Samson - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Power to Break Sin's Bondage

What in God's Word, what does that poor guy in prison do? Does Jim Baker laugh now that he used to get a million a third salary? He had a two one and two Rolls Royces, any good now? He's a mocking thing for the world.

What does Swaggart do? I don't know. I pray for the men every day. I doubt God will restore them. They never had much message anyhow. They hung on to one thing. You see what we preach, we sing Wesley's great hymn, oh for a thousand tongues.

And then he says he breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free. We don't preach about that. Forgiveness is all we preach. We don't preach about break the power of cancelled sin and set the prisoner free.

I had the privilege of preaching in a wonderful church, you can remember this, in Orange Grove in England. It was a church where a top lady used to preach. I put my hands on the desk like this and said to myself, top lady, by the way, it wasn't a bit like this desk.

This junk wood here. It was a very elaborate beautiful thing, but I put my foot behind, my feet behind it. I looked at the stained-glass windows and I said, top lady, used to be the pastor here. He wrote Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.

He wrote Be of Sin, the double cure. If somebody prayed in the morning, Jack started it first. Reading what, Ezekiel 46? You've got a stack of bones, the bones begin to move, and instead of a valley full of bones, you have a valley full of skeletons.

Then there's a sinews on the skeletons, then there's flesh on the sinews, then the skin on there. But what does it say? God said I breathed into them, and then he said I put my spirit within them. He breathed on the disciples in the upper room.

They didn't receive the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. They received the Holy Ghost before Pentecost. He breathed on them. They didn't need the Holy Ghost to do miracles. They raised the dead and cast out demons before Pentecost.

Entering the Promised Land Through Obedience

We've got to move up. Lots of you people got out of Egypt, but you're not in the promised land yet. You've got rid of lousy habits and lousy ways, but there's still the promised land. And I reminded you yesterday again, only one disobedience.

Cosmos is 40 years of joy in the promised land. So here's this man. He's angry now. There is a holy anger. There is a holy jealousy. We need to know that jealousy. We need to know the anger. Holy anger is pure.

In my simple thinking, in the natural, jealousy is love that goes sour. But on the other hand, jealousy for God is love that's ablaze with holy indignation and holy revelation. So here's this man. The house is filled.

3 ,000 in the gallery, 10 ,000 people all together. And he hears and he's so tired of hearing the mockery. It's amazing how many people in the last week particularly have said, Lord, I'm at the end of the line.

This is no Christian life. I don't have power. I don't have an endowment. I don't have a broken heart. I don't have vision. I'm mediocre. You have to come to the end as David said, and I want to finish that off in a minute.

What did he say? Here's a blind man. He doesn't even have the jawbone of an ass in his hand. But he prays. I've never heard anybody include Samson as a man of prayer. And he prayed one of the greatest prayers in the world.

He's totally blind. He's in prison. His nation is destroyed by the enemy. And he says, he prays, Lord, what? Strengthen me just once. He doesn't pray, give me my eyes back. He doesn't pray for healing.

He doesn't pray deliver us from the enemy who's destroying our young people. He says, strengthen me just once. What did he mean? Give me an anointing just once. Just once anoint me. That's all I'm asking for.

And I'll tell you he meant business. He said to the boy that had his hand, put me between the pillars. I've been in this place. On a tourist trip. There are two pillars. Lead me up. You can't even find his way.

The boy takes him up and he prays this awesome prayer. Strengthen me just once. I pray thee. How? Verse 30. I said before that Israel began in the miraculous. She's going to end in the miraculous. The Church of Jesus Christ began day by day with anointings in the power of the Spirit.

And yet there's going to be a super Pentecost where we'll see and understand God more and see more of God's power than ever in history. But listen, he makes a bargain with God. Strengthen me just once, even if I die.

Are you prepared for that? Are you prepared to die as David said? To get the real wine skin that God can fill? From here to eternity? You see, it's very easy to talk about revival. I think this book is on sale.

I hope it is. John G. Lake. He wasn't an American. He's a Canadian. Okay. Listen to this, would you a minute? You see, every work, every work has to have its Gethsemane. Every work has to have its Calvary.

God's going to test it right to the ground. C .T. Studd went through agony because people at home let him down. Hudson Taylor had trouble with his staff in China, but he had more trouble with the people at home.

They cut down his funds, and little by little, he's driven to God. Not many of us are driven to God. America's the easiest country in the world to raise a testimony. There's plenty of money if you want to beg for it.

