Sacrifice of Faith — Leonard Ravenhill

The Warning of Hebrews to Believers

Now we said yesterday that this book is essentially to God's people, it does not have a single word to say to lost people. And even when you've emphasized the third verse of chapter 2, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation.

This again is a warning to us. We do neglect this salvation, this great salvation, which first was preached by Jesus and then by those who heard him, and then it says, that great salvation is signs and wonders and miracles and diverse gifts of the Holy Ghost.

Now that is the gospel, anything less than that is not the gospel, it may be part of it. Further, this epistle is not addressed, as you know, but I have to remind you, it isn't addressed to the Romans, the Ephesians or Colossians, it doesn't bear any title.

So people say, look at chapter 3 and verse 1, wherefore holy brethren, partakers of their heavenly calling. Now that's the address. If you have been made a partaker of the divine nature, this epistle is addressed to you as much as to the people of the day, the Hebrews to whom it was written.

I'm going to suggest on the basis of the word of God, that one reason why this epistle was written was that these people were beginning to default, they were getting shaky and nervous. It's very difficult for us to step back 2 ,000 years in our thinking and get the framework in which these people were living.

The verse, excuse me, verse 35 of chapter 10 says, cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great reward. Verse 12 of chapter 12 says, wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees.

Now it's no good having feeble knees, this is where we stand on our knees. If you kneel before God, you can stand before men. Their hands were feeble, their knees were feeble. They were getting shaky and nervous, why?

The Supremacy of Christ Over the Old Covenant

Well, let me put it this way. One of the ministries of the Spirit through this wonderful epistle is to show the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now these Hebrew Christians, and this reminds me of a place we were in not too long ago where a lady said, well I'm interested in what you say about Hebrews, because I go to a church where Hebrews is out.

They put a fence around it, you never read Hebrews, it's to the Hebrews. It's not to us, it's to the Hebrews. And therefore leave it alone. Well I said them Romans is to the Romans, leave that alone, Ephesians is to the Ephesians, Colossians.

If you go on like that, all you have is the Amen at the end of the revelation. You'll have nothing left. If you're going to be logical, which we're not usually, if you can't take the epistle to the Hebrews, you can't take John 3.

John 3 was spoken to a Hebrew, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. And it's the most preached chapter in the Bible, he must be born again, and so forth and so on. The four musts in that chapter, he must increase, I must decrease, he must be born again, he must be lifted up.

But it's all addressed to a Jew. Now this book is written to us upon whom the ends of the age are come. And I remind you again of this, I don't know if you find it shattering, I do, whether you live in the pew of the pulpit.

That God hasn't said anything to mankind for 2 ,000 years, and if the world holds together another 2 ,000 he won't say anything. God finished talking to men 2 ,000 years ago. We've got to find out what he said, and we've got to catch up with what he said, and believe what he said, and embrace what he said, as these people did.

Now, let's visualize here the two men going down the street. Call one if you like, Isaac, call the other one Jacob. Not the old characters in the, in the Bible, but these men are living in the days when this epistle was written.

And Jacob comes down and he says hi, Isaac, and he says hi. He says, listen I want to talk to you a minute. You're not still meeting with that bunch of silly people that meet up that back alley, are you?

Those Christian? Yeah? Well, uh, I mean I, I know really you're embarrassed, you're too embarrassed to come back and join our church, aren't you? I mean you know that really Jesus wasn't all he said he was, it's really a fake.

He didn't rise from the dead, I mean nobody ever saw him, except of course a little holy club, a group of you and a lot of screaming women who you never trust anyhow. I mean you're meeting in a little back alley.

Look at the temple there, hey there's the high priest just going in. I mean you know, man we've got a monopoly on God. You're meeting in a little upper room somewhere. We have the great temple, oh isn't it beautiful.

You don't have a temple, there's the high priest, you don't have a high priest. You don't have the law and the prophets. Now this was literally true in their day. They did not have a temple. They did not have a sanctuary.

They were despised, they were rejected. They did not have a priest that wore fantastic garments. They didn't keep up a calendar of worship in the sense of keeping the feasts of the Old Testament. They'd been liberated from all this.

And this man, he's trying to make this man feel inferior, why don't you come and join us. Oh come back to all the display of the sanctuary. Come and see the priest and see the sacrifices and think of all the history and think that we have a monopoly on the great God who divided the Red Sea and the God that flung the worlds into space and he upholds all things by the word of his power.

