The Man God Tore Apart - Part 1 — Leonard Ravenhill

Father, we thank you tonight for this wonderful story. We thank you for the Christ we've seen joyfully, so often living he loved me, dying he saved me. Buried he carried my sins far away, rising he justified, freely forever.

But we thank you for the capstone of this. One day he's coming to this troubled, distorted, wicked world in which we live. Coming for a bride, a church that's pure, without spot, without wrinkle, a company of people out of the church.

Just as you took the bride out of the side of Adam, we believe you will take a bride out of the church. A holy people, a sanctified people, a people who have already announced everything of the world, and chosen the path of virtue and holiness to walk in purity.

To walk straight in this twisted world. To walk pure in this corrupt world. To walk obedient in this disobedient world in which we live. Lord Jesus, I ask that you may seal the travail of your soul tonight in this meeting.

Again I pray you'll make it a bad night for the devil. Make it a glorious night for our Lord Jesus Christ. Set the captives free, undo heavy burdens. Take away oppression, take away doubt, take away fear.

Come with a great wave of cleansing. Lord I pray for this precious pastor, I love him as much as he loves me. I thank you for his witness, I thank you for his character, I thank you for his integrity.

I thank you for the love he has for yourself and the love he has for his flock. Lord I ask tonight that when in the scenes of glory we sing the new new song, we'll look back to this night and remember that there was something added to our faith, something added to our vision, something added to our concept of the majesty of being a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

We thank you for your word. We know how many times it's been burned and banished and blamed, but it still lives. Great empires have perished but it survived them, it survived all the criticisms of men.

I thank you Lord it has a wonderful habit of standing at the graveside of its persecutors. Because you said heaven and earth may pass away but my word shall never pass away. And therefore Lord we ask for wisdom to preach it and understanding to hear it.

Again we pray get glory to your great name and bless every place in America tonight or in the world where the gospel is being preached in its power, in its purity, in its possibilities. Yes we love you.

Let's sing, I'm not going to strike this up properly, I'll try. My Jesus I love thee, I know for thee, for thee is of sin. My gracious redeemer, my gracious redeemer, my saviour ever. Well I sincerely hope your faith is stronger than your singing.

All right let's get to the word, thank you. The brother that does the taping asked me just prior to the meeting what's the title of your message tonight. Well it's a very strange title I guess because I happen to be strange myself.

The title is The Man God Tore Apart. The Man God Tore Apart. I want to begin in Matthew chapter 16 and verse 16, or let me start, pardon me, at verse 13. When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples saying whom do men say that I am?

I the son of man am. He said some say that thou art John the Baptist, others Elias, others Jeremiah's, or one of the prophets. And he said unto them, notice, he said to the group of them, but whom do ye say that I am?

Of course Peter was always there with a ready answer. And immediately he shoots out the word, Simon Peter answered and said thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. That's one of the greatest confessions in the whole of the word of God, particularly again in the New Testament.

Now, without looking, you could think of Mark chapter 11. In Mark 11 it says this, that Peter began to curse and swear and say I don't know him. To me, pastor, this is a classical case of backsliding.

Well, why didn't you turn the thing around and say the bad thing first and cover it up? Because it's not true historically. Whom do I, this man remember has come onto the stage, they've been through a series of revolutions, there's a gap between Malachi and Matthew of 400 years, 400 years without any prophetic voice, 400 years without any prophetic light.

And then suddenly, dramatically, there's a strange man in the wilderness, very strange. He had no newsletter, he had no choir, he had no support. And this radical man comes and they said of him, this is Elijah that has come back again.

This had upset the whole community, it had upset the Jews. Then immediately after, they get rid of John Baptist. You know, I get lots of young men call me or send me letters and say, God has called me to be a John the Baptist.

And if I'm talking on the phone, I say, have you increased your insurance? And they say, why? I say, you're only going to live six months. If you want to be John Baptist, take all that goes, but you get your head chopped off.