People are very tender and gracious. They can afford to give. They can't do that in other countries. Well, listen to this man. This man goes out in the power of the Spirit of God. He goes out into Africa, which was darkest Africa at that time.

But he says, after I'd been there a while, somebody misrepresented me. They sent a letter through Africa. They sent it through England. They sent it to America. This man isn't straight. The things he's doing are not according to the scripture.

So what did he do? You see, I've said before, the trouble with many of our churches, pastors are pointing the way, not leading the way. This man led the way in sacrifice and hardship and difficulty. And so these young men see him.

And this man now is multiplied. He has a hundred and twenty men working like him, but suddenly all the resources are cut off. He can't send the money. So he consults his wife or somebody, and he says, we need to bring these hundred and twenty preachers back to headquarters.

But darling, we don't have the money. Everybody sell your watch. Everybody sell your possessions. Sell your furniture. Let's get these hundred and twenty men back again. They must get the anointing of God.

And we must bring them here at any cost. So they sold everything he had, they had. Then he got these men together. And he said, God has to come and move on us again. When these men arrived, he said, I poured out my heart to them as I do to you today.

And after they said, Brother Lake, we'd like to be alone for a little while. You ask us to retire. Will you retire when we make a decision? And then they did an awesome thing. I've never read this in history before.

These people came forward. They cleared the chairs, made a circle and put a hundred and twenty chairs for the hundred and twenty preachers. That's like the hundred and twenty in the upper room. And they said, Brother Lake, we made our decision.

We're going back to our fields if we die, if our wives die, if our children die. We will never reduce the we will never reduce the ministry that Jesus has established through the work in Africa. And then they took bread and wine in the middle of the table.

And each man came forward and took a piece of bread and drank the wine. And this is what they said. He said, I took my head of this. I took my head at the place of the head of the circle as they brought bread and wine.

And every one man said this, and I believe God understands it. There are bankrupt people in a foreign country where there's witchcraft and devilry and every hellish thing opposing them. Living men and every conceivable hardship.

We're not going to let the standard down. If you sacrifice like that, we will. So what did they say? They took the bread and the wine and this is the pledge they made. Every man said this is the New Testament in my blood for South Africa.

Isn't that a commitment? Before all the angels. Before each other saying we don't care. This is the last final thrust. We're reduced to helplessness, but it's the lame that take the prey. And to those who have no mind to increase the strength.

People at home are criticizing them. People that don't know a thing about facing the devil and the hardships. But they said brother, we have a request. The request is this. If you die, will you please bury us?

Now listen to his word through his tears. We pledged ourselves if need be to die. If our wives die, if our children die, here's the report. They said if we die, come and bury us. Now listen to this. Twelve times in that year of hell, I stood beside the finest men.

Twelve of the finest men and sixteen of the greatest prayer intercessors that God ever let live on the earth. Fourteen women, was it? And twelve men. No, sixteen women and twelve men pledged themselves to die and he said I buried every one of them.

They couldn't live on the money that we were sending first white people. But they said we'll die and die they did. And he said I saw my labors. I saw the men that I thought would be the strength of the next move of God.

And I buried them. I stood in tears at the side and said God, I don't understand this woman as a power of anointed when she prays that man has been used in apostolic strength and there he's buried and then we took the children and had to bury the children as well.

But he says here a bit further, all the heroes of Jesus do not live in the first century nor in the fourth. He said I want to tell you my soul was touched. My soul has been touched by the soul of this people.

My heart felt a new lift in God and a new response from the depth of my heart. Now listen to the result. I can't quote it exactly here but one of the men was a thin black man. He got filled with the spirit of God and he said I went and I saw him under a tree and he was there for thirty days praying for a new move of the spirit of God.

He said I took in food and he said no I have to fast and pray. You've been there ten days it doesn't matter. You've been there twenty days it doesn't matter. That's getting serious isn't it? I can't live while little people die and go to hell.

But he said eventually that man came forward. He prayed as nobody has ever prayed and I know of in my lifetime. For days he remained under a thorn tree. When I passed in the morning I would hear him in prayer.

When I returned in the evening he was still praying and he wouldn't take any nourishment of any kind. Then he says he had to go on a mission himself. Here was a man kneeling under the tree but I had to go away for a while.

A hundred and fifty feet away my eyes were open. I saw a scene I'd never seen before. A multitude of demons like a flock of sheep. The spirit of the Lord came on him also. He rushed ahead of me cursing the demons and they were driven back to hell.