This is our God. And the new Christian listens a little while and he says, well, do you want to say anything else? He says, no, I think I've said enough just about to squash you. And he says, you haven't done anything of the kind.

Well you don't have a temple. Oh yes, well where is it? He says, you're looking at it, this is it. God doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. People say, I'm going to church. How can you go to the church when you are the church?

You can go to the church house, this isn't the church, this is the church house. George Fox, the Quaker, he used to call them steeple houses. The church is the body of Jesus Christ. We are the church.

We go to the church house. No, I don't need a temple, I don't need a fancy altar. I am the temple. God indwells my personality. We are the temple of the Holy Ghost. Well, you don't have anybody like Moses.

After all, Moses is the greatest man that ever, well, just a minute, the Christian says. Moses brought you out of Egypt, but he couldn't take you into Canaan. Well, no, you're right, but Joshua, he took us where Moses left off, Joshua took all of us, and he took us into the Promised Land.

And the Christian comes up again, he says, that's right, Moses brought you out of Egypt, Joshua took you out of the area you were in there, Kadesh Barnea, and he took you there on into the Promised Land, but he couldn't give you rest either.

Now you say we do not have a high priest. No, but remember this, your high priest, he dies, and somebody has to take his place. He has to bring an offering. Now my high priest, he made one offering by the sacrifice of himself, and he lives now at the right hand of the Father.

I don't, we don't have to replenish our priest. We don't have to fill him in when somebody, another priest passes away. He doesn't have to bring one offering, he made a perpetual offering for sin. Once in the end of the age, he appeared by the sacrifice of himself.

He lifted a burden Samson couldn't lift. He solved a problem that even Solomon could not solve. This is the excellency of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. He didn't start like Moses, and Moses couldn't finish.

He didn't start like Joshua who couldn't finish the job. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. I was in a certain Baptist Church a few years ago, and they had a very fine congregation. I used to wonder why they had so many bushes around these churches, and I discovered it's where the fellows, and then they throw it away just before they go in church you know.

And I looked in those trees and they look like Christmas trees. They were full of stubs of cigarettes. So one night, all the deacons were sitting here, a whole bunch of deacons, and I said gentlemen now I want you to relax in the meeting, and as I find my text you take out your cigarettes and smoke.

Oh boy they sat up in a row. Smoke in church? Why not? If you defile the temple outside of the church, you may as well defile it inside. This place isn't sanctified necessarily. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.

If you fill it with smoke an inch at the other side of that glass, you may as well fill it with smoke inside the church. What's the difference? Our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. We are his workmanship.

We don't have to bring an all, we don't have to bring a sacrifice. There is one sacrifice. We don't have to seek a priest amongst men. There he entered once and for all. He presented his blood before the Father.

And because of that we have one who is ever living to make intercession for us. You could go into the tabernacle of old, or I mean to the temple and the priest wasn't there. But Jesus is on duty every moment of every day.

He never sleeps, he never fails. He is the same from everlasting to everlasting. He's Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Now, we're coming down into Hebrews 11 now. Remember again, if you were not here yesterday, I'll have to tell you.

Worship, Sacrifice, and the Heroes of Faith

There's a pattern in this wonderful chapter. The first person that's mentioned here is Abel. And he is there because he built an altar. An altar is a type of two things, sacrifice and worship. And the first and the hardest thing to do, harder than learning to pray.

We'll pray because we're under pressure, we'll pray because we're embarrassed, we'll pray because we're up against a wall. Lots of things can drive us to prayer. Only one thing will drive us to worship, and that's love and adoration.

And the least known thing in the Church of Jesus Christ today is worship. We say, well, we'll go to church and worship for an hour. We don't worship for an hour. The choir sings, somebody talks, we have a song, that is not necessarily worship.

I want to preach Sunday morning, God willing, on a lovely little verse that maybe no one ever preached on in this place, I hope not, thou gavest me no kiss. Now apart from being sentimental, when did you last kiss Jesus Christ?

When did you last take him by his feet? When did you last forget all the cares of the world, all the pressure on you, you didn't even have anything just to praise him about, but you took hold of him as it were by faith, and you adore him and you magnify him.

