Leonard Ravenhill passionately addresses the moral decay of society, drawing parallels between the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the present-day world. He emphasizes that God's judgment is not merely a future event but a response to the cries of the oppressed and the broken-hearted. Ravenhill calls for a divine intervention to awaken the church from its complacency and to respond to the cries of those suffering without hope. He urges believers to recognize the urgency of their mission to rescue the perishing and to live with a heart that reflects the love of Christ. Ultimately, he challenges the church to rise up and be a beacon of hope in a world filled with despair.

Father, tonight, because of that eternal offering offered by the eternal priest, it is with confidence we now draw nigh, and Father, our Father, cry. We thank you, Lord, that you're not beyond the farthest star. You've told us in your risen splendor that where two or three are gathered together in your name, you're there in the midst. We can truly sing as that, I think of a meeting in England that starts almost every week with the same song, God is here, and that to bless us with the Spirit's quickening power. See the clouds already bending, wait to drop the grateful shower. Let it come, O Lord, we pray thee. Let the shower of blessing fall. We are waiting, and Lord, we want to exalt you and crown you, Lord, of all even tonight. Lord, as we sing that wonderful phrase, it's as vast as eternity. All the saints adore thee. Lord, we think of that day when, as the book of Revelation tells us, on his head are many crowns. We sing it so often, crown me with many crowns. We crown you because you're the king of love. The king of love my shepherd is, and you wear the crown of love. We thank you, you wear the crown of victory over death, the crown of victory over disease, the crown of victory over everything which has spoiled and polluted men. We bless you, one day we're going to sit down with Abraham and Isaac and all the saints of all the ages. Lord, it's going to be beyond our comprehension, it is now and it will be then. But Lord, we bless you, our vocabularies will have stretched by then, our understanding will be stretched, our hearts will be, every part of us, our affections, our emotions, every part of us. Lord, we couldn't do that in the body as we are now, we'd die. Our nerves wouldn't stand the strain, our emotions wouldn't stand it. But Lord, we bless you, one day we shall be acceptable in Jesus Christ, in that final day. Lord, we're glad we didn't have to bring a resume of our lives when we came to the cross. You accepted us just as we were, some of us stiff-necked and arrogant, some of us very depleted and depressed and despised, despicable, diseased, and surely damned. But Lord, we thank you, you didn't look us over, you saw us in our misery. We thank you that you looked over our leprosy, the leprosy of our heart, the vileness of our conscience, and every disorder that we had that had been so messed up by sin. But Lord, we bless you that we came, we cried like the leper, make me whole and you made us whole. We cried like the blind man, all that I might see and you opened our eyes. We would have far off and you brought us nigh. But Lord, we think of the millions tonight without God and without hope. We think of the terrible reproach upon the church that 2,000 years after Jesus came, we're still treading water, we're still more interested in putting up buildings than we are of pulling down strongholds. Lord, reverse the order. God, give us a holy antagonism against every evil system, whether it's in the church or out of it, whether it's in this country or some other country. Lord, we're sick to death of news reports of deaths, even now of children come and place, shooting each other and all the other horrible things that they've been taught day by day on their TVs and elsewhere. But Lord, we bless you that you are a merciful God. If you were not, you'd have dropped the atom bomb of your anger on the world tonight. Lord God, we have sinned a billion times today. Maybe in America alone we've broken and transgressed the Ten Commandments without any qualm of conscience. It's become a way of life. God, we're so in dire need of one thing, and that's one tremendous divine intervention. Lord, we know that democracy will not work because it's all man-controlled from senators of conference. Lord, we have no hope in ourselves. We've tried this so long. I thought tonight for some reason about World War I when men went marching in England. I remember them going down the streets, beating drums and saying this is a war to end war. And it didn't. It left 16 million men trampled into the soil away there in France. We think of all the battles that have been fought. We think of the pact that's been signed now between this country with Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Reagan. Lord, I know it hasn't made one, it hasn't made a difference of a candlelight to that war that you have ordained will come to pass before too long, the awful battle of Armageddon. But Lord, we thank you. You've guaranteed us the ultimate triumph of the gospel over every iniquitous system men have. Lord, we bless you. There's no barrier that you can't pull down. There's no darkness that you cannot penetrate with light. There's no death that you cannot touch with life. There's no bondage you cannot touch and bring freedom. Lord, we bless you for Jesus Christ tonight. He said, whom the sun sets free, he is free indeed. We thank you, Lord. He didn't need a thousand men to die on the cross. He didn't say to his disciples, you'll all be crucified with me. You said, I be lifted up. And we thank you that you broke the powers of death. You went into the sepulcher and you rose again from the dead. Lord, give us a new assurance that you're a living Christ tonight. Not a Christ painted on a picture somewhere. Not a Christ just in words in this book, but a living personality. God, that we might honestly say, thou O Christ art all I want. Cure us from all the petty things of this world. Give us eyes to discern what is flesh and what is spirit, what is trivial and what is triumphant, what is of men, what is of God, what is visible and tangible and what is eternal. Lord, we ought to be living now with a life that comes from another world. People should see the beauty of Jesus. We read today in your word, one question, one statement there was, let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. And the other one says, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. You didn't say worship him with a thousand dollar check. You didn't say worship him by a hundred mile pilgrimage. You didn't say go to Lourdes or go to St. Peter's or go to Jerusalem. We bless you say that where, where we meet thee thou art found and every place is hallowed ground. Lord, we pray for every meeting to the ends of the earth tonight. I think about dear Paul. He used to go out there in that forest, 150 miles from home and hang from his church and hang a little, a little oil lamp on a tree and look up and watch satellites sailing through the sky. And there he was trying to get those people, teaching them to read and sing. I think of the woman that took the only thing she had in the