This One Thing I Desire — Leonard Ravenhill

The Word of God Through Persecution

The Apostle Paul, when he said he was a debtor to all men. Lord, we are debtors tonight, to a multitude we cannot number. As we sung this wonderful hymn, break thou the bread of life. Lord, unseal the seals on that word tonight.

Teach us thy word. Lord, I think of men who were martyred in my own country, burned at the stake for publishing the word of God. Think of men who were cast out of the country. Think of for the hundreds of years it was banished even from England.

But Lord, we bless you this book. Men have burned it and buried it, but it's had many resurrections. We thank you it stood at the graveside of all its persecutors. And you've told us, Lord, that heaven and earth may pass away, but your word will never pass away.

We thank you for the living word, who is now the eternal word in the presence of God. Lord, as we sang about our liberation tonight, long my imprisoned spirit lay. Many of us were not very unclean, we were bound with self-righteousness, with our own good works, with our own theology, with our own ideas of God.

But we bless you, Lord, that you broke our fetters, but at the same time you became fettered. You left the glory of heaven to be fettered in flesh and blood. You left the blazing glory of eternity to be shut up in the womb of a woman.

No wonder it says, he laid his glory by and wrapped him in our clay. Or as we sang tonight, he left his father's throne above, so free to infinite is grace. Emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race.

Lord, you have every right to ask us to leave our homes and go to other countries, because you left your eternal home. You have every right to ask that we shed our blood, because you shed your blood for us.

Lord, don't let us die debtors to this generation. God in heaven, I think of the minority that went to the Upper Room. I'm convinced you invited the 500 that were there at the Resurrection, that 380 of them didn't bother.

How 120 went, and received that marvellous endowment with power from on high. Lord, I think of Peter, that stammering fisherman, and you made him a wonderful oaf for giving us two epistles. I think of Matthew gathering taxes, and then he started gathering texts, and gave us the book of Matthew.

Lord, we think of these other men. We thank you you're still in the business, you still lift a beggar from the dunghill and make him a prince unto God. We rejoice, Lord. Whatever you do in our lives is of your grace, is of your mercy, is of your compassion.

We don't deserve a single thing. We will be naked in your presence tonight, but for the robe of righteousness you see over us through Jesus, our Lord. We thank you, Lord, as we sang already, this wonderful love of God, money cannot buy it, and substance cannot buy it, and waters cannot drown it.

The Persecuted Church and Christian Freedom

We think of the Church of Jesus Christ tonight, persecuted in Russia, in Afghanistan, in China, in other countries, Lord. We don't know how many martyrs have been made today. Rather than renounce their faith, they renounce their lives.

It's so easy for us to sing, we'll give our lives. So easy, Father, in an atmosphere where the guards are not waiting for us to leave this building and take our name and number and report us. We thank you we are free indeed tonight, but our freedom only angers us that there are millions in darkness, in the shadow of death.

We pray you'll bless your holy work to our hearts tonight, and then give us the spirit of prayer. We recognize a fresh Lord, without thee we can do nothing, we are nothing, we can be nothing. And yet the other side of the coin is with God all things are possible.

We thank you you've never known failure, Lord. You've been under pressure from nations, from kings, and yet not once have you failed. We bless you for your faithfulness. How often we sing, great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee.

We've proved that again this week in our individual lives. You blessed us in our going out and in our coming in. You brought us to this place, others are laid on one side with sickness, with disease, with other things.

We thank you for the privilege of fellowship tonight. Lord, Lord, kindle afresh our love, our zeal, our desires for God in Jesus' name. Okay, let's be seated. Let's all cough together and it'll be over.

Good, that was a good one. Don't practice, just cough if you have to. Where are we going now? The book of Psalms, okay. Psalm 27, excuse me, Psalm 27, let's read from verse 1. I want to pass a few quick thoughts on I hope tonight, give more time to prayer.

A lot of people needing prayer tonight. Psalm 27, the Lord is my light and my salvation. How many of you have the King James Version? I thought you were an intelligent crowd, good. Anybody at the NIV?

Throw it away, okay. NIV, I'll tell you what that means, it means Nasty Imperfect Version. It's the same text as the Jehovah Witness Bible, remember. Don't give me one, I'll burn if you give me one. All right, Psalm 27, verse 1.