After all, you can't make God rich. You can give him a thousand dollars an hour if you like, you won't make God rich. You can give him all the advice that you think you've got, but you can't give him any because he's the source of all wisdom.

You can't make God strong. There's very little you can give God, but you can give him worship. When the whole world collapsed for that fantastic man Job, the first stroke you remember was bereavement, pardon me, was bankruptcy, he lost all he had, second stroke bereavement, he lost his family, third stroke his health, he got boiled.

And here he is broken and baffled and bankrupt and bereaved, and he's lost everything, and what did he do? He says, I'll worship God. And to worship him you defy your feelings, you defy whatever pattern there is there of chaos, and you just go before him and you magnify and you adore him, and you pour out your love.

Because this is what, this is what worship is, it's a love trice. Some of you experienced this, maybe it's a few years ago. Remember the time when you were courting and the fellow wasn't kissing you and sometimes he'd take you in his arms and look at you?

That happens in true love, and he doesn't use a lot of adjectives, the man is just lost. Or the woman in adoration for the person, they're speechless. Now this is what happens in true worship, but we do not worship very often.

The first man in Hebrews 11, built an altar, worship, contact with God. The second man is Enoch, he did not worship, yes he did, but he's famous because he walked. You cannot walk with God really until you really learn to worship.

The next man is Noah, he built an ark. He worshiped and he walked, but he worked. And faith works. I was reading there in that little book, it's a lovely little book called Jude, it's an epitome of the whole Bible.

And you know what it says there in the 20th verse? It not only says praying in the Holy Ghost, it says building yourself up. Nobody ever has, nobody ever will decide what percentage of responsibility for my spiritual development is mine, and what responsibility is God's.

To say it's all God's responsibility, is to make him responsible for a backslidden church. For me to say that I do it all is sheer arrogance, that there is a percentage. Look at verse 22 of chapter 10 here, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

Verse 23, let us hold fast the profession of our faith. Verse 24, let us consider. That's not God doing it, it's God making the provision. I was thinking this morning, I've traveled a good deal around the world and I've seen sheep in many countries, but I've never seen a sheep with a suit on its back.

You say no, all that sheep have is wool, right. And then you take that wool, and you wash it, and you comb it, and you card it, and you weave it, and you make cloth, and you make suits. But you never find sheep with suits on their back.

The material is there for you to get, and wash, and comb, and card, and weave, and cut, and sew, and make a suit. Now if you go up to Canada right now, the fields will be getting white towards harvest, with beautiful wheat.

I never saw any loaves growing in the field, did you? But you take that wheat, what do you do with it? You put it in a machine, you'll see a harvester go on, and it takes that wheat, and it grinds all the stalks up, and it breaks the chaff off, and then at the end you'll see this golden grain coming out.

And then you take it, and what do you do with it? You put it between stones, that's the old way, and grind the very life out of it. And then when you've done that, you put some water in, and you pummel it, and pummel it, my mother used to anyhow, making bread in the old-fashioned way.

You ladies don't do that, you just get tired pushing buttons all day. But my mother used to have to make the bread, and wash the clothes, and knit the socks, and do everything. I don't know what you women do, what do you do, sleep all day?

But anyhow, you've got to get the bread, you see, you've got to take the little grains of corn, and they've got to be ground, and then you've got to mix water with them, and that isn't the end of it, you beat up that dough, and that isn't the end, you put it in a furnace, and burn the thing, or cook it.

It's an awfully long process, from where you find it in the field as a little grain of wheat, to be ground, and then water, and then pummeled, and then roasted in an oven, and then come out as bread. By the same token, when God begins with us, it's the same thing, it's a long, long, long, long process.

As I reminded you yesterday, when God started working on this man Abraham, he was seventy-five. When he finished working, he was a hundred and seventy-five. So some of you have a long way to go yet.

When this man began with patience to build an ark, and stand all the ridicule of men, he needed a hundred and twenty years of patience before he finished the ark. Somebody says, have you read the life story of Saul?

You never read the life story of anybody. All you read are the high spot. They don't tell you about their broken hearts, they don't tell you about a couple of deacons that did some dirty deed, or somebody in the choir that did something, or our church let them down, or how they got some unjust deal from headquarters, they don't put that in.

