(Audio Sermon Clip) Prayer Meeting Exhortation — Leonard Ravenhill

Spiritual Slumber and the Call to Awaken

The thing that really has gripped me today about this, is not just the parable, three simple words that are very very applicable to the day in which we are living. While men slept. I believe that's what the Church of Jesus Christ is doing today, sleeping.

Remember Paul in Ephesians 5, says to the people of that day, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. Well, sleep isn't death, but it's the same, all our powers are suspended. A man is unconscious, he's out of touch with the world around about him.

While men slept. If the Christians are the salt of the earth, and I'm sure they are, the praying people are the salt of the Church. He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall possibly get a harvest.

No? That must be the perverse version. What is it? Shall doubtless. There are lots of things that break me up, but nothing breaks me up like Hebrews 11. Reading about men and women, like us they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions.

Women received their dead race to life again. What bigger stretch of miracles do you want than that? Then there was people obscuring that others, others, had chance of deliverance, they wouldn't take it.

The Enemy Sows Tares While the Church Sleeps

What happened while men slept? Well, it tells us that while men slept, the enemy got in and sowed the seed. This wretched thing about the peace house coming up every day on TV, what happened? While they were sleeping, the enemy was doing his damnable work.

But the enemy is sowing his seed. Do you hear the news tonight? Well, a few days ago I got a paper and it said the judge in Alabama had said that if you're going to teach, you have to teach the creationist theory as well as the, you must teach the creationist theory alongside with the junky theory of the monkeys.

I mean, I've no problem with the scholar. If he wants to go to the zoo to see his relatives, that's his business. I'll take them some peanuts. But now, what did they say? The Supreme Court declared today that we cannot teach the biblical creation.

One smart guy says we can't teach that trash anymore. Why don't these guys that know so much about monkeys go up the Amazon without arms, without any guns, and evangelize in that area? You see, wherever this book Liberty goes, freedom goes, what's the difference between the United States of America and South America?

Well, a bunch of fellows came from England and Holland. With what? Two things. Their Bibles. No, three things. Didn't know they all brought their own caskets. When they came off the pilgrim fathers and mothers, they brought their wives with them, they brought their Bibles, they brought their caskets with them.

What happened? That this was, the light going out was and has been, and pray God it will be, the most enlightened country in the world. What happened in South America? Priests went, they didn't take any wives, they used other men's wives.

They didn't take the Bible, they sent it bound in a foreign language. And only in the last decade or so have they liberated it. Wherever this word goes, it's a lamp for our feet and a light. Now we say, why have we got all the problems in school?

Because we threw ten lamps out of every school. The ten commandments. There's no mystery about it. Boy, I'm no genius, but I know when they put the lights out, it's dark in the room. I know when they take the Bible out, it's dark.

And we've done this in our homes, alas. Very few homes. Where the word of God is honoured and read and explained. Sowing the seed of discord. Sowing the seed of error. There's an old song, let me see if I can recall the hymn.

Denying the Devil and Ignoring His Work

It's a hymn, it's a poem. Men don't believe in the devil now as their fathers used to do. They force the door of the broadest creed to let his majesty through. There isn't a print of his cloven hoof or a dart from his fiery bow to be found in church or world today for the church has voted it so.

Well, who is it mixes the fatal draught that pulses heart and brain? Who fills the beer, the beer meaning the thing they take the corpse out of? Who fills the beer of each passing year with a hundred thousand slain?

Who dumbs the step of a toiling saint? Who digs the pit for his feet? Who sows the turd in the fields of time wherever God sows his wheat? For the devil is voted not to be. So, of course, the thing is true.

What we simple folk would like to know, who's doing the things the devil should do? The devil alone should do. There has to be a revival. I'm absolutely sure of that. Look at the error in the world tonight.

Discipleship Requires Taking Up the Cross

I remind you again, somebody reminded me this week, these young Shiites and others, every time they hear somebody's being killed, they're lining up in Lebanon, standing in line from 17 to any old age up there, 17, 18, 19, asking, I want to go and die for my country, not fight for it, not live for it, die for it.

Well, that's all Jesus Christ. He doesn't ask you to come and get rid of your lousy sins, so you won't go to hell. He says, come and die. You can't be a disciple. I said to a preacher today, do you say to young folk that come to the altar, listen, before you go away, renounce the world, the flesh of the devil, say, I put off every unclean thing, and I embrace everything that's pure and holy, and right here I take up my cross.