world, a goat and sold it to pay the ferry over the river and said she wanted to preach a long time. I won't get back for six months. Lord, we thank you for the areas of the world where there's hunger tonight. They don't need an automobile to get there. They have a driving force inside. They want to worship the lamb. They want to bring with an offering that's not visible, but invisible. An offering for which they'll be rewarded in eternity. Lord, we pray for every tired mystery, that young fellow up the Amazon that's struggling with the new language, struggling with the new climate, struggling with the new vocabulary, struggling with new food. His body isn't readjusted. His emotions not readjusted. Nothing's readjusted. He feels he's an idiot to have left a secure job in a nice little church here and sweat it out up there. But Lord, we bless you that one day he who has seen us in secret will reward us openly. Lord, we think of the applause that these precious mysteries will get in that great day when all values will be straightened out. When we live, Lord, and see so much that we touch every day has corruption in it, death in it. It has no value at all. Lord God, we bless you for this word, this lamp for our feet, this light for our path. We bless you for the men. I think particularly of England at the moment where men were burned at the stake. I think of the cost that Wycliffe had when he said he put the Bible in the hand of every plow boy. I think of Latimer and Ridley there, burned at the stake. This Bible is blood inside and blood out of it. And I think it's going to cost more and more blood. Even today it costs blood in these other countries. Lord, save us from smugness. Save us from a fatal contentment. Lord, we bless you that the paradox is we have peace within and yet we war within. Not war against the flesh, that should be over. Not war against the will of God. We're at war with everything that's satanic and evil, all that will blind and destroy men forever. So Lord, we bless you for those who are here tonight. Bless those who cannot come and give us a word that will quicken our hearts tonight. We give you praise in Jesus' name. Thank you. Okay, now we're going to read from the book of Genesis, if you know where that is. Like the colored man said, he heard the man preach. He meant to say from Genesis to Revelation, he said from generations to revolutions. Well, that's what the book is, if we really believe it. It's generations to revolutions, isn't it? Okay, chapter 18. How many of you have a cold tonight? Oh, quite a number. Well, I haven't, so anyone? You know, I remember being in a meeting a few years ago and we were eating a meal after the morning service. A lady came and nudged me behind. I looked up, she said, can I hug your neck? I know people want to break it, but I said, what? Can I hug your neck? I don't know what you mean. So she showed me what it was. Well, I hug necks usually, but last week we were out at Kilgore and I hug people, you know, I just give them a hug. And somebody didn't like it, so I said, fine, I've finished hugging people. For one people, I don't want to catch a cold, keep it to yourself. And the other thing is, I love you all whether I hug you or not. No good hugging if I don't pray for you every day. You may as well go to any church. Excuse me. Okay, Genesis chapter 18. Genesis chapter 18 and verse 20. If I mentioned to you Sodom and Gomorrah, what do you think of? Well, in most cases we just think of corruption. We think of a thing that's popular now even called sodomy. Well, why did the Lord go down? Let me ask you a question. You think God has wound up the clock of the ages and set the alarm and that whatever happened is going to go off? Does God judge us because he's appointed a day which he'll do it? Or does he, is it a case of time or is it a case of temperature? Sodom and Gomorrah was not a judgment, it was mercy. If God hadn't destroyed them, they'd have lived 10 more years, they'd have rotted in their sin, they'd have all the diseases we have now. I believe it's an act of mercy. And it says here, what did God do? In his 20th verse it says, the Lord said, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah. You know, that thing has haunted me this week. It didn't just look down at the bathhouses, it didn't just look at the people trading their bodies, it didn't look at the people fornicating and doing all the devilish things they do. He heard their cry. Maybe it was a cry of the children that would be mutilated or forgotten in that day. But he heard their cry. That's what it says in verse 20 of this chapter 19. Now look over into verse 13 of the, oh that was chapter 18 verse 20. Chapter 19 and verse 13. For we will destroy this place because of the cry of them as waxen great before the face of the Lord and the Lord has sent us to destroy it. You see, this is not, this is not a cry calling for help. This is a cry of people in a situation which is beyond description. And they're crying out of brokenness. They're crying out of despair. And you know, that's where God has to get lots of people. I believe sometimes, you know, when people call me, I'm in this situation, I'm in that situation, ask the Lord to take it off of me. I said, listen, somebody else has been praying the Lord to put it on you. The only way to develop character is not to unload everything you don't like, spit out everything that's bitter. You take it, you digest it, and then you go through hell, what do you care? All he wants to do is thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. There's no, God isn't capricious. He designs everything for the perfecting of my life, to build me up in my most holy faith. I have to do that. You're looking for God to do it. He says, do it yourself. Isn't that what he says? Where is it? In Jude? Building up yourself in your most holy faith. When fellows come in my, I don't think I have a big library, bigger than some, maybe, and they look around, I say, well, listen, let me remind you, all that, those men, you see all those volumes there, there's about 30 of them in red binding, written in the in the 1600s. The man who wrote those 16 volumes, or 30 volumes, the man who wrote all, he only had the same book that I have. That's all he had. He only had the same God. He only had the same Holy Spirit. He had no privileges, because he has a big head. What's the good of having an extensive head, if you've got a shrinking heart? And nowhere in the word does God say, son, give me thy head. He says, son, give me thy heart, for out of it are the issues of life. Well, then he says here, that the cry has come up before God. Look for a moment there in that little book of Jude, which is really an epitome of the whole Bible, I think, the book of Jude, verse 6, in the first chapter. And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting change, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day. You know, I hear people say some day, sometimes there are many evil spirits, they are fallen angels. That's not true. I've never found a theologian yet that knows where those evil spirits came from, if they pre-existed before what's recorded here in the word. But they're not fallen. The angels are reserved, in bondage, tied up, if you like, and they've been there for 2,000 