In this sermon, the preacher discusses the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire and draws parallels to the present day. He identifies five reasons for the empire's collapse, including the rapid increase of divorce and the undermining of the sanctity of the home, excessive taxation and extravagant spending, and the prioritization of pleasure and the brutalization of sports. The preacher also highlights the importance of maintaining a clean and pure heart in our relationships with others. He emphasizes the need for prayer and the danger of being constantly occupied and distracted by entertainment.

There are many great biographies and many great autobiographies that are written in two volumes. Haber Begbie gave us two great volumes on the life of William Bull, the founder of the Salvation Army. There are two great volumes on the life of the founder of the China Inland Mission. The founder of the China Inland Mission was Hudson Taylor, and the first volume is describing the expansion of his own spiritual life. It's called The Growth of a Soul. The second volume is called The Growth of a Work, which shows us the expansion of the China Inland Mission. There are two great volumes on the life of one of the greatest women that ever lived, that is the wife of the founder of the Salvation Army, Catherine Booth, a woman with a very remarkable prayer life. And since I do a bit of writing myself, I don't think it's very difficult... Is this too loud? It sounds loud to me. But I don't think it's very difficult to write the life of an individual in two volumes. I do think it is difficult to write the life of an individual in two words. And yet the biography of one of the greatest men that ever crossed the bridge of time is written in two simple words. He prayed. Here is a man who could strangle the economy of a nation, he could change the weather, he could raise the dead, he could put to flight the armies of the alien. And yet James reminds us of this amazing man, Elijah. In this context he says, is there any among you afflicted, let him pray. So there is prayer mentioned again. Is there any sick among you, let them call for the elders of the church and let them pray. And then a little further in that same chapter, verse 16 of the last chapter in James, it says, confess your faults one to another and pray one for another. And then in the next verse it says, the effectual fervent, or as some marginal references are, the boiling prayer, the fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Let me tell you what I have told myself often and told thousands of other people, that no man anywhere at any time is greater than his prayer life. If you want to take your spiritual temperature then just check up on your prayer life. I think the most privileged men that ever lived actually were the twelve disciples who walked around and were able to listen to the greatest man that ever lived, the Lord Jesus Christ. I think I would have liked to have lived with Jesus any one day in his life. And you remember that these men, they were there at the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest man who ever lived. It had all the answers to our modern life. Don't let anybody fool you that Christianity has been weighed in the balances and found wrong and it has not. Christianity has been tried, found difficult and rejected. They heard Jesus preach, but they never said, Lord, teach us to preach. I'm sure more than once they heard Jesus sing, because the Bible says that he sang. No doubt he sang psalms. But they never said, Lord, teach us to sing. They saw Jesus wield his power over death and sickness and demons, and yet they never said, Lord, teach us to do miracles. And I do not know how often, but they heard Jesus pray, but they did say, Lord, teach us to pray. I pray that prayer every day. I guess I've been praying for 70 years, but I still pray, Lord, teach me to pray. Because there is no know-how in it. Some people say that God is not selective. He is. He always was. He always will be. How many disciples did Jesus have? Well, you know that without going to Bible school, he had 12. How many did he take on the Mount of Transfiguration? Do you remember? Three. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. Now, if you want to study the prayer life of Jesus, you would take the Gospel as Luke has recorded it. Because in every crisis in the life of Jesus, Luke says that he prayed. You see, Matthew shows the Lord Jesus Christ as a king. Mark shows him as a servant. Luke reveals him as the Son of Man, and John reveals him as the Son of God. And therefore, in every crisis, in every great experience in the life of Jesus, Luke emphasizes the fact that Jesus prayed. All right, the other disciples say that Jesus was there in the Jordan, and the Spirit descended as a dove upon him. But Luke says it was while he was praying the Spirit descended upon him. The other evangelists tell us Jesus was crucified. But Luke says that even while he was crucified, he was praying. Jesus spent a whole night in prayer before he chose his 12 disciples. I've often wondered what would happen if a church spent a whole night in prayer before it chose its deacons. Maybe they wouldn't make it. Very hard. He spent all night praying before he chose his 12 disciples. And while the others explore the fact that Jesus was transfigured on the mountain there, Luke says that it was while he was praying that he was transfigured. Now the disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray. And here they are, in one of the most amazing events in the life of the most amazing man that ever lived, and they said, teach us to pray. And he prayed, and they fell asleep. I think that's almost the unpardonable sin. Except for the fact that a little later, he took the same three men into the Garden of Gethsemane. The same men who said, Lord, teach us to pray. And he took them into the Garden of Gethsemane, even when they failed to pray on the Mount of Transfiguration. And do you remember, after a little time, he came back, and what were they doing? Sleeping. And he went away, and he came back, and what were they doing? And he went away, and he came back, they were still sleeping. And I know you didn't saw your hymn book happen, because you've fallen asleep more than once praying, haven't you? I have, the pastor has. But anyhow, teach us to pray. And they fell asleep. I was with a very brilliant, famous, Baptist preacher not too long ago, has a very wonderful church, one of these multi-million dollar budgets, you know. And he said, what so often preachers say, you know, sometimes you just feel like giving up. You sweat. You know, preaching is the most expensive job in the world. Oh, it's the cheapest. After all, you come home from the office, you hang the phone up and say, let the boss get drowned or something, I don't care. I'll be back in the morning at 9 o'clock. The preacher, after he's called, is on call 24 hours a day. Either he gets called from heaven or he gets called from earth. When I read about men getting $13 an hour, I figure I earn about 25 cents. Because I pray for a church for months before I go, and I pray for a church months after I've been there, and I pray while I'm here. So do other preachers. And yet prayer is indeed the most rewarding thing in the world. Don't get discouraged with your Sunday school class, don't get worried with your church. Why, the most disgusting men in history. I say they were the most privileged men in history to listen to Jesus, to see Him do miracles, to listen to Him pray, to hear Him sing. But they never believed Him anyhow. You say, how can you prove that? Oh, I can prove that very easily. He taught them for a little, around three years. He kept telling them over and over and over again that He would die and rise from the dead. And they didn't believe Him. Why didn't they? Because there wasn't one of them down at the tomb on the resurrection morning, that's why. If they believed Him, they'd have been lining up waiting, and Peter would have said, hey, let me get to the head of the parade. And so they'd say, you come