Ambassadors for Christ — Leonard Ravenhill

Paul’s Ambassadorship and the Armor of God

We pray you in Christ's name be ye reconciled to God. You may remember that Paul uses the same word ambassador when he finishes that marvelous sixth chapter in Ephesians where it's been drawn out putting on the whole armour of God.

And this again is in the sixth chapter. The one we just had is the fifth chapter verse twenty. This is in the sixth chapter of Ephesians and again verse twenty for which I am an ambassador in bonds. Now a verse before that he says.

And it's for me he's asking for prayer the letterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in bonds. I think this is the most unused expression of our privilege in the family of God.

We're often told I suppose if it's not wearying it's almost monotonous to be told we're children of God by faith and not of Jesus. And sometimes we're told we're servants. And occasionally we run round the ministry gifts and say well we do have apostles and prophets and evangelists and teachers and so forth for the edifying of the saints.

But I don't remember, maybe I've heard it but I don't remember in my lifetime ever hearing a sermon on the fact that I'm an ambassador of Jesus Christ. As far as I know there are no schools to teach people to be ambassadors.

They'll teach you to, you know, beauty saloons and they'll teach you to do this and teach you to do the other. But no schools where you teach people to be ambassadors. In the natural realm the office of the ambassador is something which has got to carry a great deal of prestige with it.

I think the very opposite is the case in the spiritual life. It's not that we have prestige. It's not a prestigious job I think really, to keep alliterating it. It's a perilous job really to be an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's very seldom a man will refuse to be an ambassador. It's almost a kingly office. And in our concept of things the ambassador usually lives in security in a huge house and a tremendous income. And again he's respected very very highly.

If for instance the Queen of England their daughter's getting married inevitably all the ambassadors the American ambassador, the French ambassador the ambassador from Vietnam if they have one Africa every one of them automatically gets a letter of invitation to the wedding.

All the social standings he's always included. The reverse is just about true in the spiritual realm. But if a man is a true ambassador of Jesus Christ he's in another world. And I don't think that we stress this enough.

The Spiritual World and Paul’s Great Calling

There are two worlds. We say there are two hemispheres. There are two worlds. There's the natural, the world of men. And there's the spiritual world. And the Good Book itself says that friendship with the world is enmity against God and friendship in God is called enmity by the world.

Paul says that he was an ambassador of Jesus Christ. And you know I keep saying this because I kind of get a kick out of it. I think the greatest brain that the world ever had was the brain of the Apostle Paul.

That's not necessarily why God used him. But no fool could have written the epistles that he wrote. I remember being in a a pastor's office one day and he was downgrading, learning. You know, these guys would study Greek and philosophy and Hebrew.

And you know, they still don't need that. You get the Holy Spirit, you gotta go. Well he was about as empty handed as anybody I knew. And if the Holy Ghost he was an example of the Holy Ghost. Well, the Holy Ghost must be bankrupt.

That's all I can think. And then I turned, he had a very fine library. I said, you know I had so much of those books. Oh sure, they're fundamental. You can't find any rubbish on those shelves. I said, most of them are rubbish.

No sir, you're insulting me. What do you mean? I said they're all written. I said there, Dr. Adam Clark wrote that he was brilliant in Hebrew and Greek. You couldn't trust him. I read Adam Clark a lot, but he just dismissed a man with an intellect.

Dr. David Livingstone he was a doctor, split Africa open on the gospel. Dr. Hudson Taylor went to England, China. C .P. Studd was a graduate of I think Oxford or Cambridge. And I went down the list of books and I said, now you can't find one man who is a great expositor.

There is one exception and it is Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones who now is writing a series of books on the epistles to the Romans. God doesn't despise intellect. After all, why did he make us all dumb? I know a lot of us think we are.

I do, I mean I don't think you are. But at times I think I am I'm so terribly limited in my knowledge in my understanding. But this thing on top of my shoulder isn't just to hang my hat on. I mean I'm supposed to use it.

And it isn't that I might have a different hairstyle or something else. It should be full of grey matter and brains. And you know what they say the deeper the roots go. You've got grey matter in your head and if the roots go deep and you blot a bit, your hair turns grey.

You've got a couple of samples there. And my wife the wiser you are, the roots go deep and your hair goes grey. And if you have no brains, your hair falls out. But anyhow that may not be a perfectly true analogy.

