Problems in the Christian Life — Leonard Ravenhill

Peter’s Call to Holiness

This morning we're going to forsake the epistle to the Hebrews and take a look in the first chapter of the first epistle to Peter and begin at the first verse with the first word. First word in the first verse of the first chapter of the first epistle of Peter.

The epistle of James is very often given the title of being the most practical epistle in the New Testament, but I always find this epistle to be more practical, maybe because I need it, I don't know.

But this message this morning is designed with two ends in view, one to encourage people who maybe have made a recent commitment to Christ, a fully total commitment, and the other to encourage people who would like to do that, but they're afraid of tomorrow.

They say, well if I lived on a camp like this I could really live the victorious life, but when I get outside, well that's a different situation. Well that's true, the situation is different, but God is not different, and the Spirit who indwells us now is the same Holy Spirit who will indwell us continually.

Let's read together just verses 15 and 16 here, but he which has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. One of the recurring words in this epistle is the word holy.

Notice in the second chapter, verse 5, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, and then in verse 9 he says you're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

And he says in the third chapter in verse 5, after this manner of all time, the holy women. And so he goes on and uses this word that is a kind of frightening word to many people in the day in which we live, because some people become very eccentric about the way holy people should live.

A man said to me recently, he said, I believe you're very interested in the holiness people, and I said, I'm not a bit interested in them. Not a bit interested in holiness people. I'm interested in holy people, but they're very different from holiness people.

The Pharisees in the New Testament are the holiness people who lost the glory and then they put the accent on external things. Now I sure believe you should be modest, but I was at a camp a while ago where I was rated as, well, maybe my true category, way down in the list, because I wore a tie.

The real holiness preachers do not wear ties. A tie is a sign of vanity, you're trying to show off. And the ladies wore long skirts, which are all right. But I said, if sanctification is determined by the length of your skirt, the nuns have got you beat.

I wouldn't say they all said hallelujah, but there you are, you see, we put the emphasis on externals. I think one of the troubles with, now let me say this, that the Word of God says that we're to rightly divide the Word of Truth.

It does not say rightly interpret the Word of Truth, though we should do that. That to rightly divide the Word of Truth is not necessarily rightly interpreting the Word of Truth. For instance, I'm hoping this morning that this, this very simple message will clear a lot of your thinking.

And I trust I'm rightly dividing the Word of Truth because I'm bringing you the message that I feel God wants you to have at this moment. I don't think it's the right thing, let me say this, I think a few minutes ago we sang Years I Spent in Vanity and Pride.

I went into a large church in England and I heard some marvelous singing, little children's voices. And I opened the door and there were maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty little children on those tiny little chairs, and then their feet didn't even touch the floor, and there wasn't a child in that room over five years of age, and they were singing lustily, Years I Spent in Vanity and Pride.

Now I couldn't understand that. How can five-year-old children spend years in vanity and pride? Now I could bring you a message, or you could go to, say, a rest home for old ladies and preach on put on the whole armor of God.

I don't think that would be rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Or you could go to a class of vigorous young teenage boys and take a section out of The Life of Moses, take this child and nurse it for me.

I don't think that's rightly dividing the Word of Truth. I think there is a Word which is essential to people at that moment, that is dividing the Word of Truth. If you need a word of rebuke, that is the Word of Truth to you.

If you need a word of exaltation, then this is the Word of Truth, and this is rightly dividing the Word. In other words, it's due meat in due season. Now on top of that, we must, of course, rightly interpret the Word.

Interpreting Scripture Without Stopping at Comfort

But the trouble with interpretation is we go as far as it's comfortable to go. Years and years and years ago, when I was a boy, and that's a long while, but, no I wasn't, I was a young preacher at that time, and a very famous American executive wrote a book.

Bruce Barton wrote a book, The Man Nobody Knows. Now that book has been republished, and it's well worth reading, though there are areas in it you won't agree with. But as I said last night, or the night before, I would like to rescue Jesus Christ from stained glass windows and children's cramming books.