back, you're always at the head, let me get there. I want to welcome Him as soon as He comes out of the tomb. I want to bow down and say, my Lord and my God. There wasn't one of them there. The Lord teaches us to pray. Again, no man is greater than his prayer life. No church, I don't care how many you have, whether you have 20,000 members like Mr. Chrisman, no church is stronger than a prayer meeting. Your life isn't stronger than your prayer life. You see, in preaching, a man may have a very elastic vocabulary, he may be very dramatic in his presentation, and in preaching he reveals what he knows of the Word of God. In prayer, he reveals what he knows of the God of the Word. Usually my wife travels with me. She's not doing so now. Our sons are back from the mission field. She's at home with our sons and grandchildren. But also when we're traveling, I say to my wife, sweetheart, look, there's another bus. You know, some beaten up old Greyhound bus nobody would use but an evangelist. And he has it painted a nice, quiet purple or something like that. And on the side he has his name, you know, Billy Brown and his bouncing babies. We'll come and sing at your church for a fee. And Bible schools send their choirs round. Do you ever know of a Bible school that sends its prayer meeting on tour? Do you ever heard of a seminary where we prepare men for the ministry, who sends young ministers on tour to teach other people how to pray? A neighbor of mine came just before he left Sgeen a few months ago, and he said, you know, we were down at a great song fest the other night. It happened to be the Gaithers. Oh, it was wonderful. My wife and I went. And I guess there were two or three thousand people there. It was marvelous. I said, wait a minute. How much did you pay? Five dollars each. I hope you all put five dollars in the offering tonight. If you didn't do it tomorrow night, look. They paid five dollars each, ten dollars for the two of them to hear some singing. It took them an hour to go, an hour to come back, over two and a half hours during the show, whatever it is. And there'd be three thousand people there. I said to him, supposing I rent that same auditorium a month from now, and I notify all the churches in San Antonio, that I'm going to hold a night of prayer. I won't charge them five dollars for coming. I'll let them come free. Do you think I could get three thousand people to pray? No. No, he said. How many would I get? Oh, you might get two hundred. Oh, if I did that, I'd think it was amazing. I figured I'd get about forty people to come. You know, and I'd see all the singing groups going round. Now, I have nothing against singing groups, if they can sing. Not many of them can, but anyhow. But you see, you'd imagine the Bible said, sing without ceasing. It doesn't say that, does it? No, no, it's always to sing and not to faint. Well, I understand that. When I've heard some singing, I feel like fainting. I confess that. Look, you can sing from here to eternity. You won't scare the devil. If you want to know the quality of your spiritual life, check on your prayer life. If you want to know if you're filled with a spirit, what's the proof of being filled with a spirit? We can get fifty answers to that. I'll give you two. In the Old Testament, it says that King Saul had an evil spirit, and therefore he did evil things. Jesus said men have an unclean spirit, and they do unclean things. Well, if a man with an unclean spirit does unclean things, and a man with an evil spirit does evil things, wouldn't it be logical and biblical to say a man with a holy spirit lives a holy life? After all, the greatest miracle in the world is not raising the dead. I've been in meetings where I've seen paralytics jump up, and I remember once praying for a blind man. He got his sight. I've seen people's withered arms grow straight, and I think I've seen everything in the book except raising the dead, which I'm trying to do tonight. I've seen all those physical miracles, but I want to tell you something right here, that the greatest miracle in the world is not getting withered legs straightened out and crossed eyes straightened and deaf ears unplugged. The greatest miracle in the world is that God can take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make that unholy man holy, put him back in an unholy world, and keep him holy. Only the gospel of the grace of God can do that. I heard somebody say quite recently, you know, if you're going to really be a good Christian, you'll have to pray if you want to live the Christian life. P.T. Forsythe was a contemporary of Spurgeon. Spurgeon said P.T. Taylor Forsythe was born a hundred years before his time. And people today, theological students, are beginning to read P.T. Forsythe. And he changes it around, and instead of saying you need to live the Christian life, or you need to pray in order to live the Christian life, he says the opposite. You need to live the Christian life in order to pray. What is prayer? Prayer is the language of the poor. Read over and over and over again the word of the psalmist when he says, bow down thine ear and hear me, for I am poor and needy. Or he says, this poor man prays. We kind of think you need a big vocabulary, you need a great deal of education, you have to paint stained glass windows with words. Look, you'd learn a good lesson if you start right tonight to realize this, you can't impress God. You don't have to. He knows you better than you know yourself. Prayer is the language of the poor. The self-sufficient don't pray. They don't need to. The self-satisfied don't pray. They don't want to. The self-righteous can't pray. They've no chance. I was talking at lunchtime today about being with one of the great men who had had revival in our day. That was a man by the name of Duncan Campbell. And we used to rise at five o'clock in the morning to pray. So enough he needed some good Scottish tea to get him revived, and once he had a cup of real hot tea, he could pray. I remember talking about an experience that he had. You know, there's no way of fathoming the mysteries of God. God cannot be explained. He can be experienced. Duncan Campbell was in a conference with about 1,200 people. He was fingering through his Bible, ready to preach, and he turned to the chairman and said, I'm going. And the chairman said, well, we'll wait till you come back. He said, I'm not coming back. Well, this is the final night. Look at all these people. They've all come to hear you. What are you going to do? He said, I'm going to Scotland. He said, when? He said, right now. Well, what do you mean? You're walking off this platform to go to Scotland? He was in Ireland. And he said, yes. Well, why did you agree to come and preach tonight if you were going? I didn't know I was going until a minute ago and the Holy Spirit told me, go to Scotland. Are you sure it's the Holy Spirit? Well, he said, brother, it isn't my spirit. I don't even go to Scotland. He ran off the platform. He caught the boat. He got to Scotland. He went from one island to another in the Hebrides there. And when he got off the boat, it was a rowing boat, and he got a boy to row him over to this island. And when he got there, there was a boy working in a field, and he called him, and he said, where is the elder of the kirk, as they call the church, the kirk? And he said, oh, he lives way not far up there. Would you go tell him that Duncan Campbell has arrived? And this great big Scotsman, highlander, helander, they say, big, scrawny man, came down and he says, ach aye, aye, how are you, brother Campbell? He said, fine. And he turned round and he said, the meeting is in the church up there tonight. And Duncan Campbell says, the what? Oh, he said, I went round the island on my bicycle about five o'clock this morning and told all the people to come and hear Duncan Campbell. You tell them that I was coming to the island tonight. Right. He said, how did you know I was coming? Why, brother, he said, how did you know to come? Oh, well, he said, I was preaching in Ireland last night, and just before I got up the Spirit told me to come. Well, you