Because Jesus says, if you don't take up your cross, you cannot be my disciple. And that's a tremendous statement, that we lose all our rights. The moment we say, I take Christ into my life, I have nothing.

I have no rights to myself. It may not cost you much to say, take my silver and my gold, you don't have much. But when you're saying, take my life, remember the moment you said it, we read this in eternity.

I read again this week, where G. Campbell Morgan said, remember, a man is not an apostate, because he propagates error. He's an apostate because he knows the truth and won't accept it. He's living below standards.

Living for Eternity Rather Than Wealth

But we're in God's name with all these people. I wonder how many kids now, they've been ambitious, they've got a style. I want to be like PTO. I say this and I'll answer before God, maybe the greatest show, when we get to the judgment seat, will be a man who worked 20 years to get $200 million, to buy $200 million of wood and steel.

The whole thing's going to be burned up before God. There's only one way to live, and that's to live with eternity's values in view. If you do that, you won't care whether you wear designer clothes or you don't.

Whether you've got the worst looking car or the worst looking house, it won't matter at all. We used to sing a hymn when I was a little boy, and I'm glad we sang hymns and not so many choruses. He was not willing that any should perish.

Jesus enthroned in the glory above, saw this poor fallen world, pitied our sorrows, poured out his life for us, wonderful love. The last time he says he was not willing that any should perish. Am I his follower?

And can I live longer at ease with a soul going downward, lost for the lack of the help I might give? Perishing, perishing, thou was not willing. Master, forgive and inspire us anew. Banish our worldliness.

Help us to ever live with eternity's values in view. I've been thinking about this very thing of Soyne, and a friend wrote me a note today. It came, and it just put in, Satan seems to do his most critical work when men are asleep.

It says, while men slept, the enemy came. People say sometimes, are you critical? I said, no, I'm a watchman. The watchman's on the wall higher than this, and he doesn't have a bullhorn. He doesn't have a mic.

The Watchman Must Remain Vigilant

He stands there day, and then he shifts for the night shift. He's on the wall, maybe 40 or 50 feet high, and he hollers to a man like that, a little guy, and he says, the enemy, the enemy, and he in turn shouts to the next man, who shouts to the next man, who shouts to the next man.

You know, we read the Bible as though everything was electrified in those days. It was all man, it was all hard work. And they couldn't sleep. Napoleon was one of the greatest military strategists in history.

People still study his military strategy. He appointed some men who were supposed to be the cream of the crop in his army, lieutenants and captains and majors, to go on night duty. And he put them all around an area where he knew the enemy would come.

And I don't know what you're doing here. We have sheaves of corn in England. You stick them up like this. At least they're used to it in the field. And this captain is way on the edge of the field, the night was cold, he got cold, so he propped his gun up against the sheaves and he slipped in, pulled his big coat around him, and fell asleep.

Woke up in the morning, he looked and there, all he could see were a pair of trousers. He crawled out at the other end and looked up and Napoleon saluted him and said, Now what? Well, it means another captain to be in trouble, but it was the famous Napoleon.

Again, the Superman. You know, God Almighty is going to judge us merely by the Bible verses we know. The trouble again is we're living in a generation that's filled with apostates. All of us know to live better than we're living.

We know to pray better than we're praying. We know to sacrifice better than we're sacrificing. And as I told you before, I don't know who said it, but it's smart. You never get a second chance to make a first appearance.

The Deadness of Worldly Living

One chance. These crazy folks talk about coming back a second time. But they're saying I've lived 200 years ago, 300 years ago. Do you know what the problem is? They're not even living now. They're dead in trespassing and in sin.

Sure, they can throw a million dollar bash when there's some great situation on. They can have all the so-called luxury things of this world, perishing things of clay, born but for one brief day. As I said last week, these horrible, wretched people who die with age.

Have you heard of one that said, look, when I die, put at least six back issues of Playboy in my casket? Put six copies of what's the other stupid thing there? Some other silly girls' magazine. I don't hear of them saying, I want to read, I want to die.