The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

Though a horse should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident. One thing of the Lord have I desired, and that will I seek after. And then he asks three requests there.

One, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Two, to behold the beauty of the Lord my God, and to inquire in his temple. If you were here last week, and the week before, and the week before, we were in Philippians chapter 3, where Paul said, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.

The Desire to Know God Above All Else

Now let me cut you on the spot, I won't ask you to say it openly. Just say to the Lord. If you could have one prayer answered tonight, what would it be? Don't tell me. Just think of it and answer it to the Lord.

Just one prayer the Lord said. I'll give you one stupendous answer to prayer, what would it be? Sister, no I won't ask you. What would it be? Oh, if you're a preacher, Lord make me more eloquent. I've said this, preachers get mad at me for saying, You don't need to be clever to preach.

To preach, if you could, I couldn't do it. You need a good memory, a vocabulary, a bit of personality, very little. But anyhow, we've all kinds of preachers, good Lord, all over the country. If I could have one thing, what would I have?

Remember Paul says, and I remind you of his background, his fabulous background. He'd already written 14 epistles, if you give him Hebrews, and I think he wrote that. And then he's still saying in prison with his back to the wall, his knees on the ground, he's looking through into eternity.

One thing. What was the one thing he wanted? That I may know him. Does it matter who you know if you don't know God? These young preachers come to see me. And they want to impress me. They remind me of a fellow not long ago, he said, I was talking to my friend Joe, the pastor.

Oh, he was so excited. I said, what are you excited about? I went to a big meeting for three days. And do you know yesterday morning I had breakfast with Billy Graham? Oh! I mean, what's heaven after that?

Breakfast with Billy Graham? Come on, you're kidding. I'm not. What did you have? Well, first of all, we had orange juice. Or was it prune juice? Maybe it was prune juice, but it wasn't juice anyhow. And then he said we had scrambled eggs and bacon and, what do they call them?

Black-eyed peas? No, blueberry muffin. You had breakfast with Billy? Yes, I did. What he forgot to say was, so did 300 other pastors. You see, it's time to hitch on to, oh, I had breakfast with Billy Graham.

Well, I shall count with him. I talked to him once, as a matter of fact. Isn't that wonderful? I don't sleep much after that, but anyhow. You know, we're so wanting, particularly preachers have their own temptations.

The Judgment Seat and the Accountability of Ministers

There's no question about that at all. I believe the condition of America tonight is not due to AIDS. It's not due to humanism, nor Mormonism, nor communism, nor Romanism, nor any other ism. I believe the condition of America tonight is due to the preachers.

Lost vision, lost anointing, lost power. Sraggart says in a tape I have on my desk, the reason that the nation's in this mess is that the preachers have lost sight of the rapture. Forget it. He knows, he's dealt with a man recently, a man who would sweat on a stack of Bibles that height.

He believed in the rapture, but he was carrying on with women in his church. There are millions of people in America who believe in the rapture. It's not that we've lost sight of. We've lost sight of the judgment seat.

That's what we've lost sight of. That every penny we earn, I was thinking tonight as dear Martha was locking the door there, we sing that hymn, take my life and let it be consecrated. And I've said sometimes, you know, it says take my silver and my gold, take my life, take my heart, take my love, take my lips and let them move, take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee.

Take my heart, it is thine own. But we don't say anything about time. Yes, we do. Take my moments and my days. Every minute you've had today was God's. What do you do with it? What you wanted to do? Every penny you have is God's.

What do you do with it? What you want to do? Either we're totally his or we're not his. I don't believe in departmental sanctification. I believe we give him spirit, soul and body. We don't just give him the Sabbath day.

Total Consecration in Every Moment of Life

Every day is a Sabbath if you walk in the light. I think it's a great danger. I must have an hour with God before I go to work. What do you do with the next 23? You live as you like? An hour's devotion can be a trap.

Oh well, I've done my duties. At one time when we were wealthy, we weren't wealthy, but we had a chauffeur to us everywhere around the nation. In the morning Martha would say, we get on the road at seven.

You know, that was when there were no speed limits. And so we flew most of the day. Remember the scripture? Lo, I am with you. So we went as low as we could. Travelled as fast as we could. We used to do 300 miles before lunch anyhow.

