In this sermon, the preacher reflects on the life of Moses and how God used him despite his mistakes. He emphasizes the importance of prayer and the study of God's word for preachers. The preacher also highlights the need for churches to operate in God's power and not just go through the motions. He shares a story of a man who was trained by God in the "university of silence" and encourages listeners to seek God's training in their own lives.

The following message was delivered by Reverend Leonard Ravenhill during a regular session at the Christ for the Nations Institute. We're speaking on the subject of prayer and abiding in Christ. Somebody once asked D.L. Moody how he knew that, could he prove the Bible was inspired and he said yes. I know it's inspired because it inspires me every time I open it. I think that's a pretty small answer and yet a very great answer too. I've never been you and I'm awfully glad about that. So I don't know how you react to the scriptures, I don't know how you react to the word when you read it, I don't know if you ever find that the Bible kind of explodes in your hand when you are reading it. There are times when I find this to be very real, as though the Bible suddenly explodes, gets hold of me and as I said before I want to try at least to talk about prayer tonight and I think it's significant that the disciples never asked Jesus to teach them to preach. He was the greatest preacher the world ever had and he preached the greatest sermon that the world has ever heard and when some very modern boys asked me in New York why we had lived 2,000 years and nobody had an answer to the problems of the world, I reminded them partly in the language of G.K. Chesterton that Christianity had not been weighed in the balances and found wanting, it had been tried, found difficult and rejected and we're not waiting for somebody to discover an answer to even to human problems because it's all there in what we call the the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon that the world ever heard from the greatest person that ever lived. But they never said Lord teach us to preach and they never said Lord teach us to do miracles, but at least on one occasion they did say Lord teach us to preach. Now here's an interesting thing, have you ever thought of this, in all the books you've read about prayer and everything else and even reading the Word of God there is no record in the Bible that Jesus ever prayed with his disciples. Ever thought about that, is there? He prayed for them. Again in the prayer that we call the Lord's Prayer, which is the disciples prayer, the Lord's Prayer of course is John 17 which is divided into three sections, verses 1 to 5 he prayed for himself and verses 6 to 19 he prayed for the church and verses 20 to the end he prayed for the world, which I think maybe is a divine order. Why didn't Jesus pray with his disciples? Well I can only give you again what I think because they'd be too embarrassed and I don't think they ever try and pray again after they'd heard him pray. I once did a two-week meeting for Dr. Tozer in what I used to call the highest pulpit in America. If you preach in his pulpit everything else is easy. He was such a profound theologian, he was such an amazing man of God and we had a series of two-week meetings there. Now I said in passing this morning that when the Lord Jesus received the anointing, I prefer that if you want to call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the disciples were to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire. I don't like the term baptism, it's too slang. You're going to quote it, quote the scripture. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with light. With a lot of baptism I'm afraid it hasn't got much fire in it anymore. But Jesus was not baptized with fire for the simple reason there was nothing impure in him to be consumed. It was the anointing, a signal anointing by the Spirit of God. And again we remember that when he came up out of the baptism, out of the water, the baptism, he was led into the wilderness by the Spirit, not led of the devil as some people say, he was led of the Spirit and he returned in the power of the Spirit. Not exhausted, not on the edge of a nervous breakdown, fighting every round with Satan and winning every time on every round and every level with him. I don't know whether it was there or in the experience that we call the garden of Gethsemane that the apostle is referring to in Hebrews when he speaks about the Lord Jesus who prayed with strong crying and with tears. Now the disciples didn't say teach us how to pray. I don't think there is a formula in prayer. There's a science in it but not a formula. You may not agree with a lot I say. You don't have to. You might be stupid if you did. But that goes for every preacher of course because they're all stupid. But always take whatever a preacher says and measure it by the word of God. Now this is a strange country isn't it? It's a young country compared with the ancient dynasties of say the empire of China or even the British empire. America is just a newborn babe in a crib playing with its toes. After all you're only 200 years old. So you're looking that the nation's only 200 years old. So compared with ancient dynasties America was born yesterday, she's dying today, she'll be dead tomorrow unless we have revival. It's as easy as that. Now America has produced some of the greatest rottenest things in modern history. I don't think anybody could stand erect and feel proud about Vietnam. I'm not taking issue with beatniks and others who yell about it. But all war to me is immoral. And there are lots of other things. You can go to India and pick up a beautifully bound copy of Shakespeare in leather and look inside and it will say printed in Russia. Printed in English in Russia. You can pick up a nudie magazine at the other end and look and it'll say printed in Chicago. And the film industry has certainly cursed the world. America has enough to make her crawl on her knees from here to eternity. But to balance the scales, you know you may not like that. I spoke like this at a meeting and a lady came up to me and she was pretty angry. You know ladies can get mad, I mean they practice so often. And this lady came up to me and she was really mad and she said, what are you talking about like that? You're in English, what are you talking like that in America for? What are you doing in America anyhow? And I said because Billy Graham's in my country. And sometimes it's a bit difficult to take from an Englishman. But let's face fact, this is this is the debit side. All the lousy, filthy, rotten things that are cursing the world. Not all of them, but many of them came out of America. Now what about the credit side? Well to just take one little section, America has had some of the greatest praying men in history. I have in my office, I have some pictures, Billy Graham's amongst them, and Dave Wilkerson, and Norman Grubb, and a few others, C.P. Studd. Then I have a picture of a man with a very benign kind of face. He's totally bald, just what he lost at the top he let go at the side. So he has two great big puffs of white hair on either side, or one on either side pardon me. And a beard right down here, snow white beard. And people will look at that kind of little gallery and say well who's that, who's that, who's the old fellow at the bottom, your grandfather. I say well guess how old he is. Oh I don't know, maybe, maybe he's older than he looks, uh 80, 90, 100, 101. Who is he anyhow? Oh he's an American, a very remarkable American. And that bald headed old man with his long beard and white hair is just at the remarkable age of 45. Crazy. Well his daughter sent me the picture, his name was E.M. Bownes. I have a book amongst the few that I've not written anything like by the Gordon Lindsay, but one book that I, I didn't write it, I edit it, so I'm not afraid to push that book. I never push my own books, if you thought I want to buy them that's fine. But I never carry them, I never sell them, it's for other people to do if they want, because I don't want think, anybody to think I'm trying to commercialize from the pulpit. I don't do this. But this one book is, E.M. Bownes wrote 11 books. Out of the 11 he wrote seven books on prayer alone. Now you've got to know a bit about praying if you're going to write 11 books on it. And I just took the overlapping sections and I got these books which, six of them are out of print, and I put them together in one volume which is called A Treasury of Prayer. Now E.M. Bownes had a habit as Wesley had, the same habit that Robert Mary McShane had, he died at the ripe old age of 28. The same habit that one of your famous Americans had, but he lived longer, he lived to be 29. That was the boy that went after the Indians, David Bainard. I