know, all that started through two little old ladies. Well, one was old, she was eighty-four, her sister was younger, she was eighty-two. And they called for the preacher one day, and they said to the preacher, look, we're going to have revival, the children are going to the devil, they're drinking, they're dancing, they're sinning, we're not going to die until we see revival. And they looked at the deacons and they said, ach, now don't you make a covenant with God unless you mean it. And the little old lady put her skinny hand out at... Oh, she couldn't speak, you see, she was blind. And she felt for one preacher's hand or a deacon's hand and her sister's hand, and they joined hands and they made a covenant before God they would not die until revival came. And God told the man, she's in Scotland, he's in Ireland, and he quit preaching and he started on that journey, saying that to say this, God rent the heavens. And he said, Brother Abner, I remember one meeting particularly we'd moved into, I think it was to Stornoway, and they'd gone into a fairly large building and the place was full of preachers, they wear their collars backwards way in England, you know, most of them are going backwards way, but anyhow, they wear their collars backwards way and all over the place there were ministers and Duncan says, I preached and it was like throwing a rubber ball at the wall, my words bounced back on me. So after preaching for fifteen minutes, he said, I said to them, bow your heads, bow your heads, and I call on a boy, sixteen years of age, not on the deacons, not on the preachers, not on the PhDs, not on those distinguished theologians, oh, they knew the word of God, they knew it in Hebrew, they knew it in Greek, there's a boy that didn't know too much about Greek, there was a brilliant scholar at sixteen, but he'd have to know two languages by that age in Scotland, anyhow, I mean two others than the language you knew, you'd have to know Greek and Hebrew or Greek and Latin or some other language, and he said to this boy, pray, and the boy stood up, and he said with his Scottish accent, they say, ah, as a child, you say, he stood there in that crowded place and he said, ah, what's the good of praying if we're not reaped with God, and he began to recite the twenty-fourth psalm, which became the key to revival and maybe is the key here, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands, that's our relationship with people, and a pure heart. And he went on and he quoted and quoted and quoted, and then he began to pray. A sixteen-year-old boy began to pray and Duncan said, by the way, he prayed ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty minutes, forty-five minutes. And then just as though in heaven, God had his hand on a switch and pulled that switch after that boy had prayed forty-five minutes, the heavens opened and God came down. On the church? Yes, and on the tavern at the end of the street and on the dance hall at the other end of the street. And they closed down and they haven't opened since and that was 1950. The effectual, fervent prayer, oh, that boy didn't learn to pray over the weekend, but he learned to pray. This man, Elijah, prayed. He prayed the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man. He was one of the rarest men in the world because he was what? He was a prophet. Do you remember when John the Baptist came? They went out to see this strange man. People were not going to the established churches. They were going to hear a rugged, rugged, uncouth man, a bearded eccentric with a chronic vulgar tongue. And people said, who in the world is this? He doesn't talk like the Pharisees. He doesn't talk like the Sadducees. He doesn't dress like them. He doesn't eat like them. You know, listen, here's a simple, oh, it's not philosophical, it's smart, but it's very simple. Do you know what? You never need to advertise a fire, either physical or spiritual. Who is this man in the wilderness? You know what they said? It must be Elijah that has come back. He plays a great part in the history of the church. Who appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration? Jesus, three disciples, Moses and a rather important man. In the book of the Revelation there are two final witnesses, and one of them is, Elijah comes onto the stage. You see, he is again one of the most dramatic men in history. He comes in a crisis hour because at any period, any given period, the prophet is God's emergency man in a crisis hour. And I'm going to tell you, and I'll tell you if Nixon was standing there and the peanut farmer there, I want to tell you something, that I believe that when the books are opened in eternity, that awesome night, I may preach on it one night, the judgment day which may last a hundred million years because we're not going anywhere, I believe when those books are opened in eternity, we'll discover that Watergate was not just a political tragedy or a moral tragedy, it was a spiritual tragedy. Do you know why? Because eighteen, five, ten, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, eighteen different preachers preached before Nixon in the White House and not one of them got through to him. Answer this in your own mind. Do you think Elijah would have got through to him? Hmm? Do you think John D'Arcy should have got through to him? People often ask me why I don't have a radio or a TV program. Well, I figure if I got anointed well, I'd never get back a second time anyhow. Do you think John D'Arcy should have a radio program, a TV program? We'd tear him up. Elijah comes on the stage, let's condense the history. Fifty-eight years before he arrived, there had been a dividing in the kingdom. Immediately before he came, there had been a succession of evil kings. Seven of them, six of them. The second did more evil than the first, the third did more evil than the second, the fourth did more evil than the third, the fifth did more evil than the fourth, and the last one, Ahab did more evil than not the king before him, but all the aggregate iniquity of all the kings. Look at the end if you want to read it afterwards, the first book of Kings, the 16th chapter. It says in verse 30, Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil in the sight of the Lord and above all that were before him. He did more evil than all the compounded iniquity of the kings before him. And it came to pass as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. He took the wife Jezebel, the daughter of Abel, the king of the Sardonians, and he went and served him, and he worshipped him, and he reared an altar in the house of Bab, and he built, which he had built in Tamarith. And he did build a grove, and he did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him. And then to make bad worse, as the Irish say, do you know what he did? He rebuilt the city of Jericho, which God said should not be rebuilt. Notice the iniquity, will you? He did more evil than all the kings before him. He walked in the sins of Jeroboam, he took a wife of a strange group that God said he shouldn't have married into. He served there, he worshipped him, he raised altars, and every day that stinking incense went up to God from those vile altars. And then he rebuilt the city of Jericho and laid it in the foundation of human blood. What's that saying? Well, I'll tell you what it says. It says that when he appeared on the stage, the nation was submerged in iniquity, entirety, impurity, idolatry, infidelity, and everything that we happen to be doing right now here in America or England. I mean, who are we fooling? I mean, do we put God, in God we trust on our coins and then say to hell with the Ten Commandments? Do we put in God we trust on our coins and legalize abortions? And in the state of Nevada, one section, prostitution is legalized and other states are pushing for it. We've legalized state lotteries. We've kicked the Bible out of the school, but we've in God we trust on our coins. Hmm? A thirteen-year-old girl had an abortion in California a while ago. Her parents were curious. Do you know what the law said? It's got nothing to