Trust and Obey - Part 1 — Leonard Ravenhill

Hymns, Revival Preaching, and Spiritual Hunger

Reminds me of when my mother used to dress me. She wasn't always so gentle though. Well I've heard that hymn, And Can It Be, for at least 70 years of my long life. I've never heard it sung worse than tonight.

Terrible. I'd imagine Charles Wesley turned over in his grave. You see, in the original there are about six stanzas and every stanza has a separate chorus to it. I think that one, No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine, Alive in him my living head, And clothed in righteousness divine, Bold I approach the eternal throne, And claim the crown through Christ my own.

I like the other verse, He left his father's throne above. You know, the best of modern hymn books, I collect hymn books, if you have some old ones, bring them. I've given a lot away. But you know that hymn, Some of Wesley's hymns that were written in 1740 had no less than 27 stanzas.

Imagine singing 27 stanzas and a chorus after each one. Our people would fall asleep. But then he used to preach for three hours. George Richard preached on Boston Common. I preached at that big church on Boston Common some years ago, so I wanted to go see the place.

And George Richard preached there to a crowd of 20 ,000 and snow was falling gently, yet he preached for nearly three hours. When he finished out of, I think there were 20 ,000 there, 1800 of them were laying prostrate on the floor.

That's really been slain in the spirit. They didn't just hit the ground and get a bump on the back of their head. They were transformed. But for laying there for hours and hours, when that happened repeatedly, the police used to come round and they'd kneel at the side of a man that was prostrate there, you know, he'd be face upward, and smell his breath.

If he was drunk, they took him off to the lockup. If he wasn't drunk, they said he got, what do you call it, Tennant's disease, I think it was. Because every time, there was a fellow called Gilbert Tennant, and he had a son called John, and he had a son called Gilbert, and Gilbert travelled with George Whitefield for just over a year.

And the critics said at the end of the year he could preach better than Whitefield, so he must have been quite a preacher by the brace of him. Glad I wasn't around then. Anyhow, it's good to see you. Thank you for the offerings.

Peter’s Transformation from Simon to an Apostle

I've got a pretty down-to-earth message, I think, tonight. It's from the first epistle of Peter. I'll be here one more Tuesday night, then you'll be free of pain for a long while. I think it was John Owen.

Have you read about John Owen, any of you? John Owen, one of the great Puritans, he said the sin of people in the Old Testament was that they resisted God the Father. The sin of people in the New Testament was that they resisted the message of the Son of God.

And in his day, 300 years back, he said the sin of today is we resist the Holy Spirit of God. But in today we resist the whole lot, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. So here you've got this wonderful epistle.

And I remind you again, I'm reading the Living Bible, King James Version. Peter, an apostle. Isn't that fantastic? I remember the first time in America. I heard some funny things in America. I remember once being in a place and somebody asked the president of the Bible school, how do you get to So-and-So?

He said, you can't get there from here. That sounds pretty Irish. Well, how did Peter get from there to here? Peter, an apostle? Never give up. We're looking forward to our son coming home. He'll be here, God willing, Thursday night.

We've got three sons, three marvelous sons. In fact, three of the most wonderful men in the world. And I'm not biased. The oldest, Paul, is a pioneer missionary. He's been down in South America for 20, I don't know, 26 or 27 years.

Never asked for a penny support. Has no church backing. And yet, he has five children. He's on ten radio stations. Why, you didn't mention money anyhow. The other one, the last one, Phil, he has an earned Ph .D.

He meets kings, literally, presidents of nations. He's done work in Africa for National Geographic Society. He goes to France and lectures in French. He speaks, I don't know how many languages, and his wife too.

David always jokes about the fact he was the most... He's not retarded. Nobody in our race was ever retarded in our family. They're all in yours. I mean, no. But he was shy. And yet, he's just resigned as a pastor in the largest Pentecostal church in New Zealand.

1600 people, Sunday morning. And Sunday school in another room with 500 in there. And set out world preaching. You see, three times in the last four years, people from different parts of the world have gone into his church.

