Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the critical state of the Church, likening it to a deep sleep while the enemy sows discord and error among believers. He draws from Matthew 13:24, highlighting the urgency for Christians to awaken and actively engage in spiritual warfare against the forces of darkness. Ravenhill stresses the necessity of prayer, sacrifice, and a genuine commitment to spreading the Gospel, warning that complacency leads to spiritual decay. He calls for a revival of fervent faith and action, urging believers to live with eternity's values in view and to recognize the cost of discipleship. The sermon serves as a wake-up call for the Church to rise and fulfill its mission in a world increasingly hostile to the truth.

Matthew chapter 13 and verse 24. Matthew 13, 24. And notice the word, it's very necessary to realize this first word, another parable put you forth to them, because it's already given them a parable about sowing. And the thing that really has gripped me today about this is not just the parable, three simple words that are very, very applicable to the day in which we're living. Matthew 13, verse 21. Five. While men slept. I believe that's what the Church of Jesus Christ is doing today, sleeping. Remember Paul in Ephesians 8, says, Ephesians 5, says to the people of that day, awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. Well, sleep isn't death, but it's the same. All our powers are suspended. A man is unconscious, he's out of touch with the world around about him. While men slept. And it goes on with a parable about the sowing. You know the actual, the whole, that whole theme is condensed for us in the last verse of Psalm 126. What does it say? He that goeth forth. What? Weeping. What else? Going, weeping, bearing, coming, rejoicing, bringing. It's as simple as that, and as profound as that. If a man is sowed seed, there's a number of things. Number one, there's a cost of the ground, he has to buy the ground. There's the labor, there's the sweat, there's the toil, there's the purchasing of the seed. And yet it's all condensed together. There has never been a revival without the breaking up of the fallow ground. A young man called me yesterday, and boy, was he in desperate sweat. Father Abner, Father Abner. I thought maybe his wife was chasing him or something, he sounded breathless. I said, what's your problem? Father Abner, we've prayed, we've fasted, we've even cried, and no revival's come. I said, well that's strange. How long have we been praying? Two days, he said. Isn't that wonderful? Do you think you could break up the fallow ground on the wheat fields of Kansas in two days? I said, if we need to get a copy of the little book, The Invasion of Wales, the young man there was 26 years of age when God took him. He had already prayed 13 years. If the Christians are the salt of the earth, I'm sure they are, the praying people are the salt of the church. He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall possibly get a harvest. No? That must be the perverse version. What is it? Shall doubtless. I'm trying to make a tape this week that's going to go to 34 different nations again, giving some advice to young people. I say to them, get right into the 11th chapter again. Boy, they led a baptism, we've never had one before. Get into Hebrews 11. As I said to a very well-known preacher, you know him, came to see me this week. I said, you know, there are lots of things break me up, but nothing breaks me up like Hebrews 11. Reading about men and women like us, they subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Women received their dead race to life again. What bigger stretch of miracles do you want than that? Then there are people obscuring that others, others had chance of deliverance, they wouldn't take it. A brother told me today, been looking in that book of, can't remember the fellow's name, but the martyr, the martyr book, martyr's mirror. If you want something to shake you up, get a copy. It's about $30, but my good generous friend will sell you it for $22. You know we don't know we're alive. What happened while men slept? Well, it tells you that while men slept, the enemy got in and sowed the seed. This wretched thing about the petells coming up every day on TV, what happened? While they were sleeping, the enemy was doing his damnable work. Thank you so much. I might drop this too. I won't put it there. But the enemy is sowing his seed. You hear the news tonight? Well, a few days ago, I got a paper and it said the judge in where? A judge in Alabama had said that if you're going to teach, you have to teach the creationist theory as well as the, wired for sound. You must create, teach the creationist theory alongside with the junky theory of the monkeys. I mean, I've no quarrel with the scholar. If he wants to go to the zoo to see his relatives, that's his business. I'll take them some peanuts. But now, what did they say? The Supreme Court, stupid guys, declared today that we cannot teach the biblical creation. One smart guy says we can't teach that trash anymore. You know, I believe in some of those guys and those Christian psychologists. When the psychologist says, you come to my clinic, doesn't cost you anything, there's a plate at the door, drop in whatever you want. Boy, he wants your 50 bucks before he tells you the lies. Why don't these guys that know so much about monkeys go up the Amazon without arms, without any guns, and evangelize in that area? You see, wherever this book, Liberty goes, Freedom