In this sermon, the preacher focuses on Isaiah chapter 6 and highlights three key words: woe, love, and go. The first word, woe, represents confession and recognizing our own sinfulness. The second word, love, represents the cleansing and forgiveness that comes from God. The third word, go, represents the commissioning of believers to share the message of God with the world. The preacher emphasizes the need for vision and passion in the Church today, and encourages believers to be spiritually minded and actively engaged in bringing revival and blessing to others.

Usually, in leaving one country to go to another country, there's a serious handicap of language problems. But I always take comfort in America that while most of you don't speak English, at least you understand it. And I'm glad for this privilege of fellowship, and I want to read now from the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 6, and reading from verse 1 into verse 9. Isaiah, chapter 6, from verse 1. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood a set of fins, each one had six wings. With train He covered His feet, and with train He covered His face, and with train did He fly. And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. The whole earth is full of His glory. And the post of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with snow. Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the set of fins unto me, having a life-cold in his hand, which he had taken with the tongues from off the altar. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lord, this hath touched me. For my iniquity is taken away, and my sins heard. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and whom will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send me. There are three simple words in verses 5 and 7 and 9 of this familiar chapter. They're so simple even a preacher could remember them. Verses 5 and 7 and 9. The first is the word of a man, woe. The second is the word of a seraphim, lo. And the third is the word of God, go. The first is a word of confession, woe is me. The second is a word of cleansing, lo, this hath touched thy lips. And the third is a word of commission. I think that maybe the supreme need of the Church of Jesus Christ today is vision. And that vision must be allied to something else, and that is passion. Isaiah here has a vision in three dimensions. It was an upward vision, he saw the Lord. It was an inward vision, he saw Isaiah. It was an outward vision, he saw the world. It was a vision of height, he saw the Lord, high and lifted up, saw the world. It was a vision of deity, he saw God. And the cherubim and seraphim were not crying, omnipotent, omnipotent, omnipotent is the Lord, or omniscient is the Lord, or omnipresent is the Lord. God is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. Those are the attributes of God. But God is essentially a holy God. And the cherubim and seraphim were not crying omnipotent, but they were crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord. Therefore it was a vision of holiness, they saw the Lord. It was a vision of hellishness, he saw Isaiah. It was a vision of hopelessness, he saw the world. It was a vision of deity, he saw God. It was a vision of depravity, he saw himself. It was a vision of beauty, he saw the world outside. And I believe that there is no alternative. If they're going to have Bible revival, which is obviously very different from a city-wide campaign, one is worked up and the other is sent down. One has a human personality usually as the driving force, and the other there is a mighty impact of God. For after all revival is nothing more than deity localized. It is God coming down into an area. It is God coming down upon a given situation. It may be God coming down upon a personality. But how different? I suppose it's inevitable in traveling that you get to see great places and meet great people. Personally I don't think there are many great people. Those who think they're great, usually great on you. But the great people that exist, well if a man knows himself, he's bound to be humble. And if a man knows God, he can't be proud. But I met a man quite recently who has been used of God in revival. The only revival maybe in the last five years, apart maybe from this visitation in the Argentine. But I went to a meeting specifically to see this man by the name of Duncan Campbell, who was used in the Hebrides revival. Now I knew that he was a tired man on the verge apparently of a physical breakdown. And I didn't want to ask to see him, but after the meeting he asked to see me, which was very wonderful. Because I'm nobody, but he said, I saw Raydner in the audience tell him I want to see him. And so in the church office we had an interview, a visit as you would say for maybe an hour. And I began to ask that man about the visitation of God. You may have read of that visitation in the Hebrides. Those little islands, broken little bits of land off the west coast of Scotland. And this was such a revival that Campbell told me that when it began five years ago and subsequently as it's moved on, after five years of revival in that island, that a threat from senators of conference that just extinguished communism in one blast of God upon the impact of iniquity, that every communist leader got saved in one meeting. It closed the taverns, it closed the dance halls. And he said to me, Raydner, the amazing thing is this, that in five years there are only four backsliders. Now that must have been a revival. Do you know how it began? It began because there was a little woman there, a very little woman. She's about 95 pounds weight. She certainly isn't five feet high. She's 86 years of age. She's stone blind. But she prays eight hours a day. I wonder how many preachers here pray eight minutes a day. Eight hours I mean. Eight hours a day. And has been hidden away in a little cottage in a chimney corner refusing to die till God sent revival. And God sent revival on the Hebrides, on the Isle of Lewis and on the Isle of Harris. But the amazing thing is this, that before God could send that revival he had to deal with a preacher and deal with a holiness preacher. A man in the faith mission, a man who is known all over our country as an exceptionally good fundamentalist and holiness preacher. And he was sitting on the platform in an auditorium much larger than this, away in the city of Edinburgh in Scotland not far from Glasgow. And he was turning his Bible over getting ready to preach. He was listening to Dr. Fitch, a great theologian up there. And Fitch was bringing down with amazing unction the power of God on that meeting when suddenly the Spirit located the preacher that was to follow him and said, as Duncan Campbell told me, Campbell what are you going to preach tonight? And he said, well I'm going to preach on the Holy Ghost. And suddenly the Holy Ghost said to him, why preach about something you don't have? Now I'm not clever enough to know whether there are any degrees in death. Is there a degree of the Holy Ghost without the Holy Ghost? And the Lord said to him, why preach? Five years ago you were filled with the Spirit. Five years ago you saw wonderful things. But no longer you see that. Your altars are not filled. Your eyes are not filled. Your heart isn't filled. Why aren't you just proud of the fact that you're booked for the next five big conferences in the British