Baptismal of Fire — Leonard Ravenhill

The Promise of Holy Ghost and Fire

And, of course, register my deepest gratitude to God for this privilege of fellowship, and of worship, and of ministry. Sometimes, at least, I've got an idea that maybe I was the only queer person left, but it's been great to meet you all.

And Brother Anderson, and a few other queer folks around here, and Brother French, and I hope someday that we'll meet again. I just asked you to... I don't ask for anything. It's not my business to ask for anything.

A lady said to me one day, do you have a promise? I said, yes, I do. Do you have a promise? She said, yes, I do. I said, what is it? Well, I could have guessed it. Romans 8, 28, everybody has it. It's a wonder it's in the Bible.

It's been used that much. But he said, do you have a promise? I said, yes, and what's more, nobody else wants my promise, and so I have it nearly all to myself. And she said, well, what is your promise?

I said, the Lord preserves the sinful. And I'm not clever enough to look after myself, and so the Lord has all the responsibility. But he's really good to work for. Now, this verse is the best known verse, I suppose, in holiness works, but I'd better read it to you.

I sometimes wonder why Luke 3, 16 is not as well known in the church as John 3, 16 is to men and women in the world, even. But the word in John 3, 16, you know, is God's soul of the world. That's God's, the redemptive purpose of God in Christ to the world.

But here is the redemptive purpose in God, in Christ, to the church. And it says in Luke 3, 16, John answered, saying unto them, I indeed baptize you with water, that one cometh mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.

John the Baptist and the Need for Men Sent from God

He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. Dividing the Old and New Testaments, there is a page, a very innocent looking page, it's blank, there's nothing on it. And yet that innocent looking page represents a solid block of 400 years of spiritual darkness without any light.

400 years of spiritual stillness without any prophetic voice. And then suddenly on the velvet blackness of that 400 years, God shows the radiant personality of John the Baptist. The stillness of 400 years is shattered by an anointed man.

There was a man sent from God. And the need of the hour in which I live, brother and sister, the need of this hour is for men sent from God. May I respectfully say, not even sent from the Bible school, but men sent from God.

I suggest to you that to attempt to measure John the Baptist by our modern standards of spirituality is about as difficult as trying to measure the sun with an instep. The sun is far away, your instep is very small, John is far away, and our modern standards of spirituality are so desperately low that you can't measure John the Baptist by modern standards of spirituality.

John came on the stage after 400 years of stillness. It was a, it was a nation, remember this? They were fundamental. It was 400 years of progressive deterioration. It was 400 years of being wrapped up in ceremony and circumcision and sacrifice.

God could have said of them as he said of the church at the end of the book, I know that thou hatest false doctrine. As I said the other night, it isn't enough to have a negative gospel, you must have a positive gospel in the day in which we're living.

And these people loved new moons and they loved Sabbath. They were very careful and meticulous. They said their prayers, putting on new garments. They watched every phase of the moon. They did a thousand and one things.

Why, one of the historians of Jewish antiquity reminds us in the days that when John came on the stage of time, men used to say their prayers, of course, the Jews said their prayers in a chair. Didn't they say in the upper room the Spirit came upon them as they prayed while they were sitting?

Every man was sitting and the Spirit came upon them. And this man tells us in the day when John came, that these Jews had nothing else to do but divide doctrine and play with doctrine. And they argued as to whether God would hear you when you said your prayers.

If you said your prayers, they said you must say your prayers like this and put both feet up. And the other half said no, you have to put your feet out like this. Now that sounds absurd, but you see when people have lost the power of God, they're fooled with anything.

And so they argued, if you put your feet that way, then he answers prayer. Charlie Chapman would have got his answer all right, because he always walked like that. Poor guy, never had any more friends.

But you imagine, four hundred years there had been a whole army of priests, hundreds of priests through hundreds of years, and yet the nation had gone to hell. And here's a lesson for you, that what God could not do to a whole army of priests, hundreds of priests in hundreds of years, in six months, one man, filled with the Holy Ghost, turned the nation upside down.

Spiritual History and Men Who Transform Nations

Secular history is tied up with bloody men and evil men. A man comes and he pulls the nation to the edge of hell like Hitler. A man like Torquemada rises up. Some other person, Genghis Khan, or if you want to go further back, Philip of Macedon, or Alexander that conquered the world at 27 and cried because there was no other area of the world to conquer.