I wonder if Jimmy Swaggart's still got a head on his shoulders, after all he's said on TV, I admire him greatly. I don't think John Baptist would preach ten minutes before he got switched off all over the nation.

But immediately after John Baptist, when they're saying, are you the Christ that you, no, no, no, no, he said, am I the Christ? I'm not worthy to undo the shoes that he has, the sandals, and carry his lap, and carry his shoes.

Though there's one coming, I think I've got a good stretch of humor in me. I like to preach to Baptists because I tell them the first man that ever preached the baptism of the Holy Ghost was not a Pentecostal, he was a Baptist.

And then I like to tell the Baptists at the Pentecostals, they weren't first on the parade either. John comes declaring, one shall come and he shall baptize you, not with the Holy Ghost and with fire, not in the Greek, with Holy Ghost fire.

Because our God is a consuming fire. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. An awesome confession. And now he's saying, I don't know him, I never saw him, I don't believe in him. The same Peter, he'd slept with Jesus in the fields, they had no accommodation, the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head, and Peter had slept with him.

Peter walked on the water once. Peter took a piece of bread and every time he broke it, it multiplied. Jesus gave five loaves to twelve disciples, so then he must have broken them, otherwise he'd have Peter walking like this with loaves of bread under his chin.

He took bread and break it and it multiplied. He'd heard the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man that ever lived, the Sermon on the Mount, which has an answer to all our problems today. There's really only one problem in the world, it's in your family maybe, in your business, in the city.

The one problem is the problem of human relationships, we can't live with each other. And the Sermon on the Mount answers all those questions. And this man had heard the Sermon on the Mount, he'd seen Jesus raised from the dead, he took with him Peter, James and John on every outstanding occasion.

And yet he denies it. He was in the most glorious event in the life of Jesus up to that time on the Mount of Transfiguration when the glory of God came upon him. And Peter was there, and now he swears and curses.

He was there when he raised Jairus' daughter from the dead. And yet he's behemoth in his denial. Sound incredible, Pastor? How could a man who knew so much and saw so much suddenly betray his master? Well, tell me, why did you do it on a certain occasion when it was convenient?

Why did you back out? A very famous hymn writer was in one of those swell restaurants out in California some years ago. A friend of a friend of mine was eating with them. Oh, it was one of these super-duper places, you know, with gentlemen, waiters at tables and the tarot's over the line, whatever you call them.

And they all sat there quietly, and then one man said, why don't we say grace? And this famous character says, I said grace. Oh, you mean when you took your glasses off and didn't want anybody to know you were praying?

You're a coward. I'm a coward yet you didn't say grace in front of the people. Well, he said, you say it. So he said, all right. So he got his handkerchief out like this nice clean one I've got. He put it there down in the restaurant, and he knelt down and he said, Heavenly Father, he said, shut up.

We sing at the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light. Then will he own my worthless name before his father's face? No, he said, if you're ashamed of him or not, he'll be ashamed of you in heaven.

And yet here's this man, whom do men say that I am? Some say what? Notice, nobody said he was like Moses, the mightiest man that ever lived, as regards in the opinion of some Jews. What do they say? Some say thou art Elias.

And some say, you're John the Baptist, risen from the dead. And some say, you're Jeremiah. Well, how did they know they'd never seen Jeremiah? No photographs of him around. Nobody living had ever seen him.

Well, what's the point of contact? Why is Jesus like Jeremiah? Because in my judgment, Jeremiah was the man of sorrows until the man of sorrows himself came. Jeremiah was the man who wept and groaned, and I'll tell you about it a little bit later here.

Oh, let's go back to, go to Jeremiah right now, shall we do that? I was thinking as I, while the pastor was talking, you know, we're living in a very troubled world, but it's going to get ten times more trouble before the next ten years are through, the next five are through.

