Such as I Have — Leonard Ravenhill

Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate

I want to read some verses from the third chapter in the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles, reading the third chapter from the first verse. Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer being the ninth hour.

And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask the arms of them that entered into the temple. Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, asked the arms.

And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John, said, Look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them. Then Peter said, Silver and gold I have not, but such as I have, give I unto thee, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Then Peter and John went up to Peter and John and said, Look on us. Rise up and walk. And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. And he leaping up stood and walked and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God.

And all the people saw him walking and praising God, and they knew that it was he which sat at arms at the beautiful gate of the temple. And they were all filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.

The Church’s Failure to Evangelize the World

And there is no question about the need to evangelize the world in the day in which we are living, because there are more heathen living today than at any other period in history. But I'm not sure that we can afford even to lay down our lives to spread the gospel which is not quite the gospel of the Bible.

I have been reading, I'm being very disturbed in reading of the New Testament church, not from any textbook of church history, but reading the authentic account here from the Acts of the Apostles, and I'm amazed at the disparity between what we label as Christianity today and what Christianity really was in the days of the Apostles.

We have to say that between us and them there's a great gulf fixed. And you would be very dumb tonight if you think that we're evangelizing the world because we're not. And I'm very glad I'm not God, because if I were God I'd blow the lights out and pull the blinds down and say, get out of existence Church of God and the world as well.

Because again we're not evangelizing the world. The first reaction of the world to the coming of the Spirit of God was one of playful mockery. When those men tumbled out of the upper room you remember that people just jerked their thumbs and said with a kind of sneer, they're drunk.

Well I want to tell you something, the church never does anything when it's sober, anyhow it's time he got drunk again. What Spinoza calls some God-intoxicated men. The first day of World War II I was preaching in the, a crusade for the head Nazarene church in England, actually in Scotland, and as we came out of the service they announced that war had been declared and that the city would be in darkness and everybody must carry a gas mask.

And so as we went home from the church the pastor said to me, now I'm going to get a gas mask. One of the reasons of course, they were free, and he said I have to join this building here and you stand by this lamppost if you're not coming in and I stood by the lamppost in the street.

The city was in darkness, the streetcars were operating without light, automobiles had no light, and it's a very eerie, weird kind of world we were living in. And an old streetcar rumbled up the street and a man got off it, he was well drunk, and he staggered on those rubber legs of his one way and another and then as he was going to fall he put his arms around the lamppost and me as well because I wasn't even as heavy then as I am now.

And then he sensed that I was standing by the post and he backed off and he said, who are you? Well I said my name's Leonard Wavenhill, ah he says my son is MacTavish, can you sing? I said no. Ah he said I can and he sang Maxwell, Tom Braise, or Bonnie, Where Early Falls the Dew, though he said Jew but that didn't matter.

And then when he'd sung he rolled his sleeves up and he said can you fight? And I said no, no I'm not in the fighting business. Who's a saver? I told him who my father was. What country did I come from?

I told him. And then he began to tell me a lot about his personal history. And then he put his hand in his pocket and he took out a handful of great big English coins, a handful of silver, and you can tell a Scotsman's drunk when he offers you all his money.

And he offered me this great handful of silver and I said no thank you. Ah he says what kind of a man are you? You can't fight, you can't sing, you don't want to talk, you don't want money, good mix. And he went up the street.

Now if I had seen that man the next morning at nine o 'clock, instead of nine o 'clock in the darkness, he wouldn't even have spoken to me. He was intoxicated, he had another spirit, it's true he got it out of a bottle, but he didn't offer the fact.

You see Paul draws an analogy, a parallel here, he says be not drunk with wine, where in is excess, but be filled with the spirit. Because when a man is drunk he's ready to fight. He'll fight a man twice, he'll sigh.

He's generous, he gives his money. He wants to talk, he wants to communicate. He's happy to tell you his pedigree. And because these men in the early church were drunk, they were ready to fight the good fight of faith, they were ready to sing the Lord's song in a strange land, they were ready if need be to go to prison for Christ's sake.

Recovering the Apostolic Church

I think there is nothing more exciting that I have ever read in my life, about the word of God, outside of the word of God, than reading the statement of what you might have thought was a very stuffy English clergyman by the name of Dr. J .D. Phillips, and when he made his first investigation of the early church, he did it by reading the Acts of the Apostles, and he did it by reading it from the original Greek, and those words began to leap off the page and grab him by the throat and shake him and make him realize that the church of which he was a part was a very, very, very, very distant relative to the church as it was originally conceived.