I'm a communist. Put Karl Marx's Bible. He had a kind of a Bible. Put Karl Marx in my casket with me. I'm a Nazi. Put Mein Kampf in my casket with me. They don't do that. They don't call their friends and rejoice they're going into eternity.

It's only those of us who know the light and by the grace of God walk in the light. Do you remember what Abraham did? He made his offering. What did he do? He slew the beast, the birds here, the birds there, and he walked down the middle in the night, beating off the birds of prey that were coming.

Guarding the Seed of the Word

I tried to do that in a little way every day of my life. I know that as soon as somebody sows a seed somewhere up the Amazon or somewhere else, the birds of prey come, the unbelievers come, the liars come, the cheaters come, the false priests come.

But the story says, remember the wheat and the tares, they grow together until the final day. And it's the tares that are gathered first, not the wheat. There's going to be a removal of a lot of these tares.

I think God is starting a purging in the church and I pray God it will go on. God is jealous for his church. He's jealous for his bride. He's coming for a bride, pure and spotless. How many of you know that lovely hymn of Rutherford written where?

1550, The Sands of Time are Sinking, you remember that? Well, he has a verse in there, he says the bride eyes not her garments, but her dear bridegroom's face. What all these folk want to be raptured for?

Do they get intoxicated with joy every day, they kneel there and see his face by faith? Huh? Are they transported to the exorcism? Oh God, I wish I could, right now you come and get me. No, most people want to be raptured because they're in debt and distress, they're afraid of war, they're afraid of communism.

A poll was taken recently across the nation. What is your number one fear? Oh my God, cancer. What's your number one fear? A nuclear war. What's your number one fear? A rush of invaders. Went down the list like that, what's your number?

Not one said they were afraid of death. Not one said I'm afraid to stand trembling before the eternal Holy God. Not one person said that, even amongst Christians. But what an awesome thing when we stand there.

Worship Must Be Rooted in the True God

How can you smart men, you study stars, you know history, you know philosophy, how is it you don't know God? How do the Kennedys still light candles for a man that's been dead? And the candles can't help him and everybody else.

And yet they still do it. And they have a sincerity. The trouble is that these people who have gone pilgrimage, they shame us. The sacrifice they make to climb mountains or go to a sacred place. Every Muslim wants to go to Mecca, every Catholic wants to go to Rome.

Well thank God, as the good book says, neither in Jerusalem nor anywhere else. In this place is where we worship. I remember going to Ireland and preaching in a hut, it had no floor, just mud. And that was nice till it rained and then boy, we were knee deep in slush.

But that was one of the best prayer meetings I was ever in. But I remember an old man muttered a prayer, he said this, it's in an old Methodist hymn book, Where 'er we seek thee thou art found, and every place is hallowed ground.

I'll tell you, there are more prayers in airplanes, in a storm, than in most churches in the country. Everybody becomes religious. Now this doesn't mean when we go to bed tonight we should be waking because other people are waking.

The hymn writer says, The sun that bids us rest is waking our brethren beneath the western sky, and our by our fresh lips are making thy wondrous doings heard on high. It doesn't mean that. When a man is asleep, it's insensible.

There can be a fire there. He doesn't know about it. He doesn't care about it. You know, it's a wonderful thing to have this book. It's an awful thing to have this book. And the hymn says, What more can he say than to you he hath said?

God hasn't two words to add to the book that he's given us here. Every word is here that's essential for salvation, for our wisdom, for our strength, for our inspiration. While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and then he went his way.

The Cost of Sacrificial Service

While Jesus is a supreme example, he is the bread of life. He's the cone that falls into the ground and dies. You know, we don't think much, do we? A grain of wheat, stick it in the dirty ground. Then it rains.

Then it freezes. Then it snows on top of it. Then some big old Clydesdale comes and sticks its foot on top of it. But it germinates. It brings forth forty, sixty, eighty. Have no thought. Then its mission's over.

No, it isn't. You put it in the machine and grind the life out of it. And then you grind the life out of it. You make dough of it, make bread of it. Then you stick it in an oven and bake the thing, kill it.

Then you pull it out and slice it. Then you've done it. You give it to some pagan that puts it in his teeth and tears it apart. Is that the price we pay? Surely it is. If you're not prepared to be torn apart, forget all about it.

