This sermon emphasizes the importance of persistent prayer and wrestling with God in prayer, drawing inspiration from the stories of Jacob wrestling with the angel and Moses interceding for the people of Israel. It challenges listeners to have a deep burden for their generation, to be willing to sacrifice and pray fervently for revival and transformation in their communities.

Genesis, the book of Genesis, if you don't know where that is, it's the opposite end to Revelation, Genesis chapter 32, Genesis 32, I'm reading from verse 1, And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's host. And he called the name of that place Manahein. Actually, that word Mahanein means two hosts, because there was one host before him and a host behind him. And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, unto the land of Seir in the country of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord Esau. Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now. I have oxen, asses, flocks, men's servants, women's servants. I have sent to tell my lord that he may find grace in thy sight. And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother Esau, and he cometh to meet thee with four hundred men. How wonderful! Well, then the next verse tells you what happened. Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. Well, wouldn't you be if four hundred men were coming after you, all determined to destroy you? Then was Jacob greatly afraid and distressed. And he divided the people that was with him, and the flocks and the herds, camels in two bands, and said, If Esau come with one company and smite it, then the other company which are left shall be saved. And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, the Lord which said unto me, Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. Now he changed his tune, I am not worthy to be the least of all thy servants. Verse eleven, Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear lest he will fear, lest he will come and smite me and the mother with the children. Well, there's a background for you. Verse nineteen, So he commanded the second, oh no, I'm sorry, I must go back. Verse sixteen, he delivered them into the hand of his servants, every drove by themselves, that is, every group of cattle, and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space between, betwixt drove and drove. You see, he didn't want the cattle mixing up, he didn't want them under one big line, he wanted them in short sections. A section of sheep, another section of sheep, a section of some other cattle, and so forth. He commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau, my brother, meeteth thee, and asketh thee, Whose art thou, and where goest thou, and whose are these before thee? Then thou shalt say, They are thy servant Jacob's. It is a present sent unto him. You see how cautious he is? Skip to verse nineteen, And so he commanded the second section, and then the third section, and all that followed in the droves, saying, This manner shall ye speak unto Esau. And say, Moreover, behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me. You see, he's still a good Jew, he doesn't want to give too much away. If he can appease his brother with one section of sheep, he's not giving the next lot. But if he presses, give them. If he takes the cattle, and he's not satisfied, well give him the second one, but don't let him come near me. And he's kind of buying time to get where he wants to go. Verse twenty, He said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see his face, and peradventure he will accept me. So went the present over before him, and himself lodged that night, notice it's night, in the country. I remember when I was young and enthusiastic, an assistant pastor to a very brilliant pastor, in fact the most brilliant preacher I ever heard, Dr. Fawcett. We took the whole church over from England to the Isle of Man, that's an island between England and Ireland. It's a self-governing island, it has a wonderful creature there, only found there in the whole world. It has a beautiful cat, and every cat in that island never has a tail. They're born without tails, and that's not a tail, it's true. And we pitched our big tent in one field, and the women were lodged in that, and men in the other field, and a central tent for eating. One night I decided to stay up and spend the night in prayer, so I went into a field about, I guess, nine o'clock. It had been a warm night for England, roasting hot, seventy-two. And I thought, this is a lovely night, so I got down in the grass, I lay prostrate in the grass, which is fine for a couple of hours. But about one and two o'clock the rabbits came round me to see what was lying in the field, this strange creature. I'd never forgotten that night. It was beautiful going in, but it got intensely dark, it got intensely cold, it got intensely lonely. Now here is this man in the same situation. Verse twenty-one, So went the present over before him, and himself lodged that night in the company. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the four jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone. Notice, did you, in verse seven we read, Jacob was greatly afraid. And he divided the people. How many people? I don't know. Servants, women servants, wives, everything else. But verse twenty-four says, Jacob was left alone. You know that's one thing God's trying to get with most of us? Trying to get us alone. We go to so many meetings, we have so many friends, and God all the time is trying to separate us. He has to separate this man from his wealth, from his home, from his possession, from his position, he's alone. And it's a dark, dark night. Well if I ask you what this story is about, you'll say, oh we know this brother Amiel over and over again. It's Jacob wrestling with an angel. No it isn't, it's an angel wrestling with Jacob. Jacob didn't go looking for the angel, the angel came looking for Jacob. Let me read it to you. Verse twenty-four, Jacob was left alone and there wrestled a man with him. Later he wrestles with the man, but first of all it was the man that wrestled with him. And struggled with him all night, in the cold night, lonely. Maybe hearing the roar of beasts, wild beasts. Darkness, isolation, hunger, starvation, if you like. Everything's been away from him and he's alone. I remember flying over the Rockies once and the pilot of the plane said, if you look to the right, you'll see an eagle flying. There was one eagle. They seldom fly in crowds, breeding time yes, but otherwise alone. I remember crossing the Atlantic and the buzzer went on the ship, go to starboard and you'll see a beautiful whale just goes, and there was a great whale and it was tossing his water in the air. And most often the whale, it goes alone. Great birds fly alone. The lion goes hunting alone. The devil as a roaring lion goes about. When does he roar? Well if the lion roared, everything would run away from it. He roars when he gets his foot on something and he's possessed it and he's torn it and he's tasted the blood. Great lions hunt alone, great birds fly alone, great fishes swim alone, great people walk alone. Unless he didn't say amen, but