In this sermon, the preacher discusses the story of Samson and the power he possessed as a Nazirite. The preacher emphasizes that Samson's strength did not come from his physical abilities, but from his commitment to God's commandments. The preacher also highlights the importance of staying true to one's calling and not succumbing to worldly temptations. The sermon concludes with a reminder that even in the face of giants, God provides the necessary tools and strength to overcome challenges.

But I believe the greatest pain of all is spiritual. And I've been going through something of a crisis, I think, in my own life the last few days, trying to reconcile the omnipotence of God and the impotence of the Church. I find it very difficult to explain why we can talk so glibly about the Lord God omnipotent and His sovereignty, and yet the Church just struggles on, staggers along. The text is in the book of Judges, chapter 16 and verse 6. Delilah said to Samson, tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. This is a question of a woman of the world to a man of God. It will be a great day when the world again begins to ask the Church, what is the secret of thy great strength? I'm sure right now the world thinks that we don't have any. Tell me wherein the secret of thy great strength lies. That is one of the European versions. You can dismiss the word secret if you like, and it isn't there by inspiration, it's there by inference anyhow. This is the record of one of God's supermen. I said last night, and say again, I think the curse of modern Christianity is there are too many of us too much alike. We settle to be like the guy next door, the man in the pew in front of us, the preacher that had the church before I have it. Let's not break the mold, let's not get out of the status quo if you like. But I've seen this man Samson, a type of a spirit anointed man, and a type of a spirit anointed church. You may not be convinced of this, but I am, that Jesus Christ died for something better than the thing that calls itself the church of Jesus today. A bunch of folk that only want to escape hellfire and clap their hands and go to heaven and live as selfishly as they were when they were unsaved. Mr. Finney the greatest evangelist, he was not an evangelist, I wouldn't like to put him in that horrible category. He was a revivalist, the greatest revivalist in American history. And Mr. Finney said that you do not do much for a person until you touch their selfishness. Because self is the basis, it's your ego that's your problem. And here again we have a man I say, a type of a spirit anointed man. I don't care which way you look around in the world tonight, we're in more trouble than ever we've been in history. Not merely locally. I remind you again in the last twelve weeks, twelve governments have toppled all their leaders, their prime ministers, their chancellors, their presidents have been removed. And just now Northern Ireland is on the edge apparently of civil war. It's a battle of the papacy to break that dominion of Protestantism that she hasn't been able to break in history. She tried to break England in the invasion of the Spanish Armada, she tried by engineering World War I, and I'm quite sure World War II, and she engineered Vietnam too. And she's struggling like the communists are for world dominion. And as I said to the brethren this morning, it's my conviction, disagree if you like, that we're moving into that bottleneck in history described in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews, in which it says that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot be shaken may remain. Nations only sin so far like individuals. And God said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, and he hasn't moderated that in any shape or form. And we've swaggered around and said we're the most favoured nation in history, and nobody's going to dispute that, but we have the greatest responsibility. Because this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of heathen. Again we're so subnormal that if ever we become normal we'll think we're abnormal. Here is a man moving in the power of the Spirit. You see the two most elusive things in the world are not the abominable snowman and the lost island of Atlantis. The two most exclusive and elusive things in the world are number one, personal anointing by the Holy Spirit, and number two, Holy Ghost revival. The great tragedy is we have no revivalists. Evangelists, they're ten a penny. Revivalists, no. Again revival changes the moral climate of the community. Men are never the same after it. Here is a man moving in the power of the Spirit of God. Everywhere he goes he does something that cannot be explained. Again it's called, in a big word, supernatural. And soon the eyes of the nation are turned on him. He was a judge, again he was a superman. He went where nobody else dare go, he did what nobody else could do. And therefore the enemies are after him, they're pursuing him. They get a woman into the plot and say, find out the secret of his great strength. I suppose it's fortunate for us that it's very seldom a man has ambition enough to want to rule the world, but some do. Alexander the Great conquered the world when he was 27 and sat down and wept. Because there were no more worlds to conquer. Hitler in my day desired to dominate the world and he almost made it, came within an ace of making it. And in between the two you had a little corpulent Corsican by the name of Napoleon. He was born on one island, the isle of Corsica. He died on another island, the isle of Elba. But in between he almost got them in and over the world. He gathered together his warlords one day and hearing them shift their feet around, he moved up to a map of the world he had on his wall, the old wall of his office. And he ran his index finger around the great country. And then the sternness and the anger of his ambition, he wanted to dominate the world. He wasn't after running Sears Roebuck or some triviality like that. He wanted the world beneath his feet. Somebody has said you can get what you want if you want it bad enough. And I believe that that's just about true in the spiritual area anyhow. And then when he had outlined that great country, he snapped them into a tent and said, See there lies a sleeping giant, let it sleep. Because he said if that nation ever wakes up and harnesses its manpower to its mineral power, if that sleeping giant wakes, the world had better watch out if it starts moving. He said that in 1815 before he went to the Battle of Waterloo. There lies the sleeping giant. What was the country outlined? China, the biggest headache on the horizon tonight. As mysterious in its power as it's been in the occult. China says she can throw a hundred million men into battle and she wouldn't lose them. She'd be glad to get rid of them because it would be three plates of rice each. That's three hundred million plates of rice. And that's the reason she wants Vietnam. It has the richest rice fields in the world. China in thirty years from now will have a thousand million people. The population of America will be about, with birth control and all the other things we have, abortion will be a third of that. A thousand million people. A quarter of the world's population, more than a quarter. And way back there, it seems to me, he was not only the greatest military strategist in history, but he was a prophet. When that nation, if it should wake up and harness its manpower to its military power, to its mineral power, let the world look out. Because if that giant gets up and stretches and yawns and decides to move, she'll shake the world. She's got a million men lined up on the border of Russia and China tonight. There's another mysterious upheaval inside of the country. Do you remember when we were moving around and saying, well, we drop the bomb on Hiroshima at sixty minutes to eight on the sixth of August, 1945, and a bit later on Nagasaki? And Mr. Truman said, if there's any sign of war, if there's a sign of a fire of war, we'll drop the bomb and get rid of it. Now there are fifty thousand bodies lying there in Vietnam to prove that politicians are liars too. And they didn't drop the bomb and end the war in the first week. It dragged on and there are just about thirteen or fourteen hundred women that haven't got their husbands back, and their little children that pray every night, bring back my daddy. But Watergate is more important. Another thing, we lose our humanity. If that nation wakes up, we'd better watch out. You see, a few years ago we alone had the bomb and we made the world tremble. You'd better watch Uncle Sam, if he gets angry, you could be out of the picture. Now China has it and she has no Christian conscience. If you go back, and I don't care the color of your politics, if you step back in your thinking, you'll discover this, that since Mr. Nixon shook hands with China and Russia, another thing has gone right for America, another thing has gone right for him. When you line up with atheistic countries, the Russians liquidated something like fifteen million Christians to get to power, and China liquidated maybe twelve million people. And you and I forget, we're after bread and butter, we're mesmerized by materialism, but I want to tell you, I believe from