Fresh Revelation of Jesus Christ - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Example of a Life of Intimacy With God

When I was pastoring a large church in England, I had some assistant pastors, and one of them was a very, very fine young man. He came from an Assembly of God church. I don't think I've ever heard a better preacher.

I've never met a man who had more intimacy with God. He never went to Bible school, but his father told me that from being about sixteen or seventeen when he got saved, I think about sixteen, at night he would come home and he would take a concordance and he would take the Bible and he went up into an attic that they had and he spent six hours every night for years with God.

Didn't go with girlfriends, didn't go out to shows, didn't go out to anything. You know, when I used to listen to that man, I used to think, well, I've heard G. Campbell Morgan, I've heard the greatest preachers in the last fifty years, had some assistant pastors, and one of them was a very, very fine young man.

He came from an Assembly of God church. I don't think I've ever heard a better preacher. I've never met a man who had more intimacy with God. He never went to Bible school, but his father told me that from being about sixteen or seventeen when he got saved, I think about sixteen, at night he would come home and he would take a concordance and he would take the Bible and he went up into an attic that they had and he spent six hours every night for years with God.

Didn't go with girlfriends, didn't go out to shows, didn't go out to anything. You know, when I used to listen to that man, I used to think, well, I've heard G. Campbell Morgan, I've heard the greatest preachers in the last fifty years.

Coming from England, America, and other countries, there was a forum every Tuesday and I used to go to that forum and hear these great, giant preachers, and some were great, no doubt. But you know, that man's intimacy with God didn't come by reading a magazine or a little article in a church periodical, or sticking a sign up outside his bedroom door.

He really walked with God. And if you wanted a bit closer than that, we walked through England. John Wesley Rhodes through it, we walked through it, every inch of the way, pulling a little cart with our belongings in, and we walked from the south coast up to the north and we walked back again, then from the east coast to the west coast, and preached in streets and preached in bull rings and preached in fields, and slept in fields and slept in churches for years on just a sleeping bag.

The Sanctifying Purpose of Difficult Christian Fellowship

And the more I lived with those men, one or two of them I could have done without, but there, you see, you need those kind of people too. It's, it's, it's, somebody wrote a bit of dog rule, you know, to dwell above with the saints we love, that will be glory, glory.

But to dwell below with the saints we know, well that's another story. But that just about fits it in, doesn't it? And yet those people that are aggravating, those people that are so opposite to us, are the very people we need in our lives, so that what is in us, God can make it fructify, become fruitful, and the spillover should go out to them.

Not that they infect us in any way, but rather that we infect them. But again, I'm saying this to say this again, that you've got to keep a, particularly in this day when everything's falling apart, I can't find anybody saying anything good about this year, whether they're Christians or not.

The Coming of Christ and Readiness for Spiritual Warfare

And so if you keep looking unto Jesus, we do believe in spite of all the theories of men and the strange cults, and all that's going on, that before too long, you see, God's going to close the business down.

And Jesus, this same Jesus, is going to come with ten thousand of his saints. My goodness, you don't find that on bumper stickers, do you? Don't see anybody with an Audemars Piguet, with a big bumper sticker back, when he comes in majesty, with inflaming judgments, oh mercy, they'd burn your car if you did that.

See, people don't like truth. Now this is going to be a year of warfare, I'm absolutely sure of that. I believe it's going to be a tough year for everybody, saints or sinners. I believe God's judgments are going to be in the earth, as they've never been in the earth before.

And the thing is, are we prepared to, are we equipped in the spirit to stand against this? Are we so in love with the Lord Jesus that he can ask anything of us? Wasn't there a king in France who, one of his courtiers did something very wonderful, and the king didn't know what to do, he said, I don't know how to reward you.

But here you are, and he took a sheet, and he wrote across the sheet at the corner, he wrote his name. And the king said, you take that to anybody, and anything you write on that plain sheet you shall be given.

I wouldn't like to risk that. Just to give a man a plain sheet, fill in whatever you want, the king's signature is at the bottom, the king can order you to have everything that you've asked on that sheet.

Surrendering to God's Personal Revelation

But let me ask you, since many of you are so young, would you like to give the Lord a plain sheet at the beginning of 1983 and say, Lord, you fill it in, I've put my name at the bottom, here I am, I'm your love slave, I'm your disciple, I'm willing to take up my cross, I'm willing to take up the burden nobody else wants, it's too heavy for them.

Five minutes inside eternity, again, we'll all wish we'd been more spiritual than we are. We'll all wish that we'd gone through with a cross that somehow we shed somewhere on the way. There's going to have to come some heroism back into Christianity.

It doesn't necessarily mean dying and burning at the stake, it may mean that. It's that horrible little word again, discipline, where you don't let TV rule you, you don't let other people rule you, whether you're in a group or you're not in a group, whether you live in a home or you live in one of the ministries around here, but you live according to the revelation God has given you.

And if God tells you to be up at four o 'clock and pray and intercede, well, do it. He tells you to do some other thing, he reveals it to you personally, well, do it. And that asks me to strike and be rebellious against the existing system, but God makes individuals.

God's Design in the Refining of His People

And he made John again in the very vortex, if you can use that word, of the fire, right in the crucible. But what does he want to do? Well, he wants to do what the old hymn says, thy dross to consume and thy goat to refine.