don't know the answer, so don't ask me the question, but a whole bunch of these men had a habit of rising at four in the morning, not once a week, every morning of their lives. Now E.M. Bownes' daughter told me this, she said my daddy used to rise at four until he got older and the burden got heavier and time was getting shorter, and then he got up at three. Now they have a list, you've got E.M. Bownes, you've got, oh and then up in, we went through Portland some weeks ago, a man called Payson, and preachers always illiterate, you know, praying Payson of Portland. He was the man who, after he died, they found at the side of his bed, it wasn't one of those lovely rooms like yours with wall-to-wall carpeting, he had no carpeting. And at the side of his bed they found two grooves in the floor, just hollow, scooped out, three or four inches long, scooped out, and when they washed him for burial they saw on his knees two big hoofs, two great big things like corns there. And somebody put the two things together, this is where his knees used to rub on the floor when he was making intercession. In the days when Lafayette was in this country, this famous man Payson was a very brilliant preacher. I do have an old letter bound volume I picked up in Boston, nobody wants that kind of thing, I got it for 30 cents, I wouldn't sell you it for three dollars, but, not 30, but he was a wonderful preacher. But a very titled lady came into here in one morning, and all he did was pray at the beginning of the service, and she couldn't remember another thing, she got lost in that prayer. And going out she said to one of the church officers, I would like a copy of the prayer of the preacher. Well he doesn't have any copy. What, you mean that he hadn't recited that thing, he hadn't memorized? It was so comprehensive, all the height, the depth, the length and breadth, he carried us out of time into eternity. You know I think this is one of the great, forgive me, and if you don't I'll love you, but I think that one of the great impoverishments in the pulpit is that preachers don't know how to pray. My good friend Martin Lloyd-Jones has just finished 30 years of preaching in London, and he said I didn't finish because my bible was running out. He said I hardly got into it, he's finished because time was running out, he's over 70 and had serious surgery last year. But this is another amazing man of God. And Martin Lloyd-Jones has sparked off a chain reaction that our brother was speaking about today in the realm of prayer too. He has been able to ignite ministers and gather them together for bible study and serious contemplation again on the on the life of prayer. But when people are going to London they'd say, well I'm going to London, who should I hear preach? And I say go and go hear Martin Lloyd-Jones. And without exception every preacher that went, when I said now just tell me this, first of all what impressed you most? Two things, I know them both. Number one, they had a hymn. You always stand up to sing in England, you know, in honor of people, you always stand up before the king, so we stand up always to sing every hymn. And remember that Wesley's hymns, he wrote 30,000 roughly, and do you know that most of those hymns had up to 30 stanzas? Oh we've mutilated hymnology, there's hardly anything left. The fellows that wrote the hymns wouldn't know them if they came back. You can find the hymn book in America today, I don't think except one, I once helped to compile and I pushed it in, where you've got five verses in the hymn, like when I survey the wondrous cross. The last verse is, his dying crimson like a robe, spread o'er his body on the tree, then am I dead to all the globe and all the globe is dead to me. Well we better not sing lies so we drop it off anyhow. But there's an awful lot of hymns been amputated, amputated, amputated, amputated. But people said when they went to hear Martin Lloyd-Jones, these things amazed me. Number one, they sang a hymn, a brief prayer, they sang a hymn, and then they had the church announcements, he has no choir, no specials, no trumpets, no soloists, doesn't go in for anything of this, he's a real old Puritan preacher. And then he would say let us pray, and he would pray for 15 to 20 minutes. Most people would say, no that's as long as my preacher preaches. He would pray for 15 to 20 minutes. You know sometimes when those fellows have prayed, I didn't care whether they preached or not, I got so much out of the prayer I was ready to go home, I was just about full up to my gills anyhow. And then he preached for an hour and ten, an hour and fifteen minutes, to the largest audiences in Britain, right until a few months ago. Our church population is down, he got a couple of thousand people Sunday morning, a couple of thousand Sunday night, and a good cross-section of them, teenagers, 20 year olds, students, varsity students, men from the law schools, girls in training for nursing, scientists, tremendous audience of people. But the two prevailing things were not a jazzy choir and some other wonderful contortions, but two things again, prayer and the word of God. Sometimes when I talk to preachers I get into trouble too. But you know a preacher only has two things to do. Oh I'm so tired. You're tired are you preacher? Yeah I've been to six hospitals and so forth. Well you're stupid. Why don't you become a bible preacher? The formula for a bible preacher is we will give ourselves continually to prayer and the word of God. Those are the only two things a preacher has to do. The elders of the church should look after the sick, not the preacher. You see when we do God's work in God's way, with God's power, we'll get God's blessing. Now you can run an automobile, an eight-cylinder automobile, you can run it on four. You may have a struggle getting over the Rockies, but if you really want the car to go you should get all the eight cylinders working. But you know we've run so long in our churches on four cylinders that we are not much interested whether the other four work or not. We're getting along, so what? We just put a new building up and we've got a new few other things. You could build a building from here to Timbuktu and the devil wouldn't get any nerves anyhow. And you say to the preacher you can put all your diplomas on the wall, do you think that scares the devil? You can read as well as you can, all he'll do is smile, say get that guy to get a bit more interested in this and that and the other. As long as he doesn't pray, as long as he doesn't prevail with God, that's the only thing that matters. You see? So when your preachers are sweating on ten committees, maybe the Lord didn't want you on one, but it's prestige. Oh did you hear about my husband, wife says, you know he's been appointed to the board of so-and-so. Reminds the preacher who asked on Tuesday night, he'd like all the board members of the church to come and 700 turned up, they were all bored. But you know it's prestigious now, isn't it? We put on this board, we put on that, we put on something else. Oh my husband, and well I'm sorry he won't be home for two days, he's gone to headquarters at so-and-so and he comes back, I'm sorry I have to leave tomorrow morning, he's at so-and-so, I'm sorry he won't be back for so-and-so. I just say, you know, somehow the Lord isn't quite quickening me and getting, sure, sure. What does the Lord say? What did you sing the other day? Burdens are lifted at Calvary, sure. But burdens are given at Calvary. All God is looking for now is people to carry burdens. We all want to be blessed, blessed to death. But you see, my yoke is easy and my burden. Now if you're carrying a burden the church made for you, it may kill you. If you're carrying a burden you made for yourself, you're stupid. You might be carrying a burden that your organization made for you. Oh there's 50 burdens and God won't give you a bit of strength for any one of them, so you may as well quit praying. The man that wrote some of our greatest hymns, who lived a long while before the Wesley's, was Isaac Watts. And Isaac Watts said on one occasion, I would be quite content to be the governor of six worlds as big as this, or six universes like this. I would, if this were the burden of God for me, I would be content to carry the burden and govern six universes, if that was God's burden. But if it wasn't God's burden, he said I wouldn't even dare to attempt to look after six sheep. You see, the compensation is my yoke is easy and my burden. God isn't obligated to give you anything except what he's put upon you. He isn't obligated to give you money, strength, wisdom, or anything else, if it isn't his burden. You'll kill yourself, they'll say some nice things, only the trouble is you won't hear them. And you'll be down there in your box. You see, we've got to go God's way about things. My yoke