years. They'll be there another 2,000 if the Lord wants that. But what's it say? That in change, unto darkness, unto the judgment of the great day, even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of them in like manner, giving themselves to fornication, going after strange flesh, and setting forth an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Will you be surprised if I tell you there's nobody in hell fire right now? I believe the beast and the false prophet were the first to go. Do you believe that? All in favor keep quiet. They're reserved in a chamber that God has. But let me go to something that might lighten this up a little more. In Ezekiel chapter chapter 16. Ezekiel 16 and verse 46. Thine elder sister is Samaria, and her daughters that dwell at thy left hand. Thy younger sister that dwelleth at thy right hand is Sodom and her daughters. Yet thou hast not walked after their ways, nor done after their abominations. But as if that were a very small thing, thou hast corrupted more than they know their ways. As I live, saith the Lord, Sodom thy sister hath not done she nor her daughters, as thou hast done and thy daughters behold. This was the iniquity of Sodom. Look, supposing, supposing now for a minute, before you read any further, supposing I had said tonight everybody gets a paper and pencil coming in and write down in a sentence what is the iniquity of Sodom. You'd say morality, sexual perversion, sodomy, everything. But that's not what it says here. See what it says here? In Ezekiel 16 and verse 49. Behold this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness, which was in her. And verse 50, they were haughty and committed abomination before the Lord. I don't believe I ever go into a store, a food store, whether it's Piggly Wiggly or any other Wiggly. I look down the counter there, see 50 different kinds of meat, different cuts, pork. What else you got? Beef, chops, what? Chuck roast, round roast, any other roast. Rows and rows of meat, rows and rows of cheese, rows and rows of crackers, rows and rows of... Pride and fullness of bread. It's our downfall today. Arrogance, we're American. Lots of American Christians, they're Americans before they're Christians. They're more excited now about a political meeting than the prayer meeting. Far more excited. Listen, there's one controlling the universe, I don't care who gets in. In one sense, I know it would be better if some certain men get in. But you see, God is full of surprises. You wouldn't have dreamed after a hundred years, a solid block of Roman Catholicism had blasted Europe, and then God reaches down into a, into a cell where there's a brilliant Roman Catholic priest by the name of Martin Luther, and cleanses him and sets him on fire, and he shakes the very gates of hell. If you've gone into England, you've seen a couple of fellows, uh, dons as they call them in the university, teachers, both of them men of impeccable morality, both of them tremendous scholars, both of them hymn writers, though Charles is better known than John as a hymn writer, and they were scholars of the first degree. They preached in the greatest cathedrals in England, and then they decided, when at an invitation George Whitfield gave them, to become street preachers. I'd like to see that come back. I spent most of my life in England street preaching. It's the most rewarding ministry I know. Jesus did it. Preachers want to stand here, have a nice salary, and a nice little church, and everybody be kind to them. Bring them Easter eggs at Christmas, and sausage, uh, no, Easter eggs at Easter, and sausage at Christmas. I got it mixed up. And that's all there is to it. Where did Jesus go? He went where the fish were, in the streets. Where did Wesley go? In the streets. The greatest revivals in history have been street preachers. In fact, there's a mission in England called the Open Air Mission. I tell you, if I, if I were younger, I'd be glad to go out still at night and preach. We used to go, uh, nine o'clock Saturday night till midnight. Then, of course, I'm not short-winded, I'm a bit long-winded, so I preach till one o'clock in the morning, and the neighbors all objected, Ray Mills too noisy. So, they took me to the police court, and I had a wonderful time. I had to fight the liquor trade. A little lawyer stood there, and he said, well, what would you do if you could control all the liquor in America, in England? I said, send it to hell where it came from. Boy, was there a ruffle in the court. Sure. I got a chance to testify. Two or three courts in England got taken to court for holding street meetings that blocked the traffic. If I'd asked them all to come to court, they wouldn't have come. So, block the street, and you get them. Argued with the chief of police, argued with the lawyers. One of the worst men in town had been saved, a man called Smith, and, uh, he was about 70. He was the most notorious gambler and drinker in town. He got saved, everything changed. When they had me in the court, I wore my clerical collar, you know, to get some influence. And I walked in the court, they asked me to swear, uh, on the Bible. I said, I don't swear at anybody. They said, you swear by the Bible. I don't. I said, I'm a Quaker. That's what I said, Brother Brown, I'm a Quaker. I said, I don't need a Bible in my hand to tell the truth. I tell the truth all my life, and I preach it. Boy, I got preaching there. There were five judges. I said, just a minute before you start. This is a trial. The judge said, what do you mean it's a trial? I said, I mean you're going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ before too long and answer for this trial. Do you know what happened? He died of shock within five days. That was great. I was so happy. I was so happy. I got a shot in. When I got really going, though, this, this fellow that had been saved from the depths, man alive, what do you expect? It was like David had been lifted from a horrible pit. When I said, Jesus Christ came to save today, he jumped up in the gallows, had it, hallelujah. The chief of police in all his gaudy uniforms says, this is not a meeting, be quiet or I'll send you out. He kept quiet for about six minutes, then he yelled as loud as he could, glory to God. All the cops looked up. You know, he kept that up for a, for a whole while, and eventually the only thing they could do, well, what they did, at the beginning of the court, I was number 12 on the list. No, I was number one on the list, and, and the chief of police stood up and said to the chief judge, uh, let's put Ray Mill at the end. I want the court clearing. I thought, that's great. So then they let all the policemen, and they stood all around the court. All the policemen stood there giving me the thumbs up sign, you know, because I'd been having some good times in street meetings. Anyhow, we, we won the day. Do you know what happened? They gave me a suspended sentence. So I was coaching math at the time. I got on the bus and went about 40 miles, came back six months afterwards, and went in a different court, a massive place. And the judge, judge called me up, uh, what did it say? Uh, what did it say now? How do you phrase it in England? The court or the, not the king, what did it say? I can't, I can't tell you. They put it in, you