Revival Forum Question-and-Answer Session - Leonard Ravenhill — From the Pulpit & Classic Sermons

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America’s Greatest Need: Returning to Prayer

This week we have Leonard Ravenhill with his Revival Forum Q &A session. What would you perceive, Brother Ravenhill, to be the greatest need in the church in America specifically today?

I won't give you my opinion, I'll give you a Bible opinion from Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13, my people have committed two evils, they've forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

It's amazing to me when every pastor that comes, oh I'm in a mega church, you know, we get four thousand, got nothing to do with your church. Every church in America nearly is filled Sunday morning. How many people you have in your prayer meeting?

The prayer meeting has almost died. Not just in Presbyterian churches, but in Pentecostal churches, in Baptist churches. I have a prayer meeting Thursday morning for pastors, about twenty come, some come two hundred miles, some come three hundred miles round trip, and the last five or six weeks we've all ended up on the floor in tears praying for one thing, revival, nobody's praying for his church.

I believe the spiritual condition of America at this moment is lower than it was in the revival of the 1700s with Jonathan Edwards. We've forsaken God, particularly we've forsaken the prayer meeting. What would happen if you had a choir like say you had at First Baptist or somewhere, I First Baptized in Dallas or Good Brothers First Baptist Church in Atlanta, I stayed there a month once, you have about two hundred people in the choir.

What if only ten percent turned up for choir rehearsal on Friday night? Do you think you might get the resignation of the choir master? But supposing a guy with twenty six thousand members had ten percent come to the prayer meeting, he'd die of shock.

But you see, we have had people, just a year ago now we finished our five hundredth prayer meeting every Friday night, and it was a prayer meeting. In most churches now the preacher preaches Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night, forget it.

One of the young pastors that comes to us, he got moved by the power of God, he went to his church and said look I'm going to preach Sunday morning, Sunday night, but not Wednesday night, we're going to pray.

He's in a country church, he went from sixty Wednesday night to six, they don't want to pray. We had a prayer meeting where people drove four, five and six hours, and there were people that came and they belonged to famous churches in California, and they came over and said look we know why God's brought us in this area, we need to learn to pray.

We went to a very popular church, it's attended by dozens, hundreds of film stars and others, but there's no prayer life there. But you know what happened? When they come three or four times they quit, you know why?

Because we had men that used to mumble in their prayers, and it pleased God to educate them in the spirit, and I would go on Wednesday night, I'd go Friday night, there was one full-blooded American Indian, he was dying in the gutter, snow falling on him, he was a victim of drugs and drink, and God awakened him and he got wonderfully saved, and he got an anointing in prayer, to hear that man pray for the American Indians, they're the most neglected people in America today, and the Indians somehow don't go after them, you can't go on the reservations, they kill you, all they say, listen you stole our land, you stole our oil, you stole our mineral rights, you stole our fishing rights, get out of here.

And I've told him, stay with it, stay to your people, with your people, don't let somebody else wear your crown, you see some of us we were walking around eternity, and God was going to put a crown on my head, and I didn't do the job, so he passes it to Dale, he's going to wear it for a billion years, every time I see him I think, that should have been my crown, but that's my fault, it's not the devil's fault, no man take thy crown, that's a warning against deacons, but anyhow, not let any man take your crown, God has given you a job, do it, if you die, that's what it takes.

Targeted Intercession and Covenant Prayer

Brother Leonard, what is the nature and the content and the direction of those prayer meetings, for the average lay person who has not been able to attend, where do you begin, what do you pray for, what do you target, what happens in those prayer meetings that are so unusual, and what are the kinds of prayer meetings that we need to start having in our churches?

Well we have different target, I call it target praying, for instance, one week we pray for all the husbands of the wives, or fathers of the children who were there, whose daddies were not saved, maybe not even church members, we concentrate on unsaved fathers, unsaved husbands, another time we concentrate on teenagers, you see there's something about covenanting in prayer, I went to Dr. Toto's church, thank you, and I stayed there for two weeks, and I had the privilege of praying with him, he's a wonderful man, he wasn't the greatest preacher I've ever heard, we had an intimacy with God like nobody else, and I remember one day he said, Len, don't let anybody diminish your appetite or zeal for prayer, he said I'll tell you what happened, in World War I, the finest young men in our church went to war, they were drafted, thirty of them, and we covenanted with their parents, and their wives, we covenanted in prayer that not one of those men would get killed, or seriously injured, and every man came back, the only one that was lame was his own son, but he said if we can covenant in prayer like that, why can't you covenant in prayer in your churches, not one of our girls in our churches is going to get pregnant, not one of our boys is going to go into drink, we're not just going to raise nice healthy children, we're going to do more than that, we want to produce spiritual offspring, and the reason those superstars that came to our prayer meetings didn't continue, well they heard men that were praying with anointing, again they heard this fellow crying with tears for the different tribes in America, it's astounding that two and a quarter American Indians, where's David.

