In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of prioritizing time with God over worldly distractions. He criticizes the tendency to spend hours watching TV shows but not dedicating enough time to prayer. The preacher also shares personal anecdotes about his own family and the impact of his ministry on their lives. He highlights the need for personal revival and warns against relying on external appearances of spirituality. Additionally, he mentions a story about a girl praying fervently for her family's salvation and expresses his desire to see genuine, passionate believers who are willing to sacrifice for their faith.

You told the people I was coming at 8 o'clock. How did you know I was coming? He said, how did you know to come? The same Holy Ghost that told you to come told me you were coming. He said, Brother Campbell, there's my barn. You know this island is swept with winds from America across the Atlantic. You shiver in summertime. I've been in that barn every morning before five. And the straw up to my, the straw, he said, right up to my chin, interceding for revival. And I believe God is going to send it. It was actually the birth pains of an old blind lady, 84 years of age, and her sister who joined hands and got one or two deacons and said, we declare before God we refuse to die until you invade this island. We want revival but we'll close the taverns. Our young people are drinking. Close the dance halls. Our people are lusting. God began to move. He was asked to go to a big farmhouse. I love house meetings, I'll tell you the truth. I think God's through with denominations. The church is going to end up where it began, in houses. He's going down the road on his little motorcycle. On the side of the road there's a beautiful girl there. She has a Scottish kilt. She has her elbow on her knees. She has her head in her hands. She's sobbing convulsively. I shut the gas off and went back and I just touched on the shoulders. She was unconscious of anybody's presence and I just said, my dear, maybe I can help you. Well, the Scottish people say God with a long, oh, God. She didn't look up. She said, no, sir, you cannot, only God can help me. He thought, oh, here's another answer to prayer. The Lord's prepared this girl. Well, what is God going to do? Oh, she said, sir, my brethren and my uncle and my daddy are down in that village and they're lost. They're without God. They're going to die. They go to church, they take communion, but they're going to die. They're unsaved. And I, he thought, this is great. Have you prayed for them to be? Prayed all the night through with Jeannie. How old are you? Seventeen. How old is Jeannie? Sixteen. You prayed all night? Oh, sir, not only one night, we prayed the night before. Never went to bed? No. Two nights without sleep. Three nights, we didn't pray the night before. Don't you realize my daddy is dying, my brother is dying, my uncle is dying without God. How can this be? He went down to the village. These men came in the meeting. And the first night they were in the meeting, they were all saved. Do you ever get as desperate about the salvation of your parents you've left at home, or your unsanctified empty preacher that you've listened to so long? Or is it just a commercial? Is it just a term for conversation? No, my daddy's good, he pays my fees at school, and if he doesn't, my aunt would pay them back, but he's well. Of course, he's a good churchman, but he's good this, he's good the other. The girl prayed the effectual fervent. Fervent? Three nights consumed with passion for a daddy that should have been praying for her? Three nights consumed with desire to see her uncle and her brother snatched from burning hell? I don't believe God's problem in America is Mormonism, or Judaism, or any of that. God's problem in America is dog fundamentalism. We know the terms, we know the language, but it's void, it's empty. I'd like to see a crop of men like Duma. I wouldn't care about Hillary Beans if they were jet black, I wouldn't care if they were green. I'd like to see, when men ask me what Bible school to go to, I'll tell you this, I'm cutting my throat here. I say, listen, you don't need to go to a Bible school. I'll give you ten books to read. If you'll shut yourself up for the winter, or if you'll go to Kansas and get a job at a farm, and tell the farmer, I live without wage. Give me bed and bread. I'll work for you from eight in the morning till five at night. After that, it's my time. And you take these ten books and read them for a year, they'll completely revolutionize your life like no school I know of. Because I don't know much about this school, but anyhow, I know what God can do. We keep, I was recently asked, and I'll throw you this, I was recently asked to go speak at a