No Man Is Greater Than His Prayer Life (Cd Version) — Leonard Ravenhill

Elijah’s Life Defined by Prayer

I find that the most stirring, profitable thing in my life is to read the biographies of great men and particularly to read the life stories of men in the Bible and I want to talk about one tonight that in my judgment is one of the greatest men that ever crossed the bridge of time.

Is that ok? Ok we'll start soon.

His life is all wrapped up in the miraculous he changed the climate he raised the dead he subdued armies. And yet God has wrapped up the life of this man in two very simple words. There are many great biographies written in two volumes.

Degby gave us two great lives of William Booth the founder of the Salvation Army in two great volumes. The life of the founder of the China Inland Mission is given in two great volumes. And as a writer I don't think it's very difficult to condense the life of a man into two volumes.

But it's rather difficult to condense the life of a person particularly a man who stands as a giant in history into two simple words. And God has done exactly that because he says of this amazing man Elijah he prayed.

I don't believe that any man is greater than his prayer life. I don't believe that any church is stronger than its prayer life. The other day I saw a monstrous machine coming up the road I don't know an 18 wheeler or bigger than that and it had an oversized load and as it came past the machine was almost groaning under the immense weight.

Of this huge machine whatever was on it.

And you know I'm not an engineer but I knew that that 18 wheeler didn't have a Volkswagen engine in it because if it had it would never have pulled that load. And yet we've got churches that have massive organization and yet they're trying to run on a Volkswagen prayer meeting.

No church is greater than its prayer life, no man is greater than his prayer life, I don't care how great his intellect is. Now this man Elijah came on the scene in the history of Israel in a crisis hour quite recently in the Wall Street Journal there was a statement I don't take the Wall Street Journal, I don't have any investments I'm sure some of you do.

But the Wall Street Journal said that presently there is a revival sweeping America from the Californian coast into New York. A great evangelical revival it said. But it is having very little effect to me.

That's like saying that last night there was an earthquake 9 .5 on the Richter scale but nobody felt it just as ridiculous. Now I want to talk about prayer and talk about revival because right now there's a spirit of lethargy over the nation.

We've kicked all the old rascals out of Washington, we've got a new bunch of rascals. Anyhow, we've got a new bunch in and now the attitude is relax and be raptured. What can go wrong. Now we've got Mr. Reagan in.

There's something far more deep seated that's wrong with the nation than politics or economics or a bankrupt dollar. There's no way in the world that we can turn the nation around. We're always trying to bail God out.

The latest effort is have a moral majority. Why didn't Jesus have a moral majority. He had the most moral men in the world around him. Pharisees and Sadducees. They were impeccable in their morality but Jesus attacked them.

You see we'll do just about anything in the world except obey God. I'm trying to write a book right now. Revival God's Way, do you know why? Because we've tried every other way we've tried to glamorize the gospel.

Tomorrow morning turn your TV on. You'll see ladies swinging there in what look like night dresses, long gowns to the ground you know and faultless hairdos. And men have their hair blown and some blown away.

But you see them all dressed immaculately there suave and sweet. And nobody says anything that will disturb anybody. Because if you do you'll cut your finances off. Now listen, let's be intelligent. I'm sure you must love God when you could be at home watching that intellectual rubbish on TV and you left it to come here Saturday night, that's not very normal.

And I'm very glad you're here. But friends, we're not going to move this generation to God except by a holy ghost revival. We have the most expensive evangelism in history that revival has never become never been born through a famous personality.

Revival cannot be nationalized. Revival cannot be organized. Revival cannot be denominationalized. The church of Jesus Christ began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing. It's ending in the supper room with a bunch of women organizing.

We mistake rattle for revival. We mistake commotion for creation. We mistake action for unction. Anybody that's read the bible knows how Elijah went off the stage, he went up in a whirlwind, he had a kind of a private rapture.

He went up in a whirlwind and in a chariot of fire. How did he come on the stage, where had he been. Who were his father, who were his mother. Why did he live, nobody knows. He is classified in my judgment in the greatest classification of men this world has ever known.

He is classified as a prophet and prophets are God's emergency men for crisis hours in history. To some people judgment isn't in the earth. To some people judgment won't be in America till the empire state building falls down and there's a new gap when California falls into the sea.

But one of the judgments of God is he gives a nation. No prophets. And right now we have no prophets. We super star evangelist. We have a lot of organizations, many organized. Who will do the agonizing.