I think they're vulgar, I think they're almost blasphemous very often, they're certainly grotesque and they're not right. And I think Bruce Barton was doing that in words, but he wrote this book that became a bestseller, and thirty years after, it's still selling very well.

It was The Life of Jesus, The Man Nobody Knows, and then he followed that with another book about the Bible, The Book Nobody Knows. And I've been very tempted to write another book on the life nobody lives, because I could easily prove to you, I think this morning, that there are no Christians anymore.

No Christians anywhere. Anybody here doesn't have two coats, raise your hand. Well you're not Christians, because Christians don't have two coats, do they? And you carry neither purse nor script, and if you push too far enough, most heresy that we have is truth that is pushed too far.

I believe in sanctification, the Bible teaches it. I do not believe in sinless perfection. Dispensationalism is error, actually. There was no dispensationalism until a hundred years ago. The world didn't know a thing about it, then somebody brought it up and everybody fell for it.

Strangely enough, I'm not trying to sabotage your theology, you say, I believe in the imminent return of Jesus, he could come before we get home, which I don't believe. And that theory was never propagated until 1834, and it was started by a woman.

Now that's rough on the Baptists, but that's really true. It was started by a woman. And it became very popular. You know, lots of people would like Jesus to come today for two reasons. One, they're afraid to die, and the other, they don't want to go through any tribulation.

And if Jesus came today, well, that'd be great, because we wouldn't have to face death, maybe very coldly, and the other thing is, we, well, we wouldn't have to go through what I'm sure the Church is going to go through.

After all, if you were in Russia this morning, or let me put it this way, a man came into my office a while ago, and I said to him, where have you been? And he said, well, I had a wonderful experience out on the West Coast.

I met my cousin, and he told me his cousin has joined a group of people. And he said, my cousin never reads the Bible, he doesn't know a thing about it, but I found him, and he put his hand up like this, living in a house, oh boy, a mansion, and beautiful foreign sports cars, and I don't know what he didn't have.

I asked him how he got it, he said he'd joined this certain group, and he said, you know what my cousin said, and he doesn't know a thing about the Bible, he said the world situation is heading up, and soon there's going to be a superman on this earth, and he's going to rule the nations of the world, and we've got him on the ground floor, and because of this, we're getting money from various directions, and when this man gets into authority, we're going to help to rule the nations.

And he said everything about that man, except named him as the Antichrist. And then he said, why don't you come and join our group? It's a good thing you came today, if you'd come tomorrow, he said, I'm taking a plane for Basel, and I'm going to the university to try and get a degree there in the occult.

Now he has a number of degrees. And on the way, he said, I'm going to South America, into a certain mountain, and there's an old woman there, I believe an Indian woman, and she has a great big, um, well, to switch over to a lady who's caused a lot of sensation in Washington, she reads a crystal.

And people sometimes say to me, do you think that, uh, Jean Dixon is, is, is a God-guided person? And I say very emphatically, no, because if she was, at first she'd witnessed for Christ, and she's never mentioned his name yet.

She's got spiritist instincts, she, uh, she doesn't look at the Bible, she looks through a piece of glass made in Cornell or somewhere. Now the Bible doesn't say you should receive power after you've bought a crystal.

It says that you receive power after the Holy Ghost has come. But this woman in South America has a crystal which has been hewn out of the side of the mountain, and it's the shape of a skull, and she predicts world affairs out of this.

And this man said, I'm going to see her because she is one of the most amazing women in the world. Now remember this, Adolf Hitler made every move right until the last one. And he did that because he stayed out of bed every night, not consulting the Holy Spirit but familiar spirits.

His guide was a crawly and old wrinkled woman that was in touch with evil powers, and he made every move right. He roped Europe, and he went on almost to world dominion until he came to the last fence and then he missed it.