Our good brother the song leader put a little thought in my mind this morning, and consciously I guess, he said after all the promise is to those who are far off, well God knows we are far enough from Pentecost tonight to need the Holy Ghost to come to us, we are far off.

We are far off theologically, we are far off in the time sense, we are far off because we have denied so many truths of the word of God. Now listen to Phillips, he begins to read the Acts of the Apostles, and this is what he says about the early church, this is the church of Jesus Christ before she became fat and short of breath by wealth, this is the church of Jesus Christ before she became muscle bound by over organization, this is the church of Jesus Christ where people did not sign articles of faith but they acted in faith, and remember faith is the only thing that is a fruit of the Spirit and a gift of the Spirit at the same time, but these people did not sign a particular Baptist doctrine or Pentecostal doctrine, they did not sign articles of faith, they acted in faith.

These are people he says not saying prayers but praying in the Holy Ghost. This is the church of Jesus Christ not gathering together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, but they healed the faith.

After all when Jesus sent out for this as it was before Pentecost. Now I'm not trying to stipple your theology but if it's sick it needs some help and I'm prepared to help you anyhow, but you can't tell me a miracle that those men did after Pentecost that they didn't do before Pentecost, to list miracles and say this is Pentecost is nonsense, it is not true.

The men that staggered out of the upper room did not, N .O .T. did not get into trouble for speaking in tongues, they really got ridiculed for that, they did not get into trouble even for healing the man at the beautiful gate of the temple, great as it was.

They got into trouble when they had been tried by the hierarchy, the big shots there, and when they saw the boldness of Peter and John. It was the boldness of a minority group standing up against the establishment anointed by the power of the Spirit, and when they saw the boldness of Peter and John they were staggered and they were amazed.

The Helplessness of Organized Religion

Now this is a very simple but a very sublime story. Here is a man crouched at the gate of the temple, to me he is a type of our modern, thick, very thick society. To me it is an illustration of organized religion that passes him two or three times a day and can do nothing for him.

After all, read the story, they carried this man every day from his home to the temple, temple to home, again, twice a day he was carried twice a day. There are 365 days in a year on this, so he must have been carried what, 730 times a year, and if you carried him for 10 years, and remember, so often in the Bible it does tell you the age of men, it very seldom tells you the age of women, but it says a little later this man was over 40 years of age on whom this miracle was wrought.

And if he had been carried 7 ,000 times in 10 years, then he had been carried 21 ,000 times in 30 years. He had been carried, but he had never been cured. He had been helped, but he had never been healed.

He had received a word of greeting, but he had never received a word of power. Isn't it a very strange thing that Peter and John went to the temple at the hour of prayer? After all, the hour of prayer, why should they go pray with that bunch of backsliders?

Because nobody in the temple believed what Peter and John believed, and Peter and John didn't believe what they believed, but they went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And this man may be crippled, but he says, after all, this is Peter and John, they had a big revival yesterday, they must have got a stack of money like preachers usually do, and we've got a big hand out.

And so the man there that has been crippled all those years, he suddenly makes his need known, and the Bible says he asked for an arm. Well, phonetically, that can get you into trouble. A teacher was telling some children about the man that sat at the beautiful gate asking for arms, and the little girl asked, why did he ask for arms when he needed legs?

Well, I don't think he's any worse than most of us. I mean, we don't let the Lord talk to us and tell us our need, we go with our big shopping list and say, Lord, do this and do this and do this, and I want this and I want the other and I want something else.

Here is the man crouched at the beautiful gate of the temple. Year after year, the priest, the high priest that tossed him maybe a golden coin. Another priest that tossed him a silver coin, and then he looks on this man, Peter and John, and he says, I need an arm.

And Peter said, silver and gold I have none. I have argued sometimes, I don't argue anymore about theology, but sometimes I've argued with men who say, now look, you know, I believe in Acts 2, 4, you can be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak with tongues.

Right, that's good, it's in the Bible, let's accept it. And I believe that you must be filled with the Holy Ghost and you must speak with tongues if you're really filled with the Spirit of God. They're very insistent about this.

