Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the profound simplicity and necessity of prayer, asserting that it is the language of the poor and a confession of spiritual poverty. He argues that those who are self-sufficient and self-satisfied do not pray, while true prayer acknowledges our dependence on God. Ravenhill highlights the importance of teaching children to pray and the need for a deep, personal prayer life, drawing on examples from scripture and his own experiences. He calls for a revival of prayer in the church, stating that no man is greater than his prayer life and that prayer is essential for spiritual strength and effectiveness.

The motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try. Prayer a sublimest strain that reaps the majesty on high. Prayer is so simple that a child can do it and so profound that nobody can explain it. And if you speak in the languages of tongues and of men, angels and men and tongues and everything else, you still can't exhaust this tremendous theme of prayer. In the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, 18.1, you may remember it says there that men ought always to pray. Those were the words of Jesus. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, there are 17 exhortations and one of them is that we ought to pray without ceasing. I'm sure you think sometimes we got that mixed up and thought it was we should preach without ceasing, but actually pray without ceasing. There's an old saying that man proposes and God disposes. And I had figured that today we'd continue the theme we had yesterday, the Sermon on the Mount. And yesterday morning the Lord made it very clear to me that we should stay with this theme of prayer. Prayer is the language of the poor. People who are spiritually rich don't pray. I reminded you yesterday that the Sermon on the Mount begins with, blessed are the poor. If it began with, blessed are the pure, the challenge would be too great for us. But it begins with, blessed are the poor in spirit. And again, the poor pray. Prayer is a confession of poverty. If you don't pray, then all you're telling God, you can manage it without Him. You're self-sufficient. Well actually, the self-sufficient don't pray. The self-satisfied don't want to pray, and the self-righteous can't pray. Prayer is a confession of bankruptcy. Again and again and again, the psalmist says, bow down thine ear and hear me for I am poor and needy. And of course the supreme example is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Because he was always praying. It says of the disciples that they went, as was their custom, they went to sleep at night. Jesus went into a mountain to pray. I imagine that the major part of the life of the Lord Jesus was the, was the life of prayer. I don't know if there is a pattern in prayer. People often ask, how do you pray? I read a lot of books on prayer they say. You could read a lot of books on swimming but never swim. You've got to get in the water and do it. You could read a book on physical culture. As I tell young people sometimes, my muscles are hard to find. Because I've never done any work. Preachers don't work, we're the retired class. I mean we don't work with our arms, we don't chop trees down, we don't do manual labor, and therefore very often we are, we're not too well developed. Unless you've been an athlete. And our spiritual muscles don't develop by sitting in a chair and reading books on prayer. You can have all the knowledge in the world if you want it, the science of prayer, psychology of prayer, and still not know how to pray. There is a sense in which it's a trial and error method. Madame Guillaume, if you can find the book, Madame Guillaume the French mystic, had a lovely book on the, on the, on prayer. I mentioned last night, P.T. Forsyth, who is really a preacher's preacher. He has a very beautiful profound book on the soul of prayer. You won't read it a chapter at a time, you might read a line at a time, you might read nearly a sentence at a time. We had the other night, three nights ago I think, a book publisher was here for the night meeting. I didn't ask if he could publish any of mine, but anyhow, he was here and he said, well we're getting a new series of books out. Now just for Christians you know, not more than 60 pages. I said what you mean is we're done. All the bestsellers in the last two years have had a thousand to two, to 120, pardon me, to 1,200 up to 1,500 pages. If you didn't read Leon, Exodus by Leon Urist, you missed a very fine book I think, you should read it. Read his Miller or 18, show you what people do when they, you know, when they set their minds to do it. A couple of kids in a, in the fall of Warsaw I think it was, that crawled under a city, right through a city, in the sewers, up to their necks in filth. And when they got out, the oldest boy was about 15 I think, the younger boy about 12, and the youngster said, where do we go? And he said, we're going to our own country, where's that? Palestine, where's that? Oh it's a long way off, but we'll get there. And they made it, because they made up their minds they'd get there. I'm not, I don't think, I don't think you'd crawl through a sewer to a prayer meeting. You can get people to prayer meetings with wall-to-wall carpeting, and plush seats, so you'll go to sleep quicker, and all the other things. The softer we make the church, the softer we make the Christians. And now you don't have to preach too long, a law that I do not obey as you know. Now we want sermonettes for Christianettes. But boys would walk through a sewer, up to their necks, in excretion, and stink, and almost dying, because they wanted to be free. And usually, you, you discover in this country, that very, very often, the most outstanding students are kids that come from a foreign country, with a shirt, and a pair of shorts, and hardly enough money to chew gum, well they haven't learned to do that marvelous thing when they get here usually, they learn it while they're here. And hardly enough money to ride home, but they make the best grades. You see, they've no side diversion. They come to do this one thing, that's the whole secret of Paul's life, it will be the secret of yours. Paul said this one thing I do, he had no side issues. And the Christian life is just as demanding as that. Now some of you look young, I don't know if you are, it could be the Avon lady helped you, I don't know, but you look young and maybe you've got some children parked down the street. Don't you wish you could park them every day? But anyhow, are you teaching the children to pray? You know in the Christian life, you, you, you put this in your mind if you don't write it in the back of your Bible. In the Christian life, the good is the enemy of the best. Books are good, but they're bad if they keep you from the Bible. The fellowship of saints is good, it's bad if it keeps you from fellowship with the Father. John says our fellowship is with the Father and is with Son Jesus Christ and we have fellowship one with another. But we prefer fellowship one with another, to make up the other gap. You see why prayer is so demanding is, you don't have to pray with anybody else. Prayer is a lonely business. I was born into a very wealthy family. My mother was a saint and my father was a praying man, but with no money. Later my father went into service with people like the Duke of Argyll and Lord Tallmash and the upper crust, upper edge human of British society. And afterwards he said, he always thanked God he was born poor. Because when he got up there, he saw how they wasted their lives. As I said the other day, God will forgive you, this thing won't. Some stupid person will tell you faith can do anything, it just can't. If it could I'd suggest we all stay here a week and fast and pray and raise up John Wesley from the dead, we could do with him. And then pray and get Luther raised from the dead. And then why not shoot for the stars, let's pray and get the devil saved, it cleared the whole mess up. Faith can do anything, no it can't do anything. It can do anything God wants, not anything I want. God has set boundaries, but I thank God sincerely I was born in a poor home. I thank God for a godly mother, I thank God for a praying father. Not until I was a teenager did I discover why my father wept every time he prayed, even at family devotions he wept. The greatest favor he ever did was take me to a whole night of prayer when I was 14 years of age, I never forgot it. And when I heard a few weeks after there was another night of prayer, I begged, I entreated him, please let me go. Mother said, well uh you know we didn't get home last time till between two and three in the morning, so what? I heard father say, don't stop it, let it go. And I went week after week after week, ten o'clock at night we prayed till two or three in the morning. What do you do, take the kids in the backyard and feed them to catch with a mitt? Play baseball? Sure