The devil offered him the kingdoms of this world, and he bowed down and he was going to take them, and then the devil did what he always did, he gypped him. But this woman has this skull, and this man said, I'm going to see her.

And he said, you know the people that come to consult her from all over the world, the people that come there the most are either Jewish people or mainly Roman Catholic priests. And he said the Roman Catholic Church had offered her a blank check for this crystal that she has.

But then he said this, which was more disturbing, he said, I met a friend out there in California, a man who used to be a missionary in China. And he had been on a tour, and as he came back from Australia, or somewhere down under, he stopped off in Somerset, and he learned that there were a number of Chinese people there who had been living in a certain province where he used to be a missionary.

And he went to see them, and they were doing what they always do, they're industrious. That's the thought that had been to Hong Kong. Almost every room in Hong Kong is a factory. Everybody's making money.

There are no Jews in Hong Kong, there are no Jews out in Thailand. They can't make a living. The Chinese are the Jews of the Orient, they now Jew the Jew, and so the Jew has to run. But he went to see these Chinese people, and he greeted them in eloquent Chinese, because he used to teach them in Chinese, and they ignored him.

And he spoke again, and they ignored him, and he spoke again, and they went on working, and he went up to a man, and he said, Do you know who I am? He said, Yes. He said, I'm your former pastor in Hunan province, or whatever it was.

I've lost my hair, I'm a little heavier, and so forth, and so on, but isn't that somebody you know, all these Chinese names they have, Sing Hai, and Sing Lau, and Won Lung, and all the rest of it. And he said, Yeah, that's right, you remember them, yeah, yeah, well they used to be in my church.

And I greeted you once, and I greeted you a second time in the name of the Lord, and you ignored me. Now this is not Oriental courtesy. Why do they ignore me? And he shot the answer back, he said, Because you're a heretic, you're a false prophet.

Well he said, I'm not a false prophet, I led you to Christ. Ah yes, but after that. Remember you had some big maps of the world? Remember you had one area, all red, this is Russia? Remember telling us the Russians, and you made a red mark, will invade China, and take over China, and they'll burn our churches, and they'll rape our women, and they'll take our sons that way, and take our daughters this way, and they'll tear our Bibles up, and burn the churches before us in the street.

Remember saying that? Yeah. And remember telling us that just before that happened, the Lord would take his little darling church out of it, and we wouldn't experience it, it would just be left to the sinners, and the unbelievers, and the others, but we would escape.

We would not go through tribulation, we're going to be caught away, and wrapped up in the arms of the Lord, and he's going to take his darling children into his presence. He won't let one hair of your head suffer.

Well the preacher went out in on his feet, he came out on all fours. You see we do a lot of our interpreting inside the framework of the American economy. Or sure you can build a university, or you can build a great evangelistic empire in America, because this is the most affluent society in the world, but you can't do that in Russia.

If you tag on to being filled with the Holy Ghost, that after you've been filled two years you should be a millionaire, and if you're not you didn't get it, you better be parachuted into Russia or China, they'd accept that, but it wouldn't work, I'll tell you that much.

And again we like to twist, it's comfortable. If I preach this over the nation this morning, and then said now, which I wouldn't say, but I'd like you to send me a dollar to support my program, I wouldn't get any dollars.

But if somebody told you some lies, if somebody told you you're going to be raptured before tribulation comes to America, boy you'd feed him because that's what you want to know. You want to know you're not going to suffer, you want to know you're going to be wrapped in his dear arms.

Now after all brethren, why was Daniel in the lion's den? He didn't escape and get a rapture, he went through tribulation. And I have an idea that Paul went through a little bit, tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword, imperils of the deep, imperils of my known countrymen, imperils amongst false brethren.

