This sermon delves into the features of a real revival, drawing parallels between the early church's outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the 1906 Azusa Street revival. It emphasizes divine sovereignty, spiritual preparation, suddenness of God's work, and the need for personal purification and unity in prayer. The sermon highlights the unexpected and spontaneous nature of revival, with real-life examples of God's powerful and transformative presence in communities, leading to mass conversions, societal changes, and a deep thirst for God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I want to talk to you tonight about features of a real revival. So you can get a look at, if you like, a New Testament model of this. And we're going to explore this by looking at the first time the power of the Holy Spirit was poured out in the early church. Something very similar to this happened in 1906 in Azusa Street. That person I talked about, William Seymour, or Willie Seymour, which... all felt was rather strange. I'll give you a little background on this man's life in a second, because what happened in 1906, many people believe, really restored the key and the heart of this thing. If you wanted to hit up your notes tonight, we're going to talk about features of revival, what revival looks like when it operates. We have talked about two great eras. We looked at the Reformation and what needs to be in place in terms of understanding of the way God is. We looked at things like inspiration of scriptures and the fact of justification by faith, the lordship of Jesus, sovereignty of God. We looked at all of these things, and then recently, this morning and partly last night, we began to explore the contributions of the First and Second Awakening under Wesley Whitfield, Finney, Edwards, and others. And looked at the contributions they made, three tremendous emphases that were a little neglected in that first line of the Reformation. The obligation of man, we looked at holiness to the Lord, purity of heart, and thirdly, we just briefly touched on the work of the kingdom. Many people believe that when revival comes, it will follow this pattern. So we're going to read this together, and I want you to mark some phrases as we go past and read this. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, and I'd like you to put the word divine sovereignty in your sheet. I'll just read you this out, and I'd like you to put the word down, and we'll put the phrase beside it. When the day of Pentecost was fully come, and beside it, put the word divine sovereignty. The day of Pentecost was fully come, fully come, divine sovereignty. Second, they were all with one accord in one place. And then put the words, one accord, and then put human, or if you like, spiritual preparation. One has to do with God, one has to do with man. You'll see the order here again, divine sovereignty, the reform base, and then spiritual preparation, obligation of man. One accord in one place. Then the third word, suddenly, suddenly. And beside suddenly, you can put suddenness. Make it easy. There came a sound from heaven. Put the phrase from heaven, and put the word spontaneous, working, beside it. As of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting, and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. That's a birthday party, with candles. This is supposed to be the birthday of the church, and God had a party, and human candles. That's what it looked like. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and filled with the Holy Spirit, or filled with the Spirit. And then put beside that word, the word anointed, vessels. We'll pray for that tonight. And at this point, we'll begin to explore these, and we'll come back and look at some of the others. I want to give you, first of all, the thing we're doing tonight, because it'll be the last one of our teaching things, because we're trying to sum up what we've sort of briefly touched on, as we've gone through these studies this week on revival. I want to speak, first of all, to you again about divine sovereignty. We said that real revival is stamped with a hallmark of God's timing. The reason why this is, is it has nothing to do with arbitrariness. God doesn't just say, well, you know, they're praying, but I don't think I'll do it right now. There is a thousand things that God sees we don't see. And whenever God does something, he does it totally economically. He answers thousands of things, sometimes all at once. God never wastes anything. Remember in the story of the feeding of the 5,000? These 5,000 men, plus their families, were all out listening to Jesus. They got so carried away, they were all really hungry, and nobody bought any food at all. And Jesus turned, and there was this little boy there who had a couple of fish sandwiches from McDonald's. And he asked the disciples, what have you got? And he had this, and so Jesus took the fish and the bread, and he broke it, and he gathered the disciples to distribute. Scripture tells us they not only fed all 5,000. Understand, they didn't just get a fish flake and a crumb each. They were filled. But then it makes a significant comment. And then they gathered up all of the fragments that remained. So everybody was filled, but nothing was wasted. And God is like that. He wastes nothing. As a matter of fact, one guy made a comment one time. You know, the squirrels, in the