Brennan today? There is no Brennan there. How do we have a right to pray for revival when in the 20th century there are so many people who believe theologically that things are just going to get worse, and worse, and worse, and God certainly is not going to send a revival, so why are you wasting your time praying that God will send one?

Well you get.

A nucleus of people, you get together and talk with the deacons and others, but it says here they have forsaken me, so what? How many of you deacons come to prayer meetings? One night I was standing on the platform with Charles Stanley, there were maybe over a thousand people there, I think you have 50 deacons, and I said Charles, where are your 50 deacons tonight?

He said well I can count 15, I said well fire the rest. What did they do in the upper room when the Holy Ghost came, they gave themselves continually to fundraising, did they? What did they do? Give ourselves continually to prayer.

I like the figure, I'm going to speak maybe one day, I think Hannah is the best type of an intercessor that I know, that all the qualifications, she had grief, she suffered, she mocked, and yet year by year, it wasn't once they scorned her, but when she got pregnant she didn't care a hill of beans about anybody.

Seeking God Rather Than Revival as a Ministry Trophy

Well let me say this too, I think there's a danger of seeking revival to justify my ministry, to prove we're the best people in town. We mentioned it with Paul this morning, what does it say in Malachi?

The Lord whom ye seek, we're not seeking him, we're seeking revival, we're seeking healing, we're seeking miracles, it's not that we need, if we get God we get all that's needed, and revival is when God comes down.

Pick up the book for me please, here's a little book I hope you'll all get, it's Come Down Lord, it's a good book of course, it's from England, but apart from that, get a copy if you can, it's published by, it's published by Banner of Truth, but I mark this page 23, now this is revival.

I think revival is the most prostituted word that we have in our vocabulary today, either revival or faith, we don't know much about either. Revival stops the traffic, as dear Tozi used to say, Leonard when revival comes, it changes the moral climate of a community, taverns close down, nightclubs close down, it's, I mean, there's a war going on now, dear God if anyone needs one of Whole Armour of God it's today, how many of you may now have the book The Whole Armour of God by Goebbels, do you have it?

Let me see your hands, oh good, only two out of all of you. It's a wonderful book, it's 1130 pages, it's $36, we can send dear Nancy an address, we can get it for 18, it was written like most of the classics in the 1600s, and it's the most stirring, I gave Wilkerson a copy of that five years ago, when I came back he said, hey, while you were on it, we had a vacation in the Bahamas, we should be there now, we get a free flight and a free holidays, but this glorious atmosphere here, you know, where you can freeze every night.

Is more attractive. So, how do you address the people who say that we are living in a day and age where everything is getting worse and worse and worse, there is no way God's going to send revival, let's hang on for dear life and pray for the rapture, but you have no right to believe and to storm the throne of heaven in faith, believing that God is going to send a revival, he tells you in the Bible, things are going to get worse and worse.

How do you answer those people? Well, I answered it this week this way, when the world population was five million, did God love it? Yes. Does he love it less when it's five billion? If God isn't willing that any should perish when it's five million, is he more willing that many should perish now?

You see, the trouble in the world today, the stagnation, the moral desolation in America and the stagnation in America is not due to the strength of humanism, it's because of the weakness of evangelism.

The Necessity of Genuine Conversion

People don't get born again when they come to the altar, they leave it, they come damned and they leave it damned, they're not born. People can't be born in five minutes, put off ten million sins and transgressions and violations of the law of God, they can't change the way of life, put off the old man, put on the new man by just standing there in tears, and I told you last night, when I heard that guy say on TV, come forward, it'll only take a few minutes, I went to bed and cried.

I tell you, he's a leading evangelist in America, telling people who are dead in trespassing, they're not bad, they're dead. The prodigal didn't say, my son is bad, he says he's dead. It's no fun to look on a congregation.

Maybe I said yesterday, a hundred years ago, that great art critic in England, what was his name, John Ruskin said, preaching is thirty minutes to raise the dead. I thought that was facetious, it's scriptural.