know, stilted stylish English. It was very nice. I enjoyed it very much. Uh, the crown, the crown, the crown versus Ray Mill. I thought, yes, it does, right. And I'm not running. So got through the whole thing, and the judge said, well, you were here six months ago. I said, yes, sir. He said, you know, I'm not the judge that tried you last. I said, no, sir. He said, you know what? He died a week after you talked to him. Well, I, I, I didn't say a thing. But I got the, I got the shot in anyhow. Then he said, well, okay, the sentence is this. You go to jail for seven days or a five dollar fine. I said, I'll take jail. He said, what? A clergyman go to jail? I said, why not? John Bunyan did a good old Baptist. I'm a Methodist, so I should go. He said, you mean that? I said, sure. I said, the apostle Paul went many times. I'd be happy to go to jail. He said, uh, he shook his head. Five dollar fine. I said, five dollars? I don't have one dollar. He said, what? A clergy, a clergyman doesn't have five dollars, and this clergyman doesn't. Oh, he said, uh, the clerk of court at the back, your pay going out, you know, he just waved to say somebody paid it for you. You know what they did going out? Oh, the Baptist game, the Pentecostals game. The court was, court was grounded. Going out, they stuffed bills, one dollar bill, five dollar bills. I said to the cop, could you arrest me again? It pays. I said, I get paid better for coming to jail than I do for preaching. So we won the day anyhow. But all goes to tell you, see, the, the, every, every city I've been in, God knows, and I've been in the, some of the best in England, I got known as being the preacher, the street preacher. I'd say one thing, I was going across a square, and a lady came up to me, had a big red shawl on her. Everybody, she's a notorious fighter. Boy, she practiced on cops. She loved knocking cops out. And there's a policeman standing, I was going past, she came up behind me and put her arms on me, said, hi, Leonard, and gave me such a hug. She believed in hugging anyhow. And she gave me a hug, and the cop says, hey, who's that? Do you know who she is? She's the worst woman in town. I said, maybe she is. But she knows somebody loves her anyhow. And all the, there were three cops standing there, they stood and laughed and said, I've never seen her. She fights guys, and she loves you. I said, that's okay. It's infectious. The Lord told me to love people. I fight the devil, but I love people. But you see, that's where they are tonight. How many, how many of you know who Francis Thompson was? You don't know his poem? What is, how's it started? I fled, fled him down the days and down the years. Do you know that, Bob? You don't know that? And he used to sleep on a park bench in England, and a Catholic priest passed him night after night, saw this guy, just on the bench, no covering, there he was. Whether it was raining or anything, there he was. And one night, the priest went and sat at the side of him and talked with him, and then he took him to a place. And eventually, the man came to know Christ, and wrote the greatest poem, maybe outside of the Bible, unless you think Mayfield's Everlasting Mercy is that. But that's where the jewels are. And there's thousands in the streets tonight. It's alright having meetings indoors, but that's where they are. And God has told us to rescue, that's been on my mind so much this week, rescue the perishing, care for the dying. Of course, they're perishing in the church, I know that. The average church, every row is death row, because they're not born again. They've gone through religious exercise, they've no living relationship. It's alright to sing for thee all the follies of sin, that's not what the Bible says. It says, Moses chose to, what? Suffer Christ, then enjoy the pleasures of sin. Do you think there's no pleasure in sin? Why are all the gambling places packed in Las Vegas tonight? Because there's pleasure, there's excitement, there's joy, there's thrill, it stirs the emotion, it makes a man feel as if he's somebody. There's pleasure in sin, but how long? For a season. It's pleasure now and damnation forever. You know, none of us really sacrifice. When I hear this man gave up this, I had a man singing for me once in a church in Canada, Dr. Oswald Smith's big church. This great big fellow and his wife were there. They'd sung on Broadway, they were the stars of Broadway, about 10 years before that. He had a fabulous tenor voice. One night he said, I want to give you my testimony. I was just going to sign a contract to make so many records for 30 million dollars, and you see what it cost me to serve the Lord. I told him after, I said, all you all you sacrifice to serve the Lord was going to hell, that's all you sacrifice. He wouldn't have stood the rest of the journey with his wife, they were always quarreling. I said, all I think anybody gives up is hell, that's all you give up. They don't alter the fact we've got as many heathen in our country. In fact, I'm convinced that most people in church today are Sadducees. They don't believe in angels, they don't believe in the resurrection. It's just a formula. I'm waiting to see some fellowship where there's vibrant life. As I said to a preacher the other day, I want to see God raise up a center, you can guarantee. Where's your husband? Oh, my husband wouldn't come here. He wouldn't go to church, he quit that 10 years ago. He said, I'm not going to church. I said, listen, I'm waiting to see when you can go to your husband or friend and say, listen, you can't come to our church twice, two successive Sundays, you can't come a third without getting saved. What's about the fastest growing church? Bunk them, I'm not interested. I want a church like the apostolic church. No man dare join himself to that church. Dear God, there's hypocrisy in your stepping. I called a man the other day, I said, Martha darling, I never call this one, I called him. And he said, Brother Raymond, I've been very sick since Christmas, I've had a deep surgery. He said, I was deeply disturbed about my church. You know what Paul says? They whipped his back how many times? 195 times. Once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, periods of the deep, periods of my own countrymen, in weariness, in fasting, in painfulness. He goes through the whole catalog. And then he says, but here's the bottom line. It's not my bleeding back, it's not my belly that's craving for food, it's not my loneliness in a stinking prison, it's not my care, it's the care of all the churches. They're not taking advantage of the privileges they have. God's left them a multi-million dollar estate and they're buying popcorn. He's left us an area of the supernatural. The only thing that's going to move this generation to God is the supernatural. But we're so choked up with the superficial. Anyhow, this dear man said, well, I was sick. And he said, I was troubled over my church. It's quite a large church. And he said, I called the people and said, look, announce on the Wednesday night meeting that Saturday we're going to meet in the church at nine o'clock. I want you all to come and be prepared to stay at least two hours in prayer. And there's a great crowd came. So he said, now look, this section, some of you go in that