In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the unbreakable love of God. He uses the analogy of receiving letters from his wife while traveling to illustrate the excitement and anticipation of receiving messages from loved ones. The preacher then shifts to the image of airplanes defying gravity and relates it to the power of God that can lift us above the pull of the world, flesh, and devil. He references the end of Romans 7 and encourages the audience to read a poem by F.W.H. Myers about St. Paul's deep desire to save lost souls. Overall, the sermon highlights the need for God's intervention in our lives to overcome the sinful nature and the importance of recognizing Jesus as our one true hope.

Conquer us through him that loved us. More than conquer us over what? Well, more than conquer us, if you read closely, we're more than conquer us over sin. And if you read a bit more closely, we're more than conquer us over self. And if you read it a little more closely, we're more than conquer us, according to what he says here, over circumstances. Over sin, over self, over circumstances. And better than all, we're more than conquer us over the devil. Sin shall not have dominion over you. There's no religion in the world, has there? I hear preachers say, you know, Jesus died to make bad men good. Well, he didn't. You better get that pretty clear. That's a fringe benefit. He didn't die to make bad men good. Well, why did he die? He died to make dead men live. And the devil's pretty smart. He's been in the business a long while. And you know, he says to some people, well, look at that man in the church there. Do you know what he did recently? Do you know that preacher got divorced? Do you know what that deacon did? Do you know somebody's living a double life? Oh, we can point that out all right. And so he says, you know, if anybody on this earth, I mean, you're a lovely man, you have a marvelous family, you have a good wife, and you never did anything wrong, and you pay more than union wages, and everybody acknowledges you're just a gentleman to live with. And you're a gentleman in business. You know, you're so good, you don't need salvation. And they fall for it. And then he says to somebody, like some innocent girl gets trapped tonight, and before long she's selling her body on West 50, West 20, 42nd Street in New York. That's a hellhole. 13-year-old girls prostituting. We've got no pull over any heathen nation. We've got white slavery in this country. We've got 30,000 boys under 15 years of age. 30,000 boys in the Los Angeles area who were sold by their parents for sexual immorality in a Christian country. The devil's trick is, you're so good, after all, you're very moral, and you do go to church, and you even help missions, and you help the poor. You're so good, you don't need to be saved. And then when you get tangled and messed up, he says, you're so bad, you can't be saved. And he's a liar on both counts anyhow. You see somebody going into a stately church tomorrow, maybe carrying a Bible or a prayer book, and you couldn't put a finger on their lives morally, and they're as lost as a goose. They're as lost as a girl selling a body in Las Vegas tonight. Boy, those people who went there last night and were laughing and cheering and gambling didn't think they'd be barbecued, and that's a rotten word to use, but that's what they were. 80 people were roasted to death. Fancy going straight from a place like that to the judgment seat of Christ. But on the other hand, supposing you die going home tonight, and your heart's full of corruption, you're going to have a bit of a job, aren't you, at the judgment seat? Not good to say you're a supreme athlete. Not good to say you're an intellectual person. That'll only bring more responsibility. You see, Paul sees every man, whether he's a barbarian or a Greek, or who in the world he is. He says he's bound when he should conquer, and he's a slave when he should be king. If you can ever find it, find that poem by F. W. H. Myers, St. Paul. And if you've got any memory at all, memorize it. It's got about 80 stanzas. And in one of those stanzas, he visualized St. Paul saying this, as he views a world of lost men, then with a rush, the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a thunder roll, all to save these, to perish for their saving, to die for their lives, to be offered for them all. Here they are, they're bound. Who should conquer? They're slaves. Who should be kings? And they're looking at the cross and viewing their one hope with an empty wonder, gladly contented with a show of things. Could you imagine you're going through an airport, and you see me sitting there with my wife, and suppose my three sons were home. I don't, maybe never see them again. I've seen them once in 15 years. They're on the mission field. And supposing we're all there, and we've six big baggage cases there, you know. And we're sitting there reading, and you come and say, hey brother Ravenhill, how are you? I say, fine. Isn't this a lovely airport? Well, I don't think any airports are lovely. But anyhow, it's as good as they go, I suppose. Ah, like your suit, thank you. You're looking well, thank you. Where are you going? Tell you the truth, I haven't got the slightest idea. What? All those