Woe Lo Go - the Vision (1955) — Leonard Ravenhill

Usually in leaving one country to go to another country there's a serious handicap of language problems. Take comfort in America that while most of you don't speak English at least you understand it. It's a privilege of fellowship and I want to read now from the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 6 and reading from verse 1 into verse 9.

Isaiah’s Vision of the Holy God

Isaiah chapter 6 from verse 1. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw, saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his plane filled the temple. Above it stood the set of fins, each one had six wings.

With plane he covered his feet, and with plane he covered his face, and with plane did he fly. And one cried unto another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with snow.

Then said I, woe is me for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the set of fins unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar, and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lord, this hath such iniquity as taken away and thy sins heard.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and whom will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send me. Simple words in verses 5 and 7 and 9 of this familiar chapter. They're so simple even a preacher could remember them.

Verses 5 and 7 and 9. The first is the word of a man, woe. The second is the word of a set of fin, lo. And the third is the word of God, go. The first is a word of confession, woe is me. The second is a word of cleansing, lo, this hath such thy lips.

And the third is a word of commission. The supreme need of the church of Jesus Christ today is vision. Vision he saw Isaiah, saw the world. He saw the Lord high and lifted up, saw the world. It was a vision of deity, he saw God.

And the cherubim and seraphim were not crying, omnipotent, omnipotent, omnipotent is the Lord, or omniscient is the Lord, or omnipresent is the Lord. God is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. Those are the attributes of God.

But God is essentially a holy God. And the cherubim and seraphim were not crying omnipotent, but they were crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord. Therefore it was a vision of holiness, they saw the Lord.

It was a vision of hellishness, he saw Isaiah. It was a vision of hopelessness, he saw the world. It was a vision of deity, he saw God. It was a vision of depravity, he saw himself. It was a vision of duty, he saw the world outside.

Revival as the Presence of God

And I believe that there is no alternative. If we're going to have Bible revival, which is obviously very different from the citywide campaign, one is worked up and the other is sent down. One has a human personality usually as the driving force, and the other there is a mighty impact of God.

For after all, revival is nothing more than deity localized. It is God coming down into an area. It is God coming down upon a given situation. It may be God coming down upon a personality. How different?

Visible in traveling that you get to see great places and meet great people. Personally, I don't think there are many great people. Those who think they're great, usually great, aren't you? The great people that exist, if a man knows himself, he's bound to be humble.

If a man knows God, he can't be proud. I met a man quite recently who has been used as God in revival. The only revival maybe in the last five years, apart maybe from this visitation in the Argentina.

I went to a meeting specifically to see this man by the name of Duncan Campbell, who was used in the Hebrides revival. He was a tired man on the verge, apparently, of a physical breakdown. I didn't want to ask to see him, but after the meeting he asked to see me, which was very wonderful, because I'm nobody, but he said, I saw Ravenel in the audience tell him I want to see him.

In the church office, we had an interview, a visit, as you would say, maybe an hour. I began to ask that man about the visitation of God. You may have read of that visitation in the Hebrides. Those little islands, broken little bits of land off the west coast of Scotland.

This was such a revival that Campbell told me that when it began five years ago, and subsequently as it's moved on, after five years of revival in that island, that a threat from senators of conference, that just extinguished communism in one blast of God upon the impact of iniquity, that every communist leader got saved in one meeting.

He closed the taverns, he closed the dance halls, and he said to me, Ravenel, the amazing thing is this, that in five years there are only four backsliders. Now that must have been a revival. Do you know how it began?

It began because there was a little woman there, a very little woman, she's about 95 pounds weight, she certainly isn't five feet high, she's 86 years of age, she's stone blind, that she prays eight hours a day.

I don't know how many preachers here pray minutes a day, eight hours I mean, eight hours a day, in a cottage, in a chimney corner, refusing to die till God sent revival. Revival on the Hebrides, on the Isle of Lewis, and on the Isle of Harris.

The amazing thing is this, that before God could send that revival, he had to deal with a preacher, and deal with a holiness preacher, a man in the faith mission, a man who is known all over our country as an exceptionally good fundamentalist and holiness preacher.

And he was sitting on the platform in an auditorium much larger than this, away in the city of Edinburgh, in Glasgow, near in Scotland, not far from Glasgow, and he was turning his Bible over, getting ready to preach.

