Spirit of a True Prophet - Part 1 — Leonard Ravenhill

To the effect that modern criminals, until their bodies were bruised and bloody, some of them who have been pistol-whipped, some of them who have broken almost every law of God and man, and feared neither God nor man, one thing.

When the judge said that they were to be sentenced to jail for reconfinement, a notorious criminal, raised his hands and begged the judge to lengthen his period, but let him be in company with other men, because he said, if I'm alone year after year after year, I'm afraid that I can't stand the loneliness.

Let him be in company with other men, because he said, if I'm alone year after year after year, I'm afraid that I can't stand the loneliness. Prophets are a strange breed of men, God's emergency men for crisis hours, and the price of being a prophet is that a man has to live alone.

Prophets Prepared Through Solitude

Men have been very, very lonely men. University I went to, and I said, I went to Bush University. She said, well, I never heard of anybody from Bush University. Who else went there? Well, I said, I think Moses was the first student there, and he spent 40 years on the backside of the desert.

Not only does he send a man like that, but the other prophets in the word of God were very strange men. Isaiah was prepared to walk around the streets of Jerusalem barefooted for three years. Well, that doesn't sound strange, except you remember perhaps that when the prodigal came home, his father said, put shoes on his feet, because no slaves ever wore shoes.

That's why the colored people used to sing so joyously, all God's children got shoes. I've got shoes, you've got shoes. Going to walk all over God's heaven in shoes, because they never had shoes. He was prepared to be identified as a slave.

A man was prepared to lay on his right side for a period of time. Another man like Jeremiah walked down the street with a yoke around his neck and said the nation was in bondage to sin, as he was in bondage to that yoke.

And tonight I want to think about a man that lived a very, very lonely life. I've said very often that when I turn over the pages of the Bible, that one of the most challenging pages is the white page that divides the Testaments.

It doesn't say anything, it says one of the most eloquent things that is possible to say. It's a white page, but it covers a period of 400 years of total darkness. 400 years of darkness without any light, 400 years of silence without any prophetic voice.

John the Baptist as the Greatest Prophet

If I were to say to you tonight, I'll give you a paper and pencil and you can write and give me, from your knowledge of the Word of God, who was the greatest man that ever lived outside of Jesus Christ, I guess you might come up with Moses, or you might come up with Paul, and you'll be wrong, because the greatest character reader of all time was Jesus himself, and he said that the greatest man that was ever born of woman was John Baptist.

A man who spent some 20 years there in the fastness of the desert. A lonely man, a strange man. His father was a priest of the Cross of Adia. There were 20 ,000 priests at that time, and his father was a member, I think, of the 12th caste, or the 8th caste.

And it's an amazing thing when you think of it, at least to me it is. You know, just like the tide has to go the farthest out before it can return. We as individuals, we as churches, we as nations, as I see the picture, have to come to a place of recognizing our total barrenness before ever we bring forth life.

And you can tell me of a little spark of revival in your church, thank God for it, but you'll never convince me there's any revival in America. I'm too smart to know that. And I'll bring you statistics that will drown you.

It makes us realize the fact that we've out-sinned Sodom and we've out-sinned Gomorrah by a long, long way. We have blinded our eyes to truth and we have put our fingers in our ears to the voice of God.

The Need for Prophets and Repentance

And the great need in America tonight, I'm convinced of this, as good as Bible schools are with their assembly lines and producing their preachers, the greatest need in America tonight is prophets. And as Deer told you, he used to say, if you're going to be a prophet, brother, you better settle.

Or it was Dr. Parker who originally said, if you're going to be a prophet, you'll have to preach repentance, and before you start, dedicate your head to heaven because you won't last much more than six months, maybe.

John the Baptist himself didn't. This man's father then was a very wonderful man and he had a very wonderful wife, but she was a barren woman. It was a barren woman that brought to birth Samuel. It was a barren woman that brought to birth an amazing man by the name of Samson.

It was a woman who was magnetized by her beauty, was no longer fascinated by her beautiful garments, was no longer adored or interested in the adoration of the people because, unquestionably, she was the queen of the tribe.