All those lovely people you have, executive people, deacons, nice people, wealthy people, poor people, hippies, yuppies, what have you got, there they are, they're dead. And we're the ones that transmit life.

But dear brother, I believe we're going to see a Pentecost that will allow Pentecost, Pentecost, I'll tell you what, nobody's going to stick his name on it. Swaggart's had his chance to evangelize the world, messed it up, all around us, they've got millions of dollars, what have they done?

They've brought disgrace to the name. People ridicule it, but God is a jealous God. God's going to raise up, I mean, I pray for Romania and behind the anchor, every day of my life. People want to tell me now that God's bypassed America, don't waste your time.

Why? Was it as dead in the days of Jonathan Edwards? What about his revival? Well, I think it was in old America, I think it was E .M. Bounds said that E .M. Bounds is the breath of God on the situation that threatens to become a corpse.

We're very near death in America. There's no time for a new reformation in a denomination. He's going to raise up new men with new vision. I want to preach on vision tonight, God willing. And we've got to have vision and passion.

You've got, God's got to upset our whole schedules, our lifestyle, our way of eating, our way of living, our way of socializing in the church. God help us. Sure you can get a hearty church, if you put a chicken supper before the prayer meeting, they'll come for the chicken supper.

You've got the chickens, you've got the crowd. Because they're all chicken, but anyhow. I believe, but I didn't believe there was going to be an awakening. Okay. God has given me the privilege of knowing praying men.

There's a little fellowship of people in a town called Zion, Illinois. You know where that is? And it's still there. There's one or two original people that were there with Dowie. And I went there and they asked me to talk with the man.

He's upstairs in bed, normally. He speaks with the mic to the congregation downstairs every morning. Do you know what happened to him? I walked in, he thanked me. He said, Mr. Hill, you do me an honor.

I've read your books. I said, please don't say a word. My mother said, if ever you go into royalty, you never turn your back. And when I backpedaled to the door, I said, I want to thank you. Do you know that man, Andrews?

God called him to go to Israel and he mastered Hebrew. And when he got there, God said, go back. He said, but people gave me money. Do as I say, go back. Intercede for America. What did he do? For 30 years, he prayed from 10 o 'clock in the night to five o 'clock in the morning by himself.

Oh, you talk about David Brin and I'm talking about our day. I'm talking about the man I talked with. When they carried him in his little wooden casket out of that room, it was the first time he'd been out of the house in 12 years, never out of the house.

How does a man retain his fire? He's not only seen men are lost. Men are not merely lost in your church. They're robbers. They're robbing God of the right to use their personality. They're robbing God of the right to use their time.

They're robbing God of the right to use their tongue. Dear God, Saturday they shout till their hoarse. They're frantic on Saturday at the sports arena. They're frozen on Sunday. And here is a man, he said, listen, I am not a bit weary.

And this is a staggering thing to me. He said, Mr. Rainer, there's going to be an awakening before Jesus comes. And I forgot it till Martha reminded me the other day. He said, there's going to be a revival that will sweep one billion people into the kingdom of God.

Well, that's a lot. But there are five billion in the world. Are the other four billion going to hell? There's a man around the country now. I don't know if, man, have you met Paul Kane yet? Well, Paul, I've ministered with him a few times lately.

He's an amazing man. He used to get 30 and 40 ,000 people in his meetings. He deputized for Bill Brunham. And then he disappeared. I heard of him in 1950 when I first came to America. I didn't meet him till about 20 years after.

And then I met him recently. And he said in a meeting we're in, he said, God has revealed to me there's going to be a moving of the Spirit of God. And what? And one billion people will be born again. And he mentioned your country, dear brother.

What did he call him, son? He mentioned your country. Those other countries are in the belly of Russia now, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. Dear God, when I was a boy, we had a family who used to come from Estonia.

I think there were, what, about 10 in the family. They all played different instruments. And they set our church on fire. Well, where did they disappear to? Dear God, you say, my church had never prayed.

Get some conditions from this brother about what's happening in their country. You know, the two most pleasant-looking men in the world right now are the two biggest enemies of the cross. One is the Pope, another is Gorbachev.

And they fooled us. They fooled us. We may not have a collision with communism. We'll have one with Romanism. It's a deadly enemy because it says Mary is Corydentrix and Mary is a mediator before God.

But going back to this, there never has been a situation in the world as difficult as today. We've never had all the cults that we have now. I see the nations being squashed like this. This wall is moving in this way.