Listening to Dr. Fitch, a great theologian up there, and Fitch was bringing down, with amazing unction, the power of God on that meeting, when suddenly the spirit located the preacher that was to follow him, and said, as Duncan Campbell told me, Campbell what are you going to preach tonight?

And he said, well I'm going to preach on the Holy Ghost. And suddenly the Holy Ghost said to him, why preach about something you don't have? Now I'm not clever enough to know whether there are any degrees in death, that if there are degrees of the Holy Ghost.

He said to him, why preach? Five years ago you were filled with a spirit. Five years ago you saw wonderful things, but no longer you see that. Your altars are not filled. Your eyes are not filled. Your heart isn't filled.

Why aren't you just proud of the fact that you're booked for the next five big conferences in the British Isles? I believe that there is a baptism of water, and I believe there's a baptism of fire, but I believe that a great need of the Church of God, and particularly holiness people right here, is a baptism of honesty.

We just won't be honest. We hide behind doctrine. We hide behind terms and phrases. If you ask a man, is he a Christian? He says, I don't smoke, I don't dance, I don't swear, I don't do this. Well neither do nuns in convents, and neither does a priest in Kentucky.

He doesn't do those things either. It's a tragedy when you should try and prove your fundamentalism by what you don't do, rather the thing is prove it by what you do do. The preacher, it's no good preaching about the spirit.

You can preach about him theologically, you can preach about him scripturally, historically, but you can't preach about him personally, and you can't transmit life for this people tonight, and therefore you'd better go home.

And good honest man, he went home. When he got home there with his clerical attire and his nightclothes, his wife said to him, well darling, you're home very early tonight. What's the trouble? He said, listen dear, I don't want to.

He said, Ravenel, I went inside the door, and I shut the door of my little study, somewhere around about ten o 'clock at night, and the clock went to eleven, and it struck twelve, and one, and two, and three, and four, and five, and six.

And I was still laid on my face prostrate before God. And then he said about half past six in the morning, I knew that somebody entered the room. I could hear somebody tiptoeing across the rug. I heard somebody's knees touch the ground.

I heard somebody fall down. I heard somebody begin to pray. He has a very beautiful, cultured daughter. That daughter had no idea, except by revelation from God, what was happening. But the exact vision that this man had, a threefold vision, an upward vision, says this wonderful man to me, I saw God upon his sword.

The Vision of God, Self, and the Lost

And then he said, I saw myself. And then he said, Ravenel, I can't tell you whether I was in the flesh. I can't tell you whether I was elevated like Paul. I didn't know whether I was in the body or out of the body.

I don't know whether I had a dream. I hadn't envisioned what I had. But if I do know, he said, I was on the edge of an abyss. And I could see millions, and millions, and millions more of people. There they were, fire around them, and torment, and agony, and shrieking, and weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

And I had a revelation of hell. Campbell says, I've never been the same man since that. And how in the world could he be? What is the devil anyhow? The trouble is, many of us, we can put the whole world in hell without setting a tear over it.

And he said, Ravenel, I had a vision. I'd always wanted one all my life. But he said, I'm not sure I'd ever pray for any other man to have a vision. It was this, he said, that at half past six in the morning, without saying a word to anybody else, when I thought my whole brain would burst, when I felt like saying to God, why did you give this to me?

It's not normal. A man can't bear it. Come eternity into time. How can you stamp a revelation that only God should see on the eyeballs of a man? How can a human personality bear the grudge? At that very minute, he said, my beautiful girl at the side of me began to pray this prayer.

Please God, don't let my daddy lose his mind. God, don't let my daddy go mad here. Oh God, don't let my daddy go insane. Please, please keep your hand on him while he is gone. He never told her that he was seeing that vision, but he said it was just like somebody putting a bunch of eyes on my burning head and my burning heart at that moment, the prayer of my daughter.

She would think that she were some cool draft from heaven. And she went down to the room and I stayed there more hours and finally got it. No longer the man I had been before with a threefold vision, upward, inward and outward, to go out and live for God, to go out there into the aisles of the West Coast of Scotland and see that phenomenal visitation of the Holy Ghost.

The Cost of Revival

We want revival, of course, we'd all say that. I'm not sure that we do. Supposing we change that and say that we want revival. Yes, sir, we want revival. Whether we want it or not, we need it. Book and read there in the first book of Kings about a man that stood one day and said, there should be no rain on the earth for the space of three years and six months, according to my word, not God's word.

