Spirit of a True Prophet - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

And on you by the Holy Ghost. See, when you're a young guy, you want people to recognize your ministry. And you have to go around begging. You know, I've been around your way for a while now, let me see.

Yes, I'm free. I've got three spare weeks in June. Let me just fill it up for you, you know. Nice to be a beggar for Jesus, isn't it? Brother, if you have no ministry, you'll have to find a place for yourself.

A Ministry Established by God, Not Self-Promotion

You know what the good book says? The Bible says that a man's gift will make room for him. Now, I've never asked for an opening, and I never will. And if God shuts me off, that's fine. I'll go on the back side of the desert and pray and weep and seek God.

But I'll never ask anybody to open the doors to me. John did no miracle. Advertising. No, no, those stickers, you know, you put on the backs of... Well, you say they had an automatic... Well, he could have had a little card, couldn't he?

And stuck it on the camel's tail or something. And had the camels going, wagging a little card. Here's John Baptist up in Enon, near Salem. After all, he was a Baptist, and you know what they are for advertising.

But anyhow, he didn't advertise about his meeting. I say again, you don't have to advertise a fire. The pub was empty, the temple was empty, the crowds were up there. Heard the news, what news? Oh, there's a strange man.

Do you know what they say? Some people say... You know, I don't want to scare you to say it, but you know what some people say? Elijah has risen from the dead. You see, there's only one spirit of the prophet, Ash.

You can identify the prophet right away. When God anoints a man like that, they're all of the same spirit. Whether it be Azar, or Jeremiah, or Elijah, or Elisha, or John Baptist. There's just one mark of identification.

There's some supernatural authority they have in the Word of God. And John was doing no miracle, and he wasn't offering a donkey or a camel for the one who brought most businesses next Sunday. They were hanging on every tree, they were climbing the banks, they were listening to Republicans, and sinners, and harlots, and thieves.

And the big shots had a committee meeting up in Jerusalem, at headquarters, and they said, we've got to go down and see this fellow. The big fat belly priest came and one said, we've come with authority to, well, first of all, what Bible school did you go to?

And, I don't see a diploma nailed up on the tree there. Do you have a PhD or anything like that? What's the distinctive feature of your ministry? Where did you get your authority? I like his answer. He said, I'm a voice.

Most preachers are only echoes. He said, I'm a voice. I heard a fellow preach a brilliant sermon in New York a while ago, and I could tell when he left Campbell Morgan and he took up DeWitt Talmadge, and when he left DeWitt Talmadge and got on to Arthur Pink, and when he left Arthur Pink and got on to, I could tell he put all the bits together, you know.

But, oh brother, that wasn't true when you heard John Baptist. Here is a man with a divine revelation. He preached like nobody on earth, because he'd been living so long in heavenly places, and he knew the judgment of God was going to come very soon.

And, remember this, when he was at Arthur Pentecost, that shook the city and shook the environment, not many years after the whole city was raped and wallowed in blood, under the invasion of Titus. And, we were going to get revival in America before we were wallowing in blood, and bypass the revival and still wallow in blood anyhow.

John the Baptist’s Prophetic Authority

John preached in the anointing, and it says they came from... Any way you measure him, this fellow is a success. Socially? Why? Because it says that the soldiers came to hear him, and it says Republicans came to hear him, and it says the people came to hear him.

But, oh, they must have felt awfully indignant when he looked up and he didn't tremble and he wasn't worried, and he didn't say, well, I have to slip home and bring you my preaching papers. He just stood there and said, I'm a voice.

A voice crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. ...to do. More than Isaiah, though he started to fall off, more than anybody else, he was to introduce Jesus, and one day Jesus stood in the water, and not only was he crucified between two thieves, he was baptized between two thieves, because there were only harlots and murderers and drunks who were getting baptized anyhow.

And Jesus stood there in the spirit, and John uttered the words that echoed down the very last corridor of hell itself, and has made hell tremble ever since. He says, behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

Not all, but but a beast, some Jewish altar slain, could give one guilty conscience peace, or walk away one stain. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, took all our sins away. He lifted God, and Samson could never lift.

He solved a problem that Solomon, with all his wisdom, could never solve. He led captivity captive. He died and rose again. And he pledged my resurrection and his resurrection, because he said, if I die and rise, you die and you'll rise again.

If I go to my Father, you'll have a place. The Holy Ghost came. I was preaching. I said, this morning we have so many things we put up with, they never had in the New Testament. There are no Bible schools in the New Testament.

