The Chronic Cripple Cured — Leonard Ravenhill

The Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate

Let me read some verses from the Acts of the Apostles and the third chapter. Acts chapter 3 verse 1. Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. And a certain man lame from his mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple, which is called beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into the temple.

Who seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple asked an alms. And Peter fastening his eyes upon him with John said, look on us. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive something of them.

And then Peter said, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. Someone has said, I think it was Dr. J .B. Phillips said, that the title of the book, the Acts of the Apostles, is really a misnomer.

It is not the Acts of the Apostles. It's really a record of some of the Acts of some of the Apostles. It is in no way a complete record. In the language of our day, it's where the action is. It's the book of the Holy Spirit.

The others are inspired by the Holy Spirit for sure. But 52 times in this book the Holy Spirit is mentioned. And the Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer, and 40 times prayer is mentioned. As I meditated on this today, I tried to make a comparison between the Acts of the Apostles and something else.

And I think, you know, if you can do it at all, you owe it to your children to take them to see the Grand Canyon. It's one of the great sights of the world. And I think that what the Grand Canyon is in nature, the Acts of the Apostles is in the in the New Testament.

Or if you should go to the Tower of London, you'll gaze, I suppose, with admiration on the crown jewels. And it seems to me that the Acts of the Apostles is the crown jewels in the New Testament. I remember being in northern India and going over a bridge, just to say I'd been in Nepal, walk there a few yards in the country.

And we tried to look to that most majestic mountain in the world, Mount Everest, which we couldn't see in the clouds. There is a sense again in which the Acts of the Apostles is the Mount Everest of the New Testament.

Pentecost and the Spirit-Filled Church

You know, the first reaction of the world to the coming of the Spirit of God was one of playful mockery. All they did was jerk their fingers and say, so what? They've been speaking in tongues. Well, they were up in an upper room and you know what happened?

They're all drunk. You know, it's almost amusing. It's certainly amazing that the church never does anything when it's sober. You've got to get men drunk before they do the reckless things. It isn't by accident, I'm sure, that Paul says, be not drunk with it, but be filled with the Spirit.

Why are the two things together? Because a drunken man is reckless, he's an abandoned man. He'll try and fight somebody twice his size. He doesn't care about public. You say, you fool, quit singing, you're going down Main Street.

He goes away totally intoxicated. And the men in the Acts of the Apostles, in my judgment, were God's intoxicated men. Usually, I like to read some things, anyhow, that Dr. G. Campbell Morgan wrote. I think he was a great preacher.

I heard him many times, too. But I looked up today to see what he said about the Acts of the Apostles, and he said that that day of Pentecost was not to be repeated. It is not the norm of the Christian church.

Well, I beg to differ. I believe it is. I believe it was a birthday, it was a sample day. You know, again, we read things and we forget that for 400 years there have been no prophets, no manifestation of God, 400 years of darkness without any prophetic light, 400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice, and then you suddenly have a rugged, ragged little man who happened to be a Baptist.

And I often tease the Baptists that, after all, they were the first people that ever preached on the baptism with the Holy Ghost. So why don't they keep up with it right now? Because if they don't, they're not Baptists.

At least they're not Bible Baptists. John says you'll marvel at this. Why, nobody's going to church, nobody's going to the synagogue, nobody's going to the temple. Where's everybody going? Oh, there's a man down the road there.

So what? Well, people say it's Elijah, come back to life. He's a tremendous man. You know, it says of him, it says of him what it doesn't say of Jesus. It says he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.

Well, I'm not being facetious here, but he could hardly speak in tongues that day, could he? If you have to speak in tongues to be filled with the Holy Ghost, it says he was filled with the Holy Ghost, but he didn't speak in tongues.

Now there is a valid gift of tongues, I'm not disputing that. But I'm disputing the fact everybody has to have it, to prove they're filled with the Spirit. Up comes John the Baptist, right after him comes Jesus.

The Disciples' Unbelief and the Truth of Christ

The next thing, these men in the upper room, this bunch of disciples, what an investment Jesus made in them. For three years he taught them and they still didn't believe him. If they believed all that Jesus said, they would have been lined up that resurrection morning at the grave, waiting for him to come out of the tomb, and there wasn't one of them there.