And I say, well, no, you can't take a text from its context or its a pretext. If you deal with a text, you must deal with the context, what goes before it, what comes after it. Now, if you're going to clobber me with Acts 2, 4 and say that I must be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, I'm going to come back on you and say, yes, my friend, look, and this is what you have to do, you must have balls of fire on your head, you must have a rushing mighty wind in the room, and not only that, you must fulfill Acts 2, 44.

And you know they don't even know that's there. Acts 2, 4 is they were all filled with the Holy Ghost to speak with other tongues. Acts 2, 44 is that they sold all their possessions and shared everything out.

Did you do that when you got the Holy Ghost? Maybe we better have a multi-call right now. They sold all their possessions and they shared it out. And whatever share Peter and John got, they'd already got rid of it.

For Peter is telling the truth and he says, silver and gold I have none, but such as I have, give I unto thee. Now, you can only give what you've got. Most of us want to give God what we haven't got. You can only give God what you've got.

And you can only give anybody else what you've got. And Peter says, silver and gold I have none, but such as I have, give I unto thee. You see, here is a man and he's crouched to the beautiful gate of the temple.

He needs a man. He needs a message. He needs a miracle. And what that vast system of religion and its stained glass windows and its ritual and its formality, which was so elaborate, what that system could not do.

I remember a little earlier when Zacharias went down the aisle, he was a priest of the most high God of the course of Abir. There were 20 ,000 priests ministered in that temple in a year. And yet 20 ,000 priests and all the blood of bulls on Jewish altars laid, and all the ritual and all that formality, spectacular as it may be, still left that poor man crippled and impotent and paralyzed at the gate of the temple.

The Anointing Rather Than Religious Prestige

I say he needed a man. He needed a message. He needed a miracle. And he found the man and the message and the miracle in two penniless, but very powerful preachers, two men who were consecrated. They were compassionate.

They were committed. They could communicate. And Peter says, look on us. We don't usually say that. We say, now you look to Jesus. But Peter says, you look on us. And afterwards, when they wanted to put a halo upon his head and make, he said, look not upon us, as though by our power, our own holiness, we had made this man to walk.

He isn't after any halos that men can give him. He has received the greatest thing a man can receive, this God of eternity. He has been filled with the Holy Spirit of God. I say again to you tonight that I believe that one reason we do not have revival is because individually and collectively, we're happy to live without it.

That's why the man looking in a shop window and he sees a Rolls Royce there and he tags it and he says, boy, it's $28 ,000. I'd like it, but I can't afford it. The price is too high. Convinced that our modern method of trying to reach this world for God is the same as you putting me on a little rowing boat to a great big iceberg, which is showing a mile of ice above the water and therefore seven miles of ice below the water.

And all you give me is one match. And I'm going to strike that match in my little rowing boat and hold it at the side of that super iceberg. And you expect me to melt an iceberg with my one match. Most of the Christianity we export to the mission field today isn't worth taking there, let me tell you that.

I preached at a great Kirizawa missionary conference in Japan. There were hundreds and hundreds of missionaries there. And it pleased God that night to come down by His Spirit. The meeting began somewhere about 7 and ended there.

At 9 o 'clock suddenly men began to make confession. Missionaries began to make confession. They were still confessing at midnight. The next day one of the best known missionaries in Japan came to me.

And he said, Brother Ravenhill, I want to tell you something. Now let me ask you a question. Do you know how long missionaries have been in Japan? I said no. They have been in Japan 120 years at the cost of millions of dollars.

Americans are here. People are here from New Zealand, Australia, England, all kinds of missionary societies here. And they have been here for 120 years. Do you know what degree of success we have had?

I said no. He said, including the Roman Catholics, we have gained a half of 1 of the population of Japan in 120 years. Half of 1%. All upside down. This man says silver and gold. I have none. You see the difference between the church that was and the church that is, is this.

They have nothing but they possess all things. Now we have all things and possess nothing. We've got billions of dollars blanketing the world every weekend with radio programs. Brother, not Billy Graham, but somebody on his staff was asked a while ago what he thought about the final third of this 20th century.

He said, I believe that mass evangelism is going to play a greater part. We don't need mass evangelism, believe me. America is not going to ride to spiritual victory on the back of Billy Graham and all the robbers.

If America is going to have Holy Ghost revival, it's going to be when the local church gets it and the fire spreads there to another church there and the Baptist and the Methodist and the answer is in the local church, not in the mass system.