is easy, my burden. Give yourself continually to pray. This is the only thing we're told to do, the preachers, give yourself continually to pray, and the people we're told to pray without ceasing. Now I think maybe tomorrow morning they're going to finish up John 15, and we were trying to talk today about becoming mature in God. That none of us have arrived, however long you've been around. I heard of a lady in a church testifying, some people saying, I've been in the way, oh I've been in the way 20 years. This lady said, yeah I've been in the way for 30 years. And some member of the press said, you've been in everybody's way. And there are some people like that, they've been stuck around too long, I think they've been in everybody's way. But you know, none of us have arrived yet. There's still a lot of land ahead to be possessed for any of us. And the only way that I know to possess it again is obedience and in the place of prayer. Now there's one of the great men in the Bible, maybe we will start on tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday morning, maybe in Hebrew. But there's a great man in the Bible, and he was a great man. He was a great man from God's standpoint. He was such a great man that he could stop the course of nature. He could strangle the economy of a nation. He could raise the dead and do a whole string of miracles. And yet God's epitaph of that man is just two words. He prayed. Now there are many biographies of famous men written in two volumes. Begbie wrote two marvellous volumes on the life of William Booth. And there are two larger volumes on one of the greatest women that ever lived, Mrs. Booth, the wife of the General. One of the greatest women that this world has known. If you'd looked on the Booth Street one day there in London, you would have seen somebody stop at a door and a royal carriage drive up and somebody hand a letter in and the letter would be taken to Mrs. Booth and she'd read it and it would be from the Queen of England saying, Pray for me, we have vital problems in the British Empire today. And when that carriage had gone, another one would come bearing a letter from the Prime Minister of England and the same thing, something of the same thing. The cipher on the corner from Downing Street. Please pray, we have a very decisive thing to settle in the British Empire, will you pray? Now they didn't go to William Booth. They didn't go to the other cabinet members. They came to this woman that all her life had a curvature of the spine and had a somewhat moderate degree of ill health, but she knew one thing, she knew how to pray. Well, there's the very remarkable life of the founder of the China Inland Mission written in two volumes. Volume number one, the growth of the soul, and volume number two, the growth of the work, the establishing of the China Inland Mission in China through Hudson Taylor. And I could recite a whole string of biographies and autobiographies, life stories written in two volumes. Here is a life story, a vast life story written in two words, he prayed. Now if you want the second volume, I can give you it, he prayed again. That's the only difference. If he hadn't have prayed again, we might be without rain until now. And you don't need to look up the story, but you can read it when you go home. Well, I guess if I was to say to you, when did Elijah come on the stage? Well, you remember maybe when he came up. How do you? Oh, you remember he went off the stage in a whirlwind and in a chariot of fire. How did he come on the stage? When did he come on the stage? Well, if you forget the long period before this, when, what, 58 years before there had been a dividing of the kingdom, and immediately before Elijah came on the stage, there had been seven kings. And the second king did more evil than the first, the third did more evil than the second, you go right down the list. And then when the seventh man, Ahab, comes along, he did not do more evil than the king before him. He did more evil than all the kings that were before him. And then as though he would defy God to the nth degree, he really rebuilt the city of Jericho, which God had said should never be rebuilt. And then to make that worse, as the Irish would say, he not only rebuilt the city, but he married outside. He married a Sidonian. And the summary of this whole thing is that, well, there are seven things, indictments against him. He did the sins of Jeroboam before him. Then he took the wife of Jezebel, the daughter of Beth, Baal, and then he served Baal, and then he worshipped him, then he read an altar to him, and he built a grove, and he did more to provoke the God of Israel and anger him than all the kings of Israel before him. And then just like turning these lights out one by one and plunging the building into darkness, this is what this wicked woman did when she got into the place of authority. She said, I've got it just where I wanted it now. And they built groves to Ashtaroth and to Baal. Would you ever try to imagine you'd like to see the world as God sees it? When God looks on this pile of dung that we call a world, what do you think he thinks of it? How do you think he reacts to it? Every time God looked from heaven, he saw groves to Ashtaroth and Baal, he saw incense off it, and they were all stinking in the nostrils of God. And God was angry. As I said this morning, we get angry about things that shouldn't faze us, and we don't get angry about things that should make us blazing mad. It says in the seventeenth of the Acts of the Apostles that when Paul went down that main street in Athens, the intellectual capital of the world at that time, and when he saw the cathedrals and the buildings and the temples to strange gods, in this sleepy, stately Elizabethan English, it says his spirit was stirred. But it says there in the version I don't like too much, except when it agrees with me, and that is the amplified version, it says he was angry when he saw it. You get angry when you see temples to strange gods. Now you may disagree with me and fire me, and if you do, I'd just be as happy to go tomorrow and love you all. It will make a hill of beans difference to me. You know, I can't get excited about what these people call Pentecostal Catholics, because I don't believe there are any. The Roman church is the dirtiest thing on God's earth. It's worse than communism. Now I'm not saying a Catholic can't be saved and filled with the spirit, but I am saying they can't be saved, filled with the spirit and stay in that system. You can't offer the sacrifice of the mass, it's blasphemy. You can't make the Virgin Mary co-redemptrix with Jesus Christ, it's anti-biblical. You see, Protestantism is the meat in the sandwich. We've got Catholicism here and we've got Romanism there, and boy, they're going to put pressure on, because they both hate us like the devil anyhow, if they're true to the vows. And we're heading for trouble, as little as you like. You can say, well, I know lovely people. Well, you may do, but I'm talking about a system, and I'm saying they won't stay in that thing, because the spirit of God is the spirit of truth, and he'll fight heresy and error. You see, and we're going to have the biggest showdown in America before very long. You mark my words. That system robs the living and it robs the dead, but we don't get angry about it. We're trying to balance the thing. We'll be anything to anybody. You know, if you start an anti-communist society in America, like a good preacher who had a tremendous ministry, and suddenly he dropped it all to fight communism. Well, if you're going to fight communism just on a human level, you may as well try and beat an elephant to death with a balloon. You've got as much chance. God will destroy it. Men will destroy it. And Rome, too, because the branch that beareth not fruit, men take it. Not devils, not God. Men take it away and burn it. And Rome has killed more Protestants and more believers than all the wars in history. Yes, sir, when God looks down on these abominations, God hates them. They're vile. And when Elijah saw these altars to Ostrath and Baal, he was angry about it. You know, these days people back off and say, you know, I don't think we can do much these days. We just got to kind of sit and let things get worse and worse and just hope the Lord's going to get us out of this trouble. Did you ever hear of a man by the name of Ralph Nader? What did he do? Well, about five years ago, he decided single-handedly to take on Ford Motor Company and all the multi-billion dollar motor industry and take them to the cleaners. And he did it. And in case you don't know, he did it without the Holy Ghost. Well, boy, he's a headache to them. He's starting on the airlines now. Brother, he's a boy. He's determined to get justice. Did you ever hear of a woman called Madeleine Mary? They call her