suitcases empty? Oh no, I've got six changes of underwear, and I've got a couple of suits in there, and I've got quite a lot of things in there. But we just thought we'd come to the airport. I mean, we're going somewhere, but we haven't the slightest idea where we're going. You'd say, well that's nutty, isn't it? Yeah, friend, it is. It's as nutty as you are. You don't know where you're going. You don't think we haven't a nutty government? They give you a stinking old bones in Oxyrhynchus down on the River Nile to find out where the human race comes from. They won't give you a cent to tell where the human race is going. Well, of course, the government will help you if you believe in evolution. I heard, I can't vouch for this, but you can pass it on if you like, I heard that not too long ago, all the monkeys and our now tanks and other things had a conference in Africa. Somebody came in with the news that they'd been spying on a conference in America. And they heard one of the big shots there say, you know, we came from monkeys. And those monkeys got so angry, they said, we come from monkeys? Did you ever see a drunk monkey? Did you ever see a monkey on drugs? Did you ever see a monkey beating his wife? Did you ever see two thousand monkeys going to bash the brains out of another crowd of monkeys? I pass a resolution, let the whole, those things that walk on two legs know that from here on we disown any relationship to the mad world. Well, you don't come from monkeys. Some of us act like them, maybe. We may be pretty scrubbed up, but we were made originally an image of God. And there's only one way to restore that image. There's only one way to get rid of the love of the world and the love of the flesh and the pride of life. There's only one way for you to be the prince or the king in your home as the father and be the priest and take those children and educate them and don't leave the world to put the devil in them. My father was raised with a lot of society people, dukes and lords and ladies. You remember the time when the king of England came to dine with them there in, with the Duke of Argyll in Scotland, and they put out solid gold dinner plates and they had a marvelous time. But he got into a lot of trouble. He got in, not crying, but he did become an awful drunkard and went way down in the gutter. And he was just about in the gutter when my mother married him. And she was saved and he wasn't. Everybody told her all hell would break loose. And she said, no, God's already told me he'll be saved. And he was saved not many months after. And he said to me one day, Len, you should be grateful you were born in a poor home because rich people never hear the gospel. They don't take the Bible out. You know those little brats you have, they get under your foot. And if you went home tonight and one had swallowed something, you'd scream your head off and you'd stay at the side of its pillow all night and you'd be crying to God. I'm not saying that's wrong and I hope it doesn't happen. But you know the most precious thing you have outside of your own salvation is responsibility to raise those children for God. Raise them where they never, and not my children have never, in fact I've never argued with my wife in my life that I know of. We've never had contentions. We raised three boys and they were boys, you know. They put a frog down your back if you weren't looking. They put some bramble bushes in your bed and you put your feet there, oh mercy on us. Sure they were full of tricks. But you know what? We raised three boys. One's in Africa teaching in university, the other two are missionaries. They've been through school, the best school in Ireland, which was equal to Eton in England. And I never asked anybody for a penny in my life, but I got the boys through college and they had some university courses and one has an earned PhD. And they're wonderful guys. And you know we never had five minutes trouble. We did. One boy, we had just five minutes trouble with him. But the other three, all their lives we'd never five minutes trouble with any of them really. Never had to shed a tear over them. Never had any heartbreak over them. Why? Because we did what the book says, we brought them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And it's much better to put a fence at the top of the cliff than a super ambulance at the bottom. It's better to pray them to sleep at night and pray them awake in the morning than be hanging outside of a jail and asking all the church to pray for your son who's going to hell. If it's happened that way, I'm sorry. But you folk who are starting life, you do the right thing in the home. Give God priority. Read his word every night. Read it every morning. Instruct the children in the ways of righteousness. Well, I got to my text and it's time to go home. But anyhow, let me say one or two things about it here. He says we're to be more than conquered in all these things, in all what things? Well, those miscellaneous adversities that are mentioned there. Well, how in the world can you be more than conquerors? One old preacher said it means shooting birds, 12 birds and killing 13. Well, that isn't sense really. When Joseph went to prison and he refused to gripe and grumble about it, he was a conqueror. But when he sat