I, I, well maybe I'm wrong, but I kind of figure that's tribulation. Hmm? And your tribulation was, it, it, we, my dear wife and I were in a certain place two weeks ago, we went to a lovely church, and I said, well there are not many people in, and I looked at the Sunday school register, and noticed on the wall, you know we never put any prayer meeting attendance up there, that it said, it just said Sunday school, last Sunday, four, four hundred and, what was it, four hundred and fifty-three.

Attendance this morning, one hundred and fifty. Do you know why? It rained. Tribulation. You imagine sitting through a service with wet feet, wouldn't that be terrible? Or splashed your nylons going into church, oh dear.

You know what ladies do just before they go into church, they go like this. If we spent as much time preparing our hearts as we spent setting our hair and all the other things, we'd be in the millennium right now.

If I didn't know what the Bible said, I would think the Bible said the Lord looketh on the outward appearance and not upon the heart. Maybe that's in the Amplified, I don't know, but anyhow, the Authorized Version says that God looketh not, not, not.

He doesn't know whether your hair's set or what. I remember taking a morning service in Teen Challenge one morning, and just before I spoke, the song leader, a boy who had been on drugs for seventeen years, and he came in Teen Challenge one day, and he just knelt down there and said to God something like this, I'm rotten, I'm corrupt, nobody wants me, the police have given up on me, the judge threw me out, they won't take me in Lexington, I'm too hopelessly gone in drugs, oh Jesus do something.

And right there the Lord transformed his life, he didn't have to take cold turkey, which is just sweating it out really. Right there the Lord delivered him from sin and delivered him from the habit of drugs and wonderfully saved him, and he was a miracle of God's grace.

And he said, before Brother Ravenhill speaks, let's all stand up and sing Amazing Grace. And I looked down the side of this, this room, a fairly long room. Every girl there was either a prostitute, or had been, or a lesbian, or was involved bisexually or some other way.

And one girl was the queen of the call girl racket, she came to our office one day with a five thousand dollar mink coat on, a snow white Cadillac outside, and burst into tears and said she wanted to get some help.

She had five other mink coats at home, and a jewel box like this with real jewels in, and she was supposed to have about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars stashed away. I looked at all these girls, some of them pregnant, some had been pregnant, some diseased, some had got delivered.

They'd been to Lexington, they'd been to jail, and here were all this bunch of riffraff, now very attractive, washed and renewed and in their right mind. At the boy, at the side here, here's a boy, I remember saying to him when you're just starting crime, he said, I, I carried a, I carried a, a point, what do you call it, point to eight, well I don't know much about guns, but anyhow, he carried a revolver when he was eight years of age and was in a double murder, and remembered shooting a man, murdering a man when he was eight years of age, and had been so many murders in New York and round about he couldn't even remember how many was it.

Another man had just done ten years in Sing Sing, where nobody sings. And all the other boys were criminals, and they stood and sang Amazing Grace, and you know before we were through the stanza, tears were running down their faces, and I never realized what that word really meant till those boys sang it.

To save a wretch like me, and when they came to wretch, you could see them wince and close their eyes, and the tears ran down their faces, and the girls' blouses were wet with tears, and they sang it over and over, to save a wretch like me.

And then a couple of Sundays afterwards I went to a stuffy church, I don't know what it was, maybe Baptist, but anyhow, it was a very stuffy church with a lovely choir and everybody was so nice. There's a little blonde woman here with curls, and, and, and do you know what they said before Brother Ravenose preaches, we're going to sing Amazing Grace, and I thought what, in an outfit like this?

And they sang Amazing Grace, and this little darling girl here with the, with the curls, you know she sang something like this, Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved, and you know she couldn't get through that stanza, that little curl wouldn't sit down, and she had Amazing Grace, and she was hitting the thing down, and you know she sung that hymn totally unconscious, and when she sat down she was as dry as the sand out there.

But these other kids had been lifted out of a horrible pit, they knew what Amazing Grace really was. David never describes the horrible pit, he just declares it, he saved me out of a horrible pit. And you say, Mr. Raven, I was never deep in a horrible pit, well friend, let me remind you, you are going to one anyhow.