do with you that your daughter as a child at fourteen years of age keep your hands off her life. You know one state has legislated that if your son does not want to carry the garbage out, you've no right to have authority over that boy and take that garbage out. Of course, the people who say you're not to train your children like that train their race horses very carefully. Now, come on, how much longer are we going to tell God to hell with the Ten Commandments? You don't have to go to court now to get divorced. You just write in and say, Jack and I disagree. You can do that in the state of Florida, can't you? You will write in divorce law you have in other places. We've over ten million alcoholics. We've nearly ten million drug addicts. One very famous man whose name you know said to me just recently, but you forgot one thing by the way, last year the divorce rate was down. Well, in God's name where do you expect it to be? They don't even get married. How can they get divorced? They're not even married. Girls used to get embarrassed. They were pregnant. And they came to preach and they said, can you get me to go someplace? I want to get out of this state. Do you know the places that run homes for unmarried girls are hardly occupied these days? It's no embarrassment. The most beautiful woman in the world walks down the street. You see, we've changed the language and made it easier for sinners now. Can you think of anything more stinkingly horrid and hellish than homosexuality? And we call them the gay people. In God's name what's gay about it? Well, why don't we call them sodomites? She has this gorgeous beautiful woman who advertises the automobiles and is so vastly beautiful above the rest of women. Happens to have three bastards by three different husbands. It doesn't bar her from society. She's not worried about it. We're living in a day of moral and spiritual rebellion against God. Do you remember the great sweep of the life of the apostle Nahari? He began his life in Tarsus, the historic city, the historic, most historic city maybe in the world. That's where he began his life. He ended his life, he began in the historic capital of the world, he ended his life in the military capital of the world, which happened to be Rome. In between he went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. He went to the immoral capital of the world, which was Corinth. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, Athens. And they discovered this little Jew, he knew as much about their philosophy, he'd have earned a dozen PhDs. He talked with the stoics and the poets and the professors and all the brilliant men and they were marvelled at his reasoning. Then he says when he went down Main Street there in Athens, it says in the sleepy lit piece of English of the King James Version, his spirit was stirred. Well, that's not too hot a word. Do you know what it says in the Amplified? I'm not too fond of the Amplified really, but I'll tell you, I like this what it says in the Amplified. It says that when he went down Main Street in Athens and saw that city given up to idolatry, he was angry. Did you ever hear anybody preach on being angry as a proof you're filled with a Holy Ghost? We can't suggest if you get filled with a Holy Ghost you become sloppy and everybody pushes you around and you'd better go with plenty of spittle because you have to kiss everybody when you go in church and then you have to lick them all when you come out. This is a proof you're filled with a spirit, not pure bunkum. He went down the street and he saw the street enclosed with strange gods. They don't move us anymore. Come on, they don't move us anymore. You say, oh, the Jehovah's Witnesses have put a lovely Catholic church. Well, that's as far from God as anything heathen. After all, the Mass is blasphemy. You say, I know some Spirit-filled Catholics. Well, let them get out of the lousy church if they're really filled with a Holy Ghost because the Spirit happens to be the Spirit of Truth and they live in the lie. Maybe our Biggie Teddy could be with some of those folks. Now, I know some godly charismatics too. You see, he doesn't worry us too much. Do you know there are two thousand gurus in America tonight? Did you read recently about a girl in the Pentagon, I think it was, or one of the places up in the capital there? A sweet girl had been really marvellously saved and full of the joy of the Lord and sometimes when she answers the phone, she's not too decent. You know, when she puts down the phone she says, God bless you. That's a terrible thing to say up in Washington. I wonder why she's even, don't mention this, but she's even being heard to say praise the Lord in the office. So, do you know what they did in Washington? They pushed her in a back room where nobody goes more than about once a day looking after cardboard boxes because she happens to say God bless you or praise the Lord. She says, I don't understand it. They tell filthy jokes in the office. They use bad language in the office and nobody says a thing. Or you can talk all the corruption you like, but if you mention God, if you mention Jesus, then immediately you're in trouble. Paul goes down the street and he sees temples to strange gods and his spirit gets angry. You say, well I like the text that says be filled with a spirit, so do I, but there's another side to the coin. Do you know the same scripture that says be filled with a spirit also says be angry and sin not. And I don't really believe you can pray without some anger on your spirit at times. The trouble with our generation is built with our individual selves, we're comfortable in our sin and we're comfortable in the world's sin. You see, the thing about the strange thing, a prophet is by the very nature of his calling, he's a strange, he's a unique character, he's a tragic figure, why? Because he loves God with a fierce loyalty and he loves the nation. And he's torn between his love for the nation, and he knows that God is on the holy horizon to behold iniquity and that the devil in God's patience runs out. After all, it wasn't to the liberals, it wasn't to the Catholics, it wasn't to the Jehovah's Witnesses, it wasn't to transcendental meditation, it was to his church that Jesus said, I'll spit it out of my mouth. And I'm convinced we're getting desperately near to that day. Listen, our option is very simple, either we have revival in America or we'll have revolution. I believe we'll either have to concentrate in prayer or pray in concentrating camps. Of course, that doesn't move you, perhaps, you've got a nice new car, or you've ordered one. There's an awful danger of seeing everything in the framework of the American economy. Our present lush living. And when you lay your darling little head on your bed tonight and put your back on your beauty rest mattress, will you remember there'll be millions of people that sleep without covering tonight and they go to bed as hungry as they get out. One of the great masterpieces of all time was Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's a very fascinating work. It is exactly that. It's the history of the rise and fall, the decline of the Roman Empire. Let me give you its five reasons for the collapse of the greatest empire in the world up to that time. These are the five reasons. Number one is the rapid increase of divorce and the undermining of the sanctity of the home. He's writing about an empire nearly two thousand years back that the number one cause of its collapse was the increase of divorce and the undermining of the sanctity of the home. Number two, the spiralling of taxes and extravagant spending. Number three, the mounting craze for pleasure and the brutalising of sport. Two thousand years ago. Do you know why we have radio 24 hours a day? And in many cities we have TV 24 hours a day? Because the big boys are afraid you might have time to sit down and think. And the thinking man is the most dangerous man in the world. They know the best way to trap people is just keep them happy, keep them silly, keep them like idiots. Put anything on TV you like but keep them