room, some of you go over there's. And he split them all up around the church and rooms outside of the main auditorium. And he said, you ask God for two hours, what do you want you to tell? Tell the church. I could sense him choking up. He said, Brother Amy, I'll tell you. He said, I was on my knees. I was reaching out to God and suddenly there was a great cloud. And he said, out of the cloud came two hands with a nail print in them. I was awed. All I could do was stare. Then he said, the cloud began to thin out and the body came feet. And I could see from the feet right up to the mouth of the son of God who had shown me his hands. And he said, now, look, I want to show you something. And he showed me a section of the church. And he said, that section, they're interested in games. They're interested in the social side of the church. There are some men in your church. They're more interested in other women than they are in their own wives. There are men over here greedy for money. He showed him the church. So he said, please come Sunday morning. It's going to be a fellowship meeting. When he got there, he said, listen, I want to tell you what I saw, what God told me. He said, some of you, I know you. He said, God even showed me your faces. I know you men and you're fooling around with other women. I know you. The spirit of God showed me faces. He showed me you men, you're gluttons for money. That's all you want. It's money. Christ is not priority in your life. Imagine a guy saying that, Bob, isn't that courage? To a big church? Dear God, they could have fired him. But he said, I have to tell them what the Lord revealed to me, as painful as it was. And he said, he showed me, I was just broken in humility and said, Lord, we're denying you the rights. You say, well, I'll do as I like. You won't if you're born again. The moment you were born again, you lost your rights. You're not your own. You're bought with a price. Every moment you've lived today is lonely to you, to be accounted for in eternity. As I said to somebody yesterday, when somebody boasted how much money they'd made one week, evangelism, I said, listen, I want to tell you something. This is new to me. It's old to you, maybe. You get $5,000 for preaching a week in a church. God has no matching funds. He doesn't put $5,000 to your account. Maybe he says, you're only worth $500. And it's all knocked off when you get up there. If you say the sweating, toiling missionary is going to be rewarded in eternity, because of all they've missed and sacrificed, he's going to make it up there. He's going to knock a lot, a lot of stuff off, as some people have had too much. He's the just and holy God. But again, we are lost in abominations. Supposing I could, I can't do it. Let me, let me say this. No, no shape. Let me put an R in that. That's Russia. And let's put one here. This is, this is China. Let's put one here. This is Afghanistan. How many million groans do you think the Lord has heard today? Huh? He's the same yesterday, today and forever. The only man who knows the inside of the Gulag archipelago, of course, is, what's his name? Sultan Hitson. And we wouldn't listen to him. They gave him the whole BBC in England. He told the whole story of those hideous camps. I've told you about him turning over and seeing a man across the cell, taking bits of paper out of his shirt each night and unrolling them and reading and putting them back again. And finally he said, what are you doing each night? He said, I'm reading scriptures. I stuck in my pocket. I stuck in my shirt before I came here. And he said, for the first time in my life, I saw live Christianity. Not my priest with his robes and his chains and his prayer book and his dainty walk. There's a man who'd been whipped. He said, I'll tell you what happened to him. He bore such a testimony. They gave him the dirtiest job in the compound, in the Gulag. They gave him the hardest job. They gave him the most difficult job. They gave him the longest job. And what did he do? He thrived on it. He said, never once did he say, why me? He took everything they gave him. He said, just like Christ did. I didn't know a man would do that. You know, maybe today you and I have passed up a treasure. If we'd had just a little more compassion for that person. Oh, well, I may lose my job. Lose it. You better lose your job than lose your crown. That's the trouble with these old pastors. They're afraid they'll lose the job. They're losing the ministry. They're losing their crown. I tried to drill that in these young preachers to come listen. I said, God has a crown to fit your head. You say, I can't do the job. So God gives it to him. All eternity you'll see a man wearing a crown God designed for you. Whatever your ministry is, treasure it. Hold fast to that which thou hast. Because as everything in the world, the flesh and the devil wants to get that crown out of your hand. If they can't destroy your ministry, they try to delay it. So it's passed on to somebody else. And while it's passed on, somebody's died in the gap there. Anyhow, this is verse 49 again in Ezekiel. 49. Bill, thy sister. What'd you say? Verse 49. Bill, this was the iniquity of thy sister. Notice that? The iniquity of thy sister Sodom. Pride, fullness of bread, abundance of idleness. Well, even the politicians are waking up. In the news the other day, Martha said, men look at that. It was a hotel in New York. And I'm glad they've done it. They took the homeless and put them in. It cost the government $1,400. $1,400 a month just to keep them in that hotel. And then there's food on top of that. And some of these are incorrigible. They've been doing this years. They're professional beggars. And this is starving the nation. What do you pay taxes up to your ears? Nobody hears for. To run churches? No, to run armies and police forces. That's the wages of sin. We're all paying it. You know, in Australia a few years ago, they tried to raise a tax on Christians. Tax everybody that says they're born again. Why? Because they don't pay tobacco tax. They don't pay drink tax. They don't pay tax on gambling. They don't pay tax on horses. So let's tax them. It may come to that before too long. We've got away with so much. I'm going to read that verse again to you. Here's the cry of what? Where was it? Genesis 18. Okay, Genesis 18, 26. The Lord, because the cry of Sodom. It didn't say I'm looking down and I see whole sections of immorality. I see shameless women selling their bodies. I see young men that have become harlots. He doesn't say that. I heard their cry. He got the attention of God. Didn't the Lord say at the first murder? What did he say to the man who murdered his brother? Thy brother's what? What? Stains the ground? No, crieth. Well, what about every blood stain saturated battlefield? If I talk to you about Vimy Ridge and Ypres and Passchendaele and Mons, you think I'm talking foreign? Those are all the great super battles in World War I. In England on what you call, what do you call it? Veterans Day or Memorial Day? Veterans Day. Well, we have a, well the 11th of November in England is Armistice Day. And they sell little poppies on the street. You give a dime or something towards a fund. And we used to have a sign in our church. And they put fresh poppies there, you know, the