The Baptism of Love — Leonard Ravenhill

Maybe put it under the title of Will Christ Return in 1974. One of the news commentators reminded us the other day, actually two weeks ago, that no less than eight governments had toppled, or at least the, if not the governments that toppled, the presidents, the principals, the chancellors, the prime ministers, advocated their office, all in the last eight weeks.

Since that time we've had two or three others. And now we've ten countries that have either collapsed or their leaders are leaving. And it doesn't look as though America's too secure right now either.

So maybe tonight we'll talk on this very wonderful theme, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to assume, for the sake of time, that you at least know that there are thirteen verses in 1 Corinthians 13.

In case you've forgotten, it begins with, I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as founding brass or as a tinkling cymbal. In the two thousand years of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ, a very erratic history, a very dramatic history, the Church of Jesus has lacked many things.

But not in the past, nor in the present, nor will she in the future lack critics. She's always had them, and we always need them. And we have a lot today, and they're trying, of course, to tell us with some degree of truth, the Church is washed up.

We're a relic. We're standing on the sidewalk watching the parade go by. The main actors being, of course, the Communists and the Romanists and a few others. And I don't think we need to be nervous about it, let's face it.

The Church is, as I say sometimes, the greatest tragedy in the world today, is a sick Church in a dying world. What is wrong with the Church? Well, it would take a long while to analyze that. But let me say this, that I believe that there is one thing that would really put the Church of Jesus Christ back into business, and that is the baptism of love.

I believe that the greatest need in the Church today, in the home, in the fellowship of the Saints, in the Church speaking in general, is a great outpouring of the Spirit of love. In this chapter, 13 verses, Paul says, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have no charity, as it says in the rather sleepy Elizabethan English of the Authorized Version, a version that I stay with.

A lady told me not many weeks ago, in a kind of hushed, sanctified mood, she said, I've just received a living Bible. I said, I've had one fifty years. In fact, I never knew the Bible was dead anyhow.

I didn't need Ken Taylor to tell me the Bible's living. The Word of God said that. The Word of God is the living Word of God. And there is nothing more living, more vital, than this great theme again of love.

Now remember this, that this is written by a man who one day was going down the road to Damascus, and he carried inside of his toga, the garments the Romans wore, he carried what he thought was the death sentence of the Church.

We would say he was mad, blazing mad, breathing out threatening. There's one thing for sure, that when he went down that road to Damascus, he didn't have much of this commodity of love. And yet here he is writing the greatest song, the greatest theme, it's a poem actually, the greatest poem ever written, was written of course by divine inspiration, and through this amazing man, the Apostle Paul.

Whenever I read his life, I'm challenged and I'm humiliated and embarrassed. Because you see, you've got to remember that he didn't live in our day of jets and planes and trains. Rather interesting when you think that for the first three or four thousand, four thousand, five thousand years of history, that men never moved any more swiftly than on the back of a horse or across the sea on a ship with a bit of cloth on it, the wind puffing the thing along.

Sometimes Richard could go back to that. In America, I know there's only two kinds of people, the quick and the dead. If you're not quick you're dead. That for three thousand years we only moved on the backs of animals, went over the ocean on a little boat with a stick on it and a piece of cloth.

And it was in days like this that the Apostle accomplished all that he accomplished. He began his life in the historic capital of the world, a very wonderful place, Tarsus. And he ended up in the military capital of the world, Rome.

In between he went to the religious capital of the world, which was Jerusalem. He went to the Las Vegas of his day, Corinth, the very church to which he's riding here. And he went to the intellectual capital of the world, which was Athens, which is mentioned in the 17th of the Acts of the Apostles.

And there you get the sweep of his life. He wrote 14 epistles, if you include Hebrews. And he exceeded everybody else in suffering, in outrageous sacrifice, in unreasonable efforts. You could describe his life only in superlatives in every area in which he moved.

And there must be some reason for this. In the language of a child, what made him tick? Why did he do these things? And I think he gives the answer. In fact, I'm sure he gives the answer in the second epistle, in the, about 5th chapter, verse 14, where he says that this is the secret of his own life.

He believes, of course, that there's a day of judgment ahead. Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. I trace these folk without stickers on the back of their nice little automobiles, you know, smile, God loves you.

That's only one side of the coin. You should have one on the other side, on the other bumper, saying God is angry with the wicked every day. Because God doesn't joke, and he doesn't smile on a rotten world that stinks in his nostrils right now.