They put the nice, lovely spots in. You can't read the life of anybody. Not even here in the Bible, not everything is said about these people. We just get certain spots, we get projected into their lives, where God wants us to see and understand, and learn some lessons.

Nor build his ark. We didn't go through, and we're not going to through the characters here logically, as they are here. And in any case, they don't come really in sequence, from the beginning of the Bible right through the, this whole thing is mixed up in Hebrews 11.

I mentioned Joseph yesterday, when he started up here, and they put him down into a pit, and sold him down into Egypt, and he went down into a jail, and then he fell through the bottom, and there he is for thirteen years.

Oh, it's all right when faith is active and things are going. What about when you get dumped? This is where character is for. In the secret place, where nobody sees. And for thirteen years, this young fellow, he's about seventeen I guess, and for thirteen years, he's left there in a jail, forgotten, he's in a heathen country, he has no father, he's nobody to communicate with.

The fantastic thing to me, I don't know how to express it, I don't have the vocabulary big enough. How did these people, when you want to make a move, what do you do, you pray, and you search the scripture, and you put your finger on a promise, as I say I've done often with Hebrews 11, 6.

God is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. But he says, the word of the Lord came. And God spoke to Abraham and said, get up and go. Now he didn't have a Bible. I don't know anybody he could go to and ask, what do you think the Lord is saying to me in this?

Or, what do you think, do you think God's guiding me, and should I go and shouldn't I go? God said, get up and go, and it says he went out, and a little later in Hebrews 11 it says he could have returned, but he didn't, he looked for a city.

Cain built a city, Abraham looked for a city, John saw the city. As I said yesterday, we talk about a leap of faith, a blind leap, faith is not blind, faith is the most seeing thing in the world. What does it say about Moses?

When he was born, was hit three months, sure, but then it says that when he was come to years he refused to be called the son of, choosing rather, verse 25 of Hebrews 11, to suffer affliction with the children of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

Verse 27, by faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured a seeing him who is invisible. Now you say to somebody, you're talking to somebody, your eyes are wide open, you're looking at the woman with a fancy hairdo, pretty makeup or something, or a man, and you're talking, you can see them, and he says, do you see what I mean?

You say, no I don't see it. And he talks a bit more and you say, oh I see what you mean. Why? Because suddenly the eyes of your understanding are open, that's why. But then you have other eyes, just as you have other ears, you can hear and not hear.

One of the greatest preachers in England was Dr. um, what was his name, the great ex-pastor McLaren. When D .L. Moody came, McLaren was on the platform, and he saw one of the elders, the finest men in his church, walk to the front, and the man got saved.

McLaren couldn't understand it, he went and talked to the man, he said, listen I preached a sermon just the other week on the same text, and it was more profound than this poor American, he can't even speak good English.

How come you came out and got saved? You were there? You told me after it was a good sermon. He said, yes it was, but I never heard you. What did he do? He registered it with his mind. But he had ears, as the scripture says, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Faith Must Be Personally Activated

Wouldn't it be nice if you could get every member of the church and line them up in sixes like they, come on we're marching to Zion, let's go now. And everyone's going to have more faith when we finish at the end, but you can't march people up like that.

People move individually. Some people in the church you have to whip them all the way, some of them you have to hold them back, and some of them don't go anywhere anyhow. What does it say in the, what is it, the twelfth chapter there, I think it is, yeah the twelfth chapter of Romans, it says in verse six, having therefore gifts, differing according to the grace that is given unto us, whether prophesying, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith.

Now I reminded you that it says in, in first Thessalonians, chapter three, about verse two there, all men have not faith. Faith is the gift of God and our repentance. Faith does not grow except it's activated.

Building up yourself in your most holy faith. Do you want your faith to grow? A lady said to me one day, my faith doesn't grow much, Mr. Ramel, what can I do to really develop my faith? I said, you get into such a jam that only faith can get you out.

She said, oh I'll see you later. What did she want? She wanted a theoretical faith, a philosophical faith, a theological faith. She didn't want a faith that was activated. There is a sense, in which however strong my faith is, it won't help yours if yours is weak.

Or however strong yours is, it won't help mine if mine is weak. You've got to get in this thing yourself. Now God calls Abraham. I think sometimes we don't really realize these people of flesh and blood.

They weren't plastic. They had nerves and sinews and emotions and doubts and fears. The world, the flesh, the devil, everything to oppose them. Now here is a man who lives down there in Ur of the Chaldees, the most lush part of the world at that time.

