In this sermon, the preacher discusses the importance of having a three-fold vision. He shares a story about a Welshman named Stephen Jeffries who was able to elicit a response from the congregation by asking if anyone wanted to be saved or healed. When no one responded to the question of salvation, a woman raised her hand when asked about healing. The preacher then brings a boy with a deep shoe onto the platform and declares himself as Jesus' ambassador. The congregation is asked to pray, and everyone participates, demonstrating unity. The preacher emphasizes the need for believers to know God and do exploits, rather than being consumed by worldly distractions like watching sports on TV. The sermon concludes with a reference to Isaiah 6:7-8, where the prophet Isaiah is cleansed and commissioned by God.

...have been here for several weeks now. Leonard's been preaching four and five times a week, and it's been wonderful. It's been glorious. Our prayer meeting attendance, which we thought was good to begin with, is up four to five times now. It's numbered, and the meetings have gone extended now for several hours, some of them, as the Spirit of God has been wooing and stirring and ministering to us. The idea for Leonard's coming here was given to me by the Holy Spirit. I had heard of him before. I'd read two books, I believe, one of them on the wide Revival Terries, and then one several years before that. And I knew of him from various and sundry places, but I'd never met him. And this last year I had an opportunity to meet him while in Kansas City and to go to lunch with him. And as we were sitting there, the Lord said to my heart, This is a treasure, and I want to pour it out among you. So I blurted out, Hey, could you come and see us for a few months? Fully expecting him to say no. And within hours he came back and said, Yes, I can, and it'll be a very important meeting. And so we've lived with that excitement in our souls for the last few months waiting for him to come. There's many things I could say about him that would probably embarrass him. We've learned to love him not only as a preacher and a man who has fire in his bones, but as a friend. His tenderness to us privately is just beyond belief. His fierceness when he gets behind a microphone is also beyond belief. Somewhere between the two places is the man, I think. And we've learned to love him. Let's welcome Brother Leonard Ravenhill. Well, if a friend says I'm fierce, what do my enemies say? No, I want to first of all thank God for putting in the heart of John to have this conference and secondly that he obeyed the Lord and thirdly that he had the wisdom to call me. I was just saying to Carol there, you know, if anybody ever says to me, Do you believe Jesus spent the five thousand? I'll say, Well, John Wimber did it. OK. Today there are many, many versions of the Bible. My son David says there are ten versions. Five are wise and five are foolish. You know, the Bible says do things decently in order. Don't you see anybody decent around here? So why should I wear a tie? So now you can tell people you were there when I got rid of my bondage. Well, I'm going to read a scripture from the NIV version. Just a minute, just a minute. The NIV is the never improved King James. So now I've got you. I'm like the old lady in England. She said it was good enough for the Apostle Paul, so it's good enough for me. OK. The prophet Isaiah, chapter six. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims. Each one had six wings. With train or with two, He covered His face. With two, He covered His feet. And with two did He fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of Him that spoke. And Him that cried in the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me, for I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me with a light cold in his hand, which he had taken with a tongue from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth and said, Lo, this has touched thy lips. Thy iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I. Send me. And He said, Go. There are three simple words, they're very simple, verses 5, 7 and 9. They're so simple you can remember them even if you've been to college. In verse 5 the word Woe, in verse 7 the word Lo, and in verse 9 the word Go. The first is a word of a man, the second is the word of a seraphim, and the third is the word of God. The first is a word of confession, Woe is me. The second is a word of cleansing, Lo, this has touched thy lips. And the third is a word of commission, Go. I must tell you college people something else. If you have a notebook, put it down, if not, get the tape. Because I want to tell you there are 66 books in the Bible. Did you get that? There are also 66 chapters in Isaiah. The Old Testament has 39 books, so that's the main division in the Scripture. The first 39 chapters in Isaiah divide the book. In chapters 1 to 39 there are no less than 12 references to the holiness of God. Then from the 40th chapter to 66 there are 17 references to the holiness of God. This Scripture is very carefully dated for us. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isael saw the Lord. I don't know, but many of the scholars tell us that Isaiah and Uzziah were very close friends, and that Isaiah was a kind of aristocrat in his generation. But there's a crisis in his life. In the year that King Uzziah died, he saw the Lord. The one obstruction to him seeing the Lord was his closest friend. The closest business partner was his chief blockage, if you like, for him seeing the King in his beauty. If you want to get a slight rundown on the life of Uzziah, we find it here, in the 26th chapter of the 2nd book of Chronicles. I'll just skip through it very quickly here. 2 Chronicles chapter 26 and verse 1. Then the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was 15 years old, and made him king in the womb of his father. Now that's very interesting, isn't it? I mean, what's your 15-year-old doing, apart from collecting baseball cards? Here is a man, a boy at 15 years of age, who has to take command of a great nation, a very, very powerful nation. I guess in our day we'd call this boy a whiz kid, because everything he did, he turned to prosperity. He took over the economy, and it began to blossom as it had never blossomed before. He took over agriculture, and that came to its greatest peak in the period when he was in authority. Then he went and took over the military, and we have a description here of the army. Let's read verse 5 here. He sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him to prosper. Verse 7 says, God helped him against the Philistines and against the Arabians that dwelt in Gabiath. Verse 8 says, the Ammonites gave