mad for short, and that's real good. Now, if you'd said to that woman a few years, oh, look, woman, now, just think. You think you're going to get the Constitution of America altered. Well, did she? Just one stupid woman that's blazing mad and gets a few atheists and others and Jews around her, and they're going to get the Constitution of America altered? Well, forget it. You can't alter it. It's like the laws of the Medes and Persians. It alters nothing. But you get it altered. Well, if Nader can do that on one level, on the financial level, against the multi-billion dollar motor industry, and this woman can do it on this level, don't you think there's a chance that some man, really, full of the Holy Ghost, and in total submission, might write a few new pages in the history of the world? After all, God isn't looking for movement. He's looking for men. God never raised up a movement. Maybe movements come out of men, but God never starts with a committee. What do you think would have happened if Moses had sat on the mountain and said, I've got a suggestion to make. I want you to sit down and vote on whether we accept these ten commandments or not. You think it would have gone over big? I don't. You see, there's an old, old saying in history that one man with God is a majority. Now, if you don't have God, you need everything else and everybody else. But if you really have God, you just don't need anything else and everybody else at all. Just him. Now, I can't tell you where this man Elijah came from. I just don't know. Oh, he came from Thizb or Tizb. Where's that? Well, nobody knows very much. But you see, this man, again, is the personification of some of the promises of God. Proverbs 28, verse 1 says that the wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. What they say about this man, the effectual servant of prayer is a righteous man. He's as bold as a lion. Or as the psalmist says there in Psalm 3, that he'll not be afraid even though 10,000 people press on him. All right, Elijah comes on the stage and everybody else has run away. Sometimes people have said to me, hey, just wait a minute. He forgot to mention one thing, that after Elijah, Elisha came. Elisha prayed, let a double portion of thy spirit come on me, and he did twice as many miracles as Elijah. Right. Sure enough, the Bible's always true. But you know, God is never called the God of Elisha, is he? Mm-hmm. When John Baptist came in the desert place, what did he say? Who was come? Oh, Elijah, not Elisha, huh? If you went to the home of a devout Jew on some of the festive days, what we call, again, the feasts, you would find the door open five or six inches. You'd find a table set for six people, but an extra chair. And you might come in, sit down and say, oh, you're expecting someone else to say, yeah, yeah, excuse me, the door's open. Oh, yes, it's got to stay open. The extra chair, somebody flying in. Oh, no, no, Elijah may come. They were promised that Elijah would come. Jesus was transfigured on the mount, wasn't he? And there appeared with him Moses and who? Oh, not Elisha, huh? And in the book of the Revelation, there are going to be two final witnesses, and they're going to be who? Moses and Elijah. And Jesus was dying on the cross, and they said he calleth for Elijah. God is called the God of Elijah, not the God of Elisha. Now, this man comes on the scene when the whole nation is just drowning, like we are today, in iniquity and impurity and impiety and indecency. Every devilish thing was prospering. The enemy had come in like a flood, and I'm going to legitimately run away and say, well, every other preacher's gone, everybody else is forsaken. What am I going to do? Well, I don't quite know altogether. Yes, in some ways I do. I do know where God trained this man, and he can train you and me there, though it's a pretty expensive Bible school because it's in the University of Siloam. And when God had got this man ready, he says to him, come on now, come on. And one day, I don't know quite what they were doing. I like to think that maybe this very strong personality, this woman was very authoritative. Maybe it was in the garden, plucking some flowers with Elijah, a family they had. And suddenly this little man comes up, and she looks breathlessly at him, this ragged, rugged little man, and he just says, just before you take the flowers in the royal palace, I want to tell you something. Wait till I get my key. Where's my key? Here's my key. There's going to be no rain around here, all for a few years, according to my word, not God's word, my word. And here's the key. Look, I'll shut up heaven, and there won't be another drop of rain until I turn the key and lose heaven. It's rather amazing, but we'll commence on it the day after tomorrow, that amongst the men of faith in Hebrews 11, Elijah isn't found in this chapter. And it takes some faith to do that, doesn't it? I'll shut up heaven, but there'll be no rain. And he shut up heaven. And the rain, the heavens became like brass, and nothing happened. Now, I think he must have felt real good when he told the king and queen off, don't you? I'd have felt real good if I'd rebuked that pair of rascals. And immediately he'd done that when he was the most powerful preacher in the world. You know what God said? I'm going to increase your salary, send you to a bigger church, we can build a house by the Sea of Galilee and fish and just write books at the weekend. He didn't say that. He's a man, and everybody in the nation is going to talk about him and feel a part of his life. And in what it says, God says, go hide thyself. Well, Lord, this is bad psychology. I mean, I'm right in the zenith of my power. I mean, couldn't you promote me right now? I mean, I've just shut up heaven. I've just exercised more power than any man on earth. I mean, Lord, did I hear you right? You see, in the next chapter, God says, go hide thyself. In the next chapter, he says, go show thyself. And it's wrong to show yourself when you should hide yourself, and it's wrong to hide yourself when you should show yourself. He says, in this chapter, I've commanded the ravens to feed thee there. And in the next chapter, I've commanded the widow woman, later in the chapter, I've commanded the widow woman to feed thee there. Now, if the Lord is directing a raven to you there and you're there, I'll give you some news, he won't reroute the raven just to find you. I happen to be a raven myself, but anyhow, the Lord won't do that. Go hide thyself. Oh, this is tough, isn't it? You know, I like to go to meetings every now and then. I like to get blessed and sing. Yes, sure, yes. Your sanctification is still self-centered. Your baptism is still self-centered. You want to be blessed. You want to be happy, not holy. Go hide thyself. And I don't know if Brother Lindsay met Buck Singh, but I consider him one of the greatest men in the world today. I talked with him for hours, and we were talking about prayer, and I said to him, well, Brother Singh, I know you've had very remarkable answers to prayer, and he smiled and he said, yes, I certainly have. I said, just give me one, will you? He said, well, you know, now, he was a high-class seeker, but you know, sometimes people that got the Bible a long while after us use it better. We've had it so long, it doesn't matter too much. Pathway. Somebody gave him a Bible after he got saved and gave him the book, and he said, is it true? And they said, from cover to cover. And you know, poor fellow, he believed them. I mean, he was simple enough to believe that God means what he said. We aren't. We're the biggest bunch of unbelieving believers the Lord's ever had. He just read the book and thought the Bible, you know, as though the Lord meant what he said, and so he just took God as his word. And God did all kinds of amazing things. He wasn't seeking a sensational ministry. That man has raised up 350 churches by himself. In about the last 25 years, he can raise a church in about three months and teach the elders two or three times a day, and then let the church select the elders, and then appoint an elder out of the bunch. And he goes on. They don't pay any tithes or taxes. He leaves them. He's gone around India like this. Some of the missionaries are blazing mad, you see, because they're backed by a rich organization in America, and they have to send reports, and they're hungry for statistics. And he just goes around establishing churches. I said to him, supposing I came to your church on the Lord's Day, Brother Singh, what would it be like? Without batting an eye, he said, well, Brother Abel, the first three hours of the service, I said yes. Oh, he said, the first three hours of service, worship, praise, adoration, thanksgiving. Now they're not Pentecostal in the acceptance sense of the word. People say to me sometimes, are you Pentecostal? I