In this sermon, the preacher discusses the story of Samson from the Bible. Samson was a man with great strength and anointing from God. However, he made a mistake by revealing his secret to a woman who betrayed him. As a result, he was bound, blinded, and forced to grind corn for the Philistines. Eventually, his hair, the source of his strength, was cut off, and he was captured by the Philistines. The preacher emphasizes the need for abnormal men with abnormal methods and messages in the church and society.

should really punctuate his address or sermon with this phrase, in my judgment, because men are so fallible. But in my judgment we're living in the most critical days in human history. Abnormal days demand abnormal men with abnormal methods. One of the requirements in studying for the ministry is that we study church history. But I think we have too many preachers studying church history and too few preachers making history. Studying church history is an indoctrination which very often becomes, I think, brainwashing. And the idea is to get you kind of mesmerized by your particular denomination and what it did in the last hundred or two hundred years. And quite frankly I'm not a bit interested in what your church has done in the last hundred years, but I want to tell you something. I am interested in what it does in the next five years. Billy Graham said not too long ago about my country that he thinks that England may have a dictator within the next five years, and America may have one within five years from the time that England gets one. I say again we, in this hour, both in the church as well as outside of it, we need abnormal men with abnormal methods and abnormal messages. And I want to try to interest you tonight in this last meeting, and I'm very grateful for the privilege of being here, that I want to interest you in one of the most fascinating characters in the whole of the Bible. A story that everybody knows and yet in one sense nobody knows it. A story where from which we have gathered certain features and we have left, in my judgment again, certain truths buried. Let me read you the sixth verse of the 16th chapter in the little used book of Judges, and this is what the text says. And Delilah said to Samson, tell me I pray thee wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. One of the old European versions of the Bible includes an extra word in the text, and the injected word is the word secret. So then the text reads, tell me I pray thee wherein the secret of thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. Now this is a question of a woman of the world to a man of God. In my judgment Samson is a type of the anointed church, or he is a type of a spirit anointed individual. When the anointing is upon him he can subdue kingdoms, he can stop the mouths of lions, he can put to flight the armies of the alien, he can make the materialistic world outside tremble when he moves in the power of the spirit, and so did the church when she had the anointing of God. But again I want to replay, to repeat particularly to the preachers that I think that the hardest thing in the world is to get the anointing of God, and the easiest thing in the world is to lose it. You'd hardly believe it, but, well you may believe I'm English, but you'd hardly believe that in the little schoolhouse in England I learned what is the most, or the best known story in America, about America. God I've been to Australia, I've been around the world a number of times, and and I find in every country there's one story that everybody seems to know. It isn't the old man and the sea by Hemingway, it isn't uh, as far as I remember it wasn't written by Mark Twain, that very smart fellow, and he certainly was smart. You know the best known story around the world about America is the story about Rip Van Winkle. Isn't that something? And my school teacher told me that Rip Van Winkle one day went to sleep, he went up the hill, he went to sleep, and he slept for a hundred years. And that's all I ever remember about the story until I grew up and found. I'd always been suspicious about my teacher, she thought I didn't know much, and I knew she didn't, and uh, I discovered years afterwards that she didn't. Because you see the story about Rip Van Winkle is not the story about a man who went up a hill and slept for a hundred years. When Rip Van Winkle went up the hill there was a sign hanging on the old tavern there, English type, and at that time England had millions of money invested in America. And when he went up the hill, hanging outside of the tavern was a sign and swinging in the breeze, painted on that sign was the head of George III of England, because of England's interests in America. But when he had slept for a century and he came down the hill, you know how he came down with fingernails as long as a modern office girl, and whiskers like Castro, and when he got to the bottom of the hill there, he forgot to look at the sign, and that was his undoing. The point of the story surely is not that he went to sleep for a hundred years, because when he went up the hill there was the head of George III on the sign, and when he came down the hill there was painted the head of George Washington. And I think the point of the story is not that he slept for a century, but that he slept through a revolution. And I suggest to you tonight, fearing neither men nor devils, not even the judgment seat of Christ, where I have to answer for it, that I believe this is a tragedy of the Church of Jesus Christ today. We're sleeping through a revolution. In every realm it's an abnormal world. We're intoxicated because we are going to get two men on the moon. Bless your life, it's only a third of a million miles away. If you could keep that rocket going at the same space to get to the first star, it will take men about 20,000 years to get to the first star. And in my opinion, their tang would be dry by the time they got there. We've never had any astronauts. We have never had any cosmonauts. No problem getting to the moon. It may be a little harder getting to a planet. We certainly never will reach a star. But you see, we're living in abnormal days. If you had told your grandpa that you could take a picture of me, or somebody else, or good old Billy Graham, and a hundred million people in America could see the same picture at the same moment, he would say you're ridiculous. How can you take a man's face and break it up into a million parts? You don't have to do it. Right across the nation, even now bouncing the thing off Telestar, you can watch a sports event in Europe. And it seems to me that every science has made such rapid progress, but the Church of Jesus Christ has been stuck in the mud for the last 30 or 40 years. There have been very few men in history who have aspired to dominate the world. One of them was a little corpulent Corsican by the name of Napoleon. And he nearly made it. But one day he gathered together his warlords, and there in his great office, he had a huge map of the world, and he snapped these generals to attention, and then he ran his index finger around the rugged edge of a great country. And then he said with a snarl, gentlemen, there is a sleeping giant. Let it sleep! Because, he said, if that nation ever wakes up and harnesses its mineral power and its wealth to its manpower, if that sleeping giant ever wakes, that sleeping giant will shake the whole world. He said that prior to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The country that he had outlined with a great jagged edge, and the country that he plunged his finger into, and the country that he said, if she ever harnesses her wealth and her mineral power to her manpower, she'll shake the world, was the country that's