his throne, he still says, your brother's blood cries to me from the ground. And God is not only a God of love, he's a God of vengeance. And the worst days are not over, we're moving into the most terrible days in history. Economically we're not sound. The dollar bill in your pocket? Well it says Federal Reserve on it, the government doesn't own one cent of it, it's owned by the big banking companies. And right now the American government is paying five hundred dollars a second to the banking companies. They love this country so much. Can you tell me why only the Rockefellers have banks behind the Iron Curtain? Why doesn't anybody else have it? They were recently trying to get the CIFA out of the fluctuating gold standard. And who went over? Mr. David Rockefeller. Can you tell me why we never hear about the United Nations or Mr. U Thant, who gets about fifty thousand bucks a year for running it? You never hear about that. It's all Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Kissinger. I'm not anti-Jewish. But by the same token tonight, the President's report was read by Mr. Stein, another Jew, and I think Simon is a Jew, and they run the movie industry, and they run the banks, and they've got us just about where they want us. And again, I'm not against the Jewish system at all. Where you go may not come back. I don't care in that sense if you don't come back. If you don't come back for the simple reason you're disturbed and shaken out of your lethargy and begin to think that maybe you have some responsibility to be a Christian, never go to church Sunday morning and give a dollar so the kingdom won't fall apart. Because the worst thing you could ever say this side of eternity is that you're a Christian. I'm not going to look in any direction, but you know, half of you are chewing gum tonight. Would you chew if you were listening to Mr. Nixon? I think it's awfully bad manners. Disgustingly ignorant to chew in the house. You say this is God's holy house and you chew, eh? Tomorrow night I'll mention again that we need some reverence for God's house. In my judgment, when you cross those doors, through those doors, you ought not to open your lips. You could get a hymn book and meditate and make it easy for the preacher. Prepare the atmosphere with devotion and love and adoration. After all, you've been in a rotten world all day. Why bring it in here? Why talk chit-chat? You've had all day to chew in the office or somewhere else. Why make this a snack bar? That's just a gentle rebuke. Whether we like it or not, we've got Chan on our hands. Whether we like it or not, we've come to that place where everything is disintegrating. The family is disintegrating, morality. Morality, that's an old-fashioned word. Homosexuality is legalized in England, legalized in England. Abortion in this country. We're not going to go much further without the judgments of God. Either he bends low in mercy, or he extends his mercy a little further, or he sends judgment one of the two. And maybe it's just as simple as this. That either we concentrate in prayer, or we pray in concentration camps. Which do you think? Oh, God won't let America go to England. Why not? I remind you again, he loved Israel, but he hasn't bothered with Israel for 2,000 years. She's been kicked around like a football. And then he's going to take her back and embrace her. And then he lets the Jews be liquidated. Six millions of them, Buchenwald and Dachau, another concentration camp. Don't take it from an Englishman, take it from an American. One of the most articulate and, I think, discerning of modern preachers in America. Francis Schaeffer who runs the Liabri Fellowship. Wonderful man. And he reminds us that 800 years ago in China, that every decent sized city and village had a thriving New Testament church. 800 years ago. When there were nothing but Indians in this country. And England was still a backward country. 800 years ago they had thriving New Testament churches in China. And if there's one tonight, it's underground, hidden away. And he reminds us too, he says, disagree if you like, that God has given up on the cities of America. They're already doomed. They legislated God out of the picture. God said, well, you're done with me, I've done with you. And we've seen this strange, could I call it, circus. I said yesterday, say again, that you never advertise a fire and if the church had been on fire we wouldn't have any drug addiction. The kids went to drugs. From drugs they went to the occult. From the occult now they're taking up with Satan worship and a lot of other things. And the church is comparatively impotent. Oh, that New Testament church was something. As I said to the preachers this morning, there's nothing in the New Testament that says we should go to church twice on Sundays. It's an accommodation to our laziness and our greed because we're hungry before the sermon's over. But they didn't do that in the New Testament church because, you remember, a man got into trouble and his wife came three hours afterwards. And the service was still throbbing and thriving. All right, change the characters. Instead of seeing Napoleon there putting his finger around the ragged edge of a great country. Instead of seeing a map of the world, see a map of the ages. Instead of seeing Napoleon, see the devil there. And instead of talking to men, he says to demons, look, there is the church of Jesus Christ. There it is, you see that? The church asleep. Let it sleep! Because if the church ever wakes up to the resurrection power of Jesus and gets an endowment of power from on high, she'll shake earth and hell as well. Let it sleep! Oh, if you talk about this story you've got to bring to my mind, at least being in England, when our school teacher told us, the best known story in all American literature is the story of Rip Van Winkle. And she told us about the old man going up the hill and falling asleep and coming back afterwards, you know. And she made an awful mess of it. My teacher thought I was stupid. I was sure she was. And I found out that I was right. Do you know why? She told me about a man who went up a hill and fell asleep and came down after 20 years and started talking. That's not the story. When he went up the hill there was a sign outside of the tavern like we have still in English taverns. They have the queen's head or a bull or the golden unicorn or something. And there was a sign hanging in the breeze. It had on the head of George III was painted on it. And when Rip Van Winkle came down the hill, they had erased the face of George III and they painted a face of another George there, namely George Washington, another good Englishman that you used to have around here. They had erased one face and painted in another. And the point, the moral of the story is not that he went to sleep for 20 or 30 years. The point of the story surely is this, he slept through a revolution. And I suggest to you that's exactly what the church of Jesus is doing today, sleeping through a revolution. Moral, spiritual, financial, political, economic, it's revolution, everything is disturbed, there are no foundations. Does it disturb the church? Any of you preachers put a special night on because the country is in the mess it's in? Are you sitting rather deep alive, conferences? No sir, I've abandoned hope on those. I believe the only hope is for a bunch of men and women to get together or let me change it now, I say a bunch of men, let's leave the women out of this. A bunch of preachers mainly I'd like, that would go together to some place, not for a day or a night, but for a month. And not one of them preach. Get together and storm hell and bind the powers of darkness and release the blessing that God wants to give but will not give because the church is too weak and impotent to take it. What a question, tell me where in the secret of thy great strength lies. You see wherever you go, I've been in art galleries around the world and wherever I go and see a picture of Samson, he's a superman. You know the average man in Israel was so high and saw the king of Israel was head and shoulders above that man and Goliath was head and shoulders above him and Samson is somewhere up there. Now do you think a woman would go to a man 19 feet high and say, excuse me buddy but what's the secret of your great strength, it's pretty obvious isn't it? Do you older men remember the time Primal Carneiro was around, do you remember him? You remember him, he was world champion boxer for about a day I think. But he took about 23's in boots and he got a fist like a catcher's mitt. No wonder nobody could stand up against him. He's a colossal man, about 9 feet or something, came in the ring, you know he fought this way, he had to fight downwards you know, he couldn't fight anybody this way, so he punched them down you see. Would you go up to a man and say, hey do you take cornflakes every morning? Would you ask him some stupid question like, what's the secret of thy great strength? Why you do the things you do? You lift the gates of Gaza, nobody ever lifted them. But you see there's one thing here that brother you might covet more than all the gold in Fort Knox or the tea in China or anything else. You know it says, the most amazing thing you can say of this man at this side of eternity, I care not who