In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of vision for the church in the present time. He refers to Jesus' statement about the church being poor, wretched, naked, and blind, and highlights the need for a vision to overcome these shortcomings. The speaker mentions that vision is the combination of a task and a vision, which can make someone a missionary. He also shares the story of Isaiah's vision of the Lord, emphasizing the need to focus on God rather than earthly kings or worldly things.

I feel so sorry for Mike going to Australia. You won't hear any singing like that till he comes back. Thank you. Well, I really do hope the Lord will let us come back sometime. You heard our David preach last night, a masterpiece. He's a super preacher, I think. You know, he's like me, he's a bit of a maverick. I used to go around all the holiness centers, but one day I offended them. So they shut the door on me. But you know, when your father and mother forsake you, the Lord takes you up. I'm not good enough for the holiness people. I'm not fiery enough for the Pentecostals, so I have to come to you. Okay, let's read from the prophecy of Isaiah, or as Mike would say, Isaiah. Prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 6. This isn't usually cataloged as one of the great chapters of the Bible, but I think it is. Again, I'm reading from the Living Bible. Did you hear that? I'm reading from the Living Bible, which is what? King James Version, thank you. I was hoping you'd learn that. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims, each one had six wings. With train or with two did he cover his, what, face? With two he covered his feet, and with two did he fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. The whole earth is full of his glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a peep of unclean lips. For mine eyes I have seen the King, and that's the one we need to see, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a light coal in his hand, which he take with the tongue from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this has touched thy lips. Thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me. And he said, Go. We're going to hang our thinking on three verses here. Verse 5, verse 7, verse 9. And they're all monosyllables. They're so simple that if you're a PhD you can remember them. Verse 5, Woe. Verse 7, Lo. Verse 9, Go. The first is a word of a man. The second is a word of a seraphim. The third is the word of God. The first is a word of confession. Woe is me. The second is a word of cleansing. Lo, this has touched thy lips. And the third is the word of commission. Go. We can't go past the first verse here. It's absolutely essential that we pause a minute and look at it. People ask me, What is the most, what do you think is the most needed thing for the church in this hour in which we live? I can answer it in one word, vision. I remind you again of the appalling statement of Jesus. I don't care about the critics, what they've said about Jimmy Swigert and all the others. Forget them. But when Jesus says of the church that he purchased with his own blood, she's poor, wretched, naked and blind. And thou know'st it not. Tears my heart up. What can a blind church do? These Bible schools and big head cloths keep reshuffling the theological cards. That will no more bring revival than going and shouting in a cemetery. There has to be an invasion of holy power. There has to be a holy people. God won't use anything else. He demanded a virgin, didn't he? For his child to be born. Not some famous woman, not a queen, a virgin. And he wouldn't trust the world with his son unless he came through a virgin. And he won't trust anybody else except a virgin for his bride. He's not coming through this lousy system we have now with all its sins and worldliness. I know there's up the road there some seminary or something. What's it got outside? A sports yard. You never saw a school get revived with a sports outfit with it. We're so trying to mix and make it attractive to young people. Forget it. The most attractive thing in the world is fire. Holy fire. God is fire. Our God is a consuming fire. I'm glad what you said, David, that God had touched you with fire. Well, I pray it will increase. You see, fire has to be fed continually. Otherwise, it'll go out. Let me go back a bit here. In the year that King Uzziah died. I'll turn, please, back for a minute into the second book of Chronicles, chapter 26. And there you'll see a very wonderful outline. If you like, a chapter in the life, or it's almost the whole life, it is a whole life, of a very wonderful person. Two Chronicles 26, verse 1. Then the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was what? Sixteen years of age. A little further up, you'll read about a king that was anointed when he was eight years of age. What's your fifteen-year-old doing? Does he know God? Recollecting baseball cards. Is he like his daddy, wasting his time? I get lots of preachers come to see me. I usually beat them up. I enjoy that. Oh, I don't have time to pray. Then I let them talk, you know, get lost. And then I say, hey, by the way, are you a supporter? Oh, yeah, you should see my trophies. I had a fellow in my office, and he was saying I had much time to pray. I said, listen, you've just been away for three days hunting up in Montana. It cost you a fortune to go. You spent three days. You spent all that money. You came back. Before that, you'd been goose shooting for three days. You're talking about another three days you're going. I said, you put those nine days into prayer, you'll be a different man. Don't tell God you love him. You're lying. I said, if you love God as much as you love hunting, if you love prayer as much, if you took two or three days at a time praying, your church would be alive. Remember this. There are no rewards for hunting, even if you're a doctor, a Ph.D. Forget it. One of the most stupid things, one of the most awesome things of the judgment would be when God opens the book of time. You work. How long do you live a day? 24 hours? You sleep eight? You work eight? What do you do with the other eight? Put that on the basis of 60 years. You sleep 20. You work 20. What do you do with the other 20? Work 20 years out into days. Work it out into hours. You're going to regard it in account not for only every day, every hour, but every moment, every second. You know, we thought everything was big in America. Again, this amazing man. Let me stay with him a minute, then I'll come to Isaiah. Let me skip down the chapter just a minute. This 15-year-old, look what it is. 16 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 50 years. 52 years. 