We don't have none. Like revival at the price of getting up every morning at four o 'clock to go and get one loaf of bread for your family to last a day. It's easy to read the verse, but you remember later down the road this man saw a woman picking up sticks and she had some meal and she was going to make a loaf.

When he said, make me a little cake first, what did she say? I want to make a cake for myself. We're going to make a cake and then what? Die, that's right. Everybody else is dying. We talk about preaching to bring down blessing.

Where's a preacher that can strangle a nation? You won't have a motor car, at least you'll have it, but you won't have money to buy gas for it. Where you're told without buying any new ones for the few years if revival comes that way.

But do we want revival at that price? Is it better for a nation to go to hell prosperous with a big waistline or go to heaven with your clothes hanging on your skin like an old coat hanging on pegs? If it's a business then revival must be possible, but the trouble is we don't want revival.

We just want blessing. We just want our churches filled. We just want an easy way. To start talking about vision and somebody very smartly comes up and says, vision, vision, oh be careful that's a very dangerous word, you'll become a visionary.

I've heard it in your country too. I've heard people say something like this that that if you get a vision like that you'll become so heavenly minded you're no earthly use. It's quite smart, but I want to tell you that as far as I know this generation and the holiness folk included as well, the trouble is not that we're so heavenly minded we're no earthly use.

The trouble is we're so earthly minded we're no heavenly use. If you have a vision without a task you'll be a visionary. Without a vision it's dreadful. But if you have a task with a vision it's a visionary.

Whether you're in Cincinnati or Pembroke too, God took Uzziah out of the obstructed view of God. And listen before you ask God for an obstructed view of himself be sure that you're prepared to pay the price.

He might even take your wife or your husband or a friend or even your ministry and cast you away in some place to fast and weep for six months in order that that vision might be clear. But in the year that King Uzziah died, when he went out to the leper colony, in that year I saw the Lord.

Holiness and the Judgment of the Present Age

Actually you certainly need this vision these days. 50 years ago there was a writer in England by the name of Thomas Binney. He wrote some very wonderful hymns. He wrote that wonderful hymn, I think one of the greatest, Eternal Light.

Eternal Light, how pure the soul must be when placed within thy searching sight. It shrinks not, that with calm delight can live and look on thee. And he says in the second verse of that hymn, the spirits that surround thy throne, in this chapter of Isaiah 6, the spirits that surround thy throne may bear that burning bliss that that is surely theirs alone, since they have never, never known a fallen world like this.

And immediately after him comes another hymn writer that says, does it not spare thine only son that gavest him for a world undone? Well I'm tempted to be cynical nearly there and curl my lip and say a man wrote 150 years ago, a fallen world like this, a fallen world.

They didn't even have movies in those days. Why even when I was a little boy, if a woman showed her ankles they had suspicion that she was a street woman. It's gone a long way since then. A world that was fallen 150 years ago, I suggest it's 150 times more fallen today anyhow.

He come in like a flood, that the spirit of God so far in this generation has not lifted up a standard against him in the truest sense of that word. To be spiritually minded is joy and peace, but I'm equally sure that to be statistically minded can be very uncomfortable.

How many millions of people there are in the world this afternoon, let's take this last vision first. God is looking out on the world, he says, who will go for us? Oh some people fold their hands and say, well after all Mr. Ravenhill is very careful, you know there's a thing called dispensationalism, brother don't I know it.

God's pathetic, pale Protestantism right now is being tortured on the rack of dispensationalism. God isn't with us, so we have to find an excuse for it. America said only a few weeks ago that since God gave the great commission, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, he also said heal the sick, send the leper, raise the dead, do this, do the other, but since we're not doing the latter, we must cease to do the former.

And henceforth he said, as regards this church, we shall support no more mission, if you want to support them individually, all right, but this church will support no more mission. There is no evidence of the supernatural power of God right now.

Well nobody doubts that Christianity began in the upper room. It began by being supernatural, it's ending by being superficial. Why a lady came to me the other day, when I finished preaching in an Alliance church, she was a Pentecostal lady, and I had no arguments against them, but she said, Mr. Ravenhill there's no fire in my church.

She said it's a beautiful new modern building, and she said even now we're saving money to get it air conditioned for this summer. I said sister you want to get it fire conditioned? Where there's a corpse it will smell.

You always keep a current of fresh air. I think that's why they have air conditioning in some of the churches, they'd smell so bad if they got the fire. But the fact is that we're more concerned about coolness than we are about fire these days.