goes, what's the difference between the United States of America and South America? Well, a bunch of fellows came from England and Holland. With what? Two things. Their Bibles, no, three things. Didn't know they all brought their own caskets. My mother got, my mother, my wife got me to choose a casket recently. She's not wanting to get rid of me, but she wants to know I'm comfortable. I said, let's, I said, let's go and see if we can't find a used one. It'd be cheaper. On book, when they came off the pilgrim fathers and mothers, they brought their wives with them, they brought their Bibles, they brought their caskets with them. What happened? That this was, the light's going out, was and has been, and pray God it will be, the most enlightened cunt in the world. What happened in South America? Priests went, they didn't take any wives, they used other men's wives. They didn't take the Bible, they sent it bound in a foreign language. And only in the last decade or so have they liberated it. Wherever this word goes, it's a lamp for our feet and a light. Now we say, why have we got all the problems in school? Because we threw 10 lamps out of every school, the 10 commandments. There's no mystery about it. Boy, I'm no genius, but I know, I know when they put the lights out, it's dark in the room. I know when you take the Bible out, it's dark. And we've done this in our homes, alas, very few homes, where the Word of God is honored and read and explained. Sowing the seed of discord, sowing the seed of error. I heard somebody saying recently, our magazine, well, take for instance, Decision Magazine has a circulation, or it had a circulation of 5 million. That's a lot. Except when you come to that wretched stuff that Tana, what's it, Tana, Garner, Ted Armstrong puts out. 20 million, every issue, in about 10 different languages. Boy, they'd money to burn. They're sowing the seed. There's an old song, I think I recall a hymn, it's a hymn, it's a poem. Men don't believe in a devil now as their fathers used to do. They forced the door of the broadest creed to let his majesty through. There isn't a print of his cloven hoof, or a dart from his fiery bow, to be found in church or world today, for the church has voted it so. Well, who is it mixes the fatal draft that pulses heart and brain? Who fills the beer, the beer meaning the thing they take the corpse out on? Who fills the beer of each passing year with a hundred thousand slain? Well, who dugs the step of a toiling saint? Who digs the pit for his feet? Who sows the tares in the fields of time, wherever God sows his wheat? For the devil is voted not to be, so of course the thing is true. What we simple folk would like to know, who's doing the things the devil should do? The devil alone should do. You see, we're de-myth, de-what, mythologizing the scriptures. There has to be a revival, I'm absolutely sure of that. Look at the error in the world tonight. I remind you again, somebody reminded me this week, these young Shiites and others, every time they hear somebody's being killed, they're lining up in Lebanon, standing in line from 17 to any old age up there, 17, 18, 19, asking, I want to go and die for my country, not fight for it, not live for it, die for it. Well, that's all Jesus Christ, he doesn't ask you to come and get rid of your lousy sins, so you won't go to hell, he says, come and die. You can't be a disciple. I said to a preacher today, do you say to young folk that come to the altar, listen, before you go away, renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, say, I put off every unclean thing, and I embrace everything that's pure and holy, and right here I take up my cross. Because Jesus says, if you don't take your cross, you cannot be my disciple. And that's a tremendous statement, that we lose all our rights. The moment we say, I take Christ into my life, I have nothing. I have no rights to myself. It may not cost you much to say, take my silver and my gold, you don't have much. But when you sing, take my life, remember the moment you said it, we read this in eternity. I read again this week, where G. Campbell Morgan said, remember, a man, what's the phrase he used? A man is not an apostate, because he propagates error. He's an apostate, because he knows the truth and won't accept it. He's living below standard. But we're in God's name, and all these people, I wonder how many kids now, they've been ambitious, they've got a style. I wonder if they like PTL. I say this, as I'll answer before God, maybe the greatest show, when we get to the judgment seat, will be a man who worked 20 years to get 200 million dollars to buy 200 million dollars of wood here in Stubble. The whole thing's going to be burned up before God. There's only one way to live, and that's to live with eternity's values in view. If you do that, you won't care whether wear designer clothes or you don't. Whether you've got the worst looking car or the worst looking house, it won't matter at all. We used to sing a hymn when I was a little boy, and I'm glad we sang hymns and not so many choruses. He was not willing that any should perish. Jesus enthroned in the glory above, saw this poor fallen world, pitted our sorrows, poured out his life for us, wonderful love. The last time he says, he was not willing that any should perish. Am I his follower, and can I live longer at ease, with a soul going downward, lost for the lack of the help I might give? Perishing, perishing, thou was not willing. Master, forgive and inspire us anew, banish our worldliness, help us to