U.S., the squirrels get all these nuts. You know, they go crazy, and they're getting ready for winter, and they run up and down and collect all these little nuts and things, and then they bury them under the ground. They want to stock their refrigerator up for the winter. I don't know what they do in New Zealand. Probably just float. But one secular biologist made a comment. God told him to do that. He said, then, he must have not given them enough brains, because they lose most of them. And they only find a few. Like, oh, that's that one, see? Well, who says they lost it? Maybe God wants them to do some planting in response for his provision. Because those dumb little squirrels plant thousands of acres of trees with the nuts they forgot about. There is a sovereignty of God. Now, Charles Finney, who very few people ever thought believed in the sovereignty of God, he really did, speaking of the 1859 revival, said, when I was in Boston, a man stood and said he'd come from Nebraska. And he had traveled 2,000 miles, this man, in a stagecoach or horse or whatever, this huge region. And he said, all through the country in which he traveled, in every place he stopped, from the north to the south, there were these little prayer meetings. And what was weird is that every person thought they were the only ones praying. They thought, nobody else is praying for this country, it's in deep trouble, but we are praying for the nation. And for 2,000 miles there were these little prayer meetings. They didn't even know the other ones were praying. Now, when you see one or two, you can think coincidence. When there's a whole bunch of them, then you know the locusts are on the move. They have no king, but God is speaking to them all. In the Welsh revival, the outpouring of the Spirit came dramatically, with precision, the second week in November 1904, on the same day, both in the north and the south. It happened simultaneously, exactly the same day, in both north and south Wales. Now, there's a timing thing in this. Now, here's an interesting verse. Write this down, Zechariah 10.1. Zechariah, just put Zech for short. Zechariah 10.1. Here's what it says. Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain. See that? Ask of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain. There is a timing here. The Lord will make bright clouds and give showers of rain to every one grass in the field. Divine sovereignty. That's point one. Why does God do stuff like that? Because He's God, that's why. Remember, He is God and you're not. So, He can do anything He wants to. Number two. We have now this phrase, They were all together in one place, and with one accord continued steadfast in prayer. That was verse one and also verse fourteen. There are two essential conditions of revival. I mentioned these already. The first one is prayer. Special, unfortunate prayer. What some call extraordinary seasons of prayer. People are moved to pray above and beyond the basic, Now I lay me down to sleep, my little soul the angels keep. Well, thank you Lord for the spaghetti. When we move past that and get into some serious stuff, there is a sign that God is on the move. Prayer is something you do. Prayer is something for man to do. The second condition of revival is unity. And this one has two conditions to it. The first one is common understanding. And it is important, every revival has something restored to it or something brought back into focus. The Welsh revival, though there was very little preaching, just a lot of testimony, one of the dominant things that went through the Welsh revival was singing. One man asked Evan Roberts, Will the revival come to London? And he said, Can you sing? And though there was very little preaching, we could call it, it was a worship and a testimony revival. So there were tears, testimony and tremendous praise in the Welsh revival. Common understanding is the first condition of unity. The second condition of unity is common unselfishness. If you look at these two things, they are not only the conditions of unity, they are also the conditions of peace and the conditions of happiness. There will never be happiness, harmony, agreement or unity until there is some measure of common understanding and common unselfishness. Let me illustrate, for instance. Zayah said to Yathurma Mugha Haragadom, Do you believe that? Say no. No, he said no, that's good. Because I told him in Tamil he had the face like the rear end of a duck, which is not true. You cannot agree on something if you don't understand. And that's why revival is preceded by reformation. God teaches us something, gives us something. We common understand things. And that is why in a group where people have learned something that God has showed them as a group, it is much easier to see unity come. The second characteristic is not understanding but unselfishness. You could change these words and call the first one wisdom and love. Now, the essence of sin, though its root would be pride and an independent spirit, is selfishness. So if you wanted to boil down the two conditions of happiness, you could say we need wisdom, we need a source of truth that is both testably true, what Francis Sheffield used to call true truth, as opposed to your made-up ideas of truth, and then love. I was in Australia some years ago, and somebody said to me, some reporter, I was in an interview with a reporter, and he said, what