The only reason we have Bible schools is because we are better at preaching, that's why. Mr. Spurgeon said a hundred years ago that the Bible suffers more from its exponents than its opponents. A witty American said not long ago, sure, the Bible is infallible.

Otherwise, how do you think it survived so much bad preaching? Oh, brother, let's get back and preach the book. Preach what God says about it, about sin, about redemption, about the Holy Ghost, about His coming, about war, tribulation.

Why, this is the most exciting book in the whole world. And John preached, and while he was preaching, shooting the arrows of God into the hearts of men and women. Dear old George Whitfield did that one night.

Repentance as the Center of True Preaching

He said, I've got my quiver full of arrows, and they're tipped with the fire of God, and I'm going to shoot them. And he drew, he said, here is the first arrow, and the arrow of repentance, here it comes.

And the whole audience stepped down. But he got them anyhow. And John was preaching something, we're bypassing these days. We offer people heaven these days without repentance. We offer them a jewel crown without repentance.

We say, if you just come here and want to be baptized, and you'll be good and pay your tithes, so the preacher won't have to work, just let him get fat and lazy, and help us along. And you can be a real good member in a Baptist church or some other church.

But brother, I'll tell you, John didn't preach there. Oh, we don't preach like these old fellows used to preach. Old Nicholson of Ireland, I heard that fellow preach, and the audience would weep, and then they'd laugh, and then they'd get mad, and then they'd shake.

And you'd think, boy, if he drops the net now, he's going to get hundreds of people. And you know, they'd do it, stand up and sing.

Stand up, now sing.

God save our gracious King. You'd think, what in the world is the man doing? And then he'd say, well, good night, God bless you, go home, keep your nose clean and eat fish on Fridays. That was a benediction.

You'll say, that's ridiculous. Why does he preach a thing like that? I'll tell you why. Because he knew when God had shot an arrow in the heart of a man, he didn't have to stop there and plead, and say, let's sing this once again.

And you know, you could die in an automobile wreck before you go home. He said one night when he was preaching on John 3, 16, and nobody honored the word that had been preached, he preached on Hill the next night, and he said, there are 1 ,200 people here.

Look, this is my farewell to you. Get to hell, the whole 1 ,200 of you. And he went home and prayed that they'd have nightmares and they'd be in hell. A friend of mine preaching with him said, look, it's a good thing we've only got one meeting on Sunday night because you've ruined the whole crusade.

Nicholson said, what did you think of my sermon on hell? He said, it's the most terrifying sermon. Did you feel that it was real? He said, I could almost smell the sulfur. Did you feel that God has made a hell for wicked men as well as the devil?

Did you feel that there are a million ways into hell, a million roads in and no road out? That while hell is eternal life, hell is eternal life, hell is eternal darkness, seeing the summer morning in hell, they groan and groan, the harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we're not safe.

Did I make hell as real as that? My friend Peter Conley, some of you may know, he died just recently, dear old Peter Conley, said, Brother Nicholson, you made hell more real than any man either. He said, all right, son.

I didn't kill the meeting by getting them to sing the national anthem and my little bit of fun there, keep your nose clean and eat fish on Friday. He said, I'll tell you, if those 1 ,200 people stay in hell till Sunday night, they'll be glad to get out.

And I'll tell you something, sonny. He said, when I make the altar call on Sunday night, there'll be more than 100 people converted. Peter Conley told me himself. I preach with him often. Peter says, well, I couldn't wait till Sunday night.

And he said, Nicholson came. Man alive, he said, he must have been in eternity, was saturated with the Holy Ghost. He said, he stood there and the people, he hurled God's thunderbolts at them. And boy, he got most people too.

They were holding on their feet. And then he said, now, come on tonight. The Almighty God shot an arrow in your heart the other night. You better obey God. This may be your last chance. But if you're coming, get up and come.

And they stamped it to the altar. They were falling. They were cursing as they came to the altar. Here's another so-and-so. They didn't know any better. He said, brother, you go to Northern Ireland and go to the government there at Stormont and ask them to open the book to the year 1922.

The 1922 Northern Ireland Revival

And there's a great big line across the state book, the national book. And he says, we anticipated revolution. God sent revival through W .P. Nicholson. That man knew God. His main theme was repentance.