Fold your little arms. Relax. Be comfortable. The devil has stolen his tricks amongst the Christians today. Be comfortable. Everything's comfort, comfort, comfort. Rock us in the cradle of prosperity.

Give us a pillow called comfort. Don't disturb us. I tell you again, friend, five minutes after you and I enter eternity, we wish to God we've been a thousand times more zealous, more faithful. Obviously what we've had for 25 years, we spent millions in evangelism in America in the last 25 years and the rest of the world ever since Jesus came to earth.

Evangelism in a Backslidden Nation

But where are we? A drunken, backslidden, divorced nation with more crime than anybody else, with more teenage pregnancies than anybody else. The devil has sown the seed. Now I don't think these evangelists should have million dollar homes.

I don't think the Pope should have a billion dollar home either in the Vatican. They're talking now again, I think I mentioned it last week, but it was mentioned this week again. The FCC is talking about putting all Christian services, all religious services off TV from here out.

Wild men's slack. What are we doing? Oh, we've got volleyball for the young people in the church. Summer, we've got baseball. We've got this, that and the other. Boy, I'm glad I didn't go to a church with a sports program.

I'd have been a backslider. Someday at 17, I'm through. Somebody gave me an abridged copy of The Life of David Brainerd. I read it. Instead of playing ball, I went over the golf course, got in the forest at night, tied my mother's little dance to a tree and cried my heart out for revival.

Then I got bounces, power through prayer. Determined to read it through, I said I'll go through the book. I didn't, the book went through me. Changed my life. Come on now. If you want to believe Schofield and all the other strange Bibles around, they'll tell you the miraculous ended.

Spiritual Gifts and the Continuing Work of God

There are no apostles and no prophets. Oh, come on, be faithful. Cast out the apostles. Cast out the prophets. But at the same time, cast out the evangelists that are in the same verse. Get rid of the whole shebang.

Say Christianity's bankrupt. It isn't. God hasn't done off production. God is making men. If I didn't believe some men here were moving up with God, I'd want to go. I believe God is shaping men and women in prayer here.

Some of us won't be around too long. Somebody else is going to step in and take up and do what we haven't done. Come into dimensions of faith, dimensions of revelation. We're heading now for the most terrible time.

Watching the Signs and Preparing for Judgment

Can I say one thing? I was reading that, is it 22nd or 23rd of Matthew today? When you see Jerusalem surrounded with armies, here's Jerusalem, over here you have Iran. Russia here wants Iran so she can go straight to Jerusalem without getting around the sea way.

Over here you've got Libya. So Libya cuts her off here. You've got Jordan there. You've got Russia up there. You've got all the nations of the world right now around Russia. Pardon me, around Israel as we call it.

And the scripture says watch. I thought of what Jesus said. Watch. When you see these things, watch. Well, if you watch, you'll go to sleep. It's a day to be diligent. It's a day for clear eyes. I seriously doubt that we'll get through five more years without war.

Isn't it strange? It was Iraq that started the war in the Gulf. It was Iraq that shot the shell into the ship. But we're not blaming Iraq for anything. It's all Iran. Iran, Iran, Iran. Iran. In case it sounds like he ran.

Iran. It's Iraq that did it. We're not saying a word about Iraq. It's all Iran. The devil hates this nation. He hates every nation that has the true word of the living God. And I've done him stand up for Jesus.

The strife will not be long. It won't be. We're going to need the blood for our constant protection. The blood that pleads for us at the mercy seat. We're at war. We have no option about it. All the wealthy nations of the world.

All the heathen nations of the world. They're armed to the teeth, even in a natural sense. And yet, Napoleon said, God is on the side of the big armies. He's a lie. The word of God says it takes the weak things to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence.

Revival Through Faith in the Miraculous

God's going to do a move. A work of his spirit, and none then will get the glory. Willie Burton went to Africa. We had a pastor with him. He'd always tell about Willie Burton. Went right up the Amazon there and shifted it.

He went up the Congo River, one of the longest, most difficult rivers in the world. Then he suddenly got some disease in his mouth. His teeth were going corrupt. He was in shocking state. He paddled in a steamer.

No, a dugout canoe. Imagine. I sat in one once. Good night. Going two feet was too far. And he goes right down the Amazon, sees a doctor. The doctor says, there's only one thing. I must take every tooth you have.