Isles? Now as I've said repeatedly, I believe that there is a baptism of water and I believe there's a baptism of fire. But I believe that a great need of the Church of God and particularly holiness people right here is a baptism of honesty. We just won't be honest. We hide behind doctrines. We hide behind terms and phrases. If you ask a man, is he a Christian? He says, I don't smoke, I don't dance, I don't swear, I don't do this. Well neither do nuns in convents and neither does a priest in Kentucky. He doesn't do those things either. It's a tragedy when you can try and prove your fundamentalism by what you don't do rather the thing is prove it by what you do do. And so the Spirit says to the preacher, it's no good preaching about the Spirit. You can preach about him theologically, you can preach about him scripturally, historically, but you can't preach about him personally and you can't transmit life to this people tonight and therefore you'd better go home. And good honest man he went home. When he got home there with his clerical attire and his nightclothes, his wife said to him, well darling you're home very early tonight, what's the trouble? He said, listen dear, I don't want to, I'm going to get along with God. He said, Ravenel, I went inside the door and I shut the door of my little study. Somewhere around about 10 o'clock at night and the clock went to 11 and it struck 12 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 and I was still laid on my face prostrate before God. And then he said about half past 6 in the morning, I knew that somebody entered the room. I could hear somebody tiptoeing across the rug. I heard somebody's knees touch the ground. I heard somebody fall down. I heard somebody begin to pray. He has a very beautiful cultured daughter. That daughter had no idea except by revelation from God what was happening. But the exact vision that this man had, a threefold vision, an upward vision, says this wonderful man to me, I saw God upon his sword. And then he said, I saw myself. And then he said, Ravenel, I can't tell you whether I was in the flesh. I can't tell you whether I was elevated like Paul. I didn't know whether I was in the body or out of the body. I don't know whether I had a dream, I had a vision, what I had. But if I do know, he said, I was on the edge of an abyss. And I could see millions and millions and millions more of people. There they were, fire around them and torment and agony and shrieking and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And I had a revelation of hell. And Campbell says, I've never been the same man since that. How in the world could he be? You say, I'm a fundamentalist, I believe in hell. So does the devil anyhow. The trouble with many of us, we can put the whole world in hell without shedding a tear over it. And then I remember looking at the face of that man. And he said, Ravenel, I had a vision, I'd always wanted one all my life. But he said, I'm not sure I'd ever pray for any other man to have a vision. It's too much. And the saving factor was this, he said, that at half past six in the morning, without saying a word to anybody else, when I thought as though my whole brain would burst, when I felt like saying to God, God, why did you give this to me? It's not normal, a man can't bear it. How can you cram eternity into time? How can you stamp a revelation that only God can see on the eyeballs of a man? How can a human personality bear the groans and horrors of millions of men? At that very minute he said, my beautiful girl at the side of me began to pray this prayer, please God, don't let my daddy lose his mind. God, don't let my daddy go mad here. Oh God, don't let my daddy go insane. Please, please, keep your hand on him, or he'll die. And he never told her that he was seeing that vision, but he said it was just like somebody putting a block of ice on my burning head and my burning heart at that moment, the prayer of my daughter. She was as if it were some cold draft from heaven. And she went down to the room and I stayed there more hours, and finally got her. No longer the man I had been before, with a free, full vision, upward, inward and outward, to go out and live for God, to go out there into the isles of the west coast of Scotland and see that phenomenal visitation of the Holy Ghost. We want revival, of course, we'd all say that. I'm not sure that we do. Supposing we change that and say that we want revival, yes, sir, we want revival. Well, whether we want it or not, we need it. But at what price? You pick up the book and read down in the first book of Kings about a man that stood one day and said, there should be no rain on the earth for the space of three years and six months, according to my word, not God's word. I shall have none. Well, would you like revival at the price of getting up every morning at four o'clock to go and get one loaf of bread for your family to last a day? It's easy to read the verse. But do you remember later down the road this man saw a woman picking up sticks and she had some meal and she was going to make a loaf. And when he said, make me a little cake first, what did she say? I want to make a cake for myself. We're going to make a cake and, and then what? Die, that's right. Everybody else is dying. We talk about preaching to bring down blessing. Where's a preacher that can strangle a nation? I'll shut up heaven. I'll send the nation bankrupt. You'll be going to funerals every hour of the day. The economy of the nation will be destroyed. You won't have a motor car, at least you'll have it, but you won't have money to buy gas for it. You'll wear your clothes without buying any new ones for the few years if revival comes that way. But do we want revival at that price? Is it better for a nation to go to hell prosperous with a big waistline or, or go to heaven with, with your clothes hanging on your skin like an old coat hanging on pegs? If God hasn't gone out of business, then revival must be possible, but the trouble is we don't want revival. We just want blessings. We just want our churches filled. We just want an easy way. Ah, to see, to see the world as God sees it. Why, you've only just started talking about vision and somebody very smartly comes up and says, vision, vision. Oh, be careful, that's a very dangerous word. You'll become a visionary. Well, there is a saying current in our country and I've heard it in your country too. I've heard people say something like this, that, that if you get a vision like that, you'll become so heavenly minded, you'll know earthly use. Well, let them say it, it's quite smart. But I want to tell you that as far as I know, this generation and the holiness folk included as well, the trouble is not that we're so heavenly minded, we know earthly use. The trouble is we're so earthly minded, we know heavenly use. If you have a vision without a task, you'll be a visionary. If you have a task without a vision, it's drudgery. But if you have a task with a vision, it's a missionary. Whether you're in Cincinnati or Timbuktu, this man says, in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. When God took Uzziah out of the way, Uzziah had an unobstructed view of God. And listen, before you ask God for an unobstructed view of himself, be sure that you're prepared to pay the price. He might even take your wife or your husband or a friend, or even your ministry, and cast you away in some place