week before the 11th. And underneath it said, if ye break faith with those of us who, if ye break faith with those of us who fell, we shall not sleep though poppies grow on fields. They took the poppy as symbolic of the blood in the ground of all those soldiers. Sixteen million people perished in that war. After that, the greatest plague of influenza went through the world. Sixteen million people died. Thirty-two million people. Where did they go? Most of them to a lost eternity. A little place called Blantyre, it's nine miles out of Glasgow. I was preaching at the head church of the Nazarene there in World War I. The first day war broke out. During the week we went out to Blantyre. There's a big old stone house like an apartment. We went upstairs. We were carrying with our little Paul then in his, in our hands. We laid him on the bed where David Livingstone used to sleep. And David Livingstone left that apartment house. And he was going on his journey, he was a doctor remember. And he went down nine miles, carried on his, all his own baggage. Just one old man went with David boy. I'll go with you David boy. I believe you'll make history. And he carried his baggage nine miles to the dock and went out there. He married the daughter of Moffat, the great missionary. She died out there. He buried, I think, two children. He died, he buried her. And the reason she, she begged to go out. I want to come and meet you. I want to come and work with you. And he said, you can't darling. You come out here, you'll die within six months. The mosquitoes are full of malaria. They'll poison you. And, and, and she went out anyhow and lived a while anyhow because she had two children for him. And then she got a severe case of it. And they used to scratch in the ground, make their own graves. Try and block them up because the animals came at night and stole the bodies. When he lay his wife in the grave, according to Boram, a pretty good authentic biographer, he says, he looked down, he pointed down and he said, Mary, Mary Moffat it was, Mary, they write a record of this in Scotland and they'll say you died of malaria. He said, darling, you didn't die of malaria. You died because of gossiping tongues in Scotland. You kept writing to me and say, these people say you don't love me anymore. You don't care. You don't send enough for me to live on. And I'm so lonely. It's a terrible climate up there in winter. And there she, he paid the price. You see, we're wanting to skip the bases. Lord, I want to serve you, but don't upset my lifestyle. Were the whole realm of nature mine. Try it this way. Try getting up an hour earlier every morning next week. Forget the whole realm of nature. You'll never have it. Prove it to God. He doesn't listen to your words. Any of us. There's no truth behind it. But I say, look, here's Russia. How many millions or cries have gone up to God, straight to heaven? Nobody wants to listen to Sultan Hinson telling you about those rotten camps. He was, he was, he came to Christ. He said, with another man across the room on a bed of rotting straw. That's how he used it. Pity picturesque. And because of that, it started his journey toward God. What about all the millions of cries have gone from. What about this place, China? Let me read something here for you before I. Signed to. Here's something on the revivals in China. By the way, hopefully our dear David will be here two weeks tonight. So I'll be able to retire for a little while on my pension. It's about the revivals. This is a lady by the name of Mama Kwong in Korea. She was first in prison for Christ in 1961 for conducting a major evangelistic campaign in which many people were healed and many came to know the Lord and volunteered to become preachers. Mama Kwong says that in the 35 years of rule in China by the communists, it can be divided into four periods. Okay. 1949 to 58, the communists expelled 6,000 missionaries. That's communism. That's the stuff that Mr. Gorbachev has sworn his life to. He's sworn his life to hate America, hate God, hate Christ, hate the church. And we're falling and licking his feet. And he's diabolical. 6,000 were turned out. Then it says they kept a few churches open in cities so that the visiting foreigners would think there was freedom of worship. Even Billy Graham says there's freedom of worship. They bluffed him. They took him to one big Baptist church that's open. I listened to Graham the other night. He says the revival is on now. God, where? The jails are crowded. The divorce courts are crowded. Little girls' bellies are crowding with babies. Where in God's name is revival? We've never seen it. We've come to preach. I talked face to face with Wilkerson in my office. I said, David, with 500 evangelists in America, we've not one revivalist. There's no man who can preach. And when he leaves, the dance halls close, the taverns close, the hell holes close. We haven't got one. It would take God to change this. She said in the second period, 1958 to 1966, everything was nationalized. There was oppression from the government, no freedom. If anyone complained, they were in prison. Anyone found with a Bible was in prison. Mama Kwong says that during those days God chose 300 dedicated Christians to start a new church. Listen, what do you do? Send buses for them. They walk miles. What time do they meet? Three o'clock in the morning. You seal it immediately with my desire to sacrifice for him bed or anything. Three o'clock in the morning they met, Jose. They saw a vision of the Lord and he clearly heard his voice saying, although communism is evil, I will open doors, a door and no man will shut it. The third period was 1966 to 76. The government turned their attention to the Christians and sought to annihilate the underground church. Listen to this. Christians were in prison. Bibles were burned. Some of the Christians were nailed alive to the walls of their churches. Boy, we'd run like fury, wouldn't we? We think all hell had broken loose. Supposing somebody broke in here tonight and came with a hammer and got me here and put me back and started nailing me. What would you do? Would you scream and run? And would you fall down and pray for the poor man? I wouldn't be in trouble. He would. But you see, this is what it's costing now. Our dear granddaughter will be here in two weeks. She's been in China since November, I think. And so I want to get a first-hand record if I can of what's happening. There are two reports out. One is that there's a wave of, let's see here, this woman I mentioned, Mrs. Wong, Mama Kwong, she testified in Pentecostal meetings in Australia. The man who interpreted it for her was called Simeonok. He said, she said before the persecution, there were 800,000 Christians in China. In 1979, this had increased to 30 million. You see that? From 800,000 to 30 million in that span. In 1979, this had increased to 30 million. In 1981, there were 50 million Christians. In August of 82, that's this decade, in August of 82, there's an estimated 75 million in the nation, and now they believe it's increased to 100 million. That's a so-called heathen country. Put your church to test. Say there'll be a prayer meeting Sunday morning when it's nice and easy at three o'clock, and see how many come. Oh, they'll come once for the novelty, they'll