he is from Billy Graham to who you've got. The most amazing thing that can be said of any man is not he's a super millionaire and makes Paul Getty look like a pauper. The greatest thing you can say about a man is what was said about Samson, the spirit of God rested upon him. There is no substitute for it, there is nothing like it, there is no possibility of getting this handed out with your diploma or your degree. Now I don't know how you pray, maybe I pray stupidly, but often when I pray I say to God, Lord I'm so glad you're not corruptible. I'm so glad God doesn't go to the church with the most money or the most buses or the most something else. The Lord thy God is a jealous God. And in case you think, well I'm just talking to men, no, no, no, no. I think Bertha Smith, my dear old friend we saw a few weeks ago, and she, oh Brother Ramsey said, and I held her tight, gave her a kiss, and when we left I said, well now go on, keep growing young. She's only 85, the little dear, and she's going to come and see you. Look, the spirit of God anointed that woman in China, and he could anoint you, you sister, brother. There's no class distinction with God. There's neither Jew nor Greek race distinction, there's neither bum nor free social distinction, and there's neither male nor female class distinction, sex distinction when it comes to anointing. When I was a little boy there used to be a woman that my beloved friend here, Dr. Willis, will remember the Mara Shaw. She came to a church I pastored. Now she was a woman, so she was awkward. But apart from being difficult to understand, she was an amazing... Do you know at 17 years of age, with a curvature of the spine, when her daddy, who happened to be William Boole, the founder of the Salvation Army, she said, Daddy, I'm going to France. She spoke French more eloquently than the French, that's what they said themselves. Darling, you can't go... He kicked everybody to the ends of the earth, but not his own darling daughter. Stay at home, dearie, you could pray and have... She went to the subculture of France, like Wilkerson, and I worked two years with Wilkerson in the subculture of New York. She went to the subculture of France, to the prostitutes, took abasement because they'd no money. Girls who never even put up their own hair or fired their own fingernails left castles and mansions in England to join this daring, brilliant young woman. And she went to the underworld of Paris. And when she collected all these prostitutes and jailbirds and others, the prefect of police came in and blew his whistle and said, Stop! You can't handle this! Do you know who that man is? Do you know how many people he's murdered? Do you know who this woman is? You can't handle this! She said, No, I can't. What are you going to do? She said, Let the Holy Ghost handle it. When they started to sing a hymn, a woman picked her skirts up and exposed herself and waltzed around. The marichal, smart, wise, said, Do you want to dance? Sure. Cleared all the benches off the floor. They cleared all the benches off the floor. Now she said, Here's the agreement. We'll play our instruments while you dance for 40 minutes, and then you'll listen to me preach for 40 minutes. Good. So these harlots and drunks and everybody danced and jazzed around. And at the end of 40 minutes, the marichal raised a hand, and this woman, the queen of the underworld, stood on a chair, and all she did was that, and all the men trembled. And they quit. And the marichal said, I preached, but I kind of didn't look at the clock. They danced for 40 minutes. I preached for an hour and 40 minutes. And she said, When I finished, here were drunks and prostitutes and bearded professors from the sorborn. And the chief of fleas came in and said, How did you do it? What kind of power do you have? I've never seen men, look at those men crying. Those men have never cried in their life. These are the most blatant harlots that we have in this city. A little frail young woman, so don't be discouraged, you know. Don't write yourself off. There may be some hell hole in America, but God would take some of you girls if he couldn't take anybody else. You'd be so effective. I used to look at some of the sweet girls in summer college, brilliant girls. We had a teen challenge. Going out at 11 o'clock into areas I'd have trembled very much for my daughter to have gone in years ago. In fact, my three boys went out at 12 and 1 o'clock in the morning to go down 111th Street and Broadway and down some of those back alleys. Great, great for you, you know. A weekend like that would do more for you than reading six books on soil winning. Because how do you find out you've got what it takes to meet it? You back off and get out of the picture. But you see, the secret is this, the spirit of the Lord rests in the public. Shut him up in a city, he lifts the gates and away he goes. No, no, this man isn't a, he isn't a colossus. Because if he is, he contradicts the scripture. The Bible says it's not by what? You know, that little, little, little book of Zechariah we never use, but we quote it so often. Isn't it chapter four where it says it's not by? Nor by, but by my. Isn't that easy? Oh, we only thought if somebody give us a few more, if somebody, you know, if Paul Getty would give a thousand million dollars to the Southern Baptists, we could shake the world. No, we'd only increase the salaries of the big shop. Well, let's get on with the message. A thousand million dollars wouldn't help us. The church never had more gimmicks and gadgets and ability, put us on more TV stations. Ah, forget it. Tell me one man that's been on TV for twenty-five years but shaken the nation, will you? Tell me a million dollar crusade, and I respect the men in the, tell me a million dollar crusade that's changed the moral atmosphere of any community, can you tell me one? This old man came up to me after a meeting, he said, Brother Raytheon, I remember more decay I have. I remember that after he preached three nights, he needed a police escort to get into his tent, it said to the anointing of God. You don't think anybody needs a cop these days with him, do you? Who's afraid of preachers? Evangelists. Forget it. But oh, when the anointing of the Spirit of God is there, there's something entirely different. No, no, no, no. The good old book says it's not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. The Lord said it's the lame that take the prey, and to those who have no mighty increase, the Lord thy God is a jealous God. And all he's waiting for today, I'm sure, is to find some men that don't want to steal the glory, or get a crown on their heads, or get any credits for what they do, but they're jealous for God. We say to people, you're a sinner, you know it will take you to hell. If you don't give up this lousy habit, you could end up in a mental institution with your drugs. Oh, you'll be smart and get saved for your own sake. We'd better tell them, say, what sin is doing to our God, do we? That every sin that men and women do sends, as it were, a repercussion into eternity, and God feels it because it's a rejection of his Son anyhow. What's the secret of thy great strength? He does the most ridiculous things, doesn't he? He has no money, he has no charms, in one sense, and yet he does what nobody else can do, lifting the gates of Gaza and carrying them away. Some men come to attack him, and he lifts up the jawbone of an ass, and he slays them. Isn't that something? We get so nervous and say, oh, there's never been power in the world like this. Do you know what power the new megaton bomb has? No, and I don't care either. Why not? Well, I won't do your homework for you, but let me tell you there's a story in the Old Testament where some angels had been around, and one of them, I think, was going home late, and he banged his wings a bit too much, and he trailed it through a town, and the tip of an angel's wing destroyed 178,000 people. Did you ever read that in the Old Testament? Good job he didn't trail both wings, he might have destroyed the earth. One wing of an angel destroyed 170 odd thousand people, and you expect me to tremble because Russia has power. If it were really true what's on our coins in God we trust, I'd be scared to death in Russia tonight. Because under God we could get angels to go there on White Main Street however it may be, and maybe it'll come to that. Jawbone of an ass. I heard of a preacher preaching this one day, and he said, you know, of course the Lord doesn't use things like that, the jawbone of an ass, anymore. A little lady that didn't like a pastor on the front row said he does it at our church every Sunday morning. That, you know, he still uses the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are. Oh, if I had just something else I could bring to the... That's not what the Lord says, he says, what's that? Your problem isn't that you need something else, it's that what you've got you won't surrender, that's your problem. What is that in thy hand? It's a shepherd's rod. Throw it down. Right. What is it called after that? Is it called the rod of Moses? No, it's called the rod of God. What is that in thy hand? The jawbone of an ass. And it's as powerful as an army. What is that in thy hand? Oh, just my lunch. I have a rather big appetite and I