Elijah in Israel’s Crisis

Elijah comes on the stage 58 years after the dividing of the kingdom. Prior to his coming there was a wicked king by the name of Ahab. He had superseded all the iniquity of every king that came before him.

There had been at least six kings, the second king did more evil than the first, the third did more evil than the second, the fourth did more evil than the third, the fifth did more evil than the fourth the sixth, the last one Ahab did more evil than all the iniquity of the kings before him.

And then to make bad worse as the Irish say he rebuilt Jericho which you remember had been destroyed and they laid the foundation in the blood of a child and then he married a wicked woman. You see today people are snatching at scriptures.

I get literature from all over the world because my books go all over the world and nearly every one of them quotes 2 Chronicles 7 14 if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face.

But wait a minute you can't snatch that out of the scripture that was given to the Jews. Is it valid today, yes it is. But there is a scripture beyond that that has a tag on it and you see the preachers like to say if my people, that shoves all the responsibility on you.

I believe the key to revival is endure. Let the priests weep between the altar and the door posts. I was in a very famous college not long ago and God was on that meeting that morning and I just stepped round the podium and I said to all the brilliant doctors of divinity and all the other scholars that were there, I want to ask you a simple question.

You have hundreds of students that are going into the ministry, do you have a course on weeping. And if they graduate in weeping do you have a course on howling with a stony silence. What would you think if people gave a blind man a license to drive an automobile.

You'd say that's insanity. We give boys in college a certificate to stick on the wall to prove that they're preachers just because they know the word of God but they do not know the God of the word. They know how to divide Romans chapter 1 to 7, 8 to 11.

They can tell which is doctrinal and practical and so forth. I think so often of the disciples. I guess you do, you read about them. I think of them coming to Jesus and saying Lord teach us to pray. I wonder why they never said Lord teach us to preach.

He preached the greatest sermon the world has ever had. It's got the answer for our day. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances found one thing, Christianity has been tried, found difficult and rejected.

Christianity is not only too difficult for the world, it's too difficult for the church. God's problem in the world is not communism, Romanism, Moonism or any other ism, God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism.

We know all the cliches. We know all the words I would have loved to have heard Jesus. I'm going to teach a course maybe start next week with the Agape. They're up the street from us. We live in the New Jerusalem.

They've got the Agape on one side of us, we've got Y1 with 250 students behind us. We've got Keith Green's group down the road there, we've got Calvary Commission up the road here. Barry McGuire just lives up the street there and we've got Dallas Holmes behind us and I don't know who lives there.

Great bunch of folk and I sure like to get amongst those students. And I'm going to teach there in about a couple of weeks. One group I'm going to teach on Hebrews 11, heroes in Hebrews and with Keith Green's group on the Kingdom the great teaching of Jesus in what we call the Beatitudes.

And people say, well what are the Beatitudes, well I'll tell you they should be attitudes in our lives. Do you know what if every professing believer in America lived a sermon on the mount for 24 hours, we'd turn this country round.

We don't want no more preaching. If I were a kind of a Protestant Pope, I'd close every Evangelical church down for the next month. We've enough knowledge to give us the biggest beating we can ever get when we get to the judgment seat.

Some young people said to me not long ago, you know, they tell us that when we're old enough to get married, there won't be any material, we'll have run out of wood, we're cutting all the trees down and we won't have any bricks to build the houses, I said you just forget it.

You'll all be able to build a house. They said what with, I said your cassette. I find youngsters who say you know I've got 300 cassettes, oh I've got 400 cassettes, oh I've got so many cassettes. The nation is drowning right now in theological knowledge there are millions of cassettes.

There are hundreds and hundreds of seminars. I'm thinking of having a seminar on teaching seminars. Everybody's having seminars and weekend meetings. And you can go into hotels and have meetings and breakfast and banquets and bankruptcy.

Well anyhow, they've all these things going and we're getting nowhere. The disciples said Lord teach us to pray. I would rather pray than be the greatest preacher in the world preaching. We stand before men on behalf of God praying.

We stand before God on behalf of men which is the greatest. The disciples said Lord teach us to pray. You know there are people who say well you know the Lord has no favourite, well he has. I want to tell you very surely he has.

Jesus went to the house of Jairus to raise his daughter from the dead. Who did he take with him. Right, Peter, John and James Peter, James and John. And then he went to the mount of transfiguration. And he took with him and he was transfigured.

