In this sermon, the preacher talks about his mission to spread his message by going door to door and giving lectures. He mentions a man named Zagarki who he believes will surpass Christianity in Japan and other nations. The preacher also discusses the importance of prayer and believes that a person's greatness is determined by their prayer life. He then focuses on the life of Elijah, a biblical figure known for his miraculous acts, and emphasizes the power of faith in sustaining him.

I find that the most stirring, profitable thing in my life is to read the biographies of great men. And particularly to read the life stories of men in the Bible. And I want to talk about one tonight that in my judgment is one of the greatest men that ever crossed the bridge of time. Is that OK? OK, we'll start soon. His life is all wrapped up in the miraculous. He changed the climate. He raised the dead. He subdued armies. And yet God has wrapped up the life of this man in two very simple words. There are many great biographies written in two volumes. Begbie gave us two great lives of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, in two great volumes. The life of the founder of the China Inland Mission is given in two great volumes. And as a writer, I don't think it's very difficult to condense the life of a man into two volumes. But it's rather difficult to condense the life of a person. Particularly a man who stands as a giant in history into two simple words. And God has done exactly that because he says of this amazing man Elijah, he prayed. I don't believe that any man is greater than his prayer life. I don't believe that any church is stronger than his prayer life. The other day I saw a monstrous machine coming up the road, I don't know, an 18 wheeler or bigger than that, and it had an oversized load. And as it came past, the machine was almost groaning under the immense weight of this huge machine, whatever was on it. And you know, I'm not an engineer, but I knew that that 18 wheeler didn't have a Volkswagen engine in it. Because if it had, it would never have pulled that load. And yet we've got churches that have massive organization and yet they're trying to run on a Volkswagen prayer meeting. No church is greater than its prayer life. No man is greater than his prayer life. I don't care how great his intellect is. Now this man Elijah came on the scene in the history of Israel in a crisis hour. Quite recently in the Wall Street Journal there was a statement, I don't take the Wall Street Journal, I don't have any investments. I'm sure some of you do, but the Wall Street Journal said that presently there is a revival sweeping America from the Californian coast into New York. A great evangelical revival it said, but it is having very little effect. To me that's like saying that last night there was an earthquake 9.5 on the Richter scale but nobody felt it. Just as ridiculous. Now I want to talk about prayer and talk about revival because right now there's a spirit of lethargy over the nation. We've kicked all the old rascals out of Washington, we've got a new bunch of rascals anyhow, we've got a new bunch in. And now the attitude is relax and be raptured. What can go wrong? Now we've got Mr. Reagan in. There's something far more deep seated that's wrong with the nation than politics or economics or a bankrupt dollar. There's no way in the world that we can turn the nation around. We're always trying to bail God out. The latest effort is have a moral majority. Well why didn't Jesus have a moral majority? He had the most moral men in the world around him. Pharisees and Sadducees, they were impeccable in their morality. But Jesus attacked them pretty severely. You see we'll do just about anything in the world except obey God. I'm trying to write a book right now, Revival God's Way. Do you know why? Because we've tried every other way. We've tried to glamorize the gospel. Tomorrow morning turn your TV on, you'll see ladies swinging there in what look like night dresses, long gowns to the ground, you know and faultless hairdos and men, you know, have their hair blown and some blown away, but you see them all dressed immaculately there, suave and sweet and nobody says anything that will disturb anybody because if you do, you'll cut your finances off. Now listen, and let's be intelligent, I'm sure you must love God when you could be at home watching that intellectual rubbish on TV and you left it to come here Saturday night. That's not very normal and I'm very glad you're here. But friends, we're not going to move this generation to God except by a Holy Ghost revival. We have the most expensive evangelism in history. That revival has never become, never been born through a famous personality. Revival cannot be nationalized. Revival cannot be organized. Revival cannot be denominationalized. The Church of Jesus Christ began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing. It's ending in the supper room with a bunch of women organizing. We mistake rattle for revival. We mistake commotion for creation. We mistake action for unction. Anybody that's read the Bible knows how Elijah went off the stage. He went up in the whirlwind. He had a kind of a private rapture. He went up in the whirlwind and in a chariot of fire. How did he come on the stage? Where had he been? Who were his father? Who were his mother? Why did he live? Nobody knows. He is classified, in my judgment, in the greatest classification of men this world has ever known. He is classified as a prophet. And prophets are God's emergency men for crisis hours in history. To some people, judgment isn't in the earth. To some people, judgment won't be in America till the Empire State Building falls down. And there's a new gap, you know, when California falls into the sea. But one of the judgments of God is He gives a nation no prophets. And right now we have no prophets. We've superstarted in Los Angeles. We've a lot of organization. Many organized who will do the agonizing. Elijah comes on the stage 58 years after the dividing of the kingdom. Prior to his coming there was a wicked king by the name of Ahab. He had superseded all the iniquity of every king that came before him. There had been at least six kings. The second king did more evil than the first. The third did more evil than the second. The fourth did more evil than the third. The fifth did more evil than the fourth. The sixth, the last one, Ahab, did more evil than all the iniquity of the kings before him. And then to make bad worse, as the Irish say, he rebuilt Jericho which you remember had been destroyed. And they laid the foundation in the blood of a child. And then he married a wicked woman. You see, today people are snatching at scriptures. I get literature from all over the world because my books go all over the world. And nearly every one of them quotes 2 Chronicles 7, 14. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face. But wait a minute. You can't snatch that out of the scripture. That was given to the Jews. Is it valid today? Yes, it is. But there's a scripture beyond that that has a tag on it. And you see the preachers like to say, if my people out shoves all the responsibility on you I believe the key to revival is endure. Let the priests weep between the altar and the door posts. I was in a very famous college not long ago and God was on that meeting that morning. And I just stepped round the podium and I said to all the brilliant doctors of divinity and all the other scholars that were there, I want to ask you a simple question. You have hundreds of students that are going into the ministry. Do you have a course on weeping? And if they graduate in weeping do you have a course on howling? There's a stony silence. What would you think if people gave a blind man a license to drive an automobile? You'd say that's insanity. We give boys in college a certificate to stick on the wall to prove that they're preachers. Just because they know the word of God. That! They do not know the God of the word. They know how to divide Romans chapter 1 to 7, 8 to 11. They can tell which is doctrinal and practical and so forth. I think so often the disciples, I guess you do, you read about them. I think of them coming to Jesus and saying Lord teach us to pray. I wonder why they never said Lord teach us to preach. He preached the greatest sermon the world has ever had. It's got the answer for our day. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found one thing. Christianity has been tried, found, difficult and rejected. Christianity is not only too difficult for the world, it's too difficult for the church. God's problem in the world is not communism, Romanism, Moonism or any other ism. God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism. We know all the cliches. We know all the words. I would have loved to have heard Jesus. I'm going to teach a course in a maybe start next week with the Agapithos. They're up the street from us. We live in the New Jerusalem. We've got the Agapithos on one side of us. We've got Y1 with 250 students behind us. We've got Keith Green's group down the road there. We've got Calvary Commission up the road here. We've got Barry Maguire just lives up the street there and we've got Dallas Holmes lives behind us and I don't know who lives there. Great bunch of folk and I sure like to get amongst those students. And I'm going to teach there in about a couple of weeks. One group I'm going to teach on Hebrews 11. Heroes in Hebrews. And with Keith Green's group on the Kingdom. The great teaching of Jesus in what we call the Beatitudes. And people say, well what are the Beatitudes? Well I'll tell you. They should be aptitudes in our lives. Do you know what? If every professing believer in America lived the Sermon on the Mount for 24 hours we'd turn this country round. We don't want no more preaching. If I were a kind of a Protestant Pope I'd close every evangelical church down for the next month. We've enough knowledge to give us the biggest beating we can ever get when we get to the judgment seat. Some young people said to me not long ago you know, they tell us that when we're old enough to get married there won't be any material we'll have run out of wood, we're cutting all the trees down and we won't have any bricks to build the houses. I said, you just forget it. You'll all be able to build a house. They said, what with? I said, you're cassettes. I find youngsters who say, you know, I've got 300 cassettes. Oh, I've got 400 cassettes. Oh, I've got so many cassettes. The nation is drowning right now in theological knowledge. There are millions of cassettes. There are hundreds and hundreds of seminars. I'm thinking of having a seminar on teaching seminars. Everybody's having seminars. And weekend meetings and you can go into hotels and have meetings and breakfasts and banquets and bankruptcy. Well anyhow, they've all these things going and we're getting nowhere. The disciples said, Lord teach us to pray. I would rather pray than be the greatest preacher in the world. Preaching we stand before men on behalf of God. Praying we stand before God on behalf of men which is the greatest. The disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray. You know, there are people who say, well, you know, the Lord has no favorite. Well, he has. I want to tell you very surely he has. Jesus went to the house of Jairus to raise his daughter from the dead. Who did he take with him? Right. Peter, John and James. You got them backwards. Maybe that's all right. Peter, James and John. And then he went to the Mount of Transfiguration and he took with him and he was transfigured and Luke said it was while he was praying that he was transfigured and these men said, Lord, teach us to pray and when he went back they were asleep. I can't believe that. To have heard Jesus praying? Okay, I'll excuse them. They were all tired. They weren't used to spending all night. He spent all night impressed time after time, year after year. And they weren't used to it. But he took them into the most amazing event that ever happened in the world. The greatest battle fought in the world wasn't somewhere back in history. It wasn't in World War I at Vimy Ridge or Packendale or Mons. It wasn't in World War II. The greatest battle ever fought was fought by one man in a place called Gethsemane. And three men were allowed to go into the garden to pray with him and they Oh, not again. I mean, these three men were allowed to be with the Son of God. He's making history like no one else and they fell asleep. And he came back a second time and they were asleep. And he came back a third time and they Isn't that incredible? You know, pastors and teachers get discouraged. I don't think people understand what we're saying. I don't think they really understand. I don't think they're following on. Well, cheer up. Jesus had the same problem. I don't believe the disciples believe the word that Jesus said. You say that's true? Let me prove it to you. He told them over and over and over again he was going to die and rise on the third day. And the morning he rose at the resurrection there wasn't one of them at the sepulcher. Therefore they didn't believe he'd rise from the dead. Otherwise they'd have been lining up there. Then the women jumped in and said, No, the men sailed in, but we got there. Women's live everywhere, but anyhow. No, the woman didn't go there to see the resurrected Christ. She went in to anoint his body, didn't she? So don't get discouraged if people are dumb and stupid. Every time I look at the congregation I remember the Lord commissioned me to comfort the people minded. But anyhow, things go very slow with us. You know, five minutes inside eternity every one of us will wish we'd be more prayerful, more sacrificial. I heard somebody say the other day, Oh, it's going to be wonderful in heaven. There'll be no tears, there'll be no this, there'll be no that, no the other. Where does it say there'll be no tears? In the book of Revelation. All right, you know what it says in the book of Revelation? God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Well, how can there be tears if there are no tears? I believe those tears, those scalding tears will pour down the faces of men and women at the judgment seat of Christ. Because we're all going to stand there. Mr. Kennedy's going to listen to that murder affair at Chappaquiddick. It's all coming to the surface. And Mr. Nixon's going to hear those 18 minutes on the tape played over. He forgot about that when he was doing the dirty trick. But I'll tell you what, if you want to know how bankrupt preaching is today, Dave Wilkerson is my neighbor. We talk together often. He was telling me recently, he said, Len, do you know 18 different preachers went to preach to Nixon in the White House and not one of them got through to him? Do you think Elijah would have got through to him? Do you think if Elijah preached on TV this Sunday, he'd get back on TV next Sunday? Elijah comes on the stage in the most critical hour in history for Israel. They'd had a series of wicked kings. Iniquity had abounded. They'd been destroyed to God. They'd built groves to Ashdod and Baal. A wicked woman had got married to the king and thought everything was in order. And one day there came a little rugged, ragged kind of man, and maybe she was gathering flowers. And this little fellow said, not God's word, my word. Do you remember in Ephesians 6.19, Paul said, pray for me that utterance may be given to me. What does he mean? He means authority in the word of God. I don't offer people an option. I offer an alternation. Preaching can