And wicked men do wickedly. And wicked men pledge themselves. And one man in the power of the devil, when he's sanctified to the devil, when he's separated to the devil, when he lives for the devil, when his heart and his imagination and his interest and his desire and his ambition and everything else about him is inflated with the evil power of the devil, a man can wreck the world nearly.

But listen, before you take too much sorrow out of that, remember this, that while secular history is tied up in men that have pulled the world down, they've razed cities, they've cleansed nations into bloodbaths.

The world's secular history wraps around men. Spiritual history wraps around men. There was a man sent from God whose name was John Wesley. And when the bloody revolution swept over France and they said it would jump over the English Channel only 21 miles, they said England will go down under the deluge.

But Leckie, a secular historian, not a spiritual historian, Leckie the secular historian says this, that when the bloody revolution swept over France, they swept the whole monarchy into the dustbin. They raised their banner, liberty, fraternity, equality.

They were going to have a new race of men, but they never got them. And when it looked as though England would fall under the spell, then he says, God raised up an army? No, sir. A committee? No, sir.

God raised up a man sent from God whose name was John Wesley. And watch, they put to flight the armies of the alien, the enemy of coming like a flood, and the Spirit of God raised up John Wesley against it and put to flight the powers of hell, religion had been on the downgrade for 400 years, every male child was circumcised, they kept the law meticulously, that they wandered far, far, far away from God.

John the Baptist’s Calling from the Womb

You know this man John was very wonderful. The amazing thing about John the Baptist was he was filled with the Holy Ghost in his mother's womb. And Mary was filled with the Holy Ghost. And Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost.

And Zacharias was ministering in the temple, in the court of Abiah. And when the angel appeared and said a son should be born, it was incredible, and he was smitten with doneness. And outside in the temple court they began to ask the question, what manner of child shall this be?

That's what it said in the sixth, about verse 65, don't look, chapter 3, first chapter in Luke, and verse 65, what manner of child shall this be? And before they called, God answered that request in the 15th verse.

Fifty verses before, God, not man, God said of John the Baptist, he should be great in the sight of God. The trouble with America right now is it's full of great men. It's full of great preachers. It's full of great theologians.

It's full of great men that fill the pulpit, don't they? Rather if they get much fatter, they'll have to extend the pulpit. But it's full of great men, great theologians, great intellectuals, full of great men.

You know why they're great? Because the rest of us are so small. They're great in their own judgment. They're great measured at the sight of others. So this is not the measurement of one preacher flattering another, this is God that measures John and says he's great in my sight.

Rather the only thing in the world that matters is that you know somehow in your spirit, while you don't want to be great, that somehow God says he's put something great in your soul, something indestructible, something that's eternal while we obey God, something that's going to carry us through bloody seas, something that's going to help us spit open the walls of indifference and modelism and godlessness in the age in which we're living.

If I could pray one prayer and die in five minutes, I would pray that God Almighty would send to my generation a whole colony of battalion of John the Baptist. Give the world ten thousand John the Baptist and we'll bring the world back to God.

A man sent from God, all by himself. A man that God says was great. Yes, John was great. Where did God make John the Baptist? He went to a Bible school. Brother, you can go if you want. The fees are exactly nothing.

You'll be the only student there. Your teacher will be the Holy Ghost. Your textbook will be broken men and women. Your inspiration will be revelation in prayer. John was in the wilderness. There's a place to live, in the wilderness.

You know, John went to God's Bible school, God's first Bible school. God went to God, he, John went to God's Bible school. He stayed there 20 years, that's my guess, that he was there 20 years and he preached six months.

Now fellas go to Bible school six months and preach 20 years, you don't wonder they're dry. And John wondered about in the desert. I think God took him and said they're the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah and I'm still a holy and a just God and I'll send vengeance on the nation unless they repent.

John didn't have anybody. He couldn't say brother come and pray with me. He was the only one. He was in the wilderness maybe 20 years. Yes, here is the most polished gentleman in the world. His name is M-O-S-E-S, Moses.

Moses, Paul, and the Need for the Holy Ghost

And he lived 120 years. The first 40 years he was in the universities of Egypt. The second 40 years he learned a lot more. He lived with his mother-in-law. And the last 40 years, that brother had a mother-in-law you see, that uh, 40 years, yes uh, 80, 80 years of age.

That's a good age to start doing a job isn't it? Two-thirds of his life gone. Here is the greatest intellectual the church of God ever had. A man with a colossal intellect. A man with a wonderful pedigree.

