The Indwelt Saint — Leonard Ravenhill

More Than Conquerors Through Christ

Romans chapter 8, read verse 37. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. There are many tags that are put on chapters in the Bible. Perhaps the best known and maybe the ablest critic of religious books in America is Dr. Wilbur Smith.

And I remember he said a while ago about this chapter that in some ways it is the greatest chapter in the Word of God. The great writer Coleridge said it's the most beautiful thing that any man was ever allowed to write.

This eighth chapter, as many of you know, begins a new section in this wonderful epistle to the Romans. The seventh chapter is a chapter of gloom, and the eighth chapter is a chapter of glory. The seventh chapter is a chapter of condemnation, and the eighth chapter is a chapter of emancipation.

The seventh chapter is a funeral march, and the eighth chapter is a wedding march. It's the song of a soul set free, to use the type of a lovely hymn. If you want to use the phrases of John Milton, you remember perhaps he wrote two great classics, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

Rather strange, I can't work it out, but he wrote Paradise Lost after he got married, and he wrote Paradise Regained after his wife died. There may be no connection, but it's certainly interesting. And the seventh chapter is the chapter of Paradise Lost.

It's a chapter of depravity. The eighth chapter is a chapter of deliverance and delight. It's a phrase that's used very often, Romans 8 .1, there is therefore now no condemnation. And so the chapter begins, away in the heights there is no condemnation, and it ends, there is no separation what shall separate us from the love of God.

But it does not say that there is no tribulation. In fact it marks tribulation out for us very, very carefully. Now this is a magnificent chapter. And if you want to make a special branding here, as I said, the seventh chapter is a chapter of misery and condemnation, and the eighth chapter is a liberated soul.

And you can explain this by this fact, that in the eighth chapter, pardon me, in the seventh chapter, the seventh chapter is the chapter on a self-centered person. And the eighth chapter is a chapter about a Christ-centered person.

In the seventh chapter you read that first person over and over and over until you get weary of reading I, I, I, I. I want to do this and I can't, but I find I'm in bondage and so forth and so on. And therefore if you count up, you'll discover 31 times you find that I, and no mention of the Holy Spirit.

And in the eighth chapter there is no mention of the I, except in two verses where he says, I reckon, and I'm persuaded, where he's no alternative, but the difference is in the eighth chapter that there is all the mention in the world about the Holy Spirit.

Eight, nineteen times the Holy Spirit is mentioned. A self-sin-bound man in the eighth, seventh chapter, and no Holy Spirit. A liberated man in the eighth chapter, and over and over and over and over again he pays tribute to the Holy Spirit of God.

It was Spurgeon, if I remember right, and I do, it was Spurgeon who said on one occasion that the Bible often suffers more from its exponents than its opponents. As I said yesterday one man sarcastically said the Bible is inspired, otherwise it would never have survived all the bad preaching.

Of course that doesn't happen here, but there it is. It's this amazing, amazing Word of God. Now let me just remind you of this, that here is a man talking about emancipation. He's talking about an individual having under his feet the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We'll get to it a bit later, but he says in all these things, and he doesn't leave you to fill in the blanks, he fills them in himself. I love to read the Apostle Paul, do you know why? He snubbed the devil.

The devil never pushed the Apostle around, he pushed the devil around. I'm gonna make a guess that when Paul died they had a half day's holiday in hell, they were so glad about it. Never once did Satan get the victory over the Apostle Paul.

He triumphed. No man ever had such a massive theology, no man ever saw further, deeper into the pit of human depravity. I think one of the most alert writers today, that is not on the shallow sensational stuff, but a deep writer, is that wonderful man of the Liabré Fellowship in Switzerland.

And that gracious man says in his book, Debt in the City, Schaeffer, God has given up on the cities of America. He's written finish on them. That's why they're such hotbeds of rebellion. That's why we've got cities, whole cities that are bankrupt.

The whole world has been asking, why does the greatest country in the world, with the greatest city in the world, New York, why is it bankrupt? And the other mayors of different cities say, we're teaching on the edge of bankruptcy.

But you see our greatest problem is we're morally bankrupt, we're spiritually bankrupt. And I remind you again that that gracious man says that for 40 years he has watched America going down the drain, and that's not not nice.

He's like Jeremiah, he saw a nation alternating with fits of depression and darkness and devilry, and then coming around and trying to say they were the chosen people of God, and then slumbering down in the mire again.