ever live with eternity's values in view. I've been thinking about this very thing of sowing, and a friend wrote me a note today. It came, and it just put in, Satan seems to does his most critical work when men are asleep. It says, while men slept, the enemy came. People say sometimes, are you critical? I said, no, I'm a watchman. The watchman's on the wall, higher than this, and he doesn't have a bullhorn. He doesn't have a mic. He stands there day, and then he shifts for the night shift. He's on the wall, maybe 40 or 50 feet high, and he hollers to a man like that little guy, and he says, the enemy, the enemy, and he in turn shouts to the next man, who shouts to the next man, who shouts to the next man. You know, we read the bible as everything was electrified in those days. It was all man, it was all hard work, and they couldn't sleep. Napoleon was very, one of the greatest military strategists in history. People still study his military strategy. He appointed some men who were supposed to be the cream of the crop in his army, lieutenants and captains and majors, to go on night duty, and he put them all around an area where he knew the enemy would come. And I don't know whether you do it here, we have sheaves of corn in England. You stick them up like this, at least they're used to in the fields. And this captain is way on the edge of the field. The night was cold. He got cold, so he propped his gun up against the sheaves, and he slipped in, pulled his big coat around him, and fell asleep. Woke up in the morning, he looked, and there, all he could see were a pair of trousers. He crawled out at the other end and looked up, and Napoleon saluted him and said, now what? What, it'd be another captain to be in trouble, but it was the famous Napoleon, again the superman. Do you know when he lost the battle of Waterloo? On my birthday, 18th of June, 1845. That was my birthday, I mean, 18th of June, which was yesterday. I was the only one at school that ever remembered that. The master would say about 300 boys there, this is the 18th of June, what happened? June, what happened? Well, I was born. No, no, Napoleon fought the battle of Waterloo. A genius, and yet smart enough not to say, go through your alphabet, show me how you present arms. He goes when the fellow should be alert, looking for the enemy, and catches him. You know, God Almighty isn't going to judge us merely by the Bible verses we know. The trouble again is, we're living in a generation that's filled with apostates. All of us know to live better than we're living. We know to pray better than we're praying. We know to sacrifice better than we're sacrificing. And as I told you before, I don't know who said it, but it's smart. You never get a second chance to make a first appearance. One chance. These crazy folk talk about coming back a second time. It's a fashion in Hollywood now, I understand. Boy, when I look at some of their faces, they need a retread too. But they're saying, I've lived 200 years ago, 300 years ago. Do you know what the problem is? They're not even living now. They're dead in trespasses and in sin. Sure, they can throw a million dollar bash when there's some great situation on. They can have all the so-called luxury things of this world. Perishing things of clay, born but for one brief day. As I said last week, these horrible, wretched people who die with AIDS. Have you heard of one that said, look, when I die, put at least six back issues of Playboy in my casket? Put six copies of what's the other stupid thing they have? Some other silly girls magazine. I don't hear of them saying, I want to read, I want to die, I'm a communist. Put Karl Marx's Bible, the other kind of a Bible, put Karl Marx in my casket with me. I'm a Nazi, put Mein Kampf in my casket with me. They don't do that. They don't call their friends and rejoice they're going into eternity. It's only those of us who know the light and by the grace of God walk in the light. You know, it's a, I understand they had a good meeting last night. Any of you at the meeting with Jacob last night? Pretty good meeting out here. But you know what happened? Many of those kids will be at home tonight and their own parents will even try and destroy the seed that was sowed. They go to ungodly home. You remember what Abraham did? He made his offering. What did he do? He slew the beast, the birds here, the birds there, and he walked down the middle in the night beating off the birds of prey that were coming. I try to do that in a little way every day of my life. I know that as soon as somebody sows a seed somewhere up the Amazon or somewhere else, the birds of prey come, the unbelievers come, the liars come, the cheaters come, the false priests come. But the story says, remember the wheat and the tares, they grow together until the final day and it's the tares that are gathered the first, not the wheat. There's going to be a removal of a lot of these tares. I think God is starting a purging in the church and I pray God it will go on. What PTL has done and these others is only a sample. God is jealous for his church. He's jealous for his bride. Again, he's not coming for a limping old lady. All due respect to limping old ladies if you're here. He's coming for a bride, pure and spotless. How many of you know that lovely hymn of Rutherford's written where? 