A man that was blameless and spotless. A man that took everything that everybody else wanted and trampled it underfoot and he put it down. And when he was saved, he knew Hebrew, he knew Greek, he knew Latin.

He was distinguished. He was the exceptional scholar in the school of Gamaliel. And he got saved one day on the Damascus road. And brother if he'd have been saved in our day we'd have said a converted Jew, a converted rabbi, if he'd been a cowboy saved in America tonight, you'd time to the radio the next day to tell everybody how to get revival.

And he doesn't know a beat from a bone's foot hardly. He was a big man in the world, a big sinner, a big rotten corrupt man in Hollywood. He may have brought a dozen illegitimate children in the world.

He may have made a hell of a hundred women's lives. He may have done a lot. But brother he got saved last night. And so you transfer him from the height he was in Hollywood to the height he was in the church of Christ only a bit higher.

What a day. It used to be a day when you drew men to Christ and to conferences because there were men anointed of the Holy Ghost. Now we draw them because you've got a broken down cowboy from Hollywood and a girl that can play dumbbells or no not dumbbells, the dumbbell preachers.

She plays what? Oh that's it, cowbells, that's right. She plays cowbells and she prays this is like heaven to me on a half a dozen gum jars half full of water. Touch it out and you're all supposed to clap and say how wonderful I got blessed.

That thing doesn't want blessing, it wants blasting. A man sent from God. A man like Moses and God says yes everybody bows and says you're a prince in Israel. Get him to the desert. Wouldn't it be nice commanding an army one day the next day looking after a lot of fluffy woolly sheep.

But I could look after sheep for four days, four months, four years, 40 years. I think I was wool gathering if I looked after sheep for 40 years. And when he'd be looking after sheep 40 years you'd see his trouble and the trouble of Paul.

See why the trouble wasn't that they didn't know enough. The trouble with Paul was he knew too much. See that's not the trouble with a modern preacher is they don't know enough. My blessing they've got a room in the church full of dead men's brains, virgins and everybody.

They ought to know a lot didn't they, all the books they've got. Sure they did. I remember Samuel Chadwick telling us at Cliff College, well when he was the best preacher, rated the best preacher in England.

And he preached and people were converted. And he said but I'm not filled with the Holy Ghost. I want to be filled with the Holy Ghost. Fill me with the Holy Ghost. Fill me with the Holy Ghost. Fill me with the Holy Ghost.

But it never got filled. Lots of people say Lord fill me. What they ought to say is Lord kill me. And he said to the Lord why don't you fill me. And the Lord said you've got a bundle of sermons. Exegetical, oh yes sir, homiletical perfection, exegetical exactitude, historically correct, everything in order.

This man was a wonderful brain and he got his sermons all streamlined. And he said but Lord I went to souls like that. Yes the Lord said it's not your sermons, it's the fact you're proud of them. You want to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

He said more than anything in the world. All right the Lord said you put all those sermons in the fire and put a match to them and set fire to them. Oh he just got his little lovely darling sermons and he took them to the fireplace there and put them down and set them in the fire and got a match.

And then he uh he lit them. I can see him sitting there on his chair and just stroking his nose. He said brother brethren they did burn. They were so dry. Amen. Brothers if you've got yours in the fire you better not put them all in at once and blow the house up.

Those are dry, dry. There's not enough water in heaven to warm those to get those dry bones of your sermons going. You better burn them. John was in the wilderness, in the wilderness maybe 20 years, learning what God thought about man, learning what God thought about sin.

Prayer, Preaching, and Spiritual Unction

And you think all you have to do is come to a conference. You know it's wonderful what you can hear when you keep your ears open isn't it? And today I was walking and in the next room those those walls are awfully thin up there and uh there were two boys discussing the preachers.

I really enjoyed them now. I wouldn't tell you all they were saying. You better ask them to put it in the report. And one of them said you know yes there's this but that's this. But he said I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what.

You know why fellows like to come here to a crowd like this? I'll tell you why they like to come he said. He said they like to come because there's such a good prayer backing and it's easy to preach. Now that may be partly true.

Only partly. Brother what I know about preaching these days if you don't take your praying unction with you you don't get any move on. You can't step in the pulpit and preach about the holy ghost. No sir you must do what John did.

He was in the world almost 20 years and preached six months. But brother if John the Baptist preached in America he wouldn't last six weeks. If John the Baptist preached in England he wouldn't last six days.