Repent, repent, repent. And John said, repent. And while he preached repentance, the forgers, with their breastplates on, these Roman heathen, were so scared stiff, it says, that even while he preached, the soldiers began to cry out.

Because he was crying in the spirit, they grew in the spirit. And before they finished crying, the publicans over there began to cry and say, what shall we do? And before they could finish crying, the people over here said, what shall we do?

They were all crying. They were low. We don't see many heartbroken people come to the altar. And if they go, before they can get broken, we say, now darling, wipe your eyes. You know, the Lord loves you.

Just put your finger on this promise. Well, if they put their finger on that promise, they're a dozen times and got nowhere. Let them wallow in their misery. Let them get to the place where they feel hell is opening.

Let them go away from the altar. For God's sake, don't try and put a band-aid on their cancer. Open the cancer. Probe them. Send them home terrified. They'll get to God before the week's over, before next year.

Sure, sure they will. Because God, as we heard today, never begins a work He doesn't finish. And God, you can't build a skyscraper on a desert, can you? I remember in New York there, they pulled a building down, and I watched those men go down and down and down.

I thought, good night. They'll get to Australia if they keep going. And I said, well, where are they? The man said, don't you know that Manhattan is one solid rock? And they're going to go down till they...

The only reason you can build a building a hundred stories high is because you go down dozens and stores and maybe hundreds of feet to the bedrock. But once you get to the bedrock... Oh, but we're afraid of going to the bedrock.

We're afraid to tell people they've got to repent and turn their back on sin and hate their sin and loathe their sin. But John did it. And not only did he disturb the whole non-lyrical, just the lyrical of regeneration, which is...

Holiness as the Greatest Work of Redemption

Listen, I believe in miracles. I've been in meetings that we have had, and afterwards, if they were sick, we'd be happy to pray. And I've seen God open blind eyes. I've seen people get up out of chairs when they were crippled.

I've gone to hospital and prayed for people who were dying of cancer. And one woman I prayed for is healthier than me now, and that was 30-odd years ago when I prayed. I've seen God do that. But I want to tell you the greatest miracle that deity can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make that unholy man holy and put him back in an unholy world and keep him holy.

That's the redemptive work of God in Christ. I was a pastor. I went as pastor. And she was distorted and crippled. And, brother, you couldn't tell that woman... She looks horrid to look at. And in a healing meeting one night, the preacher touched her, and her body just went astray to 6 o 'clock, and she's a beauty queen in the town now.

And she smokes, and she drinks, and she lives in lust, and she spends her night gambling, and she's still healed. I thank God for miracles. God does them. But again, the greatest miracle is that God can take a putrid heart.

God can take a heart of stone and make a heart of flesh. And in my judgment, he doesn't put a heart of flesh at the side of a dirty old stone either. I don't go along with carnal Christianity. That's nonsense.

You ain't got a record. I've got the list there. I gave it our brother with 62 tapes. And one of them is a fantastic record that every preacher ought to get on carnal Christians, and I tell you it's something.

He may blow campus crusades, but brother, he stands on the word of God, I'll tell you that. But you can't have the cross of Jesus in your heart and be as carnal as you were before you came in, because that's nonsense.

You can't be carnal and spiritual, because to be carnally mad, it is death. How can you be dead and be alive? You don't have to have a second blessing to put off the old man. You put off the old man when you're born again.

If you're not born again, you put off the old man and put on the new man. And become a new creature in Christ with devalued regeneration to try to make room for a sanctification or a baptism with a I want to tell you the greatest miracle this side of heaven, because it's the basis of everything else anyhow.

It's an operation of God by the Holy Ghost, where the man gets convicted of his sin and he gets born of the Spirit of God and he lives in the Spirit and he walks in the Spirit and he loves the Word of God, which is the Word of the Spirit.

And then he goes on and he has repeated in repeated anointings of the Holy Ghost. But the agony of Calvary and the hell of Gethsemane was there only for one purpose, that he might redeem us from all the power of sin.

And I say again, make another holy man holy and put him back in a unholy world and keep him holy. I remind you again, friends, that Christianity is not a comparative religion. It's a superlative religion.

It doesn't compare with any religion in the world. It contrasts with every other religion in the world. Now can you imagine how the people are getting... Hey, did you hear the other day the brother of Barabbas?

You know, Barabbas and his brother were the Jesse Jameses of the day. And they said, did you hear the news? Barabbas and his brother got converted the other day. Did you hear about that old harlot? Those things are about times in most cases.