gifts to Uzziah, and his name spread abroad even to the entry of Egypt. Verse 10 tells us how he digged towers, irrigated the country, made everything that he touched just come to perfection in due course. In verse 12 it says, the number of the chiefs of the fathers of the mighty men of Galilee were 2,600. In the next verse it gives you the number of people, 207,000 that were fighting for him. Verse 15, he made in Jerusalem engines invented by cunning men to be put on the cars, otherwise they were huge catapults and they hurled great big rocks and crushed the wooden walls of the cities that they attacked. So everything on every level is getting on fine. But then something happened. He made in Jerusalem engines invented by cunning men to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks to shoot arrows and great stones with awe. And his name spread far abroad, for he was marvelously held until he was strong. But when he became strong, his heart lifted up to destruction. You know, many more people can stand adversity than can stand prosperity. Everything this man has, his towers are fabulous. His name is known to the dead known world as a genius. On every level he's never fallen flat on his face. It seems like the scripture, everything that he doeth shall prosper. But then suddenly a little thing came into his heart, a thing that we call pride and self-confidence. And when man comes in like that, God goes out. But when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to destruction. He transgressed against the Lord his God. And he said, look, I took over the economy, I took over education, I took over the army, I took over everything. And so I'm the man you need. I'm the man in authority. And I'm going to take over the ministry. He knew very well the dangers about that. And he says in Israel 16, his soul was lifted up to destruction. He transgressed against the Lord his God and went into the temple. And the Lord took the incense on the altar. Now look at this, Azariah the priest went in after him with four score priests. Eighty-one people. Eighty-one strong men tried to stop him. In my opinion this man's demon possessed. How can he fight single-handedly? Eighty-one men. They were going to stop him from getting to the altar. But that demon power in him overcame and he went forward and he started doing the job. And Azariah the priest went in after him and with him four score priests of the Lord who were valiant men. And they tried to restrain him. Then verse 19 says, Uzziah was wroth. He had a censer in his hand to burn incense. And while he was wroth, the priests' leprosy covered him, overcame him. And so he was defiled. There's a very fascinating part of history. One of the great Caesars. We have a city in England where the Caesars live in models. Julius Caesar, Tiberius Caesar, all the other Caesars live in the town. And the most, the best known I suppose is Julius Caesar. When Julius Caesar was in his prime, he had a man by the name of Pompey who was a superior general. So they became very contentious and envious of each other. And so the best thing that Julius Caesar could do was ship this man to a far country. And that happened to be the other end of the Mediterranean. And so he sent this fellow Pompey there. And when he arrived, Pompey arrived, true to his name, pompously. Soldiers got off their boats. They had wonderful horses with saddlecloths. You know, you see the old style in England where the saddlecloths come down to their knees, these beautiful horses. And the soldiers had helmets and everything stunned them. They took him around the town to show him what Jerusalem was. They pointed various historic places to him. Then finally he said, what's that building? Oh, they said, you can't go near that. You're regarded as a heathen. He said, no, I'm one of the most powerful men in the world. No, you can't go near to it. Why not? Because God is there. God? We have hundreds of gods in Rome. What god is this? Name that god. And they told him it was Jehovah God. He made heaven and earth. He hung the stars in the sky. He put the light there. He governs everything. This is the God, Lord, God Almighty. As we would say, God immortal, invisible, God only wise. Enlightened, accessible, hid from our eyes. This man was furious. I have a right to go in there. You can't go in there. Well, he said, tomorrow afternoon I shall enter that temple. And they said, you won't. So he came down Main Street there in all his panoply and all his soldiers. Behind him 2,000 people. And Caesar, this fellow was actually going, Pompey was going to the temple. And people made a barrier that they were crushed down by the horses. And they said, you can't go in there. That's dangerous. God is there. Do you know it's dangerous here tonight because God is here? Do you know God's going to plunder this place tonight? Do you know this one meeting is going to reach the ends of the earth? People say to me sometimes, Rainhill, you've wasted your time. I've prayed for revival 66 years. You're wasting your time. God's finished with our generation. America's had more light than any nation in the world. She has more Bible schools. She has more printing presses. She has more broadcasts every day. God's through. My rebuttal to that is this. And I say this with anger. I say, listen, when I was a boy and years back even before that, the population of the world was 5 million. That's at the time when most of the great mission societies were launched, when the world was a family of only 5 million people and God loved it. Are you telling me that God doesn't love the world now it's 5 billion people? The situation is a thousand times more difficult, a thousand times more challenging. I don't know when this army of, what do you call it now, Joel's army is going to start, but I'll tell you what. Remember, it's an army. It's not a picnic. It's not a tea party. It's a warfare. I think we're going to move into a situation that's never been known in the history of the world, that God's going to raise up His men. This man goes barging into the temple and he refused to be driven back. But when he got there he was spinned by leprosy. He came as doctor, I was going to say Dr. Chaucer. Dr. Criswell is one of the great old guys. He's like me, he's pretty old. So he's very good. He's down there. He has a little paperback book on the prophecy of Isaiah, which I think is very beautiful. And I looked it up on this chapter and he says, here is this arrogant man coming, I have military power, I have money, I have the Roman Empire behind me. Who is God? I'll show you what I can do. Again as he goes in they stand against him. He comes sweeping through the outside part of the temple. There's a very brilliant young man here, knows