makes all the difference. Elijah prayed because God's glory was being insulted. What happened? Well, he got an answer to his petition, all right, didn't he? But it was a prayer that had nothing of self in it.

This pair of Abraham has nothing of self in it. It's deep prayer. As I said before about friendship, if you invite somebody into your heart, and you really love them, and you share things, they're going to share a lot of burdens and problems with you.

Your hurt is their hurt. Your joy is their joy. If the body of Jesus Christ is really healthy, if Brother Joe suffers, I suffer. I didn't phone him this week. I think I pray for him every day. I hope you have.

If somebody else is in need, well, I pray for that person because they're members in the body. I don't look at my feet very often. You look at yours. You ladies, I see you stick your toes out there. Is that to look at them?

But anyhow, my shoes, I don't have to look at my toes. They're there inside. I can feel them. I see my fingers often in the day, and I don't say, oh, a little bit of dirt in that finger. Get out, get out, get out.

But you know, my toes, I don't look at them, but boy, they're awfully valuable. You know, if for some reason somebody cut both your big toes off, they did that in the Bible. Remember, they cut off their thumbs and cut off their toes.

You know what happens? You can't stand up. Your big toe keeps you balanced. Cut it off. Over you go. They're very important little things. They don't look it, but they're important members of the body.

Well, can the eye say to the hand, I have no need of thee? Can the hand say to the foot, I have no need of thee? We're members one of another. We're particular members, peculiar members. That's true. We're peculiar members and particular members, and one can't say to the other, I have no need of thee.

After all, I've got some things working in here. I've never seen them. Thank the Lord they're working. These uncanny parts, these parts that you don't talk about and don't look at, they're there. And the only reason you can see my eyes or my hands moving is that inside there are some parts working that never get to see daylight.

And nobody ever admires them. You know, that's exactly true in the body of Christ. There's so much hidden ministry that's going on amongst God's people that my heart thrills over it. I do not thrill over a lot of this publicity stuff.

I'll tell you that I'm sick to death of most of it. I said again, we're living in strange days, and we are. We've so many self-appointed and self-anointed preachers. What gets me is that they're always begging for money.

They'll tell you, if you do this, a miracle will happen. The biggest miracle would be if they'd shut up and raise money without begging it. You know, if they tell me they raised the dead, I'll say, why don't you raise money before you raise the dead?

If you can raise the dead, surely you ought to be able to raise money. I would not give a dime to a person who asks for money. Not one, I'll tell you. I don't leave a scriptural basis for it. If God can tell, well, the Lord told me to do a job, you pay my bills.

Oh no, I want to tell you something. God never fails to pay his bills. He's never failed to pay a workman yet. I've never opened my mouth for a dime. I've been on the road since 1949, which is quite a while.

Without asking for a dime, I'm going to start now, I'll tell you for sure. You see, there are certain principles you've got to build into your life, and I've got to build into mine, and they're all here again in the Word of God.

Abraham Stands Before the Lord

I've got to go to the scripture, or I'll keep talking around it for a while. Let's go to Genesis, pardon me, the 18th chapter, and read from verse 1. And the Lord appeared unto him, that is Abraham, in the plains of Mamre.

And he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day, and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him. And when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door and bowed himself toward the ground.

Jump down to verse 5. I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts. Verse 7. And Abraham ran to the herd. You notice anything about that? These three men appeared unto him. What did he do?

Well, he set off in a hurry, and he ran. What did he do? He fetched water, and he fetched meat. And he said, brethren, so what? He gets a meal for them. Why should he? At three hundred servants, if you read further on, why didn't he say, hey, you go fetch water, you get some meat, you get something else?

It seems to be a type of the Lord Jesus. Jesus could handle himself and do the meanest task, and didn't want somebody else to do all the running for him. But you notice this? It says, there were three men stood by him.

Go to the next, chapter 19. There came two angels to Sodom at evening, and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom. Three men appeared to Abraham. Two men appeared to Lot. What happened? Well, go back to verse 22 in chapter 18.

And the men turned their faces from fence and went toward Sodom. But Abraham stood yet before the Lord. I should have gone back to verse 16 there. The men rose up from fence and looked toward Sodom, and Abraham went with them to bring them on their way.

And then it would come down to 22, and the men turned their faces from fence. Now, there were three men, all right? And they come into the presence of this wonderful man, and immediately, he detects that one of them is the Son of God.