But one day she came unto herself in prostration and I think with tears that had marked her face and her hair no longer beautifully done, and she fell down before the husband and said, Jacob, give me children or I die.

And I say to you with all the power of my hands and being tonight that I think the time has come when we change Patrick Henry's wonderful cry, when you remember he said, give me liberty or give me death, that he gives an announcement of Christ in you.

This is the hour to say, give me a revival or give me death because if we can live without revival then we're not where God wants us to be. My brother spoke a 13 word, I wish you had heard it this morning.

Get a tape, if you don't get any of mine, I wouldn't care. But get that tape that our brother preached this morning. That message on Hosea, brother that skinned us alive and hung our hides out. Brother showed us, brother Conrad Morel whose book is on the table there, he showed us, I believe, exactly where the nation is today.

And the judgments that are going to fall if we don't get revival and maybe it is not an alternative of Christ or chaos, but Christ and chaos. Not revival or revolution, but revival and revolution. Not revival without concentration camps, maybe the only place you'll get it is in concentration camps.

But as sure as that's my hand I'm sure God is going to give us revival. And this man had prayed and his wife had prayed and they desired that God would give them just one thing that seemed very natural, but she bore no children.

The Announcement of John’s Birth

Husband was given a very wonderful privilege because only once in the life of a priest did he go into the temple and minister in the way that Zacharias was ministering on this occasion. After all there was a long line of 20 ,000 priests and most of them wouldn't get in on it anyhow.

And so just once in his priestly life, when at 9 o 'clock in the morning on the temple porch of Herod, because Herod financed the building of it, some men stood with their trumpets to heaven and sounded a blast and the clock opened its doors and the priest went down the aisle there and as he went down nervous, under the burden of his garments, doing something that was unrehearsed, doing something he would never do again, he walked up there to the front of the temple and as he walked there I say I believe nervous, I believe he was maybe just shaking from head to foot and lo behold as he got there right to the side of the temple there was an angel standing there.

Well don't you think some of you preachers would be startled if an angel came and stood at the side of you next Sunday morning while you were preaching? I think I might. And as soon as he saw the angel his nervousness was intensified and the angel said fear not, I am Gabriel, Gabriel sent in the presence of God and he says he stood on the right side of the altar because when he was going to speak to the nation he stood on the left side of the altar but here he is on the right side of the altar and he says fear not, thy prayer is heard, thy wife Elizabeth shall have conceived and will bear a son.

And I think that some of the greatest shocks you and I could have would be to have our prayers answered. We're so used to praying and nothing happened that if they got answered we'd be startled. My wife is going to bear a son, yes she's going to bear a son.

He should be great in the sight of God. The man couldn't believe it and because of this you remember he was smitten with dumbness. And eventually they brought him a pad and a table and he wrote and he said what his name was going to be and they said well there's nobody of this name surely you'll call him by some other name.

This little child that Jesus said he should be the greatest man that was ever born of woman. And when this woman was pregnant with this child she went to see a cousin who was pregnant and immediately she got into the presence of Jesus, I'm going to stress that, not until that.

Immediately Elizabeth came with a child in her womb and got to marry with a child in her womb then the child left within her womb and it says, and this is the wonder of the whole thing to me, it says that Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, it says Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost and it says of John the Baptist, what it doesn't even say of Jesus, that he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.

Amazing thing. Now this is all according to a divine plan, moving in the realm of the Spirit of God. You see I discovered something afresh today in reading this and I thought it was very beautiful. I'm convinced, you may be convinced otherwise, but I am convinced there never has been a supernatural birth either of an individual or revival without prayer.

Prayer, Simeon, and the Coming of Salvation

And it says here in the thirty-seventh verse of the second chapter of Luke there was a widow of four score and four years and she departed not from the temple and she was over a hundred years of age, come on now you pretty girls at forty and fifty, she was over a hundred years of age, she didn't depart from the temple, she stayed in the presence of God with fastings and with prayer in the night and in the day and she was praying for deliverance to come to the nation.

This amazing man Simeon, Mary and Joseph come into the temple and they present to Simeon a child. There's nothing unusual about this, this is a routine, every day he dedicates children. He dedicates this child, suddenly he says, my God here is the salvation of the nation.