they need a little fresh air, encouragement and so forth, but what, what spiritual influence are you having on your children right now? Martha and I used to go to a home of a doctor, very brilliant doctor, specializes in open heart surgery, as I do. And his wife is a brilliant surgeon too, and they have a clinic, a very wealthy. And ever since we went the first time to that home, I was impressed by the fact, first the simplicity of the home, secondly the dining room table, he made it himself, it's about six feet long and about four and a half feet wide, and it's plywood and it's very poor looking. But right behind the table, right on the wall, he doesn't have a lovely mural, he has just a sheet of plywood which he's dyed black, and he has a blackboard. And the children had to learn a scripture every day. Imagine how many scriptures they knew at the end of the year, in case you can't count, 365. The first thing at breakfast was, you know, if it was John 3 16, John 3 16. But mostly proverbs. And at breakfast they had a proverb. Children came home from school, what was the proverb this morning? When they had supper at night, before you eat, what was the proverb today? After they finished, what was the proverb today? And then almost from being the height of a duck, as soon as almost they could talk, he wrote out, began to write out the grammar, the alphabet of Greek. Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, you know, he got it all going. And then he got words, and outside he began to teach them some Hebrew. Children's minds are amazingly plastic, you can teach them so much. In this country I think children don't go to school till they're three and a half. That's why they're smart, because naturally they inherited a lot of that. But apart from that, they did go to school when they were three and a half. I understand in Tokyo, they have a class every Saturday morning of 2,000 children, between two and three years of age, learning the violin. Can you imagine that? It must be agony. Going into a room with 2,000 kids pulling horses' tails over cats' guts, they said Fritz Kreisler could make an audience weep by doing that. They'd weep if I did it too, I'm sure of that. But the fact is, you see, that children so young, their minds can absorb so much. Isn't it really an indictment on us that an American child at the age of three, has watched 20,000 hours of TV. And a psychologist says it does not damage the eyesight, all it does is damage the brain, you see. 20,000 hours. Now supposing you taught them 20,000 hours of meditation in God, the Word of God and prayer, man we'd be raising giants. You know what you say, oh get in your room, you've got your own TV for Christmas, get in there, shut up, see channel 7, become an idiot like the other idiots. Do you really discipline your children? Do you, you see again, that word disciple, we talk about being disciples, well disciple comes from the word discipline. Are you a disciple or just a follower? I can't help again, but think of Mark Spitz when he, when he went to the Olympics there in Mexico, what six, seven years ago. Arrogant, cocky, you watch me get all the prizes. Didn't get one. Came home bitter, disillusioned, mad. Not with anybody else except Mark Spitz. When somebody said so-and-so beat you in the best stroke, I beat myself. So-and-so beat you in the backstroke, I beat myself. But you wait till I go to Munich. You said that Munich, you said that going to Mexico. You remember when he went to Munich, he gathered one gold medal, two, three, four, five, six, seven, everybody's gasping. The only reason he didn't get eight was there wasn't one. And he admitted that when he came back crushed, feeling such a colossal failure. He'd been written up in all the sports magazines, watch this fine young man, he's got such a marvelous body, maybe the most coordinated body in the sports world except for all Muhammad Ali. And he went to Munich and he captured all the prizes, made records that will never be beaten because he changed the laws after. When they said how did you do it, he said from the day I failed, I was in the water eight hours a day, every day for four years, never missed a day. Eight hours when I wasn't in the water, I was doing something else, coordinating, psyching myself. I understand the man that trains him can't swim a yard. Well he must be pretty humble to take advice from a man that can't swim. Imagine the man walking on the bank saying, hey you're not going for it, shut up you don't know a thing, you can't even swim. But when the man said you turn your hands at the wrong moment, you're not turning your head the right way, you're not getting all the power you can. He listened, he was corrected, he disciplined himself. And Paul says that men do this in the arena, they do it. Paul liked the kind of gymnastics, you know, he says the Christian life is what? He says I've fought a good fight, finished my course, kept the faith. It's a fight, not with the deacons, the devil. You may have to fight the deacons too, but I fought a good fight, he said. I finished my course, it's a race. I've kept the faith. It's a stewardship. And if you're going to embrace all that, the only way to do it is, as I would say, wrap it all up in prayer. Now why don't you go home and start all over again? You've been saying, Lord make me humble. Well, one way to start is go apologize to your children. That's pretty grim, isn't it? Take a five-year-old and sit him or her on a chair and say, you know, Daddy, Mummy hasn't been what we should have been. We've been going the wrong way about it. Keep you quiet, we gave you a lollipop. Interest you, we told you to watch Captain Kangaroo. And start all over. Make up your mind that your children are going to be this, that and the other. You talk about psychology. Some people put a thing under the pillow, don't they, and learn while they're asleep. I guess Christians must use a lot of those things. Very happy. 1865, there was a woman in this, not in this country, but anyhow. One of the greatest women, I think, that has ever lived since apostolic days. She was Mrs. Booth, the wife of the founder of the Salvation Army. And she was a great woman of prayer. If you've been going down the street where she lived, you would have seen the royal coach go up. And the footman would get up and hand a note, please give this to Mrs. Booth. It was from the Queen of England. The letter would say something like this, we have a, we have a government situation which is serious, will you kindly pray about it today. And the carriage had hardly gone away when the Prime Minister's carriage went up. And a note was delivered from Gladstone of Israeli, please pray. There's a situation affecting the British Empire. They don't do that anymore, of course. But not only did she have a worldwide prayer ministry, even though she had a bunch of youngsters round her skirt. But every night when the children were asleep, she'd go to the side of the bed and lay her hands on them and pray. And when she finished praying, she would say, sleep on darling, the world is waiting for you. And every one of them grew up to be distinctive. Hymn writers, poets, painters, not one of them in any way was commonplace. Now it wasn't the only time she prayed for them for sure. She continually bore them up before God in prayer. The pattern, as I said the other day, prayer really is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God. I can't tell you how to pray, I can give you a suggestion or two, and I think that the first part of praying should be praise. Get a good hymn book, memorize some hymns. There's a good, good old Methodist book. If you can't find it, get a bad Baptist book. But if you could get the old, old Baptist book, which I'm sure you can't get a hundred years old, it was a fantastic book of praise. Praise should precede all our petitions. And from praise, we move on to worship. Many of you were not here the other day when I mentioned the fact that Dr. Tozer, in all the things he taught me, and I taught with him for hours, I prayed with him many times, just the two of us. But the most startling thing he ever said, I think, was one day when he showed me a piece of dog-ear drug that was, he said he costs 69 cents at Kresge. And he said, Len, some mornings I come in and I take the phone off the hook and I call my secretary and say, Margaret, I can't interview anybody today. No interviews, no dictation. Go home, come back tomorrow. And he pointed, he said, I get down on that rug on my belly at eight o'clock in the morning. I'm still there at 12 or maybe one o'clock. And I haven't said one word of prayer. I haven't said one word of praise. All I've done is worship God. Does that sound strange to you? If I said he lived in 1864, you'd say, yeah, there used to be saints around in those days. Well he died fairly recently. Never went to school, never went to seminary. Just lived on a little farm on the hills of Pennsylvania. And