This fellow wouldn't get in the car before he'd read at least three. He read what? Daily Light. Number one, he'd always read that all his life. Daily Light. And the second one was My Utmost for His Highest.

Remember that? By who? Oswald Chambers. He read three of them. He wouldn't get in the car without it. But you know, there's a kind of a due that he paid. I've paid my dues, now the day's mine. Lots of people do that.

It can be a trap. Every moment of the day is Jesus Christ. Loan to me. Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in ceaseless praise. That's what it's all about anyhow. But if I could have one request, what would I request?

He says, one thing of my desire of the Lord. That will I seek after. That word there, you know the English isn't very expressive really. If you want to hear the Bible read, you don't have to go to Wales.

The people sing there, you know, without singing. They have so many cadences in their voices. You can get a preacher there that doesn't believe a scrap of scripture. He could recite the 23rd Psalm and leave you weeping.

Just by his oratory. He says something like this. The Lord is my shepherd. That's all I want. He maketh me to lie down in grief. He restores my soul. He leadeth me in the past. You think he's a Shakespearean actor.

You know, there was a great Scottish preacher one day, got envious, because the theatre up the road, a Shakespearean theatre, was packed every night. And this church was half full or half empty. I think it was full of empty people actually, but anyhow.

He said one day to the actor, he went up the road, he said, people turn their way every night from your display. What's the secret? He said, well sir, do you think it could be this? You have a profession, I have one.

In my profession I make artificial things look real, and you make real things look artificial. You see, we seldom have eternity in our meetings. We're so conscious of this, conscious of time. But the psalmist here says, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.

I think Helen Sparrow says in her translation of this, when she comes to desire, my soul is captivated. My soul is desired, my soul has desired him. He's captivated by him. This I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.

Dwelling in the House of the Lord

Number one, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord. Remember, this is a man that wrote the 91st Psalm. How does that begin? He that dwelleth. He's not a visitor, it's not an excursion. He wants to stay in the habitation.

Doesn't Ephesians 2 begin by saying, we were dead in trespasses and in sin? And then it ends with that majestic statement, we're the habitation of God. Do you think anybody's been suspicious about you today, that God inhabits you?

Inhabits your conversation? Inhabits your desires? Inhabits your actions? You know, the older I get, and I get old too quickly, but you get old at the same rate, so don't feel so comfortable. Just a day at a time, it's too long.

But the older I get, I realize this, the only thing that matters is that I know God. Didn't we quote last week from the 17th chapter of John, chapter 2, the reason Jesus came into the world was not to save us from hell, that's a fringe benefit as vast as it is.

The reason he came into the world is, he says that they may know thee, the only true God. You know, the heathen put us to shame with their sacrifices. Boy, some people, they have to grind money out of people with tithes.

But you know, when you get down to it, you recognize somebody like the, what's, what's the Church of God, the big one that, no. No, what's the old fellow that died recently? Yeah, yeah, friend of Jacob's, but anyhow.

You know what these people do, they have three tithes. They pay three tithes, not one. And don't for heaven's sake think you'll be rewarded for paying your tithe, you won't. That's God's income tax, you get nothing for it.

All you'll get is what you give after that. Tithe and offerings. The tithe is his, the offering is yours. Except, of course, if you really sing, take my silver and my gold, you lose all your rights. You know, some of our meetings are so reckless.

The Beauty of Holiness and Worship

One of these days we wake up and we all start shouting and praising God. How vast is, comprehensive is the redemption of Jesus Christ. Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold. Take my hands, take my mind, take my will and make it thine.

Some of the TV boys got that mixed up. They say, take your will and make it mine. They want you to give while you're living and give while you're dying. They got mixed up. They read the scripture, you know, what it says, feed the flock.

They thought they said fleece the flock. That's it. I think the other scripture, watch and pray, they exchanged it to watch and pay. Watch me and then pay. There's going to be a tremendous shock before too long.

You know, once the money value goes down, there'll be a lot of changes in ministries. Absolutely. What about when we can't afford to buy gas? What do we do? Walk, meet in the fields or what? Well, in other countries they have this horrible situation.

And yet we're free. Out of our freedom, we make a license of it anyhow. One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.

In the next Psalm, no, next but one, Psalm 29 and verse 2, he says, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Not in the beauty of his holiness, merely, but in the beauty of our holiness. When we're purged, when he's come to cleanse us, cleansed our affections, cleansed our desires, when we become the habitation of God.