come twice. How many will come consistently? Day and day until the heavens break. It's going to take that. I'm absolutely convinced of that. The last thing here, beautiful. David Wang, a Chinese born in Shanghai, is the General Director of the Asian Outreach based in Hong Kong. He's traveled extensively in China, and is an acknowledged expert in the church in China. In an article for the Australian Evangelism, 1983, he wrote, Pastor Wang Ming-do is called the Saint Paul of China. When I met him in 1980, that's not far back. When I met him in 1980, he had just come out of prison. He'd been in prison and labor camps for 22 years, and now he's blazing. He knows the horrors of hell. He's been whipped. He's been starved. He's been isolated. He's been sleeping with urine running past him, and human excrement everywhere. And now he feels he's in heaven, just because he's free to read his Bible going down the street. He's free just to get up in the middle of the night and pray and make intercession. You know how luxuries have become a curse to us? Boy, boy, you can't come to church. As one pastor said, aspirins work every day in the week except Sundays. Two aspirins will get you to work any day in the snowstorm, but not Sunday morning. I'll tell you what they'll take. You go through hell if God the Holy Ghost is there. And this is what happened here. Dr. Taylor says, we have now much money. And this Taylor is the great-grandson of Hudson Taylor. And he's a brilliant doctor, and he's given himself to China like Hudson Taylor did. He says, we in our church have far more to learn from China than they have from us. They've learned the truth of the scripture, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die to bideth alone. I'm convinced of this. You may think I'm a grouchy old guy. I think I am. I hope I am sometimes. You know what I believe? I believe most of our people live on meetings. They don't live on Christ. They live on meetings. One of the most horrible things I ever heard G. Campbell Morgan say to a crowd of about 400 preachers. He said, if I were to be put out of the pulpit for a week, I think I'd backslide. He was living on his preaching. He enjoyed, as one man said, when they said, how did you enjoy them? Oh, he said, I enjoyed myself. The man said, say with it, you enjoyed yourself. You enjoyed your eloquence. You enjoyed your rapport with the people. You just enjoyed your own beautiful personality getting over to folk. But you know, whether you go out to the meeting, any meeting saying, I don't care what you say about a meeting. If you go out to the meeting and all you talk about is the preacher or the choir, you missed it. And God missed it. The only thing that matters about a meeting, as far as I'm concerned, what did God get out of it? Not what was the offering, not what the crowds. What did God get out of it? I try to say that every meeting I go to. And for better or worse, I try and put as much. People ask me where I preach. I say, I preach Friday night to a bunch of folk that are very kind. They listen to me. I stumble over my words sometimes. My memory patterns don't always fill, meet together. But I say, I'll tell you what, I sense God there and I believe God is there. And as long as God is here, that's all that matters. Forget your choirs. Usually the choirs are the war department in the church anyhow. They most squabbles and arguments. Mary Jane's been asked to sing again. She sang last week, two weeks ago. My Susie can sing twice as good as her. And my Susie doesn't sing. Your Susie should be fired with the rest. But think of this. Maybe get up some days this week and say, well what, I put this A for Afghanistan here. What do you think Afghanistan has done today? Bleeding, suffering people. United Nations stinks. What have they done? They haven't done a thing for Afghanistan. They haven't done a thing for South Africa. People are dying every day. And the groanings of those people. And what about the children? How many million children are there in China that know nothing except hardship? Don't know much about human love even. And yet we sit at ease in Zion. God's going to have to do something. What does it say? Romans 8, 22, the whole creation groaneth. What, what is it? I don't know what all that means. Bob, tell me sometime. The whole creation. I know this, God said, cursed be the ground for thy sake. And I believe even the ground in some places is cursed. And it's unproductive. Every time, what, there were two earthquakes? What, 4.4 earthquake in California this week? And one, where was the other one? There's one at six point some, somewhere. Seems to me that's groaning creation too. And I'm going to say the last thing. It seems simple to say, I think. But you know, when you tell the children, you ask them to recite what Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Who's Humpty Dumpty? Is that a nursery rhyme? No, it's theology. It's a satire on the fall of man. Humpty Dumpty is the egg on the wall, he falls over. And the old saying, anybody can scramble eggs, who can unscramble them? Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. And all the king's horses, and all the theology, and all the brilliant people can't put Humpty Dumpty. It's going to take a God-born Holy Ghost revival. God's going to have to reduce us individually to the place where I say, thou, O Christ, art all I want. Paul wrote all the epistles, how he suffered everybody out, preached everybody. What's his dying wish? That I may know him and the power of his resurrection. And outside of that everything's trivia. Every day I get that in my mind. I say, God, don't let me get tripped up with trivia today. Don't let me get out of step and forgetful. I'm bound for eternity. All the neighbors are going to a lost eternity. My generation's going to a lost eternity. These people in Afghanistan, these people in China, most of them, apart from what we've read tonight, have never seen a blood-washed crowd of people that really care, and people that pray. Every revival has had people that are disturbed in their own social lives, emotional life, every other life. And they got together for prayer, intense, intense prayer. I want us to pray now. Let the cry from our hearts go up. What does the word of God say? I call on the Lord. We don't have to paint pictures in words. Let's call. I don't care if you scream, if it's in the will of God. Somebody call out for China tonight. Lord, a thousand million people, a quarter of the world's population, a billion people, I think, in China. Almost a quarter of the world's population there. And this, the largest country, massive country in the whole world. And yet here we are with this living word of God. And I tell you again, with all my heart, my burden is a sick church in a dying world. And the church is sick. It's a little gathering of sweet little people at night, nice little prayers. Listen to a nice little choir. I'll tell you the church that's most popular where your conscience won't be disturbed. I'm through with this. I had a man from England in my home the other day, and he told me some awesome things I couldn't share with you right now. But he was talking about a church. Such a crowd of people go there. I said, oh, oh, oh, no. He had been preaching in a big church, and