1550, the sands of time are sinking, you remember that? Well he has a verse in there, he says the bride eyes not her garments but her dear bridegroom's face. What all these folk want to be raptured for? Do they get intoxicated with joy every day, they kneel there and see his face by faith? Huh? Are they transported to the lakes and say, no God I wish I could, right now you come and get me. No, most people want to be raptured because they're in debt and distress, they're afraid of war, they're afraid of communism. A poll was taken recently across the nation, what is your number one fear? Oh my God, Panzer. What's your number one fear? A nuclear war. What's your number one fear? Russia may invade us. Went down the list like that, what's your number? Not one said they were, they were afraid of death. Not one said I'm afraid to stand trembling before an eternal holy God. Not one person said that, even amongst Christians. But what an awesome thing when we stand there. I think so often of the Apostle Paul standing before Felix, that must have been something. Felix and that dirty harlot he lived with, about the two most despicable wretches in history. And Felix trembled. It should be this guy that was trembling, after all Felix has a Roman army behind him. Felix is a conqueror, he's a king, he lives in a palace. This boy gets lodgings every year or two in a jail. It's the only place he can get a rest. Well, who's a happy man? Is this man bound because he's chained to a wall? No, he's free. The guy in gold and glitter, he's the man in bondage. And when Paul reasoned, boy, it must have been something to hear Paul preach, don't you think? What did he do? He reasoned with them about three things. What were they? Quaker meeting. Well, he got one, that's not bad. No, righteousness, judgment and, well, judgment and things to come anyhow. But he says, I remember on Mars Hill with the intellectual people of the world, Stoics, philosophers, poets, the cream of the crop. I think that Paul had prayed for years to get that chance. What a man he was. I'm going to spend at least 500 years with him in heaven, so if you see me talking for the Ferrar, stay out, you can have the second 500 years. Isn't it wonderful? He was born where? In the capital city of the world, Tarsus. He ended up in the military capital of the world. He went to the intellectual city of the world, Corinth. Went to the religious city of the capital of the world, Jerusalem. Intellectual city, capital of the world, Athens. And he's at home anyway. He's a man for all seasons and all reasons. Boy, they marvelled at him. This guy has no personal charm, you know, he hasn't a smile, as Dr. Chaucer used to say, a toothpaste smile. Sparkling personality and all the rest of it, you know. What did they say? These supermen all sitting there, pluming themselves. Here's Dr. so-and-so and here's somebody else. And all the philosophers, Stoics, Epicureans, poets, the biggest gathering of geniuses in the world. And Paul goes there, limping. How do you know he limped? Well, how could he be stoned all the time he was stoned and still be whole? His face is pleated with rot. It's been slit so many times with stones. A night and a day he's been in the deep. He has everything of adversity and calamity and tragedy, yet he has a faith unshakable, a joy unspeakable and a love that's unbreakable. That man was a headache to the devil. I think the devil gave every demon a half-day holiday when Paul died. He said, there won't be anybody like that clown around anymore. And yet that man stands, and to those men, boy, they the wisdom of the world there. What did he do? He said, you have gods here. He walked down Main Street and there's a temple here and a temple there and a temple. The streets were just embroidered, if you like, framed with temples to unknown gods. I know that I call it the sleepy Elizabethan English that gets me into trouble, but nevertheless in Acts 17 it said, when Paul saw this, his spirit was stirred within him. The literal translation is that when he saw that, he was beside himself with anger. How can you smart men, you study stars, you know history, you know philosophy, how is it you don't know God? How do you kneel to a dumb God like that? How do the Kennedys still light candles for a man that's been dead? And the candles can't help him and anybody else. And yet they still do it. And they have a sincerity. The trouble is that these people that go on pilgrimages that shame us. The sacrifice they make to climb mountains or go to a sacred place. Every Muslim wants to go to where? Mecca. Every Catholic wants to go to Rome. Well, thank God, as the good book says, neither in Jerusalem nor then anywhere else. In this place is where we worship. I remember going to Ireland and preaching in a hutch. It had no floor, just mud. And that was nice till it rained and then boy, we were knee-deep in slush. But that was one of the best prayer meetings I was ever in. We didn't have to pray, send showers of blessing, they were washing our feet. But I remember an old man muttered a prayer, he said this, it's in an old Methodist hymn book. Where'er we seek thee thou art found, and every place is hallowed ground. I'll tell you there are more prayers in aeroplanes in a storm than in most churches in the country. Everybody becomes religious. Bob Hope was in a plane one day and it was nearly going upside down. And so he said, let's do something religious, you know, they thought they'd say a prayer. So he said he passed his hat around. But that's about the essence of it for most people, isn't it? Now this doesn't mean when we go to bed tonight we should be waking because other people are waking. A hymn writer says, the sun that bids us rest is waking our brethren beneath the western