Somebody says, yes it's true, this is the last minute, the last minute of this dispensation. We can't do anything about it. All we can do is sit down. God is sovereign, of course he is sovereign. You mean to say one of these days God will wake up and rub his eyes, and realize how serious the situation is, that every hour of that clock today, 500 people die without Christ, 5 ,000 in 10 hours, 10 ,000 in 20 hours, nearly 25 ,000 in 24 hours, and God sits on his throne, and it doesn't make any difference to God.

The blood of Calvary is flowing, hell is filling, and the race is so great that 500 people an hour die without Jesus Christ. You're trying to suggest now that while the word of God says that he's not willing that many should perish, he's not willing, pardon me, that any should perish, you're trying to suggest now he's willing that many should perish.

It's difficult usually to get into a reasonably good prayer meeting. Well, prayer meetings don't count much these days. Anyhow, they're only giving God advice, most of them, that even if you get into a decent prayer meeting, somebody shoots up as a kind of, I suppose, to make God feel better, kind of give God a vote of confidence, and they say, Lord, thou art able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either ask or think, and everybody says, Amen.

The Bible doesn't say that, which I doubt. You've got 2 ,000 million people that are going to perish eternally. That's a mighty lot. Supposing we had a revival in the next five years that gave us 100 million people really born again of the Spirit of God.

I'm not talking about diseases, I'm talking about the residue. I mean, when the wind has blown some away, and adversity has come, and opposition has come, and you still have a solid block, a nice big slab of 100 million people converted.

Rather that would alter the spiritual temperature of the world if you had 100 million people converted. If America got 20 million really regenerate people in the next five years, what a mighty difference it would make to America.

If England got 10 million, remember that England isn't as big as Pennsylvania. You have 156 million people in America, we have 50 million people in our little island. If we give you 20 million regenerate people in the next five years, that would be wonderful.

Supposing England gets 10 million, no 5 million, supposing India gets 10 million, supposing Africa gets 10 million, and you distribute the 100 million regenerate people in a worldwide breathing of God.

Why, better we'd be hysterical with joy nearly. We'd be saying 100 million people born again, our churches are packed out, we're building new churches, 100 million people really converted. And then when you've done, the devil still has 1 ,900 million people to go to hell forever.

The age in which I'm living, I believe before Christ comes the world will be shaken with a mighty spiritual earthquake. Two men agree with me, but anyhow we'll carry on. That's what I believe, because I can't believe that God is happy to see this generation perish with 2 ,400 million people.

And so God is able, oh he's able, he's able, we're always telling him he's able as though he doesn't know that. God is able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either above 100 million people saved in the next five years.

He's able to do exceeding abundantly. He may give us 200, 300, 500 million people, and then the devil still has three times as many. But he only does it the word of God says, and the sting is in the end of that text.

He's able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either outscore things according to the power that worketh in us. Hold up is not in God, the hold up is in the church. If you think that God's problem tonight this afternoon is it's communism, it certainly is not.

Not even in America. God's problem in America is not Romanism. It's as devilish and wicked. It comes out of the same womb. It hates us with the same unholy hatred. Communist before he gets off the boat in New York.

It's a suspicion that they feed millions of dollars into Romanism. That Romanism is as diabolical, remember, however nice Mr. Sheen looks on television. God's problem in America is not Romanism. God's problem is not communism.

God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism. The modernist can't tie the hands of God. People who can tie the hands of God, strangely enough, might be right in this very building this afternoon. We are the people that tie God's hands.

This title for the Church of God today, in my judgment, is this. We're unbelieving believers. Somebody someday will pick this Bible up and be simple enough to believe it, and when they do, we'll all be embarrassed.

Somewhere down the line, somebody put the idea over that all you do is come to a conference like this, or do the thing I call a simple faith, a promise fee, and look to God alone. Lots of impossibilities, but right now the impossibilities laugh at us.

Where is your faith? Where is your God? We never, never more needed a manifestation of the Holy Ghost than we do right now this afternoon, and in this day in which we're living. But where is the manifestation?

People, maybe some here, but you know, A. B. Simpson didn't raise the Alliance up to be a missionary society. He raised it up to get people filled with the Holy Ghost, and after that, go to the mission field.

You can get a man filled with the, you can get a man to the mission field without him being filled with the Holy Ghost, but you can't get them filled with the Holy Ghost without they'll go to the mission field.

