I brother sent this very good list of quotations from some sermons that have really impacted him over the last year:
"I remember years ago when I was a student at the university of Minnesota, there were a group of young men there at the university that had a TREMENDOUS burden for Tibet and Afghanistan and Nepal. And these young men with the information that had come to them of the need of those unevangelized areas committed themselves to serve Christ there. On the basis of the information, they responded. That burden found a lodgment in their heart, and they did something about it. It's interesting to know that Dr. Simpson learned about Tibet, and he became TREMENDOUSLY burdened for it. In fact, record has it that on one occasion, one of the secreataries at the headquarters in the Tabernacle in New York went by Dr. Simpson's office and saw him. He didn't know the door was open. He thought that it was closed securely, and he'd been embarassed had he known it. But there he was, clasping the globe to his heart with his finger resting on Tibet, and the tears streaming down his cheeks as he cried out to God for that land. And the amazing thing, when the missionaries finally got to Tibet, they found that every one of them were of the same age, and they had been born the year that Dr. Simpson started to pray for Tibet. It took a generation! They didn't know that. They weren't aware of it, but when the facts came out, they found that God had to bring into life a generation of men! Tom Moseley was one of them and others with him who responded to the Spirit of God in those days in that way, as Dr. Simpson had become concerned and had become burdened. So, it could very well be that God has brought you into a partnership with others that have labored in intercessory travail. So you should become sensitive to the leading of the Lord." - Paris Reidhead, Cost of Discipleship Pt. 7, http://www.therevivalweneed.com/xoops/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=8
* * * * *
"Missionaries went out to Tangalli tribe in Nigeria in 1915, Gordon Beecham and John Hall. They went up into the Tangalli country and they started to minister. The first one that came to Christ was a young cannibal from the Tangalli people, and the second one was a very fierce and feared young man. His father had been killed by the Baleeri people. And this young man had lost one eye in a battle with the spears. And after his father had been killed by the Baleeri people, he'd taken a blood oath in front of the elders of the tribe that he would not rest until he had killed fourteen people of the family of -- which he found out there were fourteen males and he was going to kill all of them in reprisal for their having killed his father.
"Now Tangalli was a strange people. No one could marry in the Tangalli tribe until he had taken the head of one of the neighboring tribespeople and brought it to the father of the girl that he wanted to make his bride to prove his manhood. There were no graves in Tangalli land, because when any one died for any other occasion other than leprosy (in which case they were put in a certain place for the hyenas) but any other place, the Tangalli people would go out to the sacred family's spirit grove and there the body would be cut into portions in the sacred parts, and the family would eat until it was gone. Then the bones would be put under a carron of stones as an altar to which they would make regular sacrifices. And it was into this tribe that the gospel came.
"Targa came to work as an informant and as a houseboy for the missionaries. One night, when he was sleeping, the Lord Jesus spoke to him and said, "Targa, the mothers in Baleeri land make their children be quiet at night by saying that if they make a noise, Targa will hear them. They fear you, Targa. Your name strikes fear into the hearts of the Baleeris. And now you've come to Me, and I've given you My salvation. I've come into Your heart. And Targa, do you think the Baleeris should still be afraid of someone into whom I've come?" That night, Targa met the Lord Jesus in reference to the blood feud, and the Lord Jesus won. The next morning at daylight, when the station stirred, Targa came out, carrying his club, and he said to the missionary, John Hall, just a few words, "I go to Baleeri." Now they thought that somehow in the night a message had come that some of the Baleeri people were on the path and he could ambush them and add to this number, this total of those that he had vowed to kill. And the missionary looked at him and said, "Oh, Targa, Targa, you're a Christian! You can't go to Baleeri!" "Oh!" he said, "You don't understand. Last night Jesus spoke to me, and He told me that the Baleeri are still afraid of me. And I must go to the Baleeri and tell them they don't need to fear me anymore!" And then the missionary said, "But Targa, you can't go to the Baleeri! They'll kill you!" "But that's all right. If they kill me, they kill me. But Jesus has said go, and I must go."
"It was six miles from the station unto the edge of the Baleeri country and Targa started out and he came to the village where the family that had killed his father resided. And here he came and all of them knew it. Striding down the middle of the way, they were too frightened and surprised to do anything. He walked right up to the compound of the man that had killed his father, and he came in and stood in front of them, and he said, "I have come to tell you you don't need to be afraid of me anymore." And he sat down with them and he told them what had happened and how Jesus Christ had come into his heart. That evening he came back, and they said, "Will you come back and tell us more about this Jesus? If He can change someone like you, then we should know about Him." So every day, when he'd finished his work, in the afternoon, Targa would walk the six miles to Baleeri to the compound of the man that had killed his father, and he would sit down with them and tell them about Christ.