after he got saved, he began to dig deep into the Word of God. As I said the other day, you can say all you like about the modern interpretation of the Spirit-filled life. It may be right, it may not be right. But I challenge you to find me an example anywhere like Spurgeon. Spurgeon was saved when he was 15. They built him a church when he was 19, which in case you don't know, happens to be four years afterwards. And without Bible school or seminary, and with not many books, in four years they built him an auditorium seating 5,000 people, and he packed it twice every Sunday, for the rest of his life. I've heard people say, almost patronizingly, isn't it a pity he didn't know about the gifts of the Spirit. He never spoke in time. He never had healing meetings. And yet there's a record that more people were healed through his praying than all the hospitals ever did in London. I'm saying that to say this again, you see, he made use of all the available resources that he could find in God. One thing that I find is, really disturbing amongst other things these days, is the poverty of prayer in the pulpit. Seems to me, now in England of course, European style is entirely different. You never have a song leader for instance in Europe. You sing, you lead the songs yourself. You don't say, we're going to sing number 25, blessed assurance then, Jack you pray for us. The last thing Jack wrote was, bite his wife's head off when they got out of the car, oh well I'll see you after the meeting anyhow. Come in like saint and smile, hello, hello. Hi, how are you, how are you. His lips were slimy with anger or bitterness or something and you want him to become a saint instantly and, you know. And he stands up with piety and comes out with the old, old stuff he's prayed so long advised us. Somebody asked Paul Reese once, Paul is a great preacher. Somebody said you, you prayed a marvelous prayer. Do you, how long does it take you to prepare a sermon? He said 15 hours. 15 hours, five hours a day for three days. Some of you guys get one in 15 minutes. You know what the lady said the other week, you know, you know preacher, that was fantastic. Spurgeon couldn't have done better than that. Sure he couldn't, that's where you borrowed it from. Everybody's reading Spurgeon, they're re-issuing Spurgeon's sermon. In the preacher's office the other day there are about 20 volumes, beautifully bound volumes. Spurgeon, Spurgeon's tabernacle pulpit. Spurgeon's sword and trowel. Spurgeon this, Spurgeon that. What's wrong with reading Spurgeon? Nothing, nothing, nothing. They see very often the, as a hymn writer says, so that us, bliss may be our guide and not our chains. Books are all right when they're helps, they're bad when they become crutches. Books are helpful to provoke us maybe, they're wrong when all you do is take them and you rehash it up and just serve it up again. In fact I was in a place not too long ago, a man came to me, he said, I've got to make a confession Brother Raymond. I'll confess, go on, get ahead, what do you want to say? Oh I want to tell you, he said, that I have a broadcast in the town where I live. And he said, for the past months I've read a, well you know, we have a song and a few announcements. And then he said, I've been reading over the, over the radio, I've been reading Y Revival Tarot. Just a small fraction of it. You don't mind do you? I said, no, no, you lay up treasure in heaven for me. He said, what do you mean? I said, you think God's going to reward you for preaching my sermons? You'll reward me. That's why if you see a super-sized mansion in heaven, that's where Spurgeon lives. Everybody's been preaching his sermons. So God's going to reward him, all the work, all the sweat, all the labor. My mother used to send me shopping sometimes. And when I came back, she'd count the change very carefully. I'd like to say thank you dear. But one night I heard my mother saying to my father, Walter you know the Lord's been so good to you. You haven't been sick, we don't owe any money. There's this, there's that, the other, and she was really thanking him. Now she didn't thank me like that. All I did was take the money he earned and go shopping, and that was my little part of it, but she thanked him for it. Well I'll tell you this, that one of my favorite verses is, the river of God is full of water. It doesn't matter how much we've taken out of it, it's still boundless, it's inexhaustible. And this was one of the secrets again of, of Dr. Tozer, that he just plunged there deeply, again into the word of God. One encouraging feature to me in these distressing days is that there are bunches of people getting together to pray. Before we left Baton Rouge, a lady called me. And she said, Brother Ravenhill, I remember you spoke at so-and-so, and God got hold of my life and changed it around, particularly in the area of prayer. And she said, now here in Baton Rouge, we have a bunch of women that meet five mornings every week. There's only five or six of us. And we meet every morning, and pray for revival in this city. And she said, the, the, the results of our praying have been so amazing that we're almost getting nervous about praying. God is answering so quickly. Well, amongst other things, we're going to be amazed when we get to heaven, of how little we have appropriated of the resources that there are in God. Again, I do trust that, that in your home, particularly if you're a pastor, that you'll be a model father, and that you'll teach your children to pray. People are always deploring the days in which we live, and say, you know, times have changed. No, they haven't. Times don't change people. People change time. You know how to prove it? Go up to Pennsylvania, to the Amish country, and see if the Amish people have changed in 200 years. They haven't changed the best. They have no TVs. They have no automobiles. They have no electricity. They've almost no crime. Their girls don't get into trouble. Why? Because they live as they were trained to live 200 years ago. For the first time in history, in the last 10 years, people have been going out, out of America, the land of the free, because they were persecuted. A whole bunch of Amish people went down to South America. Why? Because they were going to make the children go to the day schools, the state schools. They said what? To pick up dirty language, and dirty literature, and drugs, and all the other things. Well either you, you conform to the state or you go. So they, I forget, I think it was 70 families pulled up. The word of God says be not conformed to this world. Now, now are you shaping the lives of those children? You know, one of the great things about revival is that when revival comes, it doesn't distinguish between the rich and the poor, the black and the white, or the old and the young. I was thinking this morning of a morning when in, it was Wednesday morning if I remember right, on the 13th of August 1727. A bunch of people were praying in a place called Hernhut in Germany. And just as the clock moved up to 11 o'clock, as soon as it moved like that, just as the o'clock was going to strike, the Holy Ghost came down on the community. Do you know what the result was? That that one room in which they prayed, and this is a record as far as I know, that one room in which they prayed at 11 o'clock that morning, was never empty for a hundred years. Go two o'clock in the morning, they were praying. Go two o'clock in the afternoon, sometimes do it two or three. Sometimes you'll find eight or nine or ten little boys and girls praying with tears, travailing. And for a hundred years that prayer meeting went on, it never stopped, the lights never went out. The result was that fine athletic young men that God came upon, kissed the girlfriends goodbye, or kissed the wives goodbye. And they came down to the place where they had a plane crash the other day, St. Thomas. And some of those areas in the Virgin Islands, and you'd see the colored pellets were put on the block, slaves were sold. When they finished selling the slaves, a white boy would stand up, lovely blonde boy from Germany, nice golden curls, and he'd stand on the slave block and say, sell me for what? I want to be a slave. We all want to be free. Why be a slave? It's the only way you can get on a plantation. When they got on a plantation, they plowed with five men instead of oxen. And the white man always got in the middle so he could witness to the slaves on either side. They put him a gold, they put him a, I was going to say gold, they put him an iron collar around his neck, stripped him to his waist except for a little pair of shorts, and put a belt around him, and fastened him to a plough. And that boy would witness, until that collar would cut in his neck, they got all kinds of poison and troubles. And then immediately he got his money for being auctioned as a slave, he gave it to the pastor, and said send that back to Germany to pay the fare for another