He reminds us that in China, that great godless, anti-Christ, anti-God, anti-biblical, anti-American country, though we're trying to woo it, that in that nation eight centuries ago, every town and city had a thriving New Testament Church.

Eight hundred years ago, where is she tonight? Nobody, I say, saw the depths of depravity. He saw that because men had rejected the message and the Son of God, that God gave them up to uncleanness. If you want to read a very vivid, dramatic, stirring, disturbing account of that, read J .B. Phillips's translation of the first chapter of Romans.

Men have given up the natural course with women and were doing the devilish things they're doing today. Isn't it amazing that the Methodists have recently said that they're not going to condemn a man if he comes into the ministry because he's a homosexual.

They've dedicated a church to homosexuals in California recently, and they opened it by having communion because they said it's the only way to have it, and the ministry is a homo, and all the fellows there are homosexual.

I say this before God, I'd as soon give communion to them, God does give it to those people. Man, if you and I knew how near America is to judgment, I say as I said last night, you would have come to church tonight in sackcloth.

God gave them up to depravity. They walked in there uncleanness, but you see this man, if he has had a picture of the depravity, if he sees the snake pit of the human heart, if he sees how twisted and distorted men can become, and I'm not talking theory, I lived two years in the subculture of New York with folk that did sex things I never dreamed existed.

Sex with animals, sex with each other, live like devils, slept all day, went to hell every night, and I saw those people as twisted and distorted and dirty and doomed as damned as any man this side of eternity, and Jesus saved them.

And Paul doesn't care how terrible the malady is, he's not concerned about the malady, he's concerned about the remedy. He said in Romans 8 at 725, he is able to save to the uttermost, and the gutter most, and the mutter most, and therefore at the end of this amazing chapter he says, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Redemption, the Power of the Spirit, and Revival

One of the favorite hymns in my church, I have a church too, I have two dozen members, and one of the favorite hymns in my church is Beneath the Cross of Jesus. I think I weep every week when we sing it.

It's a beautiful hymn. One phrase in it always gets to me, I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of thy face. Dr. Toz used to say to me, Len, you know Christians don't tell lies, they just sing them.

Is it true you ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face? A phrase that rips me every time I sing it, content to let the world go by? You let it go by today. Did you ever try and jolt somebody before they slipped into hell?

Has it caused you any agonizing tears? Yes sir, this man had the greatest concept of human depravity, and he has the greatest concept of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. We used to say when we were kids, what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable mass?

I never found the answer to that, but I'll tell you what. Calvary and the power of the Spirit is an irresistible force, and sin is not an immovable mass. The only reason there's an America tonight is not because we signed the Declaration of Independence, it's because 34 years before that signing there was a revival swept this country.

Oh he says so many things in this chapter I don't know where to start really. And I guess I won't know where to end either, but anyhow let's try. Romans 7 is a chapter on the tomb. Romans 8 again is a chapter on triumph.

Think of, think of just, I'm just going to read this. I'm not going to preach tonight I promise you that. I'm going to preach tomorrow night. I got a word from the Lord tomorrow night that just about tore me up.

I don't care if I don't sleep a wink tonight, that doesn't bother me. But I tell you tomorrow night, if you love me, I think there are three of you that do, somewhere I can't see you, but if you love me you really pray for me for tomorrow night, because I'm gonna really preach tomorrow night.

It'll tear me up as well as you. If you can find any reason not to come tomorrow night, stay away. See your mother-in-law. Go get blessed in a bowling alley, that's where most of you get it anyhow. But anyhow, so tonight I'm going to share some thoughts with you here.

The Flesh, the Spirit, and All Things Working for Good

I caught Dr. Tozer off, and he was such a blessing to me brother Peter, that's right. And he said to me, you know, as soon as man got alienated from God, he got interested in things. Now I was reading through this epistle, pardon me, this chapter this afternoon, and I noticed how many times Paul says that.

In verse 5 he says, they that are after the flesh do mind the things, the things of the flesh. That they that are after the spirit mind the things of the spirit. Get.

That? And then that very famous popular verse, Romans 8 28, all things work.

Together for good. Not something, all things. Losses as well as gain, invisible things as well as visible, things that are bitter as well as those of the sweet, all things work together. Mr. Chadwick used to tell us the only way to read that verse is backwards way.