They did not believe him. I've said very often, and it sounds facetious, but it's not, that I believe this generation of Christians were the most unbelieving believers the Lord ever had. One day somebody's going to read the Bible and believe it, and when they do, we'll all be embarrassed.

After all, this is the word of truth, thy word, O God, is true. Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. When he is come, he is the Spirit of truth, truth, truth, no error in it. Solid truth.

It doesn't have to be refined and purified, it is truth. Because God is truth. Again, Jesus is the truth, and the Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Now, they didn't get into trouble for speaking in tongues, but they did get into trouble when they went to the beautiful gate of the temple, and there was a man, and did you notice what he said, he was lame from his mother's womb.

He didn't have an accident the week before, his bones were calcified, his bones had become stiff. Oh my. J .B. Phillips says what I find forever exciting. I could say this to myself, I'll say it many times, but I never get tired of saying it, and I never get tired of getting a thrill out of it.

He said that day when he read the Acts of the Apostles, one morning when he was feeling a bit heavy, you know. Maybe you never have days like that. Well, he did, and he turned on his swivel chair, and he reached for a book and opened it like that, and it happened to be the Greek version of the New Testament, and it opened up at the Acts of the Apostles, and he began to read, and suddenly the thing exploded.

Why? He looked at the church that he was part of, which happens to be the stately church of England, he thought of all the bishops and the great men there, and then he read this exciting record, this thing that God has established permanently for the church, and as he did, he said this, this is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat, and short of breath, by prosperity.

This is the church before it became muscle-bound by over-organization. This is the church where they didn't gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, but they healed the sick.

This is the church where they did not recite their articles of faith, they acted in faith. This is the church, he says, where they didn't say prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. I like that word there in Jude, where it says, praying in the Holy Ghost.

Prayer, Boldness, and Apostolic Action

When we were kids in England, we used to sing a hymn, I often say my prayers, but do I ever pray? That little boy went into church with his daddy, and daddy bowed his head like this, and stayed, you know, like that, and when he finished, little fella said, what did you say dad?

And he didn't know. Because that's a custom, you just bow your head, and stick your head in your hands, and whether you say anything or not, it doesn't make any difference, you see. But all the difference when they prayed, ah, there's all the difference in the world, when they had prayed, it says the place was shaken.

Now the details here are very interesting, it says that Peter and John went up to the temple at the ninth hour. It was the ninth hour that Jesus cried out in his agony. It was the ninth hour when a man rounded up some men to do a job, and he hadn't finished it, and then the ninth hour he went out and gathered more.

In other words, it was a crisis hour. What's this man doing at the beautiful gate of the temple? Do you know what it says? It gives you his age a bit later on, but it says they carried him daily, they carried him from his home to the temple, from the temple back home at night, they did that every day in the year, 365 days.

How many times is that? Well, twice 350 would be 765, there's another, so 730 times a year, for 10 years is 7 ,300, for 30 years is 3 ,721, about 22 ,000 times. He was carried, but he was never cured.

He was helped, but he was never healed. He went to the beautiful gate of the temple, can you imagine the Pharisees going in and taking a piece of gold out of the pockets and seeing it got in the sunlight and dropping it very ostentatiously in his little tin can, and somebody else comes along and gives him something else, they say, oh here's Peter and John, those big evangelists, boy, they had 5 ,000 people saved yesterday, boy, they got a big love offering, they say, hey, give us some money.

I know you've got it. You know what you should do is write to your favorite radio preacher and ask him if he'll send you his tape on this text, silver and gold I have not. But anyhow, he said, silver and gold, I have not.

What did he ask for? He asked for arms. Phonetically it sounds like these arms, doesn't it? That's what a little girl thought in Sunday school, she said, why did he ask for arms when he needed legs? Well, it's like the rest of us, we pray about a lot of things we don't need and we don't ask for the things we do need.

Here is a man at the beautiful gate of the temple, do you know what he is? He's a type of the world. He was crippled from his birth, out of his mother's womb, he was paralyzed. An organized religion did nothing for him and the high priest did nothing for him and the festival days did nothing for him and the feast of Pentecost had done nothing for him until this time.

He'd maybe seen it celebrated 25 years when thousands of pilgrims came into the city and they say, what is the feast? Oh, it's Passover. What is the feast? It's the feast of Tabernacles. What is the feast?

