In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of prophets as God's gift to humanity, especially in times of crisis. He highlights that the world is currently in a crisis and the only way out is through a divine invasion. The preacher also discusses the need for evangelism, stating that there are billions of people who have never heard the name of Jesus. He shares the story of a man who received a divine commission to preach and heal, despite facing setbacks and opposition. The sermon concludes with a reminder of the importance of holiness and the need to walk in sanctification.

Usually when I begin a meeting, I tell the pastor that I don't want the offering. I want you to take it and then split it right down the middle and make half of it to our son Paul in South America and give me the other half. So if you do that today, if you give the first 5,000 of the offering to Paul, you can give me the other 5,000. That would be okay. I think I said yesterday that I wanted to talk about the second most important exercise in the life of a Christian. I've been preaching 64 years. I have tried to practice, promote, and preach on prayer. About five years ago, I suddenly discovered that there would be no prayer in heaven. There's just one person praying there, the Christ of God. I believe the most important exercise in the life of a Christian is worship. In general terms, prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God. There's a good old English hymn that says, my goal is God himself. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but God. Just to skip over this, let me say this, that the importance of worship to me is emphasized when Satan said to the Lord Jesus, if you fall down and worship me, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. It didn't mean real estate, because the Lord made that. He meant all the kingdoms. He meant the greatest kingdom of power, the Roman power, the greatest military machine in the world. He meant intellectual power. The Greeks were in great authority intellectually. He meant religious power. The Jews had monopoly, as they thought, of God. He said, I'll give you all these if you'll fall down just once and worship me. Because immediately we bow to me, we recognize we're inferior. On the other hand, the importance and majesty of worship is shown, I think, in Hebrews 1, where God says, let the angels of God worship him. Angels in heaven do not pray to Jesus. Nobody prays in heaven. Again, let me put it this way. If you could relive one day in the life of Jesus Christ, which day would that be? I ask that of every batch of students we get at our prayer meeting. They change every few weeks, because of the Bible schools round about us. We get about a hundred, a hundred and fifty students on a Friday night. It's a fantastic meeting to me. They drive three, four, five, six hours to get to the prayer meeting. They leave at ten o'clock at night, and if they're from ORU, they get back at three and four o'clock in the morning. Isn't that wonderful? Sure. But it's also tragic. Why do they have to drive three, four, five hours to find a prayer meeting? The prayer meeting is the Cinderella of the Church. If you want to know how popular a Church is, go Sunday morning. If you want to know how popular a preacher is, go Sunday night. If you want to know how popular God is, go to the prayer meeting. Who wins? If you want to take your spiritual temperature, and you should do that more regularly than you do, you check your blood, check your prayer life. Prayer is the language of the poor. It doesn't matter if you're a king. It was a king who said, bow down thine ear and hear me, for I am poor and needy. It was a king who said, this poor man cried. The self-sufficient do not want to pray. The self-satisfied don't want to pray. The self-righteous cannot pray. Prayer is the most demanding exercise this side of eternity. We live in an economy, almost, of what people tell me, of big wheels. I tell them I've never seen one. But you see David Wilkerson, yes, he comes to my office once or twice a week, and we have wonderful fellowship. Behind us lives Dallas Home. Next door to us lives the second chapter of Acts. I mean, not the book, the song party. Further down the road, David Wilkerson lives. Right opposite to him there's a studio of a well-known singing group. Just behind them we have the last days ministry. We call them the last minute ministry, they're always late. Like you are here, I notice. One of the very famous men came into my office one day. We were talking about ministry, singing. And I like to be forthright, and downright, and outright. And I said, well of course there are many ministries. There's the prophet, and the evangelist, and the teacher. What they call the fivefold ministry. But singing isn't mentioned. Of course, you remember one day a disciple came to Jesus. One disciple, it says. Came to Jesus and said, Lord, teach us to sing. He said, what version is that in? Mine. No, it's the way you live. He didn't say that. No, it was the apostle Paul who said, sing without ceasing. He didn't say that. No, it was, it was, who, James. Who said, when you're sick, sing to one another. Do you know what? Most modern singing makes me sick. I know some of you want to be filled with the Holy Ghost and get a good guitar. A guitar is a backslidden harp. And most of you are just waiting to get out of school, buy a guitar, and go on the road. I tell you, it's easy, it's easy money. You don't have to pray, you don't have to sweat, you've got a gullible audience. Dave Wilkerson has a new book coming out, it's dynamic. One chapter is on devil's music in the house of God. It's the kind of book you write on how not to influence friends and win people. It will cost him a thousand pulpits. No, the disciples came, one disciple, Mark you. Often we say the disciples came and said, Lord, teach us that they didn't do anything of the kind. In Monkey Legend it says one of the disciples. That's about the percentage. Immediately after Jesus had prayed, if you could relive, okay, relive one day in the life of Jesus, most students say it will be the day he raised Lattice from the dead. No, it will be the day when he made a carpet of the water of Galilee and he walked on the water. Oh, I'd like to see him in the unchained-up demoniac that was leaping over tombstones. Someone else has a different suggestion. When you say, Brother Owen, if you could only relive one day, what would it be? It would be the day he prayed. He was the greatest example of prayer, and it was after he had prayed that one disciple said, Wouldn't you teach us to pray like John taught his disciples? I do not know what John taught his disciples. But I want to talk on this subject anyhow. I want to take it for the background and skip through it because of time. You've already cheated me for time. I forgive you. In the first book of Kings, in chapter 17, it