on the throne, when the king was away, he was more than conqueror. When those men gave their boats to Jesus to fish in, they were conquerors. But when the boats were filled to the brim with fish and almost sinking, they were more than conquerors. When Jesus went to death, my goodness, how people trifle with the Lord. One of the thieves said, if you're the son of God, why don't you get off the cross and take us with you? And the other said, keep your mouth shut. This is the son of God. He could have spoken a word like he spoke it to the fig tree and it shrunk, it shriveled up. He could have spoken to the men, they could have all died on the spot. I believe the biggest challenge in your Christian life is come down from the cross and save yourself. I mean, you made a vow in the meeting and you're giving 50 percent of your income to missions and other people don't even give 10 percent. And look what they're doing and look what you're doing. Well, wait a minute, forget it, forget it. You'll go haywire if you start looking now. As Hebrews 11 says, you look at all the giants of faith in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 12 says, looking unto Jesus. The Greek says, looking off. Looking off all those famous men in Hebrews 11 for they're a pretty scruffy lot till God got them. And keep your eyes on Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Didn't take a host of men, it took Jesus alone to subdue kingdoms. What kingdoms? They subdued the kingdoms of men, he subdued the kingdom of the devil. You know, a friend of mine wrote to me not long ago and he said, I went to hear a very famous preacher in England that you like very much. He said, he is a brilliant preacher, he is a brilliant expositor, but he's totally incapable of being volcanic. He never explodes. I don't believe Paul was like that. I believe there were times when Paul, as he says, whether it was in the body or out of the body, he says, I don't have to wait till I get to heaven to enjoy heaven. As Mr. Spurgeon said, a little faith will get you to heaven, more faith will bring heaven into you. I don't really want his protection, I want my heart, my spirit to be the habitation of God. And finally, that final phrase he uses there at the end of the seventh chapter, oh my goodness, I sure don't like flying, I almost get claustrophobia. I've got so many invitations to go to New Zealand and Australia and India, well, why don't they bring the countries to me? Be more comfortable. You can fly from Houston to Auckland in New Zealand in 14 hours. Thank you. It would seem like 14 days to me, I do not like airplanes. And I marvel at the things. You know, if I had a feather here and I let go of it, or that sheet of paper, I say, now listen, this is Leonard Ravenhill talking, and don't be fooling around, you go up there now, go up 50 feet. Did you hear what I said? You just go up. Listen, come on, don't be so stubborn. Now, off you go. No, it won't go. And yet here's a plane, it's going to fly all the way across the Pacific, 10 or 12,000 miles, loaded with baggage, loaded with people, loaded with food to fill up the loaded people. And then it's loaded with thousands and thousands, not hundreds, thousands and thousands of gallons of gasoline. And the man says, fasten your seatbelt, that's to hold your lunch down. And suddenly he goes off and he says, now we're taking off at the end of the runway, and the thing goes like that, and you think you're going backwards way, and up he goes. Then he says, we're flying at 20,000 feet, and I say, why? Now he says, we're going to 27,000 feet, and I say, why, why? And now he says, we're going to 32,000 feet, and I say, why, why, why? Do we need to go that height? Why can't we go 500 feet over sea level, so if anything went wrong, we could just squat down? If this thing drops, man, that's the strongest poison in the world, one drop. I still marvel, I used to marvel when they had propellers at the front, they took the propellers off, that's dangerous, isn't it? They say, it doesn't need propellers to pull it, it's got pressure to push it. Push it against what? I don't see a pilot putting his foot against something and pushing the plane off, what do you think? Well, they're trying to justify what Job said thousands of years ago, God made a weight for the wind, and we've just found that there's a lot of weight in the wind. But you know that thing goes up and up, and every inch it goes up, it's fighting more fiercely the law of gravity. And you notice when a plane comes down, he puts on as much gas as he does going up, why? Because as the plane slows down, you see all the filth belching out of it, why? Because as he slows that plane, gravity is pulling, pulling, pulling at it, and the dangerous thing is not going up, more planes have trouble getting down and landing than they do going up. And this fella, I've watched them, they're coming one after the other, every, every, about every 35 seconds in Chicago, you see a plane coming in, and when you're driving, you can see them coming through the sky in steps, and when he gets about a mile, he puts the gas on, and when he gets half a mile, it's belching black, filthy smoke out, gravity is pulling at it. And he puts the flaps down, and he's sitting there scared to death, the pilots will