To them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose, all things work together for good. If you read it the right way, the forward way, it doesn't make so much impression. But if you read it from the end first, to them that love God, all things work together for good.

To them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose. Now notice what he says in verse 31. What shall we say then to these things if God be for us? Come on lift your head up. If God be for us, who can be against us?

Notice really what he says in verse 37. Nay in all these things. Yeah you can almost wear his contempt there can't you? Things, so what? And then he finishes verse 38. I think he kind of put his shoulders back and laughed in the face of the devil and said you haven't got an invention in hell that can separate me.

That's what he says doesn't he? Because he says here at the end of verse 38, I am persuaded. Are you persuaded tonight? Paul was a persuaded man. He was persuaded that God was able to keep that which he had committed unto him.

I am persuaded that neither height nor depth nor any other creature can separate me from the love of God. For I'm persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principality nor things present nor things to come.

If that isn't defiance will you tell me what is? You see one day this man was going down the Damascus road. You know what? A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. Never listen to a bachelor that talks to you about marriage.

A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. And as I said last night, Paul, he has such a panoramic view of the world. He was going down the Damascus road, breathing out threatenings.

He carried in his toga there, he carried a document that said he could put any Christians he liked to death. And he did exactly what this blundering blind age that you and I living did. He reckoned on everybody but Jesus Christ himself.

And Jesus slipped off his throne and let him in the road. And Jesus and Paul said, who art thou? Lord. And on that road he said he revealed himself to me and then he said in the wilderness the school of silence that's still open if you want to go and it costs you nothing.

On the Damascus road revealed himself to me and there in the wilderness he revealed himself in me. And then he sought up into heaven. I don't know all he saw except it was just so marvelous. The Lord said don't ever say a word about it as long as you live.

Never put a strain like that on a woman you know this. But the Lord said as long as you live you can't share anything that you saw. And he never did. And I sometimes wonder if God rolled out a plan of the ages from the incarnation to the consummation.

I wonder if he saw the day in which you and I live. I wonder if he saw the depravity that was going to try and strangle the world finally before Jesus comes. But I'll tell you whatever happened there on that Damascus road and then there when he and God were alone and God stripped him.

The greatest brain the world ever had. Roll Socrates, play to anybody you like in a bundle and don't come near him. He went there in the silence. What happened? He became spiritually pregnant. He birthed these churches to whom he's writing here.

He birthed these epistles in the Holy Ghost. And God put something in him that when you put him in the water 36 hours in the Mediterranean the waves couldn't wash it out. And they lashed him 195 times they couldn't whip it out.

And the devil chased him and he couldn't scare it out of him. And they wouldn't give him any food and they couldn't starve it out of him. And me thinks brother, sister you and I'd better get an experience like that before long because the roof's gonna come in before we've got much further.

God hasn't raised you up to be a bottle-fed baby from here to eternity. He's coming to get his dues out of your life. He's invested a lot in you. He didn't save you to escape eternal fire. That's a fringe benefit.

He saved you that you might be conformed to the image of his Son. And however costly that may be, if you'll obey God. Oh you may escape now but brother he'll get you before long anyhow. I'm making comments on this chapter.

They're very beautiful I think. Look what he says in verse 9. Come on now don't think I'm standing here waving the traffic out to get to heaven and out to go the other way. I'm not. I'm asking you to participate right here.

Is this your experience? Look at verse 9. Well let me go back a minute. You see lots of people say today when you talk about a victorious life, well you know what Paul said. Yeah I know what Paul said.

I heard, he's dead now, Dr. Campbell Morgan, I heard him preach many times. I heard him preach one day and again to quote Dr. Wilbur Smith, he said that man had a mystique that he could come into an audience and stand there and open the Bible and immediately something radiated from him.

I heard him give a message on holiness. It was marvelous. I couldn't believe it was true. He talked about the sanctified life, the life of holiness, the indwelling spirit, and then at the end, in case he encouraged us too much, but he said remember this dear friend, even the great apostle said.

What did he say? Well he quoted what's in the end of Romans chapter 7. Oh wretched man that I am. Well I didn't need the Lord to tell me that, I knew a lot a long while before the Lord told me that. I don't need the Lord to tell me with a lot of wretched Christians, I know that well enough.

