Leonard Ravenhill emphasizes the urgent need for the church to return to its roots of genuine faith and reliance on the Holy Spirit, warning against the complacency and permissiveness that have infiltrated modern Christianity. He asserts that God will raise up humble, anointed individuals—young men and women—who truly love Him, rather than relying on the learned elite. Ravenhill calls for a deep, sacrificial commitment to prayer and the pursuit of God's presence, lamenting the loss of spiritual fervor in the church. He warns that many are adjusting to a lukewarm faith, but God desires a powerful revival through those willing to seek Him wholeheartedly. The preacher passionately urges believers to recognize their spiritual bankruptcy and to prepare for a new outpouring of God's Spirit.

Our jails are so full and there's this permissiveness and so much sin and rottenness, they're going to put their hands up before too long and say, God, send us deliverance in some way and the church of the living God will come in then. And you know what God will do? He's going to anoint your sons and your daughters, not your bishops, no, I'm sorry, bishops. He's not coming for the guys that came out of, well, I nearly mentioned the name of a theological seminary there, but I won't, but he's not going to look for the learned, brilliant men. He's going to look for the little men who love God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength. And God is going to restore the years the canker worm, the palmer worm and the caterpillar has eaten. All those things that modernism and liberalism and every other reason has eaten. God is going to embarrass those people. And he's going to show us the church anointed again in the spirit of the living God. Oh, that day can't come too soon. The church is healthy when she has sight and sense and she's sound. When she has the anointing of the Holy Ghost, hell trembles. I think hell must have had a half theology when Paul died. Because again, I remember the demons said, Jesus we know and Paul we know. And we won't be seeing a Paul around for a long while. But I want to tell you that I believe in these last moments of this dispensation. God's going to raise up young men and young women, your sons and your daughters. So they must be young people, servants and handmaids. They must be working class people, not the elite, not the kings, not the bishops, not the men at the head of the hierarchy of different things. He's going to bypass them because in the days of his flesh, what did Jesus do? Did he go looking for princes? Did he go looking for the intellectuals? The Sanhedrin were mad because he never went and asked the members of the Sanhedrin to become disciples. He went to the fishermen of Galilee. He went to a taxpayer and he found those men. And they followed him and they left A-L-L all and followed him. And then they went to the upper room and because they had left all that they had, he gave them all he had. But we want to get everything from God at a cheap rate. I'd like the anointing. I'd like a broken heart to weep for the lost. I'd like to pray and preach in the Holy Ghost. But brother, it might cost you your golf average and you'd love your darling golf game, don't you? And you'd like to pray in the Holy Ghost, but oh, how long you'd like to go fishing. It's so relaxing. Well, I'll tell you something, if you really pray in the Holy Ghost, that's more relaxing than any sport you ever tried. And it will build you up more than anything you've ever tried. You just try it for a year. Just try it for a year, will you? Have one day in your life, preacher, when you're not available to your wife or anybody else, and you shut yourself in and you prepare for one whole day every week, you're not available to anybody. And if anybody dies, all right, you'll see them tomorrow anyhow. You're not available even to visit the sick. You see, our poor preachers have become beasts of burden. But preachers in the New Testament didn't visit the sick. The elders visited the sick. The elders that were anointed in the New Testament didn't get a job because they had two gas stations and owned a bit of poverty. They were made elders because they were filled with the Holy Ghost. Yes, sir, when we do God's work, God's way, we'll get God's power and God's blessing and God's anointing. But we want to do it our way and pull the string and expect him to come down. No, no, no, no, he doesn't do that. I think, again, if you got in the basement, you'd have heard poor Samson groaning. Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing dew of Jesus? I've lost the anointing. I've lost the power. We're going to see men in our generation that have never been on the earth. God's going to pull us, his spirit and all flesh. I think a dear brother here told me the other week, there's a man in western, well, western Texas. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to find the man I'd love to see. But he's probably the most anointed man in America. He has no degrees. That's an advantage. He hasn't been to Bible school, I think. That's a great advantage. Nobody's messed his mind up. And you know what he is? This anointed man, you know what he is? He's a sharecropper. God's going to raise some super holy men, men that don't greed for money, that don't care about popularity, that don't want to be listed with the great people. I send most invitations to preach at conventions and go around the world because people aren't ready. I felt a burden to deliver my soul on Psalm 51 to a handful of people. Why not? What do crowds mean? I've turned down three national, I've turned down three world conventions for next year. I've turned down three national video TV things across the nation. Why? Because folk don't want my message anyhow. I'm not going to talk to folk that don't want it. We're stuck to the ears. We're so self-righteous. We can't hear God. We're so satisfied. You preachers, I'm not a broken heart. Gabriel couldn't find a tear you shed for the loss that he tried. You've become a machine. You can recite your psalms. You can recite your sermons. You've done that so often. You can do it in your sleep. There's going to come another up the road. There's going to be a moving of God. You young men are my hope. I've had no wages. Of course I've had wages. We've got a bunch of men that could hardly pray. A few years ago, now they pray with tears. And I believe that's more precious to God than you giving a million dollars to missions. This man said to me today, this famous author, Brother Enid, I need to pray so I can pray with brokenness. I got a letter yesterday from a young man that we met in 79 in Fort Smith. He was a bus driver and God got hold of him. And he wrote such a letter this week. You think David Brennan or somebody wrote it. He said, I'd moved into a depth of prayer I didn't know existed. And just when I thought I got there, God showed me I'm water to the ankles. I need to get to the knees. I need to get to the loins. I need water to swim in. I heard a man say a daring thing this week. He said, Lord, I want to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. After strutting around and all this stuff, where do you turn? If the church is empty, where's the light? If the church is still, where is the voice? You see, God wants some people crazier than I am. But you see, there's no way of blessing without sacrifice. No way. It's basic to the Christian religion. Oh, cross that liftest up my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee. I lay in dust, lights, glory dead. When a person dies, they're not conscious. Maybe at that moment, they're passing into death. But Paul says you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. You see, God's looking for dead men, not able men, not clever men, not church organizers, church agonizers. What did Paul say? He said, you're dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. Like he said, there was a day when your father's needed water and the rock was smitten. And as I said last night, the great need of this hour, that I've got to send this morning, all ye that were in a trial, like so never in my life. And he was set out. First it is some years ago by putting a frog in a dishpan of boiling water and he jumped out. And then they put a frog in a dishpan of cold water and they turned the jet at the bottom and then they turned it up one degree, two degrees. And you know what that frog did? He stayed in there till they cooked him to death. When they put him in the boiling water, he got out because he said, I can't live here. But when they, by degrees, they change the thing and he adjusted and he adjusted and he adjusted and they still killed him anyhow. And you know, we've got some things in our churches, if not in our lives, that a few years ago we would never would have had. And old Satan didn't pour the boiling water on. He put this little thing and then that little thing and that little thing. And before very long the church has become so carnal. The glory of the Lord doesn't fill the temple. When did you last tiptoe out of your particular tabernacle saying, surely God is in this place? I say again, with all the power of my being, I do not believe that modern Christians go to church to meet God. They go to church to hear a sermon about God. They don't expect deity to invade the place. God's going to bypass organized religion and systems before very long. I believe that many denominations are breathing their last right now. They're struggling to try and plug the hole up and stick the hole up here and stop something out. And the world says, but you've got nothing real and vital and living and powerful. I'm not going to study the ark. I'm convinced God's going to do a new work. I've talked the last two or three days to the brother I love very dearly. And these are the crossroads in his life. And I know others who are men that you think are at the top of the tree. You think they should be satisfied with what they've got. And they're not. They're suddenly realizing there's a new dimension that God wants to bring to our generation. A new revelation, a new unfolding of the word of God. We said at the beginning of the meeting, it's good to be in a meeting like that. It sure isn't. It's bad too. You know why? Because the Holy Ghost may not come back to you for the next six months or six years or the rest of your life. He doesn't have to. He faces up with you with your bankruptcy tonight. That some of you preachers are preaching a theology and you're sheltering behind the denomination. You're scared stiff to preach the revelation God has given because again, it would mean you hit the high road. But you know what I find? I find some of the holiest, saintliest, anointed men in America today are men that have been kicked out of their denomination. It's the kind of day we're living in and we better face it. God's going to do a new thing in this generation. He sure is.