If you let me give us money, we can get on another radio station. Do you know there are only 400 million radio sets in the world and half of those are in America? There are people in Africa who can't even afford a loincloth.

I've walked amongst the people there in India on the dusty roads. White man alive, they can't even afford a cup of coffee, nevermind a radio set. You want mass evangelism? Shall I tell you something? I'll tell you two things.

Somebody will say, well, that fellow is sour grapes, you see. He doesn't have an organization like Billy Graham and he doesn't have six, seven, eight million dollars like all the rest. That's not the, that's not the problem.

A man came to me a while ago and he was a Texan too. A big fine looking man and he said, I read an article of yours and I read it to somebody else and I've come to make you an offer. Do you know so and so?

And I said, no, and he went through a list of men who had anything from five to thirty million dollars each. And he said, we're prepared to buy you the largest tent in America. We're prepared to buy you a whole lot of trucks and you can have Ravenel's revivals on the side.

And they'd be no good because only God's revival is very good anyhow. But anyhow, he's going to put Ravenel's revivals on the side and give me the largest and give me the largest stipend. So that will be good.

Billy gets 25 ,000 a year, so I would have got 30 ,000 at least. And he was going to do all this and give me the finest stage and the finest marquees and the finest singers and the finest gospel and everything else.

And he said, we'll put you on the road and boy, you'll get it made here in America. Now, if he'd told me that when I first came out of college, I'd have taken it up. Because when I came out of college, Spurgeon had risen from the dead and he was going to shake the world.

The only thing, he must have died somewhere on the tour because we never made it like that anyhow. And I said to this man, and now he said, this is an offer. Nobody else will get this offer. You have all these millions of dollars behind you.

You can have TV and radio and you can do this. And then I said, well, this is all very nice. Will you accept the offer? I said, yes, I will. Oh, he said, I said, wait a minute. He didn't let me finish.

Yes, I will on one condition. What is the one condition? The one condition, I said, is that with this superlative outfit that you're going to buy me, you buy me the anointing of the Holy Spirit so I can fill that tent and go out and shake America for God.

Well, he said, we can't buy you an anointing. Well, then I said, I don't want your trucks and your trailers and all the other things you've got. Because what's the good of having a great big cathedral and all the other trimmings if you don't have the superior anointing of God?

The Saturated Church and the Neglected World

Now, I'm not jealous about what these are, but look, you set the dial on your radio Sunday and maybe you're still in bed. You need to remember what old C .D. Stubbs said, get up, get up for Jesus, he's soldiers of the cross, a lazy Sunday morning surely means harm and loss.

The church of God is calling, in duty be not slight, you cannot fight the good fight while lying on your back. But anyhow, I suppose it's nice to lay in bed and you hear a radio program. And it happens to be a man who runs the radio Bible class of America from Grand Rapids.

And he reaches 20 million people with his broadcast. And you don't need to change the dial, all you do is get another cup of coffee, Billy Graham comes on, he reaches 30 million. And don't change it, showers of blessing comes on from the Nazarenes and they reach 15 million.

And don't change your dial because C .M. Ward is coming on with the Pentecostal aspect and he reaches another 15 million. And still leave the dial there and you'll hear something about I've anchored my soul in the haven of rest while you're still in bed.

And you can sit another half hour or later. And when that's gone, you can still leave the dial and you'll hear somebody come in like dear old Mr. Fuller or an old-fashioned revival hour. And you'll hear about 10 men follow each other like that.

They're all saturating a saturated community and everybody wants the last buck out of you. And all we're doing is feeding a jaded appetite of people who have had enough light and they won't walk in light.

And darkness has covered the earth and gross darkness covers the people. You know why? The one reason that these men were successful, they had a consuming passion for Jesus Christ and it made no difference where they went.

You see, in this early church they were so different. As I said, and not facetiously, in the early church you had a bunch of men in the upper room agonizing and now you have a bunch of women in the back room organizing.

Then it was the fire of the Holy Ghost, now it's the fire in the kitchen. Christianity is as supernatural as it is. Not the Christianity of the Bible and I don't care how successful it may be and how much money you can get and how many people you have in your church.

Christianity is a super, Christianity is a supernatural religion. If it's not supernatural, then it must be superficial. The Christianity of the New Testament was impressive, art is impoverished. The Christianity of the New Testament was apostolic, art is almost apostate.