be the most authoritative thing in the world. Not something to tickle ears. If your ears are tickling, I'm not going to scratch them. I have no commission to scratch itching ears. I believe the trouble with the pulpit in America today is it's filled with puppets instead of prophets. Again, prophets are God's emergency men for crisis out. Elijah comes onto the stage. Again, a prophet. The most amazing men the world has ever had. Colossal men like Jeremiah and Isaiah and the minor prophets and then the apostles take over afterwards. Dr. Burt Bathan, a distinguished Jewish scholar who was converted to Christianity, gave me a definition that I like very much. He said the prophet by the very nature of his calling is a tragic figure. Why? Because he has a fierce loyalty to God and he has a tremendous love for a nation and he's torn between the two. He doesn't see sin as something that's helping a people. First of all, he sees sin hurting God. As the brother said this morning, you don't hear people saying, oh for Buddha's sake do this or Buddha's sake doing that. They say for Christ's sake. They take Christ's name in vain. Before you go to bed tonight, there'll be more divorced people in America than when you got out of bed this morning. There'll be more drunkards, more harlots. Almost 3,000 girls under 17 get pregnant every night in the year. People were screaming a few years ago, it's wrong to go to war in Vietnam. It's wrong to go to war in the... Why? Because we're killing people and now they kill babies before they get out of the womb. You think God almighty is going to put up with America much longer. I don't. Sure I was in the 700 club there. And Pat Robertson says he thinks God's already taken his hands off the nation. I get people calling me, phoning me, writing to me, saying, why do you spend your energy? Why don't you retire? The devil's been trying to get me to do that for 60 years, but I'm not... After all, I'm only 75, so I'm still young. 74, but anyhow. I've still a long way to go. Abraham didn't start till he was 75. So I'm just... Where Abraham was, he finished 175. I don't think I'll make it so long, but anyhow. Give up this, the greatest job in the world? Elijah comes on the stage in a situation identical to our national situation. The country was given up to idolatry and impurity and inequity and infidelity. And everywhere, smokers going up from altars, groves to ash trough and to bale. And every time he sees something like that, it stings in his nostrils, and he knows that God is a holy God. And you remember it said in Deuteronomy, that if a nation sins, he'll shut up heaven. Now come on, do you love... Not America, forget America. If you're an American and then a Christian, you're in bad shape. You should be a Christian before you're an American. I left the Union jack at the cross when I got saved. Do you love America enough to say changing the words of Patrick Henry from give me liberty or give me death, to give me revival or give me death? The words of Rachel that didn't do her hair pretty that morning and dress up and get a ripe perfume but she came to the place where she realized she wasn't functioning as she should function as a woman. And she throws herself at the feet of her husband Jacob and she says, Jacob, give me children or I die. See, we want Pentecost on our terms. We want a painless Pentecost. We want something that won't upset our schedule or get us out of bed too early or keep us fasting when we're hungry and covetous. Prayer is the language of the poor. The self-sufficient don't need to pray. The self-satisfied don't want to pray. The self-righteous can't pray. The only people who can pray are those who realize that we need a power outside of ourselves. Whether you think of government or religious organization or fundamentalism or whatever it is. And again I say Elijah comes on the stage. He's not concerned about himself. He's concerned that the enemies of God are triumphing. And the God of Israel, the God, the maker of heaven and earth is being mocked by shrines all over the area. And every time he sees them his heart is broken. He feeds on tears and affliction and sorrow. Do you remember when Paul went to the intellectual capital of the world which was Athens and he went down the street and everywhere he turned there was an altar to a strange God. And he said in the sleepy Elizabethan English here that his spirit was stirred within him. He said in the Amplified when he saw those altars to strange gods he was angry. Do they anger us? Do you get angry about them or just say there's a nice building. Yeah, lovely building. The Mormons are building it. There's a lovely building over there. My, the Jehovah's Witnesses are building it. I mean, do we see with these natural eyes like every other drunkard down the street or businessman or do we say that place is an offense to a holy God? You know, I've been in many countries of the world and I find very often I'm challenged right down to my toes at the zeal and ambition of those people. I preached in a great conference in Karazhan to hundreds of missionaries from Japan and Korea. And afterwards one of them said to me, you know Brother Ravenhill, Christian missionaries have been here for 104 years. That was about 10 years ago. 104 years and the only penetration that we made of this nation, Japan, is a half of one percent and that means Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and Protestants are half of one percent. I said, well friend, I don't want to be rude, but the way you're going about it it will take another hundred years to get the other half of that one percent. Won't people go there and have a crusade and a show and they run out and give a few tracts and what not and come on and make reports. One of the leading TV Christian organizations in this country, one of their men told me, that they went down to the Philippines and they stopped coming on the way back, they stopped in Japan and they checked on the streets, they'd had reports that their Christian TV message was going through Japan and all kinds of decisions were being made and all kinds of people were being converted. And he said, we went to city after city and we could not find one single person who had been converted to that TV program. Not one. A year after I'd been to that conference we were living up with a brother there that's sitting right there, my brother Bob, in Rockford, Illinois. The Western Methodist had a preacher and I went to hear him and I said to my wife, Frida, this is the man who was the chairman of the conference when we were in Japan. When I saw him I said to him, you don't look so well. No. Did you have a bad flight from Japan? No. What's wrong? I didn't have a bad flight, I had a bad experience. Oh, what happened? Well, I thought I'd get my hair cut in Japan, it's a bit cheaper. So I got a hair cut last night. And as I sat in the chair the man clipped my hair and then finally he said, ha, you are a Yankee. Well, he said, I'm not quite a Yankee, I'm an American. You know, making such a difference. Ah, you are an American businessman. No. Ah, you are an American tourist. No. What kind of American are you? I'm a missionary. Ah, good, good said the man, I am a missionary too. Oh, I thought you were a barber. Barber in the morning, nine o'clock till five, I go home, I bathe. And then I go on the street at six o'clock, fill my pockets with tracks, take my phonograph, knock on your door, I give you lecture number one tonight, I come a week tonight, give you lecture number two, I come a week after, give you lecture number three, I come a week after, give you lecture number four. This is a new combination of religion and politics. Zagagaki. And he's greater than Christianity, he's going to wipe Christianity out of Japan and these other nations. You go out at