There is no vision. Rather, we've got enough doctrine to sink all the ships in the world. What we lack is vision. Vision that people perish. That's why they perish today. In a recent manifesto of the communists, they say, we don't need to fear Christianity.

I have this in black and white, where they said in their manifesto, Christianity is certainly more powerful than what we have. Jesus Christ can do more than Karl Marx, but the Christians don't believe it, and secondly, they won't sacrifice for it.

Jesus, what we were really getting someplace. Every tick of that clock today, communism has gained 44 square miles of territory in the world. Every tick of that clock today, the church of God is going further and further back.

Last year in Japan alone, the population increased 1 ,100 million, 100 ,000 rather. Increase in the population. The pastor wanted an invasion of the gospel. He asked for 2 ,000 ministers to go into Japan.

Well, they nearly got 2 ,000. Roman Catholicism sent 1 ,200 anyhow. We sent 200, and most of them were not even fundamental. Yeah, think of it. Years ago this afternoon, there were 345 Protestant fisheries in China.

This afternoon, as far as we know, there are five. I don't care how well you know church history, you can't deny the fact that never before in the history of the church of God has the church withdrawn, unblocked from a nation.

Men have died and shed their blood and refused to go, but all the Stalin leaders hop and pop and blow the house out, and everybody ran away, and they evacuated and left the poor Chinese, and there's a big area with 400 million people in it.

He says goodbye to family. He's not coming back. He's never guaranteed a furlough. He goes to die, saying it's not hard on the mission field. I'm not saying people don't need a furlough, but lots of them get a lot more than they need.

I'm quite sure about that. We waste a lot of money. He goes to die, and they said in China, India has 375 million people this afternoon, and Nero isn't too sympathetic to the gospel. England entered Africa with a Bible in her hand.

Now she's trying to hold it with a bomb in her hand, and people are all well in full Africa, much more than another five years. There's a steel ring. There's also a ring of communism, and there's a ring of Romanism, and there's false religion, and sir, 2 ,000 years after Jesus came, if I were to take a pin out of my coat and rub that wall with a pin, you could measure the depth of that pin scratch if you had a scientific measure, and what the measure of my little channel is with my pin on that wall, that's the measure, that's the impact of Christianity on Mohammedanism in 2 ,000 years.

Shouting about how much you've got, your obligations, you're tied in to so many people if you're Christ. There's missionaries for four days in Chicago. The Alliance Annual Meeting, and God really moved one day, and we stayed to pray.

We prayed till about three o 'clock in the morning. That great stately Methodist cathedral in the center of Chicago, we were all saying goodbye. They were all saying, I've never been in a mass of prayer like this.

Didn't God move? I've never been the same man and so forth. We came out of that warm, kind of semi-pentecostal atmosphere, and stepped into the street at a lovely May Sabbath morning, three o 'clock in the morning, and right across the road, there was a doorway, and I heard music, and I looked again.

After three o 'clock, I suddenly looked right opposite, and right down that long alleyway, inside of that building, there was a platform right up to the door. There was a girl with hardly a stitch of clothing on her, and a man behind her playing something, and a man playing a golden saxophone, and this almost nude creature walked right to the door of that building, and I took a peep inside, and it was jammed at three o 'clock, Sunday morning, in a Christian country, and I watched people come out and come to this side of the street, and I followed them up the street, and when I looked in, it was a semi-dark place, just a little flickering blue light.

The woman at the door hung herself, at least the back, she was completely naked, and as these young people, 17 and 18, came in, I looked in there, and there it was full of smoke, and stinking tobacco, and stale beer, and there it was full of sensual music, and I said to myself, this is a Christian country.

The same thing in New York, the same thing in London, the same thing in Chicago, any other city you like, this is Christianity, this is a Christian country, at three o 'clock in a Sunday morning, but I didn't see any other house of prayer open, I didn't see anybody out with tracts, few of them with their feet up on the mantelpiece, and having a nice, comfortable time, eh?

Your daughter was as pure maybe a year ago, and tonight she sells her body for a few cents, thousand divorces, America has something like more than a million illegitimate children a year, now that's something to go at, isn't it?

We'd rather talk about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that you've heard a thousand times, and say it's fact. What's the good of talking about the Holy Ghost? If he isn't coming down, I'm touching this thing.

God's always wanted men. That's why he chose 12 men. Could have brought 12 million angels with him if he wanted to do the job that way. He chose men. They were dying while you were sleeping last night, they were dying while you were fooling around somewhere.