boy. And they kept that up, that's the way they entered those fields. They literally sold themselves into slavery in order to get the message there. I've said very often, an experience of God that costs nothing is worth nothing and it does nothing. There's a price to pay. You say it's all grace, it's free everything. No it's not. Read your Bible. What does it say in the book of the Revelation? I counsel thee to what? Well to buy of me. Buy what? White raiment? Buy gold. Grace is free, rewards are not free. If there are any rags in heaven, a lot of us will be wearing them. Why? Because you see, everybody won't be the same in heaven. Won't get the same reward, we won't be the same in appearance, we won't have the same offices. As I said last night, we're not eternally conscious people, we live on this dirty old mudboard. We're so concerned to be promoted this way and promoted that way. And even if we get asked to a state convention to sing, we feel, oh boy, of course my halo will be coming soon, you know. When you think of the eternal aspect, my time, time, what is time? Oh well, my concept of time is it's an island surrounded by an ocean of eternity. You can't get off it without getting into eternity. There's a young man in this country years ago, you may remember reading Stephen Grellick's life. Do you remember reading Stephen Grellick's life? No. Anyhow, he's listed in one of the books of Borom, his five books on great texts. Stephen Grellick came to this country, he was a brilliant Quaker, a Huguenot. And he got into society, away there in that lovely city of Philadelphia, right at the beginning, just about, you know, not too long after the, I guess, Declaration of Independence. He was quite a man, he was a real lady's man, wore his nice velvet jackets, and you know. But one day he went to a church and heard the gospel. He didn't want to go. Then one night he went to a type of a camp meeting, and he walked out of the camp meeting, and he went down a corridor. They cut a rough road through the trees. And he said the wind moved through the trees, and every tree, every leaf on the tree became a tongue, and every tongue began to say eternity, eternity, eternity, eternity. He said it went down every corridor of my mind, every part of eternity, eternity. And he said, I fell there in the dust, just like Saul of Tarsus. When he got up, he was completely transformed. When he got up, he didn't own a thing. His body, his soul, his money, his time, anything. He swore his allegiance to Jesus, and he said, Lord, I'll go wherever. Some people go to the down and outs, I'll go to the up and out. He went to every king in Europe. He even went to the Pope. He walked over the Alps in the snows. He went down into the hell hole of Calcutta. And he sat there in the dirt, and he picked up vocabularies from children, learned languages. He learned about as many languages as I have fingers and toes. He was zealous for God, so zealous that when he preached in Paris, they got a hold of him and put a rope around his neck and strung him up to a lamp post. Somebody cut him down. Next day they got more mad, they threw him in the sign, the river sign there, and he swam out, got deliverance. It didn't make any difference where he went. He went to kings, I say again, he went to the Pope, he went to the poor, he went to the rich, he went to slave camps, he embraced death, he shook hands with misery, he went into leper colonies. This one thing I do. And the only way he could do it, obviously, again, was that he girded himself with prayer. Men ought always to pray. Well, the life of one man in the Bible is covered by two words. One of the greatest men that ever lived. He strangled the economy, he shut up heaven, he raised the dead. You mentioned it, he did it. Why did he do it? Because he prayed. How do you know? Because God said so. Left a little tombstone like that, and on the tombstone it just says two words, he prayed. What will it say on yours? He golfed or he goofed. He was the champion fisherman of all the pastors in the Southern Baptist Church. Boy what an honor that is. Elias, in case you think his daddy was a god and his mother a seraphim or something. He, it's very clear that he was a man of like passions. That doesn't mean he was a passionate man in the sense of anything sexual. It means he was made up like you and I. He had emotions, he had nerves, he, and he had sinews and everything else. He was a man of like passions even as we are. He's a very normal man and proved that very easily. He ran away from one woman and stuck up to 800 men. So he must have been pretty normal anyhow. But this is what he did. He, he what? Well again he, he came into a, he came on the stage of Israel. You, you know how Elijah left the stage. He went up in a whirlwind and in a chariot sign. Tell me how he came. Tell me where he came from. Tell me who his mother and father were, with all your knowledge. They tell you that at seminary. Where did he come from? Who were his parents? What school did he go to? I told you the other day he went to the same school that all good men go. He went to the University of Silas. See this is the hard thing. You can put a show on in the pulpit. You can't put a show on in the closet. You can pray very impressively maybe when you're in your church prayer meeting. That's no good if you're dumb when you're home. Your longest prayer should be in the secret place. Because if you're having a night of prayer that's all right. You can maybe pray. I used to take teams of college men around England. I enjoyed that. I confess I enjoyed it very much. Every year I took a new set of men, about half a dozen men. And they had to mean business. Do you know why? Because we had no money. We slept on floors like this. You used your boots for your pillow, your shirt of course to soften your boots. And, and we walked. John Wesley rode a triangle from the north of England, Newcastle, down to London, across to Bristol. Bristol back to London, north of England. Well I didn't do it because I hadn't a horse. I walked it. You say England's not very big. Well you try walking 400 miles and see if it is. Walk 20 miles a day and pull a little cart behind with a tent in it and your equipment. And see how much you enjoy it. That's the way that you make men. I preached with some of the greatest men in the world, been in some of the greatest churches in the world. But nothing affected me like those young men. I've seen when we, we've wrestled with wild beasts till 12 o'clock at night, the cinema crowds coming out of movies. And I'd say to the boys, well boys now let's get into bed, have a cup of tea. And one would say, you know Skipper, they always call me Skipper. The best name they could find. But anyhow, they said Skipper, I think we should pray. And as sure as ever one boy said, I think we should pray. Another said, well I'll have to pray with you. And you know what, we all ended up praying till two, three, four. Some of those boys would pray a whole hour straight off. They prayed with tears. One man, Harry Toth, my wife's favorite preacher. I'm the next one. But Martha always liked to hear Harry, oh Harry was a great fellow. Never went to Bible school. Never had any training. But he's one of the most long-headed, thoughtful, profound, disturbing preachers I've ever heard. I think we have a couple of record cassettes of his. You see we wanted easy. Let's go to Bible school, find somebody to support you, or pay your way through, and just make it as easy as you can. Harry worked in a factory, worked in a forge where it was hot, where he had to carry heavy things and so forth. Come home at night, bathe, go up in the attic with his Bible and Young's Concordance. And stay there from six o'clock at night till one o'clock. His mother and father had to get him down. When we were living in Ireland, we lived in an old castle, part of an old castle anyhow. And we would go out, Martha and I, to a meeting, and coming back we had a courtyard, half the size of this, at the back of the house, big high wall round, beautiful roses and flowers, lovely place. And we come home at two o'clock in the morning, and there's a light up in the bedroom. Martha would say, Paul isn't in bed. Check him before we go to bed. I go up and open the door quietly, and there's no heating in the house. Frost outside, there's white as snow, and there the little guy was with all the bedclothes round him, and just the top of his head showing. And I'd say quietly, Paul, it's two o'clock. Hmm, won't be long, Daddy. And from 16 years of age, that boy prayed from seven or eight at night, till two or three in the morning, on his own. No wonder he's made a tough missionary. You see, if you teach people, you teach your children. Jack Nicklaus, I don't know whether he's the greatest golfer, but he's got a boy who's a brilliant golfer. Why? Because he saw his daddy's trophies, and he'd go out with his daddy, and play golf. Another man takes up, he sees that the