Do you think that wasn't exalted when I introduced him that night that a deliverance couple was going to get Israel from under the heel of the oppressor? And you see he's in the high priest and others trembled when they heard this word.

Why did that man dare to say of this child who was so much like the baby he dedicated ten years ago, why did he suddenly say this child is for the hope of the world and for the salvation of Israel and he's going to redeem them?

Why did he say that? I'll tell you why, because there's no guessing about it. It says in verse twenty-five the Holy Ghost is upon him. It says in verse twenty-six it's revealed to him by the Holy Ghost and it says in verse twenty-seven that by his spirit he came into the temple and took him in his arms and blessed him and said now let thy servant depart in peace.

And the Holy Ghost never makes a mistake. He was led of the Spirit. He prophesied in the Spirit. And the Holy Ghost was yet poured out. He said here is the child. Here is the desire of all the nations.

First of all Old Testament prophecy terminated in the womb of the Virgin Mary and all New Testament prophecy was born in the womb of the Virgin Mary. It was the fulfillment of the old and it was the fulfillment of the new.

John the Baptist’s Wilderness Preparation

And then we know very little about John Baptist. He went into the wilderness until the day of his going forth. You've heard John Baptist preach, wouldn't you? And when God said John you've been here twenty years now, you better go out and preach.

I told you this morning it takes God twenty years to make a man. It took him twenty years to make John Baptist and then he preached for six months. You boys went to Bible school for six months and been preaching twenty years.

No wonder you're dry. You better go back. Go back to the wilderness. Go back to the desert. Get into the wilderness. There's nothing on God's earth like silence. Just take your Bible, forget everything and everybody and shut yourself away till that you have a new revelation from God himself.

And John came. I think you have seen him. He was a strange man. He didn't wear any clerical attire like in our country all the preachers. Pentecostal to Presbyterians all wear their collars backwards way.

Because most of them are going backwards way. But anyhow they wear clerical attire. But he had no distinct garments. The priest would go down the street and they would say there's the priest and there's the high priest.

They wear the distinctive marks of God. But John wore no strange garments. He was strange by the fact he wore only eleven girdles around his loins. That was his strange dress. He didn't go through the long menu and say well I don't know my jaded appetite.

There's nothing. You sure you don't have shrimp with a special dressing or something? He just caught the flies as they were going past. The locusts. Pull the wings off and put them on a hot rock. He had locust burgers every day.

Breakfast, dinner and supper. Prophets had honey you know. And Jesus ate honey too. And John Baptist had honey. And the prophets in the Old Testament had honey. Samson ate it. No Germans ever follow it.

It's one of the greatest foods you can get. And John Baptist had it. Strange in his dress, strange in his diet, strange in his doctrine. But I don't care how you measure this man. Sometimes we think he's kind of an errand boy just opening the door to let Jesus in.

John’s Doctrinal Authority Without Miracles

Look you do a bit of research and you'll discover that John Baptist was a preacher and a prophet in his own right. And he preached no less than 29 different points of doctrine. In the slight evidence that we have in the New Testament.

29 different points of doctrine that he preached. In a period of 400 years. That's an awful. Do you think that God Almighty might favor America by giving us 400 years of total darkness? And do you think we could survive it?

Why do people want Jesus to come today? Because they're scared stiff of suffering. That's why. After all the church has been getting washed and tormented and stripped and prostituted. There's a little man, some of you read his book, God's Smuggler.

How many read his book? God's Smuggler. Wonderful exciting book. I know that little man. He said I gave him that title before ever he put the book together. I said well you're God's Smuggler. And he had been over in China.

And he said when he was in Shanghai he noticed men sitting on the side of the road. They'd been for a haircut. And when their hair was cut they left a cross in the middle of their heads. Cut it, the patches out.

Left their hair standing up in a cross there. And then they had to sit on the sidewalk. And the young communists came past and hoisted all the flat they could and spat on their heads. The church tonight is suffering untold agony.

You listen to the sweet little boys over the radio. They'll tell you that the Russians are going to come and burn the country up. And they're going to put us into hell itself. But you know you little darlings.