To wake a sordid nation he wanted to disturb it out of the sleep of death. It had religion but it was damned. It had God on its lips but not in its heart. And God looked all over the nation couldn't find a man so he said I'll make one.

And he gave a woman past age a child. From the very moment he was born he was separated. My wonderful mother the very first day I was born laid me on the bed and put her hands on me and said Lord I don't let this boy evangelist or don't even let him live.

I thank God for a mother like that. Man sent from God. Yes sir I agree as the preacher said last night and again was it this afternoon that what we need in in holiness work these days where we have so many phrases and terms they don't mean anything they're just a big drum.

You know what I think of John the Baptist? Well I think John the Baptist was the man of sorrows till the man of sorrows came. John carried the sin of the nation. God wanted to turn a nation upside down.

Who better than John the Baptist with a face like a judgment morning, with a voice like a hurricane. John didn't have a heart did you know that? John didn't have a heart he just had a volcano inside of him.

Entertainment Cannot Replace the Holy Ghost

Oh yes on the day of Pentecost there were two million people in Jerusalem. There were 120 people in the upper room and three hundred and eighty there ought to have been there but they were fishing up in Galilee somewhere they never got in on the blessing.

There were 120 in the upper room. There was only one with John. The 120 had an audience when they came out of the upper room they fell on top of the crowd and began to preach that John was in the wilderness.

That's a place to preach isn't it? Nobody lived in the wilderness. Oh God why put me in the affair it isn't reasonable. But I read that they came from Judea and Samaria and all the nation began to fall down on top of John.

Do you know why? Don't you think that man Anderson has all the smart answers he doesn't? I've got one or two. Do you know why John got the card in the desert? You never thought of this I thought of this.

You couldn't think of it you're too dumb. Needed an Englishman to think. Do you know what he was he was showing a film of the crossing of the Red Sea. Don't you think he was? They've just got some new religious movies out and he said say I want to show you the hanging gardens of Babylon and the we just put a show on at one of the Bible schools and filmed it and it's marvelous.

We're going to show you how the fingers wrote upon the wall and a man's knees shaking together and a thousand chariots coming down the road and then a thousand beggars entering a thousand hearts and blood mixing up with the wine.

It's the most dramatic film brother this is going to do a great deal of work for us. Why brother we're so bankrupt spiritually now that the other day in a newspaper a religious newspaper an evangelist is advertising I'll come to your church for 14 nights I'll show you 14 different films and we'll have speakers at the altar every night.

You don't need the holy ghost only films. What are there going to be some filmy Christians about too? Oh the church has to get the crowds yeah that's all that's all that matters is the crowds. God help us.

Do you know John wasn't showing any films? No sir. On the way out on the pacific coast said Red Mill I enjoyed your preaching the other night. I must have been off form but anyhow I enjoyed it. He said I want to give you a bit of advice.

Brother I've had enough advice to be infallible but I'm not. But I listened I said all right come on give me the advice. He said you want to stop preaching for a bit. I wondered what was coming. He said stop preaching for a bit get along by yourself and don't get up until God gives you one of the gifts of the spirit.

Oh I said yes I see. He said you wait on God till he gives you the gift of healing and then he said brother I want to tell you this I prophesied you get the gift of healing and you maintain your prayer life and keep preaching like you do.

You'll need a 15 to 20 ,000 feet of tent and you'll fill it anywhere in America. If only you'll get the gift of healing and wait on God you'll see something happen. I said brother will you listen to me a minute I've listened to you he said yes I listened.

I said well listen here. I want to tell you something. I want to tell you about a man a man a wonderful man a man that entered villages and cities and everybody came to see him and everybody listened to him and hundreds and thousands of people were converted and I don't read that people run after him saying John have mercy on my son he's a lunatic.

John touched my poor blind mother's eyes. I brought my grandfather he's paralytic. I read in the word of God this John never raised John never healed a sick man. John never raised a dead man. No sir John did something infinitely more than raise a dead man.

He raised a dead nation. People didn't come to see miracles. They came to say why why why why has this man come along who is he? Yes sir on the following Sunday nobody went to the synagogue they all went past.

They went down in the Jordan Valley they saw a man a man not an angel a man a man that God has made. Oh brother if we could have some John the Baptist we talk about reaching the masses for God. We don't want to reach the masses for God.

What we need is not a preacher. We need God said to send us a prophet to preach to the preachers. That's what we want. Every school can make preachers but only God can make prophets. The preacher said I was reading the other day one of the great books I have in my library just to impress you that he's got a big library.