"A year went by, and he one day walked into the mission station, and behind him were nearly fifty of the Baleeri people that he had led to the Lord Jesus and he had prepared for baptism. And they had come to give their testimony to the missionaries to follow the Lord in baptism and be established a church. And after this, which had taken several weeks had been done, they then said, "We must have someone to teach us. You don't need Targa anymore as your houseboy and your informant. We must have him as our pastor. He will come to you and you teach him, then he will come back to us and tell us what you've taught him." And when he was there, and years ago when first I learned of Targa, he had a church of over 1,500 Baleeri people, like himself, all savage background and all that he had personally won to Christ. He only had 700 in the evening service, because in the afternoon about 800 of the Baleeri people went out into the other villages and compounds and held little fireside services, telling their neighbors and friends and other tribespeople about Jesus Christ."
Paris Reidhead, Cost of Discipleship Pt. 12, http://www.therevivalweneed.com/xoops/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=8
* * * * *
It's possible for one to have been saved from the fear of hell at the time of dying, to have been saved from habits and attitudes and traits and nature, and to have been saved from blundering through life and groping through time, and still, even being in the RIGHT road, walking in the RIGHT direction, to go along that trip unprepared. Oh, what a sad thing it's going to be in that day to find saved from hell, saved perhaps from sin and the tyranny of it, and yet wasted -- wasted as far as the matter of walking in the fulness of the Holy Spirit is concerned. And God's great delight and desire is that you should walk not in your own strength or your own energy, but in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit. And so it says, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that if you should believe on Him," you'd not be wasted -- wasted in the sense of walking on in the energy of human personality, trying to do divine service with natural abilities, but that on the contrary, you could know the fulness of Christ and walk in that fulness. And it would no longer be you, but it would be Christ living in you. Oh, friends, if you can see this, you can understand this, that this is in part of it. God doesn't want you to try to live this life in the energy that is utterly inadequate for it, for Christ-life is utterly unnatural to me, to you, and perfectly natural to Christ. What is He asking us to do? To present our bodies to Him and to permit Him to fill us with Himself and live in us His own life! For a person to go through time, forgiven of past sins, victory over trait and temptations, walking even in the way that is is in essence God's plan and purpose, but failing to walk in the Spirit.
Of this Charles Finney said, "God has commanded us to be filled with the Spirit. If we do not walk in the fulness of the Spirit, we're going to be responsible for everything wrong that we did because we weren't filled with the Spirit. And we're going to be responsible for all the good we DIDN'T do because we weren't filled with the Spirit." And so, He doesn't want you to waste one day, one hour! His desire is that you should not only have the crisis experience of being filled with the Spirit, but that you should walk in the fulness of Christ. His word is literally, "Be ye being filled with the Spirit."
F. B. Meyer came to George Mueller at Keswick on one occasion, and said to him, "Father, why is it sometimes I preach with power, and sometimes it seems so flat and empty." And the old man said, "It's because you breathe out twice, when you've only breathed in once." And Oh! to breathe out without breathing in is to waste that time. Dr. Simpson spoke and wrote in his hymn, "Of Him breathing the life of the Lord." And I find so many of God's dear children do not understand the necessity of a secret place alone with God, a place not just of going through Bible reading and prayer, but a place primarily of worship, a place of BREATHING out in worship, and BREATHING in -- drinking of Him who is the living waters -- BREATHING of Him who is the holy breath. And God doesn't want one day or hour of your life to be wasted lived merely in the energy of a dedicated human personality, but He wants you to live and walk in the Spirit. But there must be disciplines if you are to walk in the Spirit's fulness, and one of these disciplines is given in a hymn! "Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord, spend much time in secret with Jesus alone." Now we sing it, but do we do it? And do you have a time?
- Paris Reidhead, "Not to Be Wasted" (http://www.therevivalweneed.com/xoops/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=8)
* * * * *
We were on our way back from Africa, and our ship, the Execorda, it went from Alexandria, Egypt, to Pereus, Greece. We were to be there taking on some cargo two or three days. And so, we arranged a trip to go down through Athens, and the place we ended up, the last place we saw, was the Coliseum, where the original Olympic Games had been held. Our guide, the limousine driver that had gotten this group from the ship and taken them,
our guide had been a taxi driver in Chicago, and he spoke very inibitable English; and we enjoyed it--him. And he had some very interesting lines, maybe untrue, but interesting comments about Athens too. I don't know how much he knew about history, but he was an exciting guy.
We were standing there in this refurbished Coliseum. The Nazis had done it when they'd occupied Greece. They'd gone and brought the marble and fitted it out again. And I said to the guide, "Where was the bema?" "Oh," he said, "you speak Greek." I said, "I don't speak Greek." He said, "Bema--that's Greek." "I know it's Greek." "Well, why do you say bema?" "Because for many, many years I've been expecting to stand before the Bema." He said, "You can't. It's not here anymore. When they remade this, they didn't put the bema in there." I said, "Well, what was it?" "Well," he said, "it was a balcony where the judges sit and where they would bring the people that had won, they'd come up on some steps and judges at the bema would give them a crown of laurel leaves." Can you imagine these fellows going out and getting killed, or someone trying to kill them, and all they got when they finish is laurel leaves?