anyhow it's still there. Jacob was left alone and there wrestled with him a man. Why didn't Jacob go home? But the man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. Why didn't he answer his prayer immediately? He's going to answer him, he's going to deliver him, why not do it now? Because it's a test of character to be alone. Because I've told you before, God is not capricious, he doesn't play tricks. You see, if I'd spent more time alone with God instead of traveling and thinking I was changing the world and whatnot, I'd be a very different man. Verse 25, when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh. Now in the first part of this story, the angel lays hold of Jacob and Jacob tries to get away. In the second part of the story, the angel tries to get away, which I'm sure is the anointed, the angel of the covenant. I've got to quote Wesley, you'd think I'm dying or something. I may be wrong in this, I think I'm right. Oh, there's somebody else's language here. If you go in St. Paul's Cathedral, I think it is, Wesley and Strabi, there's what looks like a big coin on the wall and there's a double profile, Charles Wesley and John Wesley. Somebody said the most amazing brothers that ever worked in the church of Jesus Christ. Well, John made the theology and his brother set it to music. We're going to learn his grade, hey man, can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? We're going to put that in the front page of the book. Well, I think this story, this story that I'm reading to you a bit by bit, I want to put it this way, with a masterly economy of words, Charles Wesley puts that whole story together in verse. It begins like this, come all thou traveler unknown, and still I hold, but cannot see, my company, it sent them, my company before is gone, and I am left alone with thee. With thee all night I mean to stay, and wrestle till the break of day. Then he's holding on to the man, he says, in vain thou strugglest to get free, I never will unloose my hold, art thou the man that died for me, the secret of thy love unfold. Wrestling I will not let thee go, till I thy name and nature know. He says, yield to me now, for I am weak. You see, our idea is we have to be strong. The reason you, God can't use you, you're too strong intellectually. You should be strong spiritually, sure enough, but it's the lame that take the prey, so those who have no might increases strength. We don't quote Isaiah 40 enough. What does it say? They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and walk be weary, and walk and not faint. And it goes on to say again that strength comes to the weak. One of the greatest mission societies ever was founded by a man called Hudson Taylor. I pastored a church many years after he'd been in that town. There's no memorial there, except in town, there's a cooperative store and they have one old room with an old fireplace and a few pots and pans. That young man went from Barnsley to China and established the China Inland Mission. You see, if you have, say that's China, everybody came in by sea and they stopped at all the seaside towns. He went right inland there to the most difficult part and established the China Inland Mission. Somebody asked him one day, well you've been to China already? Yes, I've come there. I hear you're going back again? Yes. What's your resources? How much money do you have? He said I have exactly a hundred dollars in the bank. You're going to evangelize China with a hundred dollars? He said yes. Is that all? He said yes, and all the promises of God. And from that day to this, that society has never taken an offering at the door, an offering from anybody. But why did you do it? I mean there's a group of intellectuals there, Christian intellectuals, students in Cambridge University, Oxford University, some very brilliant ones in Glasgow University. Why did God take you? He said he'd been looking for years to find the weakest man he could find and he found me. And immediately he found me, he said I became a giant in faith and expectation. I got rooted in the word of God and I've drawn life on him in every difficult circumstance. He'd been there a number of years, he got a house, he had meetings in the house, his wife died. Unexpectedly. And he's 10,000 miles away from home. He put all the servants out of the house and asked the friends to go. They had those big old-fashioned English doors, they have keyholes, you can nearly get through them, never mind look through them. And the servants said we watch him, watch him, watch him, you watch, and they watched in turns. He's going to break down. He's 10,000 miles away from home. There had already been division in his camp, there had been criticism at home, he was going through a time of hell as it were, everything's falling down about him, when he needs it most his wife dies. Well you'll see him, he'll be angry, he'll pray, he'll weep. Instead of that he walked up and down quietly up and down that room and just waved to the casket where his wife's remains were, singing, Jesus I am resting, resting in the joy of what thou art. I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart. Thou hast bid me gaze upon thee, and thy beauty fills my soul, for by thy transforming power thou hast made me whole. Jesus I am resting, not weeping, not fretting, not complaining, resting. There remaineth a rest for the people of God. I'm unto me, the second was follow me, the third was abide in me. Jesus says come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Then you cross a bridge, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart and ye shall find rest. But they've got rest, he told them they rest. They rest from anxiety about sin, anxiety about death, anxiety about judgment, but they still don't have the inward rest. There's too much inward strife. There remaineth a rest, Hebrew says, for the people of God. Well he says, yield to me now for I am weak, but confident in self despair. Speak to my heart in blessing speak, be conquered by my instant prayer, speak or thou never hence shalt move and tell me if thy name is love. My prayer hath power with God, the grace unspeakable I now receive. Through faith I see thee face to face, I see thee face to face and live. In vain I have not wept and strove, thy nature and thy name is love. What does God do to him? He struggles all night. Jacob wants to get free. Hour after hour they wrestle, they wrestle, they wrestle. And God doesn't deliver him. Why? Because he's still confident he can do it himself. He's still confident he can beat this person whoever he is. Well who do you think he thought it was? He's at the other side of the brook Jabbok. There's only one man in the world he fears and that's his brother who said he would destroy him. And as Jacob goes around the rock there, somebody jumps on him. But who do you think he thought it was? I'm sure he thought it was his brother. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die fighting. And he struggles and he fights and he wrestles. You know, so often when we get into circumstances where God is trying to get us down, pin us to the ground and show us we have nothing, we fight and we struggle and we pray and we send for requests for prayer. We undo what God's trying to do in our lives. People ask me sometimes, will you pray for us? No, I won't pray for you. Why? You're asking me to pray God will take off you what God wanted to put on you? You don't become a saint by reading books. You don't become strong by reading books. They may help you to some degree. So there he is. He's trying to get away and all the angel of God does, which is a son of God I'm sure, or the angel of the covenant. And the more he struggles and wriggles, the tighter the grip on him. And there he is, he's locked up in the arms of this person. What happens? Jacob was left alone and wrestled with the man until the breaking of the day. What weary hours it must have been. Do you think it was? Do you think it was the most exciting thing ever happened to him? He couldn't explain it, but he's experiencing it. There are things that you can never explain that you haven't experienced. And yet this person, as I say the angel of the covenant is wrestling with him. Verse 25 says, when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh. Why? Because that was Jacob's last resort. When you're wrestling, a man that wrestles, he needs strong thighs. And this man is pretty strong. And the last thing that has to go is his self-sufficiency, his strength. He has to get to the place where he says, God, I've got nothing. I've done some wrestling before, I usually win, but here I am, I'm beaten up. And God puts his finger on the spot where he was strongest. So be careful how you pray, because God may come on your life like that. God doesn't want just your weakness, he will transform it. But he takes our strength. Now the tide is turned. Instead of Jacob trying to get away from the one who's wrestling, the one who was wrestling with him tried to get away, and he says, I will not let thee go. Contented now upon my thigh, he's lame. You see that the reason we don't pray is that it demands so much on the flesh, even this flesh. You can't pray if you have a fleshly nature. You sabotage your own praying. But it's hard on the flesh. Do you think that man Jacob ever forgot the place? He could come up a mountain and say, it was just behind that rock there, it was there where I met God. It was there where I went up in strength, and he weakened me. It was there where I went up weak, and he strengthened me. He took away my last resort, he took my strength from me. You say, we say that this man Jacob is trying to get a blessing. No, God's trying to get something out of him. I remember as a youngster once I saw a telescope, I picked it up and I looked through the wrong end. I couldn't believe why people were excited being looking through it. I picked it up and here it's, the object is away there, and it's about this size. Then suddenly I turned it around and looked the other way, made all the difference. If you see this story only as Jacob trying to get a blessing, it's more than that. This holy one is trying to get him right to the last resource and take his strength until he's nothing at all to lean on. He's left his wife, he's left his children, he's left his servants, he's left his possessions, he's left his cattle, but God hasn't got him alone yet. Then he gets alone. And where does he get you alone? In the darkness. Isn't that something? You tell me what a man does in his spare time, I'll tell you what kind of a man he is. He hangs on, and as I said the other night, if you hang on to God, you don't need to hang on to anybody else. You'll have friends and so forth, but in the deepest sense of the word, you hang on to God for your life, for your joy, for your peace, because he is all I need, we sing. Can you imagine somebody saying, I saw Jacob the other day, you know, he drags one leg. Oh, I saw him a couple of years ago, he was like that. It's not getting any better. No, it isn't. You see, there's part of a beast that the Jews to this day won't eat because of this fact. Jacob, remember out of him there's going to come a marvelous race of people. But God gets him to the extreme where he has nothing. He's no home, he's no wife, he's no children, he's no possessions. And the last thing he has, God said I'll take that as well. But look at the reward that he had. The angel, verse 26, says, let me go for the daybreak, and he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me. Sure he's after a blessing. And the angel said, thy name shall be called no more Jacob but Israel because you're a prince. You came up here with possessions, you came up with personality, you came up with power, but it's all gone. Isn't that nice to have a title like that, a prince with God? But you know what? Your friends may flatter you. But I'll tell you what, God never flatters anybody. He flattens you but doesn't flatter us. You say, well why doesn't he flatter us? Because it says in the, let me see, 41st of Isaiah, fear not thou worm Jacob. How do you like that? I saw my neighbor, he's Jacob tonight. I said, I got a new name for you. I said, you're a worm. He said, well he said, that's what the Bible says. In Isaiah 40 it says, fear not thou worm Jacob. So what? You want to see some more of my artistry? Here it is. You won't guess what that is. Well it's a mountain. And here's a little thing, a dirty little worm. And here's a mountain. Here's an elephant. Or you can tell it by its trunk, but anyhow. Here's an elephant. This little thing can go in a mountain, right through that mountain and sit on the other side. No other creature in creation can do that. And it says in Isaiah 51, fear not thou worm Jacob. Thou shalt thresh the mountains. It doesn't make a good context, does it? The worm goes in at one side, then what happens? The air blows through and that solid stuff becomes, excuse me, becomes dust and blows away. But the only creature that can go through a mountain. I used to pick worms up when I was a boy and put them in my sister's hand. I put them in her bed once and sure got into trouble. But you know, after that, when she got exasperated and angry with me, she said, you worm. That used to make me so mad. She called me a butterfly, a bit pretty. A worm? A worm has no eyes. I've never found eyes on a worm. I've never found legs on a worm. It has no hands. I can't find its brain. It's a picture of absolute nothingness. And yet God says that creature can go through a mountain. And you're facing mountains of opposition, become a worm. Discard all your ability, throw away all your personality, so to speak. Plead your weakness because he turns it into strength. Thou shalt be called no more Jacob as a prince thou hast power with God. It doesn't heal him. And he doesn't pray for healing. The brand of God is to take men and show them in their weakness and deficiency how he can take them. I remember when Nicky Cruz came to God. We were working in Teen Challenge at that time in New York. He could hardly put two English words together. Didn't do too good now, but it was worse then. Oh, how contemptuous he was at first of Christianity. And yet how marvellously God changed him and others that I think were far beyond him. I remember a man coming in. He was about six feet high. And I said, what do you want? He said, this is my