Is there anything greater than that in the scripture? I think it was Newton again that wrote that hymn we sang tonight. Yes, the hymn in which he says, let me get a hold of it here now. I thought I had it, I haven't got it.

Oh, how can it be thou heavenly king, that thou dost us to glory bring? Make slaves the partners of thy throne, decked with a never fading crown. You think of that? What does he say? He says that I may know thee, Paul said, the only true God.

I don't know who this man is, I can't identify him, whether he's a Psalmist or not. But it does say at the top of the Psalm here, a Psalm of David. But the other versions say, the son of Korah, one of the sons of Korah, they were nothing more or less than what we would call the janitors in the house of God.

And later he says, I'd rather spend a day in the courts of God than a thousand anywhere else. Is the house of God as precious to us? You have the great hymn writer Isaac Watts, gave us a great hymn, When I surveyed the wondrous cross.

He also wrote, Joy to the world, the Lord is come. He also wrote, We're marching to Zion. And it used to be that the children of Israel took the last of the Psalms from Psalm 115 to Psalm 150, and they marched to Zion clapping their hands, marching to Zion, the beautiful city of God.

They love the city of God. What does the Psalmist say? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue lose its cunning, let my hand lose its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. They established it so great because it was the habitation of God.

I don't care if I go dummy, he said. After all, deaf and dumb people can worship God too. I'm not facetious here, but it puzzles me. If a deaf and dumb person gets a baptism, how do they speak in tongues?

Do you know the answer to that? There must be a difference. Now you got puzzled. Don't worry about it. I'll get back on track, hopefully. What's your goal in life? If God says you're going to have one request in your life, what would it be?

God's Presence as the Believer's Goal

That I may know thee, the only true God? Somebody called Brooks, F. Brooks, I don't know if it's Francis or Frances or who, wrote this lovely poem. I've never memorized this, but it sums up what I think about it.

My goal is God himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but thee, my God. Tis his to lead me there. To where? To God. Not mine, but his. At any cost, dear Lord, by any road. So faith bounds forward to its goal in God, and love can trust her Lord to lead her there.

Upheld by him my soul is following hard, till God hath full fulfilled my deepest prayer. No matter if the way be sometimes dark, no matter though the cost be often great, he knoweth how I best shall reach the mark.

The way that leads to him must needs be straight. One thing I know I cannot say him nay. One thing I do I press toward my Lord. My God, my glory here from day to day, and in the glory there my great reward.

Do you want to meet God? Do you want to be a stranger when you meet him? I've told you more than once, and I mean it. I want to so live that without a minute's notice the Lord can call me to heaven. I won't be embarrassed when I get there, and he won't be embarrassed that I've arrived.

I'm walking in all the light God has given me. See, that's why this man will say, you've got to go back into the text, you don't need to be smart as I've told you. What does it say here? One thing I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after.

Well, let's expound it from itself. You know the old saying, a text without its context is a pretext. That's a special one for my friend, but anyhow. But what's it saying? One thing I desire of the Lord, that will I seek after.

Why does he desire the Lord so much? Well, look at verse 1. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Come on now. The Lord is my light? The heaven of heavens cannot contain him? He appears on the Damascus road and the sun looks grey.

He's so brilliant. The blinding glory. When he goes to the heaven, it has no use of sun because he is the light. He can, just with this sun we have, he can shine all over the place. Can't he take this little cramped, shrunken heart of mine and fill it with light?

We're no longer children of darkness, really. If we've been born again, we're children of light and we're to walk in the light. You can't step in and out, in and out, in and out. You can't be dead and alive.

You're either alive or dead. I told you a lady asked me one day, do you pray for the dead? I said, no, I preach to them. Sure I do. Every time I go to the average church, every row is death row. Because they're dead in trespasses and in sin and I'm not being facetious.

Deacons, who in the world are they? They're dead. In fact, Ruskin, the great English man, you may remember, he was a great art critic. He defined preaching as 30 minutes to raise the dead. Did you ever doubt that before?

You didn't hear it? Well, remember it's all next week when you're preaching. 30 minutes to raise the dead. Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. I was dead in trespasses and in sin.

Did you think about that today? Or did you just read your Bible and pray for the mysteries and say, Lord, you're so good. Oh, I've got such a nice new car and I've got new other things and you're so gracious to me.