And Luke said it was while he was praying that he was transfigured. And these men said Lord teach us to pray. And when he went back they were asleep. I can't believe that.

To have heard Jesus praying, okay I'll excuse them, they were all tired.

They weren't used to spending all night. He spent all night in prayer time after time year after year and they weren't used to it. But he took them into the most amazing event that ever happened in the world.

The greatest battle fought in the world wasn't somewhere back in history. It wasn't in World War I at Vimy Ridge or Passchendaele or Mons. It wasn't in World War II. The greatest battle ever fought was fought by one man in a place called Gethsemane and three men were allowed.

To go into the garden to pray with him and they, oh not again.

I mean these three men were allowed to be with the Son of God. He's making history like no one else and they fell asleep.

And he came back a second time and they were asleep and he came back a third time and they isn't that incredible.

You know pastors and teachers get discouraged. I don't think people can understand what we're saying, I don't think they really understand. I don't think they're following heart. Well cheer up, Jesus had the same problem.

I don't believe the disciples believed the word that Jesus said. You say that's true, let me prove it to you. He told them over and over and over again. He was going to die and rise on the third day and the morning he rose at the resurrection.

There wasn't one of them at the sepulcher. Therefore they didn't believe he'd rise from the dead. Otherwise they'd have been lining up there. Then the women jumped in and said no. The men sailed in. But we got there.

Women's lip everywhere. But anyhow. No. The woman didn't go there to see the resurrected Christ. She went in to anoint his body. Didn't she. So don't get discouraged if people are dumb and stupid. Every time I look at the congregation I remember the Lord commissioned me to comfort the people minded.

But anyhow things go very slow with us. You know five minutes inside in eternity. Every one of us will wish we'd be more prayerful, more sacrificial. I heard somebody say the other day oh it's going to be wonderful in heaven.

There'll be no tears, there'll be no this, there'll be no that. Where does it say. There'll be no tears in the book of Revelation. Alright you know what it says in the book of Revelation. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

Well how can there be tears if there are no tears. I believe those tears those scowling tears will pour down the faces of men and women at the judgment seat of Christ. Because we're all going to stand there.

Mr Kennedy's going to listen to that murder affair at Chappaquiddick. It's all coming to the surface. And Mr Nixon's going to hear those 18 minutes on the tape played over. He forgot about that when he was doing the dirty trick.

But I'll tell you what, if you want to know how bankrupt preaching is today, Dave Wilkerson is my neighbor, we talk together often. He was telling me recently he said Len do you know 18 different preachers went to preach to Nixon in the White House.

And not one of them got through.

To him, do you think Elijah would have got through to him.

Do you think if Elijah preached on TV this Sunday he'd get back on TV next.

Sunday, Elijah comes.

Prophetic Authority in a Pagan Nation

On the stage in the most critical hour in history for Israel they'd had a series of wicked kings. Iniquity had abounded they'd been destroyed to God, they'd built groves to Ashdod and Baal. A wicked woman got married to the king and thought everything was in order.

And one day there came a little rugged, ragged kind of man and maybe she was gathering flowers. God's word, my word do you remember. In Ephesians 6 .19 Paul said pray for me that utterance may be given to me.

What does he mean, he means authority in the word of God. I don't offer people an option, I offer an ultimatum. Preaching can be the most authoritative thing in the world not something to tickle ears, if your ears are tickling I'm not going to scratch them.

I've no commission to scratch itching ears, I believe the.

Trouble with the pulpit in America today is it's filled with puppets instead of prophets. Again prophets are God's emergency men for crisis. Out, Elijah comes onto the stage again a prophet, the most amazing men the world has ever had.

Colossal men like Jeremiah and Isaiah and the minor prophets and then the apostles take over afterwards. Dr. Bateson a distinguished Jewish scholar who was converted to Christianity gave me a definition that I like very much.

He said the prophet by the very nature of his calling is a tragic figure, why? Because he has a fierce loyalty to God and he has a tremendous love for a nation. And he's torn between the two. He doesn't see sin as something that's helping a people, first of all.

He sees sin hurting God, as I've got to say.

This morning you don't hear people saying oh for Buddha's sake do this or Buddha's sake doing that, they say for Christ's sake they take Christ's name in vain. Before you go to bed tonight there'll be more divorced people in America than when you got out of bed.