father becomes a pattern for the child. He wants to do it that way, okay. One day I'm going to find out how this man learned to pray. He came on the stage in a crisis hour. Read it on, at your leisure, I'm only going to take two or three minutes here. But read the end of the 16th chapter of the first book of Kings. Every law God had made, men broke. And as though they were thumbing their noses to God, God had said that the city of Jericho should not be rebuilt. And they rebuilt it in the blood of their own children. And then to make bad worse, as the Irish say, you remember that this, this king, he went and he married a wicked woman, an alien. Kipling would say, the lesser breed without the law. The cup of iniquity was filled. The devil was having a great time. The lights went out, they invaded the country with priests. Every day the incense, nonsense was going up to God, it stunk in his nostrils. And there was nobody around. And then suddenly, just as, just as, as dynamically, and just as, as I said the other night, John Baptist came like, like one of those rockets. If you happen to see one tonight or another night. When they set them off at night, a streak, the lights of the whole country. You can't see the blackness. John Baptist came like that. Elijah came like that. The whole nation giving up to idolatry, impurity, infidelity, indecency, so forth. And God found a man, that's all. That's all he found in the Reformation, one man. That's all he found in England. Found in John Wesley. Leckie is a secular historian, not a church historian. And Leckie says, remember that when that bloody revolution swept over France, they threw the monarchy in the garbage can. They put up their, their, their flag, their, their tricolour. And stamped on it, remember, liberty and fraternity and equality. They took a naked woman, a harlot, and put her on the high altar in Notre Dame Cathedral. Another day they took a pig there and cut its throat to desecrate it. And Leckie says that when that river of impurity and that river of infidelity swept over France, God raised up a man. And that man changed the history of England. Raised up two men, actually, because Wesley was raised up and also George Whitfield. Do you want to read a few fellows that read? Do you read? I know you can, but do you? I mean, apart from the sports page, Sports Illustrated. As I said a few minutes ago, we, we, the writers tell me now, the publishers, we don't want long books, you know, 60, 70 pages. Boy, they sold millions of copies of books of Winston Churchill's, his five books on the war, were all six, eight, and a thousand pages, but poor Christians can't maintain their thinking. But if you can, there's a book about that thick, written by a friend of mine, Dallimore. You could find possibly 40 lives, 40 biographies of George Whitfield. That's the greatest of them all. Fantastic book. Like other men, he was a great man of prayer. And he and Wesley were the men that turned the tides of impurity and deism. You see, we say history repeats itself, it sure does. When they had big political rallies in England at that time, people committed sexual immorality in the streets. As a sport, people watched them. Two out of every three houses in London was a gym house. England had reached the lowest point in morality or immorality that she ever reached. Suddenly God came in, through Wesley, and George Whitfield, and a bunch of men that now are named the veteran preachers of Methodism. You see, John Wesley gathered a bunch of men with him. Now look, and this is the secret of it all, they weren't as equal socially, they were not as equal intellectually, but they were as equal spiritually. They couldn't read Greek and Hebrew like he could. He could read all kinds of languages. He learned languages for fun. Could preach in French, read French, loved French. But those men were as equal spiritually. They prayed as long as he prayed. They were as successful as he was successful, because they went and carried the message and he coordinated the whole thing. But again what happened there, and what happened here in the Old Testament, is the situation we're in now. Today everything we exalt is vulgar and vile and vicious. It's lewd and lustful, lousy. We fight for the rights of people to do immoral things. The beaches on the East Coast, the West Coast, would be filled with naked, totally naked people. Now there are beaches in California, we didn't go to one, but there's a notice not far from where we were. Went to the Southern Baptist, went to the Baptist College there. There's a huge sign on the side of the road, bathing suits, knots, the knot was about this size, knots, compulsory beyond this point. So do you wonder, there are thousands of people there. Everything that's vile, exactly the same situation. Now what do you do, hang your half on the willow? No, no, no, no. You just find out where your channels got blocked, you just find out what's wrong. And if they raise their altars, well, this man says I'll show you what God can do. His whole life, you can spell it out very secretly, read it, read it, read into the 17th chapter and the 18th. In one chapter God says go hide thyself, in another chapter he says go show thyself. And it's wrong to hide yourself when you should show yourself, it's wrong to show yourself when you should hide yourself. Have you preachers learned to hide? Do you run every time somebody calls on the phone, send the deacons, send your wife. You've only two things to do if you're a preacher, give yourself to prayer and the Word of God. That's what the Bible says. And God, God is not obligated to bless anything you do outside of what he said. You can pray your heart out, you can fast, that won't move God. He hasn't pledged himself to do it. He has pledged himself to honor prayer and he has pledged himself to honor his word. And if you pray, and if you do the things that God has said, then God is obligated to bless that. Now again Elijah comes on the stage and he isn't scared. I'd like to have seen him, wouldn't you? I think maybe his Jezebel, that wicked Jezebel, maybe was gathering a few flowers. And she looked round and there's a rugged, ragged little man and she says, what are you doing? Everybody else has run away. People say sometimes, you forget there were seven thousand down by the knee to death. I wouldn't have given you a dollar for the whole bunch of them. They'd all run away. They were all scared stiff. And little Elijah says, well look, I'll show you, watch this. And he takes the key out and he says, there I shut up heaven that there'd be no rain. Hebrews 11 is a list of heroes of faith in the Old Testament, but Elijah isn't in, he's too big to get in that chapter. I was in a meeting one day and the lady said, do you know why he isn't in the chapter? I said, no. Oh well, let me tell you, can I tell you? I said, sure, sure. Ladies always know, so what's the answer? So she said, well, it says later in Hebrews 11, these all died in the faith. And he didn't die, did he? He went up to heaven in a chariot. I said, you're right, thank you so much. And going out, she was telling the pastor, I told Mr. Raybould something he didn't know. I said, you're going to tell me a million things I don't know. Would you tell me something else? About what? About Hebrews 11. Yeah, I've been reading it. I said, well, okay, who's the second person mentioned in the chapter? I can't just remember. Well, I'll tell you, Enoch. What's he doing in the chapter? He didn't die. Why you never beat a woman, do you? You know what she said? Just shows you the Bible contradicts itself. Well, that's an easy way out, isn't it? It doesn't say everybody in the chapter died in faith, it's talking about one little section there. But here is a man, he doesn't have a prayer partner, he doesn't have a committee, he didn't have a mailing list even. And, and he prayed, and he shut up heaven. There'll be no rain till I open it. That's why it says in the next verse, he prayed again, otherwise we might be without rain still. Oh that's praying, isn't it? You see preaching affects people for God. Praying affects God for people. You can show off to your crowd, they say, best pastor we've ever had. We're going to keep this fellow here. Why? Because of a loose tongue? What's your track record of faith? What's your track record in prayer? I'll shut up heaven that there be no rain, and he shut up heaven. Great. Either should have made him a national hero. Do you know what God said? Go hide thyself. But Lord, I ought to get some credit for this didn't I? I mean after all, I'm the man that's made the nation sit up. Go hide thyself. That's why I study becomes hard to many preachers in prayer. Hide thyself. Get away. Let God do some talking. I don't think he left us a forwarding address, do you? Get amused at these boys on radio that say, remember this is a faith program, and it's the end of the month. Please write to us. Well you can get a postcard down in the