You being so faithful. You're so thin with your fasting. And your homes are so poor and poverty stricken. And you haven't two dimes to your name. And you're so stricken and helpless. That just out of his great mercy the Lord's going to rapt you out of it.

So you won't have to suffer one little step. All the suffering is for the Christians in Russia and the Christians in China. But no body in America is going to suffer. Because we're the most faithful people on God's earth.

Isn't that lovely? Well the man who tells you that is a liar. He was in Shanghai and when he was there because he had preached. Pardon me. He was in Formosa. And because he had preached in Shanghai 20 years before.

And found the Chinese people were in Shanghai. Were in Formosa where they are now. He went in to see them. And he greeted them in his eloquent Chinese. And they ignored him. When he said, but I'm the pastor.

I used to teach you in Shanghai. And they ignored him. And he said, now look this isn't oriental courtesy. What in the world are you doing? I'm your pastor. One man looked up from his busy work and just frowned and said.

You're a false prophet. A what? You're a false. A false prophet? Why I gave you lectures on Mormonism and the other reasons. I am not a false. You remember when you were our pastor in Shanghai. And you had some maps of the world.

And some wonderful pictures of the Roman Empire. And you had a marvelous chart on the Antichrist. And you had some more on the dispensations. And you told us that for long we were going to be washing blood here in China.

That people were going to cut us down as though we were grass. They were going to rape our women in front of us. They were going to burn our churches and tear our Bibles up. And subject us to the most gross humiliation and suffering it was possible to have.

But you said don't you worry about that. Because just before that happens the Lord is going to take all his dear little children out from this. You're not going to suffer. The man said with tears streaming down his face.

My wife was dragged out of my arms. And the last time I heard she had three children to the Russian guards. My daughter was taken away and my sons and my children were taken away. You told us everything that was true except one thing.

We weren't snatched out of this misery. The Lord didn't spare us. We're living in anguish and suffering. A little bit of ease and comfort. But there's nothing that can bind up our broken hearts. No money, no creature comforts.

Our wives are gone. Our children are gone. Our churches are gone. Our homes are gone. Everything is gone. We can't listen to you. You better watch it preacher. Because one day you might go into concentration camp.

And some of your church members spit on you for saying the same thing. It's easy to stand up and say excitedly we glory in tribulation. In infirmity and necessities. And you go home and have a steak dinner this size.

And put your feet up and watch the Rams play Sunday afternoon. And feel that you've really got another star in your crown. Because, well very reluctantly you did go to church Sunday night. Not many people do do that you know.

And that really proves I'm a saint. Sure does. God let these dear people the darlings of his heart. He let them go into captivity for 400 years under Pharaoh. And then they went in and out of captivity.

You'd think they'd learn the lesson. And they didn't. And then they have 400 years. And God never speaks. And God never would make a sacrifice. And all the ritualism that they went through. That somehow it was a form of godliness.

Ritualism Without the Presence of God

And God decided to upset the apple cart if you like. What did he do? Send a legion of angels? No, no, no, no, no. He took a little man, a baby out of the womb of its mother. He separated this man. And he educated him in the spirit.

And sent him into the wilderness. And he came out and he had no forward man. And he asked for no program. And he wasn't seeking prestige. And he didn't beg for anybody's power. And he didn't find some secret way of promotion.

If you'd walked down the desert there. You could hardly tell the man. The color of his skin was sunburned on the inside. And fire baptized on the inside. And fire baptized with the sun on the outside.

And you could almost see the way he'd go. Because his tears were rising like steam off the ground. That's broken my lord. You see we think if we're really blessed and successful evangelists. You get a bigger home, a bigger car, more prestige.

And brother you think you're good. Because now you can buy $150 suits. Whereas you wore $30 suits not too long ago. But brother if you've moved up with God. I'll tell you what you're doing. Your heart's more broken now than it was when you started 10 years ago.

You see the nation going downhill more rapidly than she's ever gone before. Prostitution is increasing. Crime is increasing. Immorality is increasing. Lawlessness is increasing. And in the richest, most comfortable country in the whole world.