the biggest headache on the horizon tonight. And it certainly is not Russia, but China. By the year 1900, or a little after 19, by the year 2000, anyhow, China will have a population of a thousand million people. And the United States will, will not be 500 million by that time, I guess. By the same token, India will have a population of a thousand million people by the year 2000. How do you get to a thousand million people washed and dressed and put to bed and get up and see? How in the world do you do it? Nobody knows. The sociologies are staggered and they're afraid. And they look at it merely on the material level. Well, God in heaven, what's wrong with us? A thousand million people in China that by the average law of today will hardly ever hear the gospel of the grace of God. A story that really shook me recently, reading in the, what, the 12th chapter of the Book of Acts, where because one spiritual leader was taken and put to prison, nobody went to bed that night. The whole Church of God stayed up, Brother Robertson, with prayer and with tears and with agony, and they said, if Peter is in prison, we're not going to sleep. But we poor dissipated Protestants can go to sleep while thousands of millions of people go to hell tonight. Russia, the greatest prison house in history. China heading up to a thousand million people. India, I've been through it. It's dirty and frightening and horrible. But tell me, preacher, when did you last stay out of bed to pray and weep that your own soul might be quickened or your local church might have a Holy Ghost revival? The world no longer says to us, tell me what is the secret of thy great strength. This woman stands back. Here is a man with the anointing of the Spirit of God. Again I say he can lift the gates of a city, the Gaza. He can take the jawbone of an ass and slay the choice men from the, what do you call it, the west point of the Philistine nation. And he can lay them all low as easily as a boy with a sword or a man with a scythe could cut down the grass. And therefore his enemies plot his destruction. And this woman comes and asks him the question, tell me where in the secret of thy great strength lieth and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. Here is a man traveling in the greatness of his strength. Nations are standing back because of one man. And I think we've got to relearn this, or I have anyhow, that one man with God is a majority. God never made committees. All committees do is spend hours making minutes. But God never raised up committees. He raises up men. He didn't raise up Methodism, he raised up Wesley. Out of Wesley came Methodism, if you like. But he didn't raise up Methodism, he raised up Wesley. He didn't raise up the Salvation Army, he raised up William Booth. He didn't send a brigade of men, he sent a simple but very God-anointed Baptist minister to India and he rewrote history. And I have the privilege of preaching in his great church, though of course he's been dead a century, but there in the heart of Calcutta, William carried that fine young Baptist when the other old stoogey Baptist said, sit down young man, when God wants to evangelize India he'll do it without you. I believe in the sovereignty of God, that the sovereignty of God plus human personality, anointed personality, spirit-directed personality. And so here is this man again, I say, tremendous in the power of the Spirit of God. And the woman says, what is the secret of thy great strength? And he says, well if you fasten me with seven, in the next verse, fasten me with seven green widths that were never used, then shall I be weak? No, I wish he'd said that, but he was a nasty, awkward kind of fellow, this. Do you know what he says? If you fasten me with seven green widths, then shall I be weak like other men. Now swallow that preachers. Weak like other men. And they fasten him with seven green widths and boy he gets out like that. And she says, that's not the secret. And he says, no, no, no, it's not seven green widths. Fasten me with seven new ropes that were never used. And they bind him with seven new ropes and hey presto he gets out like that. And she says, that is not the secret. And he says, no that's not. But you see I wear a coil of my hair rolled out. He was a Nazirite. And if you unroll his hair and fasten it into a beam, I'll just be impotent, I'll be powerless. And they did this and he shook his head and nearly pulled the house down. And she said, that's not the secret. And he said, no it's not. And so now she came and she played on his affections and she found out his secret. And when he said, look here's the secret. I have been a Nazirite from the day of my youth and no razor ever came upon my head. And immediately with her instinct she said, that's the secret, that's the secret. And she went and told his enemies. And you know his story is a very simple story. You can tell it in three almost monosyllables. The story of this giant, this story of a man who had the anointing of God and was moved and was irresistible and nobody could conquer him. The story is told like this, that first of all he gave his secret to the woman and the first thing they did was to bind him. And the second thing they did was to blind him. And the third thing they did was to grind him. They put him in the basement and made him grind corn for the Philistines. And she knew that she got the secret. And so she, she, she, she, she got him to kneel down and put his head on a lap and she cut off the hair of his head. And he woke up and he said, now I'll go out. Immediately she heard his voice again saying, the Philistines be upon me. He says, I'll go out and I'll be as another man. Now maybe the first thing I have to do really here is destroy your mental image of Samson. What did you tell the children in Sunday school? Something like this, that the average man in Israel was this height and Saul the king of Israel was head and shoulders above the average man. And Goliath was head and shoulders above this fellow Saul. And then Samson was somewhere up there head and shoulders above everybody that ever lived. Now that doesn't make sense. Women aren't so dumb. I mean, you can't imagine a woman going asking a man 19 feet high, say buddy, what's the secret of your strength? It's pretty obvious, don't you think? And yet everywhere I've seen pictures of Samson and I've looked in art galleries around the world, he's always a towering man. He's a colossus. He's got muscles like watermelons and, and he's got a ridge of marvelous muscles here that look like the, uh, the, the, the Rocky Mountains nearly. And he's got great big monstrous legs on him. He's a kind of super edition of Paul Bunyan, if you like. You see what we have done? We have transferred from mythology. You know, Hercules, what did he do? Kicked a range of mountains over. Or Atlas carrying the world on his back. Or if you're not so intelligent, Jack and the Beanstalk. Maybe that's your level. But anyhow, a kind of superman, you know. Fellow that woke up a giant and he's going to do these amazing things. This woman does, I think that maybe Samson was subnormal physically, but he was abnormal spiritually. We think these days if you're going to be an evangelist, you have to be a glamour boy. Somebody says, you know, he would have done well on films. Maybe he would. Carrying them, you know, to be developed or something. But anyhow, the idea is that these days if you're going to make it, you've got to have a tremendous personality and a toothpaste smile and boy, you've got it made. Ah, no, no, no. Oh, yes, yes, yes. If you're going to get a job with Madison Avenue. But you know, God works it in kind of inverse ratio. Oh, God so despises our pride and all the other things that we boast that he says he