In this sermon, the speaker focuses on the book of Deuteronomy and the importance of the spoken word of God. He emphasizes the power and impact of the living, burning word of God ministered in Holy Ghost power. The speaker also highlights the contrast between visual aids and the spoken word, stating that the latter is what truly touches and transforms individuals. He shares a personal testimony of how he encountered the voice of God at a young age, leading to a life-changing decision. Additionally, he mentions overcoming personal struggles and the transformative power of God's fire in his life.

Now tonight, I wish to speak to you on the great subject of the fire of God. The first appearance of the fire is immediately after the flood, where we read in Genesis chapter 8, verse 20, Now Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took up every clean beast, and up every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. A burnt offering of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl. That must have been a great, great fire, as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a burnt offering, unto the God who done for him and his family that wonderful miracle of getting them back on earth again safely. And it must have been a different planet altogether from the scripture and the evidence of signs. We can see that this was evidently so, and it must have been a much colder and damper planet indeed. But that's, as far as we can tell, the first appearance of fire. And then we find it in Abraham, but I'd like us to move on to the second book of the Bible, Exodus, where we'll read in chapter 3. Exodus chapter 3. Now, verse 1, Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb, and the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. Just for a minute to pause on this simple but wonderful truth, that very often when God lays his hand on the life of a man or a woman, being as he is the God that sees the end from the beginning, there is something highly prophetic in that first experience, that encounter, that coming to know God, that revelation of God to a man or a woman. And here we see that it comes in this peculiar way of a bush wherein there's a flame burning and burning, and the thing that obviously caught the attention of Moses was that for all the burning of that flame, the bush remained completely intact. It wasn't consumed. And that's what drew him closer, to watch it more. And there, perhaps without understanding it at the time, God was telling him that that was to be his future. What lay ahead for him, he was to know, a burning fire of God within his bosom that would draw him to the mountain of intercession, that would draw out his soul with those supplications and cries and gushes that only come to men and women who know what it is to pray in the Holy Ghost and in the Holy Fire. And he was to go through the mill in trial and tribulation, one way or another, at times even ask God, beg Him to take his life, because he couldn't bear the burden of it any longer. And yet the immense wonder is that that bush of the life of Moses was not consumed, and he did not end up a nervous wreck or with senile decay, but he ended up fresh and full of vigor unto the glory of God. And those of us who, by the grace of God, know something of this wonderful fire, blessed be his name, know that this is one of the added benefits that comes with it. You seem to be burning at times, agonizing at times, at the end of your tether, but bless God that it's a renewing, not only in your spirit but in your body. And by His grace you go on from strength to strength and from glory to glory. But let's read on. And we see in verse 5, and he said, draw not nigh unto hither. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And here is something that the real, the genuine fire brings, and I underline those two words. Because nowadays we have a lot that is like froth that simulates to be fire, but it's not the heavenly, it's not the holy, it's not the genuine fire of God. And one of the things that it brings is that there's nothing sham or cheap or superficial about it. It's something that makes you aware of the holy and majestic, awesome presence of God. And if you don't take your shoes off like Moses, you walk on tiptoes, and you are full of that healthy fear and trembling because the Almighty is revealing himself to your soul and to your innermost being. Verse 7, And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And here's another thing about the fire. It's to do with people that are in sorrow, in bondage and affliction, with broken-hearted prisoners, with hearts and lives that have been wrecked, that unless the love and the life and the power and the fire of God Almighty come to them, they haven't a hope in this life or in eternity. And the fire will always, always relate to them, will always, always end up directing you to them. We go on reading, and it's now verse 10, Come now, therefore, and I will send you. The fire, blessed God, it will work its way when it gets hold of a man or a woman, and it will put Christ with compassion and love, it will make you do all sorts of things for God and for others to whom God will send you. And above all, the fire will end up by sending you forth in the Holy Ghost. I was so thrilled and moved upon and blessed by some of the touching accounts we got this morning. Praise God for the tremendous sending there has been over these years. It's been a thrill for me to be at Liverpool again. Over the years I've been visiting so much, especially in Argentina and in Spain, and finding very often that movements, new churches, there has been a time of blessing, a time of a move of God. And sometimes after five years, sometimes even less than that, or just a little more, you immediately begin to sense decay. The old standard is lost. The fire