God is never capricious, God doesn't play games. We see through a glass darkly, he sees the end from the beginning, we don't, we don't know the next step very often. And in the darkness we seem to stumble, but he has a design.

And I believe he has a design for every life. Here he takes John through this great experience. There must have been moments when John felt he was coming apart, when he sees the world and the great tribulation, when he sees Antichrist, when he sees all these forces.

The Revelation of Christ's Glory and the Coming Judgment

Well, he wouldn't want to read much of this book to a five-year-old child or a ten-year-old child. And as I said to you before, I'm scared, in the right sense of the word, that when I get to the judgment seat with a thousand billion people looking on, and I step up before the throne and Jesus is there, this same amazing Christ, no longer gentle Jesus, meek and mild, no buddy-buddying.

I hear people say, when I see Jesus I'm going to say this, I say, when you see him you'll be dumb. Here is a man who knew him better than anyone else, and he was dumb in his presence. I don't want him to say, I've many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them.

I couldn't get your ear, you were listening to so much junk and talk, some of it's good talk, but again, the good is the enemy of the best in the Christian life. It isn't usual that the devil tempts a Christian to be drunk or become immoral, he just wants you to fool your life away, fool your time away.

Why not make a vow by the grace of God this year, you'll redeem the time. To redeem means to buy back, to buy up the opportunity, they come to us all. And yet God permits this man to have this marvelous unveiling of his son, to lift the curtain and show him the things which will surely come to pass, the rising of empires, the falling of empires, corruption in the churches, leave the second churches and all the deficiencies they had.

Leaving First Love and Forgetting Past Achievements

And yet some of them were as sound in doctrine as possible, but they were going through a ritual. And the complaint that Jesus has, not that they were wrong in their theology, he said, but you've left.

Not you've lost, we usually say we've lost our first, it doesn't say that, it says you left. Deliberately you came to a fork in the road where you had to make a supreme sacrifice for Jesus, or go the other way, and so you sacrificed Jesus.

Not we left our first love, not we lost our first love, we left it, we deliberately made a choice, which was a second class choice. Now there's this advantage again that, as I say, in a sense the new year isn't new and in another sense it is.

And yet Paul says, forgetting those things which are behind. You know what we usually do, we kind of make a summary of all our failures, or let's forget them all. Why not forget all our successes? Our successes often become a greater handicap than our failures.

We've reached a plateau. Last year was the best I ever had. I read my Bible more, I prayed more, I won more. So what? There's so much land ahead to be possessed. So many revelations to be given, so many burdens to carry.

Pursuing New Intimacy and Progressive Revelation

Life's short. And I guess you think you've a long way to go, but you wouldn't know that it's short. And I don't say every Christian dies victorious, I don't think they do. I think a lot of them say, you know, if I could have just five years back, I'd do this, I'd do that, I'd do this.

The Lord says, no, you said that two or three times, you went to the altar so many times and made vows and you forgot all about them, you broke them and there they are. So you don't get any more time.

Or that this year may be a year of new intimacy for me, for you, with the Lord Jesus Christ. That we see him in his glory. He says, I turn to see the voice. That doesn't sound right, you can't see a voice, can you?

No, but you know what he means? There's someone speaking here who is so different. When he saw him in all his stunning majesty, he doesn't say, Lord, you look so beautiful. No, I haven't seen you for so long.

He says, his eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished brass, his face is like the sun in its strength, his tongue was as sharp to edge as a sword, his hair was as white as snow. Well, that's enough to kill you anyhow.

And yet there are progressive revelations. If you'll walk with God, you'll find that there are things he'll unveil this coming year that you've never thought about in the last two or three or four or five years.

And I'm urging you to do that, I'm urging you to make this year a year of intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ, of reading his word, hearing his word as it says, and that the promise is given that those who keep his word, it's not just hearing, it's not just knowing, but it's keeping that word that receives the reward.

Prayer, Revival, and the Church's Witness

Okay, we're going to pray again. And we don't put limits on prayer, we ask you if you've got a burdened heart to unburden it in the presence of the Lord. Pray for your church at home. We have Brother Clauson with us, a young man that's been with us a number of, I don't know, a couple of years, maybe on and off, and he has gone to, I think he's gone to the Philippines.

We have a young man from the Philippines here tonight, and he was telling us how God is blessing that country, and we're glad to hear that. George from Africa tells us that God is working in Africa. Somebody asked me not long ago, and I saw it also in a magazine, and somebody said, why are the breathings of God in these days all on foreign countries, not on this country?

The best revivals, the biggest revivals are outside of America. We have the biggest shows. We have the most glamorous gospel, but we don't have the most effective gospel. And this risen, exalted Christ, if he was exalted, if we saw him in his glory and his majesty, every meeting we'd go to again, we'd either go out with tears running down our faces that there are so many lost people, or we'd go with radiance on our face, we've seen the risen Christ again, and whatever he asks, he can have out of our lives.

Responsibility for the Lost and Confession of Sin

This generation of Christians, this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of lost people. So you'd better tuck that away in your mind. And you have a part to play in it, and I have a part to play in it.

If you have no vision, ask God for vision. If you've backslidden during the past weeks, confess it. If you like the sports page more than the sacred page, confess it. If you're wandering in the wilderness, confess it.

Because if we confess he's faithful and just to forgive us, and then he comes and he puts us on the cross, that we might live for his glory.