Audio Sermon: Die, Wait, and Get Alone — Leonard Ravenhill

Knowing God Through Jesus’ Prayer

Let's look at the book, the Gospel, as recorded by John. Let me remind you again, there are not four Gospels, there's one Gospel told by four different people. You can think of the Gospels this way, like the plan in the tabernacle of old, it had an outer court, it had a holy place, and it had the holiest of all.

You can think of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, at least I do, as the outer court, John as the holy place, and John 17 as the holiest of holies. If I were to ask you tonight, why did Jesus come into the world, what would you say?

I think some would say, well, he came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. But you know, the primary purpose of Jesus was not to come into the world and save us from hell.

That's a fringe benefit, as amazing as it is. Why did he come into the world? Well, let's get it from him himself. John 17, this is a most amazing prayer. Oh, look at the last verse of the previous chapter, in case you've had a rough week.

These things I've spoken unto you, that ye might have peace. In the world, you may have tribulation. No? Nobody's got that perversion. In the world ye shall, you what? You shall have. Our David tells a story, the man said, he's talking about different versions.

He said, well, there are ten versions, five wise and five foolish. Pretty good. John 17, okay, verse two. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

And this is life eternal, that they may know thee, the only true God. And the only purpose that you and I exist is that we may know God. I've discussed this with a few fellows this week. You see, we've stayed on the perimeter of all this stuff.

We're here to be forgiven. We're here to have assurance. We're here for this, that, and the other. But the Word of God here says that we may know thee, the only true God. I don't believe that five people out of every hundred who profess the name of Jesus know God.

They know the Word of God. They don't know the God of the Word. You can't get anywhere unless you know the God of the Word. And there's no skipping the basis. It's a case of going from one point to another.

And everybody has to go through the same school. There are many schools, but one, of course, is a school of tribulation. I want to go back to that twelfth chapter, though. John 12 and verse 24. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.

But if it die, it bring forth much fruit. You know, that little word, except, is very, very interesting. It's a favorite word, actually, with John. You know, he uses it no less than 13 times in his version of the Gospel.

Except a man be born again. Except ye eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. Except we see his hands and his feet. It's except, except, all the way through. You know, this is an amazing chapter. Look at verse 1.

Death, Opposition, and the Fruitfulness of Revival

I'm not preaching tonight. I'm trying to teach. I'm not much good at either, but anyhow. Chapter 12 and verse 1. Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus, which had been dead, he was there.

He raised from the dead. Isn't that wonderful? Come on, cheer up. Maybe you are dead. Either you are dead or you have been dead. But what happens? Well, leap over the chapter a minute with me here. It says, Lazarus, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

Verse 10 says, the chief priest consulted that they might put Lazarus to death. Why? Dear Lord, you think all the nation will be excited. You know, as soon as you are alive, you will be a target for everybody to shoot at.

They won't bother you while you are dead, but as soon as you really get redeemed, filled with the Spirit of God, walk in purity, even your pastor will shoot at you. Well, what does a pastor say about that?

Somebody in the congregation? But when Lazarus was raised from the dead, why did he do that? Say, have you ever noticed that when men are cursing, you never hear them say, well, what do they say? They take the name of the Lord in vain, for Christ's sake.

You never hear them say, for Buddha's sake or for Confucius' sake. Why not? Because Jesus Christ is still the greatest opposition that the devil has. He has power, he has authority. And every time they saw Lazarus, they were rebuked.

Maybe some of them went to the funeral, said a great oration over him. Lazarus, one of our most generous benefactors in the church, a devout Jew, one of the most remarkable men alive, they buried him.

Then Jesus goes and wakes him up. Don't you wish you'd come and do that to some of your deacons? Lazarus raised from the dead and immediately becomes a target. There's no such thing as being a Christian in a world like this without receiving opposition, criticism, bitterness, obstructions, misunderstanding, misrepresentation.

It's a package deal. It's not a job for sissies. That reminds me of a man that was talking with a Christian one day, and the man began to ask this man some questions. And the fellow said to him, well, why are you a Mormon?

