In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the joy and humor of a lovely little girl and the realization of his own aging as a grandparent. He reminisces about his own childhood and the stories his grandparents told him about their experiences in Egypt. The speaker then discusses the temptation of worldly pleasures and the ease of making vows that are difficult to keep. He emphasizes the need for true repentance and surrender to God's grace, highlighting the limitations of human efforts. The sermon concludes with a reference to the story of Rip Van Winkle and the importance of engaging in meaningful discussions and arguments.

A man was filling out a tax form, exacting the last farthing that he could get. As he did this, a shadow fell over the ledger and he looked up and when he looked up a man said to him, follow me. Would you have done it? He didn't know a thing about the stranger. I don't think he had ever heard him preach, ever saw him perform a miracle, didn't know anything about him as a prophetic figure. The man didn't say to him that one day he would be the ruler of this world and that the kingdoms of this world would become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. But that man looked up and when he saw the face and the eyes of the man who commanded him to leave all, he dropped his pen and immediately he rose and followed him. I say again, that man had no Bible. I don't think he knew anything prophetic about Christ. Had not seen a miracle. Now I'm going to suggest tonight that I think our present Christianity is an embarrassment to God. There isn't another thing God can tell us about Jesus Christ or about the age or about the future. He's said it all, he's written it all. And yet how many of us really follow him? It has been said in types of language during these days that seem to have gone so very quickly that we're living in the end time and I believe that we're living in the most amazing days in history and what your church has done in the last 500 years doesn't concern me one bit tonight, it's what your church does in the next five that I'm interested in. I don't care how high you are philosophically or theologically, the world outside is not impressed again with our eloquence, with the profundity of our knowledge, with the width of our vision, with the depth of our concepts. I think of the language of some kids in New York that shrugged the whole thing off because they've abandoned themselves to their own form of life and they say with a sneer, this is a plastic society. Plastic being the cheapest and most malleable thing that we have and we live in the cheapest, most malleable society in history and then they say with a little pepper after that, this is not only a plastic society but the church is merely a stained glass ghetto. Well then I'm going to say this now that we're living in the amazing days in history, or abnormal days. And abnormal days demand abnormal men with abnormal methods and abnormal messages. And as I said last night, I'll repeat again because obviously repetition is the law of learning, that prophets, prophets are God's men, God's ordainment, God's emergency men for crisis hours in history. And I believe that the body politic, the world in which we live is too degraded. It is, in the language of Isaiah, it's from the head, the top of the head to the soles of the feet, it's full of wounds and putrefying sores that cannot be bound up with anything that man has. Now frankly I'm very honest and I don't fear anybody, I'm a man of devils as far as I know. I would much rather have preached an hour ago because I felt the spiritual temperature was much higher then than it is now. But the fact is this, that as I sat there and heard this impassioned declaration from brother Jim, I love him very dearly, I was saying to myself this amongst other things is an age of computers, they're very wonderful things, but there isn't a computer on God's earth that could tell us the possibilities of grace in this meeting tonight. There isn't a slide rule that men can operate that could measure this in any dimension at all. There isn't a demon in hell that knows what this meeting, there isn't an archangel that knows. And I'm dead sure I don't know and I'm equally sure Jimmy doesn't, the possibilities of this meeting are as great as God himself. Somehow we think that history will be made when I get to the next conference and I hear the next preacher, I get somewhere else. One of these days instead of boring and getting a dry hole, one day we're going to get a gusher. Well why shouldn't it be tonight? Why shouldn't it be tonight? Why shouldn't the angel in heaven be making a record right now on this night, I forget the very date, at this hour here in a little beautiful cathedral like this in Mildale that God birthed the revival that this generation needs. Why not? God isn't going to commission archangels to do it. He isn't waiting till you come with a tail like a kite with all your PhDs and other DDs and all the rest of it, he's not concerned about that. I'm overwhelmed as I read the word of God time after time after time how God goes right outside of the circle again as he did with John Baptist, again as he did when he selected the twelve, and again tonight in a sermon I'd rather not preach and I never preach sermons by request, except when God requests them. And I believe he requests this that I've preached here before to some degree. It is a question of a woman of the world to a man of God when this woman, this ungodly woman said to Samson, tell me I pray thee where in the secret of thy great strength lieth and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. It will be a great day and God hasten the day when the world again begins to ask the church what is the secret of thy great strength. It doesn't cost any more to join the church now than you go to and join the Kiwanis. People these days when they go to a new area they shop around to find which church has the most prestige. Is there a member of government goes here, is there two or three millionaires, is there somebody distinguished? They don't say which is the most spiritual and the most humble and the most childlike and the most dynamic. The world no longer looks at the church of Jesus Christ and fears us. But here is an abnormal man doing abnormal things. And I'm sure if any man really gets anointed with the Holy Ghost I'm convinced he gets his name written in hell and the devil can afford to bypass lots and lots of men and put out some names on the danger list and boy when you're there you're in for trouble. Tell me where in the secret of thy great strength lieth and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. When I was a kid in school in England my teacher told me a story, an American story which is the best known thing out of all the literature that's ever been produced in America. Do you know what the best known story is around the world? The story of Rip Van Winkle. And my teacher told me that this fellow went up a hill one day and he fell asleep and he slept for a century. When he came down the hill he got into controversy there, he got engaged with some people and he began to argue and this was his undoing. Because you see when he went up the hill there was a sign hanging outside of the old tavern there and as it was stringing down the breeze there was painted on that sign the head of George III of England because England had a lot of money invested in America of that type. But while he slept during that century they had painted over the face of George III and they painted the face of another George there, namely George Washington. Now the only thing that my teacher left in my little mind was that the man slept for a hundred years. That is not the point of the story. The point of the story surely is this, that that man slept through a revolution. And I suggest to you tonight that that's exactly what the Church of Jesus Christ is doing. Sleeping during the greatest revolution in history, morally, intellectually, philosophically, scientifically, I don't care which dimension you take it in. This is the most topsy-turvy, unanchored period of humanity. When the Church ought to be going forth like a mighty