occupied. And two thousand years that great empire began to deteriorate because again of the great increase in amusement and the brutalisation of sport. Number four was the building of gigantic armaments and the failure to realise that the real enemy lay within the gates of the empire in the moral decay of its people. Number five the decay of religion and the fading of faith into a mere form leaving people without any guide. You know that's a pretty good analysis of the day in which we live isn't it? My simple analysis of history is this. The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. If we did we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. But when you've said everything else as I said yesterday when you've said everything about the decay round about us the greatest tragedy in the world tonight to me is a sick church in a dying world. A sick church in a dying world. Elijah comes on the stage and says oh there's a rare hope in this. Have you ever wondered preacher? Have you ever wondered what you would do if you were the only man in the world who had the truth of God? John Baptist was the only man in the world with the truth. Well there was a few old people there praying, maybe old Hannah and a few others. But as regards preachers he was the only preacher in the world with the truth. And he stood up against them. You see we need to rediscover this that one man with God is a majority. Have you heard the news? What? Oh thousands of preachers have been heading away in caves. Have you heard about this woman? You know the King's done that? He's married a gorgeous woman, she's a heathen, and she's got her hands on things, and she's chased the preachers away, and every street corner they're smoking incense to strange gods. The God of Elijah has been put out of the picture, the God of Abraham and Isaac has been put out of the picture. And this woman has got everything in her hands, just where she wants it, and she's feeling real happy about the whole thing, and I think one morning she goes out to cut some flowers, and she turns round and she looks, and this little man puts his finger up, and he says, listen woman, I want to tell you something. You don't have this nation in your hands, I've got it in my hands, and I'll prove it to you. You see this key? It's called faith, and I want to tell you something. There will be no rain on the earth for three years, according to God's word. He didn't say that. He said, there will be no rain on the earth according to my word. Boy, you've moved up when you can preach like that. Come on, if you're really a Christian and a true American, you ought to be in the place tonight where you have changed Patrick Henry's words from give me limited to, or give me death, or give me revival, or give me death. When I was a real boy in World War One, I stood in bread lines at four and five o'clock in the morning to get a loaf of bread. I know what that means. A letter like this, too. Are you so jealous of God's glory that you'll say, Brother Ray, if you can shut up heaven, shut it up tonight, because this is what it means, that if you shut up heaven, you're going to destroy all the crops, you're going to destroy all the cattle. You can't go without rain three and a half years, enough crops, enough cattle. I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as God will open the window of heaven if He takes that. Well, oh God Almighty, I'm willing to stand in heaven if I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as God will open the heaven if He takes that. as long as I'm willing to stand in as long as God will open the window of heaven if I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as window of heaven if I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as God will heaven if I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as I'm willing to stand in bread lines as long as God will open the heaven if I'm to After all, if you want to speak of a monk's life, it's this. God said to him, go hide thyself. In the next chapter he said, go show thyself. And he's wrong to show yourself when you should hide yourself, wrong to hide yourself when you should show yourself. Go hide thyself. 1950, I met a very wonderful man. He was in this country last year again. His name is Buck Sink. He's a very high-class Indian. To cut a long story short, I talked to him about the Christian faith in India and asked him some questions about it. And he said, you know, the Americans are very nice people, but I've never been in a church in America where they knew how to worship. I said, oh. He said, not in England either. I thought, well, he must be wrong, but there you are. He said, neither in England nor America do they know how to worship. I said, Buck O' Fink, supposing I come to your church, your fellowship on the Lord's Day, what would it be like? Do you know what he said? Yeah, I've been thinking. He said, Brother Amiel, the first three hours of the service, yeah, well, the first three hours of the service is praise, adoration, thanksgiving. Sometimes you don't know whether you're in the body or out of the body. And then the second three hours, we go to prayer and supplication, intercession. I was a bit nervous, but I risked it, and I said, then what? Oh, the third three hours, we have breaking of bread. One man has a hymn, another has a song, this woman has a rebuke from God, that man's just finishing a 30-day fast, this person over here has a revelation. I said, Brother Fink, when you go to the Lord's house on the Sabbath day, you don't stay for nine hours every service, do you? He said, no, not every Sunday. He said, some day the glory comes down when they're 12 hours and 13 hours. Well, that's what it was like. You pray for a New Testament church, somebody lives a Sunday night here, boy, you're in for trouble. A preacher told me one day he had a New Testament church, I said, how do you know? He said, because I've got every problem they had. Well, that's one way of looking at it. But do you remember, a woman told a lie, a man told a lie. Have you ever really been in the real good Pentecostal service? I don't mean just with tongues and miracles, they're all right. I mean, you know when somebody comes in and the preacher says, hold it a minute while we sing the next, before we sing the next song, Brother Jack, did you draw on Sunday? He says, yes, free Saturdays of July for the Holy Ghost. Hey, deacons, carry him out. That's Pentecost as much as tongues. If we had a New Testament church, we'd be in jail within three months, most of the preachers. The man didn't come home for his wife came to church, I'm glad the scripture puts it in, do you know when she came? About three hours after. And she didn't expect to find the church locked up and the preacher going for a crusade in the sins of truth. She went three hours after the service was started, it was still on, and the preacher says, hey, Sister Sapphira, did you do this? Yes, he says, you're right, for the Holy Ghost. Carry her out. Isn't that funny? They weren't committing adultery, they just lied. Now, preacher, you try that, but be very careful. Be sure you say, I'm a knife and Sapphira, because if you raise your hand and say you liars die, you could lose 90% of your congregation, maybe. Because lying doesn't mean too much these days, does it? Can you imagine going to a church, you know, I think that maybe economically, before long we'll be driven to just one service on the Lord's Day. Maybe gas will cost too much. Maybe other situations will drive us to the place. After all, in God's name, I don't care whether you're Pentecostal, Presbyterian, or whatever, in God's name, whatever name you call yourself, do you know any place in Scripture where it says the Holy Ghost comes at 11 o'clock Sunday morning and leaves at 12 and comes back 7 o'clock Sunday night and goes home at 8 and doesn't come back till Wednesday night at 7 o'clock? Who's running the business? God or the deacons? Oh dear, dear, this business, this business of starting on the right moment and finishing at the right moment. You see, one of the great things God demands of