Oh, he said, because my father was a Mormon, and his father was a Mormon. He said, oh. He said, well, you say you're a Christian. Why are you a Christian? He said, because my father was a preacher, my grandfather was a preacher, but I myself was born again of the Spirit of God.

And he said, well, if you hadn't been born, what would you be? He said, a Mormon. Oh, he said, you're a fool. He said, no, he said, I'm born again of the Spirit of God. There's an old holiness book, I don't know if you've seen it, called The Possibilities of Grace by Lowry.

If you ever see it, buy it. And if you don't want it, give it to me. The possibilities of grace have never been measured. I used to think that God went off the production line, because they told me that in church.

When the epistles closed, God kind of shut down business, and he finished producing those amazing men. But today I've been reading of some of them. But you see, there's a price. Let me go back into this text a minute.

Except the man, verily, verily, I say unto you, except the corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, to bideth alone. Who is he saying it to? Well, verse 19 says, The Pharisees therefore said, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing.

Behold, the world is gone after him. You see, that's what happens when revival comes. You don't have to make altar calls. People make the altar call. You don't have to beg. People immediately become generous and gracious.

And this is angering the Jews. Every time Jesus goes down the street, either they see Jesus, who is the Lord of life, or they see Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead. And they're blazing mad about it.

It's a reflection on their religion. They had formality. They had ritual. They had organization. They had systems of purity. But they did not have life. And Jesus concerned that they might have life. Verse 20 says, There were certain Greeks among them that came up to worship him at the feast.

Remember, these are the intellectual boys. The same came, therefore, to Philip, which of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus. Now, that's the test when you go to the house of God.

“We Would See Jesus” and the Necessity of Personal Repentance

I've sent in two or three preacher fellows this week. That scripture's got hold of me more and more in the last two weeks than ever before, where Paul, he's a battle-scarred warrior. He has no pension.

He has no support. He limped, I'm sure he did, because his body had been battered. I think his cheek was slit and healed up because he'd been stoned. Dear Lord. He'd been dead so often, he welcomed death.

He's one of the most insane men that ever lived. He said, I glory in tribulation. I don't just grit my teeth and say, Oh, Lord, I'm sanctified. If there'd been another hour in the day, I'd have broken down.

He says, I glory in tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches. All the things that we try to escape, he embraced them. They were all grist to his mill. I glory in tribulation. As I've said to you often, do you know what amusement, do you know what entertainment is?

It's the devil's substitute for joy. And the more joy you have in the Lord, the less entertainment you need. And yet we're suffocating with entertainment in these days. Sir, we would see Jesus. When you leave the sanctuary, it's not how good the message was or how well the choir sang.

The thing is, did you see Jesus? I've emphasized again and again in the last few weeks to myself. It's one thing when the world outside criticizes the church. It's something else when Jesus criticized it.

I get young people saying to me, I'm going to the mission field. We're going on a trip or something. Our preacher is a good preacher. Every week he says, remember the last words of Jesus will go into all the world and preach the gospel.

They were nothing of the kind. There's not a man in the world who can prove that. The last words of Jesus to the disciples will go into all the world. The last words of Jesus to the church will repent, repent, repent, repent five times over.

We're sending people to the mission field who haven't even repented themselves. Reproduction is a law of life. As I said, I think, last week when they had the revival in 1905, away there in Korea, you could not be a member of a church because you knew the Apostles' Creed or because you could recite the 23rd Psalm or something.

The only way you could be a member was that you personally had birthed another Christian. Not when they came to the altar and you prayed with them. Forget it. You had to get a target and pray and believe God for that person and say, this is my father.

He was saved because I interceded. This is my mother or somebody. Then when every person had a person born of themselves, use a simple analogy again. Does a shepherd bring forth a sheep? Surely doesn't.

He's the shepherd. Does sheep bring forth the lambs? And that's our job, to reproduce. I could go to a church, I was going to say for a hundred years, I'd be getting old if I did. I could go to a church for ten years and if nobody ever got saved, they wouldn't worry me.

I mean, say through the preaching, these wretched altar calls we have Sunday after Sunday. It's not the pastor's business to be a soul winner. It's the sheep's business to be so alive that they reproduce.