I agree. No, you have just received it. The man said the man said I used to have waves. Now I'm only the beach. It's amazing when you think of the comprehension of the apostle. If you include the epistle to the hebrew he wrote 14 epistles.

And you know he never mentions anything about the roman empire. He never mentions anything about the art in greece or anywhere else. And people have thrown this up to this great man and said why didn't he tell us anything about what was going on in the day in which he lived.

Why didn't he tell us about the beauties of the creation round about. Well, they actually said the same thing about Calvin, you know Calvin was writing his famous institute. And somebody said he never lifted his eyes up to see the glory of the Alps.

You know the sun setting on the snow and it goes pink and it takes your breath. You know, I gave him the Taj Mahal. People said to me, did you see the Taj Mahal. I said no, I passed right by it. Oh everybody goes and sees it in the moonlight.

They're nearly faint when they see it. Well, even faint without seeing it too. But Paul Calvin never was interested, he was so down to the spiritual life. I think this is true of the apostle Paul. They said Saint Bernard.

Was it Bernard of Clairvaux that wrote the hymn. What did he write. I've forgotten the hymn right now that beautiful hymn on the harp anyhow they said he went right round the shores of one of the most famous lakes in the whole world Lake Geneva.

And at the end of the day he said where's the famous lake. I heard so much about. And he had his cowl. Monks used to wear a cowl over their head to keep the wind off. And he was meditating anyhow on the back of a horse.

And he hardly ever saw anything. In other words he was so preoccupied. Was it. It was an American writer. I think Lloyd Douglas that used the phrase the magnificent obsession. Did you write that phrase.

And I think this is Paul's. His preoccupation is saturated if you like from his head to his toes. He's saturated with the things of God. He's no time to look at the mountains and say look at all the mountains.

Look what the Greeks did here. They said the same about Paschal that he was so wrapped up in the internal world maybe the eternal world that he never saw the world outside. Well Paul is exactly in the same condition.

He has a job to do and I think you can summarize it the intensity of his life in one statement that he made this one thing I do. He was never divided in his attention. He never got pushed onto a sideline.

He kept on the main track. I want to say about this ambassadorship. We are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us. Let's say this first of all the ambassador is not a self-appointed man.

The Ambassador Is Divinely Appointed

He can't choose his ambassadorship, he is selected. Usually it's considered a reward. Somebody said I think not long ago that Tim Stone that gives millions away was going to be appointed as an ambassador for giving money to Nixon campaign.

That may be wrong, it may be right but men really covet this honour but they can't choose it and it should be that no man can drive his way into it, he is supposed to be selected for many reasons but he is selected and he is appointed.

He is not self-appointed. It's an appointment made by somebody else for him and the apostle Paul remembers the time when he says he was apprehended of Jesus Christ on the road of life. He was suddenly seized by a hand that said look I want you you're my property and again you remember that on that Damascus road he says God revealed himself to me and then God took him into the wilderness for about three and a half years and he said God revealed himself in me.

Now I don't think there are many people that God has revealed himself inside, a lot of it is external. They remember happy day that fixed my choice on thee my saviour and my God. They got inside the kingdom and they sat down on a camp stool and they haven't budged for twenty or thirty years.

You know, that's not what God desires, this is not true of the apostle Paul, he says that God seized all of him. I was apprehended of Jesus Christ. So that this man is not a self-appointed man, not only is he not only self-appointed but he is not self-supported.

The Ambassador Relies on God’s Resources

When a man goes to a country, say again that Mr. Nixon called somebody this week and said you're the ambassador for instance if there was an ambassadorship to Turkey he would say now you're going to Turkey and we have a book here of protocol and I want you to read it, you won't be going for six months now you've got to study all the things study their customs and do get this in your mind that when you go to that country you're not going at your own expense.

You're going with the backing of the United States behind you. You know when an ambassador goes to another country, say the ambassador now in England, we don't keep the 4th of July, we just gave you your liberty but the 4th of July we just function normally.

But if you go to London and go to the American Embassy you think you're in Washington at the White House man alive, they live it up or a better day. You like to feed more eh Thanksgiving. Well nobody stops working in England on Thanksgiving, oh you do sure, you go into the White House they have a turkey this size and ham and oh boy do they live it up now if you went to the embassy in London you'd find it exactly if somebody could drop you there you know magically take you out in America and drop you right there.