conference that was going to tour the East Coast. They sent me a list of about 70 distinguished preachers and professors and whoever. I didn't fill registration form. I left a letter. I got another letter. I didn't fill it in. I got a call from the president. We have written to you. We have asked you to come. Will you please come? What did you think of our brochure? What did you think of our curriculum? I said, nothing. He said, what? I said, nothing. I said, because it brings with humanism, it brings with organizing. We'll do this. We'll cut the Holy Ghost off when we want. We'll do this. We'll do that. We'll do the other. I said, I notice this. You've got about 60 of the greatest preachers from the Presbyterians again to the Pentecostals to whoever you've got. All distinguished scholars. All operating the biggest churches in America. But I notice this, that not one of them is a national speaker. Not one of them, sorry. Not one of them draws the crowds. I said, listen, would you please, are you having a committee meeting? Yes. Would you say this to the committee when you see them? Wait a minute, not for this reason coming. Not for this reason. But he did point out this, that the men who are drawing the crowds for God today, not one of them has an earned doctorate. Jimmy Swagger doesn't have an earned doctorate. Billy Graham doesn't have an earned doctorate. My neighbor, David Wilkerson, doesn't have an earned doctorate. What did God go looking for? The size of brains in the upper room? They went in the upper room, it says unloaned and ignorant. Unloaned and popular with no financial backing. I've often wondered there about Mighty, Mighty Baptist. You know, I like to tease the Pentecostals because they weren't the first to preach the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Baptists preach it first. An awkward little man called John the Baptist preached the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Isn't that something? Huh? So I tease the Baptists about that, then I teach the Pentecostals. You don't have a monopoly on it. It was the Baptists who started it. Started it where? In a wilderness. He had no forward-incoming thing, he had no press manager. Could you believe it? He didn't even have a mailing list. How many mailing lists do you get? I get enough to paper our house every week. I put them all in the same file. I don't read one of them. We are so leaning on flesh that we don't know how far sunk we are in flesh. So leaning on organizing, so leaning on our brochures, so leaning on our organized TV program or some other. Now I get shot for this, but it is all right. It's truth anyhow. God is going to raise up men like this. He shut up heaven and there was no rain. He brought the economy to a standstill. He brought everything else to a standstill. Do you know I've got a secret deep inward feeling God Almighty is going to do that to America. We've had 25 years of prosperous living, but we haven't prospered spiritually at the same rate. Our name isn't worth much around the nations. But you see God isn't going to take advice. He'll listen to your prayers if you want to take advice. Let me say this quickly in about two minutes. Elijah, the odds against him were what? 800 to 1. 800 prophets of Baal. But the scripture says, I'll not be afraid if there are 10,000, and he wasn't. And he spoke the word of God with the authority of God. And the miracle happened. What does it say? He says, Will you call on your God as long as you like? And while you're doing that, let's cover the sacrifice with water. And they covered it with water, and water, and water, and water, and saturated it. No trickery in it. And the God that answers by fire, let him be God. And it says the fire fell. And then it says the people fell. And then it says the rain fell. But after these marvelous experiences, did the king take any notice? No. People say, you know, if we had a greater miracle ministry, if we'd stir the nation, forget it. I happened to come to America in 1950 when Katherine Kuhlman was pretty powerful, A. A. Allen was pretty powerful, Jack Cole was pretty powerful, and a whole bunch of them were going together. It never moved the nation. We got curiosity seekers, like Jesus did. He had the crowd, while he fed them, while he gave them free healing and free meals, they crowded. And when he put down the laws of the kingdom, he said, will you also go away? Jesus is the authority. And you know what he said? They will not believe even though one rose from the dead. As soon as you say miracles will do it, you slap God in the face because he says only the Holy Ghost can do it. I can remember in my early days, it happened in some of my meetings, but in other meetings more powerfully, when people would start walking down the aisles on their hands