Normally, the delight of a young couple, they get married normally, there's offspring. Boy, if we, I said to somebody this week, one of my cruel jokes, supposing the Lord recalled every malfunctioning preacher like they recalled malfunctioning cars in Detroit.

There'd be 99 of the pulpits are across the nation empty. Who preaches the whole counsel of God? I don't know if I quoted this last week, it's worth quoting again anyhow. A fellow called me and he said, Mr. Renniell, my church doesn't want me, I'm going out and speaking in the streets and he says, God has called me to preach the full gospel.

I thought, well, that's an old one anyhow. Someone asked me once, do you preach a full gospel? I said, why, do you think I preach an empty one? I don't have an empty one. But this is what he said and I thought it was very wise.

God has called me to preach a full gospel and he said that includes hell. Your church doesn't preach a full gospel if it doesn't preach hell. If we don't preach judgment to come, we're not preaching a full gospel.

Most preachers are very selective. What did Paul say again? He says to Timothy, preach the word, be instant, in season, out of season. What's the other thing he says about it? Yeah, okay. And then the other thing he says which has stirred me so much just lately.

He says, study to show thyself approved unto the deacons. No? Prove to show yourself acceptable. You're a nice, gracious man. You'll go around and drink coffee and eat hamburgers or whatever you have.

You know, be a nice guy amongst the folk. The only job I have on this earth is to please God. Study to show thyself approved unto God. I need God's approval. Before I deliver a message, after I deliver it.

Has it been satisfying to God? Approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Okay. So we would see Jesus. There's a great Baptist church. It's on Wealthy Street in, Wealthy Street, where is that?

Grand Rapids. It holds about 1 ,200 and I've had two or three so-called revivals there. The pastor's a big old German fella. Comes on the platform Sunday morning. There's 1 ,200 people. He just raised his hand and he yells, God is in his holy temple and all the earth keeps silent before him.

Boys, you never see anybody go to sleep in that church. You never see any children get up and run around. But when you get up, there's a rim on the pulpit and inscribed inside it says, Sirs, we would see Jesus.

And that's our whole business, to bring people into a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 23, Jesus answered them and said, The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.

Glorified, what do you mean? This is one of the most amazing pageants of glory in the life of Jesus. How does the first verse begin? He raised a man from the dead. Didn't that glorify the Father? They'd just had a procession down Main Street.

Women were screaming, tearing branches off the trees, throwing the garments in the way. The whole town's excited and he's talking about yet glorifying the Father. He glorified him by raising Lazarus from the dead.

He glorified him by rebuking the Pharisees and the others. Sure, he's, again, he stirred the town. Look at verse 19. The Pharisees, therefore, said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail, how ye prevail nothing.

Behold, the whole world is gone after him. Now look at verse 37. Though he had done many mighty miracles among them, yet they believed not on him. You know, people say, all you have to do is believe. Well, read the end of the second chapter of John.

Not now, when you go home. Everybody jumps into John chapter 3 with its great mercy. He must be born again. There are four musts in that chapter. What does it say there? At the end of the second chapter, that many believed on him, but he wouldn't commit himself to him because he knew what was in the heart of man.

Believing isn't enough. There's something more than believing. There's some miracle God has to do by his wonderful grace in us. But look, he's laying down now in this chapter. Verse 23. Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life for my sake shall find it.

If any man serve me, let him follow me. You see, here's the whole essence of the Christian life. You know what those people out there in the world are doing? They're just crazy tonight. They want to live.

They want to live. And they're dying to live. Where the true Christian is living to die. Makes all the difference in the world. Isn't it simple? I wish I'd had some corn. Now, when we talk about corn in England, we think about wheat and barley.

You think about this big stuff that you chew at this time of the year. We give that to the horses in England. You take a little corn, an ear of corn, you take one of those little seeds off it. I remember a story in England, in the world in 1922.

Who was it? Howard Carter was the man. Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon. They were in the Valley of the Kings away there in Egypt. Thousands of people had gone down those valleys searching for whatever they could find.