six o'clock at night, yeah, yeah, I go out at six o'clock, till two o'clock in the morning. How many nights a week? Seven nights a week. You go out every night at six o'clock and you don't go to bed till two in the morning. I didn't say that. You did say that. I didn't say that. What did you say? I said I don't get home until two o'clock in the morning. And then he said I pull a curtain on one side and I cross my legs and I meditate on my God for two hours to renew my strength. Maybe that sounds a bit like Isaiah 40. They that wait upon the Lord to renew their strength. But here's a heathen man dying down before his Buddhist God. And the mystery was so confused and embarrassed that a heathen man would go from six till two in the morning and then pray from two till four. What time do you get up? Seven thirty. You live on three and a half hours sleep each night? Yes. How long have you done this? Seven years, he said. Do you think I felt like coming home to America to talk about revival and prayer and the need in that country? My simple definition is this dear friends of all the Church of God in America or England or anywhere else. The one single reason we do not have revival is we're content to live without it. The price is too stiff. Don't disorganize my life. Don't ask me to open my business half an hour after day instead of a whole day. Don't ask me to stay up at night. Don't ask me to abolish my TV. Don't ask me to get rid of the trivia in my life. I mean I'm saved. I'm not going to hellfire and so I'm a nice Christian. For what? Look here friend. There are more lost people in the world at this moment, this moment than any period in history. And the Church has never been more paralyzed. Again I say that no Church is greater than its prayer life. You see our revivals are predictable. We ship in the best guy. The fellow with the big reputation. Revival is totally unpredictable. A crusade for a big city now can cost a million dollars. Revival never cost one red cent. There's only one revival I know of in the world right now. It's up in Nagaland in northeast India. It burst out in 1977, three years ago. Until that time that state was the most troubled state in India. It had more crime, it had more juvenile delinquency, prostitution, drugs, kids fighting in the street. And then suddenly there was revival. Do you know what revival is? Revival is a divine intervention in the affairs of men. Revival is God's people getting cleansed and endued with power and evangelism is those people going out in the streets. But the blockage is in the Church. Do you know how effective that revival is? Do you know you test a revival? There can be a reviving in the Church, people get a little bit of a mess in their life. Do you know you test a real revival? It changes the moral climate of the community. The government has come down now and said, hey, crime has gone down like this. We've hardly any crime in the nation. The girls aren't getting raped. Drug addiction has gone down to zero nearly. The police aren't having much to do. What in the world has happened? And they discover that God had come in all his amazing power in revival and mopped up these wretched, filthy areas and revolutionized the society. And Paul Kaufman is a very distinguished missionary statesman. He lives in Hong Kong. I was going to see him when I was there. I didn't and I've regretted it ever since. Paul Kaufman went to see this revival. You see, almost everybody has tunnel vision on revival in America. It must come like Finney had it. But it ain't going to come like that, friend. We're not living in Finney's day. We're not living in a day of arrogant militantism. Arrogant militant paganism. We're living in a day when people boast about sin people used to do in a corner and brush if they were found out. A girl used to be embarrassed and humiliated and did a letter in the area when I lived in England years ago when I was a boy, 60 years back. A girl that got pregnant. Oh, did you hear about it? Oh, it was a tragedy. People used to groan and weep and feel ashamed. She polluted the whole district. She was having a baby out of wedlock. And now you get women on TV boasting they've had a number of them. You get people openly brazenly talking about the method to this. Can you think of an educated nation where somebody puts a gadget into a woman and rips an unborn baby and then you flush it down the toilet and you call it education? Listen, if living any old how and drinking any old how and sleeping any old how and living a hellish life to satisfy the passions as people will do all night when you arrive in bed, if that's the joy of life, why is the suicide rate so high? Do you think people want to live a hundred years to shack up and live in sin? But there comes a point, you see, where the weight of sin is death, not only eternal death, but people are going out the best way they can by suicide. Why? Because they've given them to all the passions and indulge themselves in iniquity to that degree. It was like that when Elijah came on the stage. What are you going to do? All the other preachers have gone underground. I think we have to learn the game. At least I have that one man with God is the majority. Elijah didn't have a finance committee behind him. I don't know how he got on. He didn't even have a mailing list. Look, if we don't have the Holy Ghost, we'd better have every gadget that we can get. But if we have the Holy Ghost, well, he's all we need. I'm asked to believe these days, you know, when I see this and that God built this place in answer to believing prayer when all the time most of these big evangelistic societies even are monuments to human genius, human ingenuity, modest avenue tactics, public relations know-how and clever advertising. Isn't it something when these big evangelistic groups say we have more computers than the IBM down the road? I don't think there are any computers in the upper room, do you? No, no, no, no, we're not going to have any superstar evangelists anymore. I'm sorry we ever had any in one sense. But I'll tell you what I'm believing. Oh, I can paint a picture as black as hell. I can do statistics that would tell your insider. But I want to tell you the greatest tragedy in the world tonight is not the betrayal of Vietnam. It's not that Cambodia was raped. The connivance of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger knew about it. It's not that Afghanistan has been destroyed by an invading army and we didn't do a thing about it. If ever you saw the impotence of politics and money why have those boys been in prison for 444 days? The United Nations did nothing about it so they're a pretty helpless bunch. And the government did nothing about it so they're a pretty helpless bunch. And worst of all the Church of God did nothing about it. Isn't it amazing that the Russian government will let 10,000 to 20,000 Jews and other people come out of Russia every year but they won't let 7 Pentecostals come out. There are 7 Pentecostal people have been hiding in the American Embassy in Moscow for 2 years now and they can't get out. When Mr. Carter was asked about it he said, well, of course that's got to do with religion. Oh, so religious people don't have human rights, eh? I'm saying that to show you the impotence. There's a time when bombs and armies and banks and everything can do nothing. And we're in that crisis moment right now. If God, the Holy Ghost doesn't come on America, watch out. The next 2 years are going to be years of starvation and hardship such as we have never known in this country before. God's problem in the Old Testament was not Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites and Hamorites. God's problem in the Old Testament was Israel. Again, God's problem tonight is not communism and all the other isms. God's problem