He's one of five elders. They don't even call themselves pastors. And each time somebody's gone, they've gone up to him. They've prophesied over this. Each person that's prophesied over him, maybe there are six altogether.

Everyone has said the same thing, and those men never met, never knew each other. Each of them said, God has called you to be a voice to the nations. In the last two years, he's been around the world twice.

And I don't know how many. I have a stack of letters on my desk now. People want him to preach. At least three churches want him as pastor, but he won't go. If you want a church, why leave a church with 1500?

And get 1500 heartbreaks trying to build another one? You get a heartbreak for everybody in every pew, nearly. But he's not looking for a church. God has called him to be, I believe, an apostle. Well, not quite an apostle, a voice, anyhow, to this generation.

And I hope sometime he'll come up, but Bracey will have him. He's a very precious man. Okay, here's Peter. Peter, an apostle. I was sparked off talking about David being very slow, as he says. Would you imagine a man there selling fish, a sticky fisherman, would write two of the most amazing books in the world?

Would you imagine that wherever Jesus went, he was one of the cabinet ministers. He took with him Peter, James, and John. Would you imagine he would ever be one of the most distinguished men in the history of the world?

You see, when God, when Jesus found Peter, he wasn't Peter. Well, who in the world was he? He was Simon. The very word means shifty, irresponsible. If you took a little grain of sand from the ground and put it under a microscope, it has peaks on it like that and cavities like that.

You can't build on sand. If you put them under pressure, you get sandstone. We used to live in the beautiful city of Bath in England, started in 55 B .C. by the Romans. It's a law there that every building must be made of bathstone.

It's stone they quarry out of the hills. The foundation of the abbey in the center of town was laid in 444. I wasn't there, but that's what they say. But you see, they take that stone and they saw it just like you saw wood.

And all it is, it's actually just grains of sand that have been put under pressure. And Jesus found Simon. I guess he was a bad-tempered rascal, like one of those longshoremen, you know, with a big long tongue and bad language and bad temper.

And yet Jesus took him, and now he's an apostle, writing an epistle. I said that to clarify the fact that some of you may think an epistle is the wife of an apostle. And this man that would have been selling fish all his life actually now is one of the ordained, anointed men whose message is reaching 2 ,000 years after.

The Influence of David Brainerd and Henry Martyn

Incredible. There's a boy lying dying. He's yellow as butter, yellow as a flower. He weighs 90 pounds. His arms are about as thick as my two fingers. And he's coughing. And at the bottom of the bed, there's a four-poster bed, and there's a beautiful, one of the most beautiful girls in America there.

She's the daughter of Jonathan Edwards. Her name was, what, Esther? And there's a young man dying, 29 years of age. Gave his life for the Indians. Do you think he ever dreamed that one day, you know, when Methodism had its revival like other, like Azusa Street, that fire nearly went out anyhow.

But Methodism went up, and it began to do awesome things. It took a severe dip. John Wesley wrote to Charles, his brother, and he said, Look, see that every one of our mysteries, every one of our pastors, reads the life of David Brainerd.

The most brilliant young man in England, a hundred years ago, was Henry Martin. He read about David Brainerd. Martin was senior wrangler in the university. He carried off the Smith Prize that nobody had ever captured.

And right in the middle of what he thought was going to be an adventure for God, God called him to India. Why? Because he read the story of David Brainerd. And so your fire begets fire. So what did he do?

He went to India. He had a colossal mind. He might have been an inventor. He might have been an Archbishop of Canterbury. He might have been the president, or as we would say in England, the Prime Minister.

But he gave his genius. He didn't just bring his lousy sins. He brought his body, his soul, his spirit, his mind, his future, all his possibilities, and laid them on the altar. And God took him to India.

What did he do? He took the Greek New Testament and translated it into Hindustani. After that, he tackled something more difficult. He translated the Greek into Arabic. In fact, just now I was reading the other day a new book.