There are just three kinds of people in the world tonight. Not blacks and whites and the yellow people out in other countries. Just three kinds of people in the world tonight. Number one, those who are afraid.

Number two, those who don't know enough to be afraid. And number three, those who know God. We're moving into that phrase that's spoken of in Hebrews where everything that can be shaken will be shaken.

God's going to shake America like a terrier shakes a rat. He's going to shake this generation as far as that goes. He's going to glorify his son whatever it costs if he has to wreck the IBM and everybody else.

The supreme glory of God that is his son is going to sit as a ruler over the world. I guess you know that my two main things in my thinking for the last sixty years, number one is prayer and number two is revival.

The destiny of America is not in the hands of the White House. And if Pat Robertson runs as president, and I believe he will, it's not in his hands either. The destiny of America is not in the White House, it's in God's house.

If we clean the house up, which means you and I get cleaned up. Do you know honestly in my heart I'm glad I have no children these days. I wonder if you heard Jimmy Swaggart this morning, he was pretty tough.

I wish I could have got all the statistics he gave. Now this book is not a book, it's a library. There are sixty-six books in this little wonderful book, isn't it wonderful? There are sixty-six chapters in the prophecy of Isaiah.

The first part of the book is chapters one to thirty-nine. The second part of the book is chapters forty to sixty-six. In the first chapters, one to thirty-nine, holiness is spoken of twelve times.

In chapters thirty-nine to sixty-six, holiness is spoken of seventeen times. The whole theme of that wonderful, wonderful book is about the holiness and majesty of God. Do yourself a favor, read the fortieth chapter, once every day this week, do you a lot of good.

So the theme of Isaiah is holiness. That's not the theme of Jeremiah, though he speaks of it. This marvelous book of Jeremiah, which some people think is the greatest one in the whole of the word of God, the theme of Jeremiah is backsliding.

He uses the word thirteen times. It's only used four times in the rest of the Bible, and that's in Hosea where he uses it four times. He'll heal your backsliding and love you freely. There was an old Jewish teacher here in America some years ago.

His name was Bucks Basin. And he was a very super brilliant man. He had a grip on Hebrew like very few people. And he loved to move in and out of the major prophets and the minor prophets. I don't know what he wrote.

I have one book of his on Isaiah. But he speaks about this class of people that we call prophets. I believe that when God Almighty is angry with a nation, he gives it no prophets. There isn't a prophet in America I know of.

Somebody issued a paper recently. I'm going to a conference. I'm not sure I'm going in January. They put my name on. And they put there, Leonard is another Jeremiah. That's nonsense. I'm not fit to carry his shoes.

They're a unique breed of men. I had a young man preacher came in my office last Monday. He said, Brother Ravenhill, you say there's not much majestic preaching anymore. No, there's not. What about those men you talk about, the Puritans?

Like Robert Owen, John Owen, and Hawker, and a whole bunch of others. What's the secret that they gave us such a massive theology? Gave us awesome revelations of God. Where people went out of the sanctuary on tiptoe.

They didn't want to break the spell that was on them. How is it they could preach like that? I'll tell you why. Because they lived in eternity, that's why. They lived and moved and had their being in God.

The prophets are unique. Bux Basin says the prophet, by the very nature of his calling, is a tragic figure. He has a fierce loyalty toward God. I love that phrase. A fierce loyalty, a fierce loyalty. He isn't a sputtering candle.

He's more like an acetylene welder's blast, you know, the thing he uses, the torch. He has a fierce loyalty to God and he has a tremendously broken heart over a stupid, wicked generation in which he lives.

And he's pulled toward God and he's pulled toward the nation. Jeremiah is, again, in my judgment. It's the greatest book on backsliding. He mentions it thirteen times. I think he's the only prophet in the Old Testament who, from the moment he took office to the moment he died, had continuous warfare with the people.

The prophet diagnosis, he doesn't put any band-aids on. He does spiritual surgery. He lets people know exactly what he's saying and what God... You see, what prophets do? They live with God till they see like God.