It's cults this way. Wall is moving this way. It's the occult. And these things are rampant. My dear country of England, again, in the last 25 years, they've closed 600 branch churches of the Church of England alone, leave out the Methodists and others.

But in the place of 600 churches, we have now 600 mosques. The greatest revival in the world right now is amongst the Muslims. Why? Because they're prepared to die. You can't scare them. We're prepared to die.

Our folk are not prepared to live. Sure, they'll come to a camp, they think, ride horses or have played tennis or some other thing. I know that there's nothing wrong in that. But where's the passion? It's young men that see vision.

I'm not trying to escape it. I'm going to tell you for God. I'm in my 83rd year now. I have a bigger fire burning in my belly, if you like, of my heart than ever in my life. And I'm determined by the grace of God to wage war.

And I say, I got young men coming 300 miles to our prayer meeting. That's my consolation. I know that Manly's stirring people in his area, Bill in his area. Still, God has a remnant, but the remnant is not enough.

We've got to return to the old ways. The fire has to burn. Dear God, the prayer meeting has to become the most attractive thing in the church. You fire the deacons. When I went to the last church, I said, listen, every deacon has to meet me half an hour before the service, any meeting.

Friday night, we meet at nine o 'clock and pray till midnight. You'd tell me about Spurgeon. Paul was showing me a little book the other day. Yes, sure, he was a great man. Do you know in all the 20 years he was in that church, he never once made an altar call?

Do you know what the deacons did for him? They went in the side room where he prayed and wept and groaned before God. Every time he went in the pulpit, the deacons put their arms on his armpits and carried him to the door to get him on the platform.

One old lady that visited him, knew him, told me about his prayer life. It's amazing. And no man is greater than his prayer life. I don't care how many church members he has. Somebody told me the other day, you like a favourite verse.

I'm jumping around a bit. But you know, I think the greatest honour is, I don't have any doctorates, either begged or borrowed or burned or anything else. I have no degrees. You can have 32 and still be frozen.

But there's one thing I covet. I want to be one of the 10 most wanted men in hell. I want the demons to say, Jesus I know and Ravenel I know. Jesus I know and Del I know. That's why the devil's opposed him.

Dear... Namely, last night, moving to tears, I was trying to come to the platform. I whispered in his ear after. I said, you and I have one thing in common with the Apostle Paul. When in death's Dear Lord, my wife's been to my funeral half a dozen times, not at my bedside.

Lots of people like to see me die, but I'm not going to die, I'm going to live. They actually threw a white sheet over me and the doctor said he won't last four minutes. And I was going to die piously and I had my hands folded.

And he said he won't last forever. Me? I said, you're talking about me. And then the doctor said, you won't. He said, by another 11 years from now, you'll be crippled and paralyzed. Your back's broken, your feet are broken, your legs are broken, you'll be useless.

Well, I may be useless, but I'm still hanging on. But the thing is this, I've been privileged to share in prayer. And I don't remember great pulpits. I've preached some of the great pulpits of the world.

I don't remember them. I've talked with great preachers. But when men have let me pray with them, I remember all of them. I can tell you how we pray. I remember Manly at the, what was the national conference we had in?

No, when, no, when Bertha, no, Bertha Smith was there. No, Bertha. Philadelphia. That night of prayer we had. We said have a night of prayer. We got in the bedroom and boy, after about 10 minutes, the door kept going out.

And I thought, my, I'm going to be left by myself as usual. And folks weren't going out, they were coming in. So I look around, about six pairs of legs, the guys were under the bed, guys under the bed at that side and at this side.

And we prayed till, I don't know what, two or three in the morning. And somebody said, God came down that night. Well, that's where revival is born. You can't schedule it. The stupid thing, we're going to start a revival next Sunday night and finish there.

Who gives orders to the Holy Ghost? Sensitivity to the Spirit of God isn't there. In the middle of the Welsh revival, and remember there's a guy, 26 years of age, and he's already prayed 13 years for revival.

They wouldn't allow people to photograph him. The greatest preachers in England were there at the time. William Booth was there. He left his office desk to go listen to this 26-year-old guy. The greatest Bible teacher in the world was there.

G. Campbell Morgan, he left his office at Westminster and came to hear this young Welshman. F .B. Meyer came from the Baptist church. They were all flocking to Wales to hear a man who was anointed in the Spirit of God.

He comes into a meeting. The biggest hall in town had 800 seats. Everyone was packed an hour before time. And in comes a young man, everybody's waiting for him to come. There's one seat on the front. He went to the front seat, bowed his head, and he prayed for three hours.