Why does he do that? Well, verse 3 of chapter 18. The three men had come in, in verse 2, and he said, My Lord, if I now have found favor in thy sight. So, it must have been the Lord. And if that doesn't convince you, jump down into verse 22.

The men turned their faces from fence and went toward Sodom, but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. Now, the two men had gone on to Sodom to tell them the city was going to be destroyed, but Abraham did not go on with the rest.

He stood there before the Lord. And this is the secret of his life. He stood before the Lord. If you stand before God, you'll never kneel before anybody else. Notice how often it says they stood. Elijah stood before the Lord.

Ahab went and ran off with the crowd, not Elijah. You see, the man who stands is not sitting, obviously. He's not reclining. He's standing. He's ready. Tell me where to go. Tell me what to do. He's all ears, as we would say.

He's at tension. Now, this is what is, I guess the theologians call it a Christophany. It's a temporary appearance of the Lord Jesus before he became semi-permanent in flesh, in the Incarnation. Do you remember another illustration of it?

I see down there, how many men did you put in the fire? Three, you should have dropped me a second ago. But there's a fourth walking in the midst. You'd like Jesus to come and talk to you, wouldn't you?

Would you like to go in the fire to make him come? Do you think he's going to come when you're cruising down the road or sitting in a boat somewhere having a good time? Oh, no, no, no. If you're going to know the glory of his presence, go in the fire.

But we back off from it. You see, we want to learn it all here, mentally, theologically. No, thank you. We're loaded with men who know all the answers, but nobody takes much notice of them anyhow. They're certainly not shaking the country for God.

Heaven knows that, and you know it. Abraham's sense. I wonder if he'd ever prayed about this. You see, why did God appear to him? Well, I think there are very vital things. As I said to you often, it was Pascal, if I remember right, who said that trifles make perfection, but perfection itself is no trifle.

There's an old saying in England. I don't remember hearing it here. Martha, I don't know if you have. In England, often they say the child is the father of the man. Do you know what you mean by that? That what his characteristics are now, they're going to be, when he's 25 years old, unless God does a miracle in his life, all the potential is there, all the seeds are there.

The child is the father of the man. This is true in the spiritual life. Why does God honor this man with his presence? Well, for other people he could have appeared to, sure. Why doesn't he? Well, first of all, Abraham was obedient, and God loves obedience.

He hates disobedience. You can pray your head off, but if God told you there's something down the road and you're being disobedient, you won't get straight till you go back and put that thing right that he told you to do.

Master, I was working in my axe and the axe head fell off. Where did it fall? Oh, a mile down the river there. We were cutting a big tree like this good man does, and the axe head fell off. As I swung it back, it went down in the... it did?

Well, you just take this and throw it on the water and it'll come out. Of course, you don't have to go down there. The Lord's convenient. He says throw it in the water here. Don't soil and tie your dainty little feet walking a mile in the heat.

You might get a thorn in your flesh and it might hurt you. The Lord says you go back where you lost it, and other things being equal, if you obey me, you'll get back the axe. The iron did swim. A fact stated.

The iron did swim. A fact asserted. God can reverse the orders of laws of life if he wants to. He reversed the law there. Abraham obeyed God. Get up. Get out of thy country. He did it. And he stayed out, though he could have gone back.

He continued to be obedient. Not only that, when God said to him, now I'm going to give you a pledge. Circumcision. How old was he? Ishmael was 13 the day that he was circumcised. The same day, Abraham was circumcised as Ishmael his son, and he was 90 years old and nine.

Couldn't he have said, Lord, you mean me to start off with my son, of course, not me. I mean, younger children don't feel this, but old men, I could suffer. There's all kinds of complications, you know.

He couldn't run to the drug store and get help. It's a pretty serious thing for a man of that age. But he obeyed. And this is implicit in the life of everybody who's going to get on with God. When he saw the three men, he ran.

Hey, you don't run if you're the boss. You get other people to run. It's never right to run in these. You remember the young man kept running to Jesus in the middle of the day. Well, nobody runs in the middle of the day when it's 100 degrees.

In fact, nobody runs to a well in the middle of the day. But the young man was in earnest, he was rich, he was a lawyer. Some people say, though you can't prove this, some say it was the Apostle Paul, the first encounter.

And they link that up with the fact that Paul gives you a list of all the people that Jesus appeared to, and last of all, he appeared to me also. But I think that means on the Damascus Road. But anyhow, that young man came in the middle of the day.