all the Jewish traditions and what not. I'll check with you after Mike, if I'm wrong don't say anything. So, as the good old doctor says, this plunder place, this great display of power that had never been seen in that part of the world. They'd never seen men with breastplates and plumes. They'd never seen men on horseback. They'd never seen all this plunder place. And they started gasping to see coming down the street, moving towards the sacred place. And then he says, Pompey came through the outer court of the Gentiles. Then he came to the court of Israel. Then he came to the court of women. And then he came, as he says, to the courts of priests. He came to the division in the temple, what's the first place? The holy place. Went a bit further. Broke his way through there. Came to the holy of holies where the curtain, how thick was it? Six inches? Something like that. And there's that tremendous curtain. I don't see anything different here. These different courts mean nothing to me. No. God is behind that shield of a curtain. The Holy One. Elsewhere, you remember, it's called a fair loft, you want to inhabit it for eternity. And this arrogant man says, I don't care, there's nothing sacred to me. I'm going in there, I've come all this way, and I must see your God. You can't go in. He dwells in light. If you step into His presence, you'll go blind with the kind of glory. If you get in there, you'll be the most uncomfortable you've ever been in your life. The majesty of God is there. But he still persisted and he went in. He comes through the outer court, there was nothing. The Gentile court, Israel's court and what not. Now he comes up against this barrier, just one great big curtain. And behind it, God Almighty lives. So finally he told men, you take your swords and cut through there, I'm going in. And they pulled the curtain on one side and it was pitch dark. And he burst into anger, he screamed. You lied to me. You told me it was blinding light and it's darkness. You told me a living God is there. There's nobody there. You liars. Your gods have no more power than my God. I translate that this way. We went to a church a few years ago to preach. We told the big shots came over from England. And the church was 35 acres of land. There were tennis courts and I don't know what kind of courts were there. And I visualized, instead of this brilliant young military man coming here into the Temple of Olds, some young people in America come. They come to the outside, they pass the tennis courts, they pass the volleyball courts. They pass all the tennis courts and everything. And finally they come into the temple and they say, where is your God? Is that what people are asking today? Where is the Lord God Elijah? The prayer meetings this week have been terrible. The first week I thought they were good. The second week they got better. But this week there's been despair. I believe this meeting is historic. There's never been a meeting in American history like this. There have never been millions of prayers. There have never been tens of thousands of people who are fasting in different parts of the world for this week. It's too late to delay any longer. We've waited too long. We need to see the salvation of our God. People have been praying all that thou wouldst render heavens. Last Friday morning we had a prayer meeting. There were two women there, one pray. And I thought, I would like to pray after that. The majesty of God was there. I would like to pray. Another woman prayed after that and it was terrible to listen to. I went home. I said to Martha, I haven't heard praying like this since the revivals in 1930. That's 60 years ago. What is God birthing? Then we went to the prayer meeting at the end of the day. Friday night. We weren't trying to beat the clock, but we prayed till almost midnight. I think it was Friday night, was it? And suddenly a man about half past eleven stood up. I'd never heard a man in 50 years with holy anger. He was just blasting the powers of the devil. Why is the devil running loose in America? Why are our girls, before they get to women, their girls giving birth to girls? Why are our boys captivated by lust and drink? And so he went on and there was a holy anger there. I fully expected a flash of lightning from eternity. You see, there's this consuming desire. Let me tell you, nakedly, because I'm a bit of a rough boy, Beatrice, my friend, says, I have to live up to my reputation tonight. The first week one man, a young man, said this, Oh God, if this thing that we have is Christianity, it's a pitiable thing. After saying that, after Gethsemane, after Jesus had gone to hell and back, as it were, after He suffered death and brought life to them and talented to life and delegated to us, not to seraphims and cherubims, but He's delegated to us authority over all the power of the enemy. I don't care what disease or diabolical disorder the mind has. Jesus Christ conquered it. Whatever was brought into the world by the first Adam was answered by the last Adam. There wasn't a second Adam. If there was a second Adam, He could have a third and a fourth. But the last Adam didn't have a job. I tell you, the moment that Jesus rose from the dead, there was panic in hell. I like to think, thank you, now follow your Father. You know that the greatest, one of the greatest operas, I call them operas, that was ever presented was, what was it, Verdi's Aida. And he celebrated in the great theater, the La Scala, in Milan, Italy. When he finished, the character, you know, that's dead, laid out, and he was supposed to be dead, the whole place went shrieking mad. They shouted, they whistled, they clapped. At eleven o'clock at night, they were still there at one, they were still there at two, they were still there at three, they were still there at four, shouting, Verdi, Verdi, Verdi. You know, the most awful thing in America tonight is not sin, as we think of it, drunkenness and abortion. I believe the greatest hindrance in the world tonight is unbelief. We do not believe God. And that's what he asked of us. The disciples didn't believe the Lord Jesus Christ. If they believed Him, they'd have been lining up at the tomb. But they weren't lining up at the tomb. They were far, far away. I think the most amazing thing and disgusting thing in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ was that morning when He woke up from the resurrection, there wasn't a single person there to meet Him. He told them over and over again, I'm going to rise from the dead, but they just ignored Him. But He rose, and I believe it was then that Psalm 45 was shouted by millions of angels in heaven, Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lifted up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of