What Is Your Life - Part 3 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Promise of Utopia and Human Progress

Of materialism, the inevitability of progress, and the sufficiency of man. That was two years when they declared that they could have a utopia, if not a new heaven, we don't need it, a new earth. And they gathered people around them, and they marched on bravely with their little cards, you know, saying utopia isn't far off, and we will do all this.

World War and the Collapse of Human Confidence

Well, the Kaiser in Germany had another idea, and he upset the apple cart. Two years after they made their declaration, World War I came, 1914 until 1919. 1919 to 1939, I think, were 20 of the most wonderful years for the church.

She missed it. And in 1939, another fellow came along. He had Charlie Chaplin's moustache on his lip, and one stripe on his arm. His name was Hitler, and we found we were in serious trouble. And like every war, every war gets more diabolical.

The Escalation of Modern Warfare

The next one is unthinkable. Why, if you'd been around here a hundred years ago, you'd have walked down the road then, oh! Dirty Indians shot an arrow in my back. Uncivilized wrecks that he is. Now the boys from Harvard and elsewhere with brains, they can drop an arrow on a city and wipe it out.

That's education. The uncivilized people killed thought one at a time. They were pretty decent about it. Now we can wipe out whole cities. There's a possibility that a third of the population of the United States could be liquidated in less than one minute.

Atomic War and the Failure of Political Solutions

It is a sudden, terrible, horrible, unthinkable atomic war. And the situation isn't better. Do you know that in the third world, we're giving billions of dollars away? Do you know in the third world right now, there are more billionaires than in the free world?

Yesterday showed Mr. Marcos and his wife in the Philippines. I think she's just acquired her first billion. One of her friends in another country that we're sending money to has acquired her second billion, and is on her way to her third billion.

And yet tonight with all our progressive education, we have more sin, we have more, we have more darkness, we have more slums, we have more disease, we have more broken homes, more broken lives. The world is a madhouse.

The Human Cost of War and Epidemics

Despite all the lives that were laid out. Oh, how many people perished in World War One? I don't know, maybe a million. And then right after that, 16 million people perished by an epidemic of influenza that swept the world.

And then we had a time of recovery. And then again we came back to 16 minutes to 8 on the 5th of August 1945. When one man in a plane on his belly pressed the button, dropped the bomb, wiped out about a hundred thousand people, and left about 300 ,000, many of them still living, blind, and paralyzed.

You'd think these politicians would give up. What in God's name are they doing? Apart from wasting money, wasting, dangling a carrot on the end of a stick, when all the time they know there's no, there's no hope.

You know, we learn from history. The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. If we did, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in tonight. But you see, when that bloody man, Hitler, began to wipe out cities and countries, I remember walking down a street in Sheffield when people were all listening, holding their ear to the door of a shop that sold radios and what have you, Churchill speaking.

And there was old Churchill with his famous slur, you know, those Huns, he said, as he called the Germans. They've swept past Paris and they're sweeping down onto the French coast, and they're coming over here.

But he said, we shall fight them with bottles if we have to. We shall fight them with sticks. I imagine myself on the chair trying to pull a Messerschmitt out of the sky. And he roused the people. But the war got more diabolical.

H. G. Wells and the Bankruptcy of Humanism

And right in the middle of that war, H .G. Wells, who had already designed, along with his friends, a way to clean the world up out of its moral sewers, and out of its fanaticism, and insanity, and injustice.

Pull down the hills of wealth, fill in the valleys of poverty, make the crooked places straight. H .G. Wells had written his outline of history. He'd written his book Crux Ansata that got him into trouble with the Roman Church.

And then suddenly his brain, brain woke up. And he wrote his final book, and this was the title of it, The Man That Was Dreaming Great Dreams of a New World Order. And he had the answer, along with all his brother, brothers who were so super intellectual.

And his last book was called Mind at the End of Its Tether. And he wrote the whole human race off and said there is no hope, no hope for the human race. Because he says man has a blank inside of him. Well he got almost theological.

The Emptiness Within Humanity

Man has a blank inside of him. You've got life tonight, physical life, otherwise you wouldn't be here. You've got emotional life, otherwise you wouldn't laugh. You've got a social life. You've got intellectual life, you may have a religious life.

But you see, this book is not complimentary in any shape or form. So you find a man saying youth is a mistake, manhood is folly, and old age is a regret. Fancy having to be a super statesman to have a bankrupt philosophy like that.

Youth is a mistake, manhood is folly, old age is a regret. Sure it is if you miss the one place to get life. And even in the days of his flesh, Jesus complained he will not come to me that ye may have life.

Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Now do you remember his great statement, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the way, without that there's no going. I am the truth, without that there's no knowing. I am the life, without him there's no growing.

I am the way, that's external. I am the truth, that's internal. I am the life, that's eternal. Now this book is completely lost to one idea as far as I'm concerned. It tells us the origin of man. Now I know at school you've got a teacher who's much smarter than that.

Human Evolution and the Uniqueness of Biblical Creation

She tells you go to the zoo to see your uncle. And I think when you go back to school you should take a banana and give it to her. And she said, what's it for? I say, well I saw your uncle George in the zoo the other day.

He had no lunch so why don't you take this for him. I was told that not long ago the monkeys had a conference. And they outlawed the idea that they have any relationship with a human race at all. They asked for a show of hands.

There were 10 ,000 monkeys there, chimpanzees and now we're on our tongues. I don't know what world they're in. Every kindred and tribe, the whole 12 tribes of monkeys were there. And they asked for a show of hands.

Anybody here ever taken drugs? Raise your paw. And nobody raised a paw. Any of you ever been in jail? Raise your paw. No paws were in jail. Any of you ever been drunk? No, no. Any of you ever been divorced?

No. Any of you go to a village and tear it up and murder everybody in the village in one night? Oh, never think of that. Well that's what those monkeys do that wear clothes. They just raid people at night and kill them.

And they destroy. No, no, no. Here is a wonderful, wonderful fact that God has given to us. It's an amazing thing when you think of it that God gave just one chapter to tell us about the creation of the world and seven chapters about the creation of the tabernacle in the wilderness.

I wish it changed it around. But you know he never even asked me for advice these days either. I give him some in my prayers sometimes. Of course you wouldn't do a thing like that. You're too smart. But the whole thing is about life.