And so I don't want to get guilty of straining any truth at all, but I think the scarecrow that the devil has put in the field of spiritual living is the, is the scarecrow of sinless perfection. No man with any intelligence believes in sinless perfection.

But again, I say, we're living in a day when we're more afraid, it seems, of sinfulness,.

Pardon me, we're more afraid of sinfulness than we are afraid of sin.

Peter’s Transformation Through Trial

But Peter, Peter, the word Simon really means shifty, and Jesus says, you're, you're, you're Simon, you're shifty, you're not very responsible, but by the time I'm done with you, you'll be Peter, you'll be a rock.

If you took a grain of sand and put it under a microscope, you'd discover that little tiny grain of sand has got peaks on it like that and cavities in it like that. Now you can't build on sand, but if you put that sand under pressure, those cavities will fit into those, I mean, those peaks will fit into the cavities and get locked together, then you get sandstone.

And you can build. We have some cathedrals in England, the Abbey at Bath, the foundation was laid in 444. Much of it was destroyed, but the foundation remains. It's been standing there now for, for fifteen hundred years.

If it was sand, it wouldn't stand, but it's sandstone. Now Jesus says, you're Simon, and you're going to be transformed by the power of God, and from Simon you're going to become Peter. When we were out on the west coast earlier this year, a man gave me a piece of petrified wood.

Petrified wood, well, it's the same thing, it's just the accent you put on it. It was once soft, and you could chip it with your fingers, but it's gone through a process and become petrified, or petrified, it's become solid, solidified.

And the Lord says, you're shifty and irresponsible and not very dependable, but I'll take your personality and knit it together, and you shall become Peter. And notice, will you please, that Peter has become an apostle.

He's really made it. Sure, he's gone through a lot of tribulation and distress and trial and difficulties, but now he has graduated and he has become Peter, the, the Ross Fisherman. I say again, we've got all kinds of ideas about holiness.

If people are holy, they have to wear certain garments and maybe get shut away up in a monastery or a convent or something. Now, now that's no good at all. That's like taking all the lights out of the tabernacle here and putting them all in one room and say, let's have them all together, leave every other place in darkness.

This is not what God does. He doesn't collect the salt, he distributes the salt. He doesn't collect the lights, he distributes the lights. They were building a church in Scotland years ago, I'm told, and they had got everything designed and when the building was in good shape and the carpenters had been working, the architect came in and said, now give me the final plan on the windows.

You've got a dozen windows here, what are you going to do? And somebody said, now, I think it would be nice to have some stained glass windows. Let, let's have pictures of the saints in the windows. There's a little old Scot's body there sweeping the floor and she nudged the architect and said, wouldn't it be better to have the saints in the pews?

Well, I think it's better to have them in the pews rather than have them in the windows. They're not much good in the windows. There's a very famous picture, I think it's in Spain, Raphael's amazing picture of the miraculous draft of fishes.

Now it is a very beautiful picture and I guess today it's worth billions, millions and millions of dollars. It's the only one of its kind. And after Raphael had finished the picture, for years it became a, a mecca.

All the artists went there and almost bowed down and said, what a picture. Oh, look at the proportions, look at the colors. And they got drunk in ecstasy over the wonders of the picture. And then one day a rough Englishman by the name of Ruskin, some of you have read his writings, and Ruskin went along and criticized the picture.

And people said, isn't it amazing? He said, it's nonsense. What do you mean it's nonsense? That's the most perfect picture in the world. Is it? Well, he said, where did the miraculous draft of fishes take place?

Well, anybody knows that. On the Sea of Galilee. Well, why has he got the Dome of St. Peter's in the background? That's a good long way from the Sea of Galilee. How many men were in the boat when the miraculous draft of fishes took place?