glory shall come in. We have to recapture the majesty of Jesus Christ. I quoted this morning in the early prayer meeting, John Wesley, Charles Wesley said, all for a trumpet voice on all the world to call, but then he followed that by saying, My heart is full of Christ and longs this glorious message to declare. He didn't say, My head's full of theology. Over and over again in his wonderful diary, John Wesley says, I went to London, or I went to Birmingham, or I went to Manchester, and I offered them Christ. He didn't offer them forgiveness. He didn't offer them pardon. He didn't offer them peace. He didn't offer them wealth. He said, I offer you Christ. Christ is in charity as your Lord and your Master to direct and control your life. Christ in you, the hope of glory. We're stacked up with theology today, but where is the living Christ? I fully expect this place to rock in the power of God this week. Now let's go back a minute here to Isaiah chapter 6. I call him Isaiah, or whatever you want to call him. Isaiah, good English. In a year that King Uzziah, let's take these divisions which are automatic. In verse 5, the word wall. In verse 7, the word low. And in verse 9, the word go. The first is the word of a man, the second is the word of confession, and the third is the word of cleansing. Here you have a threefold vision. Vision is almost the greatest dynamic in the world. Here's a threefold vision, get it? Verse 5, wall. Verse 7, low. Verse 9, go. Here you have a vision of deity. Isaiah saw the Lord. High. Here you have a vision of depravity because he saw inside himself. Here you have a vision of duty because he saw a lost world. Upward vision of holiness and inward vision of helplessness. A world outside in hopelessness. And the only answer to it is a revelation of God. You can have a vision without a task, you'll be a visionary. If you have a task without a vision, that's drudgery. But if you have a vision with a task, that makes you a missionary. The greatest bundle of people that ever lived, live in the world at this moment. 5 billion people, that's never been before in the history of the world. So I need this threefold vision. And one of the Jewish scholars, what do you call him, Dr. Bucs Basin? He wrote a wonderful commentary, commentary on Isaiah. You know, we have some wonderful people in the world today. We have people that walk on the bottom of the ocean. They've discovered 400 million dollars in gold off the coast of California. Somebody will be after them to tithe. And they have 400 million dollars. And on our TV, show these men walking around, finding dollars and everything, put them in a bag. We've got men walk on the bottom of the ocean. We've got men that walk on the moon. But we need men that walk with God. And that's exactly what prophets do. Bucs Basin says this awesome thing. You talk about a prophet, he says the prophet by the very nature of his calling is a tragic figure. Because he has a reckless devotion to God and he has a broken heart over a lost world. Where are the prophets today? The prophet suffers for the people, he suffers with the people, he suffers by the people. There's no shortcut for a prophet. A prophet is an abomination in the sight of men. A prophet, the man who claims to be a prophet, he's going to be a true prophet of God. He'd better get ready to get out of this world, because this world doesn't want him. The greatest prophet that ever lived was Jesus, the holiest, purest man that lived. The world couldn't put up with him. Why in God's name do you expect better treatment from this lousy world than he got? Are you holier? It brutalized him from the moment he came into the world. I hang on to that. The prophet suffers for the people, he suffers with the people, and he suffers by the people. In the year that King Uzziah died, you see, Uzziah was being captivated by this political genius, this man that transformed the whole nation. He brought it out of poverty into riches. People would say, let's get the right men in Washington, dear God. They can't even run Washington, never mind run the church. Half of them are thieves. We had two of the most prominent men in the country, in our state. Mr. Wright had the third highest position in the government, and he lost it all. What was his senator? I've forgotten his name now. Towers, said Towers. I don't know why the name like that, I was only five foot one, he didn't tower. But these men, they say, if we get the right men, God never intended that godly men should run this world. We can't even run the church, God help us. Our glory has departed, our authority has departed. The people in the world laugh at the church. We're about as strong against the tide of iniquity that's pouring over the world just now. We're about as strong as the, what do you call it, what's the stuff that blows about in the wind? Thunder? No, when you're going up, tumbleweed. You should be disgusted, it took an Englishman to describe it. Tumbleweed blows here, blows there, goes up, goes down, the church is like that. Paschal said in 1500 that when Jesus revealed himself to her in a vision one night, he went to pray and he said at exactly half past ten, Jesus came in person and spoke to him and said, when I hung on the cross I was thinking of you. And he says from that very moment until Jesus comes back again, he's been weeping in heaven. I don't believe he's weeping over abortion. I don't believe he's weeping over drunkenness. I don't believe he's weeping over broken families with divorce. I believe he's weeping over his church. He's left us rich as we don't know. He's left us strength we've never fathomed. We're so content to again have a few lousy sins. Is it almost an embarrassment to say that Christ lives in us when the devil's running the whole show outside? Isn't it ridiculous to say grace is hidden in us? Somebody said the other day, you know what, the scripture says in the last days, Daniel says, the people that do not know their God should be strung into exploits. Dear Lord, we don't even know our Bibles, never mind God. Exploits? Strength to do exploits? I guarantee that 99% of you men here that watch the wretched game, what was it, in the toilet bowl? No, in the... What was it, sugar bowl? What was it called? Well, I forgot it now. Oh, Super Bowl. Thank you. You talk about doing exploits. You need enough strength to turn the thing off? Let me tell you what I thought of today. Very classical, of course. Do you know what the TV is in most homes? It's their life support. If you pull that plug, you'd kill the family. The kids would go mad. They'd throw the sugar basin at you. They'd throw the milk jug at you. They'd throw everything. It's their life support. It's tragic. It's