is not quenched, it's dwindling, it's languishing. Division, heartbreak, problems, and a real decay. Now, it's wonderful to think that after 27, 25 years ago, when we first met dear Norman and under the headship of Mr. North and Norman, things began to happen in Liverpool, and a work began, hallelujah, and to come back some 20, 25 years later and to find the same fire, the same quality in the eldership. And instead of things dwindling down, instead of decay and declension, finding there's a mighty going forth, a mighty being sent in the Holy Ghost by God to others. Bless his name. This is not to say I'm quite aware that we have our problems, and in places things have not been all they should be. But as was said so aptly this morning, we want to thank God for what we've got. Bless him for this wonderful move in which we've been caught up and just give ourselves to it, and to love and to oneness and to standing with our brethren and sisters for the flame to rise higher and just to go on and on and on. Bless his name. Now turn with me to, in the same book of Exodus, to chapter 19. Exodus 19. From verse 14 we read, And Moses went down from the mount unto the people and sanctified the people, and they washed their clothes. And he said unto the people, Be ready against the third day. Come not at your wives. And it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount. And the voice of the trumpet exceeded in loud, so that all the people that was in the camp trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God. And they stood at the nether part of the mount, and Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. I know this is the institution of the old covenant, but please forget about that side of it, and we're on the theme of the Father, the fire, the fire from Father's heart. And I'd like you to note that here God was to do this tremendous thing for His people Israel in the sight of everyone. Moses, how often we talk about Moses and say, not as Moses who covered his face, and not as Moses who was a servant and not a son. But bless the Lord, when you've got the new covenant right in your heart, you can read the Old Testament with new covenant eyes, and then you'll see a far greater glory. An old covenant and all, but I take my hat off to good old Moses. Think of the honor of this man getting all the people of God and bringing them right out in one large assembly at the foot of the mount, and God was to do this marvelous thing of coming down in holy fire upon that mount of Sinai. And what I'd like you to note is that before it happened, there was a preparation of three days. They had to wash their clothes and come clean unto God, and there was this other point, come not at your wives. Not that that is wrong in any way, it's something God-given and blessed, but there is a time when that and many other things are to go by the board, to give priority to the presence of the Almighty. And the point I'm trying to make is that before bestowing these manifestations of grace and power that change lives and situations, God very often requires holy preparations on our part. I was born again at the very early age of 15. I hadn't really heard the gospel before. I wasn't religiously inclined, but there was one thing that I knew that I was unclean, and I'd had a dear mother who from early childhood taught me to pray. And those simple prayers of my mother instilled into me something that made me want to be a clean and a pure lad. And yet, drifting with the rest at school, etc., etc., I knew myself to be unclean, and I wanted to be clean and pure. And I heard that word of God. It was such a tiny little place. The speaker was a converted waiter. The place might have been in all the size of that square of chairs or seats over there, perhaps even smaller. Some bricks put together with mud and all whitewash and a thatched roof. The word was simple and clear, and nothing happened until about 15 minutes towards the end. And it was then, without anyone noticing it, that this blessed, almost, I say, indescribable fire of God ran through my breast in two or three successive waves of omnipotent power. I didn't understand at the time. I didn't know. But may I point this out to you. First of all, three days before that happened, I, who had, we can say this in all dignity, before our Lord, who dignifies all things, but I had that secret sin of so many adolescents of masturbation. And it made me sad and it made me sick, but I couldn't overcome it. And yet by a strange overruling of God, exactly three days before that fire fell into my heart, it stopped completely. And I, who was used to it, I just got it rubbed off on me from others. I never used in my early childhood swear language, but then at school I picked it up from the rest, and yet those three days, not one swear word out of my tongue and an inner peace and quiet, without my knowing at all what was coming. And in later years, as I've read this passage, I've understood, yes, Lord, thank you you did it for me just exactly that way. I didn't know about it, Lord, but you knew what you were going to do. You were going to bless me with that heavenly fire, and you prepared my heart, removing the filth and the unclean, for me to see and to know and to understand what I now see and know and understand. And what I've been shouting and proclaiming to the young folk in particular, all over Spain and wherever in the Argentine, the Lord's been opening doors, that holy, holy is the Lord. And those who live for Him and love Him and serve Him must live in white before Him, and the unclean and the old and the sinful and the twisted must be driven out and banished forever. Praise God for this wonderful outworking of His life and His power, but yet requiring of us these holy preparations. May I go on in the same chapter 19, but just to read verse 19, verse 20 now. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount, and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount, and Moses went up. This is another thing that the fire will do for you, what it did for Moses. It claimed Moses for God and for the mountain, and Moses had to leave his food behind and his tent and his mattress and his comfort and his wife, at least for a time, he had to leave it all behind. Because the fire claimed him to go up to be with his God, to get right into those flames and to let God forge him and bring him forth. My dear brother, my dear sister, when the fire catches you in your life, it will do something of this kind to you. There will be others who will just fritter away their time, talk nonsense of politics, or sit watching the telly, perhaps for hours, whining away their time. Oh, but once that burning fire catches hold of your life, you will find that it will claim you for God. There will be a gentle, a tender, and yet an irresistible drawing that will tell you you don't belong to all this. You are for God, and you will excuse yourself and go into that inner chamber and get into the burnings of God and get right by your God. And there you'll get your revelation. There you'll get your calling. There God will forge you and God will make of you the man or the woman He wants you to be. I wonder how many of you know this inner, what I call tender, very gentle, yet irresistible drawing of the fire. You've never seen a fire burning downwards, a burning diagonally. The wind may alter its direction slightly for a moment, but the fire only knows one direction. It's the fire will always bear you upwards to the throne and to God. There'll be other forces trying to drag you down, trying to drag you back. But the fire again and again says you don't belong there. You're not one to go back or to go down. You're one to go up to your God, up to His throne. Blessed be His name. Now move on with me please to Deuteronomy 4. And here is again Moses. Deuteronomy chapter 4. He's recounting to the second generation some forty years later what had happened on that occasion. And those of you who have perhaps tried to read and compare will find that somehow, although Deuteronomy is a second law, but it's by no means an exact repetition. And one of the reasons is that here the man Moses has matured in God. He's really in the pinnacle of his career. He's viewing life and God from a much higher perspective. And so you'll find that Deuteronomy in a sense gives you a much loftier vision. And let's read two verses in chapter 4. Deuteronomy chapter 4. And first of all verse 12. And then 15 for something I want you to note with me. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice. Verse 15. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire. In this passage, Moses uses that phrase of God having spoken out of the midst of the fire and he uses it no fewer than ten times. And here there's something very important. He said when God spoke to you, take great heed to your soul because you saw no similitude. The word in other versions is no picture. You saw no image. There was nothing the eye could see. You only heard the voice of God speaking from the middle of the fire. How blessed it is when God has given us an experience that lines up exactly with this sacred word. And to the glory of God, I want to thank Him because this is exactly the way it happened to me. When I heard that word of God, it was certainly God speaking out of the midst of the fire and how red-hearted it was. But I can assure you I didn't see any vision of an angel coming to me or heaven open or a big ladder. I didn't see a green field with a shepherd or a stream or any of those visions. But I knew that that was the voice of the living God speaking to me and that voice demanded an answer. And though I understood little about it, a lad of fifteen that didn't have a clue in a sense, but that very night I went alone to my God and I just gave Him my life and trusted in His Son, repented of my sins and my whole destiny, my whole life changed from that moment. Now, this is a tremendously important Scripture, much more than we may imagine at first sight. Paul tells us we walk by faith and not by sight. It's also asserted or held and I think quite reasonably so with every justification that the sight, the visual aids used cleverly and obviously maliciously are the ideal medium, the ideal means to get men and women to be driven to the lowest, to the basest things you could imagine. Whereas the word, particularly the oral, the spoken word, when handled with love and with skill and obviously with divine help, is the most wonderful means to touch the depth of a man and a woman. Hallelujah! And just to inspire them and to spur them on to love, to kindness, to sweetness, to purity and to everything that is noble and pure and true. And that's why we understand now why God has all along the line used His word, His spoken word. Hallelujah! And that's why Paul tells us, I say it again, by faith we walk and not by sight and faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And Jesus, you remember when Thomas came and said, my Lord and my God. He said, Thomas, because you have seen, you believe, blessed are they that have not seen and believed. It's so important in this time when visual aids are appearing at all levels and nothing wrong with them in itself, but so many visions and seeing this and seeing that and you look around and you never find them leading to anything solid. Oh, give us the living, burning word of God. The old book, hallelujah, ministered in holy ghost power. That's what will really touch men and women and challenge them and rock them and shake them and melt them and break them till they come forth for God and for the Lamb. Hallelujah! Let us move one chapter further in Deuteronomy and now it's 5 verse 22. Deuteronomy 5 verse 22. These words, the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness with a great voice and he added no more and he wrote them in two tables of stone and delivered them unto me. Tremendous verse full of blessed truth. The first we read again that God spoke these words out of the midst of the fire. Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are to be imitators of God and from this verse we see that God, to speak his word, got into that place right in the midst of the fire if I may so put it where the fire was red hot and he spoke his word from there. And those of us who are endeavoring to take the Lord who feel we want to proclaim the gospel to teach the word of God will do well to learn and in our intercession and seeking God really get right into the midst of the fire. You can have as you well know such lovely words so sound, so true to the scripture, so pleasing to the ear, such eloquence, such a flow of the language and yet they can leave you cold because there's no fire within. Oh hallelujah, I used to delight when I moved among the gypsies in Spain and some of them very unlettered, no flowery language but there was a heavenly fire that you couldn't mistake. Bless the Lord. The next thing is that God spoke with a loud voice or with a great voice. The next thing is that God spoke with a loud voice or with a great voice. I know sometimes it's a still whisper. Sometimes it has to be a gentle word but on the other hand I'm sometimes perplexed when someone says the Lord's given me a word and I want to tell you the truth and you've got a strain in your ear and you can't follow it. I know I'm slightly hard of hearing but not that bad and my remark to that would be that if God's given you a word to give open your mouth wide and speak it out and speak it up so that everyone can hear. Bless his name. It's a word worth proclaiming and it must come forth in clearness so that all can hear it. But we also read this that having spoken with a great voice he added no more. Hallelujah. And like lawyers or journalists or human beings in general God spoke his word and that's it. And right at the end of this blessed book we have that solemn dual warning that we're not to add one syllable to God's eternal word lest the plagues in the book be added unto us and we're not to take away one word or one syllable from the sacred book lest our part be taken away from the book of life. Now God's like that but it also says that having added no more he wrote them in two tables of stone and delivered them unto me. This is another important thing we must always bear in mind that God's order is first the spoken word and then the written word. I was quite, quite perplexed almost at a gathering, a conference in another country never mind where so-called renewal one men supposed to be filled with the spirit and I was presented with a folder with all the program and it was the first night and brother so-and-so was to speak and I was amazed that this dear brother was reading what he'd written he'd submitted it in writing it had been printed and now in the middle of this conference he was reading out what he had written quite a few weeks before. I have no doubt that God because he's merciful can even use that and bless that for there was good sound truth. But I want to say that I find the way it works is the opposite that first comes the spoken word and then the living word. We have it in the very beginning where God says let there be light and many years later that's faithfully recorded so that there's no distortion there's no passing it down inaccurately and so the truth of God getting twisted or corrupted in any way. But in the new covenant there is still something further and more important bless God for his spoken word and it's wonderful when you know that it's coming in the Holy Ghost when there's that ring of inspiration of life when there's the breath there's something in that word hallelujah that you know is the word of God but you know it's not enough to hear that blessed word of God your heart has to be open unto him and become a table on which the blessed spirit can take the truth of God and write it upon your heart so that it becomes part and parcel of your life. Bless God for these truths that we've been nourished on and we understand and we know and let's never never lose sight of them bless his name. I'd now like us to move right on to the book of Daniel chapter 7 Daniel chapter 7 and we want verse 9 a very well known beautiful verse I beheld till the thrones were cast down and the ancient of days did sit whose garment was white as snow and the hair of his head like the pure wool his throne was like the fiery flame and the wheels as burning fire a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him thousand thousands ministered unto him and ten thousand times ten thousands stood before him in this wonderful wonderful vision of Daniel we see God known in this context or in this passage by this beautiful name that nowhere else appears in scripture he's the ancient of days as I was sharing at Liverpool a couple of weeks ago he's the eternal elder bless his name from which all the dignity of eldership comes forth bless him and here we see him seated on his throne we see him robed in white and we see the white hair on his head like blessed blessed wool but what I want you to note with me these are very simple things but how easily they can escape us if we read correctly we find that there are two words italicized that are not in the original so we can read here towards the end of the chapter his throne with fiery flame his wheels burning fire from this we see that God's throne is not a throne of ivory or a throne of gold he's seated on a throne that's a fiery flame he needn't have any misgivings about it all other reliable