takes the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. And he takes the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are. And you've been working so hard to get your degrees and everything, eh? And the Lord's hoping you'll, oh, I nearly said something, but anyhow, the Lord's hoping you'll burn them or you'll send them to your mother-in-law or something. Because your degrees don't matter to God. You could have 32 and still be frozen. But that's not what the Lord is after. What the Lord is after, men who are small enough and weak enough and empty enough and foolish enough and self-satisfying enough and they've no personal ambition at all. And if he can get a man empty enough, he'll sell him. If he can get a man he can strip, he'll troll him. If he can get a man that doesn't want anything that anybody has, that all that God has, well, that's what he got in this man anyhow. But oh, when a man moves in the power of God, what enemies there are. And this poor man lost his strength. Isn't he typical of the church? Again, I remind you that the church that is, is not the church that was. Every, we're living presently in the Bahamas. I'm trying to do some more writing there. And each time we come in and come by West Palm Beach, I see that million and a quarter dollar church. Of course, it's a Baptist church. Nobody else could afford a church like that. And there's a great big Baptist church on the front. And I think of Jess Moody. And I think of a young man that goes there often. He is the vice president of the Scripthard Corporation. And he said not very long ago, as he wrote the introduction to Jess Moody's book, I am not sure, he said, he says, I'm not really a born-again Christian, but I am not sure that the church of today is the church through which Jesus died. Well, if he isn't sure, I am. He didn't die for this freak of a thing, this powerless thing, this pale, pathetic, powerless, putrid Protestantism, that dares to label itself with his name. The church, when she was anointed by the Spirit of God in the Acts of the Apostles, could invade the Roman Empire with its millions of money and men. She could invade the Grecian Empire with all its staggering intellectualism. And she could go there into the monolith of the Hebrew religion that had dominated the world for 2,000 years. And all God did was send some men and not change the style of their hair or change their faces. He just worked a miracle of grace in their personalities, and they were emptied and they were filled with the Holy Ghost, and record says that they turned the world upside down. Brethren, we need some men to make history, not study it. The bloody revolution swept over France. They swept the monarchy into a garbage can. They put up their tricolor, you remember, liberty, fraternity, and equality. And that bloody revolution swept over France, and was going to jump the English Channel, which is only 21 miles wide at the narrowest point. And Leckie, a secular historian, not a Christian or religious historian, says, remember that that bloody sweep was going to engulf England and God raised up what? An atom bomb, yes, in the personality of a man only about five feet high by the name of John Wesley. And a secular historian, remember, says, this man changed history. I reminded you last night, on the night before, that at 35 years of age, brilliant, he had acres of culture. Wesley could have died the Prime Minister of England. Wesley could have died a multimillionaire. Wesley could have died making more inventions than Edison. He had that type of brain. But at 35 years of age, one night, about a quarter to nine on the 24th of May, 1738, he said, I thought my heart strangely warm. Voullemy, who indeed is a Catholic, but a Belgian historian, says that all that happened to Wesley that night, on the 24th of May, was that he had an epileptic fit. Well, God Almighty, give 150 people here tonight epilepsy if it's going to do that for you. We sure need some folk that'll have an epileptic fit here tonight. No, sir, what happened was this, that with all his culture, and again I say he had acres of it, his family had more influence in Britain at that time than any family except the royal family. He came from a dynasty of intellectuals, bishops, and all the other learned people. But when that man was invaded, and this is exactly what happened, he didn't sign a membership roll. Brother, a membership roll is no more good than a sausage roll. What you need is not to get on a membership roll, but get the Holy Ghost in you. And when the Holy Ghost came in, he began to write, and he changed the history. Remember, slavery was abolished by the British before it was abolished by the Americans, and it was abolished chiefly through the efforts of those Methodists. Remember the Labour Party, who have their bright boy sitting on the throne in England right now. When I was a boy, he was the head of the class in Britain's school of Socialism, that had the backing, of course, of Bernard Shaw and all the others. And they said, one day Wilson will become the bright boy, and he'll become the president, or the, as we say, the Prime Minister of Britain, and he made it. But that utopian philosophy that he had hasn't worked. He discovers there's something in human nature that is not subjective to the magic wand of politics. No, no, no, no. He hasn't made it at all. But Wesley, dominated by the Spirit of God again, I say, change history. And we need some history changes tonight. Sure, sure, sure, every preacher should have a sign. As I said the other night, you should have one sign in your office that says, On Eternity, and the other you should have a sign, Preacher. Not, it's later than you think. Preacher, it's later than you think. There are some people who doubt if the American economy can stand up for the next five years. If you read that nerve-shattering book, The Death of a Nation, buy the new book, The Death of the Dollar. Or there are two other, one or two other books that are very disturbing. But I'm not, sincerely, I'm not too, I'm not too worried about this aspect of the thing at all. My concern is the Church of Jesus Christ. I believe the body politic is too rotten. There's too much corruption. The Mafia have a stranglehold almost on the nation. And what have you got? The only answer is in a Holy Ghost revival. We have revival or we have ruin. We have revival or we have revolution. We may have revival and revolution, but certainly, sir, it looks as though we're going to have revolution before too long, unless something miraculous happens. And we need more than ever a divine intervention. We need God to give us not one, but hundreds, even thousands of men anointed like this amazing man was. We need them in every town, in every village. We need them in the cathedral. We need them in the little local church out in the rural areas. We need men with this same anointing that this wonderful man had. But I say again, he lost that anointing. And he said after his hair had been cut off, when he heard the threat from the woman, the Philistines, be upon me, he got up and shook himself, and he said, I'll go out and be as I was at other times. And then you have some of the saddest words in the Bible. It said, he wist not that the Spirit of God had departed from him. I was in Dr. Tozer's office one day, and he said to me, Len, I want to share something with you. A Baptist preacher said something the other day that's very disturbing. I said, Doctor, what was it? He said, this good Baptist preacher said this to an audience that he was addressing. He said, I want to tell you that if God withdrew the Holy Spirit from my church today, it would function tomorrow the same way we wouldn't even know he'd gone. And he thinks that might be written of