They love like God. They hate like God. They have a holy anger. Some of us get, you get angry if your children do some little trivial thing in the house. Have you ever wondered what would happen to you if you, if God was as short-tempered with you as you are with your children?

Hmm? You might come to church with a black eye now and again. Or a broken jaw. Or a broken leg. Yes, this man... Well, let me say this and then pass on. Some of us love an old hymn by Samuel Rutherford, collected out of his writings.

With mercy and with judgment, he says, my web of time he wove. He wove. But this one often brings judgment without mercy. If you go into chapter 4 of this same book of Jeremiah, he uses some very strange language here.

But remember, you're talking with one of the most unique characters in the world. This is him describing his spiritual state. In chapter 4 and verse 19 he says, my bowels, my bowels, I'm pained at my very heart.

My heart maketh a noise within me. I cannot hold my peace, because hast thou heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet. He talks about what? His heart. He talks about his bowels. Skip over now to chapter 2.

Pardon me. Chapter 2 in Lamentations. That's the next book. The Lamentations of Jeremiah. Lamentations chapter 2 and verse... For my convenience here, anyhow, verse 11. This is the same man again. He says, my eyes do fail with tears.

My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out on the earth for the destruction of the daughter of my people. In other words, this man is absolutely disintegrated. Go to the next chapter in Lamentations, then I'll start preaching.

Lamentations chapter 3 and verse 11. He hath turned aside my ways and pulled me in pieces. I think the American version says he has torn me in pieces. The Rotherham version says the same thing. My heart is moved.

My liver is torn. This man is totally disrupted because the nation is disrupted. The last thought in the mind of a prophet is self-preservation. We're taught it's the first thing in our thinking. First thought reaction is self-preservation.

It's the last thought in the mind of this man of God or any other true man of God as far as I'm concerned. Let me tell you why he's in this state of terrible agitation. Lamentations chapter 2, verse 1.

How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud of his anger, cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool? Remember that Isaiah says the earth is his footstool.

He remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. Verse 3. He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the whole of Israel. Down to verse 5. The Lord was an enemy, and he swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up her palaces.

He swallowed up her palaces, and he destroyed his strongholds. He hath increased the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation, and he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, his presence, as if it were a garden.

He hath destroyed his places of the assembly of the Lord and caused the solemn feasts and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion. And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priests. The Lord hath cast off his altar.

Let's go to the 9th chapter and verse 1. Prophets are God's emergency men in crisis hours. Not only is America in a crisis, now the whole world is in a crisis. Isn't it fantastic? When I was a boy, the Arabs all lived in tents.

Now they own half of America. They've a stranglehold on the oil of America. They've billions of money here. The whole world has been distorted and changed again since World War I, actually. This nation is in a state of chaos.

With all that God has done for them, but they're as bad and as blind and as rebellious and wicked as Peter. The nation here is the nation he delivered with his own right hand. He took them through the Red Sea.

He brought water out of Iraq. He destroyed all their enemies behind them in the Red Sea, and yet they've forgotten God. Forgotten his mercy, forgotten his graciousness. In chapter 9 and verse 1, this amazing man says,.

This is the man who says his bowels are torn, his heart is broken, his liver is disturbed. And yet he's not crying for a supernatural ministry. He's not saying, let me do more miracles than Moses. He says, I live in a dying, rebellious, sinful nation.

We're exactly in that position today. I'm going to write Jimmy Straggett tomorrow, and ask for all the statistics he gave this morning. They were alarming. Two days ago on the news, Friday night news, they said there are 2 million people in the American Armed Forces who have AIDS or diseases associated with AIDS.

There's another disease now that's hardly known. I talked with a physician recently about it. It's some kind of thing that comes only to women. It enters the body maybe at 16 years of age. There's no sign of it.