was going to have the day out, would you like to have it to me? Because if you do, it'll feed another 4,999 people. It'll only feed you if you keep it. And that's all that will happen with you if all you want to do is keep it. Keep it. But remember, if you save your life, you'll lose it, and if you lose it for Christ, you'll find it. The law of multiplication is death. Accept a corn of wheat, fall into the ground and die. Oh, my Lord, die. Me? I mean, I'm a graduate. I went to Bible school and seminary and I have all those degrees. Would you expect me? Sure, I expect you. For the simple reason God expects you to die to it. As long as you limp along on those crutches of your own ability and all the rest of it, God will let you struggle. But when you throw them down and come to the place of total bankruptcy, you'll do something entirely different. Yeah, this man is a superman. Everywhere he goes, he gets victory. You could link him up to Romans 8, 37, every weapon that is formed against thee. No, no weapon, rather, that is formed against thee shall prosper. Then Romans 8, 37, he's more than conqueror. While the Spirit of God is on him, he's more than conqueror. And while the anointing was on the Church of Jesus Christ in the apostolic days, she was more than conqueror. She went into the Roman Empire, she went into the intellectualism of the Greeks, she went up to that formidable obstacle of the Jews, and she penetrated every one of them. This man was very natural. He fell in love with a girl. There were two ways he could go to Timnath. He could go this way or go that way. Well, he mustn't go that way. Why not? Because there's a lion in the way. Now if Samson, in typology, is a type of a Spirit-anointed man and a Spirit-anointed church, that lion must be a type of the devil that goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Now this has troubled me profoundly today. It may not disturb you. You may go home and go to bed and forget the whole thing. I'm not responsible for that. But it disturbs me profoundly that we talk, in the language we talk, about omnipotence and about the delegated power that Jesus gives us and we're so wretchedly impotent. There's a lion in the way. Go this way, Neskin. No, sir, I'll go this way. And he went in the way with his father and mother and he said, hey, sit in here a little because I've a bit of business to do around the corner. And when he got around the corner, the lion sprang at him and he caught it by the jaw and ripped it as though it were a kid of the goats. Now that's a miracle, but it seems to me the next part of the verse is more miraculous. It says that when he split that lion in pieces he said nothing about it. Oh, that's more than we could do. We'd have published it, photographed it, set our denomination, did it. Stretched it out, it's the longest, strongest, heaviest, fiercest, terriblest lion that ever lived and I killed it all by myself. Do you know what I'm looking for, friends? And God won't let me die till I see it, I'm sure of that. I'm looking for a sweeping Holy Ghost revival that will out-pentecost, pentecost and be so big that no evangelist will steal the glory. That it won't put a crown on anybody's head and nobody will build an institute with his name on it. There was a lion in the way. Everybody else sprang. He goes up to that lion and the Spirit of God is upon him and he takes that lion and rips it apart as though it were a kid of the goats. Do you know anything about that? They used to have a little old man in the days of depression in England when I was in Oldham and I can see him coming down the aisle though I don't like churches with an aisle. I'm talking to that empty thing there, you know. I'd never have a church with an aisle down the middle. The bride can go around the side or come in the back door as far as I'm concerned. Why do you have to alter a church just for a few flippant girls coming anyhow? I like to talk to people right in the middle here, put the aisles down the side. But I can see that man coming down the side of the church and he took his place in front of me every Wednesday night. Dear little guy, very poor. His clothes were shabby. His shirts were ragged but always clean and his shoes were very rough but they were polished. And he would come and sit there and he'd look up and I'd look down. Dear old Mr. Furnittle. I didn't care if he never came to church as long as he came Wednesday night to the prayer meeting. We got about 150, 200 to a prayer meeting. And he never missed praying. And there was one phrase he never missed using. And it was this. Somewhere in his prayer he'd say, Lord teach us what is flesh and what is spirit. Teach us how to bind and how to loose. The church has forgotten that I think, Pastor. We could manage without the choir as good as they are. And a lot of things in the church we could lose without. But my Lord, it would be wonderful if we had a group of deacons that knew how to bind and how to loose. As I said this morning, isn't it crazy? The church is the greatest emergency station in the world and yet it's only open Sunday morning, 11 to 12, Sunday night, 7 to 8, Wednesday night, 7 to 8. You'd go mad if the fire department was only open three hours a week, wouldn't you? You'd be phoning the White House or somewhere if doctors were only available Sunday morning from 11 to 12, 7 to 8 at night, the Wednesday night. Isn't the house of God more important than any five states in the world? Aren't we here to quell the fire, as it were? Do you know anything about this business? Ah, you say sometimes you're rough on the colleges and Bibles. Sure I am, because half of them don't function as they should anyhow. Tell me this, if you went to Bible school and said, did you ever have any instruction on how to bind and how to loose? Do you think the devil was concerned whether you got the right inflection on your Greek, this is the proof of fact and this is something else? Do you think that scared him still? I went into a brilliant preacher's office not too long ago and he had about a dozen things there from the days he was at, well almost knee-high. And he had everything framed on the wall. And a vast library. Surely all the latest greats told, oh, he had money, it's a rich church. A millionaire backs the whole thing. And I doubled up, I tipped out, I said, I'm not staying here. Why not? I said, I guess the devil comes in here. What time does the pastor, oh the pastor's here eight o'clock every month. I said, I guess the devil runs at ten to eight. He said, boy, better get out of here, he's so brilliant. I couldn't stand up to this guy. No people, Greeks. Look at these things he had, hexaflame, all the rest of it here. Boy, he's got us shunted onto a sideline. We've majored on minors and we minor on majors. Wouldn't it be wonderful in this church if you only had a couple of people, or your church preacher, that knew really how to bind and how to loose? When I used to sit trembling listening to this dear preacher here in England fifty years back, a little more too, my pastor used to talk about a man called Pastor Fetler of Latvia. And when I mentioned him in the first Baptist church where we had a blessed meeting about three weeks ago down on the border of Mexico in McAllen, Texas, southern Texas, the organist came up, brilliant old man, all he could play. He was a dream. And a few nights after he brought me a faded picture about that land and he said, see what it says here, Pastor Fetler of Latvia. His family, I think there were all his family, about twelve children and everyone played an instrument. He had his own orchestra. He was a great man of prayer. And my pastor would fall back on a German, an old German preacher, what was his name now, I forget it. Blumhart, Blumhart, right. Now I need my wife to be my promise, I'm getting old. Blumhart. He was reading the scripture. Listen, I want to tell you something that I said this morning and I believe it and I look you straight in the eye, not only now but at the judgment seat of Christ as brilliant as you may be as a preacher. That the most awesome thing you can say this side of the pyramid is that you're a Christian. If you say you're a Christian, you're saying Christ liveth in me. And if Christ lives in you, you should live every day in the office in the home as Jesus would live if he was there. That's Christianity. Now if you're not a Christian because you believe there ain't a virgin birth, the devil believes it. And he believes in the physical resurrection of Jesus. He has to do it, he witnessed it all. But when you say you're a Christian, you believe this book and you believe that Jesus Christ delegated to you power and authority. Do you believe that? Do I believe that? Much easier to send people to hospital. Much easier to send people to the psychiatry. Blumhart, what day was reading the word of God? I give you power over all the power. Oh, that awful little word again, pastor. Over the power. Oh, well you said if he gives you power over the power of the enemy, but it says it doesn't say over the power, over all the power of the enemy. Somebody sent her in to pray for a lady that was delayed. Oh, I've seen people like that. Have you ever seen anybody like that? Women tearing their hair, vomiting at the mouth, green frost coming out of their mouth, blaspheming, using