many churches, in that we become so mechanical. We go in at eleven and come out at twelve, and the Holy Ghost must come when we open the door of the church, and he must leave when we lock it. And we try and lay down the track and say, come Holy Ghost, for thee we call, Spirit of burning, come, but come our way. We lay down the conditions. Holy Ghost, come, but please don't violate our theology. Don't upset our status quo. Don't break our hearts over the lost world. Oh, yes, yes, preachers. You and I will raise our hats to Finney and Booth, and we raise our hats to the martyrs, and we thank God for the last drop of their blood, but we won't give him the first drop of ours. They died, persecuted, forsaken, ostracized, penniless. But oh, brother, when it comes to the resurrection, what a resurrection. I say we, we, we'll shed some crocodile tears over the last drop of their blood, but we won't give the first drop of ours for Holy Ghost revival. And maybe it's going to take that before we get it. They experimented at Cornell University some years ago by putting a frog in a dishpan of boiling water, and he jumped out. And then they put a frog in a dishpan of cold water, and they turned the jet at the bottom, and then they, they turned it up one degree, two degrees, and you know what that frog did? He stayed in there till they cooked him to death. When they put him in the boiling water, he got out because he said, I can't live here. But when they, by degrees, they, they, they changed the thing, and he adjusted, and he adjusted, and he adjusted, and, and they still killed him anyhow. And you know we've got some things in our churches, if not in our lives, that a few years ago we never would have had. And old Satan didn't pour the boiling water on, he put this little thing, and then that little thing, and that little thing, and before very long the churches become so carnal. The glory of the Lord doesn't fill the temple. When did you last tiptoe out of your particular tabernacle saying, surely God is in this place? I say again, with all the power of my being, I do not believe that modern Christians go to church to meet God. They go to church to hear a sermon about God. They don't expect deity to invade the place. They don't expect to tiptoe out of the holy place saying, God is the here and that to bless us. The spirit moved over my heart. A boy has said to me a sweet thing this morning. He's only a young fellow, 17, 18 I guess, and he said, Brother Ravenhill, it's been so good to be here this week. You know during the preaching, and a number of priests besides me, but he said during the preach, the Lord has been pushing back my horizons. Well God bless him, I'm glad for fellows that have got bigger horizons. You know David prayed, enlarge my heart. Some of us are praying, enlarge my head. Well brother, if you only get as much in it in the next five years as you got in the last, you better keep a small head. But David didn't pray enlarge my head, he says enlarge my heart. And if he enlarges my heart, he'll enlarge my vision, he'll enlarge my compassion, he'll enlarge my concern. Yes, they took this man and they were able to pin his arms behind his back, and then they were able to put him in the basement, and they put out his eyes, and he lost the anointing. There's a remarkable story, if you turn back, not now, but when you go home, turn back ten chapters in the same wonderful book of Judges, and there's a story there, we tell the children, but it's not a children's story, it's the story of a man called Gideon. And I guess that Gideon wasn't more than 19 years of age, and he was freshing corn one night, they'd turn night into day and day into night, and he was freshing corn. And suddenly, with a thing that we call a tribulum, from which we get the word tribulation, incidentally, and with that tribulum, he was separating the wheat from the chaff, and then he looked up and there was an angel, and he was afraid. And the angel said to him, God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Oh, that sounds like a joke, doesn't it? If I'd been there and the angel had said that to me, I would have whipped round, I think, and said, so angels tell jokes too, huh? Me, 17 years of age, mighty man of valor, do you know why I'm working at midnight? Because I didn't work at midday. You see that hole in the cave up there? That's where I live. You see the next hole? That's where my uncle lives. You see the next one about the apostles through trees? Yes, that's where the preacher lives. And do you know why we're living there? We're in captivity again to the Midianites. If you tell some people that God Almighty may send communism to America to purge it of its uncleanness and its sin and its lethargy and its unbelief and the selfishness amongst believers, they'll want you ordered, shipped out of the country. But I want to tell you, God loved Israel, but he let her go into bondage for 400 years. And then when she came out, he let her go into bondage another 400 years. And now they're in bondage, not to the Philistines. And after all, dear friend, when you read the Old Testament, Almighty God's problem in the Old Testament was not the Amalekites or the Hittites or the Jebusites. God only had one problem in the Old Testament, and that was Israel. And I believe Almighty God only has one problem in the world tonight, and it's not communism or Romanism, it's the church of the living God. And he is concerned about her with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died. And if Jesus weeps, he weeps tonight because of the paralysis of the church. The glory has departed. We go through the mechanics, we have the choir to sing, and somebody to sing, which may be very beautiful, but when did you last have any supernatural operation of God in your church? When did a man walk out and say, oh boy, I forgot I left my crutches? This happened in revival not too long ago in Germany, where no mention was made about healing, but the Holy Ghost was on the meeting. And suddenly somebody in the meeting says, oh I can see, I've been blind all my life, I can see. And somebody else said, my pain has gone. And somebody went out to the bathroom and coughed up a cancer. And somebody going out of the building said, oh I forgot my crutches. Hey, I'm healed, isn't it wonderful? They were so intoxicated with God they couldn't even remember how it came that they were healed, and they were delivered, and they were purged, and they were made whole. And you see the gospel of the grace of God, healing is not the whole of the gospel, it isn't the main part of the gospel, but that it is a part of the gospel nobody with intelligence can dispute. I say again, every preacher, whatever his denomination, he goes to hospital and pray for the sick. And if those people die, you're all right, but if they get better, you're a healer, you'll be in trouble. You Baptist preachers had better not go to hospital and pray for people, for if they get sick, they'll say you're a friend of Oral Roberts. I mean if they get healed. Oh, the church that is, is not the church that was. But you know, Samson began and he went up like a rocket, and then he lost his anointing and he went down, but he ended up better than he started. And the church of the living God is going to end up better than she started. Jesus is not coming for a widow, he's coming for a bride. He's not coming for an old woman with bunions on her feet and, and, and baggy eyes, you know, tuttering like this. And, and, and if you listen to the radio preachers, if he doesn't get here soon, he'll only get time to bury her anyhow. He didn't die for a corpse, he died for a bride. And he's coming for a bride. Come hell or high water, as the poet may say, come communism with all it has. Come