The x-rays can't find it. The doctor can't diagnose it. You don't break out in a rush. There is not one single thing to let you know you've got that disease. But it's going to work its time out. If you're 16 now, maybe when you're 22 you won't have a baby.

You won't have one. There's a group of people I can't remember where in the Old Testament. When they disobeyed God, he dried up the wombs of every woman in Israel. I believe God's going to dry up thousands and thousands of wombs.

His answer to people who've had their babies thrown down the toilet. Go back a minute, please, to Jeremiah 1. Verse 4 says, The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.

I believe, disagree if you like, you're free to do that. I believe that every child that's conceived in a woman's womb already has a mark. God knows it. Every one that we've taken. How many did Shaggat say this morning?

A horrible number of millions of babies have been destroyed since 1980. Every one of those babies was marked in the womb of its mother. And the mother's going to face that babe one day at the judgment seat as far as I'm concerned.

He says before, verse 4, Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee. Before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified thee and ordained thee. Somebody brought a little boy around England a few years ago, said, This little boy is five years of age.

He's the youngest ordained minister in history. This is the youngest ordained minister in history. He's ordained in his mother's womb. Well, I can't remember being in my mother's womb. But the first day I came back from college, my mother said, This is a great day.

I said, It is, Mother. This great day to come home. Why is it great to you? I said, For some good food. I'm tired of college junk. No, she said, Len, I want to tell you something. I never told you this before.

The first day you were born, I laid my hand on you in the bed and said, God, make this boy a preacher or don't let him live. I'm glad I didn't hear that. I'd have been terrified. When you were still in the womb, I sanctified you.

I separated you. I ordained you to be a leader. No, a prophet. Prophets are greater than kings. Prophets are greater than scientists. Prophets are greater than inventors. Prophets are greater than men who walk on the moon.

Prophets know the heart of God. They know the compassion of God. They know the anger of God. They know the fear that God has. They're a breed apart. You can go to college, they may make you a preacher of a sort.

They have an assembly line. You know, you drop off at the end, and you've got an outline on every book in the Bible and a few bits of theology. You can make a preacher, trainer. You cannot make a prophet.

They're God's priority. They're a brand. This man, as soon as he had eyes to see and was old enough to walk around, I believe the Spirit bore witness with him that like John the Baptist, he was pure. He never touched anything impure.

He's separating unto God to be a prophet. And then verse 6 says, He said, I am Lord. O Lord God, I behold, I cannot speak for I am a child. Listen to this, verse 9. Then the Lord put forth his hand. That's the hand that went to a wall and chiseled the Ten Commandments on it.

A hand of omnipotence. A hand with dreadful power. And that mighty hand that flung the world into space is gentle enough to touch the lips of this wonderful man that he has ordained. That's what it says.

I've touched thy mouth, and the Lord said, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth, dear Lord. I wonder how many preachers could stand up tonight and say this morning when I preached to the crowd, I didn't preach a thought of my own, I didn't preach a word.

God put those words in my mouth. They're not my words. They're not my theology. They're not my doctrine. I try to live as near to the heart of God as I can. I know when he speaks. I know when he breaks my heart.

I know when he gives me anger, which I need. Why was Jesus, why was Jeremiah like Jesus? Because Jeremiah wept, Jesus wept. Where did he weep? Oh, you say, at the tomb of Lazarus. Why, was he mourning?

No, he was grieved at the dumbness of the disciples. He wasn't grieving because of them, he was grieving because the disciples were so unbelieving. Then you remember, he came to Jerusalem and he looked down there and he saw the city and he wept over it.

And when he got there, he whipped them. In the days of his flesh, when Jesus came, he cleansed the temple. I believe if he came today, he cleansed the pulpit, first of all. He cleansed the temple. Why did he weep over them?

Well, I'll give you my opinion of it. I believe as he looked at that temple, it wasn't the same temple, of course, it was a modern one built by Herod. But it was standing on the site of the previous temple.