office there for five cents. Write and say, I'm up at the prayer retreat praying for you. He won't even file it, he'll put it in his race basket. Well don't you have to ask God for things like that? No, no, not at all. Not at all. He made some promises hasn't he? Supposing I went in my home when the children were small, and Paul came in and said, Daddy if I ever need a dollar would you give me? I said sure, I'd be happy to give you really need it, I'll give you. He goes out and tells his brother next in line, David, and David says, would you give me a dollar if I need it? I say sure. David goes out and tells Phil, and Phil says, would you give me one? I say if you really need it, yes. And I go out, and then brother Peter comes in, and I'm in the next room, and they say, well my daddy's been talking about you. Say if ever I need a dollar, would you give me a dollar? Peter says, yeah. And the other little guy goes in, and then the next one, how would I feel sitting in the other, I'd already promised I'd give it to him. Now either they don't believe me, or else they believe me, but no I haven't got the dollar. Now what does God say in his word? Read that long version of the Sermon on the Mount, there's a wonderful clause in there, it says, Seek ye first what? And what? And things? No. There's a little difficult word in the New Testament, all things. All things. All things are yours and near Christ. All things work together for good. He couldn't have been married. But all things work together for good. Love dareth things, love dareth all things, believe us all things, hope us all things, endure us. That's an awkward word. New Testament would be so different, if that little word all wasn't in it. I mentioned this one day, then I got a lovely, lovely little parcel, and it said Mr. Ramey, so I go, oh I said Sreety this is mine. I don't know what's in it, but it's mine. We never share things anyhow, so. When I got it, it's a beautiful plaque. I don't know what the word is, but it's gorgeous, and it's lovely sculpturing. And it just says A-L-L, that's all it says. No text, no quotation, all. Well I know one man got the message, but don't you send me any, I've got enough. All. All things are yours and near Christ, and Christ, all things work together for good. My God shall supply all your needs. All things work together, not some things, not the things I like. All things are working. He works everything after the counsel of his own will. Doesn't make any difference what comes into our lives. As Hudson Taylor said, by the time it comes to your life, it's God's will for you. If we did the choosing, we'd be crazy. Elijah went there into the moment. Let me tell you one thing. Went to Dr. Tozer's office one day. J. Francis Chase was just coming out, the great American artist, and as he came out, he says, the doctor's in a good mood. Oh, he's happy today. I said, fine. And I went in, and there was the doctor. He had a piece of paper about the size of this loose leaf Bible of mine, all the leaves are loose, you notice. And there he was, stroking this piece of paper. And Chase said, I said to him, well, well, what's the paper? Suppose it's from some little old lady that admires you. Always writing and saying, I like your editorials, I like your articles. He said, no, I get those. Said, I got one the other day from a lady that said she takes eight magazines, but mine's the best, because it fits the bottom of the birdcage without cutting. Lord's got some nice ways of humbling us, hasn't he. Well, what's he stroking the piece of paper for? It was from a little, little black man, little tiny black man, down in the place called South Africa, in East London, or Elizabeth. I told this story in the Carolinas about two years ago. And the man at the back, pretty fine, probably sitting like this. After the meeting, he said, hey, you know, that's very interesting. I told how that this man came to the altar and got saved. And when he got saved, all the bells in heaven began to ring. He was full of joy. And going out, the preacher said, well, praise the Lord. Now, could I do anything for you? He said, yes. He said, what can I do for you? He said, give me a church. Well, he said, give me a church. Give you a church? Yes. Yeah, I went down there as a slave. I was in bondage and sin and fear. And the Lord just liberated me. I don't understand. Some people, you say, are you saved? They say, well, I don't really know. You don't? If you were carrying a 300-pound pack on your back, and somebody took it off, do you think you'd know? If you were going down the street, and you had debts for $5,976.63, and somebody came up and said, hey, I'm gonna pay all your debts. Here, how much is it? And they wrote it off and said, there's $5,000 extra, put it in your pocket to live on. Do you think you'd remember the spot? If you wouldn't, try it on me, and I promise you, I'll put your name on the list, and I'll remember. That's all right. I'll spend it on, I'll put a book, not the published book, that's all right. All right. Oh, we can't give you a church. Okay, thank you. Off you went. Came back a month after, sat in the church. Going out, the pastor said, seemed to have seen you before. Could I help you? He said, yes, give me a church. Ah, now I remember. You've only been in church twice, and asked for a church. I don't keep them in my pocket, you know. In any case, you haven't been around for a month, have you? No sir. Been going to some other church? No sir. Where have you been? Well, he said, when you refused to give me a church, I walked out of the city, and I came to a forest, and I found a path in the forest, and I went to a stream, and I found a cave, and I put a mark outside. And I stayed there 21 days and 21 nights. I didn't eat any food, I drank water from the stream, and I washed my face in the stream. And I just said, Lord we're going to have it out. I'm coming out of this place, either with a, with a stamp of approval on my life, you're going to make me a preacher, or else I quit. He said, I stayed there 21 days and 21 nights. The Lord said, I've called you to preach, and not only that, I'll heal the sick, when you pray for me. Boy, a Baptist, that's rough isn't it? Praying and healing the sick. I told a story in the Carolinas. Martha was there, and this fine handsome man, who was the pastor of the First Baptist Church in, I've forgotten the town there, big enormous building. And he said, you know that story's true. I said, sure it's true. But he said, my daddy was the pastor of the church. I was raised in South Africa. The man's name is Duma, D-U-M-A. So, the deacons considered him a bit of a plague, and they said, we have a shanty town. We have a little church made of metal, it sways in the wind a bit. It's only got five members, so we'll let him be pastor there, because you see he's no education. And what will happen is he, well he'll dry up, and they'll leave the church, and they'll come back to us. That's all there is. Well today, Duma has a church of about 1,200 people. And with all you say about the race problem there, white men begged to be baptized by him. And he's a very wonderful man. I have a record of his, I have a record on him, pardon me, a tape. When I was preaching about Southern Baptist College in California, about three years ago, the black man, jet, jet black, came to the front, broke his heart, he wept, he sobbed. I put my arm around him, and stayed with him a while. And I said, brother what's your problem? He said, I came to this school, I had a walk with God. I had early hour communion with God. My soul was on fire. And he said, I've lost all my passion. I've lost all my vision. Isn't that something? I prayed with him, and the Lord restored him. And then he said to me, you know, I know Duma personally. Well, I said, that's wonderful. Is it all true about him? Yeah, he's, he's a wonderful man of faith. You see, over there, if you, if you died, and you belong to church, well, they have a Baptist preacher on appointment to bury all the Baptists. Don't bury them where the Methodists would go. And over here, they bury the Methodists. The Methodist preacher buries those. And if you're not a church member, they have one pastor that every so often has to bury those who are not members of churches. Duma was on the list to bury people. He got a call from a set, from a hospital. There's a funeral tomorrow, so-and-so. I have the tape on me. Nicholas Bengu's telling the story. This dear little Baptist preacher called a couple of deacons and said, will you come to hospital and pray with me? And they said, sure. Didn't tell them the man was dead. They might have died. They went down to the hospital and they checked in at the door and said, whatever the man's name was, Mr. William Smith. And they said, yeah, he's in number 13. 