bankruptcy to the American financial system, if you like, and British and everybody else's. Revival is not dependent on one of these materialistic things. None of this security. God can break every crutch on which we lean and then get glory to himself. And he thinks he's going to have to go that way because we've lived our seven years of plenty and we haven't done too much for God, except buy bigger boats and then we need old Sonny to run around in them anyhow. But one day, brother, you'll watch that boat rot and you'll watch your automobile and you won't have gas enough to buy for it. You won't have enough money to buy gas for it. And the only place of refuge will be, you'll be going to your church, your Methodist, your Baptist, and some other place. And you know what we'll be doing? We'll have time to fast and pray now because there won't be enough food to be gluttons like we've been. And you won't have any more problem dieting, brother. No, sorry, your problem won't be dieting. Your problem will be getting enough to live on, I think, before long. The seven years of plenty are nearly over for America, I tell you that, and for the rest of the prosperous world. The teeming millions are coming up and something will have to be done. But I say this man is threshing corn. He says, I live in a hall up there on the mountains. We're in captivity now to the Midianites and they should never have been there. God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. Do you remember his answer? I think it's one of the stirring and searching and staggering answers in the whole of the Bible. The answer of this boy about 17 years of age to the angel was this, if God be with us, where be his miracles that our fathers told us of? I'm hoping tomorrow we're going to pick up our granddaughter. My son's going with a team down into the Caribbean for the summer and his wife will be getting off a plane here tomorrow, I guess, with her two little babies. And, and I'll have the joy of getting one of them. She's about two or a little over two and, and put her on my knee. And if I know anything at all, it will take me back to the time when I sat on my granny's knee or my grandpa's knee. Oh, time goes so quick. Man, it just rushes away. I, I, I sometimes feel, you know, when I think I'm married to a grandmother, it rather gets me down a bit. But the, the thing is that the years are running on and, and I had a birthday here this week. You can't dodge them wherever you go. They catch up with you. Yes, here's this little fellow and he says, um, angel, you're not getting by with this. You tell me that the Lord God omnipotent, the God that put that star in its silver socket, the God that upholds all things by the word of his power, oh boy, there's a society in England today that still believes the earth is flat. They must have had stomachache when they got pictures back from Apollo, eh? To see that, to see that the world is a cylinder up in the sky and it hangs on nothing but that, the, the, the book of Job said that 5,000 years ago. It takes science a long while to catch up with the Bible. Oh, science, science discovered about a hundred years ago, the, the, the, the children were dying at too big a rate and, and there must be something wrong. And do you know what partly of the job was? Because they were circumcising little boys on the seventh day after they were born, or on the ninth day. And the Bible says you circumcise them on the eighth day because that's the only day in the history of a male child when his blood will coagulate at a certain point. And that's the only safe, healthy, and science has suddenly discovered that. And Moses knew that when he was on the backside of the desert and he didn't have a stethoscope. And he couldn't get Aaron to bring the, uh, x-ray machine up through the dust. But, uh, boy, it takes science a long while to catch up with the Bible. They'll catch up sooner or later. Our jails are so full and there's this permissiveness and so much sin and rottenness, they're going to put their hands up before too long and say, God, uh, send us deliverance from somewhere and the church of the living God will come in then. And do you know what God will do? He's going to anoint your sons and your daughters. Not your bishops, sir. No, I'm sorry, bishops. He's not coming for the guys that came out of, uh, well, I nearly mentioned the name of a theological cemetery, seminary there, but I won't. Uh, but, but he's not going to look for the learned, brilliant men. He's going to look for the little men who love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. And God is going to restore the years, the canker worm, the palmer worm, and the caterpillar of Eden. All those things that modernism and liberalism and every other reason has eaten. God is going to embarrass those people. And he's going to show us the church anointed again in the spirit of the living God. Oh, that day can't come too soon. The little fellow says, you're telling me that the God I serve is the God. Do you know what my grandpa told me once sitting on his knee? He told me he was part of the original team that came out of Egypt. He told me he remembered when the waters parted like you part your hair and he walked through and waved to the fishes. He said that was the biggest aquarium the world had ever had. And it was wonderful walking on the bottom of the sea, waving to the fishes and all the other things going past. And do you know what he said when he got a bit nervous at night in case the Egyptians were coming after them? He used to lift up the edge of the tent and look under it and there was a pillar of fire. And he used to say, my God is a consuming fire and if the Philistines or Egyptians comes he'll burn them up anyhow. And so there was a miraculous monument. He led them by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. Do you know those people? Oh, I wish I could do that. I'm wondering if I should sue Jimmy for a new suit. I've ruined this suit this week. I don't know why. No, I won't do that. It's got all stained. It's got all my, I don't know why. But you know the children of Israel had suits and they lasted 40 years and they never smelled sweaty. They had shoes and they wore them for 40 years and their shoes never wore out like a pair like that. Do you know the angels in heaven rolled the windows back and sent them cereal from heaven every morning, fresh baked. They had manna from heaven every morning of their lives. And you know God split a rock like that and he sent a river of water of life following them. Do you know the children of Israel walked on miracle? They ate miracle, they saw miracle, they heard miracle, but they never entered into the promised land. And we've got an awful lot of people in America and elsewhere in the world, but I'm talking to Americans so let's talk to them. But we've a lot of people in America that will go a hundred miles to see a miracle, whether it's a genuine one or not. But there's not many people getting into the land of fullness. Oh they want miracle, they want signs, they want wonders, but to be emptied of sin and of self and filled with all the fullness of God is a pretty painful operation. You mean to say that that same God, that miraculous God, the God of all power, the God who hangs the world on nothing, the God who knows all things, that even if you make your bed in hell it'll pursue you there? The omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God, is he the God of Israel? Where be this God, the God of our fathers? It will be good if you and I went home and prayed that prayer every day, maybe for the next month, where is the God of revival? People say, where is the Elijah, where is the God of Elijah? What I want to know tonight is where are the Elijahs