tonight is a disobedient, bankrupt worldly church. All right, Elijah comes on the scene. This woman has got it all her own way. Just like turning these lights out one by one, she plunges the nation into darkness then the guilt grows to Ashcroft and Dale then the invaded Lord of Priests and she thought everything in the garden was lovely and whoop, up comes one man. I think she must be near a nervous breakdown. He puts his finger up and says there's going to be no rain according to my word and he locked up heaven. I think this was one of the greatest honors in the world. Do you know what they did to try and find a good preacher? They turned the army out. We have an evangelist come to town, we give him the key, the man meets him at the town. They're not afraid of evangelism anymore. Nobody met at the gates of the city with a golden key. They didn't bring everybody and his brother to a big banquet. They were terrified of the prophet. I long to see the day when men are terrified of my face or somebody else's face because they know we carry the authority and anointing of God and hypocrisy can't live. I shut up heaven let there be no rain. Say, do you love America enough to ask God to shut up heaven because it means shutting up heaven, you'll strangle the economy, the cattle die, the crops won't grow. Oh, I stood in bread lines in England in First World War. Got out of bed at 4 o'clock in the morning to try and get a loaf of bread. Standing in the shivering rotten English climate there with snow and sweet coming down. Are you really ready to get rid of some creature comforts and not have so much stuff stuffing in your refrigerators and then stuffing you afterwards? No, we want everything the same. We hope gas won't get much more costly. My boys on the mission field in Paraguay was home until two weeks ago. They pay $5.50 a gallon for gas. On a missionary's allowance, can you think of that? $6,000 for a refrigerator that costs $600 down the road there at Sears. We're still living in a paradise in America. It's a fool's paradise right now, but we enjoy it anyhow. We've got the good men up in Washington, so do you know what the feeling of the nation, the believers is? Relax and be raptured. Revival comes only through blood and sweat and tears. Elijah, the anointed of God, he'd been in the secret place of the most high. He comes on the stage of full grown men. He shuts up the whole nation, starves the economy, terrifies the king. Go hide thyself. I went to Dr. George's office one day. A friend of his was coming out and he said, the doctor's in there and he's so happy. He's got a little piece of paper. It's rather dog-eared and it's from a black man, a very, very black, black man down in South Africa. He lives in Durban. His name is Duma, D-U-M-A. When I told this story up in the Carolinas four or five years ago, a man at the back kept nodding his head, nodding his head and after he said, my, I like the story on Duma. I said, did you hear it before? He said, no, but my daddy was the pastor you were talking about. Duma came in the church and heard the gospel for the first time and he ran to the altar. And when he got up, he was like Bunyan's children, the burden loosened off his shoulders, fell from off his back into an empty sepulcher and he ran down the aisle, praising the Lord. Well, that's not, I mean, you know, that's not really the thing to do in the Baptist church. Go leaping down the aisle and praising God. The pastor of the door said, well, how are you and did you enjoy the service? He said, yes. Can I do anything for you? He said, yes. Give me a church. The pastor said, give you what? Give me a church. Well, you've never been in a church before. No, I haven't. Ah, you're the man that went to the altar. No, I'm not. Yes, you are. No, no, no, no. He said, one man went down to the altar. I'm a new man. I'm not the man that went down to the altar. Isn't it terrible when you get so excited about being saved? You know, the first six months you're saved are God's chosen people. And after that, we're God's frozen people. Oh, have you any education? No. Have you been to Bible school? No. That was a big advantage he didn't know about. Nobody brainwashed him. I can't give you a chance. The man turned up again a month after. Going out, the pastor said, well, how are you? Could I help you? He said, yes, give me a church. Oh, now I remember who you are. Well, you haven't been in this church for over a month, have you? No, sir. And you haven't been in any other church. Where did you go? I went up the road outside of Durban, and I came to a forest, and I found a footpath, and then I found a stream, and then I found a cave, and I took a rock, and I made a mark on the wall, and I went in that cave for 21 days and nights and said, Lord, you tell me whether I'm going to preach. I don't want to listen to men. Either you tell me I am or I'm not, and if you tell me, all hell won't shake me. And he said, the Lord said, I've called you to preach, and I'll give you a healing ministry. He goes, what? Give you a healing ministry? Well, I'll talk to the deacons about it. And the deacons said, you know, across the track we have a little county, just made of metal, and there are only five people go there. So we let him preach to them, because after all, he's no education and no training, and, you know, in three or four weeks they'll be fed up of listening to him, and they'll close it down. The strange thing is, that church is going, even today, 40 years after, tomorrow morning, it's nearly tomorrow morning over there in South Africa now, and you know, they'll have 1400 people there listening to this amazing man. Yet God healed a six-year-old hen. He called the elders, meet me at the hospital, we need to pray. He called the elders when they meet me at the hospital, and they checked in with the lady at the desk, you know, and said, a pastor said, I want to pray for so-and-so. She said, yes, he's in ward 13. Did you hear that? What did he say? He can't really pray for somebody. Ward 13, ward 13 is the morgue. The pastor just walked down the aisle, and the deacon went and said, pastor, pastor, this, this, this, this, this is the morgue. He said, yeah. We've got to pray for the right man. Number 21 here. So he pulled the screen over, and there was a man lying, you know, so still and quiet. And little Buma pulled a cloth off him, and then he climbed on top of the body, just like Elijah did later, and put his hands on the body. And he said, in the name of Jesus Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, rise and walk. And the corpse went, well, if the corpse had got with me on top of it, I'd have hit the ceiling, I'm sure of that. But do you know what happened? The corpse got down and walked home. A little black man who had no preaching certificate and no background. Poor, small, he only had God. Isn't it terrible when you've only God? You know, when you can't look on your diploma and say that's where I say, I mean, that's where I got my diploma. And then you look at the other one, and that's where I got my PhD, and that's where I got something else. Hey, but wait a minute. Are you suggesting that man has run 30 years on one sillop? You've got a new automobile, do you expect it to last with one sillop of gas till you're dying? The trouble with most people, they had appendix loss 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and the fire's gone out. I forget the day, it was maybe the 17th of November, when the little black man went into that cave. Do you know what the smart man did? Every year since then, he's gone back in that cave for 21 days and nights along with God to get a new anointing, to get a new vision, to get a new friend. He just wanted to go and get blessed from hell, can you say, I remember when well that's great, for if I hadn't afraid, don't build a tent there. Go up and possess the land. Go hide thyself. I hear preachers say, well I can't take time off. You don't have a church to start from. No, I don't. How do you live? I live by faith. One woman came to one of our meetings and she said, oh I like to hear Brother Aidan teach in the mornings, he's great in the mornings but at night he gets so noisy, I don't like him at night. But she said, I enjoy him in the mornings, she said, I don't think I've enjoyed anybody better. She said, I'm going to write him a nice check tomorrow and bring it. The other lady said, don't do that. Why? He said, because you live by faith. Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing? Go hide thyself. That's a hardy thing to do. I guess many of you tithe, maybe all of you tithe. Tithe what? Your money? That's easy, take your notebook out, write the check, tithe to God and then offer. You tithe your tithe. It's because you're tithing all your tithe that's the problem you think. Tithing all your tithe. And if you give God a tenth of every day, that's 24 hours, that's 2 hours and 2 hours and 24 minutes every day. And then on top of that you give them offering. I'll tell you what, if everybody tithe their time and tithe their tongues as well, then the Church of God would be in vastly different shape than what it seems to me. Go hide thyself. He lives by faith. I see Elijah so big he doesn't even get into Hebrews 11 where all those giants of faith are. And if ever you see him you need to get proud. You know some people say, well you can't live without sin, everybody needs a little bit of sin to keep you humble. Well why not have a lot and be real humble. Sin to make you humble, all I need to do to get my face in the dust is read Hebrews 11 where men and women subdued kingdoms, brought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouth of lies and not one of them ever had a Bible. Look how much they did without the Bible. You and I have got 66 volumes. You bought them for Kierkegaard tonight. How much they did without the Word of God. You and I have the complete revelation. God hasn't another word to say to humanity if the world lasts a million years. He said it all. And the old hen house from the foundation said, what more can he say than to you he has said. Elijah the man of faith. The ravens fed him in the morning and fed him in the evening. Maybe that means you should only eat two meals a day, I don't know. But what now happens The brook dried up. The brook dried up. Before the ravens stopped bringing the food, the brook dried up. The natural resources dry up first. And then he heard the voice of the Lord saying, get up and go. Where do I go? Go down the road, you'll meet a woman there. A widow woman. And tell her to feed you. Oh Lord, I can't go. This is a test of humility, isn't it? I mean, who wants to stunt on a woman, apart from radio evangelists? You don't even ask a little widow woman to feed you, are you? Oh, put your pride in your pocket. He meets the little woman and says, you make me a cake. And she says, well, I suppose I may as well die today as tomorrow. What did she say? She said, I'll make you a little cake. I was going to make one for my son and myself. We were going to eat it and what? Die! This man's prayer would have been the death of thousands of people. They'd shut up heaven. There were no crops. We want revival without any suffering. Maybe revival only comes to America through revolution. Maybe our option really is this. Either we concentrate in prayer or we pray in concentration camps. Which do you want? God isn't concerned about Standard Oil or anybody else. He says, well, if we can't have money the missions are going to close down together. All the streamlined, chrome-lined evangelism you see tomorrow on TV. Almighty God passed it, passed by it on all our computers and all our Bible schools and all our seminaries and sent revival up in northeast India. A very repetition of the Acts of the Apostles. Signs and wonders and miracles the dead have been raised. And I like the phrase that Paul Copeland gives there. He says this was not imported. It wasn't imported. Nobody told them about gifts of the Spirit. Nobody told them about speaking in tongues. Nobody told them about miracles. Nobody told them about interpretations. Nobody told them about signs and wonders. God came. God came. In His sovereign right. And this is the only answer. He's not an alternative. It's the only answer for our day. And God has said He'll pour out His Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams. And on my servants and handmaids not my bishops, not the leaders of our Bible schools. Where did Jesus go for His disciples? Did He knock on the door of the Sanhedrin? Did He go to the tent when asked the high priest or the best and most prospective scholar He had? No, He went to a fisherman and a tax gatherer. God takes the things that are not. So many people have said to me did you ever meet Smith Wigglesworth? Yes, I did. He was a character. Some of you read his books. Some of you read the Smith Wigglesworth. You know who he was anyhow. He was the oddest character in the world. He was in a meeting not far from my home. There was a lady at the front there. She had a big tummy on her. And he thought, well, that old girl can't be pregnant. She's far too old. So while they were singing, he went down and he blabbered in her ear, are you pregnant? She said, no, I'm not. He got a big goiter. He said, close your eyes. She did. He took his fish and hit her in the stomach like that. He said, you're healed. She was rather dead, one of the two. You don't hit a woman in the stomach like that when she's been kicked by a mule. There was no way of repeating it. On four occasions people were raised from the dead through that man. And yet I want to tell you tonight, I've seen signs and wonders and miracles. I used to go off with Miss Kuhlman. I took her Bible classes a number of times in the Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. Talked with her many times with Dave Wilkerson. Had dinner with her. Supper with her. Breakfast with her. Talked with her. And saw some great miracles there. And in our own ministry, blind people's up to see cripples walked in what have you. But that's not the answer for America today. America has had more healing in the last thirty years than all the nations under haven't put together. But where are we? Do you know what the greatest miracle is? That almighty God can do? The greatest miracle almighty God can do is take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make that unholy man holy, put him back in an unholy world and keep him holy. Takes all the power of the atonement to do that, plus the indwelling of the Spirit of God and all the promises of God. And what God is looking for in this day is not people with accurate theology. He's looking for people with pure hearts. He's looking for people that are totally selfless in their desires. He's looking for people who want to see God glorified. Alright, let me hurry here. He went and the lady made a cake and then he said, make yourself a cake and she goes back to the barrel and finds it's pulled to the top and this little oil can is shooting like an Oklahoma gusher. No, I don't think so. I think she took the last handful of meal out of that barrel every day and put the last pot of oil. That's the way God tests faith. I guess I know 20 millionaires and multi-millionaires. Many of them tell me I've opened Sesame to their bank account. Anytime, I've never asked anybody for a penny since I left a very fine church in 1949 and that's a few years ago. It's over 30. And I got my boys through school and college and university and never asked for a dime and never will. I believe every time we ask for money, it's a slap in the face of God. He's