But you see we tag on to that another statement and we say, now listen listen what the scripture says. The scripture says that they that are in the flesh, come up please God, that read the ninth verse, you're not in the flesh.

Now what do you do with it? This flesh, yes. But a fleshy nature, a lusting, sinful, greedy, lustful nature, no. You see Paul here uses one of the most amazing terms in all his career. He says, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Now what do you do? Is that the end of the story? In the original there are no chapters, there's no seventh chapter or eighth chapter. The seventh goes right on into the eighth. Now what do you do? You stay at the end of Romans 7 and say Paul is saying all through his life, oh wretched man that I am.

I have another war warring in my members. What does he say? He says, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well tell me tonight, can Buddha do it? Can Confucius do it? Can transcendental meditation do it?

No sir, a thousand times over. There is one who is able to do it. You see, all around here we've got a few crosses, there isn't one here at the moment, but at a cross, the usual type of a cross. Do you know there were a hundred and twenty different types of crosses?

There was a traditional cross, there was a cross like a letter T, like that, in which a man's head was allowed to drop back. There was a cross like a letter X, where a man's body was stretched up, his arms went up each section of the X, and there he was crucified.

There was another cross. It was a straight tree like this, with a spike, and they pushed the man's body on it, and turned his body any old way they like, like a propeller, and left him to hang on the birds to eat him.

But there's another crucifixion worse than any of them. That was that if you murdered a man, or another person, they will take the dead body of the person you murdered, and they will crucify you to the body, to the dead body.

There's the corpse, you made you lay down on it. They strapped your arm to the other arm, your leg to the other leg, the trunk to the other trunk, the neck to the other, to that neck, and then they stood you up and said get going, and you staggered everywhere with a body of death.

And gradually of course it became rigid with death. The mortification, the stench, the maggots would work inside in the bowels, the whole body would degenerate, and you could try to go to sleep in that rotten thing.

And if you were struggling down the road after two or three days, and the stench had made you vomit, and you're just about as sick and weak, and feeling as horrid as you could, and you saw a friend and said, hey Jack cut this body off from me.

Okay there's nobody around. He gets his knife out, and he cuts the ropes off, and he's just gonna cut the last, and you look up and there's a Roman centurion. What are you doing? I'm liberating my friend.

The law doesn't allow you to do that. Oh yes it does, yes it does, yes it does. Go ahead. On one condition, the one condition is if you free that man from that corpse, that corpse will be tied to your body.

Do you love him enough now to have the body? Oh no sir, no I won't cut it. I don't want that stinking rotten corpse attached to my body. All right we'll tie him up again. Now Paul has been talking about the law, and we say so much about the law, but read the seventh chapter.

He says the law is holy. He says the law is spiritual. You see the law could bring condemnation. It could point out sin, but it couldn't cast out sin. Can the law do it? No. Who can deliver me, he says, wretched man, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

And he says there's no hand to do it. But then he says yes there is. Thanks be unto God, through Jesus Christ my Lord. You see in the sixth chapter he says when when Jesus died we were crucified with him.

Were we? Romans 6 6 says that knowing this that our old man is, not was, is crucified with him. The trouble in the Church of God today is we preach heartless salvation. We didn't tell people how to get rid of a lot of lousy sins.

We don't tell them how to get rid of a prince from inside that made, that has dominion over them. And this is exactly what Paul is talking about in this epistle. This is why I say it's a son of a soul set free.

The Indwelling Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

All right come over to verse 9 please quickly time's going. You're not in the flesh but in the spirit. Come on tonight are you in the spirit or in the flesh? Have you got secret lusts? What's biting you on the inside?

An unforgiving spirit? A grudge? Laziness? Jealousy? Anger? Secret lusts? What is it? He says you're not in the flesh but in the spirit. If so be, now listen, the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. Look at the next verse.

Verse 10. If Christ be in you. Look at the 11th verse. The Spirit of him that raised up Jesus dwell in you. Man alive, how in God's name can you be indwelt by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost and be defeated?

Don't argue with me about it. Scratch it out of your Bible if you don't believe it. If you're a Christian you're an indwelt person. God dwells in you. The Father dwells in you. That's what it says. I didn't write that did I?

I write good books. But they're not as good as this. The Holy Ghost wrote it. And he says I want you to know that if you're really born of God, God dwells in you. And the Son dwells in you. He that hath the Son hath life.