men who are going to be great in His presence is to spend time with Him. You can be a smart aleck because you know how to juggle with text. Don't let anybody fool you that because you get a diploma from the seminary of a Bible school that you're a preacher. They can give a blind man a license to drive a car. It doesn't mean he should drive it. They can give a fellow a license to be a preacher, but if God hasn't called him, he'd be better selling hamburgers. Go hide thyself. Oh, we stress tithing, don't we? There's no tithing in the New Testament. There's no tithing in the New Testament, like circumcision. But anyhow, we don't stress circumcision, but we stress tithing. Why? No tithing in the New Testament? Well, what does the scripture say? Bring all the what? Tithing. Well, if you say I tithe all my income, when I make a thousand dollars, I very carefully take a hundred dollars out and I give God a bit of extra on top of that. But wait a minute. It says bring all your tithe. If you give God a tenth of your money, you should give God a tenth of your time. Now, there are, what, 24 hours in a day still? And a tenth of 20 hours is 2, and your 4 hours is over 4 times 60 minutes 240, so you give God 2 hours and 24 minutes every day out of your life. That's your tithe. On top of that, you're giving some time, so at least you give God 3 hours minimum every day out of your life. Did you do that? Anybody behind on this tithing time? Raise your hand. Oh, most of you are behind. That's great. Not really. What about tithing our conversations? There are so many areas that we neglect in life. But you see, again, here is a demand that God makes. Every great man that I have read of has been a disciplined man, and he has been a man who has spent time with God. Take time to be holy. Speak often with thy Lord. A few years ago, I preached in the great Curacao Mishna Conference in Japan. About a year after that, I noticed the chairman of that conference was speaking in... We were living in Oxford, Illinois. And I said to my wife, darling, let's go and hear this man. He was the chairman of the conference I was at, the missionaries from Korea, Japan, all over the place. After the meeting, I went to him, and I said, well, how are things in Japan? He said, all right. I asked him a few questions. All right. I said, man alive, you get a cold? Are you under the weather? What's wrong with you? Oh, well, I'm having a bit of a bad time. For what? Last night, he said, just before I left Tokyo, I decided that I'd have a haircut. It's a little bit cheaper. He said the man put the cloth around my neck, and he clipped away at my hair, and then when he got me nice and comfortable, he said, are you a Yankee? I said, not really a Yankee. I'm an American. Oh. Tourist? No. Businessman? No. Well, what are you? He was a missionary. Oh! But, man, look, it fizzles, and it... I shouldn't say it fogs. It fizzles, and it... it's cold. And he clapped and he said, I'm a missionary, too. And then he said, my friend said, a missionary? I thought you were a barber. Oh, I am a barber in the morning from nine till five. Then I go home and have supper. Six o'clock I go out. Seven o'clock I get to a house, and I give them literature, and I play a phonograph. I go, you see, we've got a combination of religion and politics called Zangagashi, and we're going to turn the whole of this nation upside down. You know, I discovered when I was there that the Christian witness had been one hundred and thirteen years in Japan. It's a dozen years since I was there. The Christian witness had been in Japan a hundred and thirteen years, and half of one percent of people in Japan, and that included Protestants and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses and what have you, they made a half of one percent of people that had been converted in that nation in a hundred and thirteen years. I said to the chairman of the conference, and you know, the way we're going out of here will take another hundred and thirteen years to get half of one percent. Those people will die by the moon and not be saved. Don't let anybody fool you they're evangelizing the world. I heard a guy say on TV out in somebody else's house, I don't listen to many TV Christian shows, this guy says, I want to tell you that America is evangelized. Somebody should change his diagnosis. America evangelized? We've not tried? Broken homes? Yes sir, we've got broken homes, broken lives, broken minds, broken families, broken marriages, but we've no broken hearts over it. He said, a little man said, I go out at seven o'clock at night and I don't get home till two o'clock in the morning. You see, this is going to change the whole life of Japan. My friend said, I could feel myself going down in the chair. I thought he'd missed my hair. I was quite embarrassed. Wait a minute, he said, you go out, you go knocking on doors at seven o'clock at night and you don't go to bed till two in the morning. I didn't say that. You didn't say that. I didn't say that. What did you say? I said, I go out and I knock on doors at seven at night, I give them lecture number one, I come back to your house next week, give you lecture number two, I come the week after, give you lecture number three, I get in homes and I give them a course and I leave them literature. But you said you got home, you went to bed at two in the morning. I did not say that. What did you say? I said, I go out and knock on doors at seven at night, I get home at two o'clock in the morning and then I pull the church number aside and I bow before my God from two o'clock until four o'clock to renew my strength. I don't go to bed till four o'clock in the morning and I get up at seven thirty in the morning. He said, I felt so angry, I said, how long have you done that? He said, for seven years. You've lived on three and a half hours sleep for the last seven years? Yes, what am I going to do? You're going to change the whole structure of my society. My friend said, I paid for my haircut. I went to the airplane feeling as though somebody had hit me here and hit me here and hit me with a two by four and all the way across the Pacific as that plane flew and I heard the buzz of the engine, I was hearing a man who is a heathen say, I only need three and a half hours a day. I wait on my God from two until four. It sounds a bit like Isaiah 40, doesn't it? May the grace upon the Lord renew their strength. And he said, that heathen man rebuked me and did me more good than most of the preaching I'd heard for years. God says, go hide thyself. He went and hid himself. Let me push this in. Get up and go home if you want. I won't be able to worry about you, but he'll only go watch some dumb TV so he may as well watch me anyhow. But, you know, I have a lovely little cassette. There's a great Pendy Castle preacher in this country years ago. He's in England right now, I think. I guess he's about six feet three or four. He's a black man. He's a great preacher. And I got this cassette from him. It's about a little Baptist preacher called Duma. And I gave this illustration in South Carolina and there's a big fine-looking preacher at the back. He came up afterwards and he said, Thank you for the story of Duma. I said, Why, have you heard it before? He said, No, I didn't need to. He said, Because my father was the pastor of the church that you talked about when Duma got saved. A little black man that ran down the aisle and got saved. Going out, the preacher said, Can I help you? And he said, Yes, give me a church. Give you what? Give me a church. He said, You saw me go kneel there? Yes. Well, I'm not the man that knelt there, he said. Boy, he must have begun to become a new preacher. Some people don't know what's happening when they come. They don't know what they want. They don't know what they've got. So they don't know if they lose anything. But this man knew he'd been changed. The pastor said, I can't help you. He came back again a month after to the church. Going out, the pastor said, Can I help you? Oh, I know who you are. D-U-M-A. Duma, Duma, Duma. The man that asked me for a church. Can I help you? He