wife. I said, she is? Well, no, no, no, no, no. She's not my wife. We've lived together for three years. Boy, her hair, you should have seen it. I'm sure she'd done it with Mobil oil. That had been through the engine once. Streaky, she smelled. Woof. Get my wife off drugs. Thank you for the order. We sent her in a room where about 40 women were praying. She came out of that totally liberated, transformed. Next day, when I got to that room, he said, uh, my wife, Mary, uh, she's different. Will she stay different? I said, she will if God's made her different. Can I go in that room? Yes, he went in. They had a system of robbing. They had a plan for pawn shops in, in New York. They marked them out, you know, they say there's West 44th street that runs through some other place. They had all these pawn shops marked and they raided them systematically. And she watched on the street and she had a sign to give him. He got in the back. They robbed and robbed and robbed and robbed. He went in that room and he got marvelously saved. He was illiterate. Dear old Dave used to dress them up, get them nice soaps and get the teeth fixed and the haircut and all the rest. That guy was illiterate. He went to a small, yes, Pentecostal Bible school on the East Coast for an extracurricular activity. He studied Greek. At the end of the first semester, when this Greek expositor was speaking, he'd say, uh, you know, gentlemen, there's a word, a Greek word for flesh is sarx. And he says, yes sir, and there's another one called soma, sarx and soma, and they're interchanged. And he kept pulling the Greek scholar up. So at the end of the, end of the semester, they asked the guy to leave. He's now a very awesome man. He's a marvelous man of God. We had another man there from Yale University, no Harvard. And recently I told him, I said, what about, what was his name, James. He said, I went to a conference to speak and James spoke before me. I didn't speak after him. Here's a man from Harvard, has to follow a guy that's been in the gutter. He'd lived with women, he'd drunk, he'd fought, he'd been in murders, been in everything, and yet God gets hold of him. You see, he's still lame in some ways, he bears scars, but he, to me, he's a prince with God. You can have your superstars on TV, I've not much respect for them, never mind anything else. As a prince, thou hast listened two things, power with God, and you've prevailed. You know, I notice one thing missing out of this time of prayer. It doesn't say that he wept, does it? Yes, it does. When you say it doesn't be my version, well, you've got to read the King James. But he won't find it in the story, you'll find it in Hosea, of all the places, a little prophecy of Hosea. Chapter 12, and verse 2 says, The Lord also had controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways. Jacob, this same Jacob, according to his doings will he recompense him. He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God. Yea, he had power over the angel, the angel, the angel of the covenant. He had power over the angel of God, and he wept. You can't have travail without tears. You can't have travel without sweat. Let me give you the last verse from Mr. Wesley here, a minute. He says, Lame as I am, I take the prey, hell, earth, and sin with ease, or come. I leap for joy, pursue my way, and as abounding hearts fly home, through all eternity to prove thy nature and thy name is love. Beautiful. You know, I hear people say to me, oh, you get Ravenhill and some of those old cronies there. You know, we don't have to lay hold of God now, we don't have to pray like this. I was telling a lady this week, a few years ago I went to a big conference, I never got back. They asked me to preach, and I preached on the judgment seat for three hours and 15 minutes, and I didn't know it was that time. They said they had those big reels, you remember the old reels they had? We filled two or three of those, so what, you got your money's worth. You know what, the altars were crowded, and a man came and he said, you know, the altars were still filled at two o'clock this morning. People didn't used to go and kiss the ground with their knees and get up when they'd said a little slobbering prayer to the Lord. I'm sorry for my sins, I'd like to be better, my prayer life is weak. They stayed at the altar, and what they called, they prayed through, they prayed till they got assurance. And once they got up, all the demons in hell couldn't shift them, there's no backsliding. And they didn't know how many churches you go to, they believe in the eternal security, but they get saved. Every revival they have now, three a year, they get saved three times over in their eternal security. So they must be pretty insecure in their security. I'm just looking now at Isaiah 64, 7, isn't it there? Isaiah 64 and verse 7, what does it say? There is none that calleth on upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee. I don't care how many baptisms of the Holy Ghost you have, I don't care how many gifts you have. There are times you have to stir yourself up. Paul says to Timothy, stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the laying up of my hands. We go to sleep so easily, we get satisfied so easily. You should keep constantly stirring yourself up. How do you do it? You can do it by literature. Every time I see precious, I forget his name now, Spencer there, I've got his list, I read it today about the Indians all over America. The percentage, some of the tribes, 95% alcoholic, some 80%, some 70%. And the stuffy folk all sit in churches all day Sunday, then stretch their hand out to the people that own the country. There are four times as many suicides amongst the Indians, isn't it, as there are amongst white people. And four times as many, what's the other? Mortality rate is four times that of the whites. And alcoholics, four times the rate. Suicide, four times the rate. Who bothers about them? I won't put you on the spot, I'm not afraid to do it, I like to do that. Dear Lord, if I can embarrass you, what are you going to do at the judgment seat with a billion eyes looking on you? When God looks on your record for today and says you never thought of the Indians, you haven't thought of the Indians for a year. They're full of superstition, they have witch doctors, they have witchcraft, not in Africa but here in America. But somehow it's rather exciting to get in a canoe and paddle up the Amazon to the Indians there. And there are lots of them there, there may be a million. You go up the Amazon and turn off to the Orinoco River and turn off to another river. And Mishra did that and he said, I thought, well this is wonderful, I'm a pioneer. Nobody's ever been up here before, no white man. He went round a bend, there was a sign and hanging on a tree, Standard Oil. Standard Oil had got there before the Mishra had got there. The Mormon Society has more Mishra's than all the other Mishra societies put together. I read a statistic today that there are 51 million people in the world full of the Holy Ghost with a Pentecost lecture. I don't believe it for a minute, not 10% of them. 75 million Americans filled with the Holy Ghost and with some stinking hell