The first thing God requires is purity. You can have all the gifts after that. Thank God for them. Against God. Get him saved. You've got to deal with selfishness in him. And that's the thing that we want.

Surrendering Selfishness and Personal Rights

You understand why I'm not successful, because you haven't surrendered your rights. That's right. Surrendered your rights. You buy what you want. You don't pray and say, should I buy this automobile? Should I do that?

It was only a few months old. And as he went past, he said to his buddy, hey, we've got to go back and buy that car. That's a beauty. And the salesman says, yeah, the young fellow gave it up. He has to go to war.

It's a marvelous car. You know, there's about $1 ,500 of it. You can't afford to miss it. And he said, come here, let's exchange it. And he took it, and he signed up for it. He drove down the road, and it went well.

And it's been going on ever since. You know why? He bought it because he wanted a little prestige that would be the best outside the church and a few other things. And he admitted that later. He told himself about it.

Selfishness, this carnality, this something that's there that should not be there. Somebody said to a friend of mine, well, there was Robbins sat in the back, and then he said, never the same, man. He said, it's for the numbers living there.

What's the best answer I know? You should get out of it. You ought to take it. I'll say one thing. I quoted this before, but it always thrills me. I thought about it as I meditated this morning. I went to preach in a little town, a lovely town, actually called Dundee in Scotland.

Excuse me. Famous for its marmalade and famous for its Dundee cakes. Famous because Mary Slater was born there. I went along to preach with a ministering preacher. As we went in the Cherryfield Mission, the sign was up.

It said, James Baxter MacLagan. He was the president of the southern section of the Magdalene Church in Britain just before he died recently. But he was in Scotland, and I had the privilege of doing a crusade for him in every church he was in.

And he said, man, I've got to go up in the train this afternoon. I've got to meet Paul from Godfrey, Dundee. Would you come? And we went. And I saw his name outside, and I said, you're only a little fellow.

The sign is bigger than you are. Sign says, James Baxter MacLagan is going to preach this afternoon. He said, you know, it's real funny because he isn't. I said, well, who is? He said, you are. Well, I said, that's a dirty trick.

Blocked with ice, the roads were impassable nearly, and I said, you bring me all this way. I've come up from England, come to Perth, and now you've got this in my lap. I said, well, I'm not going to preach.

But he got up and he played his concertina and he sang with his lovely voice, and then he said, you're going to stand up and sing, and then I have an Englishman here, he's never preached in this town before,.

And he likes this city, Dundee, famous, of course, for Mary Slater, famous for this, and most famous of all, for a man that had revival by the name of Robert Mary McShane, of 29, but he shook the city for God, with all his tuberculosis.

Sacrificing Personality for God’s Use

In your spiritual experience, you're still fettered, you've still got bondage, fear, doubt, weakness, nervousness, powerlessness. You see, here is another sacrifice. Personality on the altar, all that's there, that isn't any good to him, ashes, he'll do more with the ashes than you could do with the whole personality.

Now, I said, I've got five minutes to get away and catch the train, but I want to pray for you as I leave, and if you're going to trust God this afternoon, whatever your experience has been before that, I'm not telling you just how to get in and laying one, two, three down, and what you think, I'm telling you, you're coming, you're bankrupt, you're in your helplessness, and say, I promise, and I said, that's ten, eleven, twelve, will you bow your heads, now as you sing Spirit of the Living God, as I go after the door, will you run down the altar and go in that back room and pray?

She put her foot as quick as that, and I said, that's number thirteen, and it's not unlucky, no unlucky number, and she went like that in less than ten seconds, she nearly flew down that, that track, and she went home and shivered on the train.

It was a big missionary rally, a worldwide missionary rally in, in, Manchester, England. The old speakers can't have them, I can't have them, and you have them. That was a terrible atmosphere, wasn't it?

The devil was there, it wasn't the devil, it was the janitor that was at fault. The place was overheated, there was no ventilation, it was hard to keep your eyes open, what's the good of blaming the devil?

He gets blamed for enough anyhow. The chairman said, we've got ten minutes before tea is ready, I, I, I wonder, would you like to have a little test before the rally? And they said, yes, yes, devil. And he said to a little lady sitting here whose legs didn't touch the ground, she was kicking like this all the time, I thought she was wanting to get to the preacher and kick him, I think she'd like to have done it, and she was kicking away and then he said, come on now, Miss So-and-so, testify.