Pentecost. But there's a difference. Maybe he'd seen those men going into the upper room. You know, it's interesting, isn't it, that God never works with majorities. I was praying with Herb today and it came to me as we prayed, you know, God didn't say, look, I'll never pour out the Holy Ghost until every church member's there because Jesus had been seen of 500 brethren at once in his resurrection, hadn't he?

300 major of them didn't turn up to the greatest manifestation of God maybe ever upon a community. Surely it was. They were all gone fishing or a little bit of business or something to do or find some socks for the baby or do something and when it came to it, they didn't even bother to go to the upper room.

Now I guess if they'd known that was going to be the most fantastic day in church history, they would have got there. But they didn't go. And he said, well, I'll pour my Spirit out on the 120 of them there.

And the Spirit was poured out. And Peter and John went out in the power of the Spirit of God. What did they do? They got into trouble for preaching what? For preaching Jesus. And for preaching that Jesus had risen from the dead and they had all power and all authority.

The Name of Jesus Versus Religious Systems

And you see what he's saying in a subtle way is this that everything that you have is totally legal. God has washed out centuries, millenniums of stuff that you have. Your temple, God's written bankrupt over it.

Your systems of religion, God isn't interested in them. He's ended everything and it all begins anew in Jesus Christ the Son of God. All the prophecies ended in the womb of the Virgin Mary and all the New Testament prophecies started when Jesus began to walk.

The poor dumb world outside there thinks it's got rid of Jesus. It's got another headache coming. It hasn't even met him yet. It thinks that God isn't going to interfere in the affairs of men. He certainly is in a number of ways and not the least the bloodiest battle in history, the Battle of Armageddon.

But Peter goes along with John. They were opposite characters. Why? Peter's impulsive. God impaired them that. They went to the temple at the hour of prayer. I've often wondered why they went because they didn't believe a word that the temple folk believed and the temple folk didn't believe a word they believed but they stuck at it till they threw them out anyhow.

And as they go into the temple this poor crippled withered man looks up expecting to receive something and he came round and said nobody ever did anything like this. Peter says well don't look on us. Oh that's the very opposite of what I radio.

Do you know who got healed in my program? Would you like a picture of this? Do you know so and so? Do you know what Jesus said? Somewhere in, is it the 6th of John somewhere there, he says you know the reason God doesn't bless you and only because you honour one another that's right.

You're forever seeking a pat on the back. Your group or your society and God says forget it. Jesus says I seek no honour of men. He certainly didn't. Yes condescending religion threw him some money. I think that man had been carried on his back till he knew every crack in the buildings going down.

He watched the swallows come and said it's summer. He knew every season of the year as they carried him every morning and back at night. I've met some kind people here in thousands of times carried but not cured helped but not healed.

How are you going to solve the problem of this man? Well there were two cleansed committed, consecrated concerned Christians that did it. Not a committee meeting just a couple of fellows again that God had cleansed and they were consecrated and they were concerned.

Peter didn't say get up. He saw him and he reached down and he touched him. You know I guess that when he touched him he thought Peter had about 10 ,000 volts in him. The resurrection life of Jesus was in him.

He says listen you poor bound helpless man silver and gold we have none. Oh that's a nice comment on the previous chapter because they'd all shared all their wealth. What have they done with it? You know this New Testament church was something if you lied you died.

Holiness, Discipline, and the Early Church

Now if that happened in our churches we'd have mass funerals every Sunday. In the early church if you lied you died. Wouldn't that be great going to church? I addressed a lot of Pentecostal ministers and I loved them and it was at a banquet so truly Pentecostal is Acts 2 and 3.

They went to church every day prayed every day broke bread every day people were saved every day. You have a church like that? They don't have a Pentecostal church that's all. You may have the nearest thing to it but this is what it really is.

Did you ever start a Sunday morning service by saying we're not going to sing the second stanza? He goes carry him out. And they had long meetings then because it says in that fifth chapter his wife came three hours later.

Heavens if he came to our churches three hours later they'd be locked and barred and the preacher would be on his way to Canada to preach a night service or something. She didn't expect the meeting to be locked up when she came three hours after.

It was just getting going the kind of meeting I like. And they were really rolling and the preacher says did you do so and so? And she says yeah brother we did my husband and I did it. And he says you lied to the Holy Ghost carry her out.