holes. They're preaching faith and coveting this and at the end there's a woman selling her body in the back street, kids are snuffing junk and drinking. People are all about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The biggest thing the church needs now is a baptism of honesty. Why don't we admit our bankruptcy, our powerlessness? Okay, Jacob didn't give up, he held on to the end. If he hadn't have done that, what would he have missed? Again, isn't it better to be crippled and leave that place a spiritual giant than go on in the crazy way we're living now? God says, none stirreth up himself to lay hold of God. The last scripture, Exodus 32 and 10, it's almost a terrifying chapter. I'll go back please, a little in there. The beginning of chapter 32, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him up, make us gods which should go before us. Verse 4, he received them at their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool, and with a graving tool he did it. And then later he lies to God and said, I put their gold together and a calf jumped out. That's a tall story, isn't it? Bigger than any of Aesop's stories. When Aaron saw it, verse 5, he built an altar before it and made a proclamation and said, tomorrow is a feast to the Lord and the dancing round idols. And the dancing round naked, verse 19 says, it came to pass as soon as he came nigh to the camp, he saw the calf and dancing, Moses anger waxed hot. I'll go back to verse 7, the Lord said unto Moses, get down. For the people which thou brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. What would he say of our nation tonight? A precious woman wrote me a letter this week, I've known her a number of years. Her husband's a genius at golf, they've tried to press him to become a professional, he won't. I preached one night in Baton Rouge on no man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. He cleared out all his expensive golfing gear and he started collecting books, now he's got about twice or three times as many as I have, some very choice books. And she said in a letter this week, she said, well, Brother Len and Martha, the Lord's really working on me. I can hardly sleep after four o'clock, I'm up every morning between four and five. And I have to have long periods in which I can't utter a word, all I can do is sob and grieve over a nation that's so rotten and a church that's so sterile. Pretty little businesswoman whose husband's well off, she has a family and she says, I can't sleep and when I get up I can't pray, I just grieve, I just mourn, I just weep. Well notice, if you're after a pure heart, read what it says there in the fifth, is it sixth, of Matthew. It says first of all, blessed are they that mourn. And then after that a pure heart, but you can't have a purity without mourning, without grief, without brokenness. To realize you being crucifying the Son of God afresh. The Lord said, go down for thy people which thou brought out of the land of Egypt, they have corrupted themselves, they've turned aside out of the way, they made a molten calf and worshipped it. Verse nine, the Lord said unto Moses, I've seen this people, behold, it is a stiff-necked people, now therefore let me alone. Verse ten, now therefore let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them. Skip over to verse 19. He came to pass as soon as he came unto the camp and he saw the calf and the dancing, that Moses' anger waxed hot. You see, if you get into the presence of God, when God's in a mood of anger, you'll get angry. There's an overflow out of God. That's why I bypass a lot of this junk, if you pardon me, and if you want I'll still say it, junk theology. But the only sign of being filled with the Holy Ghost is you speak in tongues, nothing. It's a genuine gift, I don't believe many have it. How often do you get holy anger? How often do you go down past a tavern and you see them brawling and shouting and carrying on? You pass a newsstand and half the girls on the covers there are naked. The Lord said unto Moses, I've seen this people. God says, look, America, I've seen you, I know every hell hole you have, I know every broken life, I know every broken home and every mind that's broken with drugs, every life that's broken with uncleanness, I know every diseased man with VD and AIDS and all the rest of it, I know it all. You've corrupted your generation, you've out sinned Sodom, you've out sinned Gomorrah, and we're a stiff-necked people. Sometimes I'm almost afraid to preach to people, you've got so much light, God help you at the judgment now, why should I give you more condemnation? You'll have more to answer for after this meeting tonight than you had when he came in at that door, otherwise it's not preaching. We want to evade it. The Lord said unto Moses, I've seen this people, and behold, it's a stiff-necked people, now therefore let me alone, let my wrath wax hot against them, and I will consume them. Well, this man loves the people. He remembered when they were whipped, when the skin was burning off their backs in the pits where they were making stones in Egypt, and they were slaves, and they'd nothing at all, and he's seen them come out of that, they're moving up to a land of promise, though they get stuck on the way of course, but he loves the people, therefore let me alone. It's a wonderful thing, listen, when somebody said to Billy Graham once, why did God choose you? I don't know, he said. You know, it's a wonderful thing when God reaches down from earth and gets hold of the man. There's only one thing more wonderful to me, that's when a man on earth gets hold of God. This is paraphrased in the Old Methodist Hymn book. Verse 10 now, therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, that I may consume them or destroy them. The Old Methodist Hymn book says this, let Moses in the spirit groan, and God cries out, let me alone. This is not Moses crying because God has a grip on him, it's God crying because Moses has a grip on him. Does God ever say that to you and me? Ask your preacher, he'll laugh at you, say that's some silly stuff, some sensational preacher. No, it's God's word. I tried to write a book Revival of God's where I didn't do a good job of it, but it's the only way it will come. God has ordained it, let my anger wax hotter and hotter and hotter. Now we get this prayer in verse 12, wherefore should the Egyptians speak and say, for mischief did he bring them out. They knew that they'd gone of course, and he slew them in the mountains. Why did he bring them out? To consume them from the face of the earth, turn from by a fierce wrath, and repent of the evil. His prayers continued in the same chapter, verse 31. And Moses returned unto the Lord and said, O this people have sinned a great sin. Do you think there's any preacher going to his pulpit Sunday, stand up before his well-dressed congregation with his arms up, sobbing and saying, God this people have sinned a great sin. I've enough sin in my auditorium to damn the whole of America, but we sin and repent, and sin and repent, and sin and repent, and we mock the blood, and we mock the resurrection, and we mock the Holy Ghost. I'm sick to death of people making cheap