In this sermon, the speaker shares his experiences of witnessing supernatural manifestations during a revival. He describes a man who was initially skeptical but was dramatically impacted when he was overcome by the power of God. The speaker believes that these displays of supernatural power are a way for God to demonstrate His authority and shake people out of their religious routines. He emphasizes that true revival belongs to God and cannot be manufactured by human efforts.

They're trans just judged and they had to carry the person pick them up and carry them to the meeting for them to repent and get Delivered you'd be amazed you would be amazed at some of the things in the history of Revival what God said I mentioned the Southern Presbyterian Church people on their knees barking like dogs Picture some of the most sophisticated intellectual people I Mean there's one one Well, I can't even begin to describe one story. I heard it's just mind-boggling when it's this guy who was just uh, I Mean, I can't even describe how together and and how socially fine-tuned he was and everything when he finally It's filled with the spirit and chases his pastor down into a hiding place in the back of a kitchen You know and and and bouncing like a frog, you know speaks in tongues in front of I mean How can you even describe a scene like that? You say it's crazy listen, I'm just telling you these things happen If you experience real revival, you'll see a little of all of it. No one conjures it up No one makes it happen in fact with with every revival you get a lot of stumbling because the flesh counterfeits and the devil counterfeits and You got to know what's going on. The spirits moving all of a sudden someone shrieks and you rebuke them That's the devil you be quiet. Someone else shrieks. It's the flesh someone else shrieks. You say let it go. It's the spirit They're getting delivered. You have to have discernment. You have to know what's going on. Sometimes it gets a little intense Overwhelming and I haven't experienced true revival. We certainly experienced the beginning of what could have been a great revival For Long Island in the New York area, but was certainly an outpouring of the spirit even in the midst of that I remember just as things began to happen somehow in the back of my mind I'd heard about these things and read just as things began to happen at a Sunday night prayer meeting I remember just saying oh my this is getting heavy As this one woman lets out a shriek as she gets delivered and another tall Brother who's actually actually here tonight collapses like a yun tree boom on the ground. I said, oh my this is getting heavy Well, why does God do that? I? Believe he does these things then there's flesh just imitating. There's satanic counterfeits, but I believe God does these things why? Well, I'll give you four reasons One reason it's a display of his supernatural power All right. It's an awesome thing You're at a meeting and 5,000 people Crumbled to the ground like one That's an awesome thing. I remember one Korean fellow who was very very very skeptical about the things of the spirit and Fairly cold in his overall relationship with the Lord And he came to a meeting and I laid hands on him and he was like a dead man I mean, they just laid him out between a couple of chairs. He was like a dead man under the power of God I remember afterwards he said that changed his life. He experienced the reality of God God shook him something happened. There's a display of God's supernatural power Even if some of the stuff is strange or odd it puts you in a different realm Put you in a holy realm put you in a realm where you just kind of tread softly I mean something's happening something's going on when the spirits really moving there should be an atmosphere of the spirit You know when I can never understand meetings where you got you're ministering to people or people up at the altar praying You're laying hands on people and the power of God is supposedly falling And I don't know people looking at their watchers or this one's singing, you know a Secular song in their mind and just you know waiting to get out and this one's you know Tying their shoelaces and and reading a comic book in it. Wait a second. Are we in the presence of God? What I mean, are we focusing on God we worshiping him with this just some kind of sideshow performance I've seen people minister and they start everyone who wants to go home Go ahead and go home and they just start praying for people and everyone's talking and buzzing around and they're up front in France Like wait a second. I mean if the spirits really at work, let's have a little reverence. Let's join together as one man one body But when these signs start occurring when these supernatural things Man, you know, wait a second God, I mean you're on your way out. All of a sudden you start in the way something's going on here So one purpose is to display God's supernatural power and to make a lasting impression lasting impression And there are enough times where I've seen God move on people intensely powerfully and it's shaking away and they've never forgotten They can't forget it Like God came down put his hook in their jaw and picked him up out of the water and said remember me Yeah, I remember you. All right now go back down in the water You don't forget that What's another purpose of religious stumbling blocks? Well to destroy every last remnant of human religiosity and the flesh These things are just not pleasant. These things are just not acceptable. They just don't build you up in the natural You know when when I was in my cold period from about 72 to Excuse me from 82 to 87. I knew the numbers weren't computing their proper No, not from 82 to 87 87 From 77 to 82 Glory to God from 70 19 and 77 as they say to 1982 I Was much more at home in the flesh with my religious beliefs. I felt much more Relaxed in the presence of learned professors than when I was a Pentecostal praying in tongues at least an hour a day That stuff is just unacceptable It's unacceptable to the fleshly mind and to human pride When you get down on your knees and you groan and shake and tremble and prevail Lay there prostrate on your face for two hours. That doesn't exactly build up the intellectually proud Esteem that you could hold for yourself