They saw a little mound and they knocked it away. And when they opened it and got in and shone a flashlight, there was more gold in there than had ever been discovered before. It was a King Tut, as they call him.

King Tutankhamen. Or if you're a scholar, Amenhotep II. He was an ex-brother to the Pharaoh that beat up the children of Israel. And they saw that amazing gold. And while they got the sarcophagus off the top, and then they saw a model of the king, all his features in pure solid gold, his hands were bound with some bandages that somehow survived 5 ,000 years.

One of the fellows that was there said, Lord Carnarvon said to him, young man, dust those fingers. As he did, between the fingers there were some seeds. And he asked, could he take them? Yes, sure. What good are they?

You know, after 5 ,000 years they germinated. They kept the treasure of life. You can't find life, no scientist on earth can find life in a little seed like that. And while it stays there, you can't do anything for it.

He says, your life and mine may be like a little seed. There's no beauty that you should desire it. It has no fragrance. It has no value. It has no legs. It can't run away. It has no wings. It can't fly away.

It's the most helpless, helpless, helpless thing. You see, we think God's looking for efficient men. He isn't. He's not looking for supermen. Somebody once asked Hudson Taylor. He lived in a town where I had a pastorate.

Of course, that was before I was there. Somebody asked him one day, the secret of his success. Why have you been successful in going to China inland? Everybody else went to the coast and they had their church.

He went right inland China. That was wild. They hated the white devils at that time. He went in there and had tremendous success. Well, why do you think God granted you that favor? He said he'd been looking for years for the weakest person he could find and at last he found me.

It's not strength, it's weakness. My strength, he said, is made perfect in weakness. What does it say at the end of the 40th chapter in Isaiah? If you ever come to my office, all my pictures are eagles and I've a lot of ceramics.

Have you? I've room for one or two more but anyhow, that's by the way. And you know, if I preached on that, somebody sends me a picture of an eagle or a model of an eagle. Beautiful eagles. Or a book.

And nearly everybody that preaches doesn't stay with the verse. He's so wanting to mount up with wings, he forgets. The first caution there is they that wait upon the Lord. A dear doctor told me, the trouble with Americans, we're activists.

We want to be there, we want to be here, we want to be there. They that wait upon the Lord. Do you think he'll ever go to a conference where everybody wants to wait? Huh? Go to some big hotel in Dallas and they say we're going to wait.

We're not going to eat, we're going to be here for four days. Just waiting on the Lord. Boy, they'd walk out in ten minutes. Find some excuse. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. What does it go on to say?

He giveth power to who? The warriors? No, to the faint. And to those who have no might, he increases strength. You see, we talk about doing things in the spirit. Most of it's done in the flesh. Anyhow, we rationalize it.

This is the way to do it. Well, what do you wait on? Wait. One of the last arts in the church today is meditation. I want to write a book sometime if I get time. I'd like to write a book on worship. Do you know what the ultimate in prayer is?

Speechlessness. I do not believe that praying in the spirit is necessarily praying in tongues. It might be, I believe it is. I believe that praying is when you've no language. As it says in the eighth chapter of Romans, doesn't it?

Groanings which cannot be uttered. Here's a little woman going to church. Who is it that shuts her down? It's the preacher. The preacher looks at Hannah and he says, She's drunk. She's intoxicated. Remember, she's going there time after time after time and she doesn't say a single word.

But she prevailed in prayer because she brought the answer to her prayer. And I believe it's the same with true worship that just at the deepest form of prayer is speechless. The deepest form of worship is speechless.

I believe it's speechless adoration. I've told some of you before but let me tell you this quickly. Dr. Tozer sent to me one day, Look, you see that rug? I said, Yes. He said, I bought it in Kresge. Kresge was the grandfather of Kmart.

I gave 69 cents for it. It was 3 feet long, 25 inches wide. And he used these words. He said, Len, I come in my office in the morning. I lift the phone, call my secretary, say, Go home. I can't interview anybody today.