Where are you from? Oh, I'm up the Amazon. You must get every tooth out. So he said, I'll come back tomorrow. The doctor took every tooth out of his head. And the doctor said, now go home and come back in six months.

I can't. Why? He said, it takes me six months to get home. And then it takes me six months to come back. So what does a little man of God? You know what he did? One of the craziest things you ever heard of, brother.

He believed God. You know what? This generation of Christians is the most brilliant generation of unbelieving believers almighty God's ever had. He goes to bed. He can't talk. Hardly. Mouths are sore.

But in the night he said, Lord, you turn water into wine. You can do anything that we ask. We take that out of context. In the 15th chapter, ask what you will. That's if you've been pruned. That's if God submitted you to all the stripping and taking everything away.

You've no confidence in anything at all. He had no health. He had no money. There he is in terrible pain. He said, Lord, the miracle is normal with you. I'm normal with me. You're a god of the miraculous.

You born of miracle. You died in miracle. You rose in miracle. Lord, he said, it's not hard for you to do a miracle and give me two sets of teeth by morning. What do you think happened? He woke up with pearlish white teeth here and pearly white teeth there.

True Revival Produces Transformed Lives

That's God. It's not only that I want to see. I want to see meetings where people go home and a man walks in and his wife says, what's wrong with you? He doesn't blaspheme. He doesn't drink. He doesn't run his TV.

He doesn't curse the kid. He's transformed. He's a new creation. He's got a heart for God. A love for God. A love for everybody else. That's the thing that brings true revival. When people become so conscious that everything I have up to my body isn't worth a thing.

It's all perishing. You can strip me my very shirt off my back, but I've got treasure in here. Moth and rust can't corrupt and thieves can't break through and steal. They're eternal. The word of God says the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord.

It tells us repeatedly that the preparation of the heart is of the Lord. It's not just giving somebody a track. Dear God, you can do that. You don't need any guts to do that, any grace, any love, any passion.

Taking the Gospel Into Places of Darkness

We're just stepping in the midst of a tide of corruption. You know these men are jailbirds, they're dirty, filthy, stinking rascals. They haven't the desire for purity or anything. But they're the ones that need the gospel.

Carey went to the heart of the corruption in India. I preached in his church one Sunday morning. Not when he was there, but I preached in the church. Right bang in the hell hole. The opium dems were there.

Prostitution places. And this is where we have to take light into darkness. What do you think I'd do if my son was there? What would you do if your daughter was prostituting tonight? Would you just go to church and throw a buck in the offering on Sunday?

If you don't worship God six days a week, you sure can't worship him on the second. If your heart doesn't beat with love for him and love for others, you can't put a shower on Sunday, bless you with a hypocrite if you do.

The gospel isn't something we just believe, we behave it. The church is sleeping and people don't want to be awakened up. But I said, remember the scripture says, hold fast to that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.

Persevering for Heavenly Rewards

Not no devil take it, not God take it. Not Gabriel. God has a crown for you. And you're going to keep adding to it. We used to sing as kids in England, when he cometh to make up his jewels, to be a jewel in the crown.

To have a crown of righteousness, to have a crown of glory, to have a crown of martyrdom. We know it's not all going to be the same in heaven. The dying thief got there on the last breath. Do you think he's going to have the same reward as Wesley who sacrificed for 53 years?

A gentleman, an aristocrat, and he slept in the mud. In Georgia, froze to the ground, struggled to get one arm free, pulled to get the other three, got his legs free, then got his hair out of the stuff, brushed off the snow and sang praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Boy, we'd have gone home on the next boat, wouldn't we? But there wasn't one. What does the old hymn say? These people, these martyrs, they climb the steep ascent to heaven through peril, toil and pain.

Oh God, to us may grace be given to following their train. I'm asking God for burdens I've never had. For vision I've never had. For passion I've never had. You see, why people want to hinder you and get in your way is because you might outshine them and out-praise them and out-suffer them and out-fast them.

Boy, that's going to be something in eternity when we see ourselves as God sees us and begins to give us reward. Don't sleep too much. Not even physically. Sleep as little as you can. Eat as little as you can within reason.

Pray. Read the word of God. Offer souls. There's not much time to labour and look for the lost. God does great things in little places.