army, we're like a bunch of boy scouts with a scared stiff. I believe that every church ought to have a great map of the world and have numbers on it reminding us of how many heathen people there are. And I think we should know the population of the world. Napoleon was one of the greatest military strategists in history. Hitler was another genius. Unquestionably he was a genius. He was a perverted genius, but he was a genius. When he sat in the bloody, muddy trenches of France and he told people that one day he would conquer the world, they sneered and said, he's only got Charlie Chaplin's mustache and one stripe on his arm and don't be afraid of him. But you talk about dedication, you talk about sleepless nights, what did he do? When other men went to sleep, he got up there in a little quiet place and he read and re-read the manipulations and the strategy of Napoleon. Did he depend on the Holy Spirit? No, he found the most expert medium, spiritist medium in the world, and she led him every time to success until the last time. He copied his strategy, I say, from Napoleon. Napoleon one day envious, put a map out. He called his generals together and on that map, like so many maps of all, there was a little country of England, just a little red spot, and he said with anger, there's that red spot. If it wasn't for that red spot, I could conquer the world. You and I need to look at Calvary tonight and say to the world, the flesh and the devil, if it wasn't for that red spot, you could sink the world, but you can't. If we learn to appropriate what Calvary really means, then telling to his generals, he snapped them to a post and he said, look, he plunged his finger on the outline of a great country with his index finger, he ran around it and he said, gentlemen, there lies a sleeping giant, let it sleep, because he said if that nation ever discovers its mineral potential and harnesses that to its manpower, if that sleeping giant ever stirs and begins to stride over the world, she'll master the world. He said that prior to the Battle of Waterloo, which of course he lost on the 18th of June in 1850. There lies a sleeping giant, let it sleep, because if that nation discovers its hidden potential and harnesses it to its manpower, she'll shake the whole world. What country was it? It was the country of China, which is the biggest headache to America or Russia tonight. As I said last night, in another thirty years, the population of that one country will be three or four times the population of the United States. They'll have a thousand million people, and the reason that she wants the war to go on in Vietnam, and she'd be happy to lose a hundred thousand men, a hundred million men I mean, but there'll be three hundred million plates of rice a day less. It wouldn't make any difference if she does continue the war another twenty years. After all, don't forget this, whatever headache America has about it tonight, that war was fought fifteen years and then de Gaulle gave up on it and said, let America pick up the tab. They shed their blood and they'd been fighting it fifteen years before we took it over, and one of the great men in America said not long ago it could go on another twenty years. And another outstanding man in politics addressed the high school not long ago and he said, you boys, you sixteen, seventeen, get ready for ten more years of war. Sure, China wants the war to go on because she wants the rice fields, she wants to feed those millions. But forgetting the politics there again. And again I say this is our headache. Now we're beginning to get more shaky because, well, things are getting bad. Yesterday the Japanese put a thing in orbit and that's terrible, and they're anti-American and they're very arrogant about it. And China has got the bottom bomb and we're a bit nervous about this too. But forgetting even the political picture, instead of seeing that little corpulent Corsican cocky, Corsican standing there, saying, God is a great country, let it sleep if it wakes, and harnesses its manpower to its mineral power, it will shake the world. Instead of seeing that, I suggest to you Christian friends tonight, you see Satan standing there. And he says to every demon in hell and every power he can harness, look, there is the church of Jesus Christ asleep, let it sleep. Because he says if the church ever discovers the power of the Holy Ghost, the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, and every believer really gets him to harness, they're going to shake earth and hell and sky. And so he keeps us blinded to the potential. He keeps singing, we keep singing mercy drops, but for a shower. They were singing that 40 years ago in the Methodist church, when I could only just see over the pew, 50 years ago. Here is a man who is mighty in God. To me this man is a classic example. Sure he doesn't belong to priesthood, but God wants a man in an emergency hour, and he finds this man born a barren woman. Like John Baptist we mentioned last night, was born a barren woman. This is the most barren age. Our altars are barren. Apart from the pressure we put on for folks to come up every week. So the altar doesn't mean anything anymore. We go so often and give God a down payment and a few hot tears, and the pastor says, nice to see you coming up to consecrate again. Consecrate what? Can he consecrate corruption? Can he consecrate bad temples and lusts? Rather it's not consecration we need, it's cleansing we need. And then the endowment of power. But here is a man who to me is the classic example again, of a spirit anointed man. Because before he does exploits, you read over and over and over again, the spirit of the Lord rested upon him. And dear brother Jimmy's right, half a million dollars on that altar tonight would be no substitute for the Holy Ghost. And if you wrote God a check for a million dollars, he'd turn it down and say your money perished with you. You cannot buy the Holy Ghost. And brother am I glad. I went to a conference a while ago, the international conference of a great group. They platformers embroidered with millionaires and multi-millionaires. They'd flown in on their own planes. And I had the audacity to turn around and say, if you gentlemen could do it, you'd pull out your fat checkbooks tonight, and you'd sign the Holy Ghost up, and you'd buy the Holy Ghost, and you'd have him serving your cause. But gentlemen, I have to tell you, he still says your money perished with you. They didn't give me enough money to get home. That's all right. I'm glad we can't organize the Holy Ghost. I'm glad you can't get him to join a denomination or a society. You can't get him to come because you're wearing a crown of fabulous learning. No sir, he will not come. He comes right as an aching heart. He comes right as an empty heart. He comes right as a cleansed heart. He comes right, he can indwell every part of the personality. And you can't have him on the installment system, and you can't have little bits of the Holy Ghost. It's all or nothing. And here is a man, I say, who is a classical example of the spirits in life. The spirit of the Lord rested mightily upon him. And if we had gone further down in Hebrews, as we've done for two You remember at the end, the preachers like me run out of time. And he says, time would fail me to tell of Gideon and David and Barak and Jephthah and our Samson, who threw faith. Oh, I thought it was his muscles. No, it wasn't his muscles. You see, we've read so much in Greek mythology, or we've read so many fairy stories. We've heard about Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. We've heard about Hercules kicking a range of mountains over. Or if you're not so well up in classics, Jack and the Beanstalk on your level. They can do so many wonderful things. And we've transferred our thinking. If a man is a colossus, he must be like Mr. Texas, only about two feet taller and have bigger biceps and bigger muscles, because this is a case of strength. Listen, the woman wasn't stupid. You think she'd say to a man 15 feet high, what is the secret of thy great strength? Pretty obvious, isn't it? I think this man was maybe six inches smaller than anybody else, not six inches taller. His