did you come here to do? And I said, well, I just came to do in a little way what Jesus would do if he came personally. And he said, well, what is that? I said, God is out to make people holy and happy, and you can't get happy until you get holy. And he said, oh, really? Well, what does holy mean? And I said, well, that's easy. God is only against two things, stupidity and selfishness. That's it. You can afford to lose that, can't you? God's enemies are stupidity and selfishness, darkness and ignorance, and the darkness of morally wrong choices. And the whole beginning then of seeing a healing come to people is some insight, some revelation that God gives to us on a specific incident, and then this love that comes when we give up our self-centered ways. The day you give up your selfishness, the day you stop living for yourself, is the day you understand what it means to be a real Christian. That is why there is no peace to the wicked. As long as you live to please yourself, your life will always be screwed up. And I can offer you absolutely no hope of happiness, real, genuine, lasting happiness outside those two conditions. Matter of fact, you're on the street, and you say to people, what would you like to be? They'll probably say, I'd like to be really happy, or I'd like peace, or I wish the world would be able to live in harmony and people wouldn't shoot each other. And I haven't found one person in a thousand that understands the conditions of happiness, and not one in ten thousand that's willing to do it. Those same conditions of peace and happiness are the conditions of unity. And when people get their lives squared away with God and start listening to his voice, then unity begins. Here is a neat thing. Unity is not developed this way first. So real revival unity doesn't come just because we hold hands and sing we are one in the spirit until our hands get sticky. Matter of fact, real unity is established this way first. The best illustration I can give you is that of a piano. If we took a piano, because that's electronic, you can pitch tune it easy. If we took a standard piano, you cannot tune a piano with another piano. You can't get one piano and then play that piano. You tune both pianos to a standard called a tuning fork. And if you're a piano tuner, you take this fork and you... like this, and you get on the piano... until that matches. And then you work all the way up and down the scale. Now, the way we tune this way is not by shall we share, brother, and so. We tune this way to the fork. Now, my wife has a piano back in our house, and there's another piano I'm thinking of in America, and these two pianos will never meet each other. They can't afford the fare. But if I took that one piano and I tuned it to that fork, and I took that fork over to America, and I tuned that second piano with that fork, those two pianos, given the same music, will play in tune. And that's what God's purpose is. First you give up your selfishness. You get right this way. Then you begin to tune this way. And if God gives us the same music, we'll all sing the same song. Scripture says this in Psalm 110, verse 3. Your people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power. So when God is doing stuff, people get excited about meeting those conditions. They start getting their lives cleaned up. They start thinking about, I need to live a godly life. Here's what Martin Lloyd-Jones said. Our essential trouble is we are content with a very superficial and preliminary knowledge of God, His being and His cause. We spend our lives in busy activism, doing Christian things, instead of realizing our own failure, that we're not attracting anybody to Christ, and they probably see nothing in us that makes them desire to come to Him. And then this key statement. The inevitable and constant preliminary revival has always been a thirst for God, a thirst, a living thirst, for a knowledge of the living God, and a longing and a burning desire to see Him acting, manifesting Himself in His power, rising and scattering His enemies. The thirst for God and the longing for the exhibition of His glory are the essential preliminaries to revival. And that is up to you. Now I'm going to give you a very important verse. This is found in the book of Timothy. And you may want to look at it really briefly. But Scripture says this. In a great house there are vessels of gold and silver. This is in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 20. It says, The foundation of God stands sure, having this seal, the Lord knows them that are His. And let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. That's the base of getting right with God. Leave your sin and follow Jesus. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and earth, some to honor and some to dishonor. Now what does that mean? It means that every house has two kinds of vessels. Now our house here in New Zealand, I have in our house some plates that my wife has collected. I'm not allowed to eat fish and chips on these plates or I'd be a dead preacher. These plates are not for eating on. They're not even for putting in a dishwasher. These plates are for putting up on the wall and looking at. They're called classy plates. See, and the purpose of this vessel unto honor is simply this. You walk into our little house and you look at that classy plate on the wall, you think just how classy my wife is. See, that's a vessel to honor. A vessel to honor is a showpiece that shows something of the class of the person who picked it and put it on display. Also in a house we have a couple of other things. We have a rubbish bag. This is called a vessel unto dishonor. It is very necessary because if you don't have a rubbish bag you've got to put it somewhere. See that? Well, here's a wonderful thing. If a man therefore purge himself from these, Scripture says, he shall be a vessel unto honor. Set apart, meet for the Master's use, prepared to every good work. Question, what is the criteria to move you from one kind of useful vessel to another kind of more honored vessel in the kingdom of God? Answer, purge yourself. And here's what I believe. If you're willing to set your heart to demonstrate to God you really mean business, you would like to display His glory better through your life than it has been in the past, then it is in your hands. God will not demand of you things. God is looking for people who will go beyond mere obedience. You see that? We think we're heroes if we've done what God said. Say, God, I actually did what you said. Isn't that awesome? It's the first time in ten years I've ever done it, but I did it. Now, Jesus said, don't think yourself a hero because you did what I said. What I really like for is to find people not only did what I said, which is wonderful, that's obedience, but actually did more than what I asked. Went the extra mile. You see what I mean? Man comes up, says, give me a coat, Jack. Jesus said, give him two of them. You got two here, take this one too. It might be cold. Go the extra mile. You've heard that thing? If you set your heart on seeking God, God is not going to demand of you these extra things. If you do them, Scripture is clear, purge yourself from these, you'll be a vessel to honor. You wonder why some people just seem to shine in Christian things and others just barely hang on like that cat on the clothesline hanging their baby? I think it lies squarely on your responsibility before God. It's not something He's going to demand of you. It is something you decide to do on your own. You decide, God, I'm going to put aside all of this other stuff. There's a lot of good things I could do, but this one thing I want to do. I want to know you. I want to set my heart to know you. You do that, the eyes of the Lord that run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who are as perfect towards Him, He looks and He marks, mark that man, mark that woman, and that person's mark becomes evident after a short time. You've paid your dues and done your quiet stuff. When you're going to seek God, go into your closet. Don't do it before man, but he that sees in secret will reward you openly. You find any man or any woman of God who's ever moved history, you'll find a secret history behind all of that front stuff of extra mild things that God never demanded of them, they just did it because they loved Him. And now we get on to the scary stuff. Verse 2, and suddenly. Now, I gave you my quick and cheap definition of revival. I'll give it to you again. Revival is a divine attack on society. In revival, God's work is very often completely unexpected. It is something you didn't ever look for, you didn't dream it would happen, and even Christians are caught totally unaware sometimes of what God is doing. And for unbelievers who happen to get caught in the afterglow, it is nothing more than utterly scary. Now, Joseph Kemp of Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh in 1905, this is just before Azusa Street, said this, There was nothing, humanly speaking, to account for what happened. Quite suddenly, on one and then another, came an overwhelming sense of the reality and awfulness of God's presence and of eternal things. That fear of the Lord came. Life, death, and eternity suddenly seemed laid bare. Charles Finney said, People would wake up all of a sudden like a man just rubbing his eyes open and running around the room pushing things over and wondering where all this excitement came from. But though few knew it, you may be sure there'd been somebody in the watchtower constant in prayer till the blessing came. The verse we could give you here is Isaiah 42.9. Isaiah 42.9. This is what God says, I've declared the former things from of old. Yeah, they went forth out of my mouth and I showed them. Suddenly I did them and they came to pass. And new things do I declare. Before they spring forth, I tell you of these. I don't know if you've ever seen a horror movie. But if you haven't, I'll tell you what they're like. They're all about the same. What you've got is some person, it's a very innocent looking situation, but the music sets it up. This person's sort of walking along, you know, and it looks really normal. Except the music is ah, ah, maybe a little kid bouncing a ball. Ah, ah. And the music goes up and up. Ah, ah, and you turn the corner and it's a cat. And you go, oh. And then you turn around. Ah, and there it is. The real thing. You know? That's it. That's called suddenly. You know what I mean? Totally unexpected. You just, that's where the shock comes from. You just come out of nowhere. Or actually you thought it was this. And it actually wasn't. And just when you relax, just when you thought it was safe, you go back to your prayer closet. And the fly, the remake of the fly, the first version of it since the black and white