52 and 16. Add that together. Verse 5 says he sought God in the days of Zechariah. Can you think of it? I get invited all over, well, even over the world. We believe you're one of the two. I get letters and letters that there are two prophets in America today, David Wilkinson and yourself. Let him answer for himself. I'm not a prophet. Don't claim to be. Wish I was. But can you imagine a 16-year-old youth with this majestic character called Isaiah on one hand and Zechariah on the other? Wasn't it Zechariah got killed between the altar and the doorpost? For what? Because he was righteous. I'll tell you how to empty your church. Preach righteousness. Forget holiness for a while. Preach righteousness. What did Noah do? He built him out. No, that's not what he's in the Bible for. He's there because he was a preacher of what? Righteousness. That little guy five feet two, according to tradition, Paul preached to Felix about what? Well, of course, the middle toe on the left foot of Daniel's image. Hmm? No? He preached temperance and righteousness and judgment to come. Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Why did Cain slay Abel? Because he was righteous. Dear God, we need some righteousness in the church as well as outside of it these days. I'm not going to prove my point, but my gripe, and I don't often get to preach to preachers. I'm going to preach to something about a month, and of course it's a banquet, poor soul. There's to eat every time they turn around. But there are three things missing out of modern preaching. Immensity, intensity, and eternity. There are two things missing in the pew. Integrity and honesty. Integrity is gone. You can argue as much as you like about the work ethic of the Japanese and so forth, but they have more, what shall I say, integrity in many areas than we have even. But let me pass that for a minute. It says of this awesome man, I want to leave this picture in your mind. In verse 5, he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding and visions. Lots of fellows have visions here. Well, Zechariah had. But you see, the word of a prophet is only true if it comes to pass what he prophesied. Your vision won't help me. It may help you. That's okay. The vision I want is different. I'll come to that in a moment. But listen, he had visions, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. Do you see that? We're not seeking God. Doesn't Malachi say, the Lord whom ye seek? You go to a conference, they're not seeking the Lord. They're seeking gifts. They're seeking miracles. And God's a jealous God. You can have all the miracles without God, but you can't have God without miracles. And I'm not thinking about crooked arms being straightened. I'm thinking of revival in the context of Phinney that I've loved for 60 years, 70 years. When Phinney went to a city, the moral climate of the city was changed. Our revivals are a little stirring up. The same people come to the altar week after week. Revival after revival. The no taller, the no stronger, the no more vision. And the pastor likes it. Oh, it's a lot of people at the altar. So what? What are you training? Dummies? The proof of this week will be the outworking of this week. There have been some awesome meetings here. I told my precious son that preached last night. I said, David, this week we've been living in history. God has birthed something here. And it's not just for this fellowship. This city needs a stirring. This city needs a cleansing. This city needs an anointing. And it's going to be done by great, famous preachers. It's going to be done by people who live in righteousness and true holiness. That's all that God delights in. The Sikh says he went forth and warred against the Philistines. Look at his accomplishment. This man is a genius. He has military genius. He has economic genius. He changes the whole nation. Because he's walking with God. The destiny of America is not in the White House. It's in God's house. But not the condition it's in now. The Lord came to the temple at the beginning of his life. And he came at the end of his life. And it was very, very different. Somebody said to me this morning, give us a whipping again. Well, Jesus. Oh, everybody remembers. Man in the tavern will tell you, Jesus, he whipped people. But listen. When he came round the shoulder of the hill and he saw the city, he wept over it. How many chances, God Almighty, how many chances do you think America's going to have? I get people who say, Brother Rayneal, quit your praying, quit your preaching. America's gone too far. Of all the five industrial nations in the world, we have the highest rate of, I believe, we have the highest rate of AIDS. We certainly have the highest rates of divorce. With every rotten corruption you can mention, we have more heresies in the country. We have 2,000 gurus in the country. We're up against a wall. But this man has strategy military. He recovers the economy. He manages to handle the farmers and they take some doing. And then when he's, when he's, when he's got this going and he's become governor of that and the chairman of that and the president of that and the president, then he gets filled with that damn little thing that men get. We've seen the moral collapse of great preachers. Listen, those guys were bankrupt and they were, they were backslidden three years before that stuff came to the surface. Every man loses his anointing in the prayer closet. Once you start getting too busy and you can't pray and intercede, forget it. How is it you ask a man when he comes to be a pastor? Well, how many were in Sunday school when you started at that church? How many were there when you left? How many buses when you start? Do you think the devil's worried about buses? He doesn't care if you have as many as the ground bus service. He's not nervous about buses. I stood outside of St. Peter's in Edinburgh in, no it's not in Edinburgh, in Dundee. There's a plaque on the wall, it's the size of that wall, and it gives an account of one of the most amazing men in Scottish history, Murray MacShane, the man who wept his way every day. He'd go to the front seat of the church with the church membership robe, and he'd pray for so many families every day. Then the next day he'd go in another seat and pray for some others. He'd go in the, in the, what we call the, you call the office, that sounds too much like business, but he called it a vestry, and his janitor said he'd put his elbows down there and he would have his Bible in front of him and he would weep and weep and weep for the lost people. He would go in the pulpit and before he began to preach he would weep and weep and weep. Well, he was a genius, he had a colossal intellect. He knew his Greek, he knew his Hebrew. He was an outstanding man, and because of his extreme living and fasting he got tuberculosis. He went to, he went to Israel, or Palestine as it was then, for recovery. A man called W.C. Burns took over from him. One man, you know some, some men are so good at plowing and sowing seed, God won't let them do anything else. Some men are so good at reaping, God lets them do it. But the sower and the reaper will rejoice together. Mary McShane fasted and prayed and wept and groaned in that church, till the very rug in, in the office was wet with his tears. W.C. Burns came along, a very different. He began to preach in anointing of the Spirit. That great church, St. Peter's, was jammed. The whole city was shaken with holy ghost convictions. People weren't lining up to see miracles. There were miracles, moral miracles. The rottenest people in the city, highfalutin people were raised from the top to the bottom. W.C. Burns poured his