say, no, I'm biblical. But he just says, well, we have three hours of worship, adoration, thanksgiving, praise, and then the Lord comes out. I said, wonderful. Then what happens? Oh, he said, the second three hours of the service. Yes. Oh, the second three hours is prayer and intercession and supplication. Yes. I was getting a bit nervous, but I risked it. I said, and then what? Oh, the third three hours of the service, he said, we have the table of the Lord. One as a psalm, another as a hymn. This man's had a revelation. That woman has just finished 20 days of fasting. This person here has had some rebuke from the Lord. This person, something else. This person. I said, yeah. I said, Brother Singh, that doesn't happen every Sunday, does it? I mean, now we don't have three hours each. This is not cut off like that. Sometimes the first section is four hours, and the next two, and sometimes the second one may be five, and the other one. No, we don't have nine hours every Lord's Day. I said, well, what do you do on the normal Lord's Day? Well, he said, that's about normal. But you see, Brother Raymond, some days the glory comes down, and we're there 12 hours and 13 hours and 14 hours. I said, how wonderful. See, we're not like that. In Pentecost, we tell the Holy Ghost, you come at 11 o'clock Sunday morning when we open the door, and you've got to leave at 12. Till 10 past 12, somebody at the front goes, when it gets to 20 past 12, somebody goes, you know. Well, we couldn't have 12-hour services, could we? Unless, of course, after the first three hours, we said, now, before we sing again, the stewards are going to come down this hour with popcorn, and down here with wieners, and down there, and then... Because of Buckingham said, you know, he said, if you, if you, if you, if you preach too long in America, they, they just look at their watches and look this way, and then if you preach half an hour too long, everybody goes, oh, you know. I mean, it's hitting me right in the middle. I love the Lord, but oh boy, I love my dinner too. I wish I could get home through it. Well, as Dr. Tozzi used to say, before too long, we'll have people coming from other countries to teach us what Christianity is about. We'll have to learn to worship all over again. It was this good man that offered me a New Testament and said, Brother Raymier, will you show me where it says in the New Testament where to go to church twice on Sunday? And you know, I couldn't find it, not even in the Amplified. Nothing in the New Testament that we, we, we accept so much, but got nothing to do with Christianity really, formula. He just followed into a rut like other people. You could go once, eleven o'clock in the morning, have a three or four hour service, particularly in these days with the problems of transport, and have such a fill and have such a wonderful time. After all, they did have long services in the New Testament, because remember Ananias and Sapphira, what? And Ananias came in and said something, and the preacher said you're a liar. Now, they're, they're the real Pentecostal service. They killed two people to start the service. And you know why they killed them? Because they were both liars. But if we killed all the liars, we'd have no delay. That's our problem. Unless you could raise the dead, you'd have, you'd have no problem. You'd never be able to get around. And what happened after he killed Ananias? His wife, who didn't know about it, came in how long after? About what? Three hours. Somebody even knows the Bible here, which is very rare in the Bible school. But anyhow, three hours after, his wife came in, and the service was still on. Well, you wouldn't have done that. You'd have driven up to church, held the lights out, and they'd have gone home. Three hours after. That was the form of the New Testament church. But you see, we've all copied them up there. And every Pentecostal church is a rubber stamp now. There's fifty varieties, like Heinz Beans, and fifty varieties of Baptist, and fifty varieties of Methodist. But all little offshoots of the other. We're, we're, we're, we're not split. We're splintered. We're in so many little bits and pieces and stuff. But we're just little copies of the other folk. But we left that off. People say, you know, I don't think God's got much room for organized religion anymore, and we're going to start worshipping in our house. And you go there two years after, and they, they worship in the house, and they say, well, this is Mr. Stone, so he's the pastor, and he's the treasurer, and he's something else. They only meet about twice, and they appoint a committee. They fall right back in the snare immediately. You see. And of course, if you want tax exemption. You know, I'm not too sure whether you're going to get a reward. I think Uncle Sam's going to get it, because if you don't give it to God, Uncle Sam will get it anyhow. So maybe you're laying up treasure for Uncle Sam. You better watch it. Hmm? And all the people said, shut up. I said to Buck Singh, you've had some answers to prayer. Yes, he said, let me tell you about one. I was going through a bazaar in India, and I guess you've been through bazaars, brother, there, and seen the dust, and the clatter, and the clamor. And a fellow came up and says, oh, you're Buck Singh, aren't you? The Jesus man. Isn't that nice to be known like that? Wonder what people know you for? Huh? Longest tongue in town, maybe, huh? Wasn't it a lady that came to the old Nazarene preacher, Buck Singh, and she said, you know, I'm sanctified. And he had an awful list, but he was a great preacher, and he said, you're a sanctified system? And she said, yes, I am. She said, I got everything on the altar, even my pocketbook, but I can't get my tongue on the altar. You know, he just measured it out like this. And he said, you know, I figure that this altar is about 18 feet 6 long. You can't get your tongue on it, lady, I'll have it lengthened 6 feet, come back tomorrow night, maybe you'll get your tongue on it, he said. You know why a lot of your neighbors don't care a hill of beans that you speak with the tongues of men is because this tongue you've got cancels everything you're saying. That's right. Oh, let's go to Buck Singh. All right, he's here, Jesus man, yes. Well, look there, there isn't a spoonful of water in the river. Look at those little kiddies with fat bellies, there's no water. Look at the bodies of the water buffalo stacked up. Well, Jesus of yours, when he was alive, when he was alive, he is alive. What do you mean he's alive? Well, he rose from the dead. He did? Where does he live? Well, he lives in two places, two places. Now, where? Where? I'm in here. Well, he said, if this Jesus of yours that you say turned water into wine and raised the dead and he did other things, he said, why, why don't you kneel down right here and tell him we've had no rain for months and everything's dying and we're going to die? Tell this big Jesus of yours to turn the water on, will you? And he said, yes, I will. And he said, what did he do? Oh, he said, I was just kneeling down and my partner pulled my sleeve and said, Brother Singh, don't pray. Why not? He said, now here's the greatest evangelist in India, in my judgment, and he says to his partner, his partner says to him, don't you pray, because if you pray, he said, we'll get wet foot. And he said, remember, we've got 15 miles to walk to the meeting tonight. And he must have thought he could pray, because he said, if you do, we'll get wet foot. I said, what did you do? He said, I knelt down there and I said, the God of Elijah. You know, God, Elijah's a great feller. He said he prayed and the rain fell, he prayed and the people fell, he prayed and the fire fell. Now, you get seven beacons like that, you've got it made. You don't need half a dozen men with oil wells and half a dozen men on committees. All you need is a few men that can, you know, we don't appoint deacons because they're full of faith of the Holy Ghost. We appoint them because they own two Texaco stations and the president of this and chairman of that and somebody else. Usually on the school board, who do you get? You don't get that little widow that knows how to pray in the Holy Ghost. You get Jimmy Jones with his three oil wells in Texaco and in Texas and he's got something else. This is why we appoint men, you see. I mean, that's why we've got to keep holding God up, haven't we? I mean, you know, like the Lord really needs our help. Oh, we don't do that, we don't say it, it sounds blasphemous, but we act it. We don't need men full of the faith and the Holy Ghost. We need a few rich men, you know, tied $100,000 a year and give us $50,000 and OR you the other $50,000 and somebody else something else. These are guys to get, you know, Mr. Stone. So I'd like to introduce him to you. See him outside in his