chest wasn't so big on his muscles. Because if you still think he was a giant, a Hercules, what are you going to do with a scripture that says, not by what? Might nor by, but by my self, the Lord of hosts. And yet this man is able to do what other men cannot do. He goes into an area, and when he goes in, the enemies of God say, now we've got him, and we're going to hold him here. And he just stretches, and he gets up, and he says, I'd better go home. And I'm not going to knock the gatekeeper up, so I lift the gates up, and he takes the gates a mile and a half up on a hilltop. Didn't even sweat about it, just picked the whole thing up and carried them away. I guess they had a problem getting them back. But he just carried them away and didn't think it was anything. Why should it be? After all, he's operating under supernatural power. Most of us have never seen it. I don't for a minute condemn the kids that are rebelling in these days. Do you know why? Because we've never shown them Holy Ghost power. We've preached sermons to them. We've lectured to them. We've told them that Jesus is risen from the dead. We've told them there's a third person in the Trinity. But when it comes to exhibiting that power, brother, we just haven't demonstrated that power. And so they think we're just phonograph records in the pulpit, and we're doing an awful lot to hold the kingdom, lest it should come apart. We're doing an awful lot to try and defend God's purity, and God's holiness, and God's Son. We're defending him. Well, as Minister Spurgeon used to say, and you'll agree with a Baptist like that, I'm sure, if you release the Bible, you don't need a sword. Pardon me, if you release a lion, you don't need to walk in front of it with a sword. It can take care of itself. Well, by the same token, once the Holy Ghost comes on man or woman, you don't need any excuse. You don't need to defend. He'll do the work, and he lifts the gates of Gaza, and he goes away. Do you know why it says it was through faith? Because there were conditions that God had laid down. This man was a Nazirite. And as a Nazirite, there were three things he couldn't do. One, he couldn't drink wine. Two, he couldn't touch anything that was dead. Three, he couldn't have his hair cut. He couldn't touch wine because it makes merry the heart of man, and he gets out of condition and does foolish things. He must not drink wine. A sign of worldly pleasure. Yesterday we've all made vows, as we've heard tonight. Lord, look, look, after this, I'm not going to stay up any more nights and watch TV. And brother, two nights after this, you'll be there watching the thing. I was in a church where God gave us a touch of revival, and before the week's out, they were offering three, four, five hundred dollar TV sets for fifty and a hundred dollars, and the fellow said, I don't know how to get rid of them. Well, I said, I'll help you tomorrow. Let's get a boat, and we'll go out in the lake and make baptists of the whole lot of them. Let's sink the whole lot in the lake. That's all. You can put yourself out there out of reach of temptation sometime. Oh, how easy to make vows. A sign of worldly pleasure. Wine. He must not do it. You see, there's never any sale price at God's counter. He still demands all. Lord, we say tonight, all for, let my hands perform his bidding. Let my feet walk in his ways. Let my eyes see Jesus only. That man that had never seen Jesus before, and never heard him preach, and never seen a miracle, he quit his business right there, and left all and followed him. Would you do it? Will you do it tonight with all you know about him? Not a lie, you're going to have a thousand times more trouble at the judgment seat than he had. You know the complete revelation. You know the doctrine. You've been to Bible school. You've been to seminary. You're a big shot. You have a pulpit. You teach people. Oh, brother, are you in for trouble at the judgment seat? This book is going to rise in condemnation against us. God's going to say, you bunch of unbelieving believers. I wrote that, and you say to somebody now, son, if you bring all your dirty sins, you know, God says, him that cometh unto me, I will let no wise cast out. You believe him and take what he has. Well, why don't you do that for healing? Why don't you do that for a dozen other areas in, in your life? If you tell the kid to do it, you ought to do it, didn't you? If God says you'll send revival, we ought to believe him, shouldn't we? If God says you're to fast, he doesn't say if ye fast, he says when ye fast. He doesn't say when we sin, he says if we sin. But he doesn't say if you fast, he says when you fast. Don't be like, this is a condition. It's always been a condition. You can't touch wine, it's a sign of worldly pleasure. You can't touch any bone that's dead. It's a type of worldly people who are dead in trespasses and in sin. I was preaching in Minnesota some years ago, and I said, maybe some of you are having trouble because you're, you're harnessed in business with an ungodly fellow. No wonder your business, a man about six feet, three or four, one of those big Swedish men stood up and he said, preacher don't preach anymore, will you pray for me? I'm in business with my brother, and, and the business is going down, and I give him his money, and he gambles, and he drinks, and I'm going to have to get out of this. Came back to church next night, he said, I walked in the office this morning, and I said to my brother, look, I'm not staying in business with you. Well, I'm not staying in business. He said, I paid him out right there, and my burden's gone, and God's going to bless me, and he did. He broke right off there, what fellowship of light with darkness? What part of he that believeth with an infidel? He gave it up right on the spot. You can't have worldly pleasure. You can't have worldly people, and then he had to let his hair grow. Oh, yes, he had to have a nice roll of hair in the back of his neck, and people would point the finger and say, huh, he's effeminate, isn't he? He looks like a woman. In other words, he had to bear reproach. We don't like that, do we? What would my mother-in-law say? What would the neighbors think? I mean, if we do, oh, yes, yes, yes. Lord, I am dead to everything except scorn. Oh, some of us can stand the, the, the, fist of adversity is the finger of scorn, we can't stand. Who'd ridicule? I don't know what it would be on your level, I'm not going to try and guess. But you see, because he kept these three conditions of his faith, the anointing of God is upon him. Now, this man was normal and very abnormal. The one thing that the Lord burdened me early in the morning, this morning, about this particular section of this, this marvelous story that I won't try to go through tonight is this, that you see, if Samson is a type of a spirit-filled man, and I think he is, then it says he was going down to Timnath, and when he went to Timnath, he could go this way, or he could go that way. And people said, you mustn't go that way. Why not? There's a lion in the way. Now, if Samson is a type of a spirit-filled believer, surely the lion is a type of the devil that goeth about as a roaring lion, speaking whom he may devour. And what did Samson do? Well, Samson took his father and mother with him, and he got down the road, and he said, Dad, Ma'am, would you sit round the corner a minute? I've a bit of business to do. And he went, and the lion spang at him, and he took the lion, and he ranted as though it were a kid of the goat. Now, that's very wonderful. I think the next thing is almost most wonderful. Do you know why? Because he never told his father and mother he'd done it. He said nothing about it. Oh, we wouldn't do it that way. We'd stretch that lion out, we'd get a trophy picture, we'd measure it from the first whisker on its nose to the last whisker on its tail, and we'd say this is the longest, strongest, heaviest, fiercest, terriblest lion that ever walked on the face of the earth. And I did it by myself. But Samson slew a lion, and he said nothing about it, because the power was not his. It wasn't native power, it was supernatural. It would have been confirmed by the thing. Now, tell me