life out. They said that every time he was in the pulpit it was as though the pillar of fire was there. You didn't question where he'd been. He was like old Ebenezer Brown, who lived in about 1599. And he says, I spent five days of my life walking in eternity, and I come down on Sundays and share the rest with my people. We need preachers like that today. Not everybody who buys the latest book that Joe somebody's written or Bill somebody else or Chuck somebody else. All they're doing is reading all that stuff. Most of it's chaff anyhow. Tell you what, when David comes and I come, I'll tell you about the grace of God. We've been deceived and cheated so often, I'll never stand here unless I have the word of God. If it doesn't burn in me, it won't burn in you. If it doesn't break me, why should it break you? This is the most critical hour in America's history and in world history. There's less spirituality in America. We have more meetings, we have more shows, we have more Bibles, we have more Bible schools. And we were never more immoral, we were never more corrupt. Where's the pillar of fire? No church is stronger than its prayer meeting. I don't care how big the church is. No preacher is greater than his praying. I'll tell you the strength to prove yourself as a preacher. How many people can you draw on a Sunday night? Everybody goes to church Sunday morning in America. A man in my office recently, very well-dressed. I go to a famous church away there in California. I said, yes. He said, we have five services Sunday morning. Wait a minute. Why don't you have two in the morning, two in the afternoon, one at night? Oh, people don't come out in the afternoon. They sit there watching football or baseball. You can't get them out at night. You can if you have the anointing of God. If I were a pastor, I would prove the strength of my ministry by how many came Sunday night. We're going to have to have a Holy Ghost revival. It won't be Pentecostal, it won't be Nazarene. It will be branded with God. It will be so glorious, no man will dare put his name on it. I'm trying to hurry. Oh, thank you. Two hours, thank you. That's good. Then we'll have a break. Pardon? No. And the amazing thing about that, Mike, is this. After Atmer Shain poured his life out, then Burns did the same thing. What do you do? You say, well, we're going to give you Westminster Abbey. Come and preach. No. Come to this church. Do you know what God did? He took him to China. And he died almost unknown in China. But I'll tell you what. The revival that John Sung had then, if you haven't read that book you should do, or the revival that Watchman Nee had was out of the praying of the same man that never lived to reap. He just prayed. He held on to the horns of the altar, if you like. And he got the witness. Just like I said the other day, right now, Raynard Bonk is getting 300, 400,000 people to his meetings over there in Africa. But, how many of you have read the life of C.T. Stern? Some of you have? Good. Well, C.T. Stern was there 15 years. I don't know why. I thought of it this morning. I've been preaching in his Bible school. No, I've been preaching for Rhys Howells, I mean. And when I finished the service, Mrs. Howells said, please come upstairs. So we walked up the staircase. There's a terrace on front of the house. It's an old mansion. And she said, look at that. You see that door? I said, yes. She said, well, daddy, meaning her husband, he went in that room at six o'clock in the morning, and he stayed there till six at night, every day for 11 months. He wouldn't even go to his mother's funeral. He said, I can't break this union with God right now. I have audience with God. What's a funeral? She doesn't know anyhow. Boy, the people reproached him. I admire him. So what happened? Rhys Howells went to Africa, left his boy at home, didn't see his boy for 15 years. That boy is in a room this morning. I've seen him in that room. He's been there about 30 years. I think he's a greater man than his daddy. But you see, he's living in a union with God. You see, the evangelists want to be exposed. The revivalists want to be alone. Get away. The evangelists raise money. Revivalists raise hell. Let the Holy Ghost come here. You'll be in trouble from every angle. As I said last night, preacher, if your name isn't known in hell, you're a failure. Demons said of the Apostle, the greatest thing ever said outside of Jesus Christ. The demons said, Jesus we know and Paul we know. I hope, dear Mike, you set an anointing. The devil who posts notices in hell, look out. Mike's coming to Australia with so-and-so and so-and-so. And brother, where's he over there? Noel, are you going as well, Noel? Good for you. But come back. Don't let the kangaroos get you. How many men do you think there are? Start with the Nazarenes. They're top of the ladder, I think they are anyhow. And I preached for the Nazarenes for years. When there were Nazarenes. No more. How many men do you know that you say walk with God? One of the world's most famous preachers preached right across America came to see me. And I said, listen, after all the preaching you've seen and heard in the big places, I put my finger, do you think there are ten holy men? Can you name me ten? No, I can't, he said. I remember the Nazarenes in England. I remember when Dr. Sharp was the head of that group. And then George Frame and all the other guys. McLaren, Creighton, all the bunch. And there was anointing there. In my day, the Salvation Army had an anointing. Colonel Bringle was still living. Some awesome men. But they're not mentioned in this chapter, so I better get back to the chapter. Let's come down to verse 10 for a minute. Also he built towers in the desert and digged many wells. And they had much cattle both in the low country and in the plain. And so forth and so on. Then you come down to verse 13. Under their hand there was an army of 300,000, 7,500. That's an awful lot. Sign 2. And they made war with mighty power. Verse 15. He made in Jerusalem engines invented by cunning men to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks to shoot arrows and great stones with awe. But here you have it now. He's got everything he wanted. He's like some of these men. I want to be on every TV show in the world, every radio station, every newspaper. They got it. Not for proclaiming the gospel, but for polluting it. It's as though he granted their request that sent leanness into their souls. Can you read that verse again? It's terrible. And he made in Jerusalem engines. That's like we invent tanks. And he invented cunning men, skilled men, to be in the towers and to shoot arrows and great stones. And the end of the verse says, And when he was, when he was, and he was marvelously helped until he was strong. But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to destruction. I'm going to stop there for a moment. Maybe the most famous of the Caesars, you remember, you wouldn't say it was Caligula or Augustus Caesar, the best known Caesar, surely it was Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar had a commander in his army, a genius. And he became a rival, even though he married into the family. And so what