This morning, there'll be more drunkards more harlots.

Almost 3 ,000 girls under 17 get pregnant every night in the year. People were screaming a few years ago it's wrong to go to war in Vietnam, it's wrong to go to war. Why? because we're killing people and now they kill babies before they get out of the womb.

You think God almighty is going to put up with America much longer.

I don't, sure I was in the 700 club there.

And Pat Robertson says he thinks God's already taken his hands off the nation. I get people calling me, phoning me writing to me saying why do you spend your energy. Why don't you retire. The devil's been trying to get me to do that for 60 years but I'm not after all I'm only 75 so I'm still young 74 but anyhow I've still a long way to go.

Abraham didn't start till he was 75 so I'm just where Abraham was. He finished 175. I don't think I'll make it so long but anyhow give up this the greatest job in the world. Elijah comes on on the stage in a situation identical to our national situation.

The country was given up to idolatry and impurity and iniquity and infidelity. And everywhere smokers going up from altars groves to ash trough and to bale. And every time he sees something like that it stings in his nostrils.

And he knows that God is a holy God. And you remember it said in Deuteronomy that if a nation sins he is shut of heaven. Now come on. Do you love not America. Forget America. If you're an American and then a Christian you're in bad shape.

You should be a Christian before you're an American. I left the union jack at the cross when I got saved. Do you love America enough to say changing the words of Patrick Henry from give me liberty or to give me death.

To give me revival or give me death. The words of Rachel that didn't do her hair pretty that morning and dress up and get a right perfume. When she came to the place where she realized she wasn't functioning as she should function as a woman.

And she throws herself at the feet of her husband Jacob. And she says Jacob give me children or I die. See we want Pentecost on our terms. We want a painless Pentecost. We want something that won't upset our schedule or get us out of bed too early or keep us fasting when we're hungry and covetous.

Prayer is the language of the poor. The self-sufficient don't need to pray. The self-satisfied don't want to pray. The self-righteous can't pray. The only people who can pray are those who realize that we need a power outside of ourselves.

Whether you think of government or religious organization or fundamentalism or whatever it is. Again I say Elijah comes on the stage. He's not concerned about himself. He's concerned that the enemies of God are triumphing.

And the God of Israel the God the maker of heaven and earth is being mocked by shrines all over the area. And every time he sees them his heart is broken. He feeds on tears and affliction and sorrow.

Do you remember.

When Paul went to the intellectual capital of the world which was Athens and he went down the street and everywhere he turned there was an altar to a strange God and he said in the sleepy Elizabethan English here that his spirit was stirred within him.

He said in the Amplified when he saw those altars to strange Gods he was angry. Do they anger us? Do you get angry about them? There's a nice building a lovely building. The Mormons are building it. There's a lovely building over there.

My my Jehovah's Witnesses are building it. I mean do we see with these natural eyes like every other drunkard down the street or business man. Or do we say that place is an offense to a holy God. You know I've been in many countries of the world and I find very often I'm challenged right down to my toes at the zeal and ambition of those people.

I preached in a great conference in Carrizal to hundreds of missionaries from Japan and Korea and afterwards. One of them said to me you know brother Eisenhower Christian missionaries have been here for a hundred and four years.

That was about ten years ago a hundred and four years. And the only penetration that we made of this nation Japan is a half of one percent and that means Catholics Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestants a half of one percent.

I said well friend I don't want to be rude but the way you're going about it it will take another hundred years to get the other half of that one percent. All people who go there have a crusade and a show and they run out and give a few tracts and what not and come on and make reports.

One of the leading TV Christian organizations in this country one of their men told me that they went down to the Philippines and they stopped coming on the way back. They stopped in Japan and they checked on the street.

They had reports that their their TV Christian TV message was going through Japan and all kinds of decisions were being made and all kinds of people were being converted. And he said we went to city after city and we could not find one single person who had been converted to that TV program.

Not one. A year after.

I'd been to that conference. We were living up with a brother there that's sitting right there brother Bob in Rockford Illinois the Western Methodist had a preacher and I went to hear him. I said to my wife Sridhar this is the man who was the chairman of the conference when we were in Japan.

When I saw him I said to him you don't look so. Well. No. Did you have a bad flight from Japan? No what's wrong? I didn't have a bad flight I had a bad experience. Or what happened. Well I thought I'd get my hair cut in Japan.