this, does the devil push you around, or do you push the devil around? I think again when we get to heaven, one of the embarrassments will be to realize again that Jesus Christ says, I give you power. Come on now preacher, come on deacon, come on Sunday school teacher, come on father at home, with your kids that are so. God says in his word, Jesus says, I give you power, not over the devil, but over all the power of the enemy. Now isn't that something? I have a chapter in one of my books, and lots of people have commented on it, because the title of it is this, Known in Hell. Well Mr. Preacher, I know you'd like to be known at headquarters, they might promote you to a bigger church. Got any ambition to be known in hell? He goes, I don't think you're worth a hell of beans till you are known there. Remember somebody said one day, you know, if you ever want to climb up and be important, you have to learn the formula, and if you cast out evil spirits, oh brother you've got it made, the crowd will come, and all you have to do is go to someone possessed with an evil spirit and say in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, come out of him, and the spirit will come out. And the fellow said, well thank you, I'll get my brothers to come along. They found someone possessed of an evil spirit, and they began to say, come out of him thou evil one, and to the amazement of the man may be, the evil spirit came out. But when Jesus brought an evil spirit out, he always sent them somewhere, because they can't live disembodied as far as I know. They must live somewhere in personality. The man got the spirit to come out, but when the spirit came out, he immediately jumped on the preacher and beat him up, and he knocked him around and kicked him and bruised him, and the poor old preacher thought, good night, what's gone wrong? I thought I got the victory, and he went back, and when he went back, the spirit there said to him, listen, Paul I know, and Jesus I know, but who are you, you serpent? I've never heard of you. What authority have you? Oh, Jesus we know, he embarrassed us, and Paul, we had a headache every day. You know the devil, the devil took a, he gave everybody a half day off in hell, I think, when Paul died. He said, we're not going to see men like that anymore. Paul stand up and say, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, but don't take any notice of them, it's only verb, you know, verbal, it's only sweet language. They're not crucified, all you have to do is pass, to go past your house twice and say, ah, you see he's been to their house three times and hasn't been in our house once. Did you ever hear a crucified man talk back? Did you ever hear a dead man carry to anything anybody else had? Jesus I know. Yeah, you certainly knew Jesus. Paul I know, because everything that Jesus did, Paul did, didn't he? Didn't he undo heavy burdens? Didn't he let the oppressed go free? Didn't he even raise the dead? Well, we can't even raise the living, never mind the dead. We can't even make people tremble, never mind demons tremble. But I'm convinced of this, the church is going to come back into the place of authority where she's going to bind the powers of darkness. I used to have a little old man came to a church I passed that I didn't care if he didn't come any meeting in the week, as long as he came to the prayer meeting on a Wednesday night, and he'd come right down to the front and sit under my nose. And somewhere in that prayer meeting, whatever he prayed, there were two things he always prayed, and they were as fresh as manna from heaven every day. Somewhere in his praying after he preambled a little, he'd get around and then suddenly say, Lord, teach us what is flesh and what is spirit. And he paused. Everybody knew what was coming. Teach us how to bind and how to loose. In my simple poor English tonight, I want to tell you, I don't have to put any better, any better way. I want to tell you that I believe the devil's getting away with too much tonight. Not because Jesus failed, but because we failed. Doesn't Ephesians 6 say that when you put on the whole armor and brother, you better not pray without it. I've said more than once over the prayer meeting room in our churches, we should put, we wrestle not, and leave it there. We wrestle not. Our prayer meetings are much more than giving God a shopping list, and Lord do, do, do you know we need that new organ in the church. Amen. Thank you. Hey John, how are you going on? You going fishing Friday? All in the same breath. Oh, I'm going to pray with these there, brother. I think I, I think I can say, Jimmy, I come to Jimmy's church every Sunday morning at least. Not in the flesh, but in the spirit. But I'm going to join, or I'll be far away with these brethren in prayer these days if they mean business for God to, to see God move in this day. And if you live within 50 miles, why don't you come and join them one night? That's the best thing you could do. I have never been in a city in England as a pastor, but what I've gathered are the preachers of any kind, any breed, as long as they were true about the blood, and about the book, and about the coming of Jesus, and the physical resurrection. I've invited them all, and we, we prayed through nights. When my dear wife was at home, we had one little baby, and I used to say to the boys, let's get praying now, it's almost 10 o'clock, let's get praying boys, you know the Germans will be here at two o'clock. And every night we prayed. They came between 10 minutes to two, and two o'clock in the morning, the Germans would come, the sirens would go, and you had to vacate the, vacate the building. And we creeped down the side of the wall so the shrapnel wouldn't fall on us, but we never quit. We wrestle not. Do we? And trying to write a book right now on the church that is, is not the church that was. And on the editor of the book is about the praying, that the church doesn't pray as the early church used to pray. When I was a little boy in England, they used to talk about two men, one that lived in Latvia, I forget his name, it began with P if I remember right. Another man that lived in Germany, by the name of Blumhart. That man had a gift in prayer. I believe there is a gift in prayer. There's a gift of faith in prayer. I can remember to the time when I used to go to conferences to sing. They don't ask me anymore now, you can understand why. They don't ask me to go sing anymore. Some people ask me to preach now and again. But I met a woman one day and she said to me, did you know John Hyde? I said, no, I know who he is. Did you ever preach at the Cyclops Convention in India? No, I've been to India, but I haven't preached there. Oh, she said, Mr. Rainville, it was something to, to be in a meeting when John Hyde prayed. I said, I guess it was. She said, you know, a friend of mine said, the greatest privilege on earth that I think I could have, better than going to Buckingham Palace, better than having dinner with a Maharaja, somebody. Mr. Hyde, could I join you in prayer one day? And he said, all right, brother, in the morning at nine o'clock. And he said, I went in his prayer room at nine o'clock on the campus, on the, on the grounds of this conference and shut the door. There's only a little room. And he said, it was nine o'clock when I went in and by 15 minutes after nine, John Hyde hadn't prayed. So I thought he must be waiting for me. And he said, I prayed. Well, I'm not sure I prayed, but I said a prayer. And then he said about a quarter to 10. I looked a quarter to 10, John Hyde began to pray. And he hadn't been praying more than half an hour and knock at the door. Well, I'm not going to the door. This is the only chance I'll ever have to pray with this man. I'm staying here. Well, you can keep knocking. I'm not going to open the door if John Hyde doesn't open it. They don't want me anyhow. They want him. Well, I'm not going to the door anyhow. Then the door opened and somebody said, Brother Hyde, it's 10 minutes of three and they're expecting you to speak at three o'clock. 