And I said to the Pentecostal preachers did you ever start a Sunday morning service like that? It's exciting. Boy you'll get attention after that nobody will sleep they'll be worried you're going to catch somebody out.

Now that's as much Pentecost as healing the sick. The true pastors of the country have been in jail in three weeks because we've been interfering with people's civil rights. Heavens you can't even tell children what to do.

Did you notice what they said the other day on TV? A school in western Texas has a sign up to the teenagers if your parents are hassling you call this number for help. Post it in a school. You're not going to be able to do anything about it.

Up in north they're fighting I forget the state just now if father or mother tell you to take the garbage out and you don't want to and they insist you call this number and we'll tell your parents what to do.

The land of the free and the home of the brave well in God's name what happens in Russia if this happens in freedom? My God is a jealous God. If my heart cries for anything it cries to see apostolic piety apostolic purity apostolic power that there's no bargain price.

Why did Peter say such as I have give I unto thee? He had no purse he had no prestige he had no place in the community these were the outcasts. Peter and John and the rest of the crowd you know that Jesus fellow ahh no need to worry but boy they soon changed the tune when they came out of the upper room it was a very different story.

This man has been watched observed by maybe millions of people through all the feasts year and year after and do you think it didn't spread like wildfire that man you see what happened well one minute he's laying.

The next minute he's leaping. Who did it? How did it happen? Peter and John look down and Peter says, silver and gold, I don't have it. But, I'll tell you what, I do have something. You know, it reminded me of this word, I think it's a thrilling word of the apostle.

Do you ever get goose pimples when you read the scriptures? Are you too sophisticated? I get them. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 .10, he says, this is my situation. I'm sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

I'm poor, yet making many rich. I have nothing and yet I possess all things. As soon as a church becomes rich materially, she becomes poor spiritually. It seems to be an unwritten law. Peter says, silver and gold, we have none, but I'll tell you we got something more.

After all, maybe that guy had a bank balance. I remember years ago, we used to have a man stood in a certain town in England. He was, it was a seaside town called Blackpool. He was always miserable and poor and he held his little tin can.

But, he was missing for three weeks and nobody bothered too much. Somebody else was in his place. The next year he was missing again. Somebody checked up on him. He'd gone to Switzerland for his vacation.

He'd rented his begging position. He owned about five good houses in the community. You couldn't blame him. He worked on their pity and everybody just, you know, when they made the Christmas gifts, oh that little man that stands outside, well I better give him ten bucks.

I give him ten a year. Well that's not bad if you have 50 ,000 people giving you ten a year. You know, like your radio man says, I'm not asking you for ten dollars. I'm only asking you for one. Well, when he's got five million people listening, that's not too bad either, is it?

Oh, what a difference in the early church. They had nothing. They had no prestige. They had no standing. They had nothing that they could put their names on. And yet Paul says, we're poor, but we make many rich.

I was thinking about what Jesus said in, wasn't it, the 10th of John when he said, he said, he said, I'm the, I'm the good shepherd. And the good shepherd laid down his life for the sheep. Now it seems the sheep have to lay down their lives for the shepherd, the way they teach it these days.

Peter's not concerned about anything except the condition of the man, and he knows that he has received that anointing from God. And he stretches forth the hand, and immediately he touched the man. His ankle bones received strength.

Do you think he could contain himself? Man, he ran down the corridor of that church, and it was a church. When Alexander Janus was the great high priest, they were bringing the water from the pool of Siloam, which you remember they poured it out on the great day of the feast, for six days they poured it out.

And he missed, there was a funnel down which they poured it, and he missed it, and it went on the ground. And there was a stampede. There was a riot in the sanctuary. Do you know that 6 ,000 people were injured?

That gives you a size, an idea of the temple. Their platform, this church wouldn't make a platform for that church. You see the size of it? You see that the number of people that went to it? And yet the collective spiritual wealth of those people couldn't touch the man.

At the beautiful gate, they'd all the theology, they'd all the terminology. They put their hands together piously and said, the Lord he is God. There is only one God, the true God. All other gods are gods of heathens.

Ours is the true God. But he was as powerless as this desk. I'm not suggesting just that miracles in themselves, physical miracles are the total answer, not at all. They're very wonderful, they're very beautiful.

I've just seen about every one of them, from opening the eyes of the blind to cripples and what have you, got everything but the desk. But I've seen churches where that existed and you'd much carnality as anywhere else anyhow.