There's a scourge where hundreds of people have died of fever and these demons were blocking the Lord. Here is one man and he rebukes the demons and immediately there's a release of power and health and the people get restored in health and the glory of God comes again.

Dying to Human Strength and Self-Confidence

But the thing that gets me again is that I thought of the point as David put it this morning again. We want new wineskins. We want to go buy them somewhere. You want to come to the conference and get one when you buy your books.

You want to have one sudden influx of joy and God says no. It's not by might nor by power but by my spirit. Samson says just give me that supernatural anointing once more and the spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily.

He pushed out the pillars and the record divine record here says he killed more in his dying than in his living. Well isn't that God our God? We don't want to die do we? We don't want to die to our plans.

You plan what you do the next three years. Die to it. David said you can't bring somebody to God and say bless it. You see many of us think what we have is so good. All we need is a bit more power behind it to shake the world.

God says no get rid of your confidence. Get rid of the works of the flesh. Get rid of your leaning on your education or leaning on this or the other. Be willing to die. That's the hardest thing in the world to do.

We'll come forward for blessing. We'll come forward for gifts. We'll come forward for anointing but die? Well it's the only way Jesus made it. It's the only way the Apostle Paul made it. With all his genius and all he had.

This man is the most amazing man ever in history. He went to heaven and had a journey up there. A vacation up there. The demons in hell knew him. How did it happen? Well this is what he says. God revealed himself to me.

Then he had three years in Damascus and God revealed himself in me. Then he comes out. There's no failure after that. It's triumph. God's going to raise these men up I'm absolutely sure. It's not easy to die to your career.

To die to your plans. Self doesn't want to die. It fights for my resources. What God can know serene. It's a terrible thing. Dear Dr. Chaucer talked to me often about that. He'd say, Leonard remember when you see a man going down the road with a cross you know one thing he's not coming back.

Did you die at the altar last night? Did every ambition of yours perish? Do you say Lord God I don't care how you reorganize my life? I told God in the early hours of this morning I didn't sleep much my precious Martha didn't I?

I said to God that the Queen of England, Queen Victoria loved to go over the English Channel to Calais. Calais you may call it. She liked the castle she had there. She liked the climate there. And she said when I die you'll find bread on my heart.

Calais this may seem funny to you I don't know and I don't care. I said to the Lord this morning as I lay across the bed in the dark. I said Lord stamp on my heart what you want. I don't care what it is.

This heart as Wesley wrote 200 years ago take my poor heart and let it be forever closed to all but thee. Seal thou my breast and let me wear a pledge of love forever there. Enlarge in flame and fill my heart with boundless charity divine.

So shall I all my strength exert and love them with a zeal like thine. And turn them to a pardoning God. Wesley died. His family was next to the royal family in England. It didn't make any difference.

He died to his scholarship and his attainment. He had to die even to Methodism. After he was born in a holy fire it went down. And it nearly broke his heart. He said give to Charles. Give every young preacher that we have in Methodism a copy of the life of David Brainerd the young American.

And they read it and there was a revival through that. Wesley himself lived in total sacrifice. If he'd stayed on as a Church of England he would have been the Archbishop of Canterbury. If he'd gone into politics he would have been the Prime Minister of England.

If he'd gone into business he'd have died a multimillionaire. He died almost broke. But look at Methodism. It's down now. It may come back again. I don't know. But I believe with David this morning God wants a new thing.

He's not going to pour wine into your old ideas and your formality and your creed and your ritual. It has to be consumed. I told you last night, I say again, I believe the destiny of millions of people in the world tonight, today hang on this meeting.

It's a fearful thing. Hebrews says to fall into the hands of the living God. Robert Louis Stevenson said it's a more fearful thing to fall out. God knocks and knocks and knocks. As I said last night, even the dirty church that you have, backslidden church, Laodicean church, he has mercy, he stands there.

Recovering the Glory and Power of the Church

Strengthen me just once. I'm tired of the world mocking the church. I don't find it funny when I say to some young people who go to church, I go to a Pentecostal church of this, but Mr. Ravenhill there's more fun at a Tupperware party than going to church.

I don't think church should be entertainment. I do believe the glory of God should be there, that sometimes I want to walk out on my hands and knees because deity has come, because God's lifted the veil and shown me into eternity.

Here is a man that's known power and might and success, and he's the sport of the world. He no longer embarrasses the world. The world embarrasses him. I'm embarrassed to be part of a world, a church that embarrasses God.