renderings confirm this God is seated on a throne and his throne I say it again no gold no ivory no silver no refined upholstery is a throne bless his name of a fiery flame we may perhaps just ask this very elementary question bear with me some of you to whom the answer is self evident but for the sake of some who may profit from this we can ask reasonably couldn't we doesn't he find it too hot doesn't he get burnt sitting on a flame of fire and of course the answer is that this fire of God this heavenly fire is a fire that's all consuming and whatever is dross or char whatever is filth whatever is unclean that flame will burn it and consume it right away but in that blessed God of eternity there is absolutely nothing nothing whatever that's burnable and so he can sit on that throne the next thought that the throne is a fiery flame it's not a seat it's not a stool he hasn't got arms for reclining on and very simply because you see God doesn't need to be upheld he doesn't need to recline his arms or to be supported in case he should get worn out or in case he should fall down and what God sits on and what upholds God is his very nature the essence of God is holy love the word of God tells us ever so clear our God is a consuming fire and that's the fire of holy love and God sits on himself and he's absolutely at rest the throne on which he's relaxed reigning supreme forever is the fire of love and holiness which is the very essence of his nature and character but as we read further in this same verse we see another thing that this throne of God is a throne that has wheels I've never seen or heard funnily enough I've read this passage umpteen times it's only a few months ago when I really caught this simple but precious detail that God seated on a throne that's a flame of fire and that throne has wheels to it hallelujah and these wheels tell us that God is an ongoing God he's moving towards eternal purposes conceived in his heart from past eternity and these wheels are moving and turning fast praise the Lord just the same as the sun is the center of our solar system and the earth and all the planets orbiting around the sun all the time and we think the sun is stationary the sun is in the middle we are moving but the sun is there and yet we know that the sun and all the other planets progressively are moving on with the rest of the universe according to God's plan according to God's laws and rules and principles of astronomy and praise God that these are not wheels with tires to them or metal rims again to our surprise we find something amazing that we've never seen here on earth glory to God that tells us that the propelling force that's just moving and moving on towards those blessed eternal purposes of God hallelujah is that fiery holy love of the almighty there he is then seated on that throne but yet we have something further how I wish I could read in the Spanish version I love King James I have a great regard for it but here the Spanish one I feel better sits in verse 10 with it a fiery stream issued and came forth from before him the Spanish gives us and it's quite a reliable one a fiery river or a river of fire here again something to make us scratch our heads a little a throne of fire someone sitting on a fiery plain and wheels to that throne and the wheels are made of fire but now it's a river but it's not a river of water it's a river of fire and the throne is reciting and this is this river is issuing and proceeding from the throne and there are countless beings there in the middle of the course of that river of fire ministering before the almighty hallelujah and standing before him in that blazing fire of the throne of God and of the river of fire bless God this projects us beautifully onto the New Testament I don't think I need you to turn with me you must know verses such as John the Baptist when pointing to Jesus said he shall baptize you with a holy ghost and with fire and Jesus himself who said I am come to send fire on the earth and again with all respect to King James that may I put it the way Young's literal renders it which is very beautiful he says I am come to send fire on the earth and how I wish it were already kindled there was a yearning in Jesus a longing a longing to set the world on fire that blessed Christ of burning came from God's throne above here in Luke 12.49 those of you who don't know the verse he opens his heart and he says I have come from heaven to send fire on this earth oh and how I am longing for this fire to be kindled to be started to flare up in the hearts of men and women but turn now with me to the Acts chapter 2 hallelujah the Acts chapter 2 here the new covenant is inaugurated Jesus as the mediator up in heaven by the throne at the right hand of the Father receives the promise of the Holy Ghost and so we read in Acts 2 verse 1 and when the day of Pentecost was fully come they were all with one accord in one place and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushy mighty wind and it filled all the house where they were sitting and there appeared unto them cloven tongues like ashes of fire and it sat upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance here if I may say so put it Jesus by His blood and by His Spirit is just able at long last to bring this river of fire that's in heaven that's there by the throne initiating from the throne bring it down to earth may I remind you that in the Old Testament the fire only fell on the sacrifice on the altar the few times it fell on human beings alas it was to incinerate them they died burnt up immediately you remember Nadab and Abihu those two sons of the high priest Aaron the captains of fifty with their fifty men who went up to Elijah when he was on the mount and fire came down from heaven and those men died every single one the fire burnt them up but this is the