Jesus sees those priests going down the street. He looks at the temple, it has no glory of God, it's empty, it's barren. He looked at those streets, Jeremiah walked on those streets, Hezekiah walked on those streets.

All the minor prophets walked on those streets. And once the temple was filled with the glory of God and now you can smell the stink of animals there. You can hear the blowing of the sheep and you hear the oxen.

And he sees the house of God deserted. I was going to say, I want to see one thing before I die, whenever that is. I want to see the temple as it was in Solomon's day, when he plastered the walls with gold and he made the reading desk of gold and it was the most costly building ever in history.

He did everything of good into the commandment, then he had to wait, he had to wait. What happened? A beast had to be slain. And it says that when he fulfilled all those demands God made, and Solomon lifted his eyes, the glory of God came to such a degree that he couldn't minister.

The priests had to back off out of the house, the shekinah glory of God. It's something we've never seen. We're blessed if you stir our emotions, tell us something nice. Look, come on, when have you last left the sanctuary blinded with God's glory?

Not necessarily a physical light, but in your inner mind you felt that this is something I haven't touched in the last ten or twenty years. You're left in speechless wonder. I preached in Wales in 1949, I guess, in an assembly of God church in a town called Aberraman up in the Aberdare Valley.

After about five nights, I went to a house after the meeting and had a cup of tea and some cookies, as you say. We say biscuits. And the lady, Mrs. Lewis, said, you know, they have an intonation, they sing when they talk.

When you sing, I think they've got a mouse running up and down my back. And she said, Brother Ravenhill, these are the most wonderful meetings since the Welsh Revival. Well, the Welsh Revival was 1904.

I said, well, what's the point of similarity? She said, well, we came up the hill, and everybody in Wales is either Thomas or Griffiths or Jones. We came up to the crossroads, and when we got there, we turned.

In Welsh, Welsh Gaelic, they say nos dar for good night. I turned to Mrs. Griffiths, nos dar. She turned to Mrs. Thomas, nos dar. Mrs. Thomas turned to me, nos dar. Good night. Then one lady said, have you noticed something?

Have you noticed something about these meetings? What? We walked up the crossroads every night and never said a word since we left the tabernacle. We were speechless with the glory and power of God. There had been no physical miracles.

There had been spiritual miracles. But God came in such overwhelming glory. He presented Himself in His holiness. We live in a day when we're more afraid of holiness than we are of sinfulness. The Lord put His hand and touched my mouth and said, I have put these words in thy mouth.

Now here's His commission. He says, see, this day I have set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build, and to plant. Isn't that something?

I would to God every preacher in the nation. I hope I'm an example of it in some ways tonight. Every preacher could say every time he stands, God put these words in my mouth. He wouldn't let me sleep for two nights.

He put these words in my mouth. I would like to preach another message tonight, but I changed it. Because I believe God wants this word to go forth. I say this man was in constant warfare with the nations, Israel and Judah.

Why? How did he sustain his power all the way through? I'll tell you how. Because it says in chapter 5, verse 14, thy word is as a fire in my heart. The world goes to hell fire tonight. Do you know why?

Because the church has lost holy ghost fire. Because the word of the preacher doesn't burn in our hearts anymore. There's no escaping fire. Moses met God speaking out of the fire. A preacher called me from California last Monday and he asked me what my view was of the next few years.

And I said, for what it's worth, here it is. What's your view? He said, Brother Rayneal, the church is going into the fire. It's only there she's purified. It's only there you hear the voice of God. Here's Moses, he's run away from the greatest empire in the world.

It says in Hebrews 11, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king. And what did he do? He esteemed the reproach of Christ. Come on, tell me in God's name. Pastor, how did he know about Christ in that day?

He was in a heathen country, in a heathen court. Maybe like the apostle, he was caught up into the third heaven at some place. I guess those royal robes didn't last too long that he ran away in, the smelly old sheep around him.