13, that's a women's ward, it can't be in that ward. Pastor, did he say 13? That's right. Isn't that a women's ward? No, not where he is. Number 13 in the morgue. In the morgue? What are we going to do? Are we going to pray for this dead man? No, don't pray for that. They said, you aren't, but I am. And he went in and he pulled the covers off the dead man. Did he like Elijah? Did he get on top of him and stretched himself on the job? Did he call a job? And he stretched himself on the, on the cot. And he said, in the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. He said, the man just went. If he'd done that with me on him, I'd have hit the ceiling. I'm sure I'd have been that scared. And he got down and the man got up and walked him home. Hmm? I mean, you can understand that in a Pentecostal church, but Baptists don't do things like that. Hmm? Or Methodists do. As I told you, the acts of the, what is the act of the apostles? The acts of the apostles is the church doing everything Jesus did. Tell me a thing that Jesus did that he didn't do in the acts of the apostles. They raised the dead, they cast out demons. You have a man that leads the music, does a great job. You've got a fellow who plays the organ. Have him play the organ for us tonight. I like that often. I'd like to hear you sing tonight, you know, crowning of many crowns. Boy, that does something for me. But you know you don't have a section in this church where there's just a bunch of people that maybe never even come in the meeting hardly. They just pray. A team of men that can go out and maybe raise the dead or raise the sick. And the book says there are gifts of healing. Not a gift, gifts of healing. We had a team of men one time and I, one of our men, I say it facetiously, he could pray for that communion rail it would hear afterwards nearly. He had marvelous faith for dead people. Everybody he touched got the healing. Now be very careful how you challenge God, because some good he gave me a book about a man in this country. And it said he used to get letters day after day with a check in, please fly to so-and-so and pray for my daughter, pray for my son. One day Martha came up. I'd been in a, jumped out of a building high with this and I broke my back, my legs, my feet and everything. I was recovering from this. Martha said, how do you feel dear? I said bad. She says, where's the pain? I said right there, in your heart and on the inside. Why? Because it says that people send letters to this man and send a check. Please use this check to fly to our town, come to hospital, pray for so-and-so. Nobody's got confidence like that in me. The week after we got a stack of mail as usual in the morning. We kept quite a lot and there was a letter and I looked and there was a check in it. And I opened it and the first thing I saw when I opened the letter it said, fill in the check for any amount of money you need. I said to the boys who were standing there, daddy who's the mail for? And I said run now and tell mummy our ship's come home. Tell her she's going to give us all the money we need. Isn't that great? After all, I've been out of work two years, got thousands, tens of thousands of doctors here. Paid them all, never asked anybody but the Lord meant to me. And the boys went to school and Martha said, I'll read the letter. She read the letter for the Ravenhill, enclosed in the check. Would you, would you take a plane and fly down to my sister? She's over in Ireland, we were in England. She's sick, dying of cancer. Martha said, how do you feel now? I said, worse than ever. You see, if brother Peter and two or three of us lay hands on somebody and they don't get healed, well I know whose fault it was. Peter wasn't in good shape. Danny was too much in a hurry. And Bill wasn't just up to it. I was, all my faith was going in, but they let me down, those guys. But you know, when you go on your own, it's pretty tight. So I took a plane to Ireland, got to hospital, here's a lady, big, big lady, bandages around her arm, she was tied up to the back of the bed, and she was under medication. Her brother met me at the, at the plane, a very handsome man. And he said, my mother sent for you. I didn't send for you. He mentioned the group that he belonged to. He said, we believe the Bible from cover to cover, but we don't believe in divine healing. Isn't that great? Real encouragement. They put a screen round the woman in bed. He said, you want me to stay? I said, no I can get through this without your unbelief. I don't need you. He didn't look too happy, but he went. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have prayed anyhow. So when he'd gone, I did what the Word said. I took some oil and put it on the head of the woman, prayed to her. It had a real assurance. She wasn't even conscious. There was no plane back, so I took the boat back. Next morning when she woke up, I was in England, taking the boat over there. Not many weeks after, about a month, I got an invitation to go and pray for somebody else with cancer. So I went, in the same hospital. It was 11 o'clock at night. As I came down the corridor, there was a light in the room. There were about 30 beds round that big, hospital ward. Oh yes, number three ward. That's where the woman was with the cancer. So I walked in, and all the lights were dim, and the nurse was in the room at the side, and she came out with a prayer. And I went, ooh, what are you doing here, this time of night? Well, I said, I'm a preacher. Oh, pardon me. We don't usually have visitors at 11 o'clock at night. I said, I wanted to see so-and-so. All right, go in and see her. Do you know her? You've seen her before? Yeah, I've seen her before. Go in and see her. So she went to get some medicines and things, and I went in the room, and I looked. Bed number four. That's not her. Bed number five, she was asleep. They were all asleep nearly, at that hour. I went right round the ward. There was just one woman sitting up. She had a kind of canopy over her, and she was knitting. I went past her. Came out of the ward, and the nurse said, well, did you see her? I said, she's not there. She certainly is. I said, well, I didn't see her. She came back. She said, she's there, the lady with the light on that's knitting. Oh. So I went to her, and I said, hello. She said, hello. I said, how are you feeling? Fine. She said, do you know what I did today? No. The doctor came in, and he said, how are you feeling? Fine. Do you think you could walk? Sure. I said, I got out of the bed, and I walked. I walked a bit quicker. Then I ran right round the ward, and he said, all right, get into bed. And he brought about five doctors and said, hey, this woman, we opened that woman up. We didn't even touch her. She was full of rodent cancer. We sewed her up. And here she is, healed. There's nothing wrong with her. So I said, well, it's nice to see you like this. You're really enjoying it. Yeah, I'm going on with a couple of days. Great. Yes, he said, it's really marvelous, isn't it? I said, yeah, I understand you have cancer. Yeah. There's a district of, a very fine district of Belfast called Ravenhill. Everybody says I own it, and I won't admit it. I said, you give me it and see. I'd love to own it. I'd be a multi-millionaire. Oh my, I could do a lot for the Lord if I did. But he said, you know, I can remember the man's name. I've never seen him in my life. He said, his name is Ravenhill. I like to go to Belfast, because when I go, there's a sign on the poster, and it says, I'm line up here for Ravenhill. Hundreds of people line up to catch buses. And she said, you know, I don't know what happened, but they told me that this preacher came, and he put some oil on my head and prayed for me. And then when they checked on me, I was better, and I've got better since, and I'm going home in a couple of days. Isn't that wonderful? I said, it sure is. He said, you know, if ever I see that man, I'm going to really thank him. And I said, well, I think that's nice. He said, what's your name? I said, Ravenhill. Are you the man that anointed me? I said, yeah. I've got no magic. I've anointed other people, but I unbound them really. They didn't make it. But you know, I found out as a result of that, you see, faith kindles faith, and I got time after time after time after time. There are areas in which your faith will develop. I know men who can believe God for money, they can't believe God for health. You'll find a man who can pray. We have a neighbour in the town where we live, he's a little Episcopalian, he's a judge. Marvellous man. He's always plugged in, he's always boiling over with joy. He's an Episcopalian, isn't that amazing? And he goes all over the country, and he has, he has a special gift of faith for two kinds of sickness, arthritis and cancer. Never worries him. He's a marvellous man. I love to go and talk to him. And he's developed his gift. You see, the Word of God says you've got to abide by your calling. The trouble is, you want to do something else with your calling. God hasn't called you to preach, keep, shut your mouth. If he's called you to pray for the deaf, pray for