obscenities. Don't you be smart and say, oh, I'm giving Mary Jane a Ouija board. That's the devil's toe in the door. You start playing with a Ouija board, you'll open yourself to the devil. And if you've got one, go put an axe on it tonight. This man of God went to pray with the girl. And he stayed at a bed while somebody sat outside of the house, at the door, bedroom door. He prayed for six or seven hours. There was no formula, no saying. Instead of dealing with the devil. I give you power over all the power of the enemy. They sent for Pastor Blumhart to another woman. She lived in a little cottage on a hillside to cut a long story short, that girl demon possessed. She had legions in her. And every time he went, she laughed, she spit in his face, she blasphemed, she vomited at dirty stuff, used obscenities. Until you could almost feel the air thick like Egyptian darkness. This is praying. May sound Chinese to you, foreign to you. But I'm glad again as I look at this precious man, he's a link with a past generation in the 1800s somewhere. And I'm a link between him and this generation. And I'm glad I touched some of those old saints who saw Holy Ghost revival. This man saw it in China and elsewhere. They didn't play Christianity. They didn't send children in the back room with crayons. And they say, well, what color do you crayon Aaron's beard? Gray or red or blue or something, you know. They didn't say, well, oh, Saturday night, got a class tomorrow. Jane, bring me a Coke and a bag of Fritos. I've got to study math in the school there. Put your feet up, you know. On Saturday night, you go weirdly sick. Brother, if you do that, be honest, throw it overboard, you've no interest in your class. You've no interest in it. May get some resignations, but it won't hurt. That's all that matters sometimes, eh? Here's a girl, demon possessed. She goes and prays. She spits and smiles and laughs. He goes the second day, goes the second week. To cut a long story short, he went for nearly two years and prayed eight hours a day. Don't ask me, if you ask me if I've got stamina, I don't have that fortitude. We give up and say, well, she'd be on hell. But he hung on like we say a dying man. And he says, Jesus says, I give you power over all the power of the enemy. And it was a constant battle. And people began to say round about, you know, I think he's about as crazy as she is. She screams like the devil and he screams on top, you're going to come out, you're going to come out, you're going to come out. And she laughs and spits and sneers and smiles. One afternoon, the people in the village heard what you would say in the old days, like a freight train going through. Or like a jet going over. A roar in the village. What happened? Three o'clock. Did you hear the roar? It seemed as though the very windows rattled. What was happening? That very minute, this man got to the place of supremacy and the demons said, we're never, never, never, never going to come out. We'll take her to hell and burn her after this anyhow. And he said, you come out in the name of Jesus, the Son of God. Come out now. And the demons came out of the girl. She sat up in bed so transformed as though you'd done that, you know, like some people do, you know, they act a fool and smile and rub it off. And it just looked like that. And her face was, and she was as beautiful as an archangel. There wasn't a blasphemy, there wasn't a bad sentence. And she sat up in bed and said, oh, I've got such wonderful peace. But it took a man nearly two years to wrestle and strive against those demons. Are you ambitious? Hmm? Come on, you're ambitious. Wouldn't you like to be called to succeed dear Brother Criswell? Wouldn't that be a real honor? Hmm? As far as I'm concerned, there's only one honor. I used to want to be known here and there, and I couldn't care less now, under God. But you know, there's one place I'd like to be known, not to be popular, but to be feared, so they'd be terrified. I'd like my name up in big letters about twelve feet high past it, with all big red letters. L-E-O-N-A-R-D Leonard Ravenhill. Where? In the Hollywood Bowl? No, thank you, no thank you. Where? In hell. Because preacher, Christian, if you're not known in hell, you're not much good. Not much good. We have a young man comes to our house, spends a bit of time with us, when he's not with us, he's with Billy Graham, and he said just before they went to the Memphis Crusade, three weeks ago, he said Billy decided he's going to preach more on hell. I said, good for him. Hell. Known in hell? Why? Because one day, and cut this short, the Seven Sons of Sceva, you remember, decided to get the devil out of a man, and they got the demons out, and the demons turned around and beat them up. Abused them, knocked them down. Oh, they couldn't understand. How come this happens to preachers? You get beaten up like this. We thought we were hating the devil, and he nearly killed us. And the demons turned around angry, and said, you want to know what I've done this for? Paul, I know. And Jesus, I know. Not you, you usurper. I've never heard your name. When we left hell this morning, Lucifer didn't get a list and say, you see that man there, his name's on the list. Do you think, I think Satan has a danger list. A men of men who are dangerous, like the FBI have a list of wanted men. I think Satan has a number of men. And he says, you try and dig a pit for that man's feet, and try not to strut him. You see, that man is moving with too much power, and somehow destroy that power. The devils knew him. Jesus, I know. And Paul, I know. Sure, they knew Paul. As I said, he started in Tarsus, the historic capital of the world. He finished up in the military capital of the world. He went to the intellectual capital of the world, Athens. He went to the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. And he went to the immoral capital of the world, Corinth. The rottenest, lousiest place. The very sewers of hell ran through that place, and yet he established a church for God in that area. You wonder, Satan says, Paul, I know. And Jesus, I know. Hmm? Do you push the devil around, or does he push you around? Hmm? I give you power. This is the awesomeness, again, that Jesus delegated power, not to make a few sermons and teach a Sunday school class, but to work against principalities and powers. Did you ever read about the Black Plague that swept over Scotland in the 1500s? And it was coming just like the smog settles over this country of yours. And everywhere it went, people died like flies. And one morning, a Presbyterian preacher came and put his clerical collar on like Dr. Willis does there, and his three-quarter coat, at five o'clock in the morning, a dirty, grey, Scottish morning. And people opened their bedroom windows and peered out. And they saw the man of God, and he was pushing and saying, you shall not enter, you shall not enter, you shall not enter. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, you shall not enter. He walked down the boundary line of the city, and he walked down the boundary line of the city. He couldn't walk down that side, it was the North Sea, and he couldn't walk down this side, because it's the River Tay. And I've been in that city a number of times. And I thought of George Wishart, just walking down that boundary line, not with a bunch of deacons, or Sunday school teachers, or folk from headquarters. He suddenly awakened to the fact that he had power over the power of the enemy. And he stood there, and he said, you shall not enter this city. And people died like flies across the road. But in that section that he defended in faith and blood of Christ and the promises, not a single person died. You wonder, why the devil gets his interest in kids having hay rides and sleigh rides? Why in the name of God don't we teach them the Word of God and the possibilities of grace? And the God's looking for some young Davids that will slay Goliaths when the king can't slay them, and the headquarter folk can't slay them. What an embarrassing thing. David goes to take cheese and bread, and this big guy comes treading through the very earth, and trembles. And he says to his brothers, why don't you go destroy him? And you run away and play. You just brought sandwiches. This man will scare you. Boy, if he were to sneeze, he'd blow you over. Why don't you kill him? I thought you went to the academy to learn how to kill. Get out of here. Well, why doesn't the king slay him? The king's terrified. Look at him, peeping round the curtain in his tent, saying, boy, I wish we could get rid of that man Goliath. Well, why doesn't his wonderful son, he's supposed to be a strategist in war, why doesn't he kill him? Will you get out of here? Well, yes, I will, but before I go, do you mind if I kill him? You'll kill him. You'll kill him. Oh, you never learn to use a, a, a, you never use, I mean, you've never had a uniform on, and we don't have one to fit you. And somebody overheard and said to the king, there's a fellow there, says he can get rid of this man that's making us the laughing stock of those uncircumcised, but bring him here. Hi, son, what do you want? Well, I won't get to get back to my sheep, but I'd like to kill that fellow before I go. You would? Well, all right, he says, put on my breastplate. Came