God is angry with the wicked. And Paul never lost sight that God is a God of wrath as well as he is a God of love. There's no sentimentalism in God. His love is love. It's not sticking daisies on Volkswagens you'll change the world.

We know the classic verse of the gospel is John 3, 16, God so loved the world. Well, Paul believed that. He would never tackle the situation. He went to the immoral capital of the world, Corinth. Why did he go there?

Because he says the love of Christ constrains me. He not only takes a great panoramic view of the world and says God so loved the world, but he narrows it down, and he says Christ loved the church. And he gets it narrower than that, he says he loved me.

And the outstanding wonder of Paul's life was not that he built a colossal church, if you like, on the slot and the sewers right in the center of the rottenness that's in the world, Corinth. But the most amazing thing he said is that one day God found me breathing out threatening.

Paul was never immoral. He wasn't a drunkard. He was a man of impeccable morality. He was the greatest brain the world ever saw, apart from Jesus himself. If he'd gone on pursuing his career he would have been greater than Gamaliel or any other Hebrew teacher that ever was.

And they set their own hopes on this. And one day dramatically, we might mention it sometime during the week, he met the Lord Jesus. I'm glad he didn't meet an evangelist. He might have given him a copy of the four laws and that would have ended him anyhow.

But he didn't meet an evangelist, he met Jesus. And if you meet Jesus, if you have a confrontation with Jesus, you'll never, never be the same, either one way or the other. It would be a saber of life unto life or death unto death.

And on that Damascus road he met the Lord Jesus Christ. And then you remember that he said on that road, it pleased God to reveal himself to me. And then he went to God's great Bible school, which is in the wilderness, and he said it pleased God to reveal himself in me.

One was dealing with his past and his record, the other was dealing with the, the work inside of him that needed to be done, the cleansing and the sanctifying and the undoing and so forth. Now, Paul says, though I speak with a pensionate, you've got to remember in every case to whom the apostle is writing.

Here he's writing to Greeks. I thrill every time I think of the infant church of Jesus Christ. The church was not presented to the world on a silver platter. The church came into the world under the total, under the control of a totality, it was a totalitarian world.

It was a sophisticated world. It was under dominion of the greatest military machine in history, that is the Roman Empire. The greatest religious system, the Jews. And the greatest system of intellectualism, the Greeks were in their power.

And the church was walled in. I looked down into the Grand Canyon some months back, I suppose two or three years ago. And I remember seeing the little sign there about the size of this desk, you may have seen it, and it says, now this is the legend here.

Across there, that little yellow ribbon, is the Colorado River. 350 feet wide, 45 feet deep, it goes at a certain speed. And then the walls of the canyon are a mile high, and the distance of the furthest wall is seven miles, and so you get all the details.

And suddenly I said to myself, supposing you put a child in that situation, would the child ever get out? Surely he couldn't swim a fast-flowing river for 350 feet, and 45 feet of water. He can't climb a mile high, he couldn't scale these rocks.

How would he get out? Well it's almost a physical impossibility. Well then that is the picture. As I stood there, there is the Church of Jesus when it was born. Walled in on this side with a mile high of brilliance of the Greeks in their supreme wisdom.

And walled in at this side with the greatest military machine in the world again, the Roman Empire. And obstructed in front with the mighty monopoly, as they thought, the Jewish religion. And yet remember that the Church of Jesus Christ, without money, without armies, penetrated every one of our systems.

Penetrated them why? Because there was a dynamic. Because the Word of God recognizes in the Old Testament that love is a fire, love is stronger than death. And when Paul says, I may speak with the tongues of men, oh boy, they knew what he was talking about.

Remember in their background they have the greatest orator that ever lived, Demosthenes. He slurred his words worse than Winston Churchill. I used to listen to him during war days over the radio. And he slurred his words, but he was a brilliant man.

I'm not plugging for England, but if America had been sensitive enough to obey him at the Yalta Conference, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. But Roosevelt backed up in some other area. If we'd done as they wanted to do when they were dealing with the Arabs and that bunch there, and a few years back when Mr. Eden was the Prime Minister of England, we wouldn't be in the situation with the Arabs that we're in today.

But we made accommodations. Anyhow, that's just a little bit of letting you know how smart the English are. But apart from that, this man, Winston Churchill, slurred his words. Demosthenes had an impediment.

And as a young man, when he heard the orators brilliant, and they got their scholarships, and they got their endowments, and they got their crowns, he burned with desire to be an orator. And so he went down by the sea and put pebbles in his mouth, and shouted his words, got his tongue round the pebbles, got his voice over the roar of the waters, and before long became the most eloquent man maybe the world has ever had.