It's not a new book. It's a new publication. You get Bordens ice cream and Bordens this, that. Well, Bordens is one of the very powerful families in America. They had a wonderful son. And Woodrow Wilson, send him a telegram one day.

I've appointed you to be the American ambassador to China. He called the president back. He said, sir, I love my country, but I love Christ more. And he went and did a super job for God in China, if I remember the story correctly.

And then he went to Egypt to do something. And of all things in, where was it now? In Cairo, I think it was. He had some, what do you call it? I can't hear it. Cerebral meningitis at 25 years of age. And yet he left his mark.

You see, the blood of the martyrs, the seed of the church. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die. If you follow church history, much of church history has come to life. Like when we go home, we have an insert in our fireplace.

It always seems though the fires out. So we open the doors about two inches and the wind gets in and, boy, the fire goes up. And God has a way of using men and women like that because we realize that they're immortal, they're a human.

Pentecost, Apostasy, and the Need for Holy Living

So the Lord takes over this man by the name of Simon, transforms him and says, thou art Peter, Petros, rock. You'll never find Peter backsliding after Pentecost. All his backsliding was before. And I'm convinced of this.

If a man has a real Pentecost, he'll never pass out. That's why you get Oral Robertson. These guys never had the Holy Ghost as far as I'm concerned. You see, a man is not a heretic because he goes on preaching heresy.

I mean, he's not an apostate. He's an apostate because he's come up to light and backed off from it. What do you think would happen tonight if God Almighty recalled all the malfunctioning preachers like recalled cars?

You might have 90 of the pulpits in the country empty on Sunday. Who's preaching the whole counsel of God? We listened to the news as we were coming out. Sam Nunn was asked, why don't you run for the presidency?

He says, it's not in the line of politicians to go around trying to get votes saying, listen, friends, I want to be the next president for four years. The next four years, we're going to have to shovel up all the mess that's come out of the last eight years.

You don't tell the truth like that. It seems you don't do that preaching either. You let people go to hell instead of awakening them with some dynamic message that's very, very unpopular. Anyhow. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, elects according to foreknowledge of God through sanctification of the Spirit and obedience and sprinkle of blood.

Grace be unto him peace. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has begun us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of the dead, from the resurrection of the dead. You know, again, it's difficult in one sense to think of this rugged, rough man possibly having much education and yet he has the best education of all.

Why? He had a role model called Jesus Christ. Why didn't Jesus take 1 ,200 men? He could manage them. You've got 12 men, then he gets on the inside group, becomes one of the famous three, and he eats with Jesus, he sleeps with Jesus, he walks with him, he talks with him.

He says that Jesus has dominion over death, disease and the devil which the church should have even today. And yet here he is, slowly, slowly, slowly coming to maturity. I remember going to Western United States.

Spiritual Growth and the Danger of Religious Formality

The first time I went, I wanted to see those awesome Sikora trees out there, or redwoods as you call them. I'm particularly interested in that big one where you can drive the car right through him, right through it, very beautiful.

And they told me that those trees were planted before Jesus was born by the rings that are growing. I guess the base of that tree is about more than 12 feet wide. And they say, this is the slowest growing thing that's known to man.

I say, forget it. What's growing slower? People in the pews. Some of you have been in a hundred years. I mean, you've had enough teaching for a hundred years, but where are you? How much do we absorb?

You see, it's difficult again to think of this man. He might have died, made a fortune selling fish or something, and he listens to Jesus, he comes to maturity. Peter, an apostle? You know, one of the most famous pictures in the world was painted by Raphael.

It's a miraculous draft of fishes. I think right now, after being in various museums, I think it's in a cathedral in Madrid, in Spain. And for years, artists came from the world and they stood in awe before it.

Nobody dares speak hardly. Well, there's a famous Englishman by the name of, now what's his name? Oh, he'll come to me in a minute now. John... It's an art critique. Anybody know the art critiques? You don't remember him.