I've no dictation today. I just want to worship. And that frail little man just pointed the finger again at the rug and he said, You know what? I get on my, on my belly, use a good old Bible word, I get on my belly at 8 o 'clock in the morning and I'm there till 10 and 11 and 12 and even 1 o 'clock.

4 hours, 5 hours without saying single, one single word of prayer or one single word of praise. I've worshipped. I'm saying over, over in my, over, over in my mind how beautiful, how beautiful the sight of Thee must be.

Thine endless wisdom, Thine endless power. Now, what is prayer? Prayer is preoccupation with my needs. What is praise? Preoccupation with my blessings. What is, what is, what is worship? Preoccupation with God.

My goal is God Himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but God. Total union with Him. Communion with Him. Consumed with, by Him. We don't do that anymore. We want to make a bunch of notes and get an outline and get a tape and go home and have a good time.

I'm not one inch further up the hill than when we came. You've got one grain of wheat falls into the ground to die. The first thing is separation. You have the wheat like that. You take one of those little, what do you call them, little seeds off it, or grains?

The first thing is separation. You know, when I hear people say, I want to be like Jesus, I say, I doubt it very much. Do you want to be torn away from your family? Jesus had to leave His Father's glory.

A hymn writer, was it? Isaac Watts said, He left His Father's throne above so free, so infinite is grace. Emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race. Right from the beginning, it was separation.

He had to come out of the ivory palaces. Barraclough wrote that, an American. And the first time he sang it, I believe it was in England. I happened to hear him. Out of the ivory palaces into a world of war.

Only His great eternal love made my Seder go. And there's the first thing, it's the breakaway. You know, lots of people are all right. They go to Bible school or they go to church. But once they get out of that atmosphere, they go down like that.

Because they have no inward relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. They haven't learned to worship Him in spirit and in truth. You get the corn and you get the grain. The first thing is separation from the main stock.

And the next thing, you have to bury it. Well, that's the part we don't like. Again, it's helpless. It can't fly away. It can't do anything but do whatever the Master wants to do with it. And He puts it in the ground, in the dark, dirty ground.

Separate, lonely. To go through all the succeeding whatever happens in winter. Around there, we don't have much winter. But it has to stay there in the ground, in the darkness, in the loneliness. And you know, that's the thing that's the biggest test for most people, being alone.

But you never get anywhere unless you get to be alone. It's a paradox. I talked with a young man recently. He asked me what he should do, so I told him the same thing. I said, get a copy of the Gurnell's 1100 page book.

And then when he read that, there's another one 700 pages on, what is it, Looking Unto Jesus. And get another one on the Welsh Revival. I think I need a vacation. I said, brother, I think you need a cave.

We've got preachers all getting vacations. They need a cave. Get alone with God. Stay there. That's the cost, being alone. Pushed into the cold, into the dark. He's one of the most brilliant men that ever lived.

Read the 7th chapter of Acts when you go home. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was an intellectual. Maybe he knew a dozen languages. It says he was a statesman before ever he got the Ten Commandments.

He was mighty in word. He wasn't a mighty speaker. He stammered. But he was a lawmaker. He dined with kings and queens. He had the way, all the luxury of the world round about him. And you know, the trouble with most of our preachers today is not that they're not clever enough.

The problem is they're too clever. The Lord had to put him in the back side of the desert to cool down and get a new relationship with God. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it said Gabriel came down in the middle of the night glowing with eternity and put his hands on him.

And he sees an old stump of a tree there that it passed a hundred times. The thing's burning like crazy. And at the end of the day it's still burning. Isn't it amazing where God meets people? There's a little Baptist preacher in England.

He wasn't even a preacher. Fifteen years of age was going to a Baptist church. And it started to snow so the Lord improved it. He let him run into a Methodist church. And in the Methodist church that morning Spurgeon got saved.

Do you know he preached nearly twenty years in London and never once made an altar call? He said if you're troubled about your spiritual life meet me in my office at seven in the morning. He said the same to the congregation at nine.

At nine, twenty years of age he had five thousand people listening to him. He had no newsletters. He had no TV program. He had no hype. Let me say it again. It will do me good if not you. You never have to advertise a fire.