of God? Where are the men he can anoint and endure and send out? Ah yes, they take this man again, I say, and this man is a type of the superman. We have lived in a day so dramatic. Let's go back, what was the end of the world war, the drop the bomb on Hiroshima at 60 minutes to 8 on the 6th of August what, 1945, and it's 69. So what's that, 45 and 69, roughly 25 years. And if you go back just about 10 years before that, we had three of the most amazing men in history, three supermen, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Now we'll forget Stalin and we'll forget Mussolini, and we'll think of this little man, this Schicklgruber, his German name, he changed it to Hitler, and he sat in the bloody muddy trenches at the end of the 1914-18 war, and he dreamed what they thought was a mere fantasy. And when he said that one day he would dominate the world, fellows sneered at him and said, don't take him seriously, after all he's only got Charlie Chaplin's moustache on his lip and one stripe on his arm and you don't need to worry too much, he'll still be a paper hanger. But you remember that he made a vow he would make Germany the master nation of the world or else he would pull the world onto the edge of hell. He said when he had finished, and you remember he put his fist up and said the third Reich that I'm establishing will stand last a thousand years. I don't think it lasted a thousand weeks. He lengthened the coastline of Germany a thousand miles, he pushed more kings off their thrones than any other modern man, he liquidated six million Jews, he pulverized nations. And my old bible here tells me in the last days and me thinks we're not living in the last days, we're living not even in the last hours, we're living in the last minutes if not the last seconds of this dispensation. But you and I have seen this vast panorama, we remember the time Mussolini started with his big boots on and he put his thumb to the United Nations, the League of Nations, 51 nations signed on the bloody line, he said go to hell I'm going to run the world. Then we remember how Stalin had come up and what he was threatening to do and then little Mussolini passed them all at the watched him saturating this nation and stealing the other nation and raping Europe. That man did not do it by supernatural power, he did it by human genius. Admittedly he consulted a spiritist medium night after night when you and I were sleeping, but my bible tells me in the last days when these wicked men do wickedly, the people that do know their God, not the people that know their bibles. There's a great deal of difference between knowing the word of God and knowing the God of the word. You may know the word of God because you went to a seminary, you have that particular drift of mind and you like to study and investigate Hebrew and Greek and Latin and you may know the bible inside out and backwards way, historically, prophetically, exegetically, homiletically, all the other wonderful ways and people may be dazzled by your brilliance but does it matter? I don't think it does too much. What my generation needs is not people who know their bibles for there are millions of them. Not people who merely know the word of God but people that know the God of the word. People that go into the secret place of the most high God and you don't go for five minutes and you don't let your knees just kiss the floor, you stay there and to be with him is more delightful than being with anything or doing any other thing in the whole world, you're having fellowship with him. Yes sir, but if you're going to be known in heaven you're going to be known somewhere else too in hell. I was preaching in Australia and a lady came to me after the meeting and she had a very sorrowful face and she said Mr. Ravenhill I've had a bad day and I said well that looks pretty obvious lady and she said you know when I got up this morning, do you know when I got up this morning Satan was standing on the rug at the side of my bed and you know the devil hasn't left me all day and I looked at her and I said lady how conceited can you get? You mean to say that his majesty the devil he's never left me all day? Well look the devil can't be in two places at the same time unless you give him the attributes of God and I won't give him those. If Satan was in the kitchen of that woman down there in Melbourne Australia he was nowhere else but me thinks he never even knew the woman was living. I said maybe he doesn't even know you're living. Side two. Ah we want prestige with men. Isn't it nice to say so-and-so is my friend and and uh I heard a preacher say quite recently he said I had I had lunch with I had breakfast with Billy Graham yesterday morning. A fellow said oh boy that's an honor isn't it? He said yes. What he didn't say was there were 320 other pastors there. Oh no he had Billy Graham breakfast with Billy that that gave him prestige. Oh boy had I some big shock. Well thank God for Billy he's a wonderful guy but oh we like to latch on to this and latch on to the other. But you know preacher I don't think you and I count much unless we're known in hell. Remember where in the bible a man came and and uh and uh he said to another man you you want to be really influential in your preaching? Well you find a man with a demon in him and cast the demon out and this is what you do. You say in the name of Jesus Christ and Nazareth come out of him and the demon will come out and boy you've got it made from there. Ah but when Jesus brought demons out of people he sent them somewhere because a demon cannot live outside of a personality. He must invade a personality somewhere and when Jesus brought demons out he sent them somewhere. Remember the man who had hundreds of demons in him? And Jesus cast the demons out and the demons said don't send us to hell. Hell must be bad when demons don't want to go there. Don't send us to hell send us into that herd of pigs. And Jesus says all right go in the herd of pigs and you know the pigs only had the devil in them about two minutes and they all committed suicide and the man had had the devil in him 40 years and he hadn't sentenced to commit suicide anyhow. You see a devil a pig doesn't want the demon in him. When this man cast out the demon he says come out of him in the name of Jesus and the demon came out and you know this the preacher didn't know the other half of the formula or else he didn't use it and the demon jumped on him and beat him up and kicked him around and bruised him and the poor old preacher was howling and wriggling on the floor there and the demon came back and said what are you startled about? Well you beat me up like this. Sure I beat you up like that he said. Jesus I know and Paul I know. Oh isn't that something when you get rated with Jesus huh? Jesus I know and Paul I know but preacher who are you? I never heard about you. In other words your name isn't in hell. Nobody fears you. Oh I say this with all the power of my being it will be really something to get the witness of the spirit in your heart that your name is not in hell. When I was at Cliff College and they gave out the list of preaching on a Friday afternoon they would give us the appointment whatever church we were going to and then our president would stand and raise his hands and say all you students who are going out to preach this weekend go and the Lord go with you. No I never said that. You know he said go and the devil go with you because he said if he doesn't have to go with you you won't be much good anyhow. Yes sir what the preacher emphasized tonight. I actually prepared all day another message but when the pastor said that I felt I got to switch this tonight and I hope it is the right thing. But you know the devil gets away with