The Resurrection Power and Opposition

The great power is this, that we have power as Jesus, as Paul says right into the Ephesians, you have equiconed the dead in trespasses and in sin. But you see those are means to an end. What did this do?

Or did they say, well I think we ought to put them on the city council. I think these kind of men should be allowed to immediately get a license to preach. I think next time we have a festival we'll have them on the, on the, on the, up with the high priest, Caiaphas and the rest and, and let them give their testimony.

They didn't do that. What did they do? Who turned on them? The people know, the people were amazed and followed them. Who turned on them? The religious men of the day turned on them. Jesus raised up who, he raised up Lazarus from the dead.

Who turned on Lazarus? The people? Nor the elders turned on him. Well you'll find the same thing in the next chapter, in this very chapter, that the, the whole of the temple was stirred and everybody else was upset about it.

What happened? Well it says at the beginning of the fourth chapter, they speak unto the people and the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees. That's a bunch. Do you know they had an army guarded the temple?

And the temple police came to the men of God. Why? They'd no swords. They weren't raising insurrection. They were raising hell. And they said, well we can't put up with this. Well you put up with the death long enough.

And so they gathered all the celebrities together. And it says in the, as you know, the story that when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, oh my, that just, I, I feel like leaping 15 feet. Two little guys here up against the vast combined system of the Jews.

All the processions they ever had through the city never stood. Like one man getting up and leaping and praising God and everybody says, well what happened? He said, I'll tell you what happened. The man that you crucified, the Lord Jesus Christ, boy did he give them both barrels.

He gave them both barrels twice over. I guess he got double revolvers or something. He shot them, shot them, hacked them to pieces. You thought you got rid of the Lord of glory. Why don't you stand on your tiptoes and try and blow the sun up?

Why, you think you've done with the Lord of glory? You've not started with him yet. And you ask us what the key is. I'll tell you what the key is. His name, through faith in his name, hath made this man whole whom ye now see.

And all that disturbed him. I tell you, it's like I quoted today, I think to her brother, no to another brother I think that came to see me today, a pastor, and I said to her brother, here it is. Hudson Taylor was right when he said if you, if God opens the windows of heaven on you, the devil will open the door of hell and you'll be caught between the two.

Sure, everybody was coming. Thousands of people were coming to see what happened and immediately they all got angry. They were going to get rid of their religious phylacteries and people weren't going to come to them when there was life and joy and excitement.

It says when they saw the boldness of Peter and John. Yes, I said it before, let me say it again. The church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing and she's ending in the supper room with a bunch of women organizing.

The church began, it was supernatural and the church that isn't supernatural is superficial anyhow. Oh, we got lost in statistics and numbers and how far we're going and how many churches we have and how many this and how many the other.

That doesn't scare the devil. Peter and John had the power, they had the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God. And when they saw the boldness, you see the church then had boldness, now she's colder. The church then was an expanding church, now she's almost an expiring church.

The distinctive features of this church to me were they had fire and faith and fruit. And they were all so obvious, how are you going to shut this man up? How are you going to stop this from spreading?

We've got, we've got a fire, a prairie fire on our hands. And they discovered all the waters of doubt and all the waters of unbelief and all the skepticism and all the cynicism and all the ridicule. Couldn't put it out, he was leaping and praising God.

And they were blazing mad about it. And so they thought if they threatened these men, you know the worst thing you can do about a preacher is to look down your nose and say, you know what I think, I think he's a nice guy, but you know what, you know I'm going to spread this, don't tell it, mention it to anybody that I told it.

Do you know he doesn't even have a decree? That's what they said. You say prove it, well I'll tell you, I can prove it. They said, look we've got to admit that that man has been tied up, he's, he got calcified limbs and we're to lift him and carry him.

And now the man's jumping around like a, a school girl full of ecstasy and he's leaping and praising God. But well yes, we'll even put it in a big bracket and say it's a notable miracle. But listen, those men that did it are unlearned and ignorant.

They were unlearned and ignorant, just about the most pitiful character you could ever see. In fact, if you got a bit nearer this one, you'd say, you used to be a fisherman? Yeah, right, you smell the fish on the ear.