promised to supply our needs. Not what I think I need, but what he thinks I need. We don't have to trail God's name in the dust to build some monument, to send you ties to keep some of this private jet up in the air. Each day, until God sent her harvest, she made a cake. And one day Elijah came in and she said, and now, now I've found you out. I see who you are now. You come into my house and my baby died. Oh, he said, don't worry about that. I didn't like to tell you this, it's rather egotistical but I'm the greatest preacher in the world. I'm the greatest miracle worker in the world. Oh, we can take holy things and make showmanship out of it. To me, the holiness of God is too great to go on TV programs. Tell me this, when you come here tomorrow or the church you go to, are you going there to meet God or are you going to hear a sermon about Him? I believe 99% of people who go to church tomorrow are going to hear, want to hear a sermon about God, not me to holy God. Elijah says, give me the child. And he prayed and nothing happened. He prayed again and nothing happened. The third time he prayed, he ran up into a loft. Have you got a loft in your life or a basement and an old chair where you always feel you're nearer to God than any other place? He ran up into a loft and he prayed. Now, this time he laid himself on the corpse, a sign of his compassion and love, and he prayed and the child's spirit came into it again. If I were a painter, I'd like to paint that. I'd like to paint the man coming down that staircase outside the house with a little laughing child in his arms and a woman there. Do you think he went up to the lady and said, excuse me, the kid's alive? Hmm? I think he went down so full of joy and said, hey, look, yes, I'm with her. Do you remember what she said? By this I know the ultimate of God. Not by the battle of me, not by the oil, by this. By what? By the fact that He brought life where there was death. Isn't that the business of the church? You happy, quick and doer dead in travesties and in sin? Jesus didn't come into the world just to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live. Well, that looks great, doesn't it? By this I know the ultimate of God. Who's the greatest man of prayer in the Old Testament? Jacob? No. You say he prayed all night. He didn't intend to. He prayed all night because he's in a gun. Wouldn't you pray all night if your brother was coming to murder you? You'd have a police escort round the house. I've seen a crowd of men coming. One of my scouts came and told me it's your brother. No, don't tell me my brother. The last time I saw my brother he said, I'll kill you next time I see you. Now, look, get all the cattle here. Give him just a few of the sheep and if he's pacified. See, he didn't want to give too much away. A few sheep if he'll take them. And if you have to give him, give him them all. And then the camels. But, you know, if you can pacify him, do your best. And then he sent his wife and family away. And then he stepped over a brook and he got behind a rock. And just as he got behind the rock, somebody jumped on him. Now, who do you think he thought it was? Huh? His brother. My brother jumped on him. Boy, I'm going to die fighting. That doesn't sound like a church prayer meeting. Sounds like a church business meeting, but not a church prayer meeting. And the more he thought, the tighter the grip got on him. And suddenly he realized, this is not my brother. Do you know what I learned out of that situation? That when Jacob went into that night of prayer, he was a tall, handsome prince. And after a night of wrestling there, he dragged his leg the rest of his life. He was a cripple. And the reason we don't pray is the flesh is too weak to pray. The body gets tired. Well, it's another petty excuse. The rest of his life he dragged the wizard's leg. But he was changed to being a prince with God. I think the greatest man of prayer in the Old Testament was Elijah. Upon me was Moses. You know, America has a very vivid, strange history. It's been such a blessing to the world, it's been such a curse to the world. A curse? Well, Mormonism was born here, and that's cursing the world. Jehovah's Witnesses were born here, and they're cursing the world. Spiritism was revived here, and that's cursing the world. Man alive, we talk about the Pentecostal revival in Brazil, but brother, there's a shocking revival of Spiritism and Buddhism in Brazil right now. And in some of those South American countries. We curse the world! But you know, you can kick the stairs the other way. We have had some of the greatest men of prayer in modern history. Just the other day, my dear wife and I were in a shop and a lady came up. Hi, Mr. Raymond, how are you? I've heard you preach a number of times. See, I've got a collection of old books. In one of your books you quote David Paton. And she has a great library. And she said, nobody has ever quoted David Paton except you. And I've got a volume on his life. Would you like it? I said, sure. I've given mine to my son. David Paton. I call him Praying Paton of Portland, Oregon. He had a bedroom like, the floor like this. You know, not that nice wall-to-wall rug like you have. Hard like this. And when he died, they found a groove in the floor and a few inches away another groove in the floor. And they found out that when he prayed, he used to pray with his hand in the wooden floor of his bedroom with intercession. Playing hide. I preached in a conference in Lake Otoboji in Iowa some years ago, 1951 actually. A dear mystery came. He said, did you ever meet Praying Hide? I said, no, I'd like to. Oh, I heard him there in the Cyclops Convention in India. A friend of mine said to him one day, Mr. Hide, could I pray with you tomorrow? Just let me pray with you once. He said, alright. Meet me at 9.30. And he said, my friend went to the back room at 9.30 and there was John Hide and we knelt down to pray. And he said for 15 minutes it was total silence. I didn't pray, he didn't pray. And then he said, I prayed. But he said at the end of 10 minutes I prayed all I knew how to pray. And then John Hide started to pray. And he hadn't been praying very long when there was a knock at the door. And this man said, well I'm not going to the door. This is the only chance I'll ever get to pray with this man. I'm not going to the door. And there was a loud knock at the door. And a louder knock at the door. Finally somebody pushed the door open and said, Mr. Hide, you have a schedule at 3 o'clock to preach on praying and it's now a quarter of 3. His friend said, it can't be a quarter of 3. We started praying at 10 o'clock. It can't be a quarter of 3. And he looked at his watch and found it was a quarter of 3. They had been praying for 5 hours. Portland of Patience, praying, Patience of Portland. John Hide, EM Bounds. You can buy 7 volumes of the EM Bounds. They cost you about $3 or $4 each. You can buy them all in one book. I put them all together. You can buy them as you leave. It's called The Treasury of Prayer. And we think all the great men of prayer lived 100 years ago. There's a man who lives 50 miles away from where I live. He's 32 years of age. He prays 10 hours a day. Here in America, right now. Come on, you fellas. Pump iron and show your strength. How much stamina do you have to pray? How much vision? How much passion? How much burden? There's a man outside Waco, 60 years of age, who prays 6 hours a day. Again, I live in an area of celebrities. David Wilkerson lives behind us. The Agape Force just up the road. Kenneth Green, Keith Green lives down the road. Barry McGuire lives just up above us. Dallas Home lives just behind us. Dave Wilkerson's building his new place on Mile Promise. Second Chapter of Acts have just bought 10 acres by the side of us. Jimmy Oiner's just