do you do? You get jealous, you get rid of the man. So he sent him to the innermost parts of the earth, which happened to be Israel at that time. And he sent him with a great panoply of, you know, men with wonderful helmets, plumed helmets, horses that had wonderful blankets, all lovely designs on them. And when they arrived on the shores of Israel, as we would say today, the people were astounded. They thought they'd dropped out from another world. They'd never seen men with these gorgeous plumes, never seen men with swords and all the accoutrements that they had. And they stood aghast, particularly when they lined up all the horses, and men went on horseback through the holy city. They took this famous man Pompey around and showed him this place and that place. This is a historic place. This is something to do with antiquity thousands of years ago. But he said, what's that building there, that large building? That's the temple of the most high God. What God? We have hundreds of gods away in Rome. Not like this one. This God lives in this temple, and the men that live in it are holy men. There's an outer court, there's a holy place, and there's the holiest of holies. Yeah, but who is this God? He said, oh, well, they gave him a name. Call him Jehovah, for short. He's the one that put the stars in their places. He made the stars. Outer court says he made the stars, those heavenly flames. He counts their numbers, calls their names. His wisdom's vast and knows no bound. A deep where all our thoughts are drowned. But saints are lovely in his sight. So this man said, I want to see that. Oh, you can't see that God. Only the priest goes in there. He goes one day, only once. He goes in for the whole nation. Nobody else can go. But I'm going in there. You can go in there. He said, tomorrow I'm going into the outer court. I'm going through the Gentile court. I'm going through all the other courts, and I'm going into the holy of holies. It was announced through Jerusalem that this invading king, ruler, was going into the holy of holies. Two thousand people came up behind this cavalcade of horses. And as they went to the temple, and this illustrious man got down from his horse and began to walk into the temple, they all fell on their knees screaming, Don't! Don't do it! Don't do it! Why? They were remembering this very event when Uzziah did it. What did he do? He said, I manage the government. I manage the army. I manage the economy. I'm a genius. And it's my right to minister there in the temple. They said, you can't do that. What did he do? He went in the temple. What happened? It says 80 men jumped on him. Well, how in God's name can one man fight off 81 men because he was demon possessed? That's right. It was the energy of hell. We've had some demons like that. You don't remember, dear Lord, I remember the marching armies when Hitler made the world to tremble before him, Mussolini before him, Stalin. Was it Stalin? We talk about the massacre of the Jews. Stalin put together, put to death more than 6 million of his own people. They're all going to rise at the judgment. Heinrich Himmler said, I shall jump into my grave with joy knowing that I personally obliterated 4 million Jews. His problem is not jumping into his grave. It's when they jump out of the grave. To meet 4 million people he slaughtered? And he's to give an account for everyone? So this man goes into the temple. Determined to minister, 80 people jumped on him. Read the story. Four scored, plus Isaiah, jumped on him and he shook them all off. What happened? Immediately he was smitten with leprosy. In the case of Pompey, he went to the outer court and they kept saying, please turn back, turn back, turn back. No. We don't have a God so majestic in my country. Our gods are strange gods. We do offerings to them. We do this, that, and the other according to what they demand. But we don't have a God that can make stars and make the heavens and make the sun and make the seasons of the year. And he said, please don't go. You'll die. Why? Because his glory is brighter than a million suns. It's called the Shekinah glory. And it's behind that curtain which is six inches thick. And if you get in there, you'll die. He's still pushed on. They still pull at his coat. Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go. And he, he too fought them off. And he said, pull that curtain back. And finally they pulled the curtain back and it was as black as night. He burst into anger. He said, what? I've come through all those dangers to come here. I brought all my garrison of soldiers. We brought all the pomp and display of our nation. And here it is as black as night. There's not a person here. You said his glory was brighter than the sun. Where is God? I don't want to see historic things. I don't want to see a fancy priest in their robes. Show me God. So what do you do at your church? I went to a church two years ago. I preached with T.R. Kendall who succeeded Martin Lloyd-Jones away there in London. And I knew Martin, talked with him often. But anyhow, when I got there, it was 35 acres of land. And this gorgeous building holding almost 3,000 people. We got 2,500 a night, almost all preachers. And it was very good. But every time I went up, I saw all the acreage outside. This is for tennis courts. That's for a football team. That's for something else. What in God's name do you want those for? Over a hundred years ago, Andrew Bonner said, I looked for the church and found it in the world. I looked for the world and found it in the church. What would he say today? Why, they made a show of that Baptist church away there in Houston, Second Baptist. It's got five sauna baths. Next Sunday I'll be preaching to the Baptists. I told them once, I said, I didn't know you're so dirty, you needed five sauna baths. They have a sports program as good as any university in the country, but there's no glory of God there. So anyhow, this furious man stamped around, hoping God would turn up. And all he would say is, where is God? Where is God? I've seen kings of the earth. I've been to the greatest banquets in the world, but oh, I so want to see God, I so want to see God. Your youngsters come to church. They come to the outside of the church. They come past the tennis court. They come past the football court, maybe. Or the racquet court or something. And they come into the sanctuary and there's nothing there. And they go out and say, where is God? Well, you're not concerned about an eloquent preacher, a fellow who fulfills the laws of homiletics. His sermons are classical specimens of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude and everything you can get. They're not concerned. They want something that stirs the conscience. They want something that makes eternity real. They've lived so long for the things of the seen, they want to see the things of the unseen. And you don't show them. You sport your skills. You juggle with words. You feel glad when somebody says, oh, you talk better than Dr. Bracey or better than Spurgeon. Forget it. That won't be what the hell it means when you die. When he was strong, his heart was what? Lifted up to destruction. When he went into the temple. You