What about when he pulls all the props away? I have a message I like to preach. I got called away to preach today. I wouldn't go, but I'm getting very choosy now. I mean, you've got to go to the biggest congregation to get the biggest offerings.

So that's why I don't go. They asked me to go preach to a thousand preachers a few days ago. Well, I knew they'd no money, so I didn't go. No, it was too far to go and stay away so long. I can't afford it at my age.

I need my time. I can't spend a day traveling a day. Preach three times a day to preachers. And then the next day. Then another call comes. Preach to a thousand young preacher pastors. And I didn't go.

A week tomorrow I'm going to preach to all the black preachers in this area. Down in, where is it, Martha Day? Pastor Walker's a pastor. Pardon? Tyler Christian. Thank you so much. So you pray a week tomorrow I'm going to preach to all these black brothers.

I'd rather be a black man with a white heart than a white man with a black heart anyhow. Then on the Tuesday after that I'm going to preach to a bunch of Baptists. Boy, they need grace. That's at, where is that?

That's at West? West Irwin Baptist Church at ten in the morning, a week Tuesday. I don't know. Some kind of a little conference they're having anyhow. You know, usually when I go to a church someone will come up and say, Brother Raven, if you talk straight enough, don't rock the boat.

I say, that's my commission. I'm here to rock the boat, not to sink it, but to rock it. You might think it's sinking when God gets going, but anyhow, don't jump overboard until you get through. Sure it's right.

Do you think I'd tell you if it was wrong? I wouldn't have. Let me skip to Psalm 84 for a few minutes and we're going to pray. Because you've got the same strain here. Remember when we quoted from the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3, what were we talking about?

Longing for the Living God

If by any means I may reach, I press toward the mark. There's energy there. There's effort there. There's obstruction. There's difficulty. You have to sweep every blessed thing on one side, your affections, your interests.

Again, in the Christian life, the good is the enemy of the best. The devil won't tempt you to get drunk tonight or go on with some whore. He'll get you to waste your time and think, Oh, I have plenty of time.

I'm young. Somebody called my wife the other day and said, She's lovely and she is, she's beautiful and she's going to have a birthday soon. And she said, No, only the good are young. She said, That's why I'm still living.

Of course, that's a reflection on us too, isn't it? No, God takes us when he wants us. You can't die a moment before your time. Forget it. I got hold of that in an aeroplane one day when the thing nearly was going to turn over.

I said, The Lord has the keys of death and of hell. So I'm OK. Not that I like flying. It's for the birds, but anyhow. What's Psalm 84 say? Psalm 84, verse 1. How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord. The other translation says, How lovely are thy dwellings.

A tabernacle. My dear old granny, Methodist grandmother, she was rather oversized and she had a huge rocking chair and she used to wear always a blue and white check apron. And I'd go in, she'd say, Lenny, put her hand up and I'd sit and I knew what she'd do.

She'd sing Take Time to Be Holy or something else. She'd reach the corners of that apron and throw it over her head and put her arms in like this. And then she'd sit and rock and meditate, sing hymns or pray.

I said, Granny, why do you throw that thing over your head? She said, This is my tabernacle. This is a dwelling place. The habitation where she met with God. She was a precious, marvelous, wonderful old lady.

How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts. Now look here, this is concentrated for you. My soul longeth, even fainteth for the courts of my Lord. My heart, my flesh. What's he got there? My soul, my heart, my flesh.

Cry out for the living God. You can't get much more depth than that, can you? My whole being. I don't think we have the hymn. There's a hymn, a beautiful hymn. Again, it's Methodist, but there you are.

Written by a Presbyterian. Fill thou my life, O Lord my God, in every part with praise, that my whole being may proclaim thy being and thy ways. Not for the lip of praise alone, nor in a praising heart, I ask, but for a life made up of praise in every part.

Praise in the common things of life, its goings out and in. Praise in each duty and each deed, however small and mean. So shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free, but my whole life in every step be fellowship with thee.

And that's what God wants. He doesn't want some erratic, he doesn't want us zealous in meetings, and as cold as ice outside. He doesn't want us fervent in spirit just because there's a bunch of us around together, which is good because we should spark each other off.