Then they saw the boldness of Peter and John. They don't see our boldness, they see our calmness. The early church was remarkable for its fire and for its fruit. The early church was a living church, art is a languishing church.

The early church, they died for him, we won't even lift for him. The early church was a very poor church, silver and gold, I have none. And I was a little shocked, let me tell you this, because there's no good pulling punches, you know.

If I hit the Methodist here tonight, you'll say amen, because you ain't Methodist. But I'm going to hit the Baptist right now. I'll tell you why I was amazed to discover that the Baptist, here in the South, yesterday, paid, what was it, 45 million to buy the little league, baseball or something.

God pitious, I wonder what promise they got from the Lord for that. In any case, they might have bought a big league, it must have been a little league. This early church that had the breath of God on it, that had the fire of God on it, that had the faith of God in it, that had the fruit of God working every day.

Again, I say, they were a living people and we're a languishing people. A friend of mine came from Japan last year, and in the course of speaking, I heard him only in one minute meeting, but he really upset me.

Because before he left Japan, he went for a haircut, it would be cheaper than getting one in the States. The very courteous Japanese gentleman put a cloth around his neck and got him into a right position, and then he said, uh, you, you Americana?

He said, uh, yeah, I'm a Yankee. America, very rich. America, a very great country. So he went on. You a businessman? No, I'm, I'm a missionary. He's a missionary too. Oh, my friend said very quickly, but I'm a full-time missionary.

The man nearly clipped his ear off, he said, I'm a full-time missionary. I thought you were a barber, a hairdresser. Ah, that is only on the side. I am a full-time missionary. I am consumed by the religion, philosophy of this area.

What do you call it? Sodagaki? Oh, said the missionary, tell me about it. Well, my shop opened nine o 'clock this morning, my shop closed five o 'clock tonight. I go home, I bathe, I eat, I go out at seven o 'clock, I take with me my, my religious books, I knock on doors, and I knock on doors from seven o 'clock at night until two o 'clock in the morning.

Because if you've been to Japan, you know, when you get outside of Tokyo, if a hut is only as big as this desk, it has a TV, a camera on it, and they watch their programs, and they're all in wrestling, and all the other junk that people want.

And he said, I go to doors, and I knock on the door, and I ask, may I go in? And I teach them, I teach them my philosophy, from seven every night until two in the morning. At two o 'clock, I go home. I usually get home by, by two o 'clock.

And then from two o 'clock to four, I spend in prayer before my God to renew my strength. And then at four o 'clock, I go to bed until half past seven. My friend was more than shaken when he heard this, because he was a mystery, and he sure wasn't living a bad place.

And he said to the man, how long have you done this? Ah, he said, six years. For six years. I go to bed in the morning at four. I get up half past seven. I have never felt fitter and stronger. But you see, I draw strength from my God.

I have been pouring out my life for my God, and I renew my strength from my God. And then I go out, and this gospel, as we call it, is spreading. They have guaranteed, one of the leaders says, we'll put Christianity out of Japan in the next ten years.

It's taken 110 years to get one half of one percent of the people of Japan into a nominal concept of religion, the Christian religion. Now tell me this. Are the things that you're living for worth Christ dying for?

The Church’s Spiritual Poverty and the Need for Revival

The crippled society, parts of the very gates of our churches, wherever we go, whatever denomination we have. Here are the people, and here they are, paralyzed, morally. Spiritually, in every other way.

Impotent. They've given up on organized religion. They've done as a boy I told you about the other day said, I live in a plastic society where the church is a ghetto. A stained glass ghetto where people just go, and they have their fun.

And the soldiers said, all we do is sanctify it. We have our little happy time, and we just pray over it and think it's wonderful. We used to go to the supper club, and now we have suppers down in the basement.

Not the upper room, the supper room. Not the fire of the Holy Ghost, the fire in the kitchen. All this zeal that consumes us. Peter and John go to the temple at the hour of prayer, and they know when they go that they have no curse, but they have power.

They have no prestige. Against the tremendous system of the day, I say again, the Roman Empire with all its power, the Grecians with all their learning, and the Jews that felt they had a monopoly on God, and here are a couple of penniless but not powerless preachers.

And when they see that man, he immediately, he asks for arms. Peter looks upon him. But you must do more than look upon him. One of the amazing things is, God bless our dear brother, going to Australia.