to fast and weep for six months, in order that that vision might be clear. But in the year that King Uzziah died, when he went out to the leper colony, in that year, I saw the Lord. Yes, we certainly need this vision these days. A hundred and fifty years ago, there was a writer in England by the name of Thomas Binney. He wrote some very wonderful hymns. He wrote that wonderful hymn, I think one of the greatest, Eternal Light. Eternal Light. How pure the soul must be, when placed within thy searching sight. It shrinks not, that with calm delight can live and look on thee. And he says in the second verse of that hymn, the spirits that surround thy throne, in this chapter of Isaiah 6, the spirits that surround thy throne may bear that burning bliss, that thou didst surely bear alone, since they have never, never known a fallen world like this. And immediately after him comes another hymn writer that says, Thou didst not spare thine only son, but gavest him for a world undone. Well I am tempted to be cynical nearly there and curl my lip and say, a man wrote a hundred and fifty years ago, a fallen world like this, a fallen world. They didn't even have movies in those days. Why even when I was a little boy, if a woman showed her ankles, they had suspicion that she was a street woman. It's gone a long way since then. A fallen world. Oh dear. If the world was fallen a hundred and fifty years ago, I suggest it's a hundred and fifty times more fallen today anyhow. The tragedy is that the enemy has already come in like a flood that the spirit of God so far in this generation has not lifted up a standard against him in the truest sense of that word. I'm not denying that to be spiritually minded is joy and peace, but I'm equally sure that to be statistically minded can be very uncomfortable. Do you know how many millions of people there are in the world this afternoon? Let's take this last vision first. God is looking out on the world, he says. Who will go for us? Oh, some people fall on their hands and say, well after all, after all Mr. Ravenhill, they're very careful, you know, there's a thing called dispensationalism. Brother, don't I know it. Poor, pathetic, pale Protestantism right now is being tortured on the rack of dispensationalism. God isn't with us, so we have to find an excuse for it. One of the great preachers of America said only a few weeks ago that since God gave the Great Commission, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. He also said, heal the sick, send the leper, raise the dead, do this, do the other. But since we're not doing the latter, we must cease to do the former. And henceforth he said, as regards this church, we shall support no more missions. If you want to support them individually, all right, but this church will support no more missions. There is no evidence of the supernatural power of God right now. Well, nobody doubts that Christianity began in the upper room. It began by being supernatural. It's ending by being superficial. Why, a lady came to me the other day when I finished preaching in an alliance church. She was a Pentecostal lady, and I had no arguments against them, but she said, Mr. Raymond, there's no fire in my church. She said, it's a beautiful new modern building. And she said, even now we're saving money to get it air-conditioned for this summer. I said, sister, you ought to get it fire-conditioned. After all, you know, you never put fire wherever there's a corpse, it will smell. You always keep a current of fresh air. I think that's why they have air-conditioning in some of the churches. They'd smell so bad if they got the fire. But the fact is that we're more concerned about coolness than we are about fire these days. And so somebody says, yes, it's true, this is the last minute, the last minute of this dispensation. But we can't do anything about it. All we can do is sit down. God is sovereign. Of course He is sovereign. You mean to say one of these days God will wake up and rub His eyes and realize how serious the situation is, that every hour of that clock today, 500 people die without Christ. 5,000 in 10 hours. 10,000 in 20 hours. Nearly 25,000 in 24 hours. And God sits on His throne. And it doesn't make any difference to God. The blood of Calvary is flowing, hell is filling, and the race is so great that 500 people an hour die without Jesus Christ. Well, that doesn't hurt God. You're trying to suggest now that while the Word of God says that He's not willing that many should perish, He's not willing, pardon me, that any should perish. You're trying to suggest now He's willing that many should perish. I think it's difficult usually to get into a reasonably good prayer meeting. Well, prayer meetings don't count much these days. Anyhow, they're only giving God advice, most of them. But even if you get into a decent prayer meeting, somebody shoots up as a kind of, I suppose to make God feel better, kind of give God a vote of confidence and they say, Lord, Thou art able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either ask or think. And everybody says, Amen. The Bible doesn't say that. Well, I don't know when anybody quoted it correctly. Yes, millions of people are perishing. The last census of the human race says that there are 2,500 million people. Cut 400 million off and say they're born again, which I doubt. You've got 2,000 million people that are going to perish eternally. That's a mighty lot. Supposing we had a revival in the next five years that gave us 100 million people really born again in the Spirit of God. I'm not talking about diseases, I'm talking about the residue. I mean when the wind has blown some away and adversity has come and opposition has come and you still have a solid block, a nice big slab of 100 million people converted. Rather that would alter the spiritual temperature of the world if you had 100 million people converted. If America got 20 million really regenerate people in the next five years, what a mighty difference it would make to America. If England got 10 million, remember that England isn't as big as Pennsylvania. You have 156 million people in America, we have 50 million people in our little island. If we give you 20 million regenerate people in the next five years, that would be wonderful. Supposing England gets 10 million, no 5 million. Supposing India gets 10 million, supposing Africa gets 10 million and you distribute the 100 million regenerate people in a worldwide breathing of God, why better we'd be hysterical with joy nearly. We'd be saying 100 million people born again, our churches are packed out, we're building new churches, 100 million people really converted and then when you've done, the devil still has 1,900 million people to go to hell forever. Not much. Oh God is able to do it, sure he is. I believe that God is going to pour his spirit out in the days in which I'm living. I believe before Christ comes, the world will be shaken with a mighty spiritual earthquake. Well the two men agree with me but anyhow we'll carry on. That's what I believe. Because I can't believe that God is happy to see this generation perish with 2,400 million people. And so God is able, oh he's able, he's able. We're always telling him he's able as though he doesn't know that. God is able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either ask or think. Above 100 million people saved in the next five years, he's able to do exceeding