You know It's not the type of situation where you you get up from that and you see some professor and you want to talk to him About some high and lofty religious or theological subject. I mean you've been down in the pit. You've been down in the trenches It was much easier for me to go pursue my studies and do all these other things and leave out some of these You know put these other things back in the closet old Pentecostal Anti-intellectual stuff put that back in the closet when God grabbed hold of me and seized me though. I just had to say Lord, whatever. I Remember the night when this guy couldn't even drive his car That I referred to that night in November of 82 Here he can't even drive his car. And at this point he's laying on his face prostrate just before we we're gonna go home He's laying on his face prostrate. I'm kind of wondering how he's gonna manage to drive or do anything looking at him There's one guy. It's fallen laying on his back. Oh, no, not falling again when we pray for people I thought that wasn't God I proved to my satisfaction. It couldn't be God I gave all the intellectual reasons for now. He's falling the wife speaking in tongues sounds like a chicken I mean just going on. I mean just I don't know what a chicken sounds like but you know what? I mean just I mean just speaking in tongues chattering and chattering and the husband laying on his back speaking in tongues and the other guy laying on his face shaking and Then the other guy who was the old-time Pentecostal who was there in the group kind of doing like an Indian war dance. Oh Oh My god, I said, I thought I was dead to all this. I thought I'd this was all behind me I thought I didn't have to worry about any of this stuff. It's so humiliating I Said Lord, if that's real if it's you, all right, whatever. I don't care. I don't care And I don't care. I didn't and I don't But I mean man, there was some religiosity in me. There is some fleshly pride There ain't no fleshly pride left After you get through weeping and wailing on your face for two hours for dying Well, I mean, where's the fleshly pride you go to talk to somebody so I just want to share my face and you fall apart I mean, where's the pride it's demolished So these religious stumbling blocks they really go a long way and doing that I mean here you're you've prepared your whole sermon and you want to impress the people and the spirit just kind of gets hold of Your feet and you start boogieing You know, I don't mean dancing gracefully but just kind of boogieing and jumping it's like oh no I don't believe this unless you quench the spirit. You're gonna have to dance around that whole building Hey and One moment of time God can humble more pride and destroy you more human religious edifices Just with that one little religious stumbling block there then years and years and years of trying to work it out And wean yourself of it and all this other stuff. You know, I remember one time Guy was going door-to-door Selling his family encyclopedias. He was in from, California. They send you to another part of the country So you just work day and night you're away from your friends and everything and he was gonna make all this money He thought it was harder than he expected got over to my house I just come back from teaching. My wife was on her way out started talking to the guy and Found out that he had known the Lord as a teenager and or even very young teenager and backslid now He was maybe 18 19 20 years old Someone had led him to the Lord back to the Lord as he was knocking on doors and we began to talk I said man You need the power of God in your life. I said even filled with the spirit You know, no, we began to talk about it. So I opened up the word We sat down showed him the scriptures here just alone in the house Showed him the scriptures and said well, you're ready to receive a lot. I'm a little scared. But yeah, I'm ready Here laid hands. I remember the power God fell on him. He got laid out collapsed on the couch shaking trembling speaking in tongues I still remember as he tried to get up and collapse down again, and he couldn't even move the power God was there It's like well Whatever religious system he was involved in or whatever. He thought was the right way because I didn't know his background He'd never seen anything like that heard about a little bit never experienced it that whole thing Just got demolished a whole lot more quickly than if you tried to teach him instruct him and have a religious argument you know when I was getting cold I Had met this guy This is when I was still kind of remnant hot, you know The coals were still burning but there wasn't fresh fire And I was in college and I was talking to this guy and he was a militant Baptist And we would argue points and I was on the Pentecostal side. He was on the Baptist side wherever we differed That's where we differed and I really thought I could prove my point I didn't see him for a couple years and yeah, I mean he used to have super super short hair and be super super conservative I didn't see him for a couple years all of a sudden I ran into him at this point And I was really cold and I was in agreement with him He looked a little different. His hair is a little longer. I just looked a little bit more free And I couldn't wait to talk to him before I could talk to me said, you know We had these people and they were going to this church out on the island This church had a lot of good things, but a lot of problems also out along on I said they were going to this church And one after another was leaving the Baptist Church, and I'm not pro Pentecostal anti Baptist or the reverse I'm just saying this is the the historic occasion here And they were leaving the church and I got really concerned and I sat down with this one sister and told this tongue stuff was Wrong and all this other stuff and she said well Ralph Have you ever prayed about it now at this point? I was ready to tell him that all his old positions were right, but he beat me to the punch He was ready to tell me that I was right. All my old positions were right I so I said, you know, what happens? Well, you know, I talked to her I'm like, can you rebuke you and you set us straight and what happened? He said I just went home and I just said God If it's real I want it and