sky, sky, and hour by hour fresh lips are making thy wondrous doings heard on high. It doesn't mean that. When a man is asleep it's insensible, there can be a fire there, he doesn't know about it, doesn't care about it. You know it's a wonderful thing to have this book, it's an awful thing to have this book. As the hymn says, what more can he say than to you he hath said. God hasn't two words to add to the book that he's given us here. Every word is here that's essential for salvation, for our wisdom, for our strength, for our inspiration. While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and then he went his way. If you read the other story there, there's a sowing of the seed which is called, I think, from the Greek darmo. And the thing is that when you sow the seed, if you add it in your hand you can't tell the difference between the true wheat and the darmo. You can't tell it till it begins to come up and sprout. Well look, so many things we have. We've got Christian science which is neither Christian or scientific. You've got all these wretched false cults, and yet many of them know more about the cult than our people know about the theology of Christianity. And they're busy sowing seed. There's no consideration of the cost. Let me wind up with this. If you have, if you have three children in your family, it's incumbent upon you at a moment that you and your husband pay their fare to a distant country. Support them while they're there, and pay for them to come home. You've no option about it. They must go for two years at least. If they're going to Japan, they can't say, oh well, we'll go and give out a few tracts in the street and say, you know what it is, C5O and people and all. They've to study the religion of the country they're going to for two years before they go. Oh we get a bunch of kids, go here, go there, let's give out tracts, let's go. For what? Your ego? Dear God, your wish has never been. You better just save the money and invest it and let somebody else put tracts there or something else. We're trying to do it in some easy way. But when it comes to this, whether you take the ground there or the ground in here, this is fallow ground, it's stormy ground. And only the breakings of God can really bring us to the place where he can put seed in us. I asked a preacher this week about his preaching. I said, do you realize? Oh he said, I realize what you said to me last time I was here, that if I go to preach, you can't break up the fallow ground, sow the seed, water the seed, and gather the harvest in 20 minutes. And so he changed his tactics. You see, we're all in a hurry to get this thing done, but it can't be done. In the previous story there, you have the law of multiplication. One seed in the ground, up comes an air of, we will call it corn in England, you call it wheat, and you find what, 30 little spiky things on it, 30 seeds, 50, 60, 80, 100. Well, Jesus is a supreme example. He is the bread of life. He's the corn that falls into the ground and dies. You know, we don't think much, do we? God did say, some people think, some think they think, some try to think, some don't think at all. I don't know what category they're in, but there you are. But look, you take that bread, we don't think much about it. Boy, one of the joys I had at home as a youngster was going to the house when mother was baking bread. I didn't like to go in when she was washing. The house smelled steamy. But oh, the bread. Mother used to get it, some of the neighbors used to get just the, what do you call it now, the wheat and grind it, and that was a performance. A grain of wheat, stick it in the oven. Then some big old Clydesdale comes and sticks its foot on top of it. But it germinates. It brings forth 40, 60, 80, 100 fold. Then it missions all the noise it is, and you put it in the machine and grind the life out of it. Then you grind the life out of it, you mix, make dough of it, make bread of it. Then you stick it in an oven and bake the thing, kill it. Then you pull it out and slice it. Then you've done it, you give it to some pagan that puts it in his teeth and tears it apart. Is that the price we pay? Sure it is. If you're not prepared to be torn apart, forget all about it. Fold your little arms, relax, be comfortable. The devil has sown his tricks amongst the Christians today. Be comfortable. Everything's comfort, comfort, comfort. Rock us in the cradle of prosperity. Give us a pillow called comfort. Don't disturb us. I tell you again friend, five minutes after you and I enter eternity, we wish to God we've been a thousand times more zealous, more faithful. Obviously what we've had for 25 years, we spent more millions in evangelism in America in the last 25 years than the rest of the world has since Jesus came to earth. But where are we? A drunken, backslidden, divorced nation with more crime than anybody else, with more teenage pregnancies than anybody else? The devil has sown the seed. Now I don't think these evangelists should have million dollar homes and I don't think the Pope should have a billion dollar home either in the Vatican. They're talking now again, I think I mentioned it last week, but it was mentioned this week again, the FCC is talking about putting all uh Christian services, all religious services off TV from here out. There's some agitation in the country to put the Revival, the King James Version down too. Wild men slept. What are we doing? Oh we've got volleyball for the young people in the church. Summer we've got baseball, we've got this, that and the