He's a classic example of a Greek orator. And when Paul says, I may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, they must have thought that to orators like Demosthenes. They must have thought of poets like Homer, who made the stuff that the orators used very often.

Speaking with the tongues of men and of angels. Philosophers like Aristotle and who have you got, that gave them all the stuff they needed so they could put it out and stir the people. There's a record of a man by Cato, another of the greatest of orators.

You see, there was an enemy of Rome by the name of Carthage. Carthage was in North Africa, across the Mediterranean Sea from Rome. And every great orator that was speaking politically, he would point there and say, there is Carthage.

Carthage must be destroyed. You know when Cato got men stirred, they would draw swords they weren't even wearing. They'd rush to a bridge that wasn't there to try and get over and destroy their enemies.

That's the power of oratory. Carthage must be destroyed. They have what they call a peroration. They stir the people up like Hitler used to. And then the final time after, Carthage must be destroyed. Carthage didn't destroy Rome.

How was Rome destroyed? Oh, well she was destroyed like America will be destroyed. She committed suicide. That's all she did. I don't believe there's a country in the world big enough to destroy America.

She doesn't need destroying. She's doing it herself pretty good right now. Morally, socially, economically, mention any area. Now don't get mad. You say, well you're an Englishman wiping us off. No, I'm just telling you the truth.

I mentioned the fact the lady got mad in one meeting I was in, and she came up to me furious. What are you doing in this country talking about my country like this? I said, because my Billy Graham's in my country talking about my country like that.

That's why. So all I'm doing is just balance the thing out, you see. I want you to know, she said, that I am a pure-blooded American. She was a blonde, very pretty. It all went down the sink at night, but anyhow she was pretty.

And she was blonde. What I call a suicide blonde, you know, dyed by her own hand. And she stood there rather furious, and she said, well I want you to know I'm a pure-blooded American. So I looked at her past as sweetly as I could, and I said, what reservation are you from?

What do you mean? I said, you're a pure-blooded American. You must be a... Why, what would I be? What tribe of Indian do you belong to? Indian? My folk came from Europe. Well, what are you telling me you're a pure-blooded American for?

The only pure-blooded Americans I know, most of them are on reservations anyhow. Can't even get their own country back, but let's not get into that right here. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. We don't need any enemies to destroy America.

America is destroying itself. Why did Rome collapse? Well, if ever you want to read something a bit heavy, you might read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is certainly a very fantastic book.

And he gives you an outline. The reasons, he said, the rapid degrees, number one is the rapid increase of divorce, and the undermining, as he says, of the sanctity of the home. The spiral rising of taxes, an extravagant spending.

Demanding craze for pleasure and brutal sport. The spending of too much money, gigantic schemes, and spending money on armaments. If you think men aren't insane, well, tell me why we've had two world wars, and we're in the mess we're in now.

We couldn't have been worse off if we'd never had the war. With fifty thousand bodies of the finest young men in America lying rotting in Vietnam and elsewhere. What good has it done us? Surely we could have had Watergate without Vietnam, couldn't we?

Could have all the rotten politics. We could have had this stranglehold that the oil people have on us for fun. We could have had all that without men shedding the life's blood. But you see, I think one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

If we did, we'd be a lot smarter. Now, Rome collapsed under the weight of its own sin, and the final thing, he said, that caused the destruction of Rome was the decay of faith into a mere form of godliness.

And all those five symptoms are very prominent in America, and in England, of course, at this very moment. All I hear is, he says, the Carthage must be destroyed. No, Carthage did not destroy Rome. Rome destroyed itself.

But you see what he's talking about. He's saying to these people, though I speak with the tongues of men. They were up against two things. They were up against the eloquence, the power, the might, and the orator.

The man who could stir you emotionally, politically, and get you angry about certain things. And they were up against something else. Because Paul here again says, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Now what's he talking about? This is a day when the popular word, of course, is charismatic. Charisma. And there's more interest in charisma than character. Now I don't care if you speak in tongues and stand on your head as long as you live a holy life.

But if all you do is speak in tongues, and then the same tongue you've spoken with, you're bitter, and critical, and snarl at people, and get bad-tempered, forget it. Because you didn't get the gift of the Spirit.

You may speak in tongues from three angles. One, psychic. You can produce things yourself. Number two, demonic. And number three, a genuine spiritual gift. And of all the gifts that there are, the gifts of the Spirit are there.