said, Yes, give me a church. I don't have one. Finally, the deacon said, Let him preach to those six-coloured people across the tracks, because he hasn't been to bridal school, and he hasn't been to a seminary, and he has no education, hardly. So, don't worry. Well, it so happens that right now, Duma has a church of about 1,400 people every Sunday morning, and even white people go hear him. And they don't do that in South Africa. Here it is, little, little black. He said to the preacher, Whether you give me a church or not, I'm going to preach. He said, When you told me I couldn't preach, I went up the road. I walked out of the city. I found a track through the forest. I found a stream. I walked by the stream. I found a cave. I took a rock and I marked the cave. And I stayed there twenty-one days and twenty-one nights, just listening to God. Telling God, I don't care about the men. You tell me whether I'm called to preach or not. And he said, God said, I called you to preach. I'm not only there. You pray for the sick and they'll be healed. Well, that isn't too good news for Baptist. One lady said to me, Our pastor doesn't believe in divine healing. I said, I saw him in hospital the other day kneeling at somebody's bed. What was he doing? Praying they'd die? You may not lay hands on the thing, but he was praying unless it was a deacon. He was praying that they'd be recovered. Nicholas Bengu said in this tape, Listen to my friend. They call him to the hospital. Preachers have to take so many turns when folk die who are not church members. Each preacher has to take so many funerals. Beumer was called. He called to the deacons and said, Could you come down to church with me? A hospital with me tonight? They said yes. He went to the counter and the nurse said, Could I help you? Yes, so and so. She said, Oh yes, he's in room 13. And one of the deacons said, He's in room 13? That's the morgue. And Beumer walked down to the great big hospital and he came to the sign 13 and he walked in and all these corpses were laid in little sections there, you know. And the deacons said, We've, we've kind of been with you many times when you prayed for the sick and they'd been healed but, this man's dead. He said, That's right. So were I going to pray for him? Mm-hmm. You know, we're a bit nervous. One day we'll strain omnipotence. They stood back and he put the covering off the corpse. I got this all on tape from Nicholas Bangor, a very wonderful man and he said, The little black man got on top of the corpse and laid his hands on the corpse and said, In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk. And the corpse went, If he'd done that with me on top, I'd have hit the ceiling, I'm sure. The corpse got up and walked home with him. You know, such things are not done in decent Baptist churches. I don't know why a Baptist minister should do a thing like that. Isn't it terrible? Hmm? Just a little man. I told you what he did. He spent 21 days and nights with God. He drank water from the stream. He washed his face in the stream. He never heard any human voice. He never saw any human face. He never ate any natural food. He drank water from the street. Like God said to Elijah, You get bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening. Maybe that means you should only eat twice a day. He didn't even get bread and flesh. He drank water. And today he has one of the most healthy, thriving churches in South Africa. Oh, I know lots of men who had a far better ministry five, ten, fifteen years ago than they have now. They hit a plateau. They lost their anointing. They keep up their terminology and their gesticulations and all the rest of it. But there's no power there. Well, is that the secret? You don't shut yourself away for 21 days of night and eat nothing and just drink water? Is that the secret? No, no, no, no. The secret is that I think it was about the 17th of November when he went in and shut himself alone in that cave. Do you know what he's done? And it's 20 years about since he did it. Every year when it comes to that date he kisses his wife and children goodbye and he spends 21 days and nights in the same cell waiting on God. Some people think you still get through but it's like sitting in a new automobile. Well, your new automobile doesn't run until ten years after on the same ceiling of gas, does it? The hardest thing in the world is to get the anointing of God, I think. The easiest thing is to lose it. The most difficult thing is to maintain it. Because we all get satisfied with numbers or a successful church or to have a nice parsonage or to have a big car or to have this or what. As I said on Sunday night if you're not known in hell, preacher, you're not worth a hill of beans. The demon said, Jesus I know and Paul I know. It's going to take men who know the power of God and power of the game to change it probably many times in the day in which we live. Go hide thyself. He hid himself. Go show thyself. He comes out and the Lord says, I've commanded a widow woman to feed thee. Well, who in the world wants to sponge on widows except evangelists? But isn't it lovely when he says, I've commanded the ravens to feed thee there. I've commanded a widow to feed thee there. And he says, will you make me a cake? You know, she's going down the road and he says, hey, will you make me a cake? Make me a cake? I've a little boy at home and he says, listen, I've just enough means and a little hell and I'll put them together and make a cake and my little boy and I are going to eat them and die like everybody else. You mean to say that if you pray for revival death comes? Revival is one of the most terrible things that can happen to any country. Revival almost always precedes persecution. Revival has swept through China. Look where they are now. Revival has swept through Korea. The Christian and Missionary Alliance had their best moves of the spirit in the last few years. Where? Well, in Cambodia and Laos and particularly in Vietnam, people were saved by the thousands and tens of thousands. But behind the eyes of the people of Cambodia and the people of Laos and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people of Cambodia and the people and the people of Cambodia of Cambodia and the people Lord God. His name was Payson. I called him Praying Payson of Porterham. A lady asked me one day, did you ever meet John Hyde? I said, no I didn't. But I know of a man who prayed with him for five hours, and when somebody knocked on the door and said, Mr. Hyde, it's time for you to speak, he said, I said, under my breath, leave the man alone, we haven't been praying half an hour. But when I pulled out my watch, we had been praying for five hours, out of which he said, I've prayed fifteen minutes, and Hyde prayed the other four hours. And forty-five minutes. And then of course you had Jonathan Goldforth, the great man of prayer, who had revival in China. And you had Jebson, who founded the Empire of Jesus in Burma. Oh, and then you had that little man that weighed, what, some massive weight, ninety-five pounds? He cued himself, praying. He said, I woke up this morning, the Indians were committing adultery, they were still drunk and beating their drunk, and there was nowhere to go, and he said it was shivering cold. And I walked out in the forest, and I knelt in snow up to my chin, a half hour after sunrise, and I prayed till a half hour before sunset. Think of it. And when he sneezed, you'd think he'd been tearing up some beautiful red roses, because when he sneezed, he sprayed the snow with his blood. And when he coughed, he would say, pick that flower up, and when he picked it up, he would scrape it like that, it was part of his lungs. He died at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. His name was David Bright. If America has touched the world, and it has with false religions, it has had some of the greatest examples of praying men in history. Oh, and then my friend E. M. Bowne. His daughter wrote to me, I think she's still living, his son's still living, he's about ninety-seven. And she said, Brother Raven, I'm glad you've