It's a bit cheaper. So I got a haircut last night and as I sat in the chair the man clipped my hair and then finally he said ha you are a Yankee. Well he said I'm not quite a Yankee. I'm an American. You know making such a difference.

Ah you are an American businessman. No. Ah you are an American tourist. No. What kind of American are you? I'm a missionary. Ah good good said the man I am.

A missionary too. Oh I thought you were a barber. Barber in the morning 9 o 'clock till 5.

I go home I bathe and then I go on the street at 6 o 'clock. Fill my pockets with trash. Take my phonograph. Knock on your door. I give you lecture number 1 tonight. I come a week tonight. Give you lecture number 2.

I come the week after. Give you lecture number 3. I come the week after give you lecture number 4. This is a new combination of religion and politics. Zagagaki. And he's greater than Christianity. He's going to wipe Christianity out of Japan and these other nations.

You go out at 6 o 'clock at night till 2 o 'clock in the morning. How many nights a week? 7 nights a week. You go out every night at 6 o 'clock and you don't go to bed till 2 in the morning. I didn't say that.

You did say that. What did you say? I said I don't get home until 2 o 'clock in the morning. And then he said I pull a curtain on one side and I cross my legs and I meditate on my God for 2 hours to renew my strength.

Maybe that sounds a bit like Isaiah 40 they that wait upon the Lord to renew their strength. But here's a heathen man bowing down before his Buddhist God. And the mystery was so confused and embarrassed that a heathen man would go from 6 till 2 in the morning and then pray from 2 till 4.

What time do you get up? 7 .30. You live on 3 and a half hours. You don't sleep each night yet. How long have you done this? 7 years. He said. You think I felt like coming home to America to talk about revival and prayer and the need in that country.

The Cost of Revival and the Need for Consecration

My simple definition is this dear friends of all the church of God in America or England or anywhere else. The one single reason we do not have revival is we are content to live without it. The price is too stiff.

Don't disorganize my life. Don't ask me to open my business half an hour after day instead of a whole day. Don't ask me to stay up at night. Don't ask me to abolish my TV. Don't ask me to get rid of the trivia in my life.

I mean I'm saved. I'm not going to hell fire. And so I'm a nice Christian. For what? Look here friend there are more lost people in the world at this moment this moment than any period in history. And the church has never been more paralyzed again.

I say that no church is greater than its prayer life. You see our revivals are predictable. We ship in the best guy the fellow with the big reputation. Revival is totally unpredictable. A crusade for a big city now can cost a million dollars.

Revival never cost one red cent. There's only one revival I know of in the world right now. It's up in Nagaland in North East India. It burst out in 1977. Three years ago. Until that time that state was the most troubled state in India.

It had more crime, it had more juvenile delinquency prostitution drugs kids fighting in the street. And then suddenly there was revival. Do you know what revival is? Revival is a divine intervention in the affairs of men.

Revival is God's people getting cleansed and endued with power and evangelism. Is those people going out in the streets. But the blockage is in the church. You know how effective that revival. You know you test a revival.

There can be a reviving in the church. People get rid of a bit of a mess in their life. You know you test a real revival. It changes the moral climate of the community. The government has come down now and said hey crime has gone down like this.

We've hardly any crime in the nation. The girls aren't getting raped. Drug addiction has gone down to zero. Nearly the police aren't having much to do what in the world has happened. And they discover that God had come in all his amazing power in revival and mopped up these wretched filthy areas and revolutionized the society.

And Paul Kaufman is a very distinguished missionary statesman. He lives in Hong Kong. I was going to see him when I was there but I didn't. And I've regretted it ever since Paul Kaufman went to see this revival.

You see almost everybody has tunnel vision on revival in America. It must come like Finney has it. Well it ain't going to come like that friend. We're not living in Finney's day. We're living in a day of arrogant militantism.

Arrogant militant paganism. We're living in a day when people boast about sin. People used to do in a corner and blush if they were found out. A girl used to be embarrassed and humiliated and did a letter in the area.

When I lived in England years ago when I was a boy 60 years back a girl that got pregnant. Oh did you hear about it. Oh it was a tragedy. People used to groan and weep and feel ashamed. She polluted the whole district.

She was having a baby out of wedlock. And now you get women on TV boasting they've had a number of them. You get people openly brazenly talking about the method to this. Can you think of an educated nation where somebody puts a gadget into a woman and rips an unborn baby and then you flush it down the toilet and you call that education.