It's no good throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are gifts of the Spirit. But I believe that the greatest need right now is to analyze and find out. And the way to do that, the greatest need in any church right now, is the gift, not the gift of discernment.

People say, I've got the gift of discernment. You can have that without being saved. You can have that and be a prostitute. You can have the gift of discernment and be a drunk. But you can't have the gift of discerning a spirit.

And that's what the Word of God says. Now, of course, everybody comes and thumps you and says, are you filled with the Spirit? Yes. Do you speak in tongues? No. Oh, well, you're not filled. Well, you don't believe them.

Because if they say that, they're not biblical. Give me a text. All right. In this very chapter, he's speaking, pardon me, in the previous chapter. You see, here in chapter 12, he's involved in a great theological discourse.

And he resumes it in the 14th chapter. He comes up to breathe, as it were, in the 14th chapter. It's been so heavy in chapter 12. He's been talking about the Holy Spirit concerning spiritual gifts. You know what I'm convinced of?

Only this last month, I came to this conviction, the Holy Spirit has no gifts to give. Oh, you say you just read it. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The supreme miracles of the ages were, number one, the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Number two, the resurrection from the dead. That's a most stupendous. We're not saved because Jesus died for us. You say you're only saved by the blood. Oh, no you're not. Oh, no you're not. You're not saved through the blood of Jesus.

You're not saved because Jesus died for you. They're two parts of something else. He must do more than die and shed his blood. He's got to rise again from the dead. He rose again for our justification.

I like that little chorus that says, living he loved me, dying he saved me, buried he carried my sins far away. Rising he justified, freely forever, one day he's coming. You've got it almost all there.

Dying is not enough. He must rise again. What did it say when Jesus rose again from the dead? It says he went down every cavern in hell and declared his resurrection power and he led captivity captive and he gave gifts unto men.

And the Spirit of God would have no gifts to give except that Jesus purchased them with his own blood. Because the Holy Spirit is the executor of the Godhead. It's like somebody leaving a stack of money in a will for you.

And then you go to the lawyer and the lawyer distributes it and says, well that's your part of the will and that's your part and that. And the Holy Spirit does that. He takes what Jesus purchased for us.

When old hymn says, the purchase of thy death divide. And Jesus purchased gifts for men. And the Holy Spirit activates those gifts. But wait a minute. You see we're so lopsided. Some of us have been dried up so long that anything that comes along, anything that's supernatural is of God.

Don't believe it for a minute. There happens to be a kingdom of darkness and a devil. And everything that's miraculous is not of God. Satan can work miracles. Do you happen to know this? That one of the tenets or tenets if you like to call it in the faith of the Mormons is that they speak in tongues.

Did you know that? Would you say they're spirit filled? I've been to mission fields in many parts of the world and somebody will say you know they had a feast there. They killed, which they did in Papua New Guinea.

They killed 2 ,000 hogs and they ate for about a month and then they starved. They actually eat until they're sick and then they vomit, pardon me, they go vomited up. Their stomach's empty and they eat again and they drink and they get mad and they dance.

And sometimes they stand up and they speak flawless English for 10 minutes and they've never heard a word of it. How do you explain it? You say oh you're like the rest of them knocking tongues. No I'm not knocking tongues at all.

I'm telling you that if every church was it should be in the New Testament character that every gift of the Spirit would operate in this church. But the Holy Ghost wouldn't give 99 people the gift of tongues and nobody the gift of interpretation.

I've been in churches like that. He wouldn't give 99 people the gift of tongues again and if somebody happens to be away there's no the Holy Ghost isn't as foolish as that. What does the scripture say?

It says that there are difference of administrations but the same Lord. There are differences of operations. Verse 6 in case you're interested of chapter 12. The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.

Now listen very carefully here. Now you quote me as much as you like but don't misquote me because I'm going to quote the scripture here. Listen to the scripture to one. This is verse 8 if you're listening and you're not too prejudiced to learn.

Somebody hasn't stuffed you because you got some bunch of tapes from Fort Lauderdale or somewhere. What's he saying verse 8? For to one he's given the Spirit by the word of wisdom to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit to another faith by the same Spirit.

Boy I'd like a I'd like a few deacons with a gift of faith. Wouldn't you? Isn't it amazing again you can go into a church where everybody says they speak in tongues but nobody has the gift of faith and none have the gift of wisdom and nobody has the gift of knowledge.