version. Guy says to this girl he's trying to pick up, don't be afraid. And then his girlfriend breaks in and says, yes, be afraid. Be very afraid. That's what suddenly is like. Let me give you another verse. Psalm 64, verse 7 and 9. But God shall shoot at them with an arrow. Suddenly they shall be wounded. The most powerful weapon up until the invention of gunpowder was a crossbow. First the sling, then the crossbow. The crossbow is where they wound this thing up. And they took this little point, this little dot, and it just sat there. And then you pull the trigger and it went like that. And it got smacked right through wood. Or you're standing there with your armor and normal arrows would glance off and this thing would go right out through there. In revival, sometimes the effect on people is exactly like being shot by an arrow. They go like this, just like they really were hit. Now I saw, I've seen God do some very strange things. Extremely strange things. I was in a camp about 15 years ago in California. And there was somebody praying for people and one of the things that happened, there's very strange things that happen sometimes in revival. One of them is that people sometimes pass out. Just like, you know, like, I've seen people just pass out, like, ah, boom, and hit the ground. You think that person's dead. You know, they hit the ground, thump, like that, and they're still alive. They get up there and go, if it's fake, you can tell. They go, oh, and they need healing, but if it's real. I'd never gotten this. I was in this camp one time and there were people, there were kids lying around on the floor, I guess just lying around, just all lost in praise and worship. And there was this guy, he was a policeman, a Christian, a very arrogant one. And he was a black belt, third dan, and karate and judo and stuff, and he kind of walked like, you know that, a walk. And he was sort of walking around, he was one of the counselors in this camp, and he was walking around sort of looking at the kids like, and I could just sort of, almost a sneer on his face like, really? It's California, so you've never seen a sneer until you've seen a California sneer. Please. I don't think so. It's kind of a Wayne's World sneer. Anyway, I was walking past this guy, and he was there, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. He went, he jumped right up in the air, and his neck went like this. Now, I didn't do anything, I just walked past, I didn't touch him, bless you brother, you know, I just walked past, and he flew up in the air, his neck went like that, and he went smack, boom, on the ground. I moved back, you know, like, and I mean, he was out. He was out for three hours, he was out. And when he got up, he got baptized in the Holy Spirit. And then he told his testimony. And I'm the only one who saw it, everybody else was gone. But I saw it, and he stood up, and you know, he'd been weeping, and he was all happy, he said, you know, he said, I'm a Christian, but he said, I've really been arrogant. And he said, you know, he was top of his police academy, and martial arts and stuff, and he trained people in martial arts. And he said, it's been really hard for God to talk to me, you know, because I don't need power, I've got power. I can take out anybody I know. What do I need? Power. See? And he said, God spoke to me in the only language I understood. He gave me a massive karate chop. Boom. Boom. Some wild things. I'll read to you a great clip I got from a book that was written during the Welsh Revival. It's neat, I've been preaching on this for some time, and an old man came up to me, he's 92 years old, and he said, Sonny, I've been waiting 70 years to give this to somebody. And he said, I was a boy in the Welsh Revival. And he said, two books were written during the first six months of it, and I've still got them. And I want to give them to you. So I, there were some wonderful things. Newspaper reports, reporters that came in and wrote these things down. One man, William T. Speeds, famous London editor of the Paul Moore Gazette, thought by some to be the most powerful man in Britain in media, visited the Revival. And then he was interviewed by the London Methodist Times on his return. This is from the Welsh Revival. Oh, Mr. Steed, you've been to the Revival. The Methodist reporter said, What do you think of it? Sir, the question is not what I think of it, but what it thinks of me and of you and all the rest of us. There's something real, there's a very real thing in this Revival, a live thing, which seems to have a power and a grip, which may get hold of a good many of us who at present are mere spectators. And later on in the interview, the man said, You speak as if you dread Revival coming our way. You know, if you hear the song Revival, and you think, Hey, I hope Revival comes. He said, You talk as if you're a little afraid. He said, That's not really so. Dread is not the right word. Or, expresses my sentiment better. You're in the presence of the unknown. He says, You've heard ghost stories. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you were alone at midnight in the haunted chamber of some old castle, and you heard the slow and stealthy steps stealing along a corridor where a visitor from another world was said to walk? You go to South Wales and watch the Revival, and you'll feel pretty much just like that. There is something there from another world. You can't say where it came from or where it's going. But it moves and lives and reaches for you all the time. You see men and women go down in sobbing agony before your eyes as an invisible hand clutches for their heart. And you shudder. It's pretty scary. If you're afraid of strong emotions, you've got to give this Revival a wide berth. Now a Christian dad in Lanarkshire read about the Revival. He and his daughter caught the midnight special train and arrived at 6 a.m. in Chester Station. And he asked a porter, Where is the Revival? How do we get to the place where the Revival is? And that's what the porter said. Take the 8 a.m. train to Uxrum. From there, the local train to Ross. How will we know when we get there, the guy said? You'll feel it on the train, he said. Go down that road and you'll feel it down there. They arrived at 2 a.m. at a chapel that was utterly filled with worshippers. See? This isn't, man, it's not like, hey, we've got a great bussing program and good publicity. This is something else from another world. It's God on the loose. And if you think a horror movie is scary, you ain't seen nothing yet. See, people are afraid of demons. Demons are afraid of God. The real original fear is much scarier than these cheap, you know. I want to give you, just to read a couple of on-the-spot reports. This man says, 34,000 conversion in Wales. I've just returned from a two-day visit to the storm center of the great Welsh revival, sweeping over Wales like a cyclone, lifting people in ecstasy of spiritual fervor. Already over 34,000 converts have been made and the great awakening shows no sign of waning. It was my good fortune to take two meals with Mr. Roberts and to attend three meetings. It was 9.45 when we reached the place and even at that hour there were scores of people seeking admission. But the gates were closed and guarded by policemen for the church was already packed to the door. Do you know why the policemen were there? They didn't have anything left to do. There was no crime. They actually gave the judges white gloves to signify there were no crimes. Matter of fact, the pit ponies who were used to being cursed at and sworn and beaten by their masters, their masters all got saved and the pit ponies didn't know what to do because they couldn't understand the language. Can you imagine the policemen were all out of work so all the thing they could do was sort of direct traffic to the revival? That's what he said. My first impression. How can I describe it? A room meant to seat about 700 people crowded to suffocation with about 1,500. Up in the gallery a young lady, almost a girl, was standing praying with such fervor as I have rarely if ever witnessed before. One hand was upraised and the tones were full of agonized pleadings and though it was in Welsh so I could not understand a word she uttered it had sent a strange thrill through me. Then a young man arose and with wrapped upraised face prayed as though he was in the presence of the Almighty. The entire atmosphere of the room was white hot with spiritual emotion and my chief thought was this is a picture of what must have occurred in the early church in the first century of the Christian era. The hymn was now started and my attention was riveted on Evan Roberts who stood in the pulpit and led the music with face irradiated with joy, smile and even laughter. What impressed me most was his utter naturalness his entire absence of solemnity. He seemed bubbling over with sheer happiness as jubilant as a young man in a baseball game. He didn't preach he simply talked between prayers and songs and testimonies and then really more than just a few sentences at a time. In the afternoon meeting while describing the agony of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane Evan broke down and sobbed from the pulpit scores in the building wept with him. It had been announced to begin at two but before twelve the building was already packed. The air was stifling but the people didn't mind a whip. They'd forgotten the things of earth and stood in the presence of God. The meeting began about noon and went on at white heat for two hours before Mr. Roberts arrived and ended at four thirty. So people could have tea and come back at six. Suddenly there came from heaven. That's that spontaneous thing. Now in one of the revivals that I was in the Readley revival the one that Barry McGuire became a Christian as a consequence of that's a wonderful story Barry was in L.A. He had accidentally picked up a Bible he didn't know it was a Bible if he had known it was a Bible he wouldn't have read it. But he always liked to take a book with him on the road and this particular time he visited a friend of his and this friend had all of these different holy books. He had the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Koran and he had Analects of Confucius and he had all these different books and one of them was Good News for Modern Man. So Barry said what is this? I'm a modern man I need some good news. And the guy said oh don't read that book it will mess your head up man. Barry looked and this guy was trying to cross index the I Ching I think or something and he said mess up my head look at you. And he took the book and when he got on the road and he opened it up and he realized it was a New Testament he took those sneaky Christians they always do them sneaky things just disguising a Bible as if