and knees, they were in such agony. I can remember, dear Brother Gray, that when I was a youngster, I went to a holiness church, or I went to a Pentecostal church, there were more people at the altar before the meeting than after. They were praying the paradigm, they prayed the Gloria Dei. They terrified me. When I was about twelve years of age, I heard a man praying, come down, Lord, as you walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, walk across this altar and walk down, oh Lord, don't. I was sure he'd come. I knew what he meant. One of the great modern inventions in evangelism, it's called an altar call. There's no altar call in the New Testament. Read the third chapter in Luke, and it says that while John Baptist, the higher brand, was preaching, the people cried out, what shall we do? And the publicans cried out, what shall we do? And the Roman soldiers from a heathen country had never known God like this, they said, what shall we do? In the Bible, you don't have an altar call, the people are the altar call. You don't get through preaching and seeing some sweet little beauty to move them emotionally. Forget it. When Holy Ghost conviction comes, I was going to say it's worse than cancer, I don't know, my darling mother died of cancer in agony. They say it's about the worst pain. Women say, of course, that giving birth to a child is the worst pain. But when God begins to get hold of men, they don't sing a hymn like this, show light into the darkened cells where passion reigns within, quicken my conscience till it feel the loathsomeness of sin, search me, oh God, my actions try, and let my life appear as seen by thine all-searching eye, to mine my ways make clear, search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the motives, the control, the chambers where polluted things hold empire of the soul. One of the greatest curses in America today is sexual immorality, not only in the church, but in the pulpit. Let me put it in a sentence. You cannot live wrong and pray right. Whether you secret sin or you've got sins in the flesh or sins in the spirit, don't blame the devil. The most demanding thing I know of is prayer. I read Psalm 24 this morning. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands, that's our relationship with the world and a pure heart. A man who is holy, holiness is our relation to the God, righteousness is our living before the crooked world. There will be no revival that will save lost men until the church is purified. I'm through with this. Dave Wilkerson was in a meeting a few years ago. Martha and I went with him at his request. He pushed his Bible on one side and said, I'm not going to preach. Dr. Cho from Korea was to follow him. David said, I get meetings like this, twelve, thirteen thousand people, two or three hundred at the altar. And then I go to my bus, and he said, and I lay down and kick and say, God, if this is revival, why am I so dry? And he said, the Lord said, this is because you have sin in your life. Well, everybody thinks of sexual immorality when you talk about sin in preachers. Well, what is it, Lord? He said, the Lord said this, David, you are offering me service instead of worship. Dr. Cho got up and followed him. David's there weeping on his knees, and Cho got up. Dr. Cho said, I'm like my brother David. I've been offering God service. I have three hundred and fifty thousand people in my church. People come from all over the world to see me. They do not know how dry I am, how powerless I am. Organizing, efficiencies, seven thousand little satellite churches around my city of Seoul. And the Lord told me, son, you are offering me, you are trying to prove your spirituality by your activity, by tiring yourself out, by working yourself to a thread. He said, David, I'm in the same car. David turned on the audience and said, you hundred-year-old preachers. It was James Robinson's conference there were supposed to be twelve thousand people there. Hundreds and hundreds of preachers. David said, come on, you send in your lads. You come down here and get cleaned up. There must have been a hundred and fifty more all in front of us. Martha and I were on the front seat. They were rolling on my feet and I was trying to pull my feet back. Here they were sobbing and groaning. Next day they had a dinner in the Fairmont Hotel. David spoke again and told these men if they wanted to come forward they were welcome. He'd like to talk a few minutes. He told me after then, I don't know how many came, maybe a couple hundred. But he said, seventy percent of those preachers that came to me blubbering through their tears and cringing and turning their heads away saying, but David, the sin in my life. I'm having an affair with a girl in the choir. When I go to other cities I go down to