10 minutes of three, nonsense. And now he's been praying from quarter to 10 to quarter to three. I can't believe it. But, oh, he said how he wrestled in prayer, how he wrestled in prayer. And as soon as the conference was over, they would say, Brother Hyde, can you make it back next year? Not to preach, not to sing. You know what this woman said? They used to say, you know, when John Hyde comes, the Holy Ghost comes. And if you don't think that's true, you know, Wilbur Chapman, one of the great evangelists, he preached in Hereford, or Hereford, as you say, where those white-faced cattle come from. They come from Hereford in England. And Wilbur Chapman preached for four days to a crowded house and there wasn't a single soul saved. On the Thursday morning, John Hyde came into town and somebody said, there's another American here. Who is it? A fellow called Wilbur Chapman. How are his meetings going? Nothing doing. We don't understand why you get excited. We've got better preachers in England. He's got a big crowd. There hasn't been a single soul saved. Now, what would you like for lunch? Would you please leave me in a room? I don't want to see anyone till after the meeting tonight. That night there was a break. The congregation broke up. The altars were filled with weeping, repenting people. All over the world afterwards, Wilbur Chapman said, Thursday, a certain day, John Hyde came to town. And when John Hyde came to town, the Holy Ghost came to town. Brother, that's the kind of reputation to have, isn't it? Pastor Bloomheart used to take people on his heart, particularly people demon possessed. And sometimes in a matter of hours they were delivered and they were leaping and praising God that one day he hit a roadblock. There was a girl and the devil drove her and she'd wallow on the floor and she'd spit and she'd fall and she'd blaspheme and carry on. And the more he prayed, the more angry the spirit got. Before one or two people he says, I pledge myself to God. But I'll keep on the burden until that girl is released. I don't care if it takes weeks or months. It took him a year and a half, praying eight hours every day before that girl was delivered. You say, should have got her delivered before. Well, you get them delivered before then. For a year and a half, or a year and ten months. Got up a certain time, disciplined and engaged against principalities and powers. Do we do it? You ever draw a line and say the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost through the blood of Christ Satan, you're not going to pass that, that line. Remember when the black plague swept over Scotland? In the Presbyterian ministry got up one morning by the name of George Wishart. The plague was rolling, rolling, rolling down the country. And in the city I mentioned last night, Dundee, he walked down the boundary line with his hands raised up and he said, plague, I beseech you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. He walked down the other boundary line. He couldn't walk down that one, that's the North Sea, and he couldn't walk down this one because there's the River Tay. But on the two sides where he could walk, he walked down. And people pulled up their windows in the morning and saw the stately, dignified clergyman in his three-quarter coat and his turnt collar, talking as though he could see somebody there, and there was only the wind, and saying, I resist you in the name of the Father. Nobody should die of the plague. And not a single person died of the plague. They died of the plague across the river. They tried to die of the plague across the road. But in that piece of ground that he took for God, not a single person died. Brother, doesn't this make anything? If it doesn't, why don't you quit preaching? Why don't we all quit? If two of you shall agree, did you ever agree about anything without any, any, any desire to be promoted yourself? Without any desire that people should know revival hit your church? Without any desire that people should know that your church is jammed out while the other church is half-empty? Did you ever pray purely for the glory of God, that in an age like this there's going to hell faster than any period in history? Did you ever put your hand in somebody and say, Brother, look, you and I are going to pray and fast if we die? Well, you'll make history because if God fails you, you'll be the first people in history ever failed anyhow, so you'll have a chance to make history that way. Oh, Brother, the resources, the resources. Don't wake up, Brother. You just sleep. You, you, you take your spiritual, uh, tranquilizers. You cover it all up by dispensation. I'll say that God isn't going to work us. Well, do it, but I won't because I'm convinced you'll not get by at the judgment seat with it. You may get by now with your buddies that are as lazy as you are and as indifferent. There was a lion in the way. Who cares about a lion? Doesn't it say in Hebrews there that we read this morning, they stopped the mouths of lions. Who stopped them? This man stopped the mouth of the lion, didn't he? And he didn't have a committee with him? And he didn't have a sword with him and a bomb with him? He just went up to that monster and he talked about tearing its teeth. He tore it apart and threw it down like a piece of paper. And the same God that anointed him says to you, Mr. Preacher, Presbyterian or Pentecostal, Baptist or somebody else, you've got the same Bible, you've got the same promises, we've got the same Christ, we've got the same Holy Ghost, we've got a rough world than ever been lived in. Communism marches on while the church is looking on. There's a lion in the way, but it wasn't bad after he'd been down that way. He cleared the decks for everybody. My, my, my. I'm just thinking now that I took a citywide campaign in Windsor, Ontario about three years ago, three years, two years ago, three years ago, this march. One night after the meeting a little fellow came, a scrubbed and clean and lovely boy you'd ever seen in your life. He had red cheeks and blue eyes and blonde hair pushed back and he stood to attention and he said, Sir, could I speak to you? I said, well sure you can, who am I anyhow? He said, Sir, I want to thank you for writing Y Revival Tales, it's done me a lot of good. I said, how old are you? He said, eleven. I said, thank you. He said, will you give me an autograph? I said, well I will, but I think I should take yours. Well a man told me here last night, he said, I read Y Revival Tales and he said I got, every page got worse and he said I just sat at my desk and threw it over my head and let it go down the back of my filing cabinet. Then he said a few months after God made me eat every word of it and it changed my life. There's a little boy, eleven, he said it's a wonderful book. Well out of the mouths of babes and sucklings I said, thank you son, that's good. He said, I'm going to read you, and I started reading the other one, Meet for Men. I said, good. I gave him my autograph, he went away. A blonde lady came, oh obviously he's a chip off the old glass, sweet looking lady, red cheeks, deep blue eyes, lovely hair, and she said, sir, could I ask you what my little boy said to you? I, I, I don't know what he was going to say. I said, yes, I think you're a very wonderful woman to have a boy like that. The little fellow said he enjoyed Y Revival Tales, that's more than most preachers does, it gets them mad. And she said, he did, he kept coming to me and say, oh mummy I read that last night and I had to pray. Ha, ha, your little guy goes and looks at Channel 12, doesn't he? But this little fellow, he read it and he had to pray. And she said he started reading now, Meet for Men. I said, lady, she said, would you come to my home and see me? I said, yep, I will. When's your husband at home? She said, tomorrow afternoon at three thirty, and I went round the house to see her, went round the corner. She didn't have fifty dollars worth of good furniture, but then she did have six sparkling beautiful children. Her husband not earning too much money. She said, all my children know the Lord. Ha, ha, this is wonderful. She said, Mr. Ravenel, at night after supper, she said, we don't wash dishes, we don't let the kids get tired out. As soon as supper is over, we clear the table, we put Bibles round the table, or we may take Y