I've been in Australia. Central Australia, it's 140 degrees. But remember this, will you, that when you get to Australia, you think you're in New York. You've got superior hotels. You've got TV. You've got automobiles.

You can charter your private planes. You can run in your automobiles. And around the edge of Australia, it's 1969 Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. But if you fly in a jet for two hours into the center of Australia, where you see those great big black people with shiny skins, it isn't 1969 Anno Domini.

It's 1969 BC. They're living 2 ,000 years near the other side of the cross, while Christians in Melbourne, and Adelaide, and Perth, and all the other areas stick an ease in Zion. The strange thing is, you get a man here, burdened for Australia, and you get people in Australia burdened for 3 .2 million Indians in America that nobody bothers to reach, hardly.

And if you want to see uncivilized people, go to the west of Canada there, where just a few months ago they had about six murders in about four or five days. And those Indians are as wild as any film you've ever seen.

And there are areas up there in the frozen snows, if you like to go there, where it's perpetually white. And there are people there in the cold chill of unbelief and of sin. I say again, we have more people without God and without hope tonight than any period in history.

And I'm convinced in my own heart that the church that is, is not the church to which Jesus Christ died. We counseled every crusade, every gospel crusade in America for a year. All we need to do is evangelize the evangelists, and counsel the counselors, and teach the teachers, and call the whole church to prayer, and put a notice outside of your church, calls for spiritual repair.

Or if you like to do it, like a man did in America over a century ago, he put a notice outside of his church, this church will have revival or a funeral. He put himself on the altar, literally. He had revival.

The Holy Ghost and the Power of Christ’s Resurrection

When Peter saw this man crouched at the gate, he remembered the exceeding great and precious promises of God. When the people brought him to question afterwards, you remember what he said? He said, well, this is that which was spoken by the prophet.

And then he says, for, therefore, being at the right hand of God, exalted and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he shed forth this which you have both seen and heard. I say again, nobody ever goes to sleep in a meeting where the Holy Ghost is.

And Jesus Christ gave us a full work of redemption, because humanity is cursed, not merely physically and mentally, and in its spirit, it is totally cursed. And therefore, Jesus gave us a full redemption.

Now, Peter isn't afraid of the status quo, and when he sees this crippled man, I say he not only looks at him, but he puts forth his hand and he touches him. Remember about six, oh no, it's ten years now since little shrimpy David Wilkerson as he was then, he's getting fatter and more prosperous, but then he was thin and skeleton-like, and he went into New York and challenged the system of iniquity there.

And then out came the book, The Cross and the Switchblade. And almost as soon as it came out, Vincent Peale got a copy of it and read it, and he went back to his stately church there, the church where Nixon has been going until he was president, and lots of socialites go in New York, and when the people got to church that Sunday morning, he roasted them.

He said, I've got people sitting on these pews here, and all you've done for 25 years is polish that pew with the seat of your britches. You've never witnessed to anybody, you've done nothing. And he said, here's my stately church in New York, and we're not known for song winning, and we're not known for extreme of perishing, and our streets are flooded with immorality, and drunkenness, and profanity, and girls who are lesbians, and bisexuals, and homosexuals, and the whole brood of hell has come upon us, and a little boy comes from the country and challenges New York, in God's name, what are you doing in my church?

And he didn't get too many smiles when they went out of church that Sunday morning. Not many people said to him, you're the greatest preacher in America that Sunday morning. And they went to church next Sunday morning, breathing a sigh of relief, because he has a habit of blowing his top about every six months, and do you know what he did?

He blew his top the second Sunday morning. And oh, were they distressed and were they upset. And I had the privilege of preaching one night in that church at a banquet, and my, the Lord really came and helped us there.

Do you know that's true of so many, isn't it? As I said the other day, we're more concerned about people that live at the other side of the world than we are of people that live at the other side of the street.

Now Peter says, silver and gold, I have them. You're asking for arms. I don't think really seriously you need arms. But he didn't ask that impotent system of religion that he might be healed and made whole again.

He knew they could do nothing. He'd been sitting there year after year after year, and maybe all people are good in our language is take pictures of him, or pass him a dime, or talk to him in comfort.

And then little Peter comes along and John, he says, fasten your eyes on us. Promise had been given you to receive power, the Holy Ghost coming upon you. And they came out of that upper room where God Almighty had been able to do his work in them.