And I faded away, and I had a vision. I don't know whether I was awake, whether I was asleep, whether I saw it or I imagined it, and I don't care. It was more real than anything that was around me. I saw a vast temple on a high hill. And then in a moment I was in a line of people going into great doors at that temple, and in a moment I was up to the door and a servant (probably an angel) reached over and brought a package and said, "Here, take this." And I picked the package up. It wasn't large and it wasn't heavy. I carried it with me through the doors and there I saw the Lamb, seated upon the throne, more glorious than anything that had ever been written or painted of Him. And in that moment, I knew what it was. I was to appear before Him, and there in my hand was my life and my works were going to be tried, whether good or bad, whether wood, hay or stubble, or gold, silver or precious stones.
Well, I moved, and I was next. A servant said to me, "The package," and I did. There was a furnace there at the foot of where the Lord was seated and a flame that burned with nothing to fuel it. And my package was put in there and the flame covered it. A moment later, the servant picked up a tool. I didn't see the tool till later. And after I heard it grating on the furnace, and then I heard the voice of the servant say, "Stretch out your hands." And I reached out my hand to take a crown. And the voice said, "Cup your hands." And a little shovel with a cover on it was put over my cupped hands, and the light contents from within slid out into my palms. And when I brought it around in front of me and looked, all I had was a handful of ashes. Ashes. Oh, I'd served. I'd given my food to feed the poor. My money to help the...I'd given my body to be burned; I'd been a missionary. I had the wrong motives, wrong attitude, wrong relationship, wrong resources. What I'd done so much of what I'd done I'd done to be seen. And I dropped my head. I looked at the Lord,
and the look in His eye made me weep. I had nothing to give Him for my life. And I knew that I would have wept, perhaps for eternity. I was there, but my life had been wasted. And I followed my fluttering ashes down and I found I was standing in a carpet of ashes. He looked at me. He dried my tears by that look of tender love and forgiveness.
And I turned, and the next thing I heard was, "Mister! Hurry! Hurry! We're waiting for you! What are you standing there for?" And I walked out to the limousine, shocked. I suppose there have been very few days when I haven't thought about that. I asked the Lord to help me so to live and to minister that in that day there will be something to lay at His nail-pierced feet--that it won't be just a handful of ashes, a wasted life, and wasted time and opportunity and privilege and neglected truth.
"You say you want a crown? What are you going to do? Strut around in heaven with a crown?" No, no, I am not. God has to take the strut out of you to make it to heaven. When I found out what they do with crowns, I said, "I want one," because I found that the four and twenty elders cast their crowns at His feet, and I want something with which to say, "Thank You, Lord, for saving my soul. Thank You, Lord, for making me whole. Thank You, Lord, for being to me my great salvation--so full, so free."
Paris Reidhead, The Principles of Missions - Part 1, https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/
* * * * *
Well, a man mightily used of God that Brother Trass knows of and Brother Crabtree knows of, he went off toward the end of his life unfortunately, but when he was at his very best, you could stick all the evangelists from one end to another and pile them high. Nobody was ever used by God like this one brother in the late '40's, early '50's, mid-'50's, late '50's. And I was -- I was 14 or 13 when he came to my father-in-law (my late father-in-law's) church. And I'll never forgot those two nights, because it was that combination of humility and brokenness and listening that releases divine power. No tricks with the microphone cord and the pulling down the tie and all this stuff. He was like a lamb but he was like a lion. Because when you listen for God's...SHEW!
A met a man years later who told me this story. He said that this evangelist, minister (I don't know what to call his ministry, but) he was flying with some friends to go to a service in a midwestern city. And they made a stop at a small airport. And they got off the plane as the plane refueled. These were the old days -- no jetways. They got off the plane, they went in, and had some coffee or something. They were walking back on the tarmac just to go up the steps of this small plane to make the last little jump. And as he's approaching the plane, he turns to the three or four men that are with him and he says, "I can't get on this plane. I'm not supposed to get on this plane." So the friends knew that this guy listens to God, and God would speak to this man. So they thought, "If he's not getting on this plane, that could only mean one thing: this baby's going down." But he said to them, "No, it's not going down. You get on the plane. I'll catch the next one to the city, but I can't get on this plane. But go. The Lord is with you. Just go." The brothers nervously got on the plane, not knowing what's going on here with our brother.