know, I could almost laugh, but I cry when I see guys begging for money on TV and they say, this is a non-profit organization. How do you buy a private jet out of non-profit? Do you think a prophet would have a jet? He'd come to town on a bus or a skateboard. Dear God. It seems the richer men become outside, the poorer they become on the inside. The more power they have with other unions and other people and other, if you like, seminaries. The less holy ghost power. God is a jealous God. As we said last night, the spirit of the Lord came upon Samson. As I said, the Greeks talked about, was it the Greeks, talked about the aphletas or the nimbus. We talk about unction. You can't buy it. You can't make it. You can't sell it. You can't give it to anybody. It's God's prerogative. And he's a jealous God. God doesn't care whether you shout like this, I always said American, Englishman, or whether you cry like our David until he gets boiling over. That's nothing. I've seen, time after time, I've seen G. Campbell Morgan come to the desk. He never raised his hand. He never raised his voice. But, boy, the power of God was there. The same was true of Samuel Cudwick. The same was true of Martin Lloyd-Jones. Different styles. But, you know, I believe in this crisis out in history. The greatest privilege in the world is to be a minister. And greatest still to be a prophet. Isaiah is linked with the greatest men that ever walked this earth. Not men that walked on the moon. Not men that walk on the bottom of the sea. But men who walk with God. There's a great book on Isaiah by Dr. Bux Basin. He was a brilliant Jewish scholar in this country. And he was converted to Christ. And in that he says, he talks about the prophet. Now, in my judgment, the prophet, the true prophet, they're God's emergency men for crisis hours. America needs prophets or she'll die. But she needs a prophet in every pulpit. So Bux Basin says that the prophet, by the very nature of his calling, is a tragic figure. He suffers with the people. He suffers for the people. He suffers by the people. The prophet, by his very status, he has a fierce loyalty to God. He has a broken heart over a nation. Why did Jesus walk, weep over Jerusalem? He looked down. He remembers. He says, how can I walk down those streets? Isaiah walked down those streets. All the great prophets walked down those streets. This is their last chance. I'm the last. What did he say when he went into the temple? I'm trying to think of the word there for a moment. Oh, my house, he said. My house should be called. But he doesn't say that. He says, your house is left desolate. Who cares a hell of beans how many members you have in your organization? It's no good. All they do is give you a bit of money. You get a project out. They back you. They love you. They're kind. Forget it. Get away from the visible to the invisible. Get away from the soulish. Get into the eternal. So again, I say that the preacher, by the very nature of his calling, at least, the prophet, is a very, very tragic figure. David, I'm glad for what you said this morning. It stirred me. You see, we've got so used to big names and big salaries and all this kind of junk. It's ridiculous. I hang on to God for revival. I prayed for revival for 60 years at least. I used to go out in the forest in England after I read the life of Raynard. Tie my mother's little dog to a tree and get it. I went to a holiness church. You never raise your hand. I raised mine in the forest. I cried. I wept. I went and stood on a hill and looked over the city. And I said, Lord Jesus, you prayed over the city. And visitation came to Jerusalem, pray over my city. I didn't know across the town there's a little Pentecostal fellow, very despised. He had three breakdowns, not mentally, but physically. He fasted too often. His wife said, if you heard him pray, if you heard him praying in a room at the back, you think he was personally entangled with a devil. But when he stood up, and he was only a little guy, no personality, no all this showmanship, forget it. But three times had a breakdown. And he spent days in fasting and praying for that city. I didn't know that little boy. And I started praying and going into lonely places. I went out late at night, got up Sunday morning, and I lived outside of the city, went and prayed among the trees. So what? George Jeffries came to that town in 1927. And when he came, the largest building in town was packed to capacity, day and night, morning services, afternoon services, night services. People that were going yard to the cathedral went. He had no clerical attire. He had something we'd never seen. He had an anointing of God. I called my precious sister about a couple of months ago in England. She's 86 now. I said, dearie, when did George Jeffries come to town? She said, well, George and I were married in 1929. He came two years as I thought, 1927. I said, how is the church? After he left, there were so many people, they gathered together. And remember, that was 1927, and this is 19, what, 89? That's how many years ago? Sixty? Sixty-two. Do you know that church is the strongest church in town today? I said, Annie, how's that Pentecostal church doing? She said, they're enlarging it again for the third time. Oh, the glory passes with the first generation. It passes with the first hour, if all you have is an evangelist. No meeting is going to die in an hour if the Holy Ghost is there. It did like these, what draws me to these fellows here is this, that they pray three times a day. Some of you with a spare million bucks. Some of you got money. You'll get no reward for it up there. Give it to some of these fellows that are not looking for private jets and so forth. Let them buy a house of prayer in this city. And I'll be a regular visitor, I'll tell you that. I'll bring my boys. I'll bring my wife. But anyhow, the glory of God came, and that church is living today. Let me say this as quickly as I can. You know, we talk about tongues. You joke about it. Wait a minute. Every time there's been an outbreak of tongues, there's been judgment afterwards. When Stephen Jeffers was preaching in a church that had a wall like this, in a place called, in Welsh, Llanelli. That's a difficult word. And as he's preaching, everybody's looking that way. So he looked, and there on the wall was the head of Christ, the traditional head of Christ, beard, his head down and blood streaming down him. And as he preached on, suddenly people said, Ah! And he looked, and the head had moved from there to there, and it was a lamb on the wall. And smart fellow, he put a sheet of paper at the door, and he got the name of everybody who witnessed it. Somebody got on the phone to the newspaper office in, I've forgotten the town now, South Wales, and told them to come in. He wouldn't let them come in. Then there were some manifestations of tongues. That was about either June or July of 1914. I remember the day war broke out, the 4th of August, 1914, World War I. Two months before that, there'd been a manifestation of God and tongues, and immediately had war. There was a great outbreak of tongues in about 1937 in England, and I'm not slurring it anywhere. It's a Holy