true and it's tragic. But I'll tell you what. When the love of God is shatter-brown in our hearts, we won't need entertainment. Joy is greater than entertainment. You don't have to run over to Hollywood, milking the wretched cow over there every day. In a year, the King Uzziah died. This man has had his vision obstructed by success and triumph. I say again, as long as he had success and was able to control it, OK. But more people fall through success than through failure. When we're in failure, we struggle. We were talking last night. We had a wonderful meeting, I thought, last night. Because Jack did most of the talking, I did a bit. But we had a wonderful meeting. And I believe that, you know, when people say, you know, I go into some meetings, I get into condemnation. You don't. The man who has faith never gets into condemnation. He fights out. He knows God is greater than that thing that's crushing him, that so-called condemnation. Forget it. OK. We're made to be conquerors over the world, the flesh and the devil. OK. Vision, doesn't the Bible say, where there is no vision, the people perish. We need a vision of a holy God. It's good to shout and clap, and all this noisy stuff that they have around here. But you know what? You can't worship God without holiness. Worship the Lord in what? The beauty of holiness. John, I've cried more. I've cried more these three weeks than I've ever in my life. Not always for sorrow, but often for joy. A lady this morning described a high priest going into the holy place. What does the Bible say? Had on sackcloth, nursery, garments of glory and beauty, pomegranates and golden bells. It was music going in. It was beautiful. He had a breastplate. It had twelve stones. On the stones were the tribes, the nations, the tribes of Israel. And he went to the holy place lift up hand, and he looked beautiful in the sight of God. And he says, Worship the Lord in the beauty. You can make all the noise you like, ten thousand times noisier than it was. And if you do, I hope I'm not here. But anyhow. But even if you do, you may not be worshiping at all. You can worship God in silence. Dear brother John used to be in his early days in the Cracers. I've been to Cracer meetings. They were beautiful. I'm not saying I go every week forever. But there's a stillness. The Bible says be still and know that I'm God, which is as vital as being filled with the Spirit. You see, God can't get to some of you. You preach, you boys, you book up. Just before he left, a guy sent me a letter. And he said, I want you to see. Last year in 52 weeks, I held 50 revivals. In 52, he didn't hold one. He just gave God a shopping list. To me, that's arrogance at its highest. Lord, I want the Holy Ghost on my meeting Wednesday to Wednesday. Then I'll be traveling three days till I get to another place. Turn up, Lord. Forget it. One of these days, we'll have enough sense to wait on God. Repeatedly, I've heard people say, you know, we haven't broken through yet. There's a glory to believe. I'd believe that with all my heart. I'd die if I didn't believe that. We haven't touched the glory of God in our generation. We haven't gone to meetings where the lights don't go out for 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 weeks. We haven't seen men come into town penniless. You can't put stuff over on me. I'm not a chicken. I don't eat chaff. I want the seed. A little man came into a town near where I lived in 1935. He didn't have a penny to his name. Nobody knew him. And he started a meeting, would you believe, Monday afternoon, good night, wash day. Starting a meeting on Monday. 5 o'clock in the morning, God woke him up and said, there'll be a boy in the meeting with a boot 5 inches deep. When you make an appeal, nobody will want to be saved. When you say, anybody want to be healed? The boy's mother will raise her hand. He said to the song leader at 3 o'clock, look in the auditorium, how many people are there? None, he said. No, no, no, no, he said. What does it hold? Oh, it holds over 3,000. Oh. Oh, well, he said, he said there may be 120. He said, let's get out of chaff. We won't get enough offering to pay for the lighting. And dear little Welshman, Stephen Jeffery said, there's a boy in the meeting with a shoe 5 inches deep. When I pray, ask, anybody want to be saved? Nobody will raise their hand. When I say, anybody want to be healed? Mother will go like that. And so he preached, and he never preached very passionately, I must assure you. But he said, well, anybody want to be saved? No hand raised. Anybody want to be healed? The boy went like that. So he said, well, bring the boy up on the platform. And he said to the boy, have you heard about Jesus? Yes. Well, what would Jesus do for you? Oh, he said, Mr. Reed, heal me. He said, well, I'm Jesus' ambassador. And the boy had his shoe off. And he said to the congregation, pray. And everybody, would you believe, that all 120 remembered the same text at the same time, watch and pray. He knew they were watching because the leg went down. Everybody said, whoo! They don't do that in England. They don't do that in Pentecostal churches, never mind Church of England. That's not devout enough. And there the little boy put on his shoe, ran out. His mother ran after him. Congregation ran after her. That night there were 3,000 people. Listen, this is revival. Do you know why? Because at the end of that meeting at night, people went round the building and lined up to get in the afternoon meeting next day. People carried chairs on their backs every day. A man would go at the end of a meeting, go home, he had a chair, sit in that chair in rotten English weather at ten o'clock at night and be there at five in the morning. And then his wife would come, he saved the seat for her, and he'd go to work and she'd come and take the place. And that went on for three weeks. There was no TV. There was no advertising. You never have to advertise a fire. All you have to do, all you have to do is get the fire. I don't know, let me ask these theologians. Jack, after, tell me. What did those people, they saw a pillar of fire. Our God is a consuming fire. One of these nights this place will burn with holy fire. These awful people, pastors will be crowded with men that say, I'm tired of preaching, I'm tired of words, I'm tired of theology. We need God. And our God is a consuming fire. Those three men, Stephen Jeffreys, George Jeffreys shook England. Nobody had ever heard about healing and miracles. You talk about the Azusa Street, there's a little guy on Azusa Street, a black man. What was his name? Thank you, sir. Seymour. Well, that's his name. He did Seymour. He saw more than anybody else. Thank you. Wasn't that smart? Do you know before