You'd say, they'd say where are you? Well of course I'm in America, it's Thanksgiving. See the flag, look at all these things. In other words the law of England has no jurisdiction inside the doors of the embassy inside that embassy you can do as you like, you can be plotting a murder you can be plotting the overthrow of England you can be passing secret messages on to another country and nobody can come inside unless of course we've got this famous thing now we call bugging, but normally that doesn't exist.

This is a little colony and Paul remember he said we're a colony of heaven. You know this home, your home, my home should be a little bit of heaven, the Irish sing a song don't they, a little bit of heaven fell from out the skies one day my wife's Irish, pure blooded Irish.

So I've got to be very cautious here and this little bit of heaven fell from out the skies one day and the angels looked and when they saw it looked so green and grand and a tear fell from their eye and they said we'll leave it there you know and it's a little bit of heaven.

Well actually Paul said that we are a colony of heaven now if this doesn't apply in our individual houses it should do. But it surely should in God's house. You know it ought to be as thrilling to go to God's house on the Lord's day filled with the glory of God as it is to slip out of time into eternity.

Longing for Heaven and the Presence of Christ

I told him a minute or two ago about these men that they used to anticipate heaven. Paul said he was itching to get there. You know you say to somebody man I remember a man, a communist said to me one day, I used to work in a factory.

I don't work now, I'm a preacher. But I used to work in a factory and I remember this man saying to me in the factory one day he said you believe in heaven. What's it like? I tried to tell him conventionally out of what I knew of the word of God and the revelation.

He said it must be a pretty lousy place. What do you mean a lousy place? Well he said I've got a neighbour he's a deacon. He's a deacon and he was taken sick on Wednesday got worse yesterday and they were scared to death.

He was going to die. Do you know what they did? They got on bicycles they ran to all the church members and they prayed oh God don't take him to heaven let him stay down here. It must be pretty lousy up there.

If a guy wants to stay in this mother hole he said why doesn't he want to stay? You know that's the attitude of many people. Oh he thought he was going to die. Well Paul didn't, he says you know I like to serve you, I like to have revivals.

I like to raise the dead. I like to put brains in stupid people that have come off the rocker and all the rest of it he said. But what longing to get there you know. But I may know him and the power of his resurrection.

And it should be that the house of God is so filled with the presence and glory of God that it ought to be as exciting to go to the sanctuary on the Lord's days it will be to slip away. You know we get excited about it in the meetings we say praise God.

We're going to go to heaven walk on streets with gold, red crowns and hearts and everybody else. And as soon as you're going to die. Oh pray pray he's going to die. You know he's going to die, wouldn't it be awful.

You know if he gets to heaven and starts wearing a crown before us now I know what we like to do. We like to keep loved ones here. There's no question about it. But to a lot of people heaven isn't exciting.

It's almost inevitable. I mean oh yeah it's pretty rough isn't it, I mean you know we've worked all our lives for this, just got wall to wall carpeting in the swimming pool and my husband died. I mean that's shocking isn't it you know.

And that's just about it. If you were really honest it isn't as exciting as it ought to be. Have you got the swimming pool. Is that what I'm talking about. Laughter. But the fact is you know that in other words whether you have a swimming pool or not material things can so possess us and really blind our vision to the glory of the world.

But it ought not to be that. You know we sing sometimes blessed assurance Jesus is mine. Oh what a foretaste of glory divine. I often feel like saying you know I've been in mass meetings of my own I've been in some Billy Graham's meeting shut up.

Now get up and tell me honestly how often do you have a foretaste of glory divine. How often is the anointing of God so real to you that you feel boy you're spitting the stones out your mouth. You know you're eating the grapes of Eshgal and you're licking your lips with the honey.

And boy you've got into the promised land. It's marvelous boy this is something it doesn't come like that often. But if it did what a difference it would make. You wouldn't have to whip people almost to get them to church if the glory of God was there more than emotion.

I'm not against hand clapping. I'm against it. When you try and work God up and say well we've got to start the meeting this way because the glory never comes down unless you shout and sing in class. Oh forget it.

You can become as ritualistic. In fact many of our churches so called are not ritualistic. They're rutualistic. They got in a rut. You know what a rut is? It's a grave with the ends not felt. That's all it is.

You just get down in a trough and everything will start this way. Praise God. We used to go to the Presbyterians.

And the pastor would say we'll sing the hymn 127.

