Revival Forum 89 - Part 6 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Judgment Seat of Christ

And now I'm going to study about the judgment seat of Christ. I've preached on the judgment seat of Christ for more than 20 years, I've been working on the book for 9 years, but you know what, it terrifies me.

The Second Death and the Reality of Hell

I try to go to bed at 9. One night I was late, I went to 10. I woke up at 2 o 'clock and went to the other end of the house, to my little office, and I opened Revelation, I began to read Revelation 20, and it's as though the book suddenly left life.

What did I read? I read there, the second death, and suddenly I said I've heard a hundred sermons on the second coming, I've heard a hundred on the second blessing, I've heard a hundred on the second coming, on the second birth, on the second blessing, and never heard one on the second death.

And it's just a voice like that I'm sure, just said to me, hell has no exits. And I turned around. What do you think I did, go back to sleep? A million roads into hell and nowhere, well preachers, tell me, when did you last, come on be honest, don't raise your hand, when did you last preach on hell?

Preaching Hell Without Compromise

Huh? Lots of the Dallas guys don't believe in it, cut it out of your Bible, you've cut it out of your preaching, what's the difference? In God's sight you cut it out of your Bible. Boy you're going to get into trouble man, you won't be in the Southern Baptists, did you say we should do what Jesus did?

The Great Commission and Making Disciples

You see, kids come to me and say, well I'm going to the Philippines for three weeks, can you speak the language now and give out tracts, why? To fulfill the great commission, what was the great, well the last words of Jesus, tell me, what were they, as manly says, what were they?

Well the last word of Jesus was go into all the world, not in my Bible, that's the last word to the disciples, the last word of Jesus is three times over in Revelation, repent, repent, repent. And he didn't say go into all the world and preach, he said make disciples, you can't make disciples in five minutes at the altar, you can't make disciples by giving tracts on Main Street every Friday night, bring them in, even if you bribe them with coffee or a donut or something and say we're going to have instruction now, we're not going to go through the catechism, the pastor's made a catechism, we're going to teach you the fundamentals of the faith, how, kids don't know it.

Genuine Conversion Beyond Religious Rituals

I guarantee, there's a big church in the south where the pastor says, we're called to the 11 ,000 college students in this town, and then he says, I'll give you the name of it in the back of my Bible, and he says in this town, in their sophomore years, and the Baptist, I'll give you his name, he says the sophomore students in the colleges here, as soon as they get away from home, in the second semester, sophomore, they quit church, they go off out on Sundays, why?

Because they've been baptized and everything, but they never met Christ, they've gone to a ritual and a formula, few of our young people are generally born again of the Spirit of God, boy I'm glad when I got saved I got saved, I know sooner got saved, boy I got an appetite for prayer, I owe a lot to America, he owes a lot to me too, but somebody gave me a limited edition of the life of David Brainard, when I read it I cried, I said, people told me that all finished with the New Testament, listen if miracles finish with the New Testament, prayer finished, you show me why God the Holy Ghost abrogated giving gifts unto men, you can't show me, a professor told you, who told him?

Not God, the devil told him, it's an amazing thing, you can be in a church and commit adultery, you shouldn't do, but if you do that, or some other thing, they'll let you stay as a pastor, you get filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, they'll kick you out, I had dinner the other day with Dr. Jack Reed, you know Jack Reed, beautiful man of God, knows Hebrew through and through, knows Greek through and through, was teaching in Dallas, no sorry, Jack Deer, thank you dear, Jack Deer, and I sat with him, well he was teaching Greek and Hebrew, I won't mention the seminaries, there's a whole lot of these seminaries, I mean seminaries in Dallas, and he didn't get the gift of tongues, he went to see what was happening in these other churches, when he saw it, he became alarmed, you know guys say to me, I've read your books, one thing sticks in my mouth, what is it, you said one day somebody's going to read the Bible and believe it, and when they do, we'll all be embarrassed, that's what they do in some of these foreign countries, they get the Bible and they read it, they stare and say, hey who's this Jesus, is he there, oh no he lives up there, they don't get a hill of beans if he lives up there, if he's not living in you, life action became new to me today, I'll tell you, you can believe dear brother, I know you do on your team, but people don't just get interested when your van goes down the street with a life action, how much life do you leave in churches, how much life is there, does somebody say Dell and his team, they don't preach like ordinary men, they preach as though they've got something of a power, that we've never measured.

Measuring Spiritual Temperature in the Church

I'm going to keep saying, I'll stop over right now, but you know what, all of us are thermometers, we have a big thermometer at the back of our window, and I say to Martha in the morning, darling what is it, do you know the last few mornings before we came here, it was almost 80 at 7 in the morning, and what's it going to be today, 100, but you know that poor thermometer, where a poor thermometer is round, they were at 80 the other day, boy they went down like the stock market, down to 40 or something last night, but there inside the door, you have a, what do you call it, a thermostat, well it's only a thermometer.