just started speaking in tongues just like that They experience God tongues is probably the greatest contemporary religious stumbling block the last two three generations probably tongue But it destroys every last remnant of human religiosity in the flesh And then a third thing these religious stumbling blocks do they get us back to God's order? But first we must be violently shaken out of our order So religious stumbling blocks violently shake us out of our order and get us into God's order You say well God does everything decently in an order. Yeah according to his order According to his order the description of decently in an order in first Corinthians 14 includes tongues prophecy interpretation revelation All different people speaking you'd call that order and 99% of services. No That's because it's God's order not our order if I said you're right I want you to put all these chairs in order here And what you did is you lined them up against the wall you stacked them against the wall You had them in perfect order and then everyone came in to sit down. I said, what'd you do? You got to take them all down now so the people can sit Well, I can't get it any other way from your order Which is totally wrong to the right order without taking your order down first Got to take the chairs down and then set them up in rows the right way So basically we've got this thing I don't like when the spirit moves like this Who are we to dictate I prefer if the spirit would move more quietly or more subtly Well, whichever way you prefer he'll move He'll move the other way until you stop dictating to him how you want him to move The Bible says test the spirits with a small s not test the spirit with a capital s if it's him you back out of the way So these religious stumbling blocks just so violently shake us out of our order of doing things look, let's say you're worshiping the Lord and singing a hymn and Someone so turned on says all I brought I feel I have a testimony. Well not now At the end of the service will give you a moment. Well, that's not gonna shake the order. Okay? But when you get up to sing your hymn and The moment you begin to sing the words you break down Weeping and get on your face and start trembling and weeping before the Lord that will knock you out of your order pretty quickly You see so these things are violent shaking intense Contrary, I don't mean contrary to God. I don't mean contrary in terms of just Controversial, I mean contrary to the way people would do it. So the last purpose of religious stumbling blocks I said it's contrary to way people would do it. Well, it's obviously this Religious stumbling blocks remind us that revival belongs to God not to man Revival belongs to God not man When he moves in this way, you can't work it up. You can't orchestrate it You can't turn it on you can't turn it off You can't bring it up the fever pitch. You can't bring it down. You can't set up when you can't set up How why cuz it's God who does it? Over and over and over and over in Bartleman's description of what happened at Azusa Street and the subsequent movings of God in that, California area Over and over and over again. He shows how people try to control it continually quench the spirit In fact, he says this The New Testament Church begun by Brother Smale seemed to be losing the spirit of prayer as they increased their organization They had become ambitious for a church and organization again. It's not that organization is wrong. It's when you organize God out It seemed hard to them to not be like the other nations quote churches round about them and right here They began to fail as church work increased They lost sight of the real issue human organization and human program leave very little room for the free spirit of God It means much to be willing to be considered a failure while we seek to build up a purely spiritual kingdom God's kingdom does not come by observation It is very easy to choose second best their prayer life is needed much more than buildings or organizations These are often a substitute for the other souls are born into the kingdom only through prayer The New Testament Church seemed to be drifting toward intellectualism I became much burdened for it during one meeting. It was so painful after what we had seen I groaned aloud in prayer one of the elders rebuked me severely for this. How are the mighty fallen kept ringing in my ears? See this church that was called the New Testament Church was initially wide open to the things of the spirit But then in order to get this better and get this better and get this you had to turn this on turn this off Start this stop this control this let this in not let this in For the people's sake you see for the people's sake they can only handle this they can't you start to dictate It's no longer God's. It's no longer God's in the moment It's taken out of God's hands like we said it ceases to be revival so religious stumbling blocks Display God's supernatural overpowering and awesome power You know, it makes people realize God's pretty big How many times you ever been flattened by the spirit? I mean flattened One fellow who's a weightlifter told me that well, he was laying on his face Well, I met in New York. He was laying on his face and he said the Lord came Just basically I put his toe on his neck and said try and get up Larry And he said the guy tried with all his might and couldn't move and he said he God was just giving him a glimpse He said well God made the universe here But do we ever have a just a little glimpse? Enough to keep us flat on our faces maybe enough that we want to speak in our mouths are just silent Enough of a glimpse of the power of God that we just feel the rush and push of the spirit coming upon us Religious stumbling blocks display God's power. They destroy every last remnant of human religiosity in the flesh They get us back to God's order by violently shaking us out of our order and they remind us that revival belongs to God Not to man Father we pray each heart here We pray that when you come When you move When you arrive in a new and significant and powerful way be it corporately or individually for each of us here God we pray that we will be waiting and willing and ready and ready Ready to receive humbly with open hearts and open minds in Jesus name Amen