invitations, come up for this, are you afraid of the future, are you afraid of, forget it. The altar is for two things only that I know of in the Bible, one is for sacrifice, the other is for death, if not keep it away. I won't beg you to come to an altar. You never ask people to come to an altar in revival, in evangelism yes, in revival no. When you have time, go home and read the first chapter in Luke, and it says while Luke was preaching, remember his father was filled with the Holy Ghost, his mother was filled with the Holy Ghost, he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb, so he couldn't have spoken in tongues that day could he? The day he came out of his mother's womb filled with the Holy Ghost, and his mother filled with the Holy Ghost, his father and he was filled with the Holy Ghost. I don't believe a man filled with the Holy Ghost ever begs for money. I don't believe a man filled with the Holy Ghost ever wants the favor of the people. John preached, what happened? The republicans cried out, what shall we do? The people cried out, what shall we do? The Romans were there, Kipling was saying his marvelous recessional, they're the lesser breeds outside of the law, and they had breastplates on and plumes in their helmets, but the words of John went through those breastplates like a knife going through butter, and they cried out, the heathen from a foreign country didn't know a thing about the eternal God, and they saw a man blazing with holy indignation and anger, and they said, what shall we do? I turned down more invitations to go to conferences on revival than you'd believe, because in the first place nobody that's talking about it knows about it. I don't believe there are 10 people in America that have been to a revival ever. There's one dear old lady in the, what's her name, Arthur Indy, Bertha Smith, 90, about seven years of age, went through the Shang Tung revival, when the lights in the sanctuary didn't go out for weeks, when people didn't sin in the streets, when she says one man got on his donkey, he wasn't going to go to the church in town, so he went round to get out of a gate, they have cities with gates, and when he got there, the donkey got stiff-legged, and he wouldn't shift, so he beat it and it wouldn't shift, so he said, well I'll go through the other gate, so he went right through town, and when he got to the place where the revival was, the donkey wouldn't shift, it had no sense in here, yeah, and it wouldn't shift anywhere till he got off and went and heard what God was saying. Oh our paper, paper, paper evangelism. I don't agree with all Karl Barth said, or Barth if you want to call him that, but not long before he did he said, I'm looking for a substantial theology, I'm looking for a massive theology, I'm looking for a massive evangelism, I'm looking for a manifestation, God in heaven. When he last stepped out of the sanctuary speechless, you hardly get out of the door, they're talking football or other junk, but it changes the vocabulary of people, once the Holy Ghost touches them, if he doesn't, he wouldn't even touch them, they're just speaking in tongues, which is beautiful when God gives it, but their tongue is a different tongue, it's a kind tongue, it's an uncritical tongue, it's a loving tongue, it's a concerned tongue. Okay, chapter 32 still, and Moses returned unto the Lord, and said, all this people have sinned a great sin, they've made gods of gold, and now if thou wilt forgive their sin, and then he runs out of vocabulary, that's the only thing that ever happened in the Bible, it never happens again, that sign, if thou wilt forgive their sin, I'm speechless, I don't know what to do, but if not blot me out of thy book which thou hast written, I pray thee blot me out of the book which thou hast written. I've lost the chapter here, wait a minute, what chapter were we in, reading of Jacob 32? 32, no there's a number somewhere, yeah but there was the other script I was reading out of, earlier when I read about, you see I'm getting old and I forget the chapter numbers, okay in chapter 32 somebody said, I think that's right, yes he said unto him, what is thy name, and he said Jacob, and he said thy name is no more Jacob, but Israel, thou's a prince with God, he said I will not let thee go, unless you bless me, now tell me that, tell me to yourself, not to me, what's the greatest blessing that could come in your life, an unsaved husband gets saved, an unsaved child, do you think you dare latch on to that and say Lord I'm not letting you go from tonight, I'm not going to let you go, I'm not going to let my son go to perdition, I'm not going to let my husband be lost, you see Jacob that cheated his brother is a despicable character, devious character, destructive character, and he cheated his brother for his birthright, and he cheats his brother for his blessing, and yet God gave it to him, you see God can change the order, in the old testament the eldest son is supposed to get the best, but you can't prove to me, nor can anybody else that Abraham was the eldest son of Terah, and Jacob got the blessing when Esau should have had it, and Joseph wasn't the eldest son of his parents either, but you see there's a divine appointment, Shakespeare said, not that you quote him religiously in that sense, there is a time in the affairs of men, which if taken at the flood leads on to higher things, but you see there's an appointment in God's time, it could be in a meeting like this or somewhere else, there are no accidents with God, Joseph is put into a pit, it wasn't an accident that Ishmaelites came past and lifted him out, it wasn't an accident that he was sent to jail, it wasn't an accident that they put Moses in a little burush, it wasn't an accident that the princess went down and saw him, that was all by divine appointment, these are all divine appointments, clouded very often with our thinking, I'd like to pray, like Moses, I can't, I'd like to, I hope I will before I die, I'd like to pray until, and by divine strength I can put a, for want of a better word, a squeeze on God, or a grip, let me put it better, I could put a grip on God until he says, Raven, you leave me alone in that thing, and I say, Lord, I'm not letting you go, I'm hanging on, I know it's your will, it's not your time just yet, but it's going to be, it's going to come to pass, and I'm staying put, I'm not being shifted from this, I said to brother Dale, I think it was the other day, brother Dale, I think I'd like to live in a cave, where there's no distractions, and certainly not that abomination called a telephone, I'd have a, I'd have a courtyard outside full of lions, keep you all away, you see, there has to be a determinate, I say, I don't care how filled with the Holy Ghost you are, if you get to know more of world conditions, a young man told me this week, a fellow from this very school, he'd been reading a book by, I think it was by Lyle, on was a fellow from the east, John Sung, if you can read it, read it, it's a fantastic thing, it's the greatest foreign scholar that ever came to America, when he came to America, he could hardly speak a word of English, in three and a half years, he learned English, he learned