abundantly. He may give us 200, 300, 500 million people and then the devil still has three times as many but he only does it the word of God says and the sting is in the end of that text. He's able to do far more exceeding abundantly above all that we can either ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. And the holdup is not in God, the holdup is in the church. You'll fool yourself if you think that God's problem this afternoon is communism, it certainly is not. Not even in America. God's problem in America is not Romanism, it's as devilish and wicked. It comes out of the same womb. It hates us with the same unholy hatred and then it can arrest every communist before he gets off the boat in New York. It's ever suspicious that they feed millions of dollars into Romanism, that Romanism is as diabolical, remember, however nice Mr. Sheen looks on television. But God's problem in America is not Romanism, God's problem is not communism, God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism. The world can't tie the hands of God, the modernists can't tie the hands of God. The only people who can tie the hands of God, strangely enough, might be right in this very building this afternoon, we are the people that tie God's hands. The best title for the Church of God today in my judgment is this, we're unbelieving believers. Somebody someday will pick this Bible up and be simple enough to believe it and when they do we'll all be embarrassed. I don't know who it was, but somewhere, somewhere down the line, somebody put the idea of it and all you do is come to a conference like this and they used to sing a chorus, faith, simple faith, the promise see, and look to God alone. Lots of impossibilities, but right now the impossibilities laugh at us. And here we are in a world and men are saying show me your faith, where is your faith, where is your God? Where is power? Well, we're in a jam, we're in a serious situation. We never, never more needed a manifestation of the Holy Ghost than we do right now, this afternoon. And in this day in which we're living, but where is the manifestation? What about these millions? I very often tell the Alliance people, maybe some here, but you know A.B. Simpson didn't raise the Alliance up to be a missionary society, he raised it up to get people filled with the Holy Ghost and after that go to the mission field. You can get a man filled with the, you can get a man to the mission field without him being filled with the Holy Ghost, but you can't get them filled with the Holy Ghost without them going to the mission field. Where there is no vision, where there is no vision, whether we've got enough doctrine to sink all the ships in the world, what we lack is vision. And to the vision we lack passion. Where there is no vision the people perish, that's why they perish today. That's why in the recent manifesto of the Communists they say, we don't need to fear Christianity. I have this in black and white where they said in their manifesto, Christianity is certainly more powerful than what we have. Jesus Christ can do more than Karl Marx, but the Christians don't believe it and secondly they won't sacrifice for it. Why we sit at ease as though we were really getting someplace. Every tick of that clock today Communism has gained 44 square miles of territory in the world. Every tick of that clock today the Church of God is going further and further back. Last year in Japan alone the population increased 1,100,000,000. I'm sorry 1,100,000 rather not 1,100,000,000. 1,100,000,000 increase in the population. When MacArthur wanted an invasion of the gospel he asked for 2,000 ministers to go into Japan. Well they nearly got 2,000. Roman Catholicism sent 1,200 anyhow. We sent 200 and most of them were not even fundamental. Yes, think of it. Five years ago this afternoon there were 345 Protestant missionaries in China. This afternoon as far as we know there are five. I don't care how well you know Church history you can't deny this fact that never before in the history of the Church of God has the Church withdrawn unblocked from a nation. Men have died and shed their blood and refused to go. But all that Stalin did was hop and pop and blow the house down and everybody ran away and they evacuated and left the poor Chinese. And there's a big area with 400,000,000 people in it. There were more Roman Catholics stayed behind than Protestants you know. When the Roman Catholic leaves his country to become a missionary he says goodbye to family. He's not coming back. He's never guaranteed a furlough. He goes to die. I'm not saying it's not hard on the mission people. I'm not saying people don't need a furlough. Lots of them get a lot more than they need. I'm not sure about that. We waste a lot of money. He goes to die. And they stayed in China. India has 375,000,000 people this afternoon and Nero isn't too sympathetic to the gospel. England entered Africa with a Bible in her hand. Now she's trying to hold it with a bomb in her hand. And people who are well informed say after all it's going to be difficult to hold Africa much more than another 5 years. There's a steel ring around the world. A trickle ring if you like. There's also a ring of communism and there's a ring of Romanism and of false religion. And sir, 2,000 years after Jesus came if I were to take a pin out of my coat and rub that wall with a pin you could measure the depth of that pin scratch if you had a scientific measure. And what the measure of my little channel is with my pin on that wall that's the measure, that's the impact of Christianity on Mohammedanism in 2,000 years. What are you, we're a crit shouting about how much you've got. Somebody's responsible for it. It's got obligations. You're tied in to so many people if you're Christ. Ah, millions and millions this afternoon. We don't have time to stay. Last year I was privileged to preach to about 1,000 ministers of Mishra for 4 days in Chicago. The Alliance Annual Meeting. And God really moved one day and we stayed to pray. We prayed till about 3 o'clock in the morning and God really moved. And that Sunday morning we came out of that great stately Methodist cathedral in the center of Chicago. We were all saying goodbye. They were all saying isn't it I've never been in a match of prayer like this. Didn't God move? I've never been the same man and so forth. We came out of that warm kind of semi-pentecostal atmosphere and stepped into the street a lovely May Sabbath morning 3 o'clock in the morning and right across the road there was a doorway and I heard music and I looked again after 3 o'clock I just stood and looked right opposite and right down that long alleyway inside of that building there was a platform right up to the door there was a girl with hardly a stitch of clothing on her and a man behind her playing something and a man playing a golden saxophone and this almost nude creature walked right to the door of that building and I took a peep inside and it was jammed at 3 o'clock Sunday morning in a Christian country and I watched people come out and come to this side of the street and I followed them up the street and when I looked in it was a semi-dark place just little flickering blue lights the woman at the door at least the back she was completely naked and as these young people 17 and 18 came in I looked in there and there it was fire with smoke and stinking tobacco and stale beer and there it was full