Lincoln Continental. These are the men we appoint. They appointed men full of faith, not full of money, full of faith and full of the Holy Ghost. Buck Sings says, I knelt down and I just said, Lord, you're the God of Elijah. He shut up heaven, he opened heaven and sent me the rain right now. I said, Brother Sings, what happened? He said, I was kneeling down, the water was running down my arms and these heathens were looking up and saying, well, who did turn the water on? Who did turn the water? He only spoke to Jesus. Jesus must be somebody, because as soon as he said, Sir, Lord, turn the rain on, he said, the heavens opened and the rain poured down. Isn't it nice to be as simple as that? Makes you wish you hadn't been to Bible school and learned how to dispensationalize things and shove them out of the picture, doesn't it? I'm not against tithing. If you want to be Jews, be Jews. That's your business. Tithing is Jewish anyhow. And if you give God a tenth, you don't give him a dime, because the tenth is God's income tax. It's what you give over the tenth that you give. The other is, if anyhow, if you're going to follow the Old Testament custom. The difference from the Old Testament and the New is, when you're really born again, if you're really filled with the Spirit, he gets every dime you have. I met a man the other day, he and his wife, lovely people, and he said, you know, we've got past the place where we give a tenth. He said, we're managing now to live on the tenth and give God nine tenths. That guy's really moved up. I've been in places, they've had an envelope like this that says, um, the Lord's portion. There's a scripture that says the Lord's portion is his people. The Lord could get your tithe every week, but he hasn't had your ear and your heart maybe for six months. You want to give him the payoff. I feel virtuous because we go to church twice on Sunday and we're not behind in our missionary offering or our church offering. Boy, I'm feeling real good. In fact, it's awful difficult to get your coat on with your feathers wings sprouting, I suppose. I won't make you think. If you give God a tenth of your money, you should give God a tenth of your time. What's a tenth of 24 hours? Two hours and 24 minutes every day. On top of that, you give him an offering. So to be three hours every day. Anybody behind in the tithe? I mean, you're his. You say you're his. If you're going to live by the law, live by it. Give him not only a tenth of your time, give him a tenth of your money rather, give him a tenth of your time. Three hours a day alone with God, you and the word. Not talking all the time, listening as well as praying. Sure, God's ways are not our ways. Here's a man, he's a military genius. He has a breast full of medals. He's been trained and read the seventh chapter of Acts. He's learning all the wisdom of the Egyptians and all the knowledge of the ancients, and he's the smartest boy on earth. His name happened to be Moses. And at 40 years of age, God cut him off like that. And send him on the backside of the desert. How long? 40 weeks? 40 what? Right. Oh Lord, now this isn't right. I mean, when a man's 40, he's in a prime of life. I mean, he's smart. He's a military general. Everybody bows down. Everybody salutes him. Everybody says he's going to step on the throne. He's the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He's the smartest boy on earth. And the Lord says, really? You're really going to do my will? Well, take off the medals and the uniform, and instead of commanding an army, go look after a bunch of sheep. Isn't that an education? You must have thought he was wool gathering. But anyhow. And there he is on the backside of the desert for 40 long, long years. God cut the middle out of his life. Oh, you thought you got it made when you went to Bible school for six months. Now God could do it for you without going to Bible school. Some of the greatest preachers. Tulsa is an example. Never went to Bible school in his life. Just bought a certain number of books, disciplined himself so many hours a day for prayer, so many hours a day for learning, and became one of the greatest preachers. I know a man in America today who has a church of a thousand people. One of the most spiritual churches I know. He has a missionary budget of a hundred thousand dollars a year. Never been to Bible school in his life. Well, settle the issue right away. It doesn't mean if you go you'll be a genius or a great preacher. It doesn't mean if you miss it you won't. But if he hears the thing, go hide thyself. It's hard to be alone, isn't it? Three hours a day by yourself. What do you say so many times? Oh, I just wish I had a little time by myself. You know, I'd come each morning if I could to these Bible studies, but business calls and so forth. And then when the Lord's Day comes, what do we do? Well, come to church Sunday morning, rush home and watch the TV and bore ourselves to death when we're as tired at the end of Sunday with more leisure time than we've had all week, and we've done just about nothing with it anyhow. So what makes you think the Lord's going to believe us anyhow? The backside of the desert. In case you've forgotten, he was a human being. Can you visualize him going down the road one day, if he had hands in his pockets, going down and kicking a rock? Well, I just remembered I'll be 80 tomorrow. Oh boy, I've missed it. I mean, at my age, what do you expect? 80 years of age. I mean, you know, it would have been a lot better if the Lord had said, Moses, you're 40 and you're brilliant and strong and efficient, and I'm going to use your 40 years. And then at the end of that, boy, I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you just how to live it up, getting retired in a little cottage by the lake of Galilee, and you really have a good time. God cut the best slice of his life out, took the middle out of his life. 40 long years. No good, I'm no good. I'm finished. I missed it. I disobeyed God. I don't think, oh, what's this? Oh, I remember I saw that bush burning this morning. I'll go up and have a look, and the voice comes out, take off thy shoes from off thy feet. At 80 years of age, he got his commission. 80 years of age, the Lord came with revelation and a voice that he never forgot. Oh, that's something. We all want an experience alike. We all want to do the same thing and get the same blessing. And the man that followed knows this. You know that lovely, wonderful man that had such a job? That man called, what was he called? Joshua. Imagine him having a problem with that wicked nation. God couldn't manage them, never mind men. And one day getting, just as we say, fed up and saying, well, I don't think anything's going to really happen. I missed it. I shouldn't have taken the job. I mean, after all, God never, God never came to me in a burning bush and revealed himself. I shouldn't have taken the job anyhow. I mean, ooh. What about the captain of the Lord of hosts? Take off thy shoes from off thy feet. The place where thou stand on this holy ground. But he didn't have a burning bush. Oh, you didn't get the baptism? Well, you didn't get the real thing. I'm sorry. It's very nice, the thing you got. You know, it's not as good as my baptism. I mean, when I got it, oh, I rolled on the floor six hours, and I did this, and I did that, and I did the other. My husband thinks I've been crazy ever since, and maybe he's right. A burning bush, a voice, no burning bush, same voice, same commission, same endowments. What makes you think you can lay a track down and tell the Holy Ghost to come running on it just to satisfy you? In case you've forgotten, not only did this man, Moses and Elijah go there, but almost every great man that God has had, God has tossed him on the backside of the desert. I'll tell you a story when I don't have time now about a little colored man in South Africa, and what an experience of God he had about this. Have you forgotten that for 30 years it looks as though God almost ignored his own son? You know, we think we're going to get power to strut and show off and everything. You know, when you have power, you need power not to use power. Imagine that Jesus, who was the resurrection of life, going to the door of the little place where he made bits of wood and yolks for cattle, and seeing a funeral come down the street, and knowing he was the resurrection, and never did a thing about it. For 30 years we don't know he ever ministered or taught or did a single thing. And then the greatest intellect the world ever saw after Jesus, the Apostle Paul, he was really smart for you preachers. Do you know what he did? He took his sabbatical before he began preaching. That's an awful good thing to do. Because if you had a year with God alone before you started preaching, some of you had never started, and that might have been