The Incandescent Man - Part 1 — Leonard Ravenhill

I may have to hop around a bit here, I've not got my mind in good shape at present. I've been oscillating between two different messages. I was going to switch to the different one, but I'm going to stay with the older one.

I preached it once before in my life, only once, and you have to preach a sermon twenty times. First of all, you have to master the sermon, and the sermon has to master you. There's no other way to preach.

The Four Hundred Years of Prophetic Silence

One of the most fascinating parts of the scripture is that blank between Malachi and Matthew. It covers a period of four hundred years without any prophetic voice, four hundred years of darkness without any prophetic light, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, and unwontedly there's a break.

At the other side of that four hundred years, when Malachi finishes his message, do you remember what he says? He says, the Lord whom ye seek. Do you know why? One reason, we don't have revival, we're not seeking revival, we're seeking miracles, we're seeking manifestations, we're not seeking Christ, and he's a very jealous God.

Seeking Christ Rather Than Miracles

But you see, the Lord comes suddenly. I was in a meeting last week, I preached to fifteen hundred preachers one night and fifteen hundred the next night, and suddenly in the midst of preaching I said, if your heart begins to burn with conviction, if you're burning with lust, if you're burning with a problem, and you believe the fire of the Holy Ghost can change it, get up and walk.

And while I was preaching, men streamed to the altar, they filled the whole altar up. And then as we finished, I said, you ladies can pray where you are. You men come, pastors come, teachers come, preachers come, Sunday school teachers come, you've no fire, you've no anointing.

And they streamed forward about a hundred and fifty, filled the altar. The next day it was greater, there were three hundred men sought God. It was wall to wall men, you couldn't get, I couldn't get off the platform, I was tied out.

The Lord Comes Suddenly

But you see, the Lord suddenly came. If we announced the Lord was coming tomorrow morning at ten o 'clock in this church, you'd pack the place out. But he comes suddenly. What does it say? Well, shepherds watch their flocks by night surely.

And suddenly there's a sound of a heavenly host. They were waiting, countdown. Do you think they were stupid? Those men in the upper room knew the fiftieth day, and they were counting down, this is the forty-eighth, forty-ninth, tomorrow the Holy Ghost will come.

And it says suddenly there was a sound of a heavenly host. Paul and Silas were in prison, and suddenly. I'm looking for God, the Holy Ghost, to come suddenly. Not any locality, not in any nation, but to fulfill his promise that he'll pour out his spirit and all flesh.

Divine Intervention in a World Facing Judgment

The world has never nearer been to judgment than it is now. There are five billion people in the human race. That's too many to fill hell. We're not going to cure the ills of America by politics. Only God can save us.

We need an divine intervention. We need God to render heavens and come and disturb us. And to do that he'll show us our bankruptcy, he'll show us that we have to be stripped before he'll clothe us, empty before he'll fill us, plead our poverty before he'll make us rich.

This is a crisis hour not only in America, it's a crisis hour in the world. One young friend of mine this week has been speaking in the greatest hall in the world, in China, in the People's Hall, which holds maybe 7 ,000 people.

Carrying the Gospel Under Persecution

He's speaking there at a banquet. He's a Christian. He said, I didn't go to America and they'll kick me out. I'm going as a believer. I'm going to tell them what the answer is. After all, there's a billion people in that nation.

Many are suffering persecution and hardship and great suffering. And he has gone there with a burden because he wants to see God come. I'll tell you why I went to that church. A few weeks ago I cancelled all my preaching for this year except here and one other place.

I should have gone to a world conference. I said, I'm not coming. I should have gone to two state conferences. I said, I'm not coming. And once you say that, of course, everybody wants you. But I've held off so far.

A Church Built Around Prayer and Sacrifice

I went to this conference not just to preach to 1 ,500 preachers every night, but the church is unique in America. Listen, this is America today, not Finnish day, not Westminster day. There's something happening in that church that does not happen in any other church in America, not even John Wimber's big church, or my friend Charles Stanley at the First Baptist there in Atlanta, or the First Baptist Dr. Criswell in Dallas.

I'll tell you why. That church has six small churches. They all operate independently during the week. They meet together on Sunday morning. They meet together Friday night, about 1 ,400 to 1 ,500 people.

They have five pastors. One of them has a Fulbright Scholarship. In England, everybody wants the Rhodes Scholarship. In America, the Fulbright is the highest. Do you get that? It's open door to millions of dollars.

Open sesame. Well, he's left it on one side. He's not going to Oxford for that scholarship. He's come to work for $18 ,000 a week. I mean, no, that's what I get. I got wrong there. I mean, I earn it, but I never get it.

No, $18 ,000 a year, isn't that something? Another young man, he took a 500 cut in his wage to take a job at $18 ,000 a year. He had a private car with a telephone. He has a daddy who's a multimillionaire.

He has an unlimited credit card, and he put it all on one side. Frank, that's encouraging, isn't it? God, there are some young men who aren't gold diggers. You'll tell the evangelists, when you get to heaven, the streets are gold.

Intercession for the Glory of God

They'll be digging the streets up. That water's terrible. But then there's another man in Africa who heard that there's a church. For the five years, they've had two hours prayer every morning, two hours prayer every afternoon, two hours prayer every night, plus a night of prayer every week.

Well, dear God, we went down, dear Martha and our son David and I, and the Lord just moved on the place again. So the Saturday night prayer meeting that goes from 7 to 9 went for eight hours, nonstop, in intercession and tears.

The morning prayer meetings that start at 6 and finish at 8 went through till half past 10 in the morning. The nights of prayer, they get 50, 60, 70 people praying the whole night through. They're not praying for the material recovery of the economy.

They're praying for the glory of God. You see, our generation, there are not a hundred people in America tonight have ever seen a Holy Ghost revival. I'm in a meeting where you didn't put the lights out.

The Moravian Prayer Watch

The sanctuary is alive 24 hours a day. One of the greatest prayer meetings in history started on the 21st of August in, let me see, 1727 in Moravia. The Holy Spirit came down just at the clock, went to 11 o 'clock.

The Spirit descended. You know what happened? To that group of people from 11 o 'clock that morning, for 100 years the prayer meeting never ended. You could go in prayer meeting at 2 o 'clock in the morning and children will be praying with tears.

The finest young men went and stood on the slave blocks down there in the Caribbean, in the Caribbean center.