You know I was reading. That's what the preacher said. Prophet never says that doesn't have time to read man. The prophet says the word of the Lord came unto me saying I heard the voice of the Lord saying the burden of the Lord is upon me brother the devil doesn't worry about so much preaching these days brother he can afford to look at it and say it didn't do that much in the last 20 years.

And it's not likely to do much in the next the way they're going because in preachers the devil's worried about his prophet. And John a spirit filled a spirit anointed man not so archaeology sideways a bit.

The Prophet’s Burden and the Cost of Holiness

You know this man wandered in the in the desert 20 years after he was filled with the Holy Ghost. But he did because he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. And then he was in the desert.

Brother I say this man bore the sin of the nation. This man felt about sin as God felt about it. This man saw sin as God saw it. This man trembled and he watched and he groaned. And I believe that when you read that God opens his book of the judgment.

Oh when I see John the Baptist there John what a man the only evangelist I ever know that never took a love offering. Brother I should have put that in this afternoon. Let me get to the judgment bar. And some of these big preachers have to account for a love offering.

Oh yes sir hit it. I was in a town not long ago. A preacher had been there. This wasn't his offering. They said what are your expenses. He's had two thousand four hundred dollars for two weeks. That's money.

That was his expense not his love offering. I thought we were one of the greatest men in America. And he said Raymond you know I sit on that committee don't you. He said you know the other week we had a man came in a distinguished American preacher that gathers money from all over America.

And he said gentlemen I know you're needing money. And I have a well I have maybe twenty five thousand spare dollars. I can give your mission society fifteen thousand dollars. What's it worth to you see what I meant.

I've got fifteen thousand dollars. I'll give you. But you give me a nice tip a backhander of say three to five thousand dollars. Isn't that nice. I tell you an evangelist that runs five Cadillacs a poor dunn preacher the other day in Pennsylvania said I've only been preaching three years.

He said when I came I I I only had. And now he said the Lord's been good to me. You know I have 51 suits. There's some conviction around brother Anderson says it's not him. I guess brother French that he's a bit older than me.

I guess he doesn't have about 52 suits. Anyhow all the time he's been preaching that wonderful 51 suits for an evangelist isn't suits. He wants the others shoot him. What do you want. What are we coming to.

I wrote an article some while ago and I got blistered for it. But brother I'll write one. The Lord inspires me. Some of the boys hit back because I said they go around the world on love offerings. And they do.

Some old widow says I feel like you're spending five dollars. And those guys come to my country and swank around the country. This generation is cursed. This generation is cursed. So help me God as I'll meet him at the judgment bar.

But in my judgment one of the curses of this generation is that this generation is smitten with traveling preachers. And it isn't traveling preachers who want it. Traveling preachers. This man brought a nation to birth.

God could trust him with it. Everybody went past the synagogue and went down to see a man sent from God. John was a strange man a very strange man. He had 51 suits. As a matter of fact he had 365 suits.

You know why. He had a suit for every day the same one. It was a wonderful story. He found an old dead camel. He cut a bit off just hit it a part of his body and God got this sun-scorched fire baptized man with a leavened girdle about his loins.

And now I come to all the preachers even holiness preachers. Now it's stylish. They all wear a beautiful black suit. Backwards way. You don't know whether the preachers are undertakers. But at the front they wear the collars backwards way.

You know this man. Well I think that's honest. Most of them are walking backwards right. So they may as well wear them that way. Now listen. John the Baptist was strained in his dress. He didn't have to press his trousers.

Even he got up in the morning full of the Holy Ghost and said I don't want to live. You'd be John the Baptist at a time limit ministry. But brother let me tell you you've got a time limit ministry. Every preacher here tonight has a time limit ministry.

I agree with brother Frank. The coming of Jesus is nearer than we know. And the answer to the salvation of America might be in this very meeting tonight. Don't you go away. I was in a wonderful meeting.

Listen God we're going to lay something on you tonight. You'll never escape to the judgment bar. John was strained in his dress. He was strained in his dress. Brother. He didn't really need to get up off his knees for the night of prayer and get a milkshake.

No sir. He didn't need a bit of something to fortify his inner man. Oh no John I read that he what. He ate locusts they're big flies. And he caught them and pulled the wings off and put them on the rock and turned them over.

And then he got a bit of bread and put them between made his own hamburgers and enjoyed them. And then he talked to the hall. He got some honey out of it. Honey in the rock. Brother straining his dress straining his diet straining his doctrine.