Ghost moving of God. Dear God, when people go to church, and remember, we don't have automobiles. How in God's name did 27,000 people listen to Spurgeon? You know this thing's a killer. All these should be thrown in the sea when I get my voice back. Spurgeon preached to 30,000 people, no amplification. People tell me I'm old. What's wrong with being old? I'm not antique. Moses didn't start preaching until he was 18. At 80, I mean, big difference. Wesley preached. When he was 80 years of age, he preached to 80,000 people. He said, at 85, I preached better than I did at 35. I'm looking forward to that. I'm going to come and preach here. I was going to say we're an odd couple. I've got the most lovely wife in the world. Do you know we never buy each other presents? We never celebrate birthdays. We never celebrate Christmas. I said to Martha, darling, I've got lovely roses. She said, they'll be dead in two days. Give the money to missions. Martha and I saw some, so she said, we don't need it. We've lived till now without it, so we'll live on. Give the money to missions. Very discouraging. No. Let me say this quickly. Those movings of the Spirit of God, in either June or July of 1937, the great Keswick meeting was on. There were about 7,000 or 8,000 people there. And one night a man preached in anointing of the Spirit. A man jumped up and said, I'm guilty of sin. I'm filthy. I'm polluted. God have mercy. I'm a deacon in a church, but I'm unclean. I'm unclean. He hadn't got sat down. A woman over here stood up. Then somebody else stood up. And then somebody else stood up. And Keswick isn't used to that. It's emotion. You say, I don't have emotion. Well, you've got a friend. His name was Hitler. He said he didn't have any either. Your preacher doesn't have any. Tell him he's a friend of Hitler. Tell him I said so. I'm not afraid of emotion. I'm afraid of emotionalism. When you sing a chorus just to get... I don't make altercoles like that, as you know. I challenge you to use your intellect. I try to get not just to your mind. I try to get to your conscience. And then you realize your uncleanness and vileness. You don't have to beg people. So anyhow, two lady friends of ours, ladies that came to our church, were sitting behind George Jeffreys. The next morning when they went to the meeting, they said, Mr. Jeffreys, what did you think of the meeting last night? Oh, he said, God fiddled this place. Well, what did you think of the man that stood up and closed the meetings when they were making confession? He said that was terrible. Now this was his version. He may be wrong. I know what he means. He said, had that meeting gone on ten more minutes, the whole place would have melted. They'd be on their knees crying to God. The Holy Ghost would come. They'd be speaking in tongues. Whether it would speak in tongues, I don't care. But they'd be broken. You don't want to stay on your seat. The ground is too high when you feel broken before God. You don't care who's looking on. Listen, preacher, when you stand at the judgment before billions of people, are you going to say to the people, please close your eyes. I lived in Kansas, and I didn't do too much in my church. So please, folks, forget it. You're going to see the blazing eyes of the Son of God. As Dr. Chosen said to me one day, not one man in a million will walk up to Jesus and look in those blazing eyes that come with us. We're so earthbound. Christians, preachers are mesmerized by materialism or fascinated with trivia. We've got to get to the place where you and I can lift a congregation into the presence of the Holy God if they stone us. Leckie is a secular historian, not a Christian historian. And he says when the bloody revolution swept over France and swept the monarchy into the garbage can and put up their flag, liberty, equality and fraternity, then Leckie says that same flood of hatred and blood and slaughter was going to come into England. And he says two men raised up their hands and stopped it. They didn't. I talked with Martin Lloyd-Jones, and he said, Mr. Rainer, the Methodists are wrong, and the Wesleyans and others, the Nazarenes. There wasn't a Wesleyan revival, really. It was a revival of George Whitefield. It was Whitefield that read a little book which you can buy now by InterVarsity Press, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. He was like Wesley and Charles and John. They were scholars, brilliant men, full of religion. They could recite the Ten Commandments, recite Pearson's outline. I forgot what you call that, but anyhow. But the fact was that God came and awakened them. And then when they were awakened, here you've got this brilliant man with an impeccable morality, a scholar, a genius. And he writes on, can it be the second stanza? What does it say? Long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and nature's night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flame with light. My chains fell off. What happened? Charles Wesley got on a boat. They weren't allowed to come up the river. Came to Georgia, weather like this. Slept in the forest. Woke up with his hair fast in the mud. He said, I got one arm free, got my hair free, got my other arm free, got my legs free. Stood up and pronounced it and sang the doxology. Why did he come? Because he believed Indians were lost without God and without hope. But here's the thing. I'm going to start preaching, is that okay? You'll hear things in Australia I heard when I was there 20 years ago. You know, there are cliches amongst the Christians. One of the horrid one is this. You know, you can be so heavenly minded, you know earthly use. That's not the problem with my generation. We're not so heavenly minded, we know earthly use. We're so earthly minded, we know heavenly use. God won't trust us. You say, it seems Jesus loves me. Or you say, I love Jesus. I don't believe you for a minute. When the World Series, not the World Series, what was it you had the other week? Super Bowl? How many of you guys spent hours in front of the Super Bowl? How many minutes did you spend with God? The world's on the edge of hell. Supposing we don't have a war with Russia, Armageddon's coming. God isn't going to alter his schedule because some people don't think it should be done. God is on the throne. I'll tell you, he's on the throne. I'll tell you something right here. He's not sitting there nervously waiting for Gabriel to hand him an envelope to say that the theologians in Dallas have decided his book's invaluable. Forget it. God's word is the same whether men believe it or they don't believe it. In a year, I'll tell you what, okay? People scorn vision. If you have a vision without a task, you'll be a visionary. If you have a task without a vision, it's drudgery. But if you get a task wedded to a vision, that will make a missionary. The greatest need in the Church of Jesus Christ today is vision. In the year that King Uzziah died, now, I saw the Lord. He'd been looking at the wrong king. He thought they were going to do like David mentioned yesterday. Get the right man into the White House and change things around. These Reconstructionists, let them read. Arnold Toynbee is maybe the greatest