X-rated movies. When there's nobody looking I buy these central magazines, daily magazines. Almost without exception it was physical. Sexual immorality. If it wasn't for sexual immorality it was pride. I tell you again, this is the most demanding thing. I have to search my heart. I've prayed now for more than sixty years, nearly seventy. I still have to search my heart. I have to find out what is my motive here. Do I want to preach with anointing so I'll be anointing known as an exception and forget it. I'm too old to want any accolades that men have. The only thing I want to do when I finish preaching is to hear God saying well done, you did what I told you to do. That's all that matters. There are no medals, there are no honors. Do you know what we need in the nation? I was going to say we need another Elijah. No, we need an Elijah in every city. Again, we have no prophets. We do not have any revivalists. The last revivalist I know of was a Baptist. I never met him, I wish I had. His name was Mordecai Han. An old man in my meeting came out one day and he said did you ever meet old Mordecai Han? I said I wish I had. He said well I did, I knew him. He said brother he would go to a city with a large tent, large for his day holding seven or eight hundred people. The third night he went to preach he needed a police escort to get him into the pulpit. And as long as he stayed in town he had a police escort to get him into the pulpit and a police escort to get him home. He blasted sin, he blasted immorality and drunkenness and breaking commandments and he blasted the church. Billy Graham was saved under him. He often says I thank God for Mordecai Han. Look let me tell you one thing. How do I know he was a revivalist? Because when he left town all the dance halls were closed, all the movie houses. You haven't got a man in the church that can do that to you. If you know one funny one that so preaches that the Holy Ghost comes as it were from heaven and gets down. In the Welsh revival men began to drink their beer and their arms went stiff and they trembled and they had to have somebody help them. The revival disorganized everything. In that little place of Wales, it's not large, over a hundred thousand people were genuinely born again in the spirit of God. It closed taverns, closed dance halls, it closed down every other thing. Even their national sport of football, people were not going. You know there's a king in America and he has a queen. What's the name of the king? Sport. What's the name of the queen? Entertainment. They get more time and money than all the denominations put together. Some of you guys can't take an hour to be quiet. You can watch a lousy TV show for an hour or two and go to bed early in the morning when you should be starting to pray. Don't pray for personal revival and expect everything's going to be the status quo. He shatters everything. Your lifestyle, your social style. I'm glad I've got one of the greatest wives in the world. She has never... My lifestyle disorganizes the house. She never says a thing. We've had 46 years now of wonderful marriage. I've got three marvelous sons, two of them dynamic preachers. Above that, men of God who know God, who walk with God. When they come home, I say, come on now, I'm in my office, I have to pray. They come and teach me and I enjoy it. Tell me of the revelations they've had. There's a brother hiding behind a white beard. I've forgotten his name. What's his name? Pardon? I can't hear. Pardon? Oh, Brother Barclay. Twenty years ago, we were in New York. My wife said, why don't you ask that brother to come, Brother Barclay? We got a few folks from Dave Wilkerson's staff and mine in the house and our boys. And this precious brother got down on his knees. This blonde beauty said, oh, please ask him to lay hands on me and pray for me. I didn't say a word and he prayed for everybody in the room except the blonde beauty. He prayed over one, he prayed over the other. He prayed for this young man. And I thought, why doesn't he talk up? And I looked and there he's on his knees holding the feet of my boy. Not the brilliant boy who's now a Ph.D. No, but that would have hindered him. Not Paul, who is tremendously sharp and intellectual. It wouldn't have hindered him. It was David, the shyest of our three boys. And that dear man sitting there said, this man who will stand before kings and rulers to preach the gospel. And I thought, boy, get your hands off his feet, get them on the next boy. A few years ago, the king of Tonga was crowned down in the South Seas. National Geographic went there. All the showmanship was there. The head of the Methodist church in Australia was asked to come and give a coronation message. And then our son David, the brother prophesied, was asked to come and