Ruskin, John Ruskin, thank you. Do you have some art? Good. I've got a heart, but I've no art. John Ruskin, thank you. Well, he suddenly started laughing at the thing. Well, it's sacrilegious, he could have been stoned to death.

What's wrong with the picture? He said, honestly, I'm trying to find out what's right with it. What's wrong with it? Well, in the background of the picture, there's the Dome of St. Peter's. And that's the other end of the Mediterranean.

What have you got the Dome of St. Peter's in the background? Well, it's just an artist's impression. Well, it's wrong. How many men are there in the boat? Eleven. Well, there's only seven in the story in the Bible.

Well, any more criticism? Yeah, the dome shouldn't be there, the numbers shouldn't be there. What about the man over the edge of the boat? He's got a needlework, what do you call it? A crochet collar and crochet cuffs, and he's pulling in fishing nets.

That's St. Peter. How many of you went a fisherman? Raise your hand, let me see. You're afraid? Oh, okay. Because I usually said Peter fished when he was backslidden too. No, but if your wife hasn't given you a lace collar and lace cuffs, you've never fished in your life.

That's the Rolls-Royce way. Can you imagine it? But that's what we think about saints. They're somehow kind of not just human. Well, this man is totally flesh and blood. No wonder, like that verse that we sang just now, along my imprisoned spirit.

The man that wrote that had no cloud of corruption following him. He wasn't divorced ten times. He wasn't drunk. He had no police record. He's one of the purest men in England. And he was trained in England.

He became a don in the university, which means he became a teacher. He was a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a friend of the Bishop of Gloucester. He was a friend of John Wesley's, Charles Wesley's, John Newton, William Culper, that wrote the great hymns like, well, the one on the blood.

There is a fountain filled with blood and so forth. And yet he was unborn. One day he had a miraculous experience of being born again. Do you know what? People don't get born again now. They come to the altar to make a confession.

They came damned and they go out damned. They're not born again. You know, the angels must be having a lot of vacations up in heaven. It says, they rejoice over sinners that repent. Nobody repents. How many men get up and say, I know I'm a new creature?

I think I told you the story of the man in Africa that came to the front one night, a little black man. When he went out, the pastor said, oh, you're the man that was kneeling at the front. He said, I'm not.

He said, yes, you are. There's only one man has a striped suit like yours. Come on. You know, the fellow thought he was in the wrong place. He was black and it was apartheid. Anyhow, the pastor insisted.

He said, you're the man that was at the front. He said, I'm not. He said, you are. There's nobody there now. He said, but I'm not the man. That man died at the altar. I'm a new man. He had a new creation.

If any man be, I like that. Such a sweep of big, any man anywhere at any time, if he's born again, he can be as black as hell when he comes. He can be the biggest sex pervert, the biggest liar. He can have broken every law of good a million times, and if he becomes a new creature, he's a new creature.

He doesn't just get a new head and new feet. He's a new creation. He has a new will. He has a new appetite. He has new interests. He has new desires. He's new. So they tell me, I think, so you tell me, isn't your daughter-in-law's going to have a baby?

When? March? Boy, I hope it's not secondhand. Wouldn't it be horrible if some babies were secondhand? I love to see babies. They're new. Everything's beautiful about them. And if a man's born again, of the Spirit of God, he's a new creation.

New Birth, Resurrection Life, and the Reality of Salvation

Sure, there's excitement in heaven, because the redemptive work of Jesus Christ has been made real. I was thinking this afternoon about this. Did you ever embrace a corpse? My first year from school, I went to work in the office at one of the largest hospitals in England.

And, you know, for a joke, they sent me up to the, what do you call it? I was going to say the monastery, no, the mortuary. Same thing, maybe. Boy, I saw all these corpses laid out. Some were beautiful.

But yesterday, near our house, there was what, what do you call these things, animals that wear armor plates? Armadillos, yes. Did you ever have armadillo pie? Neither did I. Never will I if I have the opportunity.