Revival Tales or some book like that and read a chapter with the Bible, and then all the children get down and pray. And then she said, when we've done that, she said, I take one of the children in a side room for an hour and I teach that little one about Jesus. I take some special Bible study with my child for an hour. I said, that's what Mrs. Wesley did with her seventeen. She said, I know, I copied her. You got time to do that? Huh? I am knitting socks so the church steeple won't fall down. But I am making a potluck supper so the kingdom will be held together. I mean, what are you, I know you're working hard, but I mean, are you working so hard your children are going to hell while you knit socks for the pastor? Side two. No wonder she's raising a brood like that. We have a doctor friend, one of the most brilliant vascular surgeons in this country. He's only in his thirties. His wife is a surgeon and is a, they have their own clinic and everything. They have three children and the oldest I think is not more than eleven, somewhere about that eleven. And when you sit down in their room, he had a palatial, a magnificent home. You talk about the trimmings, brother, they had everything. And one day he said to his wife, you know, we live too swankily. We couldn't afford this house. We can afford one ten times as big and a swimming pool and so, but that's not the way Jesus went. Let's, let's build an ordinary house. And he's built a house now, very, very common looking. Not much furniture, cheap furniture in it, but oh, it's so lovely to sit around the table. You seldom get through a meal in less than two hours. You could be there four or five. If you start eating supper at six, well, you could get away for 12 o'clock at night, something like that. Of course, the children have slipped off the bed by the time you've had, but he had Greek there and the kids can recite Greek. And if you ask them, well, well, how many, how many different philosophies are there on the atonement? They'll tell you the different ones. If you ask them about moral government, they can answer about moral government. If you, if you ask about total depravity, they can tell you what Mr. Finney said and the difference between being born in sin and acquired depravity. The kids are only 11 years of it and they enjoy every minute of it. Oh, brother, it's no good sending your kids to Sunday school, expecting the preacher or the Sunday school teacher to do a miracle in half an hour when you've let them go to hell all the week. It's no good you praying, praying for revival here. If you can't control your own children, forget it, go and apologize to your children. I said that in a meeting and the, and the sheriff of the big city out west, he went home and lined six children up and he sat, he knelt there with his gun and his big badge on and put his hands together and asked each one of the children to forgive him because he hadn't spent enough time with them, teaching them about Jesus and reading the word of God. Oh, it's not too difficult to humble your dirty nose down here, maybe, where nobody knows and everybody's sympathetic. But you go home and humble yourself to your children, that bad psychology. May be, but it may be the first step to victory. I got two amens, that's, that's, that's a lot. Got two amens. Hmm? Jesus I know and Paul I know right. You see, I say this and I say it with a lot of feeling. I pity the kids of our generation, do you know why? Because they've never seen revival. And what's more, most of you have never seen it anyhow. You've seen a week's meetings. You've seen us put an office outside, the Holy Ghost is going to start Monday night when Jackie Jones comes and holds his meetings and he's finishing next Saturday night. And the Holy Ghost didn't go on Saturday night, he didn't even come, never mind, go. Revival? Revival? Revival that you then go to business and make another dollar because you feel the city's going to hell? Revival that you can't eat another meal, you must fast and pray till the night? Do you mean that? I say again, I never get tired of saying it, if Christianity is not supernatural, it's superficial. If you go back ten chapters here in the book of Judges, you have one of the most exciting chapters in the whole Bible. We're all people of God tonight. Well I'll tell you, you may disagree, I'll tell you where we are in Christendom tonight. The Church of Jesus Christ is in Babylon, that's where she is. She's in captivity to materialism. We itch for the same thing that the world itches for. And they go to hell and they don't cost us anything. Here's a little fellow, maybe only in his teens, 17 or 18, threshing corn, and an angel comes, and he looks at this, and the angel says, God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. If he'd said that to me in the same circumstances, in my ignorance, I'd have whipped back and said, what do you mean angel, you telling jokes too? God is with me, a mighty man of valor? I'm not even a mighty man, never mind a man of valor. Look angel, don't crack your jokes here. You see the hole on the hill? My daddy and my mummy live there. You see the next hole? That's where my uncle lives. We're the chosen people of God, but the Midianites have got us. And we've turned day into night and night into day. We should be busy in the daytime, but instead of being busy in the daytime, we're hiding in fear from the Midianites. And we come out at night like little animals, and if we hear a noise, we run back again. What do you mean God is with us? God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. He not only said this, do you know what else he said? He said, listen angel, I'll put you on the spot right here, if God is with us, where be the miracles that our fathers told us of? That's a stiff yardstick for any church these days, isn't it? Where's the miraculous? Next week, God willing, I'll be seeing our dear little granddaughter out just on the West Coast. I'd like to tell you about the revival my son and his team had down in the Tongari area, but it was a fantastic thing. Going into a schoolhouse one morning just to brief the whole thing, and while they were preaching, the Holy Ghost fell on the whole thing, and girls and the staff fell on the floor, and everybody in the assembly in the space of two days was converted, with the exception of one teacher, and she was converted the night after. And we discovered afterwards that the matron of the school had heard that this team was coming, this team of young Americans, and our boy was happening to lead the team there at the time, and they're coming down here into the Tongari area, and she said for a month before they came to my school, I prayed every night from 12 o'clock till 4 in the morning, let this be the day of revival. There's never revival without prayer and traffic, the moving of the spirit of God. Where be his miracles that our fathers told us of? I can imagine my little granddaughter sitting on my knee, I love the little girl, she's a lovely blonde little fat girl, and she's so joyful, and she's such a sense of humor, and she giggles like little girls do, and I love that little darling chap, but you know when I realize I'm a grandpa, oh boy it knocks the bottom out of it sometimes, I'm getting so old. And you know I remember going to my grandma's knee, and my granny putting her hand around me, and telling me some stories, and I think this is why Gideon says, where be his miracles? My grandfather used to take me on his knee, and my grandfather's grandfather took him on his knee, and he said, you know son, I belong the original party that came out of Egypt. You know I used to wake up at night and think we might die, and I'd lift the edge of the tent, and when I looked, there was a fiery cloudy pillar, and I'd turn back and say, God's in the midst of his people, we're all right. And sometimes I'd get nervous, maybe that the Egyptians would catch us up, and I'd look behind, and there's a curtain that God had dropped. And no iron curtain, Mr. Churchill birthed that phrase, but no iron curtain was ever stronger than that, that curtain of vapor. The devil and hell and all the powers of Egypt couldn't get through that. My daddy said, my