too much in the day in which we're living. We ask God to do certain things sometimes we say Lord make me humble. Well he hasn't done it has he? You know what because he says humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. We say sometimes Lord will you do this to the devil and God says I give you power over all the power of the enemy. He says whatsoever you bind on earth. I used to have an old man came to a church I pastored. We had revival there for about three years people used to line up on a Sunday night like coming to a movie house and much of what was done was not my preaching it was a group of praying people particularly this old man and he would come to the prayer meeting on a Wednesday night and sit right bang in front of the pulpit and as far as I can remember every Wednesday night he was there for the years that I was there somewhere in his praying he would say this Lord teach us what is flesh and what is spirit. Lord teach us how to bind and how to loose. The bible said before ever you start doing any evangelism first bind the strong man and you don't bind him with just saying Lord bind the strong man. God has laws and there are laws that we have to obey but I believe again in these last days you have your supermen, you've had your Hitler, your Stalin, your Mussolini. They've shown us the power of evil and God says in the last days when these wicked men do wicked are the people that do know their God. We've just had one of the most amazing revivals in the history of the church. Billy Graham sent his friend Dr. Moonian down there to Indonesia and when Moonian came back breathless he raised his hands and he said to Billy Graham and the team he said gentlemen this is the greatest move of the spirit of God since the first century. I don't think there's a preacher there with a degree but you cannot find one thing in the new testament that hasn't been repeated down in those islands. Dr. Clyde Taylor one of the most conservative preachers in America the head of the National Association of Evangelicals said when he came back I found 10 authentic cases of people who had been dead and in answer to prayer were raised from the dead. I found a chain of people who had been crippled and they were healed, blind who had been made to see, deaf who had been made to hear and nobody had a healing campaign and nobody was begging for money and no star personalities. I am sick to death of star personalities. You say we need more evangelism, I don't believe we do we need more of the Holy Ghost. We've had 20 years of mass evangelism in America and we're lower morally and spiritually now not because of it but in spite of it. God is looking for some humble deacons and looking for some young fellows either going to school or just leaving it and some preachers that will humble themselves and seek his face and tell God in all honesty before anything else they would rather have a Holy Ghost revival in their church than become president of their organization or the head of the greatest Bible school in America. Well I got a call Samson was put down in the basement grinding corn for the Philistines and one day while he's grinding the corn there he's got his hands on a piece of wood and he's going around on a treadmill and he hears some feet and he turns those blind eyes. I think if you'd gone in that basement you would have seen those sockets full of tears many times. You might have heard that old thing groaning as it went round but the groaning of his spirit was louder than that. He was thinking of a time when he could destroy the powers of darkness. If he is a type of a spiritual man and he is remember he went down the road and there was a lion in the way and he took the lion and rent it into pieces and if he is a type of a spiritual man the lion must be a type of the devil who goes about as a roaring lion but boy he tied the devil up all right and when the church is healthy when she has sight and sense and she's sound when she has the anointing of the Holy Ghost hell trembles. I think hell must have had a half theology when Paul died because again I remind you the demon said Jesus we know and Paul we know and we won't be seeing a Paul around for a long while but I want to tell you that I believe in these last moments of this dispensation God's going to raise up young men and young women. Your sons and your daughters so they must be young people. Servants and handmaids they must be working class people not the elite, not the kings, not the bishops, not the men at the head of the hierarchy of different things. He's going to bypass them because in the days of his flesh what did Jesus do? Did he go looking for princes? Did he go looking for the intellectuals? The Sanhedrin were mad because he never went and asked the members of the Sanhedrin to become disciples. He went to the fishermen of Galilee. He went to a tax payer and he found those men and they followed him and they left A-L-L all and followed him and then they went to the upper room and because they had left all that they had he gave them all he had. That we want to get everything from God at a cheap rate I'd like the anointing. I'd like a broken heart to weep for the loss. I'd like to pray and preach in the Holy Ghost that brother it might cost you your golf average and you'd love your darling golf game don't you? And you'd like to pray in the Holy Ghost but oh how long you like to go fishing it's so relaxing. Well I'll tell you something if you really pray in the Holy Ghost that's more relaxing than any sport you ever tried and it'll build you up more than anything you've ever tried. You just try it for a year, just try it for a year will you? Have one day in your life preacher when you're not available to your wife or anybody else and you shut yourself in and you prepare for one whole day every week you're not available to anybody and if anybody dies all right you'll see them tomorrow anyhow. You're not available even to visit the sick. You see our poor preachers have become beasts of burden but preachers in the New Testament didn't visit the sick, the elders visited the sick. The elders that were anointed in the New Testament didn't get a job because they had two gas stations and owned a bit of poverty. They were made elders because they were filled with the Holy Ghost. Yes sir when we do God's work God's way we'll get God's power and God's blessing and God's anointing. But we want to do it our way and pull the string and expect him to come down. No no no no he doesn't do that. I think again if you've gone in the basement you'd have heard poor Samson groaning where is the blessedness I knew when first I sought the Lord. Where is the soul refreshing dew of Jesus. I've lost the anointing. I've lost the power. It's as though the philistine said one day you set fire to the corn and you took the corn out of our mouths now we'll make you grind corn down there in that basement and then in the mercy of God a little boy comes in and he says who are you and he says I'm a philistine. What do you want with me? He says they're having a conference up in a great big temple and everybody's crying. Where is Samson the miracle worker? We'd like to see him. Oh he's still living. He's in a basement. He's blind and he's bound and he's broke and he's bankrupt. We'll bring him out and let's see him. And the boy one boy took him by the hand. There was a day when two thousand men tried to arrest him and they couldn't arrest him and now a boy can arrest him. And the boy takes him by the fingers and he comes up the step and the people begin to laugh and to cheer. And do you know what the bible says? It says there were three thousand men in the gallery and the auditorium usually holds at least twice as many as the gallery so there were maybe six