republished my daddy's books. I've put all the seven books in one volume, called The Treasury of Prayer. You can buy it. If you buy the books second-hand, they'll cost you five dollars each, cost you thirty-five to forty dollars. You can buy them all for two fifty or two ninety-five, in that one volume. Do you know what he said? When my father was young, he used to rise at four o'clock in the morning to pray. But as he got older, he realized there was so much unfinished work, that he rose at three o'clock in the morning to pray. Huh? The effectual servant's prayer. Okay, let's wrap it up. It says he ran off into a laugh, and he prayed, and nothing happened. He prayed again, and nothing happened. And the third time, he not only prayed, but he knelt, and he stretched himself on the child as an act of compassion, and he prayed. The next thing you see him running down the steps, and he says to the lady, do you think he said, uh, I want to tell you something, your baby's alive. I think he came down those steps, and he says, he has the baby in his arms, and he says to the woman, hey, see, your son lives! And she said, by this I know that I am the man of God. What? By the meal, by the oil? No, no, no, no, no, no. By the fact that you raised the dead. Well, isn't that the job of the church? You happy figure knew him dead in Christ, which is an insult. What does revival mean? It means that dead men live. It means that dead prayer life of yours that meant so much years ago, it doesn't mean as much now. Many of you prayed and all about your boyfriend, that you'd get the right one, and since you've got him, you almost quit praying to your husband, or vice versa. You prayed and you thought business would go down, but since it's successful, you think ten dollars a week to the kingdom of God helps to pay what he wants. And then the writer says, all earthly things with earth will fade away, but prayer lasts an eternity. Do you wonder the disciples said, look, I would love, of all, I would rather have heard Jesus pray in John 17, which is the Lord's prayer. The prayer that we pray is not the Lord's prayer. We pray the disciples' prayer. You can't pray the Lord's prayer. He couldn't pray the disciples' prayer. They couldn't pray the Lord's prayer. The Lord's prayer is John 17. In the first five verses, he prays for himself. Verses 6 to 19, he prays for the disciples. Verses 20 to the end, he prays for the world. That's the way to pray. I'd love to have heard Jesus pray. More than being raised to the dead. He lied to us, the man, and in case you're ready to excuse yourself, he was flesh and blood like you and I are. He got stomach aches sometimes. He had nerves. He had sinews. He had emotions. He had all the world and all hell against him. But he stood in the power of the Spirit of God. He's got a wonderful biography. Listen. It says Elijah prayed and the rain fell. Elijah prayed and the people fell. Elijah prayed and the fire fell. I'd almost start a church in hell if I could get six deacons that could do that. Who's the greatest man of prayer in the Old Testament? Elijah? I don't think so. Who? Oh, you say, I think Jacob. Why? Because he prayed all night. No, he didn't pray all night. At least he didn't intend to. Do you know why he prayed? He prayed because he got in a jam. Do you remember the time you prayed most fervently when you were in a jam somewhere? Physically? Emotionally? Financially? He said to you, listen, we'd better not watch Sonic Carson tonight. We'd better just pray and get down to business here. We're in trouble. Then he came and said, I've seen your brother coming. Have you finished my brother? Yes, he did. Oh boy, that's disturbing. Why? Because the last time he saw me he said, listen, next time I see you I'll kill you. You better start praying if your brother's going to kill you or not. And he divided the cattle and he divided the sheep and he divided the servants and when he got them all away he says, I'm smart, you know. When my brother sees the cattle and sees those, he'll think I'm there, but not me. Smart me. I'm going to get over the stream and get behind the big rock. And he goes over the stream, got behind the rock and somebody jumped on him. Well, who in the world do you think he thought it was? There's only one man in the world, he was a prayer guy. He said he began to wrestle. Doesn't it sound like a prayer meeting? It sounds like it's a business meeting, but not a prayer meeting? Somebody's got him in his grip and he says, I, I, I, not this country, my brother. I'm going to cut my way out of this. One thing I learned out of that lesson, you know what it was, one lesson I learned out of it? That when he went to pray he was the most handsome man in Israel. Tall and handsome and everybody admired him. When he came out of that prayer meeting he dragged a withered leg all the rest of his life. That's when he got out of the prayer meeting, a withered leg. Isn't that the reason we don't pray? Because the flesh is weak. Many of us are governed by our appetite, our bodies, we'll sleep, we'll do this. Now who's the boss? He dragged a withered leg and when he began to realize that there's somebody had such a grip and somebody touched him. That's not my brother, he can't, he's not as strong as that. And he felt the person and then he hung on. Charles Russell paraphrases that in an old hymn, he says, wrestling I will not let thee go till I thy name and nature know. Yield to me now for I am weak, but confident in self despair. This person's going to leave him now but he hangs on. I will not let thee go unless thou bless me. Simple thing. I think the greatest man of prayer in the Old Testament was Moses. God called him and they, here Moses come I want to talk with you. Moses says I'm listening and he says Moses look, you know sometimes you make a mark on the wall and then you rub it out. I'm going to rub this nation out like that. Two, three, four, five million some people say, I'm going to liquidate them. They cried, I reached the bondage and I delivered them. They cried for food, I gave it. They cried for meat, I gave it. They cried for water, I split the rock. And yet they rebelled and asked a strange God, they defy me. Now listen, don't you get too worried about it Moses because I'm going to liquidate five million people and raise a new nation out of your loins. A man with half an ounce of calmality would have said Lord I can't wait till I get up in the morning. I'm going to stand up before them and say listen you backslidden rebellious lot, almighty God's going to roast you today, kill everyone, I won't even bother to pray to hell with all of you. I want to tell you something just before you perish. I'm so holy, I'm so wonderful he's going to raise a new generation of people out of me. God says I love to destroy these people. You know what, it's a wonderful thing when a holy God reaches down and takes hold of a man just before you get a grip like that. I only know one thing more wonderful than a holy God reaching down and taking hold of a man. And that's when a man reaches up and takes hold of God. If you read I think the eleventh chapter of Deuteronomy Moses says look God, if you're going to leave this world on me, forget it. If you're going to leave me to torture this nation, these exact words, he says kill me. Alright put it in the other language now. This is not God getting a grip on Moses, it's Moses getting a grip on God. Read the story again. I love to destroy these people. Now wait a minute, Moses says you're not going to do that. Charles Wesley paraphrases it again when he says this. When God says leave me alone and I love to destroy the, Charles Wesley puts it this way, let Moses in the spirit go and God cries out leave me alone. That's not Moses crying to God. God has a grip on him and God is crying leave me alone. Moses says I won't let you alone, destroy the nation, but destroy me with them. And isn't it in the Romans chapter 9 where the apostle Paul says I could wish myself a curse for my brethren. Do you know what it really says? He says I'll be damned if I need to be in order that my brethren may be saved.