mummy used to say in the morning, well now son, and get that cereal that was just cooked in heaven a few minutes, we used to go out and get manna, oh boy, gorgeous stuff, crisp and fresh honey on it, it was marvelous stuff to eat. And you know son, I had a pair of shoes, and I wore them for 40 years, and they never went, they never got worn out. And I had a suit, and boy did we used to sweat in the heat, but you know your suit never smelt sweaty, it never got bad. Clothes lasted 40 years, shoes lasted 40 years. One day we were strung up for water, and our leader went and he struck a rock, and out of a rock of all things, a stream of life came, and you know whatever we went, that river of life followed us. In other words, they were walking on miracle, they were dressed in miracle, they were eating miracle, they were drinking miracle, they were seeing miracle, but they never entered into the promised land. We've got people who go a hundred miles to see a miracle, but they won't walk a hundred yards to get broken down and cleansed and filled with the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, if God be with us, where be his miracles? Our Father stole us off, we're living in the last days. God, in the time past, spoken to us by the prophets, in these last days are spoken by his Son, and we're right at the end of time, I'm sure of that. Even if Jesus only comes at 60 years, we're at the end of time. Because with God a thousand years are as a day. And God is restoring supernatural power in his church, in the days in which we live, if he can find the men that he can anoint. What is God saying in his words? When God gave his revelation to Daniel, he said, Daniel, seal up the vision. Seal it up, it's not for this day. When God gave the vision to John on the Isle of Padmas, he said, don't seal up the vision, it's for now. In the day of Daniel, no, in the day of John, yes. Don't seal it up. And didn't the Lord say to Daniel that in the last days, when wicked men do wickedly? Do you think men can go any more wicked than they are now? Isn't wickedness at a premium? I preached in the church not too long ago, and a bunch of girls came in that were living up in a cave on the side of the hills in California. And all they had on was a dress, and they had no underwear, and they sat there and totally exposed themselves in the church. The preacher came in and he said, my God, I know. Oh, and he turned around, he was literally sick, he wanted to vomit, and he said, please send some women up those girls. No shame at all, they laughed. When he talked about him around here, they said, act not a baby, if I want to do business, is it, if I carry it. When they asked him about laws, they said, laws? Those are old-fashioned. Why, you don't believe the Bible, never mind us, that's a pretty rough one, isn't it? Boy, when they hit you bang between the eyes and say, why don't you produce the goods? God says, in the last days when wicked men do wickedly, I'm going to say three things and quick, listen. In these last days, the last 25 years have been the most amazing 25 years, I think, in history. The last days when wicked men do wicked, have wicked men do wickedly? I'm not saying there were three frogs in the revelation, some do, but in your lifetime and mine, many of us, we've had three outstandingly wicked geniuses. Stalin, the Corsican, that ruled that great empire that we call communism, and when he came up after that, there came a man by the name of Mussolini, a jailbird, and he got control of the powers away there in Italy, and a little man used to go through that pass, I forgot, the Brenner Pass, is it, and he used to take a weekly lesson at the feet of Mussolini, and Mussolini says, do it this way, do it that way, do it the other, and when people heard that Hitler was going to take over, they said he'll never do it. We're used to rulers and kings, but Hitler got the nation, and he made the world tremble, and he lengthened the coastline of Germany a thousand miles, and he pushed more kings off their thrones than any other man, and he liquidated at least six million Jews, and he pulled the heart out of America and took your best sons, and he raped England, and he devastated as far as Norway. One man! Sometimes when I've talked about prophets, somebody comes along very sweetly and says, you know, by the way, we were living in a different dispensation. Well, I happen to know that, thank you. And the days are very different now, are they? If somebody had told you six or seven years ago that one young man about 24 years of age would punch General Motors on the nose, and punch Ford's on the nose, and punch the multi-billion dollar automobile industry on the nose, and make them make 26 improvements, do you think he would do that? Do you think anybody would agree that young Nader could have done it? But he did it, and he did it without the Holy Ghost. Would you imagine a few years ago that one mad little woman by the name of Madeleine Murray would get the Constitution of America altered because half a dozen people wanted it altered? Oh, that 160 million people didn't want it altered didn't matter a minute. We've got to defend the minority, so we altered the Constitution. Brother, we're in trouble in America. We've got the Bible out of school, so it's dark at school. We've got the Bible out of our homes. Most of you don't have family altars, so pity the poor orphans now. They can't get the Bible in school, they can't get the Bible at home, and most of them don't even get the Bible in church. So, brother, we're under a triple umbrella of darkness. Boy, we need to pray for Russia, but God save America. Not God bless her, God save her in England too. And God says when wicked men do wickedly, when you're Stalin and you're Hitler and you're Mussolini, come on, God says when wicked men do wickedly, the people that do know their God, not the people that know their Bibles, not the people that know what Mr. Schofield says or somebody else, the people that do know their God. There's all the difference in the world between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word. The people that don't know their God shall be stolen to expite. Look, it's no good screaming to high heaven and fasting and trying to produce our own holiness and say, Lord, don't you impressed with us? We say that none of us, Lord, are able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either ask or think. And then the text turns around and says, according to the power that worketh in us. Brother, there's no more power in your church than there is in you as a preacher. There's no more power in your church than there is in you in a Sunday school teacher. The power that worketh in us is the power there tonight. What power do you have in your life? Is it in prayer? Is it in supplication? Is it in intercession? Is it in fasting? Is it in the secret covenant with God? Or are you just a has-been? You just agreed to sign the doctrine of your church and they accepted you. Boy, they'll accept almost anything in some churches, particularly if you have a bit of money and you'll pay your tithe. All right, this man lost his anointing, he lost his power, they put him in jail, he lost his sight, he's lost everything. And it comes to where I want to finish tonight. Because when he's sitting in jail, are you going to suggest that when he's down there in prison and he's pushing a bar around, these Philistines said he destroyed our crops, he once tied the fox's tails together and he destroyed all our crops as well as destroying cities. Are you going to suggest that that man who had seen the glory of God, the man who had torn the lion, the man who when 2,000 people came, he picked up a jawbone of an ass and he slew the best men from the military academy with a jawbone of an ass for the sheer joke of the thing. And every time they came, he tore his enemies underfoot. Are you going to suggest that that man who is in captivity now never shed any tears, didn't break his heart and mourn and groan over his condition? Don't you think he said, Lord, why didn't I die after I slew the lion? Why didn't you take me to heaven immediately? I had 2,000 corpses around me. Why didn't you take me in victory? Here