down to his knees, he couldn't even walk in the thing. Put on my helmet. Came on his shoulders, he couldn't see where he was going. In other words, he's saying the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Do you mind if I take these off? Go ahead. What makes you think you can do this? Well, king, I'll tell you. You see, the good old book says, he that is faithful in that which is least. This man was faithful, and there was nobody there to applaud him, because he said there came a lion during the night to tear one of my sheep in two. And I got all of him, and I punched him on the nose, and said, if you come back, I'll kill you. And the next night there came a bear, and I slew the bear. Now I got rid of a lion, I got rid of a bear, now it's a goliath. Well, all right, son, if you feel that way. Oh yes, we read it, don't we, so easily, he killed a lion and a bear. Can you see all those hundreds of soldiers standing there, military men, oh, you know, with just all policy uniforms and feeling the greatest guys in the world. And here's a little fellow going to do the job they should have done. And he goes to the brook and says, well, just a minute, I'll need a bit of something, and he picks up five little stones. Do you know why I chose five? Nobody does. Do you know why I chose five? I think I know why. Why? Because Goliath had four brothers, and he hoped they'd all come up, he'd have slain a lot of them. He wanted not only to be a conqueror, but more than conqueror. And as my son said one night when he was preaching, I never thought of it, and I've told the story, I don't know how many times. Do you notice what he did? In front of Goliath, there came a man bearing a shield to fight off the big rocks that were thrown. And my David was preaching, and he said, did you notice this, that David never tackled the shield bearer, he went for the giant. We spend all our time fooling around with the shield bearer. We mess around with demons that try to do. You go to some meetings, if you have a headache, you have a devil in you. If you sneeze, you've got a demon. Pure bunkum. Our job is to embarrass Satan. And that has happened in real Holy Ghost revival. Ask Bertha Smith when she comes about how they drew lines and stopped Satan coming. My conviction is that just as you draw a plan out militarily that there are areas that Satan sublets to demon power and there's a, there's a prince. I believe it with all my heart, there's a prince of California in the hierarchy of the devil. And he's scared, lest we should assert our power. Let China harness its manpower to its mineral power, the world will tremble. And let the church wake up to the promises of God and the power of the Holy Ghost and we'll shake hell. Briefly go ten chapters back, you'll find another story in this same book. You know, we tell it to the children. It's a lovely children's story, story of Gideon. But do you remember what happened? To abbreviate it, it's threshing corn at midnight. It shouldn't have been doing that, it should have been in bed. But the enemy has come in like a flood and the children of God are living. The angel says, God is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. I would have said what? Angels tell jokes, what do you mean God is with us? I live in a cave, my uncle lives in the next, the priest lives in the next. What do you mean? We're the people of God. The great tragedy in America today is none of us have ever been in revival. Brother Willis has, but most of us have never been in one. We don't know what we're talking about. Here is the old enemies, chased God's children, and there they are, all tied up in caves and they should have been sleeping and they were working. They've turned night into day, they've got God's children in captivity and I'm convinced of this, disagree if you like, the church of God is in captivity at this moment. Captivity to fear, captivity to carnality, worldliness. We have more fetters on us than slaves had. If we're God's children, why are we in this captivity? Do you remember what he said? He said, listen angel, I'm talking sense to you, if God is with us, where be his miracles that our fathers told us of? The church of Jesus Christ is essentially supernatural and if she's not supernatural, she's superficial. If you can explain everything you see in your church every Sunday, you better get down and weep because there's no glory there. There's something so mysterious about the brooding of the Holy Ghost that things happen, the preacher may dry up, nobody come forward and somebody go home and can't eat and there's something else that happened. God begins to work in his mysterious power. Where be his miracles our fathers told us of? I've heard Bela Willis talk about revivals in China. I talked with an old man on the hills of Wales, a rubiner. He was a right hand man of William Boo, the founder of the Salvation Army, one of the greatest days I ever had past that. I wish there were tape recorders in those days, but they weren't. Told me about the early days of the Salvation Army. They were poor, they were blessed on the stage, they were the jokes of everybody. But I remind you, the Salvation Army, and listen, correct theology is not essential to revival. Don't get on your stilts, brother. For the simple reason the Salvation Army never was straight in its theology and it isn't today. For two things, two things God said that when people are really born again they should be baptized, isn't that right? And the other thing he said you're to break bread and do this till I come and the Salvation Army never baptized anybody and they never have a communion service and yet they had a Holy Ghost revival. How do you figure it out? For the simple reason that God reads the hearts of men and William Booth was determined to blast a hole in hell if need be. You know it used to be the normal procedure in those early days of the Salvation Army that every core, as they called their fellowships, every assembly spent the whole of Saturday night in prayer. That was not abnormal, it was a normal pressure, normal procedure that the church would just meet on a Saturday night. That the house of God was open at ten o'clock and they prayed till two or three or four in the morning. That's why they shook the kingdom of the devil. That's why they entered seventy countries in ninety years. They weren't rich, they were poor. But they rescued the perishing and they cared for the dying. And they got some of the devil's worst men and saw them transform. Why I used to be excited when mother and dad would say there's a special thing about the Salvation Army. We'll go on Wednesday night and say praise the Lord we're going to go to church. I'd love to go. Salvation Army was a, you know, a star show as far as I was concerned. A man would come on the platform in chains because he'd been manacled in jail and stripes on his and they had a woman. She had a wonderful name. It's a wonder somebody hadn't borrowed it for films. This was her real name, Nancy Dickey Bird. Isn't that a nice name for a woman? Nancy Dickey Bird. She must have been the biggest Dickey Bird in the world. She was about 250 pounds. And I don't know how many people she'd fought and she'd been drunk and she'd been a harlot. And they brought her to the meeting that night and I can see that woman's face radiant with the power of God. And I don't think I was more than four years of age. In fact I wasn't four, I was three. I saw William Booth when I was two and a half years of age and listened to his son years after. Man, there's nothing more exciting than a church that's moving in the power of the Spirit. You don't have to say, I wonder what we could entertain the young people with. Oh, no sir. When we had a move of God in our little church where Brother Willis used to preach and I was a youth leader, I got the kids to pray on a Friday night and we used to pray from seven till nine and we went to church six o'clock Sunday morning and prayed. And in between I went in Sherwood Forest where Robin Hood used to hunt and used to spend hours alone by myself praying. I went that old. We have some ferns like those. Those are dumb things but we had real ones that grew about six, seven feet high and I used to go at night, even call nights and crawl under that fern and get there and pray and weep and say, Oh, God save Revival. I've heard Willis talk of Revival. I've heard dear old Jessup, he died recently, 95. I'd heard the man of Shaw talk about Revival. I'd met people, my daddy was born again as a result of the Welsh Revival. David Matthews wrote a book, I Saw the Welsh Revival. David Wilkerson told me in his own office when I was editing his paper there, he said, Len, the thing that started me up for God in this particular sphere of my ministry, in the subculture of New York, I read David Matthews book, I Saw the Welsh Revival. You see, it's a chain reaction. It's a life call off the altar, off the altar, off the altar. Where be his miracles? No, it doesn't mean if you get filled with the Spirit you'll be a Kathleen Kuhlman or Oral Roberts. We've had that for 25 years, and there are millions still dead in trespasses and in sin. I remind you again, the greatest and the first Pentecostal preacher was a Baptist. How do you like that? Isn't that terrible? I wonder why they don't teach