of modern historians. He says that 19 times men have built a permanent foundation for civilization and 19 times it's fallen down. Is it going to stand up again, David? No way. They're building with the same rotten depravity. Man's heart is, you can educate his head as much as you like. He's a devil on the inside. All the psychology in the world, most of it junk anyhow. I believe the psychologists, when the leading psychologists get together and say we can't live in this civilization anymore, we've got to report. The guy's been up the Amazon. He went up the Amazon, up the Orinoco River. There are people there living as they lived 6,000 years ago. They've long hair. They're savages. They're brutal. They're murderers. Let the psychologists prove it. Those psychologists live off the sick people. Dear God, I wish I could turn things around. Oh, you know, I have some trouble. I'll get rid of it this week. I'm going to a meeting. Oh, the lovely man coming to town. He's going to talk on inner healing. Forget it. Your problem, you don't need inner healing. You need inner cleansing. Read all the psychology you like. Won't help you. So the revival that came through the Westleys and George Whitefield that transformed England, that same God is the same God. We have the same sin here. We have the same needs here. But we have the same God there. And God is going to raise up men like that. I'm absolutely convinced of that. I don't think he's going looking for the 12 best students in seminaries. He's going to surprise us. Where did Jesus go looking for his 12 disciples? Did he go to the high priest? Did he go to the local college? No. Listen, you rich preachers, you've had your day. You multi-million dollar TV evangelists, you've had your day. God's going to take the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh, no scholarship, no genius, will strut in his presence. Let's take these three words a minute here. The first word is woe. The second word in seven is loathe. And the third word's in go. Here is a threefold vision. In the year that King Uzziah died, you see, he got his eyes off the king. He got his eyes off the army. He got his eyes off the recovered economy. He got his eyes off everything. And suddenly he realized, the king's gone. Now don't you say, Lord, give me a vision, because I'll tell you what, he may take your dearest friend. That friend of yours isn't a friend, that person that comes and talks with you till nearly midnight and waits your time. God will move somebody out of your life so you may see the king. I saw the Lord high. It was a vision of height. It was a vision of depth he saw into himself. It was a vision of breadth he saw the world. It was a vision of deity he saw the Lord high and lifted up. What were the cherubim singing? Omniscient, omnipresent, and omni... No, no, they were singing about the character of God. So it was a vision of... an upward vision of deity. And then it was an inward vision of depravity. And then it was an outward vision of duty. He saw the Lord in his holiness. He saw God. Who did he see? He saw Jesus. That's what it says in the 12th chapter of John, doesn't it? They spake his ears when he saw Christ. God has seen no... Nobody's seen God. Doubted, uh... Yahweh, whether he's right or wrong. He said, we never see the Father. He saw way in eternity. He's the Spirit. All we see is the Son. The Lamb is in the midst of the throne. That's going to be awesome. Look, when you get under the weather, don't get under the weather and read Romans 8, 28. You can take that backwards way. Read the book of the Revelation. See what's laid up for us for the people of God. Forget all the trivia around you. As I say, do you think that when Moses was having a bad time on the backside of the desert, do you think that the day when he heard a roar in the camp and it was his sister getting everybody to gossip and criticize him, do you think when he turned and saw the high priest who had a plate on his head, holiness unto the Lord, and got a calf, a golden calf, and the people were naked and dancing around like a bunch of heathens, do you think in that critical moment when he felt crushed, everything against him, the high priest had failed him, his sister had failed him, his sister had failed him, do you think in that terrible moment as the sun went down, he ever dreamed that one day it would stand on the Mount of Transfiguration? Do you think he ever dreamed that one day in heaven, whoever leads the orchestra would say, now please, we're going to change it. You're going to hear something greater than Hamel's Messiah. You're going to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. That's maybe the greatest song ever made, wasn't it? In Genesis, Exodus 15? The song of Moses? You know, I don't know the presidents in America. There used to be a very great president, one of those fellows that used to go shooting safaris in Africa. Teddy Rose, he felt good. He came to New York, and as the ship came to the dockside, there were hundreds of cameras there, and I don't know if they had radio even in those days. Anyhow, there were thousands waiting. This man had got some new trophies, and here he was. And as he came down the gangway, the people began to cheer, to shout. Leave your heart, don't leave your brains. They began to cheer and to shout. And here's a mystery looking over, all scarred, tired, had a rough time. Things hadn't gone very well. Finances hadn't been very good. And here's everybody screaming for a president. Oh, you could hear them shouting, Teddy, Teddy, Mr. President. What did you shoot? They were shouting everything. And the poor mystery's there, he could hardly hold up on the rail. And he said, the devil said to me, you see what he gets? He's going home to a mansion. He's going home to a big pension. He's going home to a lot of adulation. What have you got for 25 years in the mission field? You're broken down, you're worn out. What have you got? And he said, just as the devil finished saying, look what he's got, what you've got. He said, the Lord said in the other ear, Teddy, you're not home. Er, no, C.H. Morrison. What was his first name? Charles, I think. He said, the angel said to him, but Charles, you're not home yet. What's Roosevelt going to have at the judgment? We're not home yet. But we all have a foretaste of glory divine every day that this world has no. What's the world? To me, it's the dung heap. I can understand Paul saying, everything that you call wonderful and classical, he said, I count all things but dung. Here's a man with the greatest brain the world ever saw, a genius. He survives every attack of the devil. He goes on and on and on and on. Why? Because one day he met a preacher. No, he didn't. He met Jesus. And don't believe the lie of the preachers that he finished in Romans 7. He didn't finish dying. It didn't say there, as it says in Romans 7, that was the phase. He didn't say, it's not I, but sin that dwelleth in me. He said, it's not I, it's Christ that liveth in me. Nobody could do the things this man did unless he had the indwelling Christ. I'm going to keep referring to David here, doesn't he up there? Because the thing you said the Lord said to me