Well that's too bad too whether it's Pentecostal or Presbyterian but the thing is that we we get so set in our ways. Don't we that the glory and the beauty and the wonder. Oh and I said in a big church not long ago the pastor said now look the spirit has his way in our church.

There were a lot of preachers there one morning so I said to them you let the spirit have his way in your church. Yes brother. Yeah we got out of the rut of the Baptist. You know we're Baptist but we're not in the rut.

Oh and I said can the spirit have his way in your church. Yes. Why did you mimeograph last Wednesday what do you have to do on Sunday morning. Because that's what they do usually in the office. They mimeograph you know the first thing will be so and so and there'll be a prayer and there'll be this and there'll be something and we mimeograph we act like the spirit can have his way.

I don't know what way it is but anyhow he can have his way if he follows the printed program you see. But it should not be that there's nothing more glorious. Alright so it should be a foretaste of glory divine.

Christ Himself as the Center of Christian Life

It should be that the house of God is exciting with a not something that merely tickles my fancy or stirs my emotion. But I don't know what you think about this. But you know I sometimes think we need a new Christology.

We ought to start right at the virgin birth and forget gifts and forget miracles and deal with Christ himself because he is the sum of the substance and the centrum of the conference and the light of the gospel.

You can say as much as you like about being filled with the Holy Ghost. But when you've done and said everything as I said in this big church the other week and there were all kinds of people there and I said now if you go to the holiness people you stand up and you say I'm saved.

And five years after I found I've been wandering in the wilderness and I got sanctified. Amen brother that's right, good old language, Canaan language now that's what you say if you go to the Nazarenes and holiness people you say, if you go to the Candy Castle you say I got saved.

And six months after hallelujah I got the baptism of the Holy of Wonders, great, great. Oh boy he's my man. I don't go much for the sanctified business but he's my man, you see he said he got the gifts and so forth, great now I said why don't you treat yourself, everybody else is tired.

I said you know when you get up you stand up and say I was saved when I was sixteen and filled with the Holy Ghost when I was eighteen. Why don't you get up one day and forget all about that kind of language and just stand up and say very sweetly Christ lives in me.

I said when you sit down your wife may nudge you in the ribs and say Jack when did that happen, I didn't know we never talked. What do you mean I didn't know. Oh I knew you were saved but I mean I never thought you know when you come in at the door oh Jesus is coming.

I never woke up at night and looked and said my I'm sleeping with Jesus, he's lovely. No I never thought that was that Jesus blasting the kids the other day in the yard, was that Jesus yelling on the phone.

He didn't seem very much like Jesus to me but you see it's again we get used to terminology, we get used to phrases. You get by with those people because you're saved and sanctified, you get by with these people because you're saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, but change that and I don't care, and I defy anybody under heaven only, there is nothing higher this side of eternity than to say Christ lives in me.

When the Virgin Mary was pregnant with Jesus Christ she could have said to the world Christ lives in me. She knew it because of what God had said to her. Wasn't she the most favored woman that ever lived, that Christ could be actually in the matrix of the Virgin Mary.

Well in the same way, not physical but spiritually, Christ lives in me and then I'm the most favored person in the whole world. Come hell or high water come governments or go governments, any, Christ lives in me.

Alright then it's a foretaste of glory divine again. Ephesians 2 at the end says ye are the habitation of God by the Spirit Christ dwelling in you, it doesn't dwell in a temple. You can make it out of sword you can make it out of plywood if you like you can make it like the poor old tabernacle in the wilderness, a few props and badger skins and all the other crazy looking things or you can put a steeple on top if you want and stained glass windows that won't bring the Holy Ghost and it won't necessarily keep him out, but the thing is this, that we must realize that he dwells in us, he doesn't dwell in the atmosphere you know when we say let thy spirit fall on me, but the Holy Spirit isn't atmosphere, isn't breath, he isn't person, when he is come, he he Jesus says he all the time.

So then a man who is an ambassador is a he's not self appointed. He's apprehended and you and I have been apprehended of Jesus Christ. We've been born of his Spirit and by the grace of God we've been filled with his Spirit.

Not only is he not apprehended I say again, not only is he not self appointed, he's not self supported. You know this is an area you could not only take a night, good night, you could take weeks in this look at the text like this all things are yours and ye have Christ and Christ is God.