speak. The king was standing on the terrace here and David poured out his heart. He never said a word about it to us. Later, somebody wrote and said, if you had heard your David, you would have been proud. Boy, he talked about Wesley and the message and the revival of those days and told that whole island they were so dead in their Methodism and formality. And here's the king listening behind him, the prime minister. The prophecy that Brother Barclay came was fulfilled literally. And it was fulfilled a second time. And saying that, just to encourage you, in case you think because you're not a super intellectual, God can't use you. You know, much of our learning is a handicap. Our abilities have become our disabilities. Our flesh hinders our spirit. And it's not easy to go to the cross. Come in God's name, I ask you. Ruskin said, it's easy to get a man to the cross. Your problem is to get him on the cross. I remember the time when the holiness church, I went to the altar. I was the best known boy in church. I was the youth leader. I had all the assets, so to speak. I remember walking down the aisle because I knew in my heart I was eaten up with envy and pride and jealousy about one or two other guys. I could hear people say, that's men raising them. He doesn't need to go. Boy, I needed that more than anything. I'll tell you what, if you go to your own funeral, you'll never forget it. Side 2 What's the old hymn say? When God's fire upon the altar of my heart was set aflame, ablaze my ambitions, plans and wishes at my feet in ashes lay. You give God your all. Let him burn it. He'll do more with the ashes than you can do with your entire personality. But it's costly. It's expensive. To admit I've been living in the energy of the flesh, my intellectual ability to try to divide the world of truth and yet the people go out as they came in. It never happened in a Holy Ghost meeting. You can't have a dead meeting if the living Christ is in the midst. That's impossible. I don't care if it's a lecture hall or some other great academy or place where people are gathered. I'm through with this. This man prayed, the rain fell, the fire fell, the people fell. What happened? It says Ahab went up to Edes. Elijah went up the mountain to what? Put his head between his knees and not gloat over his success and may say I defied the king, I've made this nation. Not just that I've released the heavens or three years of rainless clouds. He has his head between his knees. That's pretty difficult. And he's still crying for something almighty, for God to come. There's no such thing in one sense as being satisfied in your Christian experience. The Christian life is what? It's a process, then a crisis, then a process, then a crisis, then a process, and a crisis because God can't do all his work in one weekend and one trip to the altar. It's not an experience, it's a walk. But what a walk. Boy, if you leave the grave clothes of cells behind you this morning and kind of take them off and put down your pride as a good old book says, lay aside every weight. Maybe your trouble is your scholarship, maybe it's your theology, maybe it's your terminology. You leave it all there and let God almighty deal with the ashes. He'll make something more glorious out of that than anything you've ever dreamed of. Oh, the old Pentecostals used to sing, remember? The God of Elijah. Oh no, you were a Baptist previously. We forgive you, but anyhow. Do you remember the old song they used to sing about Elijah? God of Elijah coming and sending the fire? I'm glad he's still in the business. And as I said yesterday, the fire does not, M-O-T, fall on the altar. It falls on the sacrifice. And as soon as you are willing to be a living sacrifice and say, God almighty, purge me of sin, take control of my life, take control of my will, take control of my emotions, take control of my intellect, take control of my future. I leave it all in the hands of the Holy Ghost. You'll find a liberty you never thought was possible this side of eternity. It's personal. When God's fire upon the altar of my heart was set ablaze, my ambitions, I remember my ambitions going out of the window. All my plans for the future. I went to a college without a penny in my pocket. Well, maybe I had one penny and that was all. I got through one semester. I was ready to go home. A man walks in the college. He said, Well, how are you getting on here? I said, Good. Do you like the college? I said, yes. I like the teaching. I like the staff. Are you coming back next semester? I said, I don't think so. He said, It's a financial problem, isn't it? I said, yes. He said, I'll pay all your bills as long as you stay there. I should have stayed there until now. Maybe he'd be paying my bills. Do you know I've never asked a person for a penny