But they tell me that they do make armadillo pie. Then, of course, they make rattlesnake pie, too. But, you know, that thing was killed, and usually there's blood running and whatnot, but no, it was lying there, but I didn't go pick it up.

Imagine you pick the thing up and worms come out of it. Then the stench comes out of it. Oh, I could tell you so much, you'd be sick. But do you know what? That's what you were like when Jesus found you.

Dead in trespass and in sin. Maybe a stiff-necked Methodist like me. Maybe just a pale, pathetic Pentecostal. Trained in Pentecost and yet never had the fire. Maybe then I know. But, you see, when God comes, he does a super...

He's the architect of the universe. And the most amazing thing is human personality. But when God can get control of it, we say the sky's the limit. No, eternity's the limit. You see, I never know when I see somebody at the altar what that person's going to be.

I'm very respectful. If people come to be saved in my meeting, I stay till I get saved. And I've stayed sometimes the early hours in the morning. It's more wonderful than any birth in the world. How do I know the potential of that man?

I don't know it. Gabriel doesn't know it. Only God knows it. So he gets this man. And here he's written this again, this marvelous epistle. Verse 3. Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope.

By what? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's shocking to say, but I'm going to say it. We're not saved by the death of Christ. You can talk about the blood as much as you like. We're not saved by his death.

We're saved by his life. If he's not living tonight, you're not living. You're fooled. Sir Ambrose Fleming, one of England's great scientists, said the best attested fact in history is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

It's just like you build a pyramid and then you turn the pyramid and you balance it on one point and that point is the resurrection. It was, it was Dr. Jowitt. He was a Presbyterian, I believe, in Carl's Lane Chapel, Birmingham, England, one of the great preachers of his day.

Boy, there was a smorgasbord there. You talk about preachers. If you're in London, I might see Sonny, say, Sonny, are you in London for the weekend? Yes. Where are you going? Well, where do you think I'm going?

Going down the East End to hear that long-bearded hellfire preacher William Boo that founded the Salvation Army, half-Jew and half-Gentile. I see Bracey. Bracey, where are you going? Oh, boy, I'm going to the other end.

I'm not going to the West East End. I'm going to the West End. I'm going to hear the good old Baptist, Dr. S .B. Meyer. Well, where are you going, brother? Oh, I'm going down to the City Temple. Who's preaching?

Parker. What was his name? Joseph. Joseph Parker. A hellfire preacher if ever there was one. And you know, if you liked a more dignified meeting, you'd go to St. Paul's Cathedral, it's old 3000, and you couldn't get a seat Sunday afternoon listening to a man, Dr. Clifford, who expounded the Word of God with authority.

The whole of London was one sea of revival in those days. You know, I see three things missing from modern preaching. What did I say they were? I've forgotten before I told you. Majesty, I know, intensity, immensity, and eternity.

I'm not going to try and put them all in tonight either, because this is not preaching, it's a Bible study. I do remember, I do not get the, I do not get the New York Times book review. I took it for five years because I got it free.

But when they charged me, I quit. But three years ago, I remember a critic said about the dullness in the church. He said, the trouble with the modern preacher is he's lost sight of the awesome majesty and the, no, awesome, what was it now?

Awesome beauty and thrilling majesty of the gospel. Isn't that a criticism? What in God's, what in the world is a mason preaching the redemptive work of Jesus Christ? But God, it was Jowitt, Dr. John Jowitt that was preaching at Cars Lane, Birmingham.

And he said, when he wanted a refresher, he went to London not to see the sights. I went to Joseph Parker. I sat in the corner and he said, it was Easter and the place was jammed out and he said, he said he, Parker with his elastic vocabulary used to exhaust almost the whole vocabulary in every message and he said, I happened to be there the day that Joseph Parker buried Jesus.

That's pretty good, isn't it? I've used parts of that, I've improved it, of course, but sometimes on Friday night I get a chalk and I put a circle on the, on the board. Like the tombstone they put over the grave of Jesus.