He that hath not the Son, doesn't matter how many, if they baptize you three times a day, won't make you a Christian. He that hath the Son hath life. He that is born of God. And he that hath the Spirit of God dwelling in him.

Creation’s Groaning and the Spirit’s Intercession

All right, just come down a little bit further in the chapter. Look at verse 22. We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together. Do you think it's doing that tonight? Men have dreamed of a utopia from Augustine's city of God down to Gulliver's Travels, if you want it for your children.

And Moore had his utopia, and Francis Bacon had his utopia, and I'm not going to tell you how many more. Hitler said you could dominate the world by a pure race. The Marxists say the only way to clean the world up is get rid of the flappy bourgeois folk we have around here, and rule by revolution.

The creation groaneth. I think, and you may disagree, but I think we've started to see the domino theory break up one of the greatest countries in the world, and that's Africa. I noticed a little Tom Thumb politician, Herb von Kissinger, is there right now.

And in the mail I read today, in the Herald, the Miami Herald he says, he's going to see that America does not buy any chrome. The highest chrome in the world is made in Rhodesia. Ian Smith is a born-again, believing, preaching Christian.

He's a president of the country. He's a friend of a friend of mine. The highest standard of living for colored people in Africa is in Rhodesia. Kissinger isn't even going to go in. He's begging opinions from other people.

That's not fair judgment. But he says I'll see America doesn't buy chrome. I hope he'll also see that they don't put it on Russian boats and double the price that they've been doing and send it here. He says we can't let the weak people down.

All right, since he got $90 ,000 of a Nobel Prize, which came out of dynamite, why doesn't he spend his $90 ,000 and blast the Berlin Wall? If it after the oppressed people? Or what about Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and Estonia and all those border countries that were swallowed up and signed away so graciously by Mr. Ford in the Helsinki agreement?

Come on now. He says I'm going to help the oppressed people. Then when he comes on, he'll be campaigning for the Indians all over this country. How hypocritical can you get? The whole creation grown-up.

Was it Bacon that said the only way to liberate the nation is to, no I forget the one who said that, but he said the only way to liberate a nation is to have a philosopher king and upgrade education? We've upgraded education and downgraded morality.

Ten years ago you couldn't get into Harvard, a girl couldn't get into Harvard, at Yale they were not co-ed. They're not co-ed tonight, they're co-bed. The big shops down there say it's not our business to interfere with what the kids do upstairs.

I bet it would be if they set fire to the place. The whole creation grown-ups. I've asked you more than once, did it cost you a tear when you heard that 50 million people were signed off in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia?

50 million people went into captivity, did it cost you a tear? 110 million people behind the Iron Curtain, has it cost you a tear? Or are you still rehearsing your choir number for Sunday? Yes. I believe every earthquake we have, whether it's Guatemala or anywhere, I believe it's a sign of a whole groaning creation.

Creation grown! Will you notice what he says a little further down? In the next verse 23 that we, not only creation, but we ourselves also have the firstfruits of the Spirit. If you're the firstfruits of the Spirit, here's a proof, here's a proof, here's a proof you have it.

You know what it says? That you're grown within yourself. Do you? After the Holy Ghost came in and he knows the mind of God, and nobody does but the Spirit, and the Spirit whispers the secret of God to you, and some nights you can't sleep, and you're like a woman who wants to get delivered of something, and it isn't time, and you're grown within yourself.

I'll tell you the secret of getting revival in the church, find half a dozen people that know how to groan. You won't have the same church in a year. But you can't learn groaning except by the Holy Ghost, it's the school of the Holy Spirit.

And if you think that's unusual, look at verse 26 in which he says, likewise the Spirit helpeth our infirmities. We know not what we should pray for us we ought, but the Spirit itself, really a bad translation, the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Huh? And verse 27, the Spirit because he maketh intercession for the will of God. Hey, that's pretty advanced Christianity isn't it? Huh? We know not what to pray, oh we know how to give God a shopping list.

We know how to tell God do this, that, oh the pastor said remember to pray for the building funds. The devil doesn't care if you build a church from here to Miami, that won't worry him. But somehow if we can get people so desiring the anointing of God, that they'd rather pray with groanings and tears and sing like Gali Kirchherr or have a better voice than Richard Tucker had in the, in the, in the opera in New York.