it isn't a Bible. He got really mad but he read it anyway and he didn't have anything else to read and he got on and he threw it on his coffee tub and he said just lay there with the wind blowing read me read me read me. So he died and he threw it in his bag and he took it this way reading it in anger he read it all the way through to the Book of Romans. The whole New Testament through to the Book of Romans. And he was invited to one of the famous three day parties twice a week that they used to have where they would just basically smoke grass and drink vodka and orange juice for three days until they all got starving and then they ordered pizza and stuff broke the thing for a day and then started the second three day party. Gary was sitting there he'd just finished reading Romans 1 that describes what a world looks like without God and he looked around and he saw he was in Romans 1 then he looked up on the around the room and it was a musician named Stanley around the room and in the room were all of these pictures of the great contemporary artists of his time and he looked at them and every single one of them was dead and had just died. There was Mama Cass Elliot of the Mamas and Poppers she was dead. There was Janice Joplin choked to death in her own vomit of drug overdose dead. There was Jimmy Morrison of the Doors dead. There was Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones dead. There was Otis Redding dead. There was Barry McGuire. So he said to the people listen, I am not going to smoke dope anymore. They went hey, Barry's not going to smoke dope here, talk on this. So he didn't know what to do. He went back to his house and an uncle had written to him and said Barry, I know you're not going to understand this but I just meant Jesus, I'm a Christian and had his address. So Barry got on his motorbike and he rode 150 miles out of L.A. to see if he could find his uncle who could tell him something about what he'd been reading. When he arrived in L.A. he met a young man was for this little town called Ridley California. And he was so burdened by this city, prayed years for this that he called a friend of mine who had started a ministry called Agape Force and he said we need something for our kids in our town. He said could you put a concert on or something? And my friend had been praying for a long time that they'd get an opportunity not to put the concert on but to begin to minister in a revival based way. And the guy broke down as he was talking he broke down and wept. He just wept over his desk and he said God is being so dishonored by this city. And these there were only about 20 kids came into the city and they began to work. opened an old safeway place and then suddenly it broke. Now I can say the preaching was fine and everything else but suddenly God visited. And it was so spontaneously scary. There were militant groups in the town that threatened to kill the Christians there. There were the brown berets that came in and they said if you don't leave town we're going to kill you. They confronted them a coffee bar and they said get out or you'll die. And they meant it very serious. God visited and every one of those dudes moved out of town. It was too scary for them. They went to hold a Bible study on the high school campus. First day they had 10 kids, second day they had 20, third day they had 40, fifth day they had 700. There were so many people getting saved it just people started turning themselves into the police station. Police station had the whole line of people lined up. You remember that robbery? I did it. I'm guilty. Arrest me. You know? And they ran out of jail. They finally just said oh forget it. And you know? The crime rate which had steadily gone up year after year stopped, leveled, and then dropped right out. And the spontaneous, here's what happened, people in their rooms completely untouched by Christians, not talked to by Christians, not even knowing something was going on in the town. One college girl suddenly became overwhelmed with a sense of her sin, and she turned her room upside down trying to find a Billy Graham track somebody had given her five years before. She couldn't find it, and she ran out on the streets to see if she could find somebody who could tell her how to become a Christian. How would you like to witness in an atmosphere like that? The mayor's son got saved, he was a real jock, a top athlete, an Olympic gold prospect, he was a swimmer, he was also secretly using drugs, he got saved, he confessed to his dad, and the mayor called a prayer meeting for the whole city. Media started coming in from surrounding cities, television guys came in, you couldn't get into this coffee bar, they had to give tickets, I'm sorry you can't get in, it's too full, come back in an hour. So people had tickets, can I get in yet, can I get in and see? People were being met all over the place. Baron Maguire came into the middle of this thing, just before it hit, there were two kids, stood up and they looked out and this church was dead as a doorknob that they were going to witness in. And they looked in the back and there was this hairy being sitting in the back like, God said to him, I'm going to you and going to you and and going to you and to and going to you and to you to and going to and going to you to and to you to you to you to to you to you to to you you to you to you you to you you you to to you to to to