People say sometimes, I heard someone say only a few days ago, for somebody that they loved, and I don't doubt their sincerity, certain saying with a kind of anguish, oh God, will you please give him a vision of hell?

A Vision of Calvary and the Love of God

That never gets an amen out of me. Sinners need a vision of hell. It seems to me the sinner needs a vision of Calvary. He needs to see the love of God. He needs to say, there, that was my cross, but he bore my sin in his body on the tree.

And he needs to see the love of God. Listen, if anybody needs a vision of hell, you and I don't need that vision. It's soft and cool, it doesn't sting, it doesn't hurt, it doesn't trouble. This is all just a tear.

I was passing through a city in England late last year with my three little boys. One of them said, Daddy, what's the building on the hill? I said, oh, it's a prison. I said, as a matter of fact, it's a famous prison.

Well, what's that tower? Oh, that's where they hang men. I've got this in black and white, it's not a figure of evangelist imagination, but we put our greatest criminal in that prison a few years ago.

His name, strangely enough, was Charlie Peeves. He broke every law of God and man. He said, they'll catch me one day, and when they catch me, well, I will squeal about it. And they caught him with murder on this hand and murder on the other.

His body was eaten with sin. He lived in indulgence and sensuality. He crawled through a source of hell to get to hell. He regarded neither God nor man. When finally the judge put on the black cap, pointed a finger and said to him, Peeves, you have been found guilty of murder and you're to die on a certain day, and the Lord have mercy on your soul.

The law of England gives a man 21 days to live after he sends him, not 21 years, 21 days, 21 days. In prison they put him in a cell 21 days, guarded night and day, and the night before he was to die, the man came in and said, good evening, Mr. Peeves.

He said, good evening, what do you want? He said, I've come to tell you that you're to die in the morning. I know that, he said, I'll be here. I'm not worried about it. He said, never had an answer like that from a man.

This man was tough. This man had a conscience like leather. This man, he had no more feelings. He wasn't human anymore. We shall be here at 10 minutes to eight in the morning. Right. I'll still be here.

At 10 minutes to eight, they came into the prison cell, the condemned cell, the prison governor and the prison warden and the prison doctor and the hangman and two or three other officers. Charlie Peeves got up and brushed his coat and said, I'm ready, let's go.

All he had to do was walk 30 feet out of that room. Here is a room, there's a piece of wood with a rope on it, put his neck through the rope, stand him on the platform, pull a lever and down he goes and the jerking of the rope pulls out his neck, cut the rope and down he goes in a pit of lime.

Then they drag out the body and bury it on what they call unconsecrated ground. Charlie Peeves said, I'm ready, let's go. The preacher, according to custom, according to tradition, must be a preacher there.

The preacher walked in front of Charlie with a little book in his hand. He began to read very dreamily. When they'd gone only halfway from that trail to the gallows, Charlie Peeves reached his hand and grabbed hold of the man and spun him round.

Now the preacher was terrified. What was going to happen? Charlie Peeves said, would you read that thing again? What were you reading just now? Oh, he said, I'm reading what we call the consolations of religion.

He said, tell me this, will you read that last sentence over again? I never heard words like those, will you read them again? And he read over, the wicked shall be turned into hell. He read about a bottomless pit.

He read about a fire that's never quenched. He read about dying a death and never dying at all. And Charlie Peeves with a sneer and baring his teeth like a mad dog, looked at the preacher and said, listen, man, I never heard that in my life.

Do you mean to say that in less than five minutes, I've only five minutes to live? Do you mean to say that in five minutes time, when I swing off the end of that rope and go down in that pit, only my body goes down.

And after that, something gets out of me and it goes forever and ever. Do you mean to say that I'll be eternally falling and never reach the bottom? I'll be eternally burning, but not consumed. I'll be eternally in the grip of death and yet never know the relief that death brings.

You said, you always talk that. Ah, well said Peeves, I've got two minutes to live. Let me tell you something. Let me preach to you preacher. I want to tell you preacher this, that if Charlie Peeves believes in what you and the church of God say you believe in, that if you covered England with broken glass from one coast to the other, gave one man for a perishing, eternal hell like that, said he'd be happy to live my life one hell and now I die.

That's effective preaching by a man just within a few shadows of the of the gallows. Are you going to suggest that we, never mind the dead fundamentalists outside, we that both were alive, we that think we're somebody, we're not only good milk, we're the cream of the crop and all the rest of it.