of weird horrible sensual music and I said to myself this is a Christian country the same thing in New York the same thing in London the same thing in Chicago any other city you like this is Christianity this is a Christian country 3 o'clock in a Sunday morning but I didn't see any other house of prayer open I didn't see anybody out with cracks rescue the perishing rather the only way you rescue them is with their feet up on the mantelpiece and having a nice comfortable time, eh? or there are some jewels right at the side of your own church somebody as pure as your daughter was as pure maybe a year ago and tonight she sells her body for a few cents your newspaper said last week that America last year had 400,000 divorces America has something like more than a million illegitimate children a year now that's something to go out, isn't it? we'd rather talk about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that you've heard a thousand times and say it's fact what's the good of talking about the Holy Ghost if deity isn't coming down and touching this thing God is saying who will go for it? He looks for a man not a cherubim not a seraphim not a half man a half deity He looks for men God takes men not money not methods not machinery not movement men God's always wanted men that's why He chose twelve men could have brought twelve million angels with Him if He wanted to do the job that way He chose men and here's a world with millions millions, millions dying they were dying while you were sleeping last night they were dying while you were fooling around somewhere God is saying who will go for it? I hear people say sometimes I heard someone say only a few days ago praying very earnestly for somebody that they loved and I don't doubt their sincerity but I heard this person saying with a kind of anguish Oh God will you please give him a vision of hell that never gets an amen out of me I'm not sure that sinners need a vision of hell it seems to me the sinner needs a vision of Calvary he needs to see the love of God he needs to say there, that was my cross but He bore my sin in His body on the tree and he needs to see the love of God listen if anybody needs a vision of hell it's you and I that need that vision talk about it we don't feel it it doesn't hurt us anymore it's a little thing that we've got away in the refrigerators of our mind nicely freezed off and cooled it doesn't sting it doesn't hurt it doesn't trouble it doesn't bring us to tears I was passing through a city in England late last year with my three little boys one of them said Daddy what's the building on the hill I said oh it's a prison I said as a matter of fact it's a famous prison what's that tower oh that's where they hang men and I've got this in black and white it's not a figure of evangelist imagination but we put our greatest criminal in that prison a few years ago his name strangely enough was Charlie Peace he broke every law of God and man he said they'll catch me one day and when they catch me well I won't squeal about it and they caught him with murder on this hand and murder on the other his body was eaten with sin he lived in indulgence and sensuality he crawled through a source of hell to get to hell he regarded neither God nor man when finally the judge put on the black cap pointed a finger and said to him Peace you have been found guilty of murder and you're to die on a certain day and the Lord have mercy on your soul the law of England gives a man 21 days to live after he's sentenced not 21 years 21 days 21 days they marched him out of the prison they put him in a cell where he was to live by himself for 21 days guarded night and day and the night before he was to die the man came in and said good evening Mr. Peace he said good evening what do you want he said I've come to tell you that you're to die in the morning I know that he said I'll be here I'm not worried about it alright sir he said never had an answer like that from a man this man was tough this man had a conscience like leather this man he had no more feelings he wasn't human anymore he should be here at 10 minutes to 8 in the morning right I'll still be here at 10 minutes to 8 they came into the prison cell the condemned cell the prison governor and the prison warder and the prison doctor and the hangman and two or three other officers Charlie Peace got up and brushed his coat and said I'm ready let's go all he had to do was walk 30 feet out of that room here is a room there's a piece of wood with a rope on it put his neck through the rope stand him on the platform pull a lever and down he goes and the jerking of the rope pulls out his neck cut the rope and down he goes in a pit of lime then they drag out the body and bury it on what they call unconsecrated ground Charlie Peace said I'm ready let's go and the preacher according to custom according to tradition must be a preacher there the preacher walked in front of Charlie with a little book in his hand he began to read very dreamily when they'd gone only half way from that trail to the gallows Charlie Peace reached his hand and grabbed hold of the man and spun him round now the preacher was terrified what was going to happen Charlie Peace said would you read that thing again what were you reading just now all he said I'm reading what we call the consolations of religion he said tell me this will you read that last sentence over again I never heard words like those will you read them again and he read over the wicked shall be turned into hell he read about a bottomless pit he read about a fire that's never quenched he read about dying a death and never dying at all and Charlie Peace with a sneer and baring his teeth like a mad dog looked at the preacher and said listen listen man I never heard that in my life do you mean to say that in less than 5 minutes I have only 5 minutes to live do you mean to say that in 5 minutes time when I swing off the end of that rope and go down in that pit only my body goes down and after that something gets out of me and it goes forever and ever do you mean to say that I'll be eternally falling and never reach the bottom I'll be eternally burning but not consumed I'll be eternally in the grip of death and yet never know the relief that death brings is that the hell you believe in the preacher said well I was always taught that ah well said Peace I've got 2 minutes to live let me tell you something let me preach to you preacher I want to tell you preacher this that if Charlie Peace believes in what you and the church of God say you believe in that if you covered England with broken glass from one coast to the other if Charlie Peace stood on his hands and knees and walked from one coast to the other and it took him all his lifetime to do it if I could save one man from a perishing eternal hell like that then he'd be happy to live my life once and rescue another man from hell and now I die that's effective preaching by a man just within a few shadows of the of the gallows friend are you going to suggest that we never mind the dead fundamentalists outside we that both were alive we that think we're somebody we're we're not only good milk we're the cream of the crop and all the rest of it you mean to tell me that we believe that you mean to say that you'd have such a narrow shrunken prayer meeting of your church if every believer believed that Harnett the famous philosopher said that Christianity is a very simple