thousand here and three thousand up there and a few extra chairs he got ten thousand people all laughing. And the world laughed at us tonight. We're not even we think he lives and lives but we spend all our time talking about his death. We're not saved merely by his death we're saved by his life he lives now. I know that he came in the womb of the virgin two thousand years ago. I know he's coming soon but it's what he's doing now that I've got to explore. Take me on the platform. The people sneer and you mean to say that this little normal looking man is the man that did all these miracles and exploits? He can't be true. And poor old Samson's moving and he says say uh uh let me see I once looked in this old heathen temple. Aren't the two large pillars here? And he says yes sir two large pillars there. And he says will you put me near them? Now all my life I remember the story of Samson because of the great things he did. Do you know I remember him now like I remember every other man. He learned how to pray but he learned how to pray when he'd lost everything. He got his hands by those pillars and it seems as though he said Lord they took my two eyes give me these two pillars will you? He prayed this amazing prayer. Lord strengthen me just once. I dare some of you preachers to pray tonight. You've had anointing and lost it. You've had blessing and missed it. You used to be humble and contrite and seek God and weep when souls were not safe. It doesn't bother you any now anymore. You have a good income and you're rated pretty high and occasionally you get to speak at a conference and they even suggested you go speak at a seminary and one or two other places and boy you feel real good. Ah brother that when you sit down and say God I don't have that anointing that compassion that passion that Jesus gave me when I first was anointed for the ministry and Samson looks at the years the canker worm and the palmer worm of Eden and he shoots his prayer to God and he says Lord here I am. I'm the only man left and all the heathen laugh and they have me in derision. He says God almighty will you strengthen me just once even though I dare with the philistines. And my friend when you get as desperate as that where you say God almighty anoint me if it's only for the next six months and then I die or the next 12 months and I die but give me an anointing I've never had in my life and he said Lord strengthen me just once and this strength gave me push the pillars down and the house came down and the word of God says and it's true that he killed more in his dying than in his living. The last revival he had was the best. The last outpouring of the spirit of God that God's going to give us for our generation is going to supersede not only the day of Pentecost but the Methodist revival one of the greatest in history and the Salvation Army revival of 1865. They're going to be all put together and God is going to supersede them. Why? Because we have more lost millions of people in the world tonight than ever we've had in human history because the church is blind and bound and she's in the basement and she's bankrupt and God is waiting for her to come in a morning come with contrition come with brokenness and pray this very simple prayer Lord strengthen me just once even though I die I say in God's name preacher what's the good of your living the way you're living now anyhow? What's the good of going and working with a carnal bunch in your church? Why don't you let him come and work in you and empty you and fill you? Why don't you let him kill you and raise you from the dead? Why don't you set it on record before heaven and earth and hell and demons tonight that here in this unfinished tabernacle where I believe God is tonight if I know anything at all that you dare to say to almighty God I want to go on record tonight that I've prayed a prayer of sense and Lord strengthen me just once and if I ever lose this anointing again Lord I'll never bother you and ask you to give it back. For if you get that anointing again it may be the last six months it may be the last year of your life but I'll tell you something you'll do more in the next six months or the next 12 months than all the previous 10 or 12 years you've ever done in your life. Can I finish with this? I preached in a church in Chicago a while back and the preacher was what I would call or the British would call a typical American tall attractive fellow muscular great type of fellow and I preached this sermon not quite the same way for two sermons are never the same. I don't carry a book of notes I just get a text and let the Lord tell me and I've got to go from there I'm so simple but I preached it anyhow and when I finished preaching the seat the the church had 2,400 seats the preacher was halfway up the aisle and when I finished I just sat down and I said thank you pastor the pastor got up he walked down the aisle and he snatched the uh snatched the the the uh what he called this microphone he snatched the microphone from the stand and he said I won't be at the door tonight friends uh your pastor can't make it there tonight good night God bless you and that big man just collapsed on a rug there in front of the pulpit he dropped the microphone or it was picking his voice up I'm sure he didn't know and he sobbed and I watched his big body heaving there as he wept and he groaned and he was saying over and over God strengthen me just once God strengthen me just once Lord anoint me just one more time I've had anointings but I've got so tied up in this big church and all the money and all the other things my anointing has gone my power has gone my vision has gone my past Lord anoint me strengthen me just once even if I die it's an amazing thing that history in the church of the living God has been made by men who die not men who live and as soon as you're willing to die to your wife's opinion or the elder's opinion or the church's opinion or somebody else's opinion a denomination opinion when you get so weary about your bankruptcy and your blindness and your powerlessness and that the uncircumcised philistines about are laughing at us the church of the living God for we have so misrepresented him and when you get so hungry that you say Lord strengthen me just one I believe as dear Campbell Morgan said I heard him say it more than once again he said I never sing that song Lord I'm waiting waiting waiting for the fire people say come to the altar the fire falls on the altar the fire never fell on the altar once in the old testament do you know where it fell on the sacrifice some of us want the fire on the altar without the sacrifice oh you're a big refugee you're a great man you're a famous preacher you're a distinguisher doesn't make any difference tonight you have no anointing and the devil doesn't worry about you and hell isn't nervous about you but you come to the place again I say while you really pray in desperation Lord strengthen me just one just one do you think you dare pray I'm particularly concerned about preachers because I spend a good bit of time at least praying for preachers and occasionally I get to conferences where we only have preachers because I believe that it looks like it they're key though God may bypass them too and and work amongst the others in the fellowship but right now I believe God is working on pastors and one preacher day you get up tonight and come and hit this altar up for my sake I don't count numbers I don't know who's been to the altar and I never count numbers either in the audience or that's not my business it's my business to see you come back to the place of the former glory or a glory that will supersede the former glory and it will come when you say Lord strengthen me just one even if I die shall we pray