They put the, they put the tombstone there and then they put wax so that they make it airtight they put wax in the filling between the stone and the wall and then they put the imperial seal because it was the mark of Rome that this is property that cannot be touched.

So you have the stone and the wax and the seal and then you have sixteen soldiers and then the devil's scared he says, you know this, this Jesus man has been a terror to me for years. I'm not sure if I've got him.

So one demon says, your majesty, I'll tell you what, let's roll the sin of the world against the stone. So they roll all the sin of the world against the stone. So now you've got the sin of the world, the stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, all the sin of all the world.

A demon says, I think there's something else to do. Rally every demon in hell. So you've got the stone, the wax, the seal, the soldiers, the sin of the world and every demon there. And Satan says, just thirty seconds till we get down to ten.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Side two. The super star general's there. And he made a map of the, showed them on a map of the world. He said, there is a sleeping giant. It was China.

And he put his finger in the middle of it and said, there lies a sleeping giant. Let it sleep because if it ever wakes up and marshals its, its what, its physical army and its resources, it will shake the world.

Right now, it's the headache to the whole world. We're afraid of China. Russia's afraid of China. We're told there are a million men up the wall in China around the great country. But Napoleon said, there lies a sleeping giant.

Let it sleep. If it ever wakes up and harnesses its power, it will shake the world. Change the figures. There's the devil with a map of the ages. And he says, there, there's a church of Jesus Christ asleep.

Let it sleep. If it ever wakes up and discovers the power of the Holy Ghost, it will shake the world. If it doesn't, the world's going to shake the church. And in our generation, you parents are better to get out of your faces.

I see my boyfriends here. Little youth boys. I pray for these little guys every day. And, for some other little boys that come to our Friday night class. You know, ten years from now, this country's going to be a hell unless there's a revival.

We're heading for panic. I wish to God we were as afraid of God as we are of Russia. We're not afraid of God. The man in the street isn't afraid of God. The man in the pew isn't afraid of God. In most cases, the man in the pulpit isn't afraid of God.

Back up. The people in the seminary are not afraid of God. There's no fear of God. And yet, we're heading straight for judgment. I may preach on that. I'm not sure. Next Tuesday night. It, it, it hurts to preach.

It costs too much. But if the Lord lets me do it, I'll preach it. Because we're heading there. Nobody's going to escape. Teddy Kennedy may pay off the Pope. He won't pay off anybody else off. Whoever liquidated Jimmy, Jimmy Hoffer is going to stand at the judgment seat.

Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death will be solved. And every creature that ever lived is going to be, it's the most awesome thing there is ahead of us. This pact we've signed with Russia won't change a firecracker in the, what's the, the Battle of Armageddon.

Nobody's ever outdone God. And Armageddon will be the most awful battle in history. Actually the most awful battle was fought in Gethsemane. So I'm begotten again to a lively hope. Come on now. I come to your church some Sunday morning going out and say, how was the meeting?

It was dead. How can I have a dead meeting with the living Christ? If you have a dead meeting He wasn't there. It's a formality. It's a ritualism. But when Christ is there, dear God, I'd like to have been in that Azusa Street meeting.

I'd like to have been in some meetings. I'm a link between the past, people that lived a hundred years back. I met them, well, where are we, 88, okay. In 88 William Booth was pulling, pulling down the strongholds of hell in England.

Colonel Brangle left America to join him. The greatest expositor maybe ever, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan went. And I didn't talk with I didn't talk with Dr. Morgan about this, but he wrote to me once. I should have kept the letter.

When everything was blazing, when everybody was shaking, the power of God everywhere the Salvation Army went, they caricatured them on the stage. Where are the men that really killed them? Now, a hundred years after, they had no financial backing.

But one of the men told me every Salvation Army Corps, as they call their fellowships, there was an unwritten law you spent Saturday night in prayer. And he said, Brother Aidan, we'd come in, we kept two coats.