but a very sublime thing to live in time for eternity under the eye of God and by his help to live in time for eternity if you could get every holiness man and woman not preacher but every holiness man and woman in America eternity conscious if they'd pray in the light of eternity if they'd live in the light of eternity if they'd get up in the light of eternity and go to bed in the light of eternity and talk in the light of eternity and buy and spend in the light of eternity and pray in the light of eternity we'd have a revival that would shake the world in two years but we're not we're not eternity conscious oh Mr. Ravenel I think we have plenty of visions so do I as a matter of fact I think we have too much the only vision most of you have anyhow is television I must tell you a vision of a fallen world can you remember the last time you didn't go to bed because men were dying without Christ can you remember the last time you pushed the plates away and said no I want more time with God have you geared your life like that are you living trying to be spiritual and living on the cardinal claim are you trying to be spiritual and living in time are you trying to be spiritual and keeping up with other people round about listen when God can get men that are sold out to him like Paul was sold out to him we'll move our generation we need a vision of a perishing world it will hurt us keep us out of debt you won't see so much of your wife your husband you won't be as well accepted as other people they write you off and say he's a fanatic my brother every man that's ever done so anything for God has been a fanatic anyhow if you want to be normal you'll be normal if you want to be abnormal you'll have to be abnormal not intellectually or physically or psychologically but spiritually we need a vision of the world we need a vision of hell we need a vision of God now if he could only recapture that old Hebrew conception of we don't just get down in the morning we're not awed not awed oh no sir it doesn't move us to get up in the morning and say as soon as my little eyelid flickers and as soon as it goes down at night from that moment to that that whether I make my bed in hell or go to the uttermost parts of the universe God is there knows my every motive my desire my thoughts my interests but if he had a revelation like this man in the year that he saw the Lord what did he do he fell down like John fell down at the feet of the risen Christ blinded with his majesty and with his glory and we'd be subdued if we really got that conception we'd be subdued by his omnipotence we'd be staggered by his omnipresence we'd be silenced by his omniscience we'd kneel down in adoration and worship him because God is holy sister you would be difficult to live with you would be cantankerous and bitter and gossipy and ridiculous like you are if you lived in the presence of the holy God many of us want to be holy we want the holy ghost just in the meeting to help us along we want the holy ghost to come and bless us and give us a real good time and let's have a real whooping shout but my friend the holy ghost won't come on your terms he comes on God's only the last vision we need surely a vision of ourselves D.L. Moody says that if somebody invented a camera that would take a picture of our hearts that that man would be out of business in a week I think it was Pascal that said we have a cloak and we hide ourselves from ourselves lest we should see ourselves and abhor ourselves my good friend the preacher had a vision of himself not his theology not his library of holiness books not his record of engagements where he was going to preach in the best holiness conferences right in the British Isles England and Scotland and Ireland not that but he had a vision of himself God called the veil away and lifted his heart out and showed him himself the poet said search me search me read this chapter this man was a major prophet in Israel read the five previous chapters and in the five previous chapters he says warn to you and warn to you and warn to you and warn to you and warn to you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and you and pride and jealousy, carnality, you may get away with it. Say, well, it just doesn't exist. Very interesting, Omer Bradley, a famous general, has just written his life, called the life of a soldier. It's wonderfully interesting. He says, I can fight at the side of a man with three or four or five pits on his shoulder and a breast full of ribbons and we fight and we risk our lives and we tear the enemy down and then we'll come back and we'll go into the mess room and we'll take a meal. And then when he says, when we're sitting in the mess room taking our meal, the men that would risk their lives at the side of each other, the men that would fight, the men that would endure hardship, the men that would stay in bloody muddy trenches, the men that would face death a hundred times in 12 hours, those men who stood shoulder to shoulder for America, you'll find them sitting around the table and in a few minutes they're as jealous and as bitter because he's got an extra pit on his shoulder and he's got an extra stripe that I don't have and something else. So you see, brother, that you might wear a square chin and be strong as a military leader and yet you're cowardly as an infant when you get to the table and the battle's over, you're jealous of the other man's promotion. Thomas Norton, the Trappist monk, away there in Kentucky, I've read one of his books only, but Thomas Norton in his book Selected Silence says that one of the things really that has shocked him having been in that monastery, I think he's courageous to own it so we get it anyhow, but he says this is the thing, that even a Trappist monastery where men take vows to poverty, they take vows to silence, they take vows to celibacy, they take so many vows, yet says he has discovered this strange thing that when a man has lived behind high walls and never contacted the world, when he walks single file for his meals and to his duties across the field or whatever he's doing, that when he's been in a monastery 60 years, he still has a vile temper. So you can't get rid of this devilish singing man by being a wall-eater, you can't get rid of it by cutting off yourself and as the poet says, in dark monastic cells by vows and grapes confined, it doesn't go out. It has been said of one famous saint, Gerard Madula, somebody sent up his life and said the great Saint Gerard Madula loved every man in the world except Gerard Madula, but he hated himself. Well this is the crux of the thing, the reason we have so many splits in the whole of France isn't that we differ on doctrine, it's just that some of the big shots can't get on with each other. Sure it is. We cover it up with something else, but the fact is that, well of course we couldn't have two leaders, you can't have two heads on one body and if he takes leadership I'd have to go down and then that wouldn't be right and he says well I'd have to go down with something else and there it is. But it's self, self-speaking, self-interest, self-pity, self-glory, protecting self. Oh the cursed thing that it is. I'll say two things and finish. I like to read that right seventh chapter of Romans, because when I read Romans 7 I take my pen for usually I mark the I's, I, I, I. I think you'll find that about 19 times Paul mentions I. Then I go through it again