What do you mean? Do you think our congregation would do that? They say he's fallen asleep. For three hours, until he felt a richer night. Then he stood up and preached for 15 minutes. The glory of God came down.

And did what happen? Nobody dare leave the place. He went out at 10 o 'clock and prayed the whole night for the anointing for the next day. The people stayed till two and three in the morning. They did that week after week.

You see, we take our little revivals to South America. What do you call him again? Swaggart went. He took the formula he had here. Turn it on at six, turn it off at seven. It didn't do a thing. It failed.

Because it was South American? No, because it wasn't biblical. Another big shot did the same thing. But the faith was having revival in South America now. I was reading one report. It said they go to a meeting.

It starts Wednesday. They have Wednesday night. They have Thursday night. They have Friday night. Friday night, the people, particularly teenagers, prayed the whole night through. Pray all day Saturday.

Pray all Saturday night into Sunday. And the glory of God fills the place. You see, we've got to get an appetite. You know, the nitty-gritty of the whole thing is this. We don't know God. We don't know God.

We know theology. We know about him. Why did Jesus come into the world? To save sinners. That's not what Jesus said. What did Jesus say? I'm come that they may know thee. Every man that comes in my office, and I get them worldwide, I don't know why, but they come.

And I say, first tell me, do you know God? Well, I have a degree. I didn't ask you about that. Do you know God? When was your last encounter with God? When were you last prostrate in his presence? When did you last sit spellbound at his majesty?

You don't know God. Because we don't know God, we don't have to worship. We don't have to enter into his presence. We're content to know a few theological shibboleths that other people have taught us.

Dear God, one of the leading men in the Southern Baptist Church, a very dear friend of yours, I won't give you two after that, my dear brother, he said to me recently, he said, listen, forget our seminaries.

There's no anointing in them. Those professors are teaching the lessons on Romans they taught 10 years ago. You can shake the dust off them. And every year they go back and saying the same thing, Romans chapter one, and then chapters eight to eleven, and chapters to... how can men sit and hear the word of the living God and not catch fire?

Amen. That's right. Our God is a consuming fire. I don't know what I preach tonight. When do I preach tomorrow, two of the day after? I have two more times, so maybe I'll get to preach on the incandescent man.

I like that. And then on the indestructible man. You see, the blessed word of God, it torpedoes us. It says, Elias was a man of like passion. Have you noticed so often God says, I look for a man. Have you noticed in the middle of his great, the greatest poem ever written on love?

Spiritual Maturity and Becoming a Man in Christ

1 Corinthians 13, has 13 verses. He suddenly stops talking about love and he says, when I became a man, what does he mean? Tell me manly, think it over. When did he become a man? What does he mean? When did he step out of spiritual infancy?

When did his parents move out of spiritual immaturity? When did that vision come? I want to preach on him one day before I go, I hope. When you were talking last night about Hebrews 11, you know, I read that chapter as I tell you.

When I read Hebrews 11, I follow my phrase because not one person in Hebrews 11 ever had a Bible. And when I've read all about achievements, I'd like you to preach on this sometime manly. There's a verse there that spaggers me and it says what?

It says, they did by faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. And then one verse says, not accepting deliverance. What does it mean? I'd rather die than fail Christ.

You can't imagine it, can you? There's a woman standing over there, feeding a baby. And the judge says to her, look, listen preacher, you take three grains of incense to that at the feet of Caesar. And all you do is say, Caesar is Lord.

You can go back to your darling wife and precious baby. If not, those lions are going to release them. The next thing you'll find a lion chewing your baby up. Another one tearing the breasts of your wife.

Do you love your wife? I didn't tell me you're going to love a God you can't see to the wife. And he stands there and watches it. We've forgotten all about that. There's a book called Fair Sunshine. It's about the young men that were put to death in Scotland until 1665.

And if you read them waving their hands and saying, have three more days before I see the king in his beauty. You see what our generation of preachers have managed to do. We've failed to make sin diabolical.

We've failed to make sin offensive. And we failed to make sin attractive, Christ attractive. You know, the only time you can sing the hymn of Wesley, thou O Christ art all I want. The only time you can say Christ is all I need is when Christ is all you have.

We're propped up with everything. Our refrigerators are full. I don't have many clothes, but I have at least, I have two suits at least. And I have at least two pair of shoes. I'm only one preacher's place.