Some people have even located the Garden of Eden there. And here is this man and he's prosperous. And the Lord says, get up and go. How did you know the Lord said that? If you think the Lord has spoken to you, what do you do?

You test it. How? You test it by the word, excuse me, you test it by the word of God. You test it by the word of God. Very often you do as the word of God says, in a multitude of counselors, there is safety.

And that's the best thing to do. On the other hand, there are times when you ignore everybody. Because Paul says, I conferred not with flesh and blood. There are times when God speaks so strongly, so surely, and you know it's God that you just push everything on one side and you go do it.

I marvel, and I mean this, every time I read Hebrews 11, that these men and women without a Bible, without a committee meeting, without a bunch of preachers, could step out in naked faith, for that surely is what it is, and dare to believe God.

Get thee up, into a land that I assure thee of. Now God doesn't deal with all these men, he says you get up and do this, and I'll give you a piece of land, he gives him the boundaries of the land. But when he comes to Moses, the Lord just told him to get going.

He didn't say if you Moses, become my servant, I'll let you write five of the best sellers in history, I'll let you handle the greatest commandments, I'll even let you see my glory. He didn't begin to shower him with a lot of promises and strike a bargain.

He seems to do this with Abraham. You can read all the books you like, and read them, particularly read biographies, read how God made Hudson Taylor, read how God made that marvellous, marvellous man, Reese Howells.

Reese Howells went and signed on the dotted line when he'd only a shilling in his pocket worth fourteen cents, and he signed the contract for about three hundred thousand dollars, and went to bed and slept.

And folk all over England couldn't sleep. I can't sleep. Why? They've got Reese Howells on their mind. Oh well, write to him tomorrow. Are you sleeping John? Can't sleep. Reese Howells. Oh well, what are you going to do?

The Lord's telling me to send him five thousand pounds. Well send him. The man got out of bed, wrote the cheque, went to sleep like that. Maybe that's why you can't sleep, try it. But that's what happened.

All over England people were sleepless. The man that's going to, he's promised I'll give you the cash in about so many days, eight or nine days, and all he has is fourteen cents, and he has to give three hundred thousand dollars.

It takes a bit of faith to do that. Either he knows God or he's a lunatic. But he paid every penny on the dot. When he went to buy the estate, Derwenval, as the Welsh call it, he found somebody else had bought it.

The lawyer said, what can I do for you? He said, I want to buy Derwenval, as the Welsh say, Derwenval. Oh, the lawyer says, I just got a document, in fact the ink's hardly dry. This is, that man that went out, he just bought it for a group of people.

I've got some lovely, let me show you a picture here, here's a picture of Skitty Fall. See that? That lovely picture. I mean, you know, the building. And he said, I don't want that, I want Derwenval. He said, you can't have it, we've sold it.

I'll show you another building. What about that? That's a lovely estate. That would make you a great Bible school. I want Derwenval. It's sold. Here, read the thing yourself. You know what they do, you do your, a lawyer said to the office girls, I never worry when they do that.

A man's a right to do what he does with his own, likes with his own head. If he did it with mine, I might be in trouble. If he does it with his own head, it's his business. Reese Howes read through the paper and he said to the lawyer, excuse me, sir, will you read this?

I've read it many times. No, no, read this. And when he read it, he discovered that this man, maybe a hundred years ago, had said that this estate, whoever it was sold to, should never come in the possession of this group of people.

The lawyer said, I never saw that. Well, is the document legal now? No, no, no, it's not legal now. What are you going to do with it? He said, I'm going to sell Derwenval. You want to buy it? Now he bought it, he paid on the dotted line.

But you see, before he went, he said to the Lord, I need this, I need it as a Bible school. They have now about 250, 300 children there, all children of missionaries. I tried to get my boys in that school.

It's about the highest standard of education after Eton and Harrow in England. It's a fantastic school. They wouldn't even take my boys because you're not a missionary. But before he went, he got a promise from God, and the Lord said, I'll give you so many wedges of gold.

Now you know, we say about people sometimes, oh, that woman has a talent. Ever hear her play the piano, ever hear her sing, see her play the piano? She doesn't have a talent, she has a gift. A talent, in the New Testament, every time is equated with money.