the fire of God fell, Seymour was praying two and a half hours a day. I've got it on record. And he said, Lord, what can I do? The Lord said increase it to five hours. There's a little black man with his head in a shoebox praying five hours a day. My precious son, David, where were you last week? Up in Portland? There's a man in Portland, Dick, what's his name? The praying man, Simmons. Has Dick Simmons been here? You need to have him. He's backslidden. I mean, would you believe this pastor, Brother John? He's dropped from 16 hours a day praying to 10. Isn't that terrible? Dave Wilson came to see me a few years ago before he left. He said, Len, do you know about Dick Simmons? I've heard of him. He's a man of prayer, yes. He said, when I was praying this morning, the Lord sent him $2,000. I said, well, I don't know where he is. He said, well, I don't. The next day he came, he said, I got a letter from Dick Simmons saying, Brother, I don't want to go back to work, but I can't pay my rent, I can't buy food for my family, because I don't have money. And he said, I've been praying, asking God for $2,000. It was read in the mail. That man has gone round this country, and he demands if he comes here, all the church meets with him at 6 in the morning, and you'll learn more about prayer than a man through that man and all the textbooks you've ever read. Why? Because he prays. And he prays in the Holy Ghost, and there's no way of praying in tongues. He prays with the wisdom of the Holy Ghost. He prays with the strength of the Holy Ghost. He prays with the love of the Holy Ghost. You talk about phenomena. You talk about the Westleys. You talk about what a fellow, that miracle man that was in England, Martha Davies. Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth's a thousand miles ahead of me, but John Lake was a thousand miles ahead of Wigglesworth. If I could pray one prayer and know God would answer it in an hour, I'd say, God give America, give the world a thousand John Lakes. I'm tired of paper theology. I'm tired of you telling me it's going to happen. They told me that six years ago. It's going to happen. It's nearly there. Our Paul said the other week, Daddy, we keep asking God for something that's almost at our fingertips, and we don't want it really. We want it in here. I don't want revival in you. I want revival in me. I don't want you to weep for the lost. I want to weep for the lost. I'm going to eternity for a thousand millenniums. So can't I bear suffering and hardship and trouble? I wouldn't take a singing tin with me anywhere. I took praying teams with me around England, and the churches we established 60 years ago are still there, in the power of God. But you see, the thing that drives you, again, is vision. If I were to ask you about one of the greatest revivals in history, namely the revival by the Salvation Army, what would you say? Who launched it? You say, a man who was half Jew and half Gentile by the name of William Booth. But William Booth had a woman behind him who was a tower. She was a divine energy. She prayed, she travelled, and she had a curvature of the spine, and they had no money. All they had was hardship. And he steps out into the gutter with no backing. The Church of England mocked him. Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to him and said, Mr. Booth, your work won't stand. Number one, you don't baptize your converts. Number two, you don't celebrate communion. So he wrote back and said, Archbishop, thank you for the advice, but if my work won't stand, yours won't. Because you say, we don't baptize, and we don't give communion. And he said, God won't bless you because you don't wash each other's feet. That stumped the preacher. He never said a word after that. And the revival was 70, 90 years. The Salvation Army went to the 70 countries. But you know what? I believe God's going to do more in the next two weeks than have been done in the last 50 years in America. I believe. Otherwise I wouldn't be here. I believe that God's going to raise up men who came into this meeting strong, and He's going to make them weak. He's going to get men who are weak and make them strong. He's going to take their summaries and reduce them to nothing. He's going to bypass the multi-million beggars that we have. There's more talk about faith now than ever, and never as much begging. There's more talk about revival than ever. That's what it is. That's going to turn around this week. I told there Brother John when I talked with him, up with Brother Bickle and Company. Oh, I'm sorry. I'll give my hand to Bishop Bickle. I said, John, I believe that in February this year that God's going to birth something here. And I whispered when I came in, I believe we witnessed something on Friday afternoon. I've never seen anything like that. I've been in big meetings. I've been to Catholic meetings in London, preached them in London, preached them in Australia and all over, but never sensed God as we sensed Him. There wasn't a preacher there. I don't think hardly. They were just very ordinary people. Doesn't God say that? He's sick to death of our professionalism. I'll pour out my spirit and all flesh, a son, archbishops. Does He say? Oh, I got the wrong version. I got the perverse version. It doesn't say that. It says, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, young men see vision, old men dream dreams. I believe the next revival, I don't know what Bob thinks, and you, dear folks, I believe the next revival will be short, but dynamic and powerful beyond anything we've ever heard. The age is closing in on us. Okay. I heard a man on TV the other night, said to Martha when we got home, she said, I said, darling, turn on the TV, there may be news. It was just on the hour. He said that as a guy talking about the Bible. Didn't the stupid guy say, he talked about the Berlin Wall cost millions of dollars, and he said it's been moved because it's a historic fact. Listen, you bear me record, let God in heaven bear me record at this moment. God moved the Berlin Wall for John Wimber. You say, how? I'm not sure what, I'm not sure what, I thought there was a man in here. I'm not sure what God wants for my life. I know when God told us to leave England and go to Ireland, leave Ireland, come to America, leave America, go to the Bahamas, come back. Now at 80, on the age of 84, I don't know where I'm going. But I do know this, Moses was only my age when he started preaching too. And I tell you what I think, Bob, that John should do it. This is a foretaste. This is a sample. It should go from here to London, from London to Germany. And the reason God moved the Berlin Wall was so John can have a holiness convention there and everybody in Europe can come. People