other. Boy I'm glad I didn't go to a church with a sports program. I'd have been a backslider. Somebody at 17, I'm through, somebody gave me an abridged copy of the life of David Brainerd. I read it, instead of playing ball, I went over the golf course, got in the forest at night, tied my mother's little don to a tree and cried my heart out for Revival. Then I got boundaries, power through prayer. Determined to read it through and I said I'll go through the book. I didn't, the book went through me. Changed my life. Come on now, if you want to believe Schofield and sort the other strange Bibles around, they'll tell you the miraculous ended, there are no apostles and no prophets. Oh God be faithful. Cast out the apostles, cast out the prophets, but at the same time cast out the evangelists that are in the same verse. Get rid of the whole shebang, say Christianity is bankrupt. It isn't. God hasn't gone off production. God is making men. If I didn't believe some men here are moving up with God, I'd want to go. I believe God is shaping men and women in prayer here. Some of us won't be around too long. Somebody else is going to step in and take up and do what we haven't done. Come into dimensions of faith, dimensions of revelation. We're heading now for the most terrible time. Can I say one thing? I was reading that, is it 22nd or 23rd of Matthew today? When you see Jerusalem surrounded with armies. Here's Jerusalem, over here you have Iran. Russia here wants Iran so she can go straight to Jerusalem without getting around the seaway. Over here you've got Libya, so Libya cuts her off here. You've got Jordan there. You've got Russia up there. You've got all the nations of the world right now, right now, around Russia, pardon me, around, around Israel as we call it. And the scripture says watch. I thought of what Jesus says, watch. When you see these things, watch. Well if you watch you won't go to sleep. It's a day to be diligent. It's a day for clear, day for clear eyes. I seriously doubt that we'll be get through five more years without war. Isn't it strange? It was Iraq that started the war in the Gulf. It was Iraq that shot the shell into the ship. But we're not blaming Iraq for anything. It's all Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran. Iran, in case it sounds like he ran. Iran. It's Iraq that did it. We're not saying a word about Iraq. It's all Iran. We're already, we can't get out, we're in so far. The devil hates this nation, he hates every nation that has a true word of the living God. I like that hymn, stand up for Jesus, for strife will not be long. It won't be. We're going to need the blood for our constant protection. The blood that pleads for us at the mercy seat. We're at war, we've no option about it. All the wealthy nations of the world, all the heathen nations of the world, they're armed to the teeth, even in a natural sense. And yet God, as Napoleon said, God is on the side of big armies, is a lie. The word of God says it takes the weak things to confound the mighty, and the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. God's going to do a move, a work of his spirit, and no men will get the glory. Time and again, he gets, remember the time, I won't take the gold or the glory. Now he takes the stinking money, every dollar that goes to casinos, and dog tracks, and racing tracks, they're all soiled. And yet he takes over a million of them, blood stained, money, tear stained, beer stained, sin stained, and says, God sent this lousy stuff to get me out. But God's going to show us some glorious things. I love those early Pentecostal fellows. Do you remember Donald G.? Remember him? And who were the others? Donald G. and ever-increasing faith, man, I saw him, met him once. See everybody, you say ever-increasing faith, everybody knows there's only one man that had it. Donald G. and Smith Wigglesworth, and Harold Horton, and his brother, and Willie Burton. Willie Burton went to Africa. I had a pastor who worked with him. He'd always tell about Willie Burton. Willie Burton went up to Africa, went right up the Amazon there, and shifted it. He went up the Congo River, one of the longest, most difficult rivers in the world. Then he suddenly got some disease in his mouth. His teeth were going corrupt, and he was in shocking state. He got, he paddled in a steamer, no, a dugout canoe. Imagine, oh, I sat in one once, good night. Going two feet was too far. And he goes right down the Amazon, sees a doctor. The doctor says, there's only one thing, I must take every tooth you have. Where are you from? Oh, I'm up the Amazon. You must get every tooth out. So he said, I'll come back tomorrow. Took every tooth out of his head. And the doctor said, now go home, and come back in six months. I can't. Why? He said, it takes me six months to get home. And then it'd take me six months to come back. So what does a little man of God, do you know what he did? One of the craziest things you ever heard of, brother. He believed God. Do you know what? This generation of Christians is the most brilliant generation of unbelieving believers Almighty God's ever had. He goes to bed, he can't talk, hardly, his mouth is sore. But in the night he said, Lord, you turned water into wine. You can do anything that we ask. We take that out of context. In the 15th chapter, ask what you will. That's if you've been pruned. That's if God submitted you to all the stripping and taking everything away. You've no confidence in anything at all. He had no help, he had no money. There he is in terrible