this morning, I don't usually make notes. I made a few. David said, I left mine on the desk last night. And they're here. And he said, I'm not going to use them. Good thing he didn't. He'd still be preaching. It's one thing to have a blessing, a quickening in this meeting. It's another thing for that thing to carry on. Wesley was born again of the Spirit of God. As I said last night, the doctrine of justification was not invented by Luther. He rediscovered it. The doctrine, the glorious doctrine of sanctification was not invented by Wesley. He rediscovered it. And he preached it. And he lived it. Do you know when he died, he left six English pound notes, a handful of books, a Geneva gown he preached in, six English pound notes. Six English pound notes, six silver spoons, a handful of books, a Geneva gown, and let me see. There's something else he left. Oh, I know. The Methodist church. He could have been the prime minister of England. Or the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a graduate of the finest schools. But let me go back here a minute. I have a number of hymn books. I treasure hymn books. My office is full of pictures of eagles. I like to preach on them. I didn't have a chance. But I like the old hymns. And if you want a book that will help you in your devotional life, there's a book called The Christian's Book of Mystical Verse. It's the best collection of devotional hymns, poets. Dr. Chaucer put it together. It cost you $10 in hard baggage. You should carry it everywhere you go. You need two things when you go into the closet to pray. Your Bible and a good hymn book. Charles Wesley set his brother John's theology to music. Here he is marching around England, getting thousands of people that would stand in the rain. Do you know nearly 10,000 people stood in the snow on Boston Commonwealth to listen to Whitefield? Now, dear God, you have to have foam rubber seats, help you to go to sleep and all the other junk in church. But there's such a magnitude about the preaching people. For God's sake, you don't worry about cold feet when you've got a burning heart. You don't worry about the clock when he turns and he's on a meeting. So, Charles Wesley wrote to him for his brother. And it says this, Give me the faith which can remove and sink the mountain to a plain. We're surrounded by mountains now. We've more opposition in America today than anywhere. And, you know, the failure in America is not because of the strength of humanism. It's because of the weakness of evangelism. We try to blame the devil for everything. Alexander White went to visit a woman. It was pouring rain. He was soaking wet there. Ah, he says, Doctor, it's fine to see you this bonny day. Bonny day? He says, Lady, I'm sore. My trousers feel like two sacks of water. But she says, Oh, she said, it's a beautiful day, Doctor. Why is it a beautiful day? She said, because all the other days are not like this. He said, Lady, you say something good about everything and everybody. I believe you'd have a good word for the devil. She said, it's very industrious. Can you imagine the people that morning at, what was it, 16th, 17th century, when John Livingstone, not David, priest at Cambuslang or Kilsyke, there were 5,000 people there that morning. They had communion. They sat in a field. The Holy Ghost came upon them as they celebrated the Lord's Supper. I don't think the Lord's Supper should be tacked onto the end of a morning service. Forget it. Take the whole morning. Take the whole evening. It's the most gorgeous thing we can celebrate till Jesus comes. Anyhow, the Holy Ghost came that morning. And the record, I have it in a book, in two or three books, 500 people that morning passed from death unto life. And five years after, 90% of them were still walking with God. They didn't hear a sermon. They heard God. Give me the faith which can remove and sink the mountain to a plain. Give me that childlike praying love which longs to build thy house again. Thy love, let it my heart, O power, and all my simple soul depart. Now, now, listen to what he says. Here's a man blazing with God, enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart with boundless charity divine. So shall I all my strength exert and love them with a zeal like thine and turn them to a pardoning God and quench their brains in Jesus' blood. Oh, you say that two centuries ago. Okay. You know, there are vessels unto all vessels to desert. There are vessels of silver, vessels of gold. God's use. Where, where is he? That little boy, that little black boy at the back there. Is he the one that's the receiver for the... Are you the footballer? Raise your hand. What? Oh, you used to be. Well, you're not shrinking much anyhow. Pardon? Bill? E-Bill? E-Bill, I thought he said E-Bill. Yeah, well, somebody, if you heard you've got an omission fee, oh, they say, oh, he's a big song man. Listen. John Wesley did his job, Charles. One of the greatest persons I ever... I didn't meet her. I was preaching in Ireland behind me. The church was made of tin. And at the back of me was a picture of a woman. She had a lace choker collar and lovely little curly hair. Look, the very... I thought it was my mother's picture. She was very beautiful too. I take after my father. That little woman got a burning compassion for India. And what did she do? She got a one-way ticket and stayed there 35 years. She gathered 350 little orphan children. I met a man recently and his daddy was the hero in a story I heard of 50 years ago. He was coming to India and he was going out to evangelize a mission, a village, and as he went he saw a woman coming down the road. She had a gorgeous little child in one hand and she had a little crippled child in the other hand. So this woman went out and did her day's work. Coming back at night, she saw the same woman with one child. And she said, Well, I think I saw you this morning with a lovely little boy dancing at the side of you, yes? And with my crippled baby girl. Well, where did you go? I went to make an offering to my God in the river. Why didn't you throw the crippled child? Oh no, I give God my best. She'd thrown the healthy little baby to the beast, I think to the crocodile, and kept the worst. Okay, Amy Wilson went, Amy Wilson Carmichael went out there. She didn't do a calisthenics. She didn't go to the health club. She was a petite little gorgeous looking woman. She went to Jesus one day and said, Oh, here it is. All I have. Take it. Do as you will with it. It's okay. And the Lord took it. What did she do? She went to India. Do you know why she went? Because the fire that God put in her was fiercely burning in her. She wrote this to this little frail woman who in the last three years of her life had to be lifted in and out of bed. She wrote, Give me a love that leads the way, a faith which nothing can dismay, a hope no disappointments tire, a passion that will burn like fire. And here's the classical part of it. Let me not sink to be a clod. Make me thy fuel flame of God. You see, some of you want to shine. You don't want to burn. You can't burn a candle without it being burned away. And she laid it all on the altar there. And what happened? She saw revival.