A talent of gold, a talent of silver, it always gives you the value. Those are gifts, not talents. The Lord said he'd give him so many talents of gold. He found out how much a talent weighed, he found out how much gold was valued, he worked it all out.

And I forget what it was, it was something like this, $250 ,000. He signed for $300 ,000. He went home and started praising the Lord, and he said, the Lord said, shut up. Lord, I've just had the greatest act of faith in my life.

I've signed for this place, and I'm going to get it, even though all the people have bought it. They have to cancel the contract and give me the place. The Lord said, shut up. He said, well Lord, what's wrong?

He said, how much are you going to pay for this estate? Uh, whatever the figure was, $300 ,000. Oh, how much did I promise you? $250 ,000. Right, the Lord said, I'll keep my bargain, you pay the other $50 ,000.

I've only got $0 .14. Well, the Lord said, I've only got $250 ,000. Well, Lord, the silver and the gold are yours. He said, exactly, but they're not yours, only $250 ,000 is yours. You've got to find the other $50 ,000.

Well, Lord, I can't do that. Well, go back and tell the man you can't buy the estate. Well, if I go back and tell him, he'll think I'm a fool. Oh, he said, don't worry, he thinks that already. He went back to the office and he said to the man, oh, he said, you come to pay the $300 ,000?

He said, no, I can't give you $300 ,000, you've signed, you've made a legal document. Who owns this? Sir, somebody, Lord, somebody. Would you write and tell him I want this for an orphanage and a Bible school or a Bible school and a school for missionary children?

It's a really a work of charity. Would you write and tell him that this is what I want it for? He said, well, yes, but it won't be any good. As a matter of fact, the people that bought it before you were giving me about $100 ,000 more than you.

I knocked $100 ,000 off so you could get it for $300 ,000. Can't you come up with the extra, no, I can't come up with the extra $50 ,000. Well, all right, I'll see. Reese Howes went back to see the man.

He'd agreed already to give him $250 ,000 for it. When he went back, he said, well, has the man agreed to let me have it for $250 ,000? He said, no. He said, oh, my, he said you can have it for $200 ,000.

See, God tested his faith, tested his pride. Be a fool, go back and tell him you made a mistake. But I remember standing with Mrs. Howes, we were looking over the ocean, looking over the English Chamber, and she said, Brother Ravenhill, let me tell you something.

Everybody knows that Daddy had a shilling in his hand when he bought this estate. See that door? I said, yes, lady, I see that door. Daddy, meaning her husband, Daddy went in that room at six o 'clock in the morning and stayed there till six o 'clock at night, 12 hours a day for 11 months and never saw anybody.

The only one day that he missed was when he went to his mother's funeral and the Lord said, you can have a day off and go to your mother's funeral, come straight back. And he stopped and talked with the man, a Mr. Griffiths, I think it was.

And the Lord rebuked him and said, why did you stay and talk with that man? I told him to come straight back here. You know, the Lord's very strict, we aren't. If you don't know God's voice, it's pure nonsense.

You think God's a taskmaster? God is a master of detail. Do you remember when they built that fabulous temple of old and the pillars were way up there and God said, put some lily work at the top of the, why?

Nobody's gonna go shimmying up the pole to look for lilies up there, are you? Nobody's gonna have a camera up there. The Lord is concerned with minute details. He always has been, he always will be. All faith doesn't leap at once.

For 11 months, 12 hours a day, isn't that something? I got that right from his own dear wife, just the two of us standing on that veranda overlooking the English Channel, or maybe there they call it the Welsh Channel.

I can see the tear in her eye, that little dark Welsh woman saying, they have musical voices, you know. Even when they're talking, they're singing. And she said, daddy was in that room 12 hours a day for 11 months.

You see, he got an underpinning to his faith. He got to the place where God was so near that if he prayed, he almost put out your hands to feel him. I remember a lady in a meeting said to me one day, did you ever meet Praying Hyde?

I said, no, did you? She said, I certainly did in India. She was an old lady. She said, I remember he came to the Cyclops Convention. They didn't get him there to speak, didn't get him there to sing. They got him there to pray.

If ever I was led, I have not been led to do it. I've had offers. I had a man, a group of about 12 millionaires offered to buy me the largest tent in America, give me a larger salary than Billy Graham, and I don't know what they weren't going to do.