tell you often they're scared to death bringing the thing down, why? Because gravity is pulling, pulling, pulling at it. And Paul says, in your nature and mine, unless God deals with, there's a, there's a spirit of gravity that wants to pull you down to the world and the flesh and the devil. But there's a power in that machine, it goes up, it defies gravity and everything else. And he talks about the laws, read it in the end of Romans 7, and then he comes to chapter 7, he says, listen, there are those things, but I want to tell you something, it isn't the sin that you necessarily need to have inside, you still have natural appetites, and you can fall back and backslide, but I want to tell you something, that it's possible for you to have a spirit greater than the spirit of gravity or depravity, and rise above the world, the flesh, the devil, and temptation, and be more than conquerors, through him that loved us. Now read the chapter when you go home, read the 9th chapter, pardon me, read the 7th chapter, and you'll find he says about 20, 20, pardon me, about 31 times he talks about I, I, I, I. And then read it and find what he says about the Holy Spirit, he says nothing is not mentioned. And then you go down to the 8th chapter, and in the 8th chapter, you read how many times he mentions I, just twice, in verses 18 and 38. In verse 18 he says, I reckon, and in verse 38 he says, I'm persuaded. In the epistle of Romans, there are 26 references to the Spirit of God, and 18 of them are in this one chapter, the 8th chapter. Sublime, glorious, a young lady said to me last night, I've, I've been told about many times about being crucified with Christ, but I didn't realize when you, when you mentioned it, you know, I kind of fear that death, but I said, remember, that we're not saved by the death of Jesus Christ, we're saved by his resurrection. And you go to the cross not just to die, you go to find life, not death. But death is the way to life. Let me give you just finally, I like that picture, I've drawn it many times, and I still get a lift out of it, not because I say it, but because it's so marvelous, that they put Jesus in the tomb, and he'd been dead three days. And the devil isn't very happy about it, he says, you know, that man pulled so many tricks, I don't just know what he's going to do. And he sends a demon down, and the demon comes down, and he says, yes, I went in the tomb, he's cold, he's as dead as that slab he's on, he's all right. And Satan says, you know, I feel a bit uncomfortable about it. We've only got, we've only got about 60 seconds left, and if he gets out of that, out of that death, we're licked. If we can keep him there, we can fill hell with a human race, but if he gets out, we're sunk. A demon says, well, your majesty, we've got a stone over the grave, and we've got wax over the stone, and we've got seals over the wax. Why don't you, why don't you roll the sin of the world against the stone? Good idea, good idea. You know, I still feel that he might still do something. Another demon says, your majesty, why don't we round up every demon in hell and earth, and we've got the stone there, and the wax, and the seal, and the soldiers, and the sin of the world, and we get every demon to put his shoulder against that stone, and he won't get out. Excellent, says Lucifer. Round up every demon, and every demon goes, so you've got the stone and the wax, and the seal, and the soldiers, and the sin of the world, and now every demon there, and satan says, I think we've got it now, hold tight, we've only got 10 more seconds to go, and he starts the countdown, the first, the greatest countdown ever, and satan says, satan says, all right, hold it there, it's 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, he's just going to say 1, and the holy ghost beat him to it. How do you know? Because this chapter says, the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead. You say, he's going to raise me from the dead? No, no, he's going to do it tonight if you let him do it. He's going to raise you from the death of sin, and the bondage of sin, and the fetters of sin, and you go out liberated, because you're indwelt by the Spirit of God, by the Spirit of Christ, by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and you have dominion, whereas you've been in bondage, you're now free, you're liberated. What a pity that the church has forgotten about it. We had a fellowship down in Seguin, I preached there for about a couple of years, and I sat with the congregation until it was time to preach, and I'd walk on the platform, and every service I raised my hand, like they do in some European countries, I just stood in the pulpit, and I said, he is risen, and all the congregation responded, he is risen indeed. There's no way we can diminish the power of the cross, but there's no way in which it's incomplete in itself. He died for our sins, he rose again for our justification, his coronation gift is the coming of the Holy Ghost to live in us and control us. I met a man recently, fairly recently, and he said to me, did you know Peter Conley? I said, yes, I preached in his church in Perth, Scotland. I thought he said he was a character. Yes, he was. He was a character. He was raised in Northern Ireland, where they went to