But oh boy we're going to do a war dance because we all speak in tongues. No no listen listen listen what it says. Verse 9 to another faith by the same Spirit to another the gifts of healings not gift of healing gifts of healings by the same Spirit to another the working of miracles.

Verse 10 to another prophecy to another this learning of Spirit. Listen to another not to everybody divers kinds of tongues to another he said. Now how does he finish the chapter? He's not looking too happy some of you by the way.

But anyhow how does he finish the chapter? He says are all apostles verse 29 are all prophets are all teachers are all workers of miracles have all the gifts of healing? Obviously the answer is no. Do all speak with tongues?

The obvious answer is no. Do all interpret? The obvious answer is no. And then we're told to covet earnestly the best gifts and tongues is always the last on the list. It's the most divisive. People only have to speak in tongues and oh boy you know none of the preachers around here there isn't a church here that's got any life in it at all.

I mean you know there's nowhere to go to get faith. They're like these sharpshooters that go to a foreign country there and they go and they get all the natives to put their hands up if they want to be saved and take a picture of two thousand and they say we saw Pentecost two nights in succession you know.

Do you know we saw more done for God in three nights than those missionaries had seen for 40 years? And the stupid fellows haven't the sense to realize if the missionary hadn't have been there he'd have been in the stew pot that night.

The only reason he could put his foot in that area was that a missionary had worked there for 20 or 30 years and taught them the things of God. No no no. What did Jesus say? By this shall all men know that you're my disciples if you speak in tongues.

Did he say that? The first and greatest commandment is I shall speak with tongues. Actually you shall receive tongues when the Holy Ghost. No it doesn't say that. You should receive power after the Holy Ghost.

By this shall all men know. Here is the badge of discipleship. The disciples said well you're not going to leave us like this we've just got to love you. I've given up a business to follow you. I was a successful fisherman.

Well I was a tax gatherer and I would be getting a pension in a year or two and I dropped the whole thing and I become a disciple of yours and now you're going to leave us. I don't think that's fair. Jesus says look somebody greater.

Oh no no that's just a consolation prize. Who could be greater than you are? And somebody says well if you're going away uh we like people to know that we belong the original party uh do you think uh we could wear a uniform so that you know when people see it say hey he used to be with that miracle worker called Jesus.

He says no uniform. What about a badge? Oh any old hypocrite can wear that but that's no good. Well why don't you give us a sign you know something like this or a shibboleth. Isn't there something you know so that uh when people see us they say hey he he belonged that Jesus man.

Jesus says yes I got something for you. What is it? He says by this shall all men know that you're my disciples if you have love one toward another. You could have tongues and not have love. In fact do you know any churches more split up than Pentecostal churches?

They're not split. They're splintered. They've only to come to a discussion and they break up and start another church and break up and start another. They're no worse than anybody else. They're no better anyhow.

With all the gifts the gifts don't hold people together. Very often they divide but you see the word of God says that we are lively stones and the only way to hold stones together is to cement them together.

And the cement the strongest cement of all is the cement of love. You're the lively stones. Oh yes Paul says I may speak with the tongues of men but if I have no love. What is the first and greatest commandment in the bible?

The first and greatest commandment is thou shall love the Lord thy God. Who is the first being in the world in the universe? God. And God is love. What is the first fruit of the spirit? Love, joy, peace, long-suffering.

I remember buying a telescope in Ireland. My sweet wife comes from Ireland. I'm English. We never fight. We get on perfectly. And uh but I bought this wonderful telescope. Took it home and uh said to the boys now I bought you a telescope.

And I thought that that's going to keep them quiet for days you know. They're just going to go upstairs. We lived in a house that happens to have three stories and we were on a hill and they could sweep right over the valley see Manchester and other areas.

I thought boy they'll get up there in a day and look around you know. They won't have any trouble for six months. They'll be so quiet and excited. The boy went upstairs he was down just he said dad this is a great telescope.

I said sure I got it very cheap and I'm glad you like it. Well he said it's a good one. I said yes. He said and you know what? I said no. He said it's a celestial telescope. I said what do you mean? He said it's not for looking at the land.

Well it's only to look at stars and other things. You see daddy what we'll have to do to use it is stay up late at night. Hmm. And I thought I'd solved the problem and I'd made a hundred. But you know one day when they were playing with that long telescope I saw that boy get hold of the telescope and he pulled one section out and then another and then another and then another.

And suddenly I thought of that scripture. The barrel of the telescope. You can put all the other sections in it and it seems to me possibly you can do that with it. The barrel is love, joy, peace, long-suffering.