good. About three and a half years this man is in the in the wilderness alone. But you know there's no record that he ever backslid for five seconds after God saved him and filled him with the Holy Ghost. Just the other day I've spoken to quite a crowd of ministers. A young minister came to me and he said, look I've been in these meetings every day and every day gets worse for me and I'm thinking I'll resign my church and I need at least three months anyhow. I'll have to take three months off and go find the cabin up in the hills of Arkansas somewhere and get before God. Just me and my Bible. I said, you're smart. Go hide thyself. And I don't, could be wrong, but I don't think he left a forwarding address. I don't think he said, you know, like I'm trusting the Lord, but you know like these radio broadcasters boys do. They say now, now this is a work of faith and I'd like to hear from you by the weekend. I'll send them a postcard. After all that's all they asked for. I said I want to hear from you. Send them a postcard. Just saying I'm praying for your brother. He didn't ask for money did he? Oh he'd never be, he'd never do that. He just says, let me hear from you. So you're right dear Johnny Jones. I like your broadcast. I'm praying for you. Amen. I think I'll fight again with a prayer of faith and hints. I don't think Elijah got up in the morning worried and anxious and sweating. Do you think he ran up the high hill climbed the high tree and said, oh Lord don't let anybody kill my little bird because it's bringing my breakfast. Don't let any naughty boy shoot an arrow through it or some silly man throw a rock at it will you? Because of course if you do I'm sunk. Yeah. Sure he didn't. His trust was in God. It was a natural thing that dried up first wasn't it? The brooks. Sometimes God has to make natural things dry up that we learn to really trust and really look for the supernatural and something that you can't pull any strings on. And when he graduated in this little area the Lord says, now all right now I told you to hide yourself. Go show thyself. Go down the road and meet a woman. Oh boy. Meet a widow. Oh goodness. What decent preacher wants to sponge on a widow apart from a radio preacher? I mean you don't like to sponge on a widow do you? I mean asking a widow to make you a cake and a spot of oil and oh no please. Hmm? Hello lady how are you? She says not too bad. What are you doing making? Well I've got one handful of meal and one drop of oil. I'm going to put them together and make a cake and give it to my son and we're going to eat it and what? Die like the rest of us. Say if I were to ask you tonight, do you think that true holy ghost revival is number one need in America? You might say yes. But do you and I want revival at the price of standing in bread lines in order to get revival? Hmm? Do you love God so much? Not saying do you love America. I'm asking you do you love God so much? Do you say Lord I don't care if we go through hell? Is it better for a nation to be more prosperous and affluent and go to hell or is it better for it to starve physically and have revival spiritually? Hmm? To look at your car and not have enough gas to put in it, not being able to make payments on it, the economy's gone down, we stand in bread lines every day. As I said this morning an experience of God that costs nothing is worth nothing and it does nothing. Come on make a little cake. Oh well I may as well after all it doesn't make much harder does it? I mean if I make a cake I may as well die today as tomorrow and he said all right make a cake and he says I'll make yourself a cake and she went and when she got there the barrel was full to the top and the oil was gushing out like an Oklahoma gusher huh? No. I think for the last day from that day until the next harvest came that woman took the last handful of meal out of the barrel and the last drop of oil out of the cruise. That's a way of faith. You're dependent constantly upon God. He doesn't shovel it in by the million. He says come on you trusted me yesterday. You only live one day at a time anyhow in one sense and so as I need it for today so thy strength shall be. Your supplies are for today they're for now. Just a handful of meal just a drop of oil. Well that was really good wasn't it? Until Elijah came in and the lady here said to him well I've been wondering about you. You're a queer kind of a fellow anyhow and you're so wonderful that while you're out today my little baby look there's the corpse of my baby. That's what I get for looking after a preacher. He said lady forget it. I didn't like to tell you I mean I didn't want to show off but you know I'm the greatest preacher on earth. I'm the greatest healer that is around. You've never seen a lot like me in all your day have you? You just give me that kid's body. You just watch this lady. Here Lord you certainly like your calling. Just put light in this kid. Here's your baby. Well as far as I'm concerned the things of God are too holy even to be shown over tv just to show off. We need a new concept of the holiness of God. I might talk on that tomorrow night. No he says give me your child and you know it says he ran up into a loft. You've got a loft in your life or a basement or the back of an old barn somewhere where God always seems nearer. An old beaten up chair that somebody says let's reupholster it and you say no please leave it as it is. You know you've stained it with your tears. You've groaned. You've travailed there. You ran up into a loft and he prayed and nothing happened. He prayed again and nothing happened. Then what do we do? We go out at the back door and say it isn't God's will. Well if it isn't why did you waste his time? Well he knew the third time he prayed. A third time yes and not only prayed but he leaned down on the chair. An act of compassion and humiliation and he prayed and what happened? Life came and he ran back to the woman and he says lady here your son Do you remember what she said? She said by this I know thou art a man of God. By what? Oh not by the bowl of meal. That didn't excite her too much. Not by the cruise of oil that was still springing up. No that didn't disturb her. That didn't worry her too much. But she says by this I know thou art a man of God. By what? By the fact that he brought life where there was death. Isn't that the work of the church? I'm all for healing. God heal me. I jumped out of a burning building some years ago brought my back in three places both my feet my legs just about everything I could break and they threw a sheet over me and said he'll be dead in four hours. I knocked the sheet down I said pardon did you speak about me? Oh the doctor said I'm sorry. I said well I've got news for you. I have no intention of dying. Oh I've seen God do the miraculous. You know the devil would rather see one thousand people healed and one person raised from the dead spiritually. I'm going to die anyhow someday. But to raise people from the dead this is revival. This is really it's really an awakening in that true sense of the word. Now if I were to ask you just about two or three minutes if I were to ask you who is the greatest man of prayer in the Old Testament what would you say? Oh well many would say of course Jacob. He prayed all night. He didn't. You know I prayed. He prayed like you do. He prayed because he's in a jam. There's a man coming. I've seen him. Oh I know it is. It's my brother. And you know the last time I saw him he said the next time I see you I'll kill you. I'm going. Divide the sheep. Divide the goats. Get my servants going. Get my wife and the family going. And I'm going to jump over the brook. Which he did. And as he went over the brook the sun went down. It becomes quickly dark in the audience and not part of the world. And what happened? Well he was going around the back of the rock when suddenly somebody jumped on him. Well who do you think he thought it was? After all there was only one man in the world he was scared of. And he says oh this is my brother. My brother's got. But I'm going to die. That doesn't sound like a church prayer meeting. Sounds like a church business meeting. But not like a prayer meeting. Fighting. And he tried to get away and the more he fought the tighter the grip. I want to learn one thing out of that prayer meeting. It's this. That when that young man went into the prayer meeting he was a prince. Handsome, strong. When he came out he came out dragging a withered leg to the rest of his life. Wherever he went. Oh yeah the Lord crippled him. The Lord crippled him. Why don't we pray? Why didn't Moses want to? What was wrong with Moses? The spirit's willing the flesh is weak. Pop his arms up. Why don't you pray? Because the flesh is weak. He tries to get away. He can't. Suddenly he says this can't be an angel. And the angel thugs in there on the thigh and