I am languishing and my enemies of God laugh. Do you ever hear hell laughing at the church of God today? The man that knocks at my door and stands there smiling with a big Bible, he isn't a God-blessed Baptist, he's a heretic. And he'll go to the ends of the earth to make me a Jehovah witness if he can. But my darling deacons that look so nice Sunday morning coming to church, they haven't knocked on a door in all their lives. And when you turn the man away, there's another knock and you're gone. Instead of a Mormon, instead of a Jehovah witness, there's a Mormon telling you of what he doesn't even know himself. Where are you, spirit-filled Baptists and you, spirit-filled Pentecostals? What are you doing, going to banquets and breakfasts still? Somebody's going to have to write a new phrase in the Bible, going into all the world and compel them to come in if they have five dollars for the breakfast at the banquet. Brother, that's as played out as anything thus far. Isn't it amazing what we've tried in the last few years, breakfasts and banquets and lunches and organizations and citywide crusades, and we haven't had a phase of revival in the memory of any living man here. So it's time to come back in repentance and brokenness and tell God, hear Lord, I've no confidence in evangelism as such, I've no confidence in organization, I've no confidence in all these things, they're rusty and worn out. And the man mourns and groans there, and they fastened his wrists with brass, and he has to push round and round there at the treadmill, instead of having a donkey do it, they've got a man, and he was once a prophet of the most holy God, and hell trembled when he moved. And now everybody laughs at him, and I want to tell you I believe the church is there tonight. The world scorns us, they ridicule us, they laugh at us, our crusades don't mean much. When a big crusade was held in New York recently, the reporter said that somebody came to town and the giant just yawned. It didn't yawn when Mr. Finney went to cities. This man is down, he's despondent, he knows the nation now has no voice, and so he does what any sensible man would do, he got down to praying, and he prayed a very simple prayer. I challenge you to pray tonight. He prayed, oh this to me seems more than his exploits, because he's broken and contrite, and he gets before God, and he thinks of the history of Israel, and the time when God was with her, and when the enemies trembled. And now Bell and all the gang are laughing at the Midianites. He gets down and crumbles up before God, and he prayed a very simple, a very profound prayer. He says, Lord strengthen me. Just once, just once Lord. I've asked you before and I never kept, just give me one more chance, and if I miss it and foul it up and mess it up, I'll never come again Lord and ask you, but I'm so determined. And then he says, Lord strengthen me just once, even though I die. Oh no, he's gone to the place where he means business. He hears some footsteps, a boy comes down, he says, hey come on, take him into the house of Dagon, the fish god. He says, why? Because the place is packed with people. There are 3,000 in the gallery, and most likely 6,000 in the auditorium, and they lead Samson up. Once nobody could take him, and now one boy can take him by the finger. At one time 2,000 couldn't arrest him. Now one boy takes him back. He must have felt humiliated. He got up on the stage, and he said to the boy, I've been in this house of Dagon, the fish god, before. If I remember right, there are some pillars here on the platform. He said, that's right sir. He said, I'm a blind man, I could fall over. Would you put me between the pillars? And then he prayed his prayer, Lord, strengthen me this once, even though I die. And the anointing came on him, and he pushed the pillars out, and the house came down. The word of God says that he killed more in his dying than in his living. This is the moment of triumph. He's prepared to die in order that deliverance and victory might come, and the Lord says, I'll take you at your word. You can have the greatest revival you've ever had, but it's going to cost you your very life. And he prayed, and God anointed him, and the house came down. And convinced from what I said the first night in Joel 2, that Pentecost was the former rain, we're going to have the latter rain, God's going to bring the house down, when he can find people who'll say, Lord, if it cost me my life, strengthen me just once. Dare you say that tonight, preacher? And dare you go back and apologize next Sunday morning for the way that you've treated your church, that you haven't treated them intelligently or passionately or with love or with deep concern, you haven't rallied them to pray, you've been more concerned that you kept the church out of the red, in the black, and you're coming to get on with the people and have a nice assembly, and people say, no, that's one of the nicest churches in town. Listen, have you got a holy ghost church tonight? Have you got a miracle church tonight? Have you got a place where the Christ of God can walk in your midst as he walked in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks? Strengthen me just once. I say reverently, for God's sake, don't say it for the sake of saying it. Don't say it just to get a bit of pressure off your spirit. Don't say it because you're embarrassed with your impoverishment tonight. Say it in the light of a perishing world. Say it in the light of an American that can't go on at this rotten rate much longer because, as Billy Graham's wife said to him one day when he'd written his book Bear World Aflame, and he gave her the manuscript and she said, Billy, I want to ask you a question. He said, darling, go on, honey, say, what is it? She said, have you read me, left me the manuscript? I've read it. Tell me this, is this book true? Why, honey, of course it's true. Well, Billy, I want to tell you something. What do you want to tell me? She said, Billy, if this book is true, if America is in this condition, if we're so near the coming of Christ and judgment, if Almighty God doesn't send judgment to America soon, he'll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Isn't that something? Brother, you'd better go home and apply for a job as a garbage carrier if you're not going to obey the light. This meeting's going to mean a lot, I'm sure, in eternity. It's the end of the line for us tonight. If you don't end up one way, you'll end up the other way, I'll tell you that, before God. Because God won't give you any more light after tonight until you obey what you've got and, and, and your light will become darkness. And your soul will freeze up and your church will dry up. And brother, you'd better, it's a pity you came to the meeting tonight, not to hear me, but because God wanted you to hear this word. I didn't want to preach it, but I had to. I'm asking you tonight, do you long for that touch of the supernatural? Do you long for a church that can pray in the Holy Ghost and drive the devil off the territory? Do you long for a church where the oppressed can be set free? Do you long for a church where miracles of regeneration happen week by week? Will you pray this prayer tonight? Lord, strengthen me. Not my brother, not. Lord, Lord, strengthen me. Just once, even if I die. It could be that the destiny of millions of souls hang on this meeting tonight. Some of you young people may go to the mission field from this meeting. I don't know, I'm not going to try and guess, I'm not going to try and intimidate you. I've delivered my soul tonight. What are you going to do? Pray this prayer? Go back and apologize to your Sunday school? Go back and apologize to your pastor you haven't been a true biblical deacon? Go back to your Sunday school class and tell them you've lacked the prestige of teaching, but you've never cared for their souls? Go back to your church and say you've been content to have no revival, you've just gone on your way. And you apologize to the church and get straightened out. Will you start it tonight? Will you come to this altar now and say, Lord, strengthen, meet me. Just once, Lord. This is a pledge between earth and heaven. Shall we pray?