in my life? Never sent out a letter. Been around the world a couple of times. Paid every bill. Seen my boys through school and college. Don't say it can't be done. He's my father. Do you think I love my boys? Do you think they ever begged for shoes or shirts or food? I was climbing ahead of the month before they needed things. God has ordered my steps. He orders my steps. He orders my stops. And it's for me to know when he's telling me to step and when he's telling me to stop and to step. Well, Elijah, bless you wherever you are. We've enjoyed it this morning. I have anyhow. The God of Elijah is my God. When I prayed this morning, I said, Lord, you heard the prayer of Elijah. You heard the prayer of your son from Gethsemane. You heard the prayer of a man who prayed in the first seminary. What did he say, John? I was in the belly of hell. All the weeds were over me and the mountains were over them and I was in the belly of hell and I cried unto the Lord. You know, it'll take the belly of hell to get some of us broken. It'll take the belly of hell to get this nation broken. But I'm glad that God is the same omnipotent God, omniscient God, omnipresent God. There's no weakness in him. There's no failure in him. He has all power, all authority, all glory. And he's just waiting for chance to bring it down from glory to the sinking. As I say, if you come to this altar, don't leave it in five minutes. Stay three hours if you have to stay. Let him take you apart. Let him take you by the finger and show you your carnality, your pride, your jealousy, your envy, your weakness, and give you them. Don't just say, Lord, cleanse me. Say as I said yesterday, Elijah said, Isaiah. Woe is me. I'm undone. I'm untreated. I don't need help. I need purity. I don't just need purity. I need power. But he's not going to come. Can I say this one thing? Do you remember when Noah had an ark? You don't remember it, do you? You remember the story. And he put a bird out. Oh, mercy again. What kind of a bird? A raven. Dirty thing. Oh, he got, oh, here's some lovely flesh here. Flesh everywhere. Mountains of flesh. Bodies of beasts. Bodies of people. He could eat, eat, eat. And then the dove went out. The dove is a unique bird. It's unique because it only marries once. Somebody needs to preach on that. To preach this. Only marries once. The dove is coming down. No, that stinks. I won't. What did he do? He returned to the ark. Why? He could find no place to rest because it was all flesh. We have revival meetings all the time and the Holy Ghost doesn't come. Because it's all flesh. That's right. And he won't settle where there's flesh. Flesh has to be crucified. Put to death. Done away. The Old Hymn says, He came sweet influence to impart a gracious willing guest where he can find one humble heart where him to rest. And Old Hymn, I'm through with this last phrase. I am trusting thee, Lord Jesus, trusting only thee, trusting thee for soul salvation, great and free. I am trusting thee for cleansing in the crimson flood, trusting thee to make me holy by thy blood. I am trusting thee, Lord Jesus, never let me fall. I am trusting thee forever and for all. I am trusting thee, Lord Jesus, at thy feet I bow. I forgot the other part of that. I am trusting thee, Lord Jesus, at thy feet I bow. Something like save and cleanse and fill and keep me. Can't get into the rest of it but that's the essence. When I went to the altar as a saved song leader, youth leader, at that altar I saw the cross in a different way. It's not for something for me to wear or appreciate, maybe. It's a place for me to die. And the only way to get resurrection life is to die. There's no shortcut. And it's painful but there is no other way. To get all from God, you give all to God. I'm not going to move you emotionally. I could do that, I guess. I'm going to say, if you want to die, and that's all an altar is for. The altar is for two things, sacrifice and death. We prostituted it. It's to help and so forth. No, forget it. You can say, by the way, I'm willing to come. I want to die and leave this sanctuary purified, sanctified. God's possession from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet, my heart, my will, my mind, everything I have. I want to die. A friend of Brother Tommy's wrote this phrase that I like so much. The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unclean man out of an unclean world, make an unclean man holy, and put him back in a whole unholy world and keep him holy. If you make business with God, you have reason to believe from here until you die, if you live to be as old as I am or older, you can live a life of victory without defeat. Jesus died for nothing less. I invite you to come and die. Do you want to come? We're not going to sing. If you want to come, come.