them. If he's called you to pray for us, pray for them. They're a gift. This little man, this little Juma, been an amazing man, still is an amazing man. He just read the book, believed it, but I'll tell you the secret. Here it is. He went into that cave, I think about the 17th of November. He stayed there 21 days and 21 nights. I'll make a guess, it's maybe 20 years since he did that. Do you know every year, when it comes to the 17th of November, he kisses his wife and children goodbye. And he goes back in that cave and spends 21 days and 21 nights with God. Just with his Bible. You see, a lot of us want to get through with the Holy Ghost. A lot of people just for kicks, because it's fashionable right now. A lot of people think you don't get anywhere unless you fall down flat. What's the good of hitting the ground? Getting up again and being as carnal and bitter and selfish. There's no magic in that. I'll knock you down if that's all you want. The group I'm with now, if you'd gone there three years ago, as soon as you went in a meeting and prayed and they put hands, they all fell off the seats and and they'd be down on the floor for 10 or 15 minutes. What's the magic in it? That happened in Wesley's day, but they stayed under the power for three or four hours, not three or four minutes. Don't let anybody cast you in their mold. You read the Word, find out what God says. Take time to be holy. Speak off with thy Lord. Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. Find out what your gift is. The gift may just be prayer itself. Hear so much about gifts today, don't hear much about the gift of help. My, that will be good in a lot of churches, wouldn't it? And it doesn't matter what area you're working in, you've got to back, all the time you've got to back that, that life by drawing on Him. You draw on Him in prayer. You draw on Him as He gives revelation. Elijah shut himself up all right. He hid himself. God says go show thyself. Pretty tough when you have to go back to the king, isn't it? Well he didn't go back to the king. It's more tough when you go down the road and say to a widow, make me a cake. Looks a bit stealthy. You've got to do as God says. A woman took a handful of meal, a little of oil, put them together, made a cake. You know what it says? The barrel of oil never failed after that. It would only lasted her one day, lasted her the rest of her life, till the heavens were split again and the crops came. And Elijah goes and God says, there's a bit something else coming up. He comes in one day and he says I did my best for you and what do I get? My boy died. Nice wages. He says listen give me the body. You just watch this. I'm the greatest healer around. Watch this. Lord, this kid's dead healing. Thank you. Very well missus. Catch your baby. Didn't say that. He said he ran up into a loft. Have you got a loft in your life or a basement? He said he prayed and nothing happened. He prayed again, nothing happened. He didn't pray. He prayed a third time. But the third time he prostrated himself, humiliated himself. And the child was raised up. You remember what she said? By this. By what? The fact he was raised from the dead. Not the barrel of meal was still going. Not the coop of oil was still spouting out oil. By this I know. By what? By the fact he raised the dead. Well isn't that the work of the church? You happy christened who were dead in trespasses and in sin. I hear people say sometimes the new pastor's alright you know but he doesn't get many people saved. Would it be news for you to know that he doesn't have to get any people saved? I could go to church for 10 years and if nobody walked down the aisle it wouldn't worry me. Australia's a lovely country. I like New Zealand better. They both have sheep. Australia has 50 million and New Zealand has 25 million. When I was there one day there were a lot of farmers and others there and I said would you tell me this please. In this lovely country the sheep are so white there's no dirty environment. They look beautiful. And I said does the shepherd produce lambs? Does he give birth to lambs? Where are you from? I said America. Oh. You do things different in America. Does the shepherd give birth to the lamb? No. Who does? The sheep. Well you're the sheep. It's what the book says. You know why the church prospered and the state church in Korea is the Presbyterian Church. Jonathan Goforth was part of the Seeker of Revival there. And you couldn't become a church member because you believed in ten points of doctrine and signed on the dotted line and got that prize. You could only be a church member when you'd reproduced your kind. Not when you prayed with somebody at the altar but you personally had won somebody to Christ. That meant that you were fruitful in the Spirit. And then after each individual gave birth to another Christian they made a program where every church gave birth to another church. And that's the way they spread. We have a little man in Baton Rouge came to my office one day. He's an old man now. Lovely saint of God. He never published any magazines. He hasn't studied around. He's been in the area for about I think 20 years. He has raised up ten churches of 200 members. As soon as he got to 200 members he said I can't manage more than that. Now I want six of you families to go in another location and start a church. So around Baton Rouge when we left this man, and he doesn't control them, they become independent. And he has raised up ten churches of 200 people. Looks a lot better when you have them all in one group, doesn't it? When you say well we have a church of 2,000 you know. So there's that man but he has them all split up under other shepherds. Your job is to reproduce your kind. The pastor is the shepherd. He should lead you by green pastures and living water but he doesn't have to produce the land. Sounds a bit different, doesn't it? The evangelists, I believe, I don't believe the evangelists in the New Testament are going around lifting the jaded appetite for Christians who, like the Catholic woman said, I don't understand you. You don't go to church every Saturday and confess, do you? And then go to mass on the morning? No. You don't do that? No. The lady said we don't do it that way. We do it but not that way. She said what do you mean? She said did you ever see outside of our church revival? Well we save all our sins up for six months then we have a revival and we all go holler at the front and scream and we tell God we're sorry. We get cleaned up and then we go back and sin a few more weeks and have another revival and go out to the front. That's what most churches do. It's a refresher course. Same folk go to the altar, same folk go back, so forth, so on. That's not true but it really is. The evangelist in the New Testament, I'm convinced, is a man we call the missionary today. Paul said he wouldn't even build on anyone else's foundation. All right, so the whole secret is prayer. Men ought always to pray and not to faint. And they that wait upon the Lord renew their strength. And again the possibilities of grace are totally unknown. There's adventures, there are adventures in the Spirit that we haven't even dreamed about yet. Let me finish where I started the other day and say this, that no man is greater than his prayer life. Not impressed with eloquence, not impressed with the size of the church or a bus ministry. Those things don't count much to the devil anyhow. The people who make Satan suffer are the people who know how to pray. An old man came to my church and I used to say to him, he didn't have too good health and I'd say to him sometimes, now look if you don't feel too good you don't bother to hear me preach Sunday no more than me anyhow, but do make it Wednesday night. And somewhere in his praying that old man always prayed the same thing and it was as fresh as a mammoth from heaven, it never got stale. You know what he prayed? Lord teach us what is flesh and what is spirit. And then he paused and said Lord teach us how to bind and how to loose. Now you've got the secret. Discerning what is flesh and what is spirit. Knowing in the Spirit of God what to bind, what's ready to bind on earth to be bound in heaven, what's ready to be loose on earth to be loose in heaven. All the church needs today is some spiritual millionaires, not millionaires who are spiritual, spiritual millionaires, rich in the great, rich in the knowledge, rich in the power of God. And here's the bank book. The Spurgeon said God filled in all the texts and left them blank, you fill them in by faith. Put them in the bank of faith and say Lord these are things of us. He had a request for a hymn, I better have it explained, we can sing a part of it anyhow. Holy Spirit, light divine. Holy Ghost with light divine, 170. Keep us again we pray, how to embrace and total your will, how to be able to say this one thing I do. Bless us in our meditation, bless the class this afternoon, give anointing to us.