say the Berlin Wall was moved by politicians, forget it, it was moved by God. It is a political strategy, it's a divine strategy. I don't know how to get through this, what time is the meeting in the morning? OK. John, I need to talk with you, John, I really have to talk seriously with you. How many of you have this book, Power Encounters, do you have it? Is it on special John? It's on special but there's something more important, do I get commission on this? There's a chapter in here that's worth a whole book. It brings me to tears, it wakes me in the night. Somebody, well, I've had two escorts this week, they've been wonderful, you know, Jack and Tom. You know, I said something about women the other day, they thought I was against women, I'm not. My mother was one. And I married one too. Oh, he says, I thought you were going to tell us the story about the man who said, what do you say he... Come on, stand behind his statement. Or sit behind it. Oh, I said, what a true thing about women, and he said, oh no, you're too hard on the women. He says, I thought you were going to tell us about the man who said, I never found happiness till I was married, and it was too late. Do you see why I get never asked to address women's meetings? What do you mean they're men? But listen, if you offered me a seven-course dinner at Buckingham Palace tomorrow, or the chance to go to Jackie Pullinger, I'd go to Jackie Pullinger for seven cups of tea, even if I got one, I'd be satisfied. To me, she'd become a heroine. It's one thing to have vision, it's another thing to obey, when the very gates of hell are locked against you. There's a little petite English lady, 20 years of age, has a wealthy family, could marry into society. They spoke to me to get a degree in the university, and suddenly she said, I got tired of going to church. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. And she told the pastor, I need this charisma. She told her dad, and he said no. Then the Lord said, you get on the boat and get off where the boat stops. So she got on the boat and it stopped 14,000 miles away from home in Hong Kong. She was 20 years of age, she's still there now, what, she's 44? She'd been there 24 years. But listen, this one I'll tell you. This is what John Wimber wrote. Talking about Jackie. She got the baptism of the Spirit, spoke in tongues. And then she says, I ask God to help, I ask the Spirit to help me intercede. She's not looking for power to show off. Show me how to travel. Show me how to pierce those terrible barriers of the devil. Show me how to make hell tremble. I'm a funny boy, sure I am, I'll tell you what. A friend of mine looked into hell and he said, I wake up at night, I can see the horror there. Do you know what I prayed this week? I prayed it publicly and privately, that this place was so blazed with the glory of God that whenever a demon in hell looks down he'll get nervous. Turn the tide on the devil. We've the biggest challenge in history. We're not going to do it by little meetings. We're going to do it by men full of faith of the Holy Ghost. Here is a man, he's a prophet. One of the most outstanding men in history. He says, cleanse me. I'm undone. He doesn't say I'm behind in my tithing. He doesn't say I'm not as I should be. He says, purge me. Did God hear his cry? Voice me, I'm undone. Here's the final thing. He didn't say, Lord, I think there's something wrong with me. He said, Lord, I have filthy lips and I live amongst people with filthy lips. Somebody told me, and I hope it's, I'll quote it because it's the same thing I believe. Somebody told me that recently, Paul Cain said this, I think one of the great pollutions in the church is through the lips. Gossiping lips. Criticizing lips. Dirty lips. Did God? We slander somebody and then say, Lord, bless me today and bless my family. With dirty lips? Preposterous. Then you have an altar there. The top of the altar is something like mesh. On the altar, there's a slain animal and from that animal drops of blood are dropping onto the live cold. The blood is symbolic of the cross and the fire is symbolic of the Holy Ghost. You put the blood and the fire together and the angel can't take hold of the thing. He gets a pair of tongs and he touches him on his head. Now he touches you and he's filthy. He says, Lord, this has touched thy lips. This land iniquity has taken away my sin. Purged. What did David cry? Terrified that God would take his spirit from him? You know, there's no fear of God with us. I turned up thinking about Moses today. We give people a second chance. Did Adam get a second chance? Did Moses get a second chance? God said, speak. And he said, speak. And he spoke the thing. It cost him 40 years. And yet, preacher, you've been walking in disobedience for the past five years. And you think it's all right. God doesn't mind. Listen, brother, you'll catch at the end of the road anyhow. You'd better do the will of God. Whatever it costs. I tell you what, today I cried and two or three days I've cried over the most neglected, forgotten people in the world. They live in America called the American Indians. Nobody goes to them. Even their own people don't want them. They're torn with witchcraft. I heard the other day a missionary saying, you come down where we live. You'll see demon power. You'll see people healed by demons. You'll see all kinds of awesome things done by demons. But why can't we castrate in the power of God? The devil's run the business too long. He's run the church too long. It's time you craved in your heart and said, Lord, I can't live any longer. As a man said this morning, Lord, I can't live like this. If you can't change my personality, if you can't indwell me, if you can't fill me with the Holy Ghost, I don't want to live. I'll say the same thing, old as I am. I've not seen the best yet. I've not seen the glory I want to see. I've not even seen the glory God wants to give. And as soon as you get angry and say, Lord, I can't live like this anymore, can you imagine the life goal from what the altar touched upon his lips? Do you wonder that after that, he can walk into the presence of God purified? He hasn't a single thing he's interested in. It's God. No, no, no. I used to have a little Bible case. It had God first. And a very famous man, I won't tell you his name, Len, you want to cross that out? I think it's wonderful. It gives me a point of contact. I get in a bus. Oh, God first. He said, it's wrong. I said, what do you mean it's wrong? He said, it's not God first, it's God only. Well, that's where we should be. God only. Again, see this man who'd been terrified with impurity. I'm unclean, I'm undone, I don't deserve to come. And the cherubim takes a life goal from off the