German, and in one of his biggest tests, got his PhD in German, he got every conceivable degree, Time magazine wrote him up, Life wrote him up, all the others wrote him up, when he got in the South China Sea, he got all his diplomas and gold things they'd given him, and they threw them all overboard, and he went to China, and laid his life out, and I was preaching in a meeting, there's a lady playing the organ, I was going to pass some remarks about the lady, but I won't, but anyhow, I said, I noticed while I was talking, you were weeping, that's a marvellous story of John Sung, I gave them a story from a, oh I said yes, no she's the lady who gave me the story, I said, have you heard the story before, she said, not quite like that, but I'll tell you what I did Mr.Ramiel, I said, what did you do? I used to play the organ for him at his revivals, he was stricken with tuberculosis, he hadn't strength hardly to stand, he finished up on his knees, he'd make the altar call on his knees, he never did like the boys over there, they all want an American suit, and an American tie, and get dressed up, he wore a 30 cent shirt, tied with a string on the corner, he had a lock of hair like Hitler's, he wouldn't do anything, and she said, my friend said, when he came home from a revival, if there hadn't been a breaking, if people hadn't come in weeping, and agony, and grief over their sin, he felt he was a failure, and he said, I'll go to his bedroom, he'd be lying on the bed, his little shirt was stuck to his back, and he was behaving like a dog he was chased, and he'd be groaning for revival, he didn't live long, what's the good of living longer? Day early in the morning he comes to pray with me, and I appreciate him so much, and he said, I talked about the blessing God gave him, and Spencer, and Dick last Friday night, each of them were anointed with awesome power, travailing in prayer, I said, God's got to do something in Tyler, if it doesn't, I don't want to live, and Dalton, everything has to become secondary, or less than that, this has to be the alpha and the omega in our praying, to glorify God, there are 109 churches in the area of Tyler, there's not one of them where one person is saved every week through the year, not one of them, millions and multiplied millions of dollars in business, in buildings, and yet not people are saved. Let me give you one classic from history, there's a book by a man by the name of Savonarola, I can't remember now for the life of me who wrote the book, trying to think of the town, a town called Florence in Italy, you see a lot of fancy gold, what they call it Florentine style, you see round mirrors, ladies mirrors, and all this kind of stuff, it was a time of the Medices, one of the cruelest groups of aristocrats that ever ruled in Italy, and this precious monk, one day had a revelation of Jesus dying on the cross, and he pledged he wouldn't move out of that city, which was governed by a corrupt priesthood, and the whole nation as far as I'm concerned, was just one seething mass of immorality, and sin, and shamelessness, and drunken orgies, and all the banquets like the Romans used to have, the papacy threatened him because he was so outspoken, the people loved him, he was outspoken, he put his finger on all the cancers in the nation, he named names, and he so prevailed with God, he said I will not let you go unless you bless my nation, and despite this candorously corrupt court, and all the other power that the devil had, his headquarters were from a hell run in that town at that time, and he didn't care about the others, he went to the altar in the cathedral, and he lay there for hours every day sobbing, nobody could console him, they'd almost to force him to eat, they'd almost to force him to drink, but you see he'd seen a vision of the lostness of men, he'd seen a vision of hell, he said if men can live in this corruption, what's it going to be like in eternity, forever and ever, when they can't go to their palaces, and their mansions, and boast about their wealth, and their jewels, and all the rest of it, the devil has cheated them, they're caught in a trap, and he lay there before that altar day after, I read that this week, I'd read the life of Stamner, it was a classic life, and I can't remember who wrote it, but this was a new light I got on it, he said he went to that altar day by day, and spent hours, didn't care about people, tourists that came in, or priests that came in, or who came in, if the pope came in, he wouldn't move, and he would just lay there prostrate on his face, groaning, and weeping, and crying, as Rachel cried give me children or I die, as John Knox, when he was a famous man in Scotland, cried give me Scotland or I die, and so Mary Queen of Scots said I would rather hear an army was marching on the town, than hear that John Knox was praying, she was terrified of the prayers of one man, a queen, dear God we don't shake thrones, wonder what would happen if God could get half a dozen seven-year-olds in Tyler, or even in Dallas, oh you say that was early, yes that was 1452, times have changed, I tell him his sin has changed, adultery then isn't adultery now, the same as adultery then, lying the same as the lying they had, cheating, war, blood, rape, I'm sick to death of all the apologies people make, as though God's broken down, as though Jesus still has to go to a cross, or go somewhere, and get the ultimate triumph over the devil, what we have to do is, I hear people saying Lord defeat the devil, he defeated him 2,000 years ago, what we have to do is, to learn how to enter into his triumph, and take some of these areas, and go on record before the holy God, don't lie for God's sake, don't lie may strike you down, and say Lord I would rather die than see my generation go to hell, I'd rather fast a day or two days a week, to see God's, I'm going to pray for Tyler, you pray for what you like, I want to see God raise a holy work there, that people will come a hundred miles to see the mighty power of God, and go out breathless, and no begging and whining, and to get people to an altar either, most of the altar calls are to satisfy the preacher, making him feel he's done good, well I don't have to satisfy anybody except God, I'm not going to try, when you feel that some grip, I was in a small prayer meeting recently, and I thought we quit, and someone said no, no, no, not yet, so we took a second spell, and it was beautiful, if you get into a place of prayer, as old Daniel Steele, I think he was a Lutheran, but he's a marvelous old preacher, he said if you feel the spirit of prayer coming on you when you kneel at the bedside, that's an old-fashioned way, many of you didn't do that, if you feel the spirit of prayer, forget all about bread, pray, you can't go to sleep and then say Lord would you please wake me with a passion on my soul, God says come on put some sacrifice into it, put something in it of yourself, I know people who have prayed, we had a man in our church, and I'm through with this, a man in our church in Sheffield, a fine big husky guy, and God got hold of him one day, and said do you really love me, you keep saying how much you love me, you keep saying I want to