church every Sunday and drank liquor every other day, and it was about the time they started talking about flying saucers. He says, what's new? Man, he says, until I was 18 years of age, there were flying saucers in our house every day. He lived in a house where all the houses were connected, and he said, when people went past our window, everybody ducked down. Hey, this is where the Conleys live, and they went past like this, otherwise you got a flying saucer, or a dinner plate, or something. And he was going down the street in Belfast, and there's a storefront shop, and a man was talking, and he went in, and Peter went down, and he got marvelously converted. He went home, and his brother was there with the liquor and smoking, and Peter went in and put his back to the door, and he said to his brother, I got saved tonight. You got what? I got saved tonight. You went into a Protestant? There's never been a Protestant in our family ever since the family began. You mean you've become a Protestant? He says, I don't know if I'm a Protestant, but I'm a Christian. And his brother got up, and you know what Peter says? I put my hands in my pocket. And I stuck my fingernails in my, in the flesh. He said, when I went to bed and took my pants off at night, there were big scars where my fingernails had sunk into my legs, because I knew what my brother was going to do. He was going to come up, and he said, I could always lick him, and he said, I was just scared. I thought, if he hits me, boy, no, I won't. No, no, Jesus wouldn't do that. I'd like to do it, but I won't. His brother gave him a really rough time. The rest of the family did. But one night, Peter couldn't get over it. There were times when he was itching to bust his brother's nose. I'd like to do it, but you know, it doesn't, kind of the right thing to do. One night, he went to a holiness meeting and heard that his life could be completely cleansed, and the Holy Spirit come in and take out all his prejudice, and his jealousy, and his pride, and all the other things. He came back to the house. His brother said, hi. He said, hi. Went to the meeting tonight, eh? You get saved? No, he said, I got sanctified. You got what? He said, you remember when I came in a few months ago, and you got your fist? He said, I put my hands in my pockets, and I gripped my legs like that, and he said, when I went to bed, I had five big nail marks where I'd been holding the flesh down, literally. I was ready to bust your nose. And he said, I saw just now when you said I was sanctified, you clenched your fist, and you know what he said? The desire had gone away. I didn't even want to hit you. You know, Christianity hasn't been weighed in the balances and found wanting. It's been tried, found difficult, and rejected. It's not only too big for the world, it's too big for some of us. The recipe for world peace is in this book. It happens to be called the Sermon on the Mount. And it answers every problem in human depravity. And it tells you that your heart can be made pure, so that you've no bitterness against anybody. The only hatred, if it's so, is a hatred against yourself, that you're so ineffective and so limited. And you're not ambitious. This blessed man sold out. He could have died, as we say, a multimillionaire, one of the greatest philosophers ever. And you know what he says? He says, I covet no man's silver or gold or apparel. You ask those boys on TV tomorrow if they do. There's nothing in the world fascinates me. I'm a captive. I'm a slave. I've got a message of emancipation. I care not whether a man's black or white or what color he is. I care not how depraved he is. He runs his masked head there and says one of the most amazing things in his letter to Corinthians. He says, if any man. I like that. I like that. I'm going to need about 10 million years to talk it over with Paul in heaven. So if you see me talking, keep your nose out of it for a while, will you? Let me ask him a few questions and celebrate a bit of victory with him. Puts his face up to kings and rulers and dictators and hell spots and earth spots and any other spots. And he says, if any man. And you know what he means? If any man anywhere at any time be in Christ and Christ in him, he is a new creation. He doesn't just get a new name and go to a new country called heaven. He gets a whole new nature and a new heart and a new spirit and a new outlook and a new appetite. And all things, the old things are passed away. He doesn't want them anymore than the new one to return to some filth that you see in the street tonight. He says, listen, the world, the world, the world is crucified to me and I to the world. Do you wonder he finishes that chapter and he begins it with no separation? Pardon me. He begins it with no condemnation and he finishes it with no separation. He kind of thumbs his nose to the devil. He says to the devil, listen, I want to tell you something. There's nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. You can separate me from the saints and put me in prison. You can wall me in, but you can't roof me in. There's nothing can separate me from the love of Christ. Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword. Neither death nor life. And then as though he looks at the devil and says, I don't care what you've got in hell, but I'll tell you one thing, it'll break down if you try it on me. Because he says, neither things present nor things to come, whatever there is in that envelope, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature can separate me from the love of God. Less than a minute, you know, when I've been at the other side of the world, somebody says, we've got a stack of mail for you. I say, yes, and I get the letters and I search and I search and I search. I see my dear Martha's got beautiful handwriting and I say, there's one letter and this is number four. It came after number three, obviously, and this is number five. And I sit down and put all the other letters on one side and I start with number one letter and number two and I read number three and get all excited about them. Supposing I came home at the end of the trip and she says, well, darling, it's lovely to have you home. I say, I'm a bit busy. Mostly I've been preaching three times a day and had some TV interviews and on the radio and I was so tired. I slept all the way from Australia to the Philippines and then I got out of the plane, I got back and I went to sleep again. But darling, I'd like a cup of real good English tea and a couple of cookies and I want to read your letters. You want to what? I want to read all those letters I picked up that I missed, you know, when I was going through New Zealand. They were all waiting in Australia, but I didn't really have time to read them and darling, I'm going to read them all and enjoy them. She says, what? After I got those three boys scrubbed and put to bed and I wrote till midnight and told you all the news and boy, all the news that was any good anyhow and you haven't read them? But darling, you don't know how busy I've been. Hmm? Like if you die tonight in a crash going home and the Lord says when you get up there, did you read any of my love letters today? You say, no, Baylor were playing. I had to watch Baylor. I mean, you know, I used to keep up and watch the football match. And then some friends came along and Lord, you don't know how busy I've been today. But what about yesterday? Well, yesterday, Friday, of course, that shopping day I was busy and other things. Come on, come on now. If you love a person, there's nothing you enjoy better than reading their love letters if they're not there. And you know what? This is God's love letter to us. If you love him, we'll read his word. If you love a person, you want to be with them. I remember coming from a prayer meeting at two o'clock in the morning in Ireland. The frost had whitened the bank. There's a place where the road comes down like this. There's a kind of precipitation and it's usually covered with grass and it was white with snow. And there's a big Irish farmer. You could see the cow clobber on his shoes there. And he had a big old army, great coat on him, you know, one of those big English heavy coats. And he had a girl wrapped inside. I could see the top of her hair there. And he was talking to her and kissing her and having a great time. They were talking together. The man driving with me says, that guy must be crazy. It's two o'clock in the morning. It's just about zero. And there he is. I said, there he is what? Kissing his girlfriend, I suppose, talking to her. Two o'clock in the morning and it's frosting. Oh, fella said, you must never been in love. It's the middle of June to him. You think he's got cold feet? Not on your life. His heart's full of love. His eyes are full of thrills. And he's talking to the one he loves. And he doesn't care a hill of beans about frost or anybody else. Do you pull this love letter out, you know, in the canteen where all those smart guys are there, you know, those guys that can manage big business, but they can't manage life and kids. They got divorced and dumped their kids. You know, they're drunk and they're idiots. And you're embarrassed to take out the greatest book in the world. You're afraid to show your love. You're afraid to speak in any form of tenderness about Christ being your Savior and your Redeemer and you love him. Well, then, tonight you need to get emancipated from fear, obviously. Are you more than conqueror tonight? We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. If we're not, we ought to be. Let's sing a hymn. One that I often associate with this church. It was written by an American. Okay, 339. 339. Don't sing it if you're singing a lie, please. But you know what? This side of eternity, I think this is the greatest thing you could ever say. 339. It is well with my soul. Is it? Hmm? All the fetters broken, fear of man gone, sin doesn't have dominion. You're really on top tonight. I hope you are. If you're not, you can get on top. Let's sing it when peace like a river. Let's stand and sing it. Beautiful song, sung by, it was written by Spafford. It doesn't say that. It was written by a man who lost all his fortune and he lost his children, four daughters in a shipping accident. And it was while he was considering this that he realized it wasn't very well with his emotions and it wasn't well with his business. It had gone down. Family, they got drowned. But he said, it's well with my soul. It's the greatest thing you can sing this side of eternity. It's well with my soul.