pain. He said, look, the miracle is normal with you, abnormal with me. You're a god of the miraculous. You're born of miracle. You died in miracle. You rose in miracle. Lord, he said, it's not hard for you to do a miracle and give me two sets of teeth by morning. What do you think happened? He broke, he woke up with pearly white teeth here and pearly white teeth there. Brand new? Sure. God doesn't make dentures. That's God. You know, no record's ever been written of Azusa Street or any other revival. There's so many miracles. I'm not hungry for that. I lived through a generation of it. We had a little man this height in England by the name of William, Jeffreys, Stephen Jeffreys. No ordination. Did one stupid thing, bought himself a dog collar. Rented a hall to see three thousand. A hundred turned up. His music director said, close the meeting, close the meeting. There won't be enough offering to pay for the lights. And he said, no. Well, how many are there in the meeting? He said, oh, maybe a hundred. Well, we can't stay here. He said, sure we can. Well, he said, what's going to happen? I'll tell you what's going to happen. He said, I'll preach a message on salvation. Nobody will raise their hand for prayer. I'll raise, I'll ask, anybody want to be healed? A woman will say, my boy has a shoe this depth, a boot that depth, a cork boot. He'll come on the platform. I'll pray for him. And his leg will drop like that. He'll run off the platform. His mother will run after him. The congregation will run after her. And tonight, three thousand people will jam this place. It exactly happened like that. Anybody want to be saved? No hand. Anybody want to be healed? Well, lady, what's wrong? My boy, his leg is five inches short. Bring him on the platform. Let us pray. So they all remember the script, you know, watch and pray. So they all watched. They did. They literally watched. He was watching. He knew what they'd do. They watched while he was praying. And he knew they were watching because when the boy's leg went down, everybody went, ah! So he knew the eyes weren't closed. The boy ran out. They began this procession of miracle. Night service, people went home to get a chair to sit outside the auditorium till the next day. Three services a day for three weeks. That town was rocked with the power of God. There's no stunting. He didn't ask you to sign. He didn't ask you to give so much money. They gave God the glory. Talk about praise and adoration and worship. Boy, they brought the place down. It's not only that I want to see. I want to see meetings where people go home and a man walks in and his wife says, what's wrong with you? He doesn't blaspheme. He doesn't drink. He doesn't want his TV. He doesn't curse the kids. He's transformed. He's a new creation. He's got a heart for God, a love for God, a love for everybody else. That's the thing that brings true revival. When people become so conscious that everything I have up to my body isn't worth a thing. It's all perishing. You can strip me my very shirt off my back, but I've got treasure in here. Moth and rust can't corrupt and thieves can't break through and steal. They're eternal. Sign 2. I'm going to ask you to pray tonight very specially because these dear Indian fellows, when they go off in a few weeks up to, where they go in Oklahoma and elsewhere, you know, they're going to hearts of men that are hard as this. They're going into spiritism. They're going into witchcraft. They're going in the middle of the devil's camp. Do you think he's going to welcome them? He's going to put every conceivable barrier he can against them. Sign 3. Brother Sonny's going down with a team of men, what is it, August? Next week. Glad I'm in time. He's going next week down to Houston and he knows Houston. There used to be a, what do you call it, a stevedore there or something. Dog hand. And he knows it. He's going on the strip and it's the biggest strip outside of, where? What's that? Yeah, it's a miniature fellowship. The streets are lined, lined, lined with what? Male prostitutes. With men who know they have AIDS and all the other devilish things. And they sport their iniquity. You hardly dare look at a woman, she thinks you're after a body. And they're going to take a team of young men right into the midst of that. Do you think the devil's going to surrender? The Word of God says the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. It tells us repeatedly the preparation of the heart is of the Lord. It's not just giving somebody a tract. Dear God, you can do that. You don't need any guts to do that, any grace, any love, any passion. But to step into the midst of a tide of corruption. You know these men are jailbirds, they're dirty, filthy, stinking rascals. They haven't a desire for purity or anything. But they're the ones that need the gospel. People are building their new churches outside the city. Salvation Army built theirs right bang in the middle of all the corruption. Carey went to the heart of the corruption in India. I preached in his church one Sunday morning. Not when he was there, but I preached in the church. Right bang in the hell holes. The opium dems were there. Prostitution places. And this is where we have to take light into darkness. And these dear fellows are going, if I were younger I'd want to go with them. So let's really ask God for a burden, not just now. And pledge we'll be praying for you every day. I will, dear brother, my dear wife. I should go to that hell hole. What do you think I'd do if my son was there? What would you do