be like Jesus, do you, he said well go fast 40 days and 40 nights, and he did, and he kept working all the time, he's never been the same thing, a man since, physically there's a mark on him, I went to another conference, there was a husky guy, and he said I want to talk to you a minute, you talked about prayer recently, I said yes sir I did, he said well Mr Raven, I've just finished 40 days of prayer and fasting, where do you go, to a place in the woods, he said no to the coal mine where I work, he said I work in a seam as they say, there's a seam of black coal, and it's less, that's about that height, less than 30 inches deep, and I have to get under with a pick, they put a pad on the shoulder and with a pick, they do it with machinery now, and he said I've worked 40 days with a pick and shovel, and I've had nothing to eat, I've drunk water, water, water, and I get up from the coal mine, I go home and pray and pray and pray, I pray while I'm picking away there, I pray while the men are cursing, but God gave me the desire of my heart, he gave me the vision, he gave me the passion, and he said I can't tell you what it means, and I know I'm a fanatic, I'm a fool to my wife, I'm a fool to the relatives, I'm a fool in my own church, but he said I have the gratification of knowing I did the will of God, this man wrestled, he touched God, well tell me who in the world is worth touching if outside of God, if we can't touch God we'll touch nobody, we're touching nothing, if we touch God we'll touch the devil, and it's the only way to have power over the enemy, I will not let thee go, he's trying to get away, and he can't get away, now the angel is trying to get away, he can't get away, wrestling I will not let thee go, he's tired, tired the angel of the covenant up, he can't move, Moses in the spirit groans, and God sitting on the circle of the earth with all power and authority says Moses let me alone, and Moses answers back he said I won't let you alone, if you're going to curse these people curse me as well, you get the same thing isn't it in Romans 9 where Paul says I could wish myself a curse, literally the Greek I'll be damned if need be for this generation, now this isn't teaching usually get in class, I'm not meaning this class or anywhere, I've said it, I'll say it again, I'll say it again, I'm tired of mediocrity, I'm tired of leaning on spiritual dwarfs, I want to see men who are not just writing books for money's sake or parading some big thing to be known, I want to know men who feel the hurt of God, Blaise Pascal was probably the most brilliant man that ever lived, though he was contemporary with Jonathan Edwards, and people say Jonathan Edwards was the greatest brain American ever had, but Blaise Pascal was there in France, and he said one day the Lord gave me a revelation of his grief over lost men, and he showed me that right until the end of time Jesus Christ is still weeping, he's still in full of agony and sorrow for his church, and it's going to be like that forever, and yet churches want fun and foolishness, as I say when are we going to get serious about being serious? All the people that take drugs are not taking them out of the package, some of them are drugged with TV, some of them are drugged with business, some are drugged with other things, it makes them insensitive to the center of the will of God. Let's be fools, Paul said I'm fools, fool for Christ's sake, we used to march through the streets in England with a sign on the front it says I'm a fool for Christ, people would laugh, on the back it said who's fool are you? Well, do you want to be men of prayer, or just evangelists? Do you want to be women of prayer, or just nice little housewives and mothers? You can be both for sure, this little woman's up at four every morning now, between four and five, and I can't even pray, he leaves me speechless, weeping, groaning for my generation. Those are the people that will be the means of saving America, not big shot preachers. You can tell our bankrupt preachers when he prays in the pulpit, they say nothing, Lord bless us today, amen, forget it. A parrot could do better in some churches, I believe to quote Whitefield, if I'm going to preach on heaven I should live there for a week before I preach, if I'm going to preach on hell I should get soaked in hell for a week before I preach, bring the atmosphere of heaven, bring the atmosphere of hell, when we do that the house of God will not be empty. I don't believe a man can be a holy ghost preacher and have an empty church. A little late but we're going to pray, as I said before when we start praying, or maybe we can sing a chorus and if you want to leave you're free to leave, I guess we'll pray an hour at least, it's half past nine, we're not beating the clock but I'm trusting God will, you know what, I wish when I'd been the age of some of you young guys, I could go to a prayer meeting like this, not because I need it but because God comes. I prayed alone in Sherwood Forest at nights, and on a Sunday morning I couldn't find anybody to pray with, I read a book about David Brennan, if he can pray in the forest I can pray in the forest, if he didn't want other things, I don't want other things. As I said, five minutes inside eternity we'd all wish we'd been more powerful in prayer, we'd all wish we carried bigger burdens, we'd all wish we hadn't prayed some of the petty things we've prayed. I believe there's got to be blood on our praying and tears on our praying. I wanted to pray for the Indians again tonight, Spencer, when we get going. A lady called from the Carolinas, yes, this afternoon and asked would we pray. Her pastor's a godly man and the church is putting pressure on him. They're going to take a vote on Sunday whether to put him out because he stands for the old paths and the old truths and it's going to split the church. She said it might be the best thing, I said it might, you might get rid of the garbage, let them join another church. But let's pray for this church and believe God for them. Some of you know, what's the lady, silver haired lady? Lynn Jones, she's, I talked with her today, she's not having too good a time. You know, she had some brain surgery and now her eyes, her vision's crossed and the ophthalmologist, or whatever you call him, says he can't do much, that one eye isn't working at all, so she has one covered. It's very critical that she gets a healing because of this. They won't keep a job open for her much longer, she works into First Bank and there's a lot of support they can put in there and she has no other income. But mainly she wants God to be glorified in healing her. Pray for these Indians, pray for that church. Maybe pray for your own church, pray for your own community, pray for your own preacher. Somebody said if you've been in a church for five years, you've been there too long, you should change it. I don't believe that. I'll tell you what, I wouldn't listen to a preacher that doesn't weep and grieve over his people. I don't care how eloquent he is, I don't care how big a shot he is. Why do I expect people to be broken if the preacher's not broken? Come on, in God's name be honest. Okay. Let's pray. Thank you very much.