and try to find how many times the Holy Spirit is in it and the Holy Spirit is in it when. Then I go to the eighth chapter and I mark how many times the Holy Spirit is in it and the Holy Spirit's in the chapter 19 times. And I try to find self in it and self isn't in it at all except in verse 17 where Paul says I reckon and in verse 37 where he says I'm persuaded. But one is a chapter where self is the center and the Holy Ghost is outside. The other is where the Holy Ghost is the center and self is outside. Oh brother you like, you like a pat on the back. An outstanding holiness preacher came to England not long ago and I was amazed, I was amazed to hear him say in the middle of the message, he said you know after all it is nice to get a handshake and somebody pat you on the back and say that was a good message. It's nice to get encouraged. That's a subtle way of saying I like a bit of praise, you just say I want to encourage you. Brother we're so far removed from God's way of doing things. We think a man is a good man if he can draw a crowd these days. You know if you're really a good man, do you know Phinney did, Phinney preached sometimes and the whole congregation got up and walked out on him. That's good preaching. Yeah. Phinney went into a mill one day and he was only in half an hour and they turned the mill into a revival meeting. True enough that only happened once in his life. He preached nine months down in Utica every night and hammered them and brought hell on them and sent men home terrified. The whole congregation got up and marched out on him and left him preaching and glory. He didn't worry. My brother I only preach for two reasons these days. Either to send people out of that door blazing mad at the preacher or blazing with fire of the Holy Ghost that's all. I'm not worried which it is. Show me myself. Supposing you just ask God to show you one thing this afternoon. You'll get round though. You don't wear worldly things. You don't do this. You don't do that. All right you'll get by. Listen will you tell me this. Will you tell me and if you tell me this I'll tell you how spiritual you are. If I want to know how popular your church is I'll come Sunday morning. If I want to know how popular the preacher is I'll come Sunday night. If I want to know how popular God is I'll drop in at the prayer meeting one night. I guess God's not too popular around where you live. Will you tell me how much you pray a day. Doesn't say in the third of Malachi that if you bring your money into the storehouse God doesn't say that. Except in Malachi if you bring A L L. All. We're happy because the church isn't in debt. We're happy just because of this. Listen if you bring all the tithe you tithe your money you get a hundred dollars and you give ten away that's quite good. You won't get any reward for doing that of course. That's God's income tax. You get your reward for giving something after the tenth for giving the offering. And you know what you give to God over the offering that's all you take to heaven. That's all you get reward for. What you leave in the bank you won't get a cent reward for. Not even if you leave it to missions you won't get a cent for it. God says you won't in the book. He doesn't give rewards for dead men's money. No he doesn't. I went to a holiness conference when I was a kid and I just cried when I was there I was about 14. And I took my money empty in my pockets and put all my money in the offering and I cried going home. Cried when I got home. I said that man stood there and made me see all those people in Africa dying without Jesus. I want to give him all my money. And every week after that I did without candy I put my money in the mystery box. That great big preacher brother he could preach. He knew the answers. He died left almost a million dollars. Sorry then it broke my heart. You know what the bible says the Lord loveth a what? All right. Those fellow delaying caskets are not usually very cheerful are they? And doesn't it say something about uh what he loveth a cheerful giver and he gives not that's right not grudgingly. That man gave his million dollars because he had to. Death made him give it. He could have given it 10 years ago and evangelized a part of the world but he kept his hands on it. And he didn't give it death took it. But apart from that if you give God a tenth of your money it's good to do that. Not wrong it's good it's not the best but it's good. Tell me this you give God a tenth of your time. You've got 24 hours a day which means you ought to give God two hours and 24 minutes out of every day. Do you do that? If you don't you're robbing God. You may as well bang your head against that wall and pray for revival because God won't give it. You'll die heartbroken. You'll get revival when you meet God's conditions. God's conditions are you bring all the tithes into the floorhouse. You ought to tithe your conversation so far as you can and talk about him. But listen let me say this in finishing. A little lady wrote to me in Ireland before I came over here. She said brother Angel I'll be praying for you every day. You know I'd rather that woman pray for me every day than somebody give me a hundred dollars. That woman's an orderly little housewife. She was filled with a spirit in a meeting I went to. I preached in about three years ago. A little later I spoke about a year after on the prayer of Hannah. She went home and said Lord there's something wrong in my life. And she told God that she'd go the way Hannah went. She started praying. To cut a long story short that woman prays a minimum of five hours a day now. Sometimes she prayed seven. When I was away the other side of Chicago in La Grange a big Swedish woman stood up to pray after a meeting one night and immediately she prayed. I knew that woman knew God. So three nights after we said goodbye at the end of the meeting I said to her sister keep your prayer, keep your ministry. What ministry do I have? I said you've got the ministry of intercession. And she said yes I have. God gave it to me. And I began to ask questions and she wouldn't answer. She told me ten different answers. And I said you've told me every answer I don't want. Will you tell me the answer I do want? Tell me this. How much time do you spend a day in prayer? Oh well it really doesn't matter. I said no will you please tell me because you see I can always use these things and it it it goes other people and it helps other people and provokes other people. How much time do you spend a day in prayer? She said well it's not a problem I spend less than five hours. But let's surrender I'll be spending eight hours a day in prayer. Now I've been saved all this time. Five hours a day in prayer. Eight hours a day in prayer. A boy got saved in that meeting, that revival meeting in the Hebrides under Duncan Campbell at seventeen and a half years of age. And he got wonderfully born again of the Spirit of God. And within six months when other boys went to crawl line off the end of the pier and fish. When they went to play ball that boy was going up the road with a Bible in his hand. Walked up the road, got over a hedge, got behind a haystack. And there he'd be interceding. And at seventeen and a half years of age that boy prayed seven hours a day. The little blind woman that brought the revival prayed a minimum of eight hours a day. Not in the days of the embalmed, not in the days of Sheldon