She jumped off the chair, hit the deck, came here, and she said, I'm going to tell you what the Lord has done to me. God, and she went, and you know, in five minutes, we were all sitting on the edge of our seats like this, and she was telling us what God did.

She'd just come back from Africa, away in the woods, they had the Holy Ghost revival. And I thought, oh, Dundee, famous for marmalade, famous priest there, and I said, yeah, that's right. And she said, you know, when I lived in Dundee, all I did was sweep the floor in a factory.

I never finished my schooling. My handwriting was very bad. I couldn't spell. My English was hopeless. I just put a broom around the factory floor and swept up the dirt and thought you'd say, hi, Mary.

She's such a nice woman, isn't she? Maybe she couldn't do something more. Maybe a typist or something, but she just doesn't have it. And she said, I swept this broom year after year around the floor. And she said, you know, I couldn't ever speak to a man.

If a man came, I blushed and I got sensitive. And you know, at night, I lived with myself. I used to go and check the door and make sure it was locked. And I used to check the windows and see they were all cursed.

And I always looked under the bed to, you know, these ladies think they're so precious somebody's going.

To steal them. And so she'd lock the door and seal the windows and she looked under the bed and then she said, I get in bed and if there was a noise, I'd spit on her. She said, I was sleeping in the factory and a mouse ran over the floor.

And as soon as the mouse ran over the floor, I jumped on the chair and I screamed, a mouse! And she said, you know now, I've got a little frail house way, way, way in the bush all by myself. I have a medical test, there are my other things.

And some nights when I'm in bed, I turn her over and I say, you better go while I'm on the menu tonight.

They say, please come wife, they seem to die, please come. And she said, I throw something over me and put a belt around me. And then she said, we come to a river and there's a slimy log and the big man takes a lamp in each hand and I follow him over very carefully and there's a big thing there and it only has one cavity.

Oh, it's such a big one and it's wide open like that and I get halfway over and when there isn't a crocodile there's a hippopotamus and his big eyes are rolling and she says, I go and say, it's alright, it's alright, I'm not on the menu.

And she said, I go and deliver a baby or I stay and give a woman a bath or do some other things and he said, no, I'll come back. But there are two very ferocious lions here that have eaten. It doesn't make any difference.

He'll give his angels charge concerning me. Well, you know, there are some big pythons and snakes and they could get over a little lady like a little rocket. I get home alright. I used to run away from mice.

I don't run away from lions. I used to run away from white men. I don't run away from black men. And she said, you know, not only that, but she said, I'll tell you how it all began. My wife and I were at the back and I was behind the lady in one of those enormous hats that I think are horrid, except on occasions like this.

Because she said, I was in a meeting and Mr. Ravenhill preached. Much that Mr. Ravenhill said except he said if you put everything on the altar and let God burn it up and let him have the ashes, he'll do more with you than you could ever do with any education or anything else in the whole wide world.

And she said until that day, he said, you know, Jesus took workmen, Peter, a fisherman, and he took a man that was a tax gatherer. He isn't looking for PhDs and he's looking for ordinary people who bring all they have and say yes to God, do what you want with me.

And she said, Lord, that's the only chance I've ever had in my life. I'm going. And she said, I was the one that ran down the aisle. I just flew down that aisle and I said, Lord, I don't know what it's all about, but here I am, body, soul, spirit, my mind, my past, my world, my past, my present, my future.

And she said, he fell in fire and he burned up my fear and he burned up my nervousness and he burned up all my ideas. And she said, I went home and I got a form and I wrote to a Bible school and said, I'm very dumb.

I'll be the worst student you've ever had, but will you take me in? And she said, they took me in. And she said, do you know what I did? I couldn't spell when I got there. I couldn't write. And by the time I finished, I was the best student in English.

And then she said, I went to France to study French because of the place I was going to. And she said, I came out at the top of the list studying French. And I got to the mission field with a bunch of new recruits.

And I came out top in languages. That's not bad for a girl that swept the floor that couldn't write her own name hardly. I came out top in English, top in French, top in the new language. And she said, I'm learning a new one right now.

And she said, it all happened because one day I said, Lord, here's the whole lot, do as you like with it. You just translate, you just do it, you understand, do me and do as you like. And she said, if you told me that day that I'd become a missionary, that I would see revival, that we would see God do miracles, I couldn't have believed it.

But she said, once I let go of something, I'm not very sure about the day I was saved.