And you reckon you're a bishop now? Well I don't know about a bishop, I'm the anointed of God. You are? Well this is all going to pass. I mean you know what's going to happen in a few years, you'll be running back here to the, temple asking for admission again, and will you restore my name to the church role?

One boy said you might as well have it on a sausage roll, but anyhow, that's all right. What happened? Have you forgotten what happened? That man who was pulled? You know what he did, the ignoramus? He went down, he sat down one night and the Holy Ghost that came upon him when he touched the man with a crippled body, the same Holy Ghost came on it.

Do you know what he did? He wrote a book. In fact he wrote two volumes. I got them right here. I got them, I always carry them around. This ignorant fisherman, I like him, he wrote the first epistle to Peter and he wrote the second epistle.

Now that's not bad for a guy that never went to school, is it? And then John, oh well of course he's worse than that one. Poor John. He wrote the most beautiful thing ever written in English prose. The gospel according to John.

You know what I like about these fellas is this, that they never collected any royalties on the on the books, but boy they're going to get them one day. Won't they get some royalties when they get to heaven?

Even if the living Bible did mess them up. But anyhow, they're going to get they're going to get the royalties. And you know what John did? That ignorant John that gave us the best interpretation of the gospel?

Then he wrote a first epistle and then he wrote a second epistle and then he wrote a third epistle. Now that's four books, all bestsellers. And you know what he did Oh boy, how nasty can he get? You know what he did just to rub our noses in the ground?

This ignorant man, he wrote the book of the revelation that battles all wiseness. My, I wish the Lord had sanctified me with that kind of wisdom. I wish the Lord had baptized me with a spirit like that, that I could write a book like the gospel as John wrote it.

First epistle, second epistle, third epistle, revelation! Yes, but what is it? If God opens the windows of heaven, the devil opens the door of hell? Oh, Peter and John didn't sleep that night much, I guess.

John on Patmos and Life in the Spirit

I guess they sat on the edge of the bed and said, hey, you know what, old boy? You remember Jesus said it would be like this one day. Isn't it great? Don't you feel on top of the world, Peter? He says, I sure do, man.

This is great. I don't know what we'll do tomorrow. It's going to be great, you know. It's going to get better and better. And Satan says, well, if I do, I'll break your neck. That's what I'll do. I'll break your heart.

Sure, he wrote the revelation. Do you know how he wrote it? He wrote it in the Alcatraz. He wrote it on the penal colony of the world. He wrote it where they put all the vilest, rottenest men that came out of the sewers of hell on a little island called the Isle of Patmos that was the gathering of all the corruption of the world.

And right in the middle of it, I like to think somebody went to Ephesus one day and said, I heard so much about your famous preacher, John, and I am quite excited. I brought my notebook. I'm going to take all the notes on his neck.

And I'm sorry he isn't here. Where is he? Well, can you just see that peak over there out in the sea, that little island? It's called Patmos. He's there. I didn't know that. Yeah, he's a, the Romans cast him away, and that's where he is, suffering penalty.

He's getting an old man. You think I could get there? Well, if you hire that man, he might take you for five dollars. And he got in the rowing boat and went over, and John was sitting at the side of the sea, gazing into eternity.

And the man comes up and says, John, I didn't think you'd be in the Isle of Patmos. He says, I'm not. He says, aren't you in the Isle of Patmos? He says, no brother, I'm in the Spirit. Isn't that lovely?

Isn't it amazing that the devil can wall you in, but he can't roof you in? Romans 8, what you'll separate us from, you can separate me from my family, from my church, from my Bible, from every friend I've got.

You cannot separate me from God. No, he's not in the Isle of Patmos. He's in the Spirit. You say, poor man, he sits there, and they take him a piece of bread every day, and a cup of water, and that's all he's had.

Brother, forget it. Yesterday, he was at the marriage supper of the Lamb. All he has, a little bit of land he walks around, because all those men are sex perverts, and liars, and thieves, they're the dirtiest, rottenest, vilest bunch the world has ever seen.

And he's been living with them. He says, you forget it, brother. Yesterday, he says, I was, you say I didn't go to church? I was the only person there. And the Holy Ghost did the preaching, and you know what the choir did?

There were 10 ,000 times 10 ,000, and thousands of, that's a hundred million plus. And every one of them sang for me yesterday. And there were 144 ,000 with hearts in their hands. Now you'll go back to your backslidden church and enjoy it, but I'm staying here.