if your daughter was prostituting tonight? Would you just go to church and throw a buck in the offering on Sunday? You know, if you don't worship God six days a week, you sure can't worship him on the seventh. If your heart doesn't beat with love for him and love for others, you can't put a show on on Sunday, bless you, you're a hypocrite if you do. The gospel isn't something we just believe, we should behave it. The world seeks to death of paperback theology. It wants to see the church of the living God on the march. And it's time we were aroused. The church is sleeping and people don't want to be wakened up. One of the most thankless tasks is to work some grumpy old guy who's asleep and he's, what's wrong? They don't like it. Christians don't like it. Why get excited? Why get stirred? Others don't, but you're not others. I wrote to a young man, I'm through with this very thing, this week a man that I think has taken a second choice. I read, I said, I believe God gave you something better. I said, you can throw me out of your friendship circle if you like. But I said, remember the scripture says, hold fast to that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Not no devil take it, not God take it, not Gabriel. God has a crown for you. And you're going to keep adding to it. We used to sing as kids in England, when he cometh to make up his jewels, to be a jewel in the crown, to have a crown of righteousness, to have a glory, a crown of glory, to have a crown of martyrdom. We're not all going to be the same in heaven. The dying thief got there on the last breath. Do you think he's going to have the same reward as Wesley who sacrificed for 53 years? A gentleman, an aristocrat, and yet he slept in the mud in Georgia, froze to the ground, struggled to get one arm free, pulled to get the other three, got his legs free, then got his hair out of the stuff, brushed off the snow and sang praise God from whom all blessings flow. Boy, we'd have gone home on the next boat, wouldn't we? But there wasn't one. What does the old hymn say? These people, these martyrs, they climb the steep ascent to heaven through peril, toil, and pain. Oh God, to us may grace be given to follow in their train. I'm asking God for burdens I've never had, for vision I've never had, for passion I've never had. Boy, I could write books, never land a book on what God has done. But yesterday I had my 80th birthday. You know I was very cheered to have an 80th birthday because that's the time Moses started preaching when he was 80. So you've a long way to go yet. 80 years and look what he did. Renounced the kingdom, renounced the throne, became one of the greatest writers in history, wrote five fantastic books, became a prophet like unto the Lord himself. You see why people want to hinder you and get in your way is because you might outshine them and out pray them and out suffer them and out fast them. Boy, that's going to be something in eternity when we see ourselves as God sees us and begins to give us rewards. Don't sleep too much, not even physically. Sleep as little as you can, eat as little as you can within reason, pray, read the word of God and ask God for a new love for souls. I've said twice I'm going to finish, so did Paul and then he wrote another chapter. Yesterday I got a letter from a young man that 40 years ago in England was a milk man. He used to bring a about a five gallon can of milk to the door and we'd take a jug and he'd take a ladle and put milk in the jug. He wrote, Brother Raymond, I'm so glad to contact you again. I'm a preacher now and he went on to say what churches he had. Then he said this remarkable thing. We used to talk much about the books, Amy Wilson Carmichael and she was in India, you've heard us talk about her. He wrote to her and he wrote to her through her secretary and kept in touch with her till she died at 85 years of age. That woman who had 300, 400 orphans at a time and he got inspiration from a little frail woman that they had to lift in and out of bed. A woman that had a curvature of the spine. The last three years of her life had to be lifted in and out of bed and yet blazed away. The woman that wrote, let me not sink to be applauded, make me thy fuel blaze, let me thy fuel, flame of God. It's not what I have and bring to God that's the problem. It's what he'll bring to me if I'm totally subjected to him. Boy, sometimes I feel like a volcano inside of me. Sometimes feelings on the very eyes will burn out. I'm not trying to copy anyone else. I want to be Leonard Raymond by the grace of God. I want Sonny to be Sonny by the grace of God or Spencer by the grace of God or these precious family here. There's not much time to labor and love and look for the lost. I promise Melody Green today will pray they're having their, what do they have? Artist retreat starts Saturday night through Thursday. So let's pray God will come with a flaming word to these artists. And then remember again the Sonny and his team going down to that hell hole. Spencer and the others that go with him and others of you that may be laboring in your own way, brother. Anybody know where Little Texas is? Do you know where that is? There's a brother and his wife and children from Little Texas. It's in Alabama, isn't it? Well, I wouldn't have known, but he told me. But anyhow, here he is in big Texas now, all the way from Little Texas. God bless you. We trust your ministry will be blessed and enriched. God does great things in little places. Are we praying? Would you give me a chance? Let's go to prayer now.