Repentance as the Prophet’s Central Message

Oh those big fat belly priests all came waddling down to the edge of the Jordan. I could have had one or two of you fat fellows to do that for me. It'll look better. I was in Louisville preaching there last year and a woman couldn't get through the altar.

I said what's wrong with her. She said I have a hatred against the preachers. I said what she said. They're all so fat. I said what do you mean. They're all so fat. She said prophets got this hat now.

That may be true or it may not. But listen John the Baptist was straining his dress and straining his diet and straining his doctrine. And when nobody went to church they wanted to know why they were having revival down in the valley.

He didn't have any boys with golden trumpets. He didn't have anybody doing a theological juggling act. Here was a man with a drive like a hammer. And they came down and very pompously said and uh if we may ask the question seeing where the hierarchy of the church and God has committed the destiny the spiritual destiny of this great nation into our hands.

Where did you get your license to preach. Who are thou higher. If he about this because he was nobody. He he he. He must increase and I must decrease. Oh brother I think this is one of the best. There's some wonderful jokes in the bible you ever find them.

Here's a wonderful joke. They said John who art thou. And he said I'm a voice. Most preachers are only echoes. That always said a voice. Voice it means authority it means power it means intelligence. America doesn't want an evangelist.

He wants a boy. England doesn't need doctrine. It needs a boy. And bless Graham a thousand times. I preached in the same program as a boy and like it immensely. So let me say in all due respect that while Graham has a message maybe to the sinner he's no message for the church.

You can holler down every radio every amplifier uh every microphone in America about corruption in the white house and corruption in the taverns and immorality and god peddling and every other damnable thing in the world that won't get you into trouble.

That's preaching. That's preaching. But listen the prophet doesn't do that. He doesn't start fooling around with bits of things like that. What the prophet gets into trouble for. You know this man really lost his head in religion.

He was only six months around and he cut his head off. They put him in prison tried to stop his mouth and then he shouted he cut his mouth off. They cut his head off. I'll tell you when we get into trouble.

I'll tell you when those got Billy Graham off 80 percent of the of the radios in America the first time he blasted the church of Rome. You get into trouble when you start a false religion corrupt religion.

Nothing less taking men to hell under the guise of a crucifix. You don't get into trouble for saying there's corruption here. The politicians want you to do that. They want. They want the church to clean the mess up if they can.

It's when you don't look at the level of the stars and stripes and patriotism. You see it from the elevation of God. And you see a nation full of iniquity and corruption. Its body is full of wounds and purifying swords.

And preaching won't do it. It needs a prophet. And John said strange in his dress strange in his diet strange in his doctrine. You know why repent it says. In that third chapter John began to preach and to say repent it says in the fourth chapter Jesus began to preach and to say repent.

It says in Acts chapter two that they said what men and brethren what shall we do. And Peter says don't get alarmed. Don't get alarmed. Please stand later. Matthew and John and the other boys are coming around with the decision cards.

We want you to fill them all in and we'll collect them up and have a real good time huh. He doesn't. I have to read the authorized but that's the polarized version. The authorized version. John began to preach and to say repent.

Repent repent repent. Rather I tell you I very much doubt. I don't want to be unkind to preachers. But I wonder if God have any prophets around these days in the truest sense of that word. All prophets are not nice to look at.

People can listen to John about this. Rather it made no difference if it was Herod on his throne with another man's wife or a big fat bellied priest. He murdered them. He blessed the souls he lived in the fire and so he could have the dismiss.

Fire fire fire. Oh sir sir said McShane. Dear McShane burned his life out at 29. A holy man. A holy man is a fearful weapon in the hands of a holy God. John didn't think his own thoughts. He thought God's thoughts.

John didn't preach homiletically. He delivered his soul. Repent repent repent. My brother. These days young people come to the altar. They don't know why they're coming. When they leave it. They don't know what they've got.

But they don't know when they've lost it. The evangelist preaches 30 minutes and makes an altar call for 45 and you have to pull it. It's like pulling teeth out and get people at the altar. But listen when there's revival that's what the preacher does.

Conviction, Repentance, and the New Birth

But when there's a prophet around people get mad and terrified and they say men and brethren what shall we do. When I read of John the Baptist it says in the tenth verse that people said what shall we do.

As the publicans said what shall we do. And in the 14th verse the soldiers likewise demanded what shall we do brother. When conviction starts moving around. When God cuts men's hearts open. When God lifts the lid off your memory and shows you your sin.