Or again God has given Jesus Christ and with him he has freely given us, now if it said things it would be alright, that he has freely given us all things, that it is again, all things are yours and ye have Christ and Christ is God.

Or again God has given Jesus Christ and with him he has freely given us all things. Now now this is the satisfaction that we have in knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ and all the resources of God are at our disposal.

If any man lack wisdom let him ask of God. Now you need an awful lot of wisdom to be an ambassador or you couldn't go in there and not know your ABC's and not know protocol or not know what's going on, you need to know an awful lot of things.

If you're going to represent your country in another country so he's not self supported. My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus or Matthew 6 .33 one of the great texts I've hung on to all my life.

Matthew 6 .33 is what? Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things you read sometimes for your own interest. How many times Paul talks about these things, all things are yours.

None of these things move me. It's fantastic how he plays on that word, he rings the changes all the time and yet God has said that all things, because I put him right in the center, I give him priority.

You see, once a man is seized as an ambassador he can't have interest in other things this is his sole job. He's got a huge job, he's representing the United States in a foreign country and everything he does is monitored by the nation that he's in and by the nation that he's working for now he's not self-supported.

He's got all his resources. He's not self-anointed. He's not self-appointed, he's not self-supported. He's not self-anointed. The authority he has isn't his own authority. You see, he might say well, oh Mr. Nixon but you're sending me to Russia as the ambassador, you know how many millions Russia has, you know this, you know that and Mr. Nixon says, look here, I want to tell you this number one, America is the richest nation in the world, number two, he didn't quite prove, now America has the most powerful army in the world, the most powerful navy, the most powerful air force, and he goes down there and he says, now all these things are behind you, when you stand there in front of the Russians you can know that all the resources of America are behind you now this authority that he has is invested in him as long as he's pleasing to that one who appointed him there should he for some reason make some transgression, that authority is taken from him.

I think sometimes when I see Mr. Nixon on TV, supposing for argument he was thrown out of the White House well let's put it in a not because of the Watergate, but let's say Mr. Johnson, the day after Mr. Johnson stepped out of the White House he was an ordinary man on the street, he couldn't sign a document he couldn't ring up Russia and say I'm representing, he represents nobody he's lost his authority well, it's true he's still a millionaire it's true that he's made his place in history but the fact is that that authority that he had when he was inside of that White House and he had the title of a president it invested him with the most awesome power maybe in the whole world but let him lose that authority he's out there on the street, he's just a nobody, he's just Mr. Johnson he owns a ranch and not a few cattle and his wife owns a radio, TV station and what not, but he's no good diplomatically he can't go over and say I'm troubled about Israel and I want Air Force Jet Number One to take me to Israel tomorrow, oh forget it brother you lost your authority yesterday and you know this is equally true in the life of the individual the unction that he has, that God gives us, that unction, that anointing can be lost and I know men who are derelict on the road, I remember preaching in Australia, there was a man, a certain man on the right rather distinguished looking and the preacher said to me you see the man on the right there I said yes, he said you know 25 years ago that man was shaking every air that he went through in this country and he said no longer, he lost that anointing, he lost that authority in the very context of that verse where Paul says in Ephesians 6, 19 he says pray for me that utterance may be given to me that I may speak with boldness now he's very conscious, he needs that boldness, he needs that authority he needs that power, because words are one thing when I say them but if an ambassador said the same words that I might say in an ambassadorial office he could create a war, he could bring fraction and division and enmity and set a nation up against another nation, but again if that anointing is gone those words have no power at all now also, let's say this this man, this ambassador he's not self-promoting.

You can't think of a man going as an ambassador from here to another country and the first thing he does, get in and say well, they say have you credentials he said oh yes, here's my high school diploma and I got my BA here and I got something else somewhere else, he's not there he's not self-promoting at all he just forgets everything, he is an ambassador, and the moment he's an ambassador his individual responsibilities it might take him away from wife children, business interests and other things, but the honor of being an ambassador excludes or pardon me, eclipses all the other offices he ever had.

The Ambassador Is Not Self-Defended or Self-Directed

So when he gets into this position he is not promoting himself and he's not defending himself. He doesn't go there with a sense of fear. I say again that once he gets inside of that little embassy that he lives in as an ambassador that he has all the rights of being in America you can't invade his privacy.