that at Dallas. But anyhow, the first Pentecostal preacher was a Baptist, wasn't he? John the Baptist was the very first person that ever said he should baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. He never did any miracles, it says clearly in the Word of God. John did no miracle, he did not. He didn't straighten withered arms or unplugged deaf ears and give eyes to the blind. He didn't raise the dead, he raised a dead nation. We've seen all the others and thank God for it, but now we need somebody to come in the power of the Spirit and raise a dead nation. For we're morally, politically, economically, I don't care which level, we're dead. And except God breathes on us. Well, you young people that are married, you better be careful about bringing children into the world, for they most likely end up in concentration camps. And some of you older folk, like myself, you better get ready, because God isn't going to put up with our sin much longer, I'll tell you that. Where be his miracles? Christianity, as this one thing, you see, Christianity is N.O.T. Would you please pass this on to Bible schools? In the study of comparative religions, Christianity is not a comparative religion, it's a superlative religion. Christianity does not compare with any other religion, it contrasts with every other religion. And in these days of so-called, you know, kind of compassion, and we're charismatic. Listen, brother, if they deny the blood, if I have to share Jesus Christ with the Virgin Mary in redemption, you can have your charismatics, and if I'm the last man, I'll stand against you. If you chop my head off, because Jesus made a perfect atonement on Calvary, he didn't need the Virgin Mary to help him out. And if you say she sits at the right hand of the Father, and you can pray, did you notice what the Pope said a month ago? He said there isn't enough reverence, even in the Roman church, for Mary. Find me a scripture that says I have to reverence her. She called Jesus Lord. It's a dear theological humbug. We're so scared of communism that we think all we have to do is flock with any other. Look, if you can have Catholic Pentecostals, why can't you have Mormon Pentecostals? Why can't you have Jehovah Witness Pentecostals? Why can't you have Buddhist Pentecostals? Come on now. If you let the gate down for the goats, you've got to let them all in, not a few. It's a day of theological cloudiness and darkness. Isn't it amazing that the Pope even has blessed the charismatics? Boy, that's enough to make old Luther jump up. Why did he waste his time? My country, I see a mark on the floor where the Romanists burn folk at the stake. And they do that now if they've got the chance. You see, when Rome is in a minority, she's a lamb. When she's in equality, she's a fox. When she's in superiority, she's a tiger. You say, I've got some of the loveliest neighbors. I'm not doubting it because, you see, Roman Catholicism in America is not Roman Catholicism. It's the American edition. What's the trouble in Northern Ireland? Oh, they're trying to oust people, they say, which is not totally true, from the government. They've already got a government which is mixed with Protestants and Catholics. And both sides hate that. You can be a doctor in Northern Ireland, you can be a mailman, you can be a school teacher, you can be a lawyer, you can be a doctor, but you can't hold one of those positions in Spain if you're a Protestant. But Teddy Kennedy wouldn't tell you that. He just keeps squealing for Northern Ireland. When Rome's in authority, she's iron-fisted. She gets a chance and we're squeezed in between Romanism on this hand and Catholicism on the other. But we've got one guarantee, you know, the gates of hell will not prevail against us. We're still going to win out. Where be his miracles, our fathers told us about? Well, come on, where are they? Any in your church or mine? Hmm? It's a severe test. As I say, the church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing and she's ending in the supper room with a bunch of women organizing. She began in the supernatural and we're ending up in the superficial. Let's get back to the story. It's a very simple story. Why did I preach tonight? Why have I preached so long? I shouldn't have done that. I should have told you Samson's story can be described in three words. When the men that were after him got him, what did they do? Blind him. No, bind him first, and blind him, and grind him. Put him in a basement. There's an awesome word, you see, he teased the woman, fasten me with new ropes, and they fastened him, he got out. Fasten me with green wefts, he got out. Unroll my hair and fasten it to a beam and they did, he shook his head and nearly pulled the house down. That's not my secret. What's her secret? And finally he confessed it. He said, I'm a Nazirite. Three things a Nazirite couldn't do. Couldn't drink wine, sign of worldly pleasure. Number two, couldn't touch anything that was dead. That's where he got messed up. He went back to the line he killed, it was dead. And number three, had to wear long hair, a sign of reproach. May not be today, it was then. A man had long hair, he's a sissy. He's a girl. And he bore long hair in reproach. And he never drank wine. And he had to break fellowship with people who were worldly. I preached in Minnesota twenty years, twenty years ago on Samson. Not this message. And you know, while I was there, a great big Swede stood up there, a man about six foot two. And he yelled, I see it, I see it. I'll do it. He came back to the meeting next night, he said, Brother Rayfield, I did it. I said, did what? He said, last night while you were preaching, I saw what was wrong. You said that Samson would not drink wine, a sign of worldly pleasure. Number two, he wouldn't touch anything abhorrent because it's typical of people who are, death, typical of people who are dead in trespasses in sin. And three, he wore long hair as a sign of, and the Lord showed me what was wrong. My business has been going down. My brother's with me. And he gambles and he drinks. And we make a lot of money and we cut it in half at the weekend. And he gets his money and he takes it to the devil. And I told him this morning, you either quit or get out of business. I'm not going to pray and ask God's blessing on this business. I'm unequally yoked. Now we take that sometimes in marriage, don't we? But listen, some of you preachers are unequally yoked. You've got ungodly deacons and you're unequally yoked with them. You'd better get rid of them. You've got unsaved Sunday school teachers, you're unequally yoked, get rid of them. You're in partnership with somebody that's not saved, unequally yoked, get rid of them. God will never, you can't pray about things like that, they're out of, they're outside of the reach of prayer. You're unequally yoked with somebody ungodly. All right, what did they do? Put out his eyes, put him in the basement, made some bracelets of brass, put him on a treadmill, made him grind the corn that he'd stolen when he set fire to their crops. But you see, immediately after, they're his head off, he said, I'll go up like I did at other times. Now I say, at the beginning, if he'd been nineteen feet high, and then he shrunk down to five feet, he'd understand something had happened. But you see, when he got up, he was exactly the same, except his hair wasn't there, maybe he didn't feel for it. He said, I'll go out and do as I did at other times. And you've got one of the saddest texts in the whole of the Word of God. He wist not that the Spirit of God had departed. I'll tell you about it for a minute. Some churches that we have, the Holy Ghost left them years ago, but we keep up the motions and the actions and all the other stuff. We keep the process going, but the Holy Ghost hasn't breathed on us for years. And when I preached to some pastors just some months ago, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Florida, in a certain town, big handsome man, he did like a bunch of others. They fell off the chairs and started crying to God on the floor. Came to me the next day, invited us to supper at his house. I was to preach for him Sunday morning. And he said, Mr. Abner, while you were preaching last night on Samson, I could see myself right after I came out of Bible College. I had an anointing. The power of God was on me. God was just breathing through the church. And then I decided I'd have a little more academic distinction and a few other things. Not that that necessarily needs to destroy your unction, but very often it does because you give too much time to that than to prayer. And he said, last night while you were preaching, I was following you down the scripture and I saw something that gave me hope. That while Samson was in prison, it said his hair began to grow again. Oh, the mercy of God is going to give me another chance. And with the tears in his eyes, that man wept. He said, Brother Abner, I got back to God on Thursday night. I told him that as I lay prostrate on my floor, Lord, I am sorry. I wish not in one sense the Spirit of God had departed. I'll go out and do it at other times. But the Philistines came and they mastered him. And they put him in the basement. And he was grinding corn for the Philistines. And I asked you, do you think if you'd