We think in the masters of almighty God tonight. And England is equally true. It's equally true of England as well. Ah, the prophets were men who walked with God. They felt like God. They saw like God.

They wept like God. They yearned like God. They had no satisfaction in seeing the beauty of the temple. The ritual, the formality. All the things that they went through. No, no, no, no. God has gone from them.

My brother emphasized that this morning. The spirit of the Lord departed from Samson and he whips not. One good Baptist preacher said to Dr. Tozer, he told me this himself. He said, Len, a Baptist preacher said something the other day that shook me.

But I think he's right. He said if God withdrew the Holy Spirit tomorrow my church would function just the same. He wouldn't even know that he'd gone. We keep up the formality. The money is coming in.

People are nice. One or two come to the altar. But oh, what a difference when a man gets a heart that craves for revival. That longs that God will make bear his heart. That all nations will have to acknowledge.

Anointing Over Programs and Prestige

When John Baptist came, he came with no lip that was buttoned. He had nobody to please. He had no program. He had no priorities that he was trying to push ahead. I remember preaching on one occasion. A brother came up very graciously afterwards.

He said, you know, Brother Ravenhill, I believe God's given you a ministry. Well, I didn't need anybody to tell me that. Because if he hadn't, I wouldn't preach. But he said if you'd only get along on a mountain somewhere and just persuade God to give you the gift of healing, I think you could have the, well, you could be one of the top ten preachers in America.

Well, the Holy Ghost never told me I had to be one of the top or one of the bottom, ten bottom ones. I wouldn't care where I was. But he said, you know, this is a great drawing card. Oh, Brother, miracle is the answer.

Well, I want to tell you tonight, miracle is not the answer. Because you've got men that have been taking tents all over this country now and they have the same ministry and they can't draw the cards anymore because they got fed up merely of miracles.

And do you know what he says of John the Baptist? It is true that Jesus produced miracles. And I've heard men say about four-fifths of his ministry. Sure it was, because he had no gospel to preach yet, only the gospel of the kingdom.

And he was trying to persuade them by the very things that he did, that he was a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, that when he is come, the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf will stop, the lame will leap to the heart, the ten of the dumb shall sing.

And he did it all, he fulfilled every command, and every miracle was done through him. Jesus did them all, sure he did. Because when he went into the temple in the sentence of John, a woman said to the big shots there, well, why don't you arrest him?

Will the Messiah do more miracles when he comes on this land? She was persuaded by his miracle ministry he was the Messiah. I want to tell you something for nothing. That after this 400 years of stillness, people were not running out to the desert saying, have mercy on my son, he's a lunatic.

I used to be blind at the street corner, but now my eyes, I can see. I used to be deaf, I used to have a crippled eye. There was no river of derelict humanity following John Baptist. Indeed, it says very plainly in the word of God, John did no miracle.

No miracle? No, sir. Never opened blind eyes? No, sir. Never unplugged deaf ears? No, sir. He never raised a dead man? No, he didn't raise a dead man. And he did it without the miraculous in the realm of the flesh.

He did it in the power of the Holy Ghost. John came. I say he was a success on any level. I think John had already had his program from God, and the Lord said, you better get busy, boy, because you're not going to be around here very long.

No, sir, they'll chop your head off if you start preaching this. Boy, we do have a few men that are prepared to lose their heads for Jesus right now. Most of you men know to preach better than you do know, than you do preach, but you won't do it because you'll get kicked out of the synagogue, that's why.

You really have to trust God, and that'll be trouble, won't it? And you've been paying in the minister's pension fund. Oh, brother, wouldn't that be awful to have to sacrifice that for Jesus? You say, I'll lay everything on the altar.

I'll set my golf club to my minister's pension fund, and my big TV, and if anything else you can have, Lord, but don't intrude just too much on me kind of thing. I like to think of John Baptist standing there, no sponsors, nobody to agree or disagree with him.

He stood there, and they came to see this strange man, anointed by the Holy Ghost. And I tell you this, if a man is anointed by the Holy Ghost, folk will seek him. Anointed by the Holy Ghost. You see, when you're a young guy, you want people to recognize your ministry, and you have to go around begging.