I live in the most tragic situation in the world. I live in a world that has lost its way and a church that has lost its voice. God has no voice but men. He doesn't use angels to yell through the sky.

Some of you men this morning can be cleansed and endued. I'm not offering you a bargain. I'm saying, listen, you've got to die. Don't come out for blessing. I don't want you to come out for blessing. Don't come out for help.

A person said to me recently, I've been to the altar three or four times asking God to help me with my temper. He'll never do that because he says in Romans 7, the carnal man is enmity and there's no law God has for it.

All he has for carnality is crucifixion. But crucifixion precedes life. Crucifixion precedes resurrection, life, and power. Again, as I began at the beginning, the church has to recover, not by formula, not by recitation, the mysterious power of the Holy Ghost on unlettered and ignorant men that scared the devil, that went into the Roman Empire and turned areas upside down without money, without backing, because God indwelled them.

The most glorious thing this side of eternity, let me tell you, is to be filled with the knowledge of God's will. It's to be filled with His power. It's to be more than conqueror in this twisted, perverted world.

Jesus didn't die to save us. He died that we may be partakers of His holiness. Isn't that fabulous? Well, that's okay. It won't do me good to God. I'm going to ask you a simple question. Dare you tell God you want to die?

Dare you go on record as the eternal God looks down here and you come forward and say, I die to self, self-seeking, self-interest, self-glory. I don't care if you make me a janitor in the Holy Ghost.

I'm not concerned about going in a pulpit. As I said to you the other day and say again, the Holy Ghost was on William Burns when he shook the whole of, what was the city in Scotland? Well, he followed Robbie Murray McShane.

When William Burns went and the city was shaking under the power of God, God took him out of that, put him in China, where men followed him and said, you yellow devil, get out of here. Grow a pigtail.

And he went through terrible suffering. And he'd come from the greatest revival in Europe at that time. But he needed the Holy Ghost to be in silence and bear the loneliness and bear the accusation of the devil and bear the ridicule of people at home who said, why didn't he go on from city to city?

Because God told him to go listen. And he went and plowed his life into China. After him came Jonathan Goforth and had revival there. After him came Watchman Nee. After him or with him came John Sung.

In that very area, the greatest thing is not ministry, but the presence of the living God in my life. To control it in any way he wants. But I have to take hands off and say, Lord, from this moment to eternity, my spirit, soul, and body are yours.

My emotion, my will, anything. A glorious abandonment. So long as you use me in some way, whether it's behind the scenes, we've got to stop this onslaught of our young people. Of a couple of minutes, as I told you last Friday night, last Friday was a prayer meeting.

If I live a thousand years, I'll remember two women prayed before lunch. At night, half past eleven, a man prayed till nearly twelve. By the way, we're going to meet in that next room, Saturday night at, what, seven?

And I hope you'll come. Don't come to preach. Pray before you come and find what God wants. Next week is the most urgent week. We've only another week to go, and the glory is yet to be revealed. But this young man stood up Friday night with a holy indignation.

Holy Indignation Against Sin and Injustice

I've never seen anger upon a young man since 1930. That's 60 years ago. And here's a young American saying, Oh God, help us oppose the power of the devil. Why are our young boys getting tied up with drugs?

Why are they dying with drugs? Why are our girls getting venereal disease? Or girls having babies? There's a holy indignation there. I believe that anger is the other side of the coin. Or joy or jealousy is the other side of the coin of love.

You cannot love God without your heart, without being jealous for his glory. And that's what Samson wants. He doesn't say, Give me my eyes again. He doesn't say, Give me my freedom from these rotten philistines.

He said, Give me one anointing that will glorify you. Are you prepared to go on record like that? I'm not offering you a bargain. I'm telling you angels are looking on. I'm telling you the men in the graves would love this opportunity today.

We don't value life and the privileges that God wants to put upon us. We're so narrow and limited. Let go and let God. Can Jesus save the trouble of your soul, his soul right now? Do you want to come as we close?

And say, Brother Rainer, I'm going to tell God, I'm willing to die to plans. I'm willing to die to everything. Some besetting sin. These limitations. Lord, I want to die. This is my burial place. I'm going to die and never, never go back to those things again by the wonderful power of God.

I say again, I'm not going to sing and move you emotionally. Make up your mind to do it. Make up your mind to be God's man, pure from your head to your feet, that he can control your emotions, your life, your will and everything.

Come and die.