And he sees a bush where he passed a hundred times, but this time it's ablaze. You never have to advertise a fire, whether it's physical or spiritual. It was from the burning bush that God spoke. It was in a furnace that was heated seven times hotter where those three Hebrew boys were.

It was there they saw the glory of God. Our neighbors, our people don't see much glory in us. Why? Because we've no fire to persecute us. Let the fire come, it will separate the chaff all right from the wheat.

The three Hebrew children were bound up and thrown in a fire. What did the fire do? Well, the boys forgot their penknife. You know, they couldn't reach to cut their ropes or their hands. And all the fire did was burn off them what the world had put on them.

And friend, that thing you won't shed, it's binding you. God Almighty will burn it off you. He'll give you the chance to repent and get rid of it, maybe tonight. And you won't, but he'll get it. What did Swaggart say this morning?

You may be behind on your tithe, but listen, God's going to get it. You know what he'll do? He'll shrink your business till he's got every dime out of you and let somebody else have it. You won't give it to God, you'll give it to somebody else.

You'll get super-tax or some other way. We forget this world is God's, it's His. We're here temporary. The symbol of the Church of Jesus, excuse me, Pastor, is not a cross. That's pagan, that's cruel.

The symbol of the Church of Jesus Christ is a tongue of fire that sat on each of their heads. I remember praying one Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. I guess many have read that wonderful little book, God's Smuggler.

I happen to give the title for that book. I feel happy about that. The man in the book, Brother Andrews, refers to a man by the name of Uncle Hoppy. He was like me. He's an odd character. But I liked that guy.

We had a half-night of prayer where we prayed at nine. We were still praying at one, nearly two o 'clock in the morning. A lady in a wheelchair sat at the back. And she said, Brother Rainer, that was a marvelous night, wasn't it?

I said, well, I thought so. I wonder what the dear soul felt like sitting there hour after hour. She must have been there nearly six hours in a wheelchair. I said, I thought it was wonderful. She said, did you feel it?

I said, well, about one o 'clock or just after, I felt a tremendous urge. You didn't see it? No. A tongue of fire came on the first brother at the end and it went on to every one of your heads. Do you wonder that we felt a surge of power and life?

He should baptize you with Holy Ghost fire. Remember Revelation says I would get either hot or cold. Isn't it amazing that? It's the church that's pretending. She's not hot, she's not cold, she's in between the two.

She's a compromiser. She finds it easy to live that way. You know what? I feel the cup of iniquity is filling very fastly for America. I'm so old at times I think I'm antique. But I remember during, when I was about, when I was born in 1907.

I won't tell you the day, I don't want, you know, a lot of presents coming to the house. I was born in 1907. In 1912, I was at school with a flag in my hand and we were singing about the British Empire.

It was a time when the British Empire boasted that the sun never sets on the British Empire. At that time, England owned Canada, Australia, India. The greatest, most fabulous empire that ever lived far beyond the power of the Roman Empire.

And I remember as a boy, I was about maybe 12, maybe a bit older. I picked up a piece of poetry. I've always liked poetry. I've only seen that poem once ever since as far as I know. I'll try and recall it.

If I break down, you'll understand. The poem said this, O England, thou privileged nation, how truly thy children are blessed. Thou hast, since the Great Reformation, had liberty, riches, and rest. Such blessings are not of thy making.

It is God who has given thee all. But if divine laws thou art breaking, like Babylon, too thou shalt fall. Thine armies and navies will fail thee if thus the Lord's God thou forsake. If political schemes want to veil thee, if sacred commandments thou break, for God has his eyes on this nation, O England, to thee will be sent the doom of thy just condemnation.

Accept, ah, accept, thou repent. Accept, ah, accept, thou repent. We used to sing a hymn in England. I think this is an old, old Methodist hymn book, so, but it's not on loan. I want to read a poem here, too.