Revival Forum 89 - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Whole Armor of God and Spiritual Warfare

Maybe we need to run a Whole Armor of God, it's today. How many of you may now have the book The Whole Armor 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 I gave Wilkerson a copy of that five years ago.

When I came back he said, hey while you're on it, we had a vacation in the Bahamas, we should be there now, we got a free flight and the 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.

God's Willingness to Save a Perishing World

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.

True Conversion and the New Birth

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 say that he's a leading evangelist in America, telling people who are dead in trespasses, 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 that great art critic in England, what was his name, John? John Ruskin said, preaching is 30 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, whatever you got, there they are, they're dead. And we're the ones that transmit life.

Pentecost, Revival, and the Hope of Awakening

But dear brother, I believe we're going to see a Pentecost that we love, Pentecost, Pentecost. I'll tell you what, nobody's going to stick his name on it. Swaggart's had his chance to evangelize well, messed it up, all the rubbers.

They've got millions of dollars, what have they done? They brought disgrace to the name. People ridicule it, but God is a jealous God. God's going to raise them. 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 is 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 a situation that threatens to become a corpse.

Vision and Passion for Reformation

We're very near death in America. There's no time for a new reformation in a denomination. It'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.

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 got the chickens, you'll drop 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.

Intercessory Prayer and the Example of Zion

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, they asked me to talk with a man, he's upstairs in bed, normally.

He speaks with a mic to the congregation downstairs every morning. Do you know what happened to him? I walked in, he thanked me, he said, Mr. Aylor, 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, you, and my back peddled 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 5 o 'clock in the morning by himself. Oh, you talk about David Brin, and I was, I'm talking about our day, I'm talking about the one 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.

A Billion Souls and the Promise of Global Revival

And I, I forgot it till Martha reminded me the other day, he said, there's going to be a revival that will sweep 1 billion people into the kingdom of God. Well, that's a lot. But there are 5 billion in the world.

Are the other 4 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 1 billion people will be born again. And he mentioned your country, dear brother.

Revival Beyond America and the Nations of Eastern Europe

What do you 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 would never pray.

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, and the other 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 co-redemptrix, and Mary is a mediator before God.

Cults, the Occult, and the Decline of Churches

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, we'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.