they said it was a marvelous week. Oh, boy, can he preach. Is not he preached on? He preached on the coming Antichrist. He was trying to fit all the patterns together that nobody will ever do. I suddenly realized why they were crowding in. Because he wasn't touching conscience. He wasn't touching memory. There was no conviction of sin. Oh, isn't it wonderful? We're going to be raptured. We're going to have an eternal honeymoon with Jesus. Wouldn't it be wonderful? Hey, boy, I'm going to sit down with the Apostle Paul. Oh, well, you sit with him. I'm after David, the Psalmist, for 6,000 years. I'm going to have a wonderful time in eternity. There's no conviction. That's the kind of meeting where everything's sweet and sugary. Well, if you want that, go to Shoemaker. What's his name? Shuler. You go to one church, you'll get a message. You go to his church, you get a massage. But it's going to take Holy Ghost conviction, and I'm convinced God is going to raise up those men. There's a heart cry under the underground church. People talk about the underground church in Russia. I say there's an underground church in America. I've had three men this week, pastors, telling me they're getting kicked out of the church. One because he told the people they couldn't pray. Another one because he dealt with a deacon who was having an affair with a girl in another church of their denomination, C17. So he took the deacon to task. He said, listen, you're living a dirty life, a double life, and the church attacked the pastor and kicked the pastor out and left the deacon in office. That's the kind of churches we've got. Oh, there'll never be a perfect church and I'll forget the church. God says you're to be perfect. He told Abraham, walk before me and be thou perfect as before the blood, before the cross. He had no Bible, he had no Holy Spirit as we know him, and that's the demand that God has. And perfection is to function in total capacity for the situation in which you are. It doesn't mean mental perfection or angelic perfection or spiritual perfection in one sense. We sing it time again, dear husband, love that song. Perfect submission, all is at rest. Forget it if there's no perfection. Perfect submission, perfect delight. Visions of rapture now burst on my sight. I don't care whether Jesus comes in the cloud in my room, if he does, fine. But I know this, I want vision of a lost world. I want a vision of a holy God. I want a vision day by day of judgment. I long to see every wrong thing put right. I long to see this flipping, flopping, flowery, what else can I say, foolish church, totally blood washed, anointed with the Holy Ghost. And preachers who dare stand up and say, listen, you bunch, I know your faces, six of you men are fooling around with other women. You men over there, you're greedy for money. You men over there, you're full of sport. If I preach too long, you're after me. But you can watch football, Super Bowl for two or three hours and you're happy. You know what, it's time for us all to grow up. As I've cried more than once beyond this desk, praying, Lord at the judgment seat, I'll stand there, my darling wife will be there, she'll have a judgment, you'll have yours. I stand by myself with the saints of all the ages, from Adam right to the last person, I stand alone. And then the Lord says, Ramiel, when you lived in Texas, I had many things to tell you, but you couldn't bear them. What do you think I'm going to do? Say, my Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine. I'm going to wilt? My knees are going to knock? I'm going to look back and say, oh God, if only I could go back to earth. I can't. It's over. There's no you. Once you slip off the edge of time, go into that judgment seat, there's no you turn there. It's straight ahead. As a sinner, you go to the judgment of the lost. As a believer, you go to the judgment of the believer. I want to hear that cry. I want to pass it on to you. I hope this week when you pray, you'll hear the cry of these poor perishing millions in China. The poor perishing millions there in Russia, the poor perishing millions there in Afghanistan. The thousands of people locked up in Ethiopia, nobody says a word about them. They saw some little black kiddies with big fat bellies. And thank God for those who help them. There are at least 7,000 Protestants locked up in huts that have tin roofs so that they're just like a sheet of, what do you call it, fire on top of them. And nobody says a word about it. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Sure. Some of these men with AIDS, they tell me now it's like taking a man and sitting him on a hot stove. And there's no cure for AIDS. Coop says that. They keep saying so there is no cure. It's going to get worse and worse and worse. The world already is just about a madhouse. What are we going to do when this breaks loose? Suppose you take the scripture and change it and say, oh America, America, how often would God have gathered thee as a hen doth gather a brood under her wings, but ye would not. America, this is the day of thy visitation. Oh, it's going to happen, but of course not for 20 or 30 years. Not in my lifetime when these little fellas are men, yes. Listen, judgments coming very soon. I've had too many in my office in the last two weeks who've been in Israel, one of them being around in the Naguib, where the Jews there have built one of the most up-to-date, what do you call it, nuclear fission devices, they've atom bombs. He said they have at least 50. And I guarantee, I can't guarantee, but in my own mind I guarantee to myself we'd hardly get through another year without the Jews drop a bomb to stop the power of the nations that want to come on that country. But apart from that they're dying day by day without God and without hope. And I want us to pray tonight. I don't know you pray for the Indians, I do. I guess if I were an Indian I couldn't pray more for them. David Brenner didn't introduce me to the Indians, not when he was around of course, but in England. And I'm glad he did. You know we can make history tonight in this meeting, not for the sake of being in a meeting that makes history, but we can make a hole in hell if we unite by faith and say, Lord pull down strongholds in China, raise up some profit in China, raise up some profit in India, raise up some profit in Russia, raise some profit in Afghanistan. They'll have to be spirit-endued men. Every time the Holy Ghost has gone up, has come down upon me, I've read over and over again where even children at 13 years of age didn't know a word of English and they stood and recited truths in English or in some other language. And God can do that. I hope you'll covet for your children that they become missionaries. Two of mine have been and will be I guess, and I hope the third will waken up and get real awakening. And I pray for your children day by day. I'm not concerned about church membership nor the ritual. I want people to say when I came in that meeting, God touched me. That's my reward. That's all that matters. So we're going to go to prayer. Somebody explode. I hope God lets somebody explode. Pray for these countries, pray for this local situation. Texas, America, that God Almighty will move on us while it's still day, because the night cometh. Okay.