They used to wear the coat down to the knees. And he said, we'd come in from a meeting, a street meeting on Saturday night, you could scrape the eggs off and the rotten tomatoes and stuff, and you washed it off.

When you got home and you got your nice suit the next day and came out. But he said, they prayed through the night, a man would get up and he'd say, Victory! Victory! The walls have been broken down. Tomorrow night there'll be twelve people saved.

Or tomorrow night, Sunday night, there'll be six people. He said, there were never more than one out. Every Sunday you went. I'm looking for a church, God help us. And I pray this may be one and you are the preacher, brethren.

Where you can say to your neighbor, listen, you can't come to our church three Sundays without getting saved. You'll get under conviction the first Sunday and the second Sunday. The third night you'll be born again.

But this man told me he was down on the Strand in London there's a big theater. At that time it was a hall you could rent. And he said, I went in that hall and the back row, the bums and prostitutes sat on the back row.

Mostly they were men, they wouldn't even go near the vile women. And there they were. And he said, the Holy Spirit of God was on the meeting. William Booth preached one of his hellfire messages and he made an altar call and the people wouldn't move.

So he turned around and he said to the officers behind him, pray, pray. He said, boy, you ducked your head down and you prayed. Nothing happened. Pray. And he said, Brother Rayneal, you'll tell people this.

I was told this in the hills of Wales just outside Swansea a place called Rubiner. I spent the afternoon with a man called Major Thomas and that was in 1932. He was about my age, about 82 years of age.

He said, Brother Rayneal, you'll tell your generation what I tell you today they won't believe you. I said, I don't care what they do, they can go to hell if they don't. He said, the Holy Ghost would get a hold of men at the back and he said, they'd be so under-convicted they would shred their hymn books.

You could see where they sat. There were piles of what used to be a hymn book. You could see the sweat run off their noses and off their chin. They were in such agony of spirit under-conviction. And then he said, the old gentleman was saying, now come on, hold it, pray.

And he said, the Holy Ghost would lift men off the back seat and carry them over the audience and drop them at the altar. Dear Lord, any Pentecost would run for the door in a meeting like that. They'd be terrified.

They'd say, we're in the wrong place. This is spiritism. Do you know what we've done? We've made the Holy Ghost the prisoner of our theology. He can't have his way. Not in Pentecostal churches even, God help us.

We're afraid. We shouldn't be afraid of something that's spurious. But nobody's going to botch the Holy Ghost stuff. When he comes, he's going to come in all its dreadful majesty. We'll see hundreds of years of prayers answered in weeks when the Holy Ghost comes.

And he must come. I don't know if I mentioned this I'll say it here anyhow. I don't care what the world says about the church. I don't think Oral Roberts and those guys should make the world a mocking church a football for the world to kick around.

But when Jesus says his church that he gave his blood for when he says his church is poor, wretched, naked, blind, miserable and that's what Jesus said about the church. Is he coming for a bride like that?

Is he coming for a is he going to stand in his church as it were and some woman comes crashing through the gates she stinks. She hasn't been bathed for ages. She's blind. She's ugly. She smells. Is he coming for a church like that?

Did he go through the hell of Gethsemane? Did he taste death for every man? What's death? Separation from God. My God why has God forsaken me? What do you think the angels did? Don't you think he staggered them?

Don't you think they stopped rejoicing and started weeping and said dear God why did you let your son go down to do that? He left his father's throne above you so free so infinite. His grace emptied himself.

He put his royal rose on one side in heaven. They worshipped him on earth. They spit on him there they worshipped him there they whipped him and God didn't interfere. And you think because God hasn't sent judgment on you you got by with it?

No at the end of the line that's the the bottom line is the judgment seat of Christ. That's the final audit. Nobody's got away with a thing. Not one person. We'll mention that next week. But here the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

The Incorruptible Inheritance Reserved in Heaven

For what reason? Well look at the next verse. How many of you have had an inheritance? Let me look now. One of the offerings was so bad. Nobody here had an inheritance. Terrible. I'll check with the lawyer before you come next week.