One thing he has he has direct communication for instance let's use again the ambassador of America to Russia he has a private line, I guess they tough it. I wouldn't be surprised at that but he has a private diplomatic bag and you know the men that would take a I don't know how they do it now, but in the old days they used to take a man and he had a bag and he had a chain around and he put diplomatic letters in that leather bag and he'd sleep with it on the train he'd take it off while he undressed and then he had to put it there on his cuff and lock it before he went to sleep, of course they found ways of doing that, they took a knife and slit the bottom of the bag and got letters out on certain occasions and sewed them up while the fellow was asleep, but by and large he has definite private communication from Washington's White House to Russia if he's the ambassador there now isn't that beautifully carried out enough.

We're ambassadors for Jesus Christ we have direct communication with the Father, you see this is why Paul says when he swaggers at the end of Romans 8 he almost puts his shoulders back and says well you can all get off here.

It makes me laugh, he says well what's going to separate me from the love of Christ, things present things to come, things again he's on neither things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature so separate me from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ.

Now to me he's saying this look you can wall me in sure you can cut me off, you can put me in prison and handcuff me to the wall and put a man there with a club ready to clobber me if I break away, you can do all that you can take me from my friend, you can take me from my church you can take my bible away from me you can shut me up in a dirty rotten prison and they used to be dirty they weren't like these modern hotels that we put our prisoners in where they go on strike if they can't have coloured TV, you know some of the poor guys in prison still aren't black and white.

Isn't that awful, but the prison he was in was rat infested and slimy walls and filth and he says well so what have you done? If ever you go to Scotland off the coast of Scotland there's a tower, maybe half as wide as this house, it goes high in the sky and they put a man called Samuel Rutherford.

I don't know if you've ever read his letters, if you haven't you've missed one of the greatest things of a predatory husband about that, Samuel Rutherford's letters and in the back of the book there's a hymn of I think it has about 27 stanzas and it begins with the sands of time are sinking the dawn of heaven breaks the summer morn outside call that fair sweet morn awake dark, dark has been the midnight, the day spring is at hand and glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land.

He says a strange thing in that hymn by the way, he says the bride eyes not her garments but her dear bride groom's face, I married lots and lots, I've never seen it happen but anyhow that's what it says, it says in the hymn that the bride eyes not her garments but her dear bride groom's face.

Then he says I will not gaze on glory but on the king of grace not on the crown he giveth but on his pierced hands when throned where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land, now they put him in that prison, why?

Because he wouldn't bow to the state and they rode out in a boat and took him his meals, cold messy meals and the walls were slimy and the floor was damp and there was a grill up on the in this, how you know, with its peak no window, just bath and the spray would splash in from the sea and he had to shiver and sleep as best he could and he'd had no sanitation.

He kept in there an awful while and somebody went to see him one day and said well, you know, I don't know what you think about this, you know, I believe John's comfort has come but it's a pretty long deal, I mean you know, you've always said what do you say, no good thing will haunt some man but what, do you think these are the best things that God's given you I mean, our hearts is warm and we have hot meals and a couple of servants and you're one of the greatest preachers in the world and I just saw a rat go saw that rat go past me.

I couldn't believe it, these walls are slimy, look at this hey this isn't much of a place for you, is it. Well he said while you were here now of course you opened the door, let the sun in and it looks bad.

But he said, you know when you're not here, he said those stones shine like rubies and diamonds and everything, he said sometimes I think I'm in the city you know, it's walls are made of jasper and he said sometimes that door there doesn't look like a grill, it looks as though it's made of one great big solid pearl and so you know I never found Christ as precious.

He preached in a place called Anworth and he said Ian Anworth was not heaven and preaching was not Christ, but in this sea-beak prison my lord and I hold Christ. And a bit later he said I've wrestled on toward heaven against storm and wind and tide and like a weary traveller that leaneth on his guide, I bless the hand that guideth and I bless the heart that plans when I'm thrown where glory dwelleth and Emmanuel's land wouldn't have it any other way.

And he said, you know it were a well-spent journey from the moment he apprehended me to the gates of the city it would be worth it. I forget the exact poetry but I know it's this, it were a well-spent journey, though seven deaths lay between though I had to be die on the lack like they used to stretch men out you know and pull your limbs out put the thumbscrew in and give you the water treatment.

Sometimes you had to drink it. Sometimes it would just drop, drop, drop till your head swell like a balloon. There were some wonderful things the Roman church invented most of them you know they had an iron maiden a beautiful looking model.