bought 10 acres. Second Chapter of Acts have bought 100 acres. Jimmy Oiner's bought 10 acres. Star-studded area. You know the most attractive thing is we have a prayer meeting on Friday nights in a mansion across the road from where we live. A Quaker family. Very lovely people. And we get 100 to 120 students. And you know how far they come? They come as far as 250 miles round trip every Friday night just to pray. Not to hear celebrities sing. Boy, we've got singing upside down. Did the disciples say Lord teach us to sing? Did Jesus say my house shall be called a house of song for all nations? Did Paul say sing without ceasing? Did James say if you're sick sing one to another? Did Jesus say my house shall be called a house of song for all nations? Do now sick the churches that you can put a show on and charge $5 and you can get 2 or 3 thousand people to go and they'll go 100 miles to the concert and it'll cost them a lot in gas and they have to eat when they go and they go to the show and then it's over and they get back 2 o'clock in the morning and they'll go by the thousand and you book the same hall for a prayer meeting and charge them nothing you get nobody there. That's how sick the church is. And nobody loves singing more than I love it. I finished where I began no man is greater than his prayer life. The greatest living expositor in the world I talked with him in London a few years back and he said to me, Brother Ravenhill I don't have any trouble writing commentaries on the Bible. I have no trouble. The hardest thing in my life is prayer. Prayer. I found it so difficult to pray. I think that a prayer closet should be the most magnetic place in our lives. I get scared that God will keep one of his promises, you know. We like God's promises if they're convenient for us. But remember it wasn't to the Mormons and it wasn't to the Mooniites that God said I'll spew you out of my mouth. It was to his lazy back-blidden church. The Laodicean church which is the day in which we're living. I'll spew you out of my mouth. And God says, Hey Moses, come here a minute. I know you're discouraged. I know you're weary of this people. I know they've broken your heart. You know they've broken my heart too. I'm as tired of them as you are. Now look. You go tell them I'm going to wipe them out. I'm going to wipe the nation out. And out of your loins I'm going to raise up a new nation. And if Moses had had half an ounce of ambition for himself, he would have said, Lord, I'm just so happy because I've had headaches and sleepless nights with this bunch that's so rebellious and lawless and disobedient. I can't wait till I stand on a rock tomorrow and say, Look, the Holy One of Israel is going to destroy you for your abominations and your sin. You're going to hell and you deserve it. But I want to tell you something before you go. He's keeping me here because I'm so holy. Do you know what Moses said in the eleventh of Deuteronomy there? He says, Lord, the weight of this nation is so great upon me, you'd better do something or else kill me. In Romans 9, the apostle Paul says, I could wish myself a curse. A plain translation from the Greek is this, I'll be damned if need be. It's my damnation, it's my destruction, the release, the mercy of God on my generation. When you go to your bed and sleep nicely tonight, they'll just be going around the casinos up there in Las Vegas and elsewhere else and the discos they'll be taking their clothes off and the nakedness and the promiscuality. And now they tell me in France nobody goes to see the girls strip anymore. They go to watch acts of homosexuality. And you think God's going to put up with a nation that has more Bibles? We have 600 million Bibles in the nation. And if you say there are 15 million Christians, that's four Bibles to each person. And we have more gospel radio broadcasts and we have more churches and we have more seminaries and we have more Bible teaching and Bible countries than all the rest of the world put together. And yet we have more broken homes with divorce, more broken bodies with drugs, more broken bodies through venereal disease, more broken girls' bodies through homosexuality, through childbirth. Everything's broken. This nation has never been so broken. But you know what the greatest tragedy is? The greatest tragedy in the world tonight is a sick church in a dying world. The church of Jesus Christ isn't broken over it. He was born in Gethsemane. And that revival, and I'm sure that revival that he had in Nagaland, you know I came to the surface because for 20 years a hidden group of people have been praying and travailing for revival. I know some of the greatest praying people in the world. You couldn't get them to come and stand here publicly. They won't let you write an article about their prayer life. You know you can come on the platform and strut and show your ability and your scholarship and how clever you can maneuver a crowd, but I challenge you to start struggling when you shut the door and you're alone with God. You don't struggle in the prayer closet. You can impress people but nobody impresses God. We're naked before Him. God says, I'll utterly destroy this people. You know what? It's a very wonderful thing when God reaches from heaven and takes hold of a man. I only know one thing more amazing. That's when a man reaches up and takes hold of God. And God says to Moses, leave me alone. That's not Moses knowing that God has a grip on him. It's not Moses saying, God almighty take your hand off me. It's God saying, Moses, leave me alone. And the old Methodist hymn book paraphrases that. He says this, let Moses in the spirit groan and God cries out, let me alone. That's praying. Our praying is so feeble. Our praying has to close at nine o'clock. Tell the Holy Ghost to go home. I don't believe you can run a healthy church in America or anywhere else without that church having at least one night of prayer a week and the best time to have it usually is Friday night because folk don't have to go to work the next day. Every church I've been in, I've been in churches in the last three years that have four, five, six, seven thousand members and my joy has not been to just see altars fill but to establish a prayer meeting on Friday night and in those churches they pray from nine o'clock at night to sometimes one and two o'clock in the morning. All earthly things with earth will fade away but prayer grasps eternity. You can test your spiritual life not by how much Bible knowledge you have. I'm not concerned that you know the Word of God though that's good but I want to know do you know the God of the Word? I'm not just concerned you run with every burden to God. Does God lay any of His burdens on you? His yoke is easy, His burden is light. Most of us want to go to heaven having a hand-clapping time, a good time. Five minutes inside of eternity again we all wish we'd be more prayerful, more sacrificial, more obedient, more submissive. The government isn't going to get this nation out of trouble and the banks aren't going to get us out and the armies aren't going to get us out. It's going to take one great merciful act of God or we are sunk. We've had more light, more privileges the last 25 years and all nations in the world put together. People say well prayer can do anything well read the 14th of Ezekiel where God says if the three greatest men that ever lived make intercession I will not hear them even for their own children. They won't save their own children never mind the nation. If I could find God's timepiece and say do you know what time it is on God's clock, you know what I think we're not living in the last days. Not even living in the last hours. Not even living in the last minutes. I think we're living in the last moments before judgement falls and before revival comes.