cripples his thigh. And he suddenly says this can't be my brother. He wouldn't have strength like this. And then he feels the man is good. Now in the first part of the battle he tried to get away. Now the angel is trying to get away and he says I will not let thee go unless thou bless me. It's a wonderful prayer but I think the greatest prayer of any man is in the Old Testament surely is a prayer of Moses. God's got tired of the nation. They've rebelled. He's delivered. They've broken every law that he's ever made. And the Lord says Moses come here I want to talk with you a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm going to destroy this nation. I'm going to rub them out. Just like you rub something off the board. And out of your loins I'm going to make a bigger nation than this nation. And you know if Moses had had just half an ounce of carnality in him do you know what he'd have said? Thank you Lord this will vindicate me. I knew I was in the right. I've known that for 20 years but you've been pretty slow coming up with the answers. But go ahead Lord liquidate them and then the next generation. Ah new world order out of me. Is that what he says? The paraphrase in the old Methodist hymn book. And you know there are two things you really need if you're going to really pray and love the Lord. One is a good bible and the other is a very wonderful hymn book. And the greatest modern hymn book. You should get some for the school here I think. Dear brother Lindsay. Is a book compiled by the Pentecostals in England. It's been out maybe 20 years now. Because they stole all the hymns but forget them. Forget that. But they've got the best of the Methodists. Of the Salvation Army. The best of Sankey. The best hymn. A thousand of the greatest hymns. And I don't think we should ever attempt to pray before we worship. Worship. Don't don't run to. Most of us don't pray anyhow. We give God a shopping list. Lord I want this, this, this, this, this. Amen. Thank you. Hello I prayed for you this morning. You didn't. That's not praying. But it says in the old hymn there. When God says to Moses, come on now Moses. Just let me. Let me. Isn't it amazing God asked permission of a man. Let me do this. Isn't it amazing the scripture that says in the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the work of my hands. Command ye me. I think maybe the great, one of the greatest honors in the world is when God reaches down and takes hold of a man. There's only one thing greater than that. And that's when a man reaches up and takes hold of God. And the scripture, you have the scripture story. You know what it is. But the paraphrase in the old Methodist hymn book is this. Let Moses in the spirit groan. Let Moses in the spirit groan and God cries out, let me alone. That isn't Moses crying because God's got a grip on him. That's God crying because Moses has a grip on him. Let me alone. Moses says all right. I'll let you alone on one condition. You're not going to just destroy a million and a half people and leave me out. You destroy a million and a half and me. You see that's getting down somewhere where prayer is really in the Holy Ghost. Not giving a shopping list. Not telling God, advising God. Just, just waiting till he brings the burden and knowing something about what Paul speaks of in the ninth chapter of Romans there when he says, I can, I could wish myself a curse for my brethren. I fell to bed and let me finish with this the other day. My dear wife and I were in a certain place, Zion in Illinois there. And after preaching there one Sunday morning, a friend of ours who was on the staff said, would you, would you like to see Mr., what was his name dearly? Andrews, Andrews. And we said yes. I'd like to see Mr. Andrews. Now Mr. Andrews is a very wonderful man. They said he's 83 years of age, an old Scotsman. Well I've seen old Scotsman as wrinkled as a prune and as grumpy as could be at 83. And I went upstairs expecting to find this old hesitant Scotsman. Instead when they threw the door open, here is this man who has been confined to that room more than 25 years. With a complexion not a lady in this place tonight has a complexion like him. He hasn't a wrinkle. He had cheeks as though they'd been painted pink and he never leaves the room. He has the healthiest most beautiful face I think I've ever seen. He has a stubby little white beard, bright shiny eyes and he's 83 years of age. And you know the wonderful thing about him is not that he's a great Bible teacher though he's that, but for 25 years that man has never been to bed one night for 25 years. He prays every night from 10 at night till 5 or 6 in the morning whenever the burden of the Lord lifts on him. He reads half of Psalm 119 and half of the Sermon on the Mount, the first interpretation which of course is Matthew's which is nearly 100 verses longer than Luke's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. And that old man, he prays a verse and reads a verse and prays from 10 till 6, 8 hours, 7 hours, 8 hours, 8 and a half hours a night for 25 years. He went to Israel, Palestine as it was then to be a missionary. And when the Lord got him there he says you've laid your eyes upon me also, now you'll go back. That's difficult when you've told people the Lord called you isn't it, to go back huh? Nearly as difficult as Paul going up there and you say hi Paul where are you going? He says well I'm going to Bithynia, they need a revival the Holy Ghost led me up and I'm going up and he gets halfway there and the Lord says turn left son turn left and he turned left and got a vision of Macedonia. He didn't care what the brethren said about him, oh you said you were going up there to Bithynia and the spirit suffered him not. What the old Quakers called an authentic stop in the spirit. You know anything about that or do you just want power to keep going? What about when he says stop? He said to this man of God you go back to America. You're going to have an affliction, that's going to tie you up. I'm going to give you a burden for revival, you're going to pray. And that man has never been photographed, he won't let you write his story, he won't tell you much about himself. This is something between him and the Lord, this is a ministry God has given to him. So every night while others go to sleep out he gets at 10 o'clock he gets down with the word, gets down to pray and prays and prays and prays. Boy you've got to know God and you've got to know something about the spirits leading to pray eight hours a night, every night. Oh I've got one or two friends that pray two whole nights a week, I've got one or two that pray two nights, two days a week. I know a number of people that pray eight hours a day, I know a number of people that pray five hours a day. A lot of them are not even Pentecostal as we think of Pentecost. I believe they're spirit filled, but you see they they have a ministry, God told them what to do. Go hide thyself. That's pretty rough isn't it? Go show thyself. I used to sing a little song in England when we were kiddies, I used to scratch my head and wonder what it meant. I didn't know then, I don't know too much about it now, but the song was that I often say my prayers, but do I ever pray? You can't really pray without the Holy Ghost on you. As I say facetiously, you've got a shopping list, you can tell him your problems and all the rest, but what about when he wants to do the praying for us? You know the greatest prayers in the bible have no language. Moses prayed, he never said a word. Hannah prayed, she never said a word. Jesus prayed, he never said a word in Gethsemane after a certain point. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try. Prayer, the sublimest strains that reach the majesty on high. If God rolled out all his gifts and ministries and possibilities of the spirit through me and showed me every gift in its largest, fullest way, and there are a lot of them, as Tozer said, there are not nine, there are seventeen if you reckon them all up. Ministry gifts as well as, if God rolled them all out and said, raven, you can have one, choose one. Do you know that? I choose the ministry of prayer, not the ministry of preaching. Preaching affects men. Prayer affects God. Finishing with a hymn, part of a hymn, it's a part of a chapter in one of my books, at least it's a title. It was written by, if I remember right, Montgomery, the great grandfather of General Montgomery in the British Army. But Montgomery was a great soul and he wrote a hymn on prayer. Pray, always pray. The Holy Spirit pleads within thee all thy daily, hourly needs. Pray, all earthly things, listen to this, all earthly things with earth will fade away. But prayer grasps eternity. Prayer grasps eternity. Therefore, pray, always pray. If there's one prayer we ought to pray every day, it surely is Lord teaches to pray.