Knapp, not in the days of Finney, not in the days of somebody else. In nineteen hundred and fifty-five when light bears down on you. I'll tell you dozens of people that are praying five, six, seven, eight hours a day. How much do you pray? That's the speaker of revival. That's the speaker of a healthy church. How much do you pray? God saved me when I was fourteen and a half in a little holiness church. When I was about eighteen I believe God filled me with His Spirit. But when I was fourteen and a half God saved me. He wrote my name in heaven, He said He did. And I believe Him. But say I've got, I've got an ambition to get my name somewhere else besides heaven. Not Westminster Abbey, not in the Hall of Fame. I want to get my name on a list. There are not many people there. So help me God, I want to get my name there and it's going to hurt me. But I believe that the devil has a list of names of men he's afraid of. And I'll tell you why. And this is what he said. One day a man said, you can be an evangelist. All you do is lay hands on men, turn the devil out of them. I will go do it. And he did it. And when he turned the devil out, Jesus sent the devil back to hell. This man drew the devil out of the man but sent him nowhere. So he jumped on the man and kicked him and beat him and knocked him around the floor and made a bad mess of him. And then the devil says, Jesus I know. And Paul I know. But who are you? Brother I'm not interested how many, you can book up ten years. I could book up seven years for myself if I took all the invitations people have sent me. But I don't do that because it doesn't give me any meaning of the spirit in my own judgment. But brother I'm not concerned how long you're booked up. I'm not concerned how many books you've written. I'm not concerned about where you are, who you are, how many doctors you have. Tell me how much you pray. Jesus I know. Paul I know. But who are these preachers? Never heard of them. Oh I think if there's anything that will kill me it's to get at the judgment bar. And Jesus looked down there and said raise me alive. Many things to tell you but you couldn't bear them. Too busy. Running your life your own way. Praying when you wanted to pray. Eating when you want to eat. Going where you want to go. Spending what you want to spend. Reading when you want to read. Call out of spiritual life. Brother it says carnality. Listen to this. Two minutes will see us through. Listen. When I came to your country I wanted five years ago to see two graves. I've only seen one. One was the grave of little Sammy Morris. The other was the grave of a man that rolled into his grave at the ripe old age of 28. Do you know the first 50 years after Methodism was born, the first 50 years, the first half century after Methodism was born, the average age of Methodist preachers was 35 years. They burned out for God. And I wanted to see some, I saw some in Morris's grave. I wanted to see another grave. David Brainerd. Oh Brainerd. Died at 28 years of age. Died amongst drunken immoral Indians. It's a wonderful thing when God reaches down and takes hold of a man. I only know one thing because I'm not clever, but I only know one thing more wonderful in all the history of the world than God reaching down and taking hold of a man. And that's when a man reaches up and takes hold of God. You have to live very near to God before you start threatening God. But David Brainerd says I've kept every law of God so far as I know. There is the day. Send revival by that day. If you don't then I'll quit. I'll go marry the girl I love. And in the great day you'll not be able to say there was no revival because Brainerd didn't do the job. I'll say there was no revival because God didn't need the condition. Then what do you think it is? Sat down and said well anyhow I've just told God what to do. This is what he does. He said I rose this morning a half hour after sunrise. There was nowhere to pray because it was cold and the drunken Indians were there making their noise. I went into the forest and knelt down in the snow and it came up to my chin and it pressed onto my breast. But I wrestled from a half hour after sunrise till a half hour after sunset which is a little more than 12 hours. And I so wrestled in prayer that by the time I finished my intercessions I could only touch the snow with the tip of my fingers. The heat of my body had melted the snow. Barked like a dog because he had consumption. And he won't tell us but another man tells us in his biography that here and there in the snow there were little red things that looked like roses. They were pieces of his lens. He'd stick them up while he was praying and interceding. And before the day came the deadline for revival heaven broke. God swept over that community. And brother you've either to make up your mind as simply as this that God is still the same God. It's no good shouting your head off and whooping around the building that God is just the same today. Anybody can say it. Here's the last simple thing. A church that got an idea like some of us have had that she was about the most perfect thing on earth. And feeling that she ought to, it was an obligation to leave a picture of herself so that everybody could see what she was like. I suggest she painted a picture of a beautiful woman. Lovely wavy hair, beautiful red cheeks, blue eyes, gorgeous teeth. A lovely fascinating woman in a very prime of life. If she goes away I say just a minute please will you come. I want to tell you something. Before you sit down listen. While you were painting a picture of yourself I saw somebody else painting a picture of you. Oh she says I'm not worried about anybody. You don't need to be worried. I didn't paint it. I wouldn't be so insolent or bold. I want to tell you that while you were painting a picture of yourself that God painted the wayside flowers and lit the stars. That very God was sketching a full-length portrait of you. And I want to tell you something. Sit down while I unveil that portrait. I'll pull the veil on one side. Sit down. She sits down and there is a picture of a gorgeous beautiful young healthy woman. And here is a picture of an old hag. And there is a picture of a woman with beautiful wavy hair. And there the head is bald. And there the teeth are white as snow. And there the teeth are decayed. And there the eyes are as blue as the pools of Hetchman. And there the eyes are bloodshot. And there the face is round and full of color. And there the face is sunken and hollow and as yellow as parchment. And underneath she has put I am rich and increasingly good. I have need of nothing. But God says thou must not act naked and wretched and blind and poor and miserable. It was the same person as she thought she was and as God thought she was. I'm not asking you if you were filled with the Holy Ghost five years ago. I'm not asking you to believe there is a third person in the Trinity. I'm asking you if every area of your life is surrendered to him. I'm asking you if your heart beats with the lust for the lost. I'm asking you if you have a passion for souls. I'm asking you if your life is the life of a follower or a disciple. The word disciple means discipline. Are you disciplined in God? Or are you just a gramophone record, a phonograph record, reciting doctrine, reciting sermons, reciting other things and the world perishes. The church this afternoon has no Shekinah power on her.