The plane taxied, and it's taxi-ing away, they see their friend just walking to the end of the tarmac, and then down the side of the airfield toward a road. The plane takes off and he's just walking in a city that he never knew he'd stop at, down a road he'd never been before. And later they learned that as he had walked about a mile, some houses started to appear, but they were really ramshackle little wooden houses -- very poor people. And as he walks a mile, a mile and a quarter, there's a little rundown wood house on the right with an African-American woman, a black sister just rocking. And as she sees him walking down this road going who knows where, she gets up off the porch, walks to the front gate, and as he's coming by, she says to him, "You're the man of God, aren't you?" He said, "I am a man of God." She said, "My son is dying inside of some terrible disease, but I was praying, and the Lord said if I stood out here at this time tomorrow, he would send a man of God by who would pray for my boy, so my boy could be healed." He walked in the house, didn't have to say but just a few sentences, because when you're following the Holy Ghost, you don't have to have a lot. You just speak the words. And the boy was healed. And he walked back to the airport and just sat there and waited for the next flight.
I don;t know about you, but that's what I'm hungry for in my life. How many are with me? How many want to hear from God, be led by God, hear from God's Spirit? You know what it takes? It takes us humbling ourselves. - Jim Cymbala, "The Great Future of Pentecost" (http://www.therevivalweneed.com/xoops/modules/mydownloads/viewcat.php?cid=35)
William Duma (transcribed from Leonard Ravenhill)
...A man named Duma in Africa--listen, please--a Baptist before charismatic stuff was popular whatnot. This precious man waited on God, and God anointed him. So what happened is he lays hands on the sick and there are miracles. He goes to hospitals and raises the dead. I gave this book to a very famous preacher. Every one of you know his name, one of the greatest evangelists in America. He said, "Brother Len, I don't want to read that. It's not documented."
Last year a man knocked at my door and I said, "Oh, hello, I'm glad to see you."
He said, "My name is Roger Volk."
"I remember you, Roger, from Africa." I said, "By the way, do you know a man by the name of Duma?"
He said, "William Duma?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Sure."
I said, "Well, is it true that he raised the dead?"
He said, "I'll give you the name of the doctor, the atheist that saw Duma stand over a corpse and raise it up in the name of Jesus. I'll tell you the name of the hospital, I'll tell you the name of the doctor, I'll tell you the name of the child." But he said, "Duma did more than that."
I said, "In God's name, what do you mean do more than raise the dead?"
He said, "Brother Ravenhill, I only have one daughter and she had to have brain surgery. They took a third of her brain away. I signed to the doctor the privilege, 'Do anything. Restore my darling daughter.' She's a vegetable! She can't even lick her own lips. And there's no hope. I've paid for her to go to England. I've prayed for physicians to come from America, but there's no hope! A third of her brain has been removed."
And I said, "Well, Roger, what happened?"
He said, "A man knocked at my door, and there's William Duma. He'd taken a train two days before and travelled all day and night at his own expense."
And Roger Volk said, "And I said to him, 'Well, why did you come?' And he never communicated at all. He said, 'Because you have a child here that's sick. I've come to pray for the child.'"
Volk said, "I almost went to pieces. He'll go in the room and she's there lying on the floor. He'll speak and she'll get up and jump and I'll be excited. And instead of that, he prayed and nothing happened. He prayed again and nothing happened. And like Elijah, he prayed the third time."
And Roger said, "What now?"
He says, "Oh, I'll be back in a few days. [Ed. couldn't make this part out: He went to go get his anointing up, referring to an incident that happened much earlier in Duma's ministry than the current story.]
And God said to him, "I'll not only anoint you to heal the sick." But here's the secret. 21 days and nights he waited on God for the anointing. And he came back like an Elijah or like an Apostle Paul, but do you know what he did? Every year after that, on the day that he entered that cave, he went back and spent 21 days and nights to his God to restore his power! He didn't say, "I got the baptism ten years ago." He went and waited on God. He forgot about big crusades. He forgot about miracles he'd seen.
Anyhow, Roger Volk said, "He came back. I said to him, 'Where have you been?'"
He said, "I've been talking to my Father in His cathedral."
"Well, where's that?"
"Well, the forest up the road. I've been there three days. Let's pray for your daughter."
So here's the daughter, again, can't lick her lips. There she is--a third of her brain removed. No hope or anything. The doctors said, "Resign yourself. She's a vegetable for life." There's no power on earth that can do that! Medical science doesn't have an answer!
Little Duma goes, little black guy, he stands over her, puts his hands down and says, "Darling, Jesus loves you. You're His property. Be made whole."
And immediately she stood and licked her lips and laughed.
I said, "Well, that's wonderful."
He said, "But God did a greater miracle than that."
I said, "What do you mean? A third of her brain taken away and God heals her, she stands up and laughs?"
He said, "But Brother Ravenhill, I left South Africa a month ago, and a month before that, that vegetable of a girl that
was dead and paralyzed and useless gave birth to a baby!"
_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon
|