If you get that you'll get the rest all right. You see. But we want other things without this thing. Paul says I may speak with the tongues of men. Now he didn't speak with all the tongues of men. Paul wasn't an eloquent.

I don't think he was a brilliant preacher. He was a profound theologian. Apollos was the orator. He oh boy he'd make something run up and down your back when he preached. When Paul went to the intellectual capital of the world, Acts 17, read the story.

They looked down their noses at him and they said why what will this babbler say? That doesn't sound like an orator. In the 10th chapter of the second epistle and verse 10 he says that when those big muscle men saw him, you know the guys that do all the barbells and what they look, they said his bodily presence is so weak and his speech contemptible.

He's no great preacher. Oh he was a profound theologian. If you had a brain big enough to follow him and you were interested and you didn't want merely serial every time you went to church. That's all some people want.

It's a great meeting if you sit and clap your hands you know and have a nice time and you didn't learn that much when you came out of the meeting. But somebody told you somebody got healed in Timbuktu.

Now I believe in healings. I've seen just about everything except raising the dead. But those are not the greatest things. You can go to a healing meeting and not gain that much knowledge. Thrills? Oh you get thrills.

Sure. Miss Kuhlman's coming to town a week when she can read next Sunday. I know Miss Kuhlman. I've taught with her for hours. I've preached in her meetings and she's a great woman. And I've nothing against miracles.

I'm glad that miracles are done but they don't build your faith up necessarily. Faith cometh by what? Hearing the choir. Doesn't say that. They minister sometimes it doesn't say. Faith cometh by hearing but immediately it follows us I'm hearing by the word of God.

This is why Satan will push you off other things. This is why it's nicer to watch a TV program even if it's a gospel program and get the word of God and let it become living and vital inside of us. Because faith cometh by hearing.

All right. Paul says I may speak with it. He doesn't say he speaks with them all. I don't believe any man ever did. I don't believe any man ever will. There are certain gifts God gives. If he's given you it and you're sure it's the spirit.

Well treasure it. Don't strut. You see very often people who get gifts start strutting. You know I've got the gift of tongues. Tongues. I got a gift of interpretation. It's far more rare than tongues.

Every Tom, Dick and Harry have tongues but I've got interpretation. I've got the gift of wisdom. Never thought that. And I've got this gift and I've got that gift. And this is what the Corinthians were doing.

They were strutting around. They were making a display in the house of God. They were so content with the gifts they're like someone who gets a little thing around the neck and oh she does this thing oh isn't this lovely isn't this lovely these beautiful jewels and forgets the one who gives it.

And when you do that. You see very often what we want is not for the glory of God. I want it for my ecstasy. I want it to stir me emotionally. I want to feel better. Life is so humdrum. You know when John's gone to work in the morning.

Oh I'm all day to wait till he comes back at night. Oh I'm so tired. It's a blessing to have soap opera. I don't know how I get through. And you say you love God and you watch the soap opera far longer than you pray far longer than you read the word of God.

Do you think God believes you? Not for a moment. Love. Stronger than death. Love is a fire. Love Paul says look they tied me to a whipping post and lashed me 195 times and when they'd done I shouted hallelujah.

I hung on a piece of wood in the Mediterranean for 36 hours. There was something in him and they couldn't lash it out and they couldn't threaten it out of him and they couldn't wash it out of him and they couldn't starve it out of him.

You know what he got for it? Well he didn't get what the modern evangelist gets you know. Two hundred dollar shoes and three uh three hundred dollar suits and two hundred dollar alligator shoes and a Lincoln Continental.

Well of course that's dead now. Every good evangelist has his own plane. That man died almost broke. Do you know the greatest revivalist America ever had was Charles G. Finney? And after these had cities where a hundred thousand people were born again.

You haven't got an evangelist do that in the last 25 years and I don't care who you name. Mr. Roberts, Billy Graham, Miss Kuhlman, any of them. Put them all together they haven't had a hundred thousand permanent maybe.

That's certainly not a record like I saw outside of that church in Rochester Minnesota. Charles G. Finney was here for six months. A hundred thousand people would change. Do you know how you can tell when you've had a revival?

Because the moral climate is changed. Not people just running to church and being happy and singing around. But the drunkard is converted and the ale house closes down and dance halls close down. That's revival.

You haven't got a man in America today can have revival like that. Nor have we got one in England. We're so happy with tinsel and toys we don't know that much about the Holy Ghost really in my judgment.