Listen if living any old how and drinking any old how and sleeping any old how and living a hellish life to satisfy the patterns as people will do all night when you arrive in bed. If that's the joy of life.

Why is the suicide rate so high. You think people want to live a hundred years to shack up and live in sin. But there comes a point you see where the wages of sin is death. Not only eternal death. But people are going out the best way they can by suicide.

Why. Because they've given them to all the passions and indulge themselves in iniquity to that degree. It was like that when Elijah came on the stage. What you gonna do. All the other preachers have gone underground.

I think we have to learn the game. At least I have that one man with God is the majority. Elijah didn't have a finance committee behind him. I don't know how he got on. He didn't even have a mailing list.

Look if we don't have the Holy Ghost we better have every gadget that we can get. But if we have the Holy Ghost well he's all we need. I'm asked to believe these days you know when I see this and that God built this place in answer to believing prayer.

When all the time most of these big evangelistic societies even our monuments to human genius human ingenuity Madison Avenue tactics public relations know how and clever advertising. Isn't it something when these big evangelistic groups say we have more computers than the IBM down the road.

I don't think there are any computers in the upper room. Do you. No no no no we're not gonna have any superstar evangelists anymore. I'm sorry we never had any in one sense. But I'll tell you what I'm believing.

Oh I can paint a picture as black as hell. I can give you statistics that would tell your insider but I want to tell you the greatest tragedy in the world tonight is not the betrayal of Vietnam. It's not that Cambodia was raped or the connivance of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger knew about it.

It's not that Afghanistan has been destroyed by an invading army. We didn't do a thing about it. If ever you saw the impotence of politics and money. Why have those boys been in prison for 444 days. The United Nations did nothing about it.

So they're a pretty helpless bunch and the government did nothing about it. So they're a pretty helpless bunch. And worst of all the Church of God did nothing about it. Isn't it amazing that the Russian government will let 10 to 20 ,000 Jews and other people come out of Russia every year.

But they won't let 7 Pentecostals come out. There are 7 Pentecostal people have been hiding in the American embassy in Moscow for 2 years now and they can't get out. When Mr. Carter was asked about it he said well of course that's got to do with religion.

Oh so religious people don't have human rights eh. I'm saying that to show you the impotence. There's a time when bombs and armies and banks and everything can do nothing. And we're in that crisis moment right now.

If God the Holy Ghost doesn't come on America watch out the next 2 years are going to be years of starvation and hardship such as we have never known in this country before. God's problem in the Old Testament was not Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites and Hamarites, God's problem in the Old Testament was Israel again.

God's problem tonight is not communism and all the other isms. God's problem tonight is a disobedient bankrupt worldly church. Alright Elijah comes on the scene. This woman has got it all her own way.

Just like turning these lights out one by one. She plunges the nation into darkness. Then the guilt grows to Ashcroft and Dale. Then the invaded Lord of Priests. And she thought everything in the garden was lovely.

And whoop up comes one man I think she must be near a nervous breakdown. He puts his finger up and says there's going to be no rain according to my word and he locked up heaven. I think this was one of the greatest honors in the world.

You know what they did to try and find a good preacher. They turned the army out. We have an evangelist come to town. We give him the key. The mayor meets him at the town. They're not afraid of our evangelism anymore.

Nobody met Phinney at the gates of the city with a golden key. They didn't bring everybody and his brother to a big banquet. They were terrified terrified of the prophet. I long to see the day when men are terrified of my faith or somebody else's faith because they know we carry the authority and anointing of God and hypocrisy can't live.

I'll shut up heaven. Let there be no rain. Say do you love America enough to ask God to shut up heaven. Because it means shutting up heaven. You'll strangle the economy. The cattle die, the crops won't grow.

Oh I've stood in bread lines in England in first world war. Got out of bed at 4 o 'clock in the morning to try and get a loaf of bread. Stand in the shivering rotten English climate with snow and sleet coming down.

Are you really ready to get rid of some preacher comforts and not have so much stuff. Stuffing in your refrigerators and then stuffing you afterwards. No we want everything the same. We hope gas won't get much more costly.

My boys on the mission field in Paraguay was home until 2 weeks ago. They pay $5 .50 a gallon for gas on a missionaries allowance. Can you think of that $6 ,000 for a refrigerator that cost $600. Down the road there at Sears.