He had 35 sports coats and 25 pairs of shoes in nearly as many books. Does the devil care what we have? All he's worried about is that you catch fire and then your church catches fire. Another thing, let me say this.

I've gone round a bit, I know, but I've got to get wound up and say what I want to say. You see, the great revivals of Methodism were not in buildings, they were in the streets. The Salvation Army set England on fire.

Wow. Not by buildings. The, uh, the Bishop of Gloucester said, don't ever let John Wesley or Charles Wesley in any of our churches. They were both certified men of impeccable morality, scholars, read Hebrew and Greek.

Don't let them in the churches. And don't let that man, George Whitfield, in the church at all. Tell me who was the bishop at that time? Nobody knows. Don't care a hill of beans. But we know the men that got kicked out.

You know, some of you guys, if you're faithful, you'll be kicked out. At least that's my prayer. I pray you all get fired for being fired. But God's going to do it. Don't lose sight of that with all I've rambled on.

You see, God used the same material before. They were flesh and blood. Many of them were fallible. Paul was saying this morning, some of them made great mistakes. But God looks on the heart. And they were able to see great movings of the Spirit of God.

America is harder today than she's ever been. We've no vocabulary anymore. Nobody commits adultery now. They just have an affair. There's no fornication. It's premarital sex. Nobody's messing with spiritism.

It's just channeling. We've taken the sting out of all the words. We don't talk about hell. We've got to get back to biblical theology. And listen, we've got to do the essential thing. Jesus says, if I be lifted up, we're not preaching Christ.

We're preaching drugs. We're preaching abortion. We're preaching crime. We're not preaching Christ. Our fathers, I've been reading very much lately again, partly the apostolic fathers and the men up in the Puritans and the other people in that area, how they exalted Christ.

It was Christ first, Christ last. You see, we've lost sight of the majesty and holiness of God. We don't tiptoe out of the sanctuary subdued by God's almightiness and power and mercy. It's just a ritual.

It's a formality. People know where we're going to start, now we're going to start. But let's go back to the main issue again. The main issue, the church should vibrate. Boy, if I live within a hundred miles of this place, I'd be here every, I'd be here every week at least once to pray with these guys.

I wouldn't pray in the day when it's nine o 'clock till three in the morning and see how men would come. They'll come. There's nothing more attractive on this earth than fire. Whether it's physical or spiritual, fire is the most attractive.

Our God is a consuming fire. And the only answer to hell fire is Holy Ghost fire.

The Hindrance to Revival: Superficial Evangelism

Brother Leonard, let me ask you another question and you make interviews very easy. This is my third question now. What do you believe is the greatest hindrance to genuine revival in the.

Church here in the West? The number one hindrance to revival in America is evangelism. We made it easy for people to come forward and say a little prayer and go out. Stop them and ask. You ask teenagers in your church.

Number one, are you saved? Yeah, from what? Oh, from hell. Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from pride? They don't know. Talk about the witness of the Spirit that John Wesley preached on more than anything else.

They don't know what you're talking about. They've seen blessed assurance and they've no assurance. The hindrance, number one, is we've made it so easy for people to come forward. They go out at the door.

I watched some recently. They had to get out of the door. They were lighting cigarettes. They weren't going home under anguish. Do you not, dear, what's his name again? Spurgeon said when he was 15, he was under conviction of sin for weeks and weeks and weeks.

He couldn't sleep. He couldn't eat. When do you get conviction like that? Dear God, our people, they're a bit upset in the meeting. They go out. They go back to sin. They go back and sit before TV till midnight.

There's no concern. There has to come an awakening in the church to the peril. Those loved ones of yours at the end of the table, they don't go to church. No, they're going to hell. Why don't you say it?

My boys are good boys. Quarterback, who cares a hell of beans is quarterback or fullback, any other back. Where are your children? What's your ambition for your boy? I have three boys. Two of them, two of the best preachers in America today.

The other one's the head of the new section in that multi-million dollar, what do you call it now? Smithsonian Museum. And these boys, they've got prayer lives. Two of them have got tremendous prayer lives, and they're my joy.

I would be totally unhappy if they were anything else. They'd never be millionaires. They'd never be rich. But they know God. They're laying up treasure in heaven. And our young people, you see, it's not a case of getting the family, getting the Bible back in the schools.

Get the Bible back in your home. We were talking, I was talking to your brother Bill here about, what's his name now? Duncan Campbell. I spent many hours in prayer with Duncan Campbell. He used to pray and weep and groan.