altar. The cherubim had six wings. What do you do when the light's too bright? You put your glasses over and you screen the brightness. They didn't have glasses, so they filtered the glory of God through their wings. They didn't look on God and they put two wings over themselves. They didn't let God look at them. And so they cried in their misery. One morning this week, when I can get, I want to remind ourselves, Psalm 80 where David says, O thou that dwellest between the cherubim. Well, listen, I'll tell you before God. I'm tired of God living amongst the cherubim. I want to walk in on His hand. I want to come here even if I'm terrified when He comes. I'm sick of meetings. I've been in meetings all over the world for 60 years almost. I've never seen the glory I want to see and God wants to unveil it on this age which is the most crooked, perverse, rebellious generation in history. Sex is a joke. Uncleanness is a joke. Rebellion is a joke. How long does God put up with it? I'd say it isn't finished. I was a youth leader in a church. I'd more zeal than most people. They said, Oh, Rabian's going to do this, Rabian's going to do that. I rallied the young kids to pray Saturday night. I rallied them to pray at 7 o'clock Sunday morning. And one day I went to an altar and everybody said, and my preacher came in, What are you doing here? I said, Well, I've some uncleanness. He said, No, you're all right. You're the best guy in this church. Everybody knows you pray with zeal. Everybody knows you shout best in the open air and so forth. It didn't make a hill of beans if Gabriel said it to me. I knew inside. I had a defilement. And I said to the man, Listen, I want Romans 6, 7 in my life. He that is dead is freed from sin. I want to die. A precious girl prayed now for a meeting yesterday morning. Lord, do something in this meeting. We've been to meetings and made commitments and we fall back. Here's a girl bursting with tears and saying, Oh God, please do something in this conference in Anaheim where we'll never backslide again. We'll never lose our anointing. We'll never lose our vision. I'm saying the final thing here. One of the most dramatic prayers, I think, in the whole of God's Word. I'm up on the hill again. Jack, where's it prayed? Is it 64 where it says, Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens? I say 64. But here it is. This man who was nervous in the sight of God says, Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens. I'll tell you what. If we could rend them, we'd have rended them long ago. I preach at the annual conference of Full Gospel Business when 25 years ago at their annual conference in Denver, there was a big crowd. And I said, If you could buy the Holy Ghost, you'd have bought him long ago. You pull out your checks and want to govern him, but he won't play that game. God never took advice from me and he won't take it from you. He says, Read my word, read my revelation. Woe is me, I'm undone. A final thing. This precious brother at the front is a brilliant scholar in Hebrew and 16 Semitic languages. He invited me to go up to their place. My dear Paul, Martha and I went. We had five meetings. Only two of them were in buildings. The other were in houses. As we finished the Sunday night, people began to pray. And I remember the prayer of one blonde woman particularly. But then I looked up. There's a young Jew. I could just see his black beard with his hands in the air. I don't know whether he's a lawyer or what. A wonderful looking guy. Do you know what he was crying? Lord, show me how to buy ointment. Jesus says in the church today she's poor, wretched, naked, blind. No wonder she stumbles around. I've never forgotten the prayer of that man. Doesn't Jesus say, When I come in I counsel you to buy. You say you can't buy anything from God. We'll argue with God. You can buy. We buy by our obedience. Buy of me gold. Buy of me white raiment. The irony is that that was the chief export of that town. It exported the best cloth. It exported the greatest eyesore. And he says, Hey, you're selling it. You need it. You want to go to the mission field? No, you need the mission. You need the Holy Ghost friend tonight. If God comes in, your prayer life will never drag. We're going to meet at seven in the next room. Come. We're going to pray. I don't care if it's at six. I do six in the morning. But I want you to pray your long prayer before you come and empty all your heart out and say, Lord, this next week is the most vital in Anaheim history, in American history, and maybe in world history. I tell you, I'm tired of praying for little chips. I want something with glory. I want something so big no man will ever dare put his name on it. I'm sick of people trying to get power to boost their little cohorts. Forget it. Maybe I'm not smart. I think I'm not. But I'll tell you what, the little foretaste I've had of God, the little foretaste I have of fire, if he would come, he said, to give me a bigger burden, crush me more, give me anointing of the Spirit. You can have everything you like. Build the biggest church in America. Get the greatest donations. I don't care. I want to live to make the devil get afraid. I want to see, before we leave this place, people swept by the hundreds that say, I can't be like this anymore. I need the fire of God. Burn up my pride. Burn up my selfishness. Burn up my weakness. Burn up my indifference. But I tell you, in God's name, there's nothing else you'll do. There are hundreds of preachers tonight, and you know, at this moment, your church is blind because you're blind. It has no vision because you've no vision. It has no passion. You go to the press, they make a spot of difference. It's a crucial hour. What are we going to do? Keep the bridegroom waiting? Are we going to take off your dirty rags tonight and say, Lord, I'm unclean? Again, he doesn't say, Israel is unclean. He doesn't say, the priesthood is unclean. He says, I'm unclean. It's easy to say, the priesthood is not clean, and the deacon, it's me. I'm going to ask you now, I never get choruses, I won't stir you emotionally. In your will, will you will tonight to do the will of God, whatever it costs? Will you say, burn up my future, if need be? Burn up my anticipations? Burn up my lifestyle? I want God, the Holy Ghost, tonight, if I only live 12 more hours. I'm going to tell you men, you say, I need this tonight. So get up and walk right here now and say, God, I'm going to stay here until the fire falls. And then the women can kneel at the chairs. Are you going to meet God? I'm not going to sing. You either come now, or I'm going to quit. Those men who say, now, I'm going to meet God, I want God to consume every hindrance in my life. Please go to the next tape.