glorious wonder of the New Testament hallelujah Jesus has gone through that fiery furnace of Calvary and now heaven's fire comes down to the bosom of men and women hallelujah and they live unto God and they burn with a mighty flame living and loving as Jesus did glory be to His wonderful name oh hallelujah praise our dear Lord look what happened to them here they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues now I know that in this case it obviously meant they began to speak in other languages there were many proselytes from overseas who knew other languages and this was a blessed sign of God and yet there is a parallel spiritual truth that's tremendously significant when this happens to you and me when the fire comes it fills us with the Holy Ghost and we can't keep our mouth closed and we open our mouth and we speak with other tongues before that it might have been the tongue of unbelief the tongue of conjecturing the tongue of hoping the tongue of criticizing and maligning other the tongue of complaint, the tongue of bitterness the tongue of flesh, the tongue of the world, umpteen tongues but when this fire comes you begin to speak with other tongues, hallelujah you speak with the tongue of the love of God you speak with the tongue of faith that moves mountains you speak with the tongue of the grace and wisdom that comes from above you speak from a tongue, hallelujah I was sharing this too at Liverpool, that blessed promise to Jeremiah is thou will take away the precious from the vials then thou shall be as my mouth I know again it's Old Testament but why are we not to have it in the New Testament to be men and women that we're so possessed by the divine flame while walking in tenderness in humility unto the glory of God we can open our mouths boldly and as we speak it's as though the very mouth of God were being opened and pearls and precious divine words spoken as only God can speak them can issue from my mouth, from your mouth my dear brother and from yours my dear sister, oh hallelujah to speak with those other tongues, those heavenly tongues, oh blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord hallelujah there's much more about the fire but I feel I should stop now and I'd like you all to get on your feet to stand up please but will you listen to me as I just add this I know that you can push appeals and you can put pressure on souls and it might mean nothing to keep on coming but on the other hand I say this that I find it very, very difficult to speak about the fire and just to leave it at that the fire brings to me always what it must bring to you a challenge a challenge a challenge that there is a life to be lived in the fire of God and I want to dare you man or woman that tonight you will come forward just to denote before God that you want to get into that river of his fire and I'll tell you the kind of person that may come perhaps you felt that your prayer life has dried up and you get on your knees and begin to pray but after a while you dry up and there's no purpose then I invite you to come here to come right up to the front to know those burnings that will melt your heart so that there'll be the true gushing of intercession in the Holy Ghost to cry to God like you've never cried before, hallelujah the challenge is also to some who knew the fire in its blazing glory perhaps years or months ago and now that fire is languishing, it's not burning as brightly as it once did, hallelujah oh, that you should come again to get rekindled and to burn and burn for God praise your name and those of you who feel although you know it and you've been here, there and everywhere but somehow it's as if God hasn't been able quite to get hold of your life you want to come tonight with reality and get right into the river of God's fire to feel that sacred burning within you but it's also for some of you who may have that secret problem perhaps of masturbation or who knows what other thing knots tied around your soul by the devil and oh, if you come with purpose to the river of fire hallelujah, the fire will burn it up, hallelujah the fire will burn out of your life lust and sin and worldliness and it will make you a man and a woman for God bless his wonderful name oh, hallelujah just like to ask that you'd come and get as tight as possible so that you can all come as near as you can, bless his name, may I just say that at this point what really matters before God about you and about me is number one our will and two, our faith in God it's faith in the living word of God and God will take you at your word when God sees that as far as you're concerned is in real earnest then there's no messing about, no keeping you waiting on God's part and I don't know what he'll do with your life, he might put you in the fiery furnace, you may find in the coming weeks and months you tried like never before but you'll come forth from that fire tried as gold speaking with a new tongue, hallelujah loving with a new love, living with a new holiness blessed be your name hallelujah, I'm going to ask my dear brother Norman to come and stand with me, and I know there are lots of many other able ministers, but I'd like dear Les to come, Les Wilson please come precious brother we're no wizards we have no gimmicks but we're men and women who love God oh hallelujah and I just assure you that when I pray for you in a few minutes, I'm going to pray with faith I'm not going to doubt what I'm praying and God's willingness to answer, and I want to challenge you to believe God in the same way don't look for feelings for emotions, if God gives them praise his name, don't try and fall to the ground, God doesn't need to knock you over to do this kind of thing he can work in the secret depth of your heart praise his name the river of fire is here hallelujah, hallelujah praise the name amen