Seven. He's got 11 in the picture. Who's that fellow leaning over the, over the boat with long lace, beautiful lace cuffs and a lace collar around his neck. So gorgeous. Crochet work of the finest. Who is that man pulling in sticky fishernets with lace cuffs and lace around his neck?

Oh, that's Peter. Peter fishing with a lace collar on? You make one for your husband next time he goes fishing and see how that works. But you see, Peter is a saint and therefore he must have special garments.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Cloistered virtues are no good. I like this story about Peter because Peter was so very, you know that Jesus spoke to Peter, not only more than he spoke to any one of the other disciples, but more than he spoke to the whole bunch of disciples put together.

And conversely, Peter spoke more to Jesus, not only than any other single disciple, but more than all the other disciples. He always had a ready answer. Boy, he was primed every time. And this man, Peter, has become an apostle.

He has graduated to some degree, though there is no final graduation this side of eternity, let's face it. Jesus Christ is the bread of life, but he's the hunger as well. He supplies the hunger in me and he supplies the satisfaction.

The Christian Inheritance Reserved in Heaven

Peter, an apostle of Jesus, is writing to the strangers here scattered abroad through Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and right down to Zachary this morning. And then let's skip over to verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We mentioned this the other night, the resurrection of Jesus tied into our resurrection, because I live, ye shall live also. But then he says the resurrection is this, to an inheritance. Remember the story of the long-term missionary coming into New York, I think on the same boat as Eisenhower, was it?

And when the boat docked there was a red carpet and a message came over the intercom, nobody leaves the boat until Eisenhower leaves, this is a very special occasion. And the mayor of New York and the representative of the president of the United States was there, the red carpet was rolled out, the band played, TV was there, the cameras, everything, the press, all wanting to see Eisenhower get off the boat, which is all right.

And the missionary leaned over and looked and he'd been sweating it out in Africa for about twenty years and the old devil said to him, there you are, you see what you get when you go serve your country, that man's going to get a pension and he's going to live in a mansion and he's going to have it easy and you don't have a pension, you don't have a mansion, and you know what, when you get off the boat nobody's going to flash a picture and no band is going to play and you're not going to get any appreciation at all, you're going to get off and get lost in the millions of New York, which isn't worth it.

And he began to feel a bit of that disease which is worse than cancer, self-pity, and then he said, the Lord said to him, son, you're not home yet, you're not home yet. Mr. Bunyan said when his pilgrim died the trumpet sounded for him on the other side.

You and I through Christ have an inheritance, and he says three things about it here, to an inheritance incorruptible. It's beyond the reach of death, it's incorruptible, undefiled, it's beyond the reach of sin, and that fadeth not away, it's beyond the reach of time.

And if you were really primed up you'd have said hallelujah, but I'll forgive you. This is the inheritance you're going to receive if you're truly born again, an inheritance incorruptible, beyond the reach of death, undefiled, beyond the reach of sin, that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.

I remember flying into Chicago in 1952 and a very distinguished American artist met me there, he was excited, he said, my wife and I have been to England three times today, and I said, wow, that's good going.

Well, he said, I mean on TV we watch the Queen get crowned. And he said, then his wife said at dinner, if you had been in England, Brother Ravenhill, would you have been at a coronation? I said, no, my name is Ravenhill, not Churchill.

And so she said, wouldn't it be wonderful to be at a coronation like that? Do you think you could have got into it? No, I couldn't have got in. There were 3 ,300 feet in the cathedral. We lived in an old house in Ireland, my wife and I, before we came to the States.

An old house, 300 years old, beautiful old house. And across the fields there was a castle. A young man by the name of Lord Belmore lived in it, he's a fellow about 35. Real distinguished aristocrat. And we went in the castle one day, and there in his library, his great beautiful library, he had two chairs, beautiful chairs, and they had a design in the back, E .R. Elizabeth Rex.