But by the same token, he wants my whole being. And I want my whole being to proclaim his being and his ways. You see, the symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ is not a cross. The cross is pagan. The symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ is a tongue of fire.

I told you maybe we're in Gillingham, which is about 70 miles east of London. We had a day of conference. If you've read Brother Andrew's book, what's he called now, The Smuggler, I gave him the title for that, and I got no fee for it.

I gave him the title. In that book, he mentions a man called Uncle Hoppy. Uncle Hoppy was in that meeting that night. He's a man that gave... He asked God, let me make a million, wasn't he, Martha? A million sterling, which at that time was five million dollars.

He made it and gave it to missions. Uncle Hoppy was in the prayer meeting. We let the people go home and the others, the team of us, six of us, we knelt at the front of the communion room and we prayed from, I guess around nine till maybe two in the morning, this tremendous breathing of God.

There's an old lady at the back of the building in a wheelchair. And as we went out, we said, Granny, so gracious of you to stay at this terrible hour. It's after two o 'clock. Wasn't it wonderful? I said, yes.

But wonderful presence of God. I said, yes, I felt the presence of God. Didn't you see it? I said, I thought, well, the old lady had visions or something. I said, see it? She said, yes, just about half past one.

You remember there's a surge of power, yes. She said, a tongue of fire went to the first brother and went on the head of every one of you, right across the front. The six of you were praying there. That's a symbol.

A tongue of fire. What were we going to do? Our God is a consuming fire. His ministers are a flame of fire. Where is the fire? Where is the fire? William Booth put his banner up. I have a little Salvation Army flag in my office.

It has on blood and fire. Remember he was kicked out of Methodism. He was a half Jew and a half Gentile. He had a brilliant wife, a praying wife. She was the power behind the throne. He was the orator.

He was the hellfire preacher. But he has on his banner blood and fire. I talked one afternoon with the closest friend that old William Booth had in a place called Rue Banner on the hills of Wales. And he told me about the marvelous prayer meetings they had in those early days in the 1870s and 1880s.

This guy was 80 years of age and this was 1930, 30, 30, 31, 1932. And he was buoyant and vigorous. His eyes almost lit up like fireballs. He told me about the prayer meetings. He told me about being in a meeting where there were a thousand people and at the back the prostitutes and over here the thieves and drunks and rough looking men.

And an old Booth had preached and nobody moved. So he turned around and he says to the officers, Pray! So everybody looks down and prays. They prayed about 10 minutes, nothing happened. So he turned again and says, Pray!

And he said, Mr. Raymond, people will not believe this when you tell them a few years ahead. If you get to be my age, but he was 82 then, so I have two to go. And he said, You know what? When men wrestled with the spirit, they had small hymn books and they would shred their hymn books.

They were so nervous, they would shred their hymn books. Where those men sat, there were piles of pages, torn up. The same thing happened with Nicholson in 1926 when they had revival in Ireland. I don't believe there are six people in America who have ever seen revival, Holy Ghost revival.

Oh, the Holy Spirit's brooding and five minutes after the guy shuts the meeting down. The difference between evangelism and revival, in evangelism you make an article, they go out smiling, they light their cigarettes when they get outside, or rush for some coffee, or rush home to TV.

They don't do that in revival. They stay two or three hours or four hours. What about that book, Welsh Revival? How much? I want to sell it. How much can we sell it for? $1 .50? No, that you have. I want you to order some.

Pardon? Yeah, that's $2, 40 off if you order 20. $1 .50, it's worth $10. So, will we get some? You can't get them for next week. We will get them. And read about the Welsh Revival, where the preacher would sit on the front pew and then open his mouth for four hours.

Anyhow, this dead man of God said, look, the preachers will get together and nudge each other, pray. The old general's getting angry. And he said, he prayed. And suddenly the spirit would lift men from the back of the auditorium over the heads of a thousand people and drop them at the altar, groaning in conviction.

Dear Lord, we think we've seen revival. That would scare the Pentecostals. Why not? We talk about an omnipotent God, and dear God, he's a plastic Christ that we have. He's not a risen, resurrected, glorified Son of God.

Do you know this man said, I'm thirsting for the house of God. He's an exile. He's been shut away. The enemies are taunting him. Let me look at my Bible and my Testament here. My soul longeth, verse 2 of Psalm 84, longeth, even fainteth, for the courts of the living God.