Now I've heard people say, when it says that we pray with groanings, it's like praying in tongues, it's nothing of the kind. Because if it was, God would say so. It's beyond that. The greatest language of prayer has no vocabulary.

The greatest prayers in the Bible had no words. Friday night I think I'm going to talk on Hannah. Do you remember Hannah, how she prayed? And even the man of God thought the priest thought she was drunk.

And she groaned and she trammeled, she was barren. I suggest to you with all the little pretty little conferences we have going on now about the Holy Spirit and all the rest, we're a barren people before God.

We have no revival in the land. But I'll tell you this, when the Holy Ghost comes and begins to burden people, it's a pretty, pretty rough thing to learn the true language of intercession. But the Spirit helpeth our infirmities.

More Than Conquerors in Tribulation

Let's come to this verse right here for a minute or two. In all these things, he's mentioned them, sort them out when you go home, will you? Tribulation, distress, famine, peril making, the sword, perils of the deep, so forth, so on.

Sort them out, put them in little sections like that. And you'll find that some of them are things that attack the body, some attack the mind, some attack the spirit. And he says in all these things, there is no area in your life where as a Christian you're expected to be defeated.

You say I can't be perfect, can't you? Are you sure? Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, be ye therefore perfect. He said of Job, to the devil hast thou considered my servant Job. He's perfect and upright.

He set a task for Abraham before the Holy Ghost was given as we know, and he said walk before me and be thou perfect. You can't have Adamic perfection in your body, you can't have mental perfection. There are many areas you can't have perfection, but you can have perfect obedience.

And we sing the song, perfect submission all is at rest. And the only way you can have rest is by perfect submission. To know there's no rebellion in your spirit in any area at all. In all these things we are more than conquerors.

You know what gets us there very often? We get so discouraged, we get so earthbound, we lose sight of the majesty of God, we forget this, that God has branded you as a child of God, and he lives in you, and the Spirit lives you, and the Christ lives in you, and we let little trivially rubbish round about us upset us.

And notice what he says in verse 33, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died. Now here is your strength. Notice in this verse again, verse 34, who is he that condemneth?

It is Christ that died. Can Christ's death be contested? Satan knows better than that. And then he says he is risen again at the right hand. Can the sovereignty of Jesus Christ be contested? And then he says at the end of the verse, he maketh intercession for us.

Is there any way that the prayers of Jesus Christ can be sabotaged? I was in a place a few years ago, and a man came to see me, a lawyer, and he said we've read something you've written, and a bunch of us got together, and I want to tell you this, we've got thirty million dollars behind us, and we'll buy you the largest tent in America, we give you a bigger wage than Billy Graham, and he went on his wonderful story, and so forth and so on.

And oh, he made such a dangling prize of it. And I said to him, I'm not a bit interested. The only thing I'm interested is in getting right into the dead center of the will of God, and knowing this, that I'm just where God wants me to be.

There is no other prize as far as I'm concerned. You see, if I'm a believer, I have the protection, this is what this says, I have the protection of the death of Jesus. If he is risen, I not only have protection, I have propitiation.

He's justified. Not only that, if he justifies me, I've not only protection and propitiation, I have prayer that's offered by him. I told you that the editor of Decision came and talked with me a while ago, we had a very interesting time, and how that he said that two million people a day pray for Billy Graham.

And I said that's great, I'm not interested, I want them to pray for me. He said, what do you mean? I said, because God says if two of you shall agree, that's all. That's why the greatest soul winner that America ever had, Charles G. Finney.

Revival, Love, and the Work of the Holy Ghost

Oh you may disagree with his theology, he did not believe in original sin. He believed in acquired depravity. He believed a child was pure, until it voluntarily transgressed. The argument is, you have sin in you.

Did you want it? No. And God's gonna send you to hell for having what you didn't want, and you didn't get. God puts sin in you, and he sends you to hell for having it. No sir, he says that's not true.

A child is born pure and innocent, and somewhere it acquires depravity. Well, whether you like his theology or not. I'll tell you one thing I like about him, amongst others. He said, nobody told me about the Holy Ghost or any baptism, but I was going over Boston Common, and he suddenly said, waves of glory came over me.

And he said, I felt as though I'd burst. And you know what he did? A little while after, he said other waves of glory. He said he had repeated baptisms of the Holy Spirit. You know, one of the great weaknesses of the day in which we live is this.