And a little tab on the corner that said on one Lord Belmore and on the other Lady Belmore. And he had been to the coronation, and he was privileged, along with others, to buy the seat that he had sat on at the coronation, and bring it home as an heirloom and pass it on to his children.

Now if I had said I want to see the coronation of the Queen, they would have got a register and had a look and said, I'm sorry, but Ravenhill isn't listed here, so you can't come in. And just look there, you see all those 3 ,300 seats, they've all got a tag on them.

Lord Belmore, Lady Belmore, Sir Winston Churchill, Lady Churchill, and all the others. There's no place reserved for you. Oh, she said, I see now, so you couldn't have gone in. I said, no. I guess you're really sorry you didn't see the Queen crowned, not a bit interested.

Well, look at all the pageantry and the pomp and the colour and the show, you know, pomp and circumstance. I said to her, Mrs Chase, I'm going to a coronation soon that will make the Queen's coronation look like the kitchen sink.

And I want to tell you something, I've got a seat reserved. Reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith and through salvation, ready to be revealed in the last day, and then it changes the temper a little bit and it says, Oh, oh, oh, dear.

There's always a fly in the ointment. Hey, that doesn't make sense. You make rejoice, though now for a season you're in heaviness. Hey, you don't rejoice when you're in heaviness, do you? No, not unless you're in victory.

If you get into heaviness, you don't rejoice, you just ring the pastor. But if you're really living where the Lord wants you, you greatly rejoice, though now for a season. Somebody said to an old colored lady, What's your favorite scripture?

She said, It came to pass. And the pastor wasn't very well educated, he was only a PhD, and so he said to the old colored lady, Now, I don't understand that. It came to pass. What came to pass? Oh, pastor, she says, you know, that trouble that came in my life, it came to pass.

Pretty smart. You better be black-skinned and be informed by the Lord than be a white PhD and know nothing anyhow. So, excuse me, you PhDs. But, you see, she said, It came to pass. Let's build three tabernacles.

Wait, wait a minute, Peter. This is the Peter that wanted to do it, remember? Oh, Peter, this only came to pass. You know, the most tricky thing that any of us have, and I don't care whether you live in a ghetto or you live in a palace, the most tricky thing that any of us have anywhere, anytime, is feelings.

You get out of bed and you don't feel good. A fellow came to the altar one night. A friend of mine went to pray with him and said, What's wrong? Are you saved? He said, Yes. What do you come for? I don't feel saved.

Well, he said, I'll pray for you and then you pray for me. I've had a bad day, too. Feelings. Oh, feelings are so treacherous. Sometimes you feel you're on top of the world and sometimes you feel the world and everything else is on top of you.

Though now for a season. Huh? Yeah, though now for a season. If need be, ye are in heaviness through, through what? Temptations? No, no, no, no, no, no. Through manifold temptations. When temptations come like waves of the sea falling over each other.

Temptation, Faith, and Spiritual Testing

Now, this is an area we could stay in for a week. It's all right to stand in a nice audience like this and sing I Need Thee Every Hour. Temptations lose their power when thou art nigh. Ah, yes, because you're feeling real good, you're at a conference.

But what about tomorrow when you have no emotion? And what about tomorrow when there's nobody at the side of you? And what about tomorrow when you, you, you're buffeted from the moment you get up till you go to bed?

What about it then? Now temptations are, oh, this is a vast field. There are temptations to the body, there are temptations to the spirit, there are temptations to the mind, there are temptations to you.

Do you know what I did when I was a little boy? Do you know my besetting sin? My besetting sin when I was a little boy, I used to steal jelly. My mother used to make it. We'd gather fruit around the hedges in England there.

Oh, she'd buy it sometimes if she had to, but otherwise we would collect the berries and my mother would make fruit. And I knew where she put it. And when she went out I'd take a chair and I'd stand on it and I'd reach for a jar of jelly and I'd take the lid off and get a spoon and whoop, I'd get a good big spoonful and mmm, boy.