ever gone in the basement you would have heard that man groaning in his spirit? Do you think that man that had known the glory of God might have been saying something like this? Father, why didn't I die when I destroyed that life? Why didn't I die after I destroyed two thousand men? Why didn't I die in the middle of my exploits? Here I'm dying. And nobody knows I'm here. I'm shut up in the basement. The Philistines are running the world and the church is bankrupt. What is that? He hears some feet and he turns his blind eyes and says, Who are thou? I'm a boy. A boy? What kind of a boy? A Philistine. A Philistine? What do you want here? I have come to take you. I suggest to you, if you had taken a dagger and ripped him open while he was alive, he wouldn't have heard, I have come to take you. It's not long since two thousand men couldn't, but I have come to take you. Did you ever have any pain like that? Eh? Some of you preachers remember the form of glory when you could pray and sweat and groan on a Saturday night and other nights for lost souls, but now you lie in bed and watch Johnny Carson or somebody? I've come to take you. Take me where? Into the temple of Dagon. Dagon was the fish god. Half man, half fish. The scripture says there were three thousand in the gallery. The auditorium usually holds at least double the gallery amount, and there were nine or ten thousand people there, and when Samson came in they laughed. Do you know what the record says? Well, it sounds very like our day when they say God is dead, they said the God of Israel. He doesn't divide seas for his people anymore. He doesn't open the windows of heaven. They can't look out of their windows tonight in the midst of a wicked world like this and say there's a pillar of fire, there's a supernatural presence of God. God is gone. The Philistines are running it. Did it ever break your heart that the rotten uncircumcised Philistines of this world, the cultists, the Mormons, the rest of them, laugh in our face and say where is the power of your God? Read the New Testament, it's one thing, go to church, it's something else. Preacher, are you Norman Hale? Hmm? I don't care if you're rated as one of the top ten preachers in the world, I couldn't care less. And preachers rate me as being this or that, I don't take any notice whether they say I'm the worst or the best in the world. I don't have to. God bears witness with my spirit. I don't want what men say, it doesn't make a bit of difference. The enemies laugh. I'm looking for a holy ghost revival, a manifestation that will shake those boys' cocks and all the rest of them with the rotten theology that they have and the, what do they call it, what was that, they had situational ethics. I'm looking for a holy ghost revival that will rock Harvard and rock Princeton and rock all the seminaries and the cemeteries as well. I'm disgusted with the church, in case you don't know, I perhaps didn't tell you that at the beginning. In my own simple language I'm embarrassed to be part of a church that's an embarrassment to God and I'm convinced it is. If you think I'm a lunatic, bless your dear heart, go home and sleep well. I won't shed any tears. God's going to have to do something in his church before he does something through his church. Samson says, you're taking me into the temple? Yeah, I'm going to take you on the platform. And the enemies of God laugh. He says, son, be careful, I'm black. Some steps up here. Aren't the two pillars here? I remember the two pillars. I once came on a tourist trip and looked in this temple. Two pillars. Yeah, put me between the pillars really, because I might fall. And I finished where I started, the greatest thing can be said this side of eternity. It's not that you're more brilliant than Einstein. Have you more riches than Paul Getty or Croesus? The greatest thing that can be said of any man is the Spirit of God rests upon him. He has the anointing of God. You can call it the baptism, call it sanctification if you're Nazarene, I don't care. But if you've got a pure heart and the Spirit abides, that's what matters. And I'm not interested in any talk about the Holy Spirit without purity. I'm not interested in any charisma without character. Just let me stay by these pillars a minute. And he reviews his life. Well, Lord, here I am, embarrassed, humiliated. The Philistines are laughing. The world doesn't care that you're the God of creation and you once showed yourself with such mighty power. We tell the story of Samson, but in ninety-nine cases I'll tell you that he was a man of prayer. And no man is greater than his prayer life. And his prayer is superb, because at the end of his life he prayed one of the most daring prayers in the whole of the Word of God. Do you know what it was, Lord? Strengthen me, just once. Just once. Just give me one more anointing and if I ever lose it I'll never bother you again. But will you please get me out of this situation I'm in and the enemies of God laugh and there are no profit. Do you notice this prayer? He didn't say, Lord, heal me and give me my sight. He didn't say, Lord, take me back and make me a judge over Israel. He didn't say, get me out of this lousy prison. He's concerned for the glory of God. Strengthen me just once even if I die. As I said last night, God doesn't answer prayer, he answers desperate prayer. He says, I'm prepared to die if that's what it will cost. I want to tell you something tonight, that's exactly what it will cost. You've got to die to yourself, to your ambitions, die to selfishness, die to pride, all the vain things that charm me most and help me least. Do you think anybody ever says about you as you go to church or in your pulpit, what's the secret of that man's great strength? Huh? Or don't we have any? Look at his prayer for a split second, Lord, strengthen me just once, even if I die. And do you know what? He repeated it He repeated the prayer. He was so honest about it. Even if I die. And the Lord came on him and he pushed the pillars out. And the good book says what? He killed more in his dying than in his living. Though he slew two thousand with the jawbone of an ass, when the house came in, he killed more in his dying than in his living. I'm going to argue from that. Again, that we're going to have a Pentecost to our Pentecost, Pentecost. We're going to have the glass great outpouring of the Spirit of God, according to Joel 2. And God says, I shall yet shake the earth. As I said Sunday night, Jesus is coming for a bride, not a widow. He isn't coming for a crippled church that's just about ready to drop in the grave. That's why I'm embarrassed to be part of the church The bride is usually young and vivacious and robed in white. And surely, surely, surely, surely, we need a revival of holiness in the church. The bride has made herself ready. No, he's not coming for a widow. He's not coming for a church that will embarrass him. He's coming for a church that, as the hymn writer says, with his own blood he bought her and for her life he died. He's coming for a church anointed in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of the Lord is upon him. Is the Spirit of the Lord on you tonight? Are you really an asset or a liability to the church? If you live the next 365 days as you've lived the last 365, will the devil be scared that you're around? Oh, this is serious stuff what you say tonight. Lord, do this in me. even if I die. Wreck my plans, postpone my marriage, do some other thing. I don't care. Just so, come and cleanse this heart of mine and indwell me by your Spirit. I challenge you to find one man, you can go to Dr. Spurgeon, anybody you like, that didn't have a crisis experience after he was born again. Tell me one, will you? Tell me one in church history. Shall we pray? We bow in thy presence, our Father, in this holy hour, in the name of the Remember again that you are the high and lofty one inhabiting eternity. We shall step out soon into the sordid world run by the prince of this world. He's the chairman of every board on everything it seems. He directs everything from newspapers to TV to films that are filthy and the flesh pots will be alive and shouting and jiving, carrying on while we go to sleep tonight. We don't have to have much sleep tonight. seem to have much answer to it unless the spirit of the living God comes afresh upon us. You know every heart here. You know every need and you can answer every need. Every problem. Solve every weakness. Purge every heart. Indwell every life. I'm not going to ask you to sing. I get scared of stirring folk emotionally. And I don't know what your need is but I know there's some need here. And your biggest need is your pride. Pride. Get it out of the way and humble ourselves before God. You say tonight, Brother Raven, I want to meet God. I've got something to get out of the way. I'm in bondage and I need freeing. Something that I need to get cleansed. I certainly need this endowment of power. Well that's between you and God and I don't count numbers and I'm not excited about numbers. I'm just saying this. If you have need and you want to meet God you just get up and come and kneel at the front here. There's a pew nearly empty. You can come and kneel here and meet God tonight. I'm not going to sing. You're intelligent enough you know your need.