There are different kinds of fires. I know that. But Spurgeon had the presence of God with him. In fact, I talked with an old lady once who had heard him preach so often. She never heard me thank the Lord.

You think of a man he was despised in his day. Down the road you had F .B. Meyer, the Baptist preaching. At this end of London you had William Boo, the founder of the Salvation Army. In St. Paul's Cathedral you had a man called Dr. Clifford.

Do you know Dr. Clifford got three thousand people every Sunday afternoon at a Bible class? Come on, you've got some big places in Dallas. Not Sunday afternoon, particularly if the cowboys are playing.

The Lord loses every time the cowboys are around. They are just so lost in sport. The God of this world is sport. Let me put it, the king of this world is sport. The queen of this world is entertainment.

And between them they get the money, they get the time, they get everything. Be very careful. Very often we sing a hymn that our dear Indian brother loves it. It came in a minute ago. I lay in dust life's glory dead.

Do you want the will of God to this degree? Do you want the will of God to this degree that it can take a third off your life? Moses, forty years in the back side of that. He could never have made it from the royal palace with all its luxury, eating, drinking, dressing.

He could have never made it from there through the wilderness. God had to cool him down for forty years in the back side of the desert. And again we shrink from loneliness. The Lord Jesus himself had thirty years until he came to know, you have to sit down there somewhere brother, there's no room.

If you come late next week, we'll fine you five dollars. This dear brother's working overtime. But you see, you can't say it's a law. You've got to lose everything you have to gain everything he has. Jesus left everything.

Just the other week I was reading it, it hit me as never before. He was teaching in the synagogue. And what did they say? They said, we were not born of what? Fornication. Every day of his life they said he was a bastard.

You tell a man that, he'll just about knock your head off. You're doubting my mother's purity or something. But every day they said, we know who he is, no son of God, he's a son of Joseph. All these people are bewitched by him.

Who wants that scorn? Who wants that loneliness? Who wants that isolation? You know, every great man that God has used has had to walk alone. Sure, eagles are wonderful, they fly alone except at mating seasons.

I remember in mid-Atlantic on one of the ships, Queen Mary, Elizabeth, the United States and somebody said, there's a whale over there. And the whale goes alone except at mating seasons. Great animals walk alone, great men walk alone.

All those men, those Puritans, the greatest giants intellectually, I think since the Apostle Paul, lived separate lonely lives. It's true, often they had fellowship. But you see, they were walking on different levels.

There are so many different levels in the spiritual life. There's a common poem, what does it say? The heights the heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight but they while their companions slept were toiling upward in the night.

I've told some of you guys what the secret is. You're going to be something for God? Eat as little as you can within reason, sleep as little as you can within reason, see as little as you can of folk.

Get in the loneliness, hear God's voice, get God's vision. William Boole was half a Jew and half a Gentile. They put him out to the Methodist Church. When he got out, his wife grabbed his arm and she said, well darling, what are we going to do?

He said, we're going to the lost, the least, the last, the lost. Well, we aren't in the Methodist Church, it doesn't make any difference, he said. And so, when he first started, he was ridiculed on the stage in England.

And the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to him and said, you know, you'll never do anything in the Salvation Army. They didn't. All they did was go into ninety countries, seventy countries in ninety years.

Not seventy cities, seventy countries. The richest people in the world came and bowed their knee. Some of the brightest men came. Again, when there's fire, they're attracted. I reached on my shelf, I took a book down today, The Life of C .T. Studd.

I'd have a letter in there from Norman Grubb, the man that wrote it. And I saw, I turned the page to Tedworth, the house where C .T. Studd lived. If you see the picture on TV or a book, you see a picture of the, what do you call it now, in Washington, the Supreme Court with those huge pillars.

The front of his house was like that. It's an enormous place. I used to pass it every Tuesday. I went to the courtroom during the war to speak every Tuesday night. I used to look in the moonlight, see that marvelous thing.

What did he do? He was the greatest cricketer in England that time. And he and Paul Hill and a bunch of others that came from the top of the ladder, socially, intellectually, they were all Cambridge. Seven of them got together, went to China, broke through China.