says he lied to Lattice by it was the inhabitants of Judea. He said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew or rain these years according to my word. Notice that. Not God's word, my word. Here is a man who did the supernatural to the nth degree. He shut up heaven. He raised the dead. He made the rain to fall. He made the fire to fall. He made the people to fall. And yet he doesn't have a place in Hebrews 11. You professors tell me that? Speaking of Hebrews 11, that chapter puts my nose in the dust every day of my life. They're not theologians. They're not leaders of kingdoms. They don't write psalms. They're not prophets. They're very ordinary people in Hebrews 11. What did they do? They subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, women received their dead graves to lie the gates. And what? Not one of them ever had a Bible. Come on, you boast of your Bible knowledge. God help your redundancy. You have more pre-religions. You have more revelations. You can buy 24 versions of the New Testament in one volume. I think that at this moment, the greatest tragedy in this world is a sick church in a dying world. And the church is sick because the pastors are sick. And the pastors are sick because they got lost in organizing instead of agonizing. They got lost in commercialism instead of Christ himself. I've got nothing against prophetic charts. I don't know what that thing means, but I guess it's good when it's interpreted. But I've been more and more impressed this Easter, as we call it. I've preached a number of times on the Immerse Road journey. That was the greatest Bible school in history. Seven and a half mile course. It took about three hours to walk. And the Son of God came up behind those despondent, disillusioned, despairing, desperate disciples. And what did he do? He taught them. What? He taught them from Moses. Why didn't he teach prophecy? He preached history. He taught them everything from Moses right down to that very day about himself. And your sole duty as a believer, a young believer particularly, is to find out everything you can about Jesus Christ. Not just theology. Again, the disciple says, Lord, teach us to pray. Not to praise. Not to do miracles. I read again this morning there in Hebrews 12, one of the most astounding verses in the Scripture, that even while I'm in the flesh, by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, the cleansing of the blood, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, even now in a rotten, perverted, crooked world where the Church is dead, I can be a partaker of the divine nature? Not only that, it says that I can be a partaker of his holiness. That is staggering. Two verses after that it's more staggering because it says without holiness. Because not without miracles, not without tongues, not without a ministry, without holiness no man shall see the Lord. If you die unholy, you'll be unholy a billion years from now. Obviously he said many famous things, outstanding things. One thing he did say, there is no sanctification in the sepulcher. If you die backslidden, there's no change when you stand at the judgment seat. If you die prayerless, there's no chance to make it up anywhere. This is our school of probation. So here is a marvelous man. Elijah. Miracle-working Elijah. He comes on the stage in a critical hour. He is in the bracket, as far as I'm concerned, with the most awesome men that ever lived. Do you know who they were? I mentioned one yesterday. They've been doing a good job. Isaiah. Elijah. A minimum of men. They're bracketed as what? Prophets. Prophets are God's gift to us. They come on the stage in the crisis of nations. Not only is America in a crisis today, the whole world is in a crisis. As I said yesterday, there's only one way out. That's by a divine invasion. You can organize your super crusades as you like, without telling a million years to get to the world. There are 5 billion people in the human race today. There are more than 4 billion of them totally lost and never heard the name of Jesus. And they're building glass palaces. I hear Peter has just bought 22 acres of prime land, right in the middle of Palm Springs. Do you know what for? Oh, a thing we need more than anything in the world. They're going to build a Christian entertainment center. Remember the apostles organized one like that, right after the upper room. When we do that, we're hanging our shingles out to say we have no anointing of God. I notice over this building a beautiful cross. But the cross is not a symbol of Christianity. The cross is pagan, cruel. The symbol of the church of Jesus Christ is a tunnel of fire. Why didn't the Holy Ghost come on those men in the upper room? As a wealth. As in the case of Jesus, they'd say, this is authentic. Jesus did not need a tunnel of fire because he needed more cleansing. The prince of this world cometh and findeth nothing in me. They had a tunnel of fire. And everybody knew about that before long. When Peter released that tunnel of fire, the most wicked, diabolical man, he pointed his finger at them and said, You crucify the Lord with glory. Let him applaud where he's at. John Baptist had a tunnel of fire. It says that John Baptist, because he doesn't serve any other person in the Holy Scriptures, he was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. It says his mother was filled with the Holy Ghost. His father was filled with the Holy Ghost. And miracle of miracles, his preacher was filled with the Holy Ghost. Those were very rare at the time. You can't even find them in Pentecostal churches. Filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb? I wonder how many women here, pregnant or want to be pregnant, are you going to pray from the very moment you know that you're going to have a child? Are you going to pray that that child will be filled with the Holy Ghost? The greatest thing my daddy ever did for me, he didn't do many, but he did one. He took me to a half night of prayer, a whole night of prayer, when I was 14 years of age. My mother was called Lucy. That's why I love Lucy. And he would say, Lucy, I'm going here, I'm going... Lucy, tonight we're going to have a night of prayer. My father was called Walter. And I'm going to pray with Walter Dayfare. And I'm going to pray with Albert Barnes. Not a commentator, just an old man called Albert Barnes. I went to that prayer meeting at 10 o'clock. We prayed till about 2 o'clock. I saw my dad take off his coat. And I saw him, I heard him praying, and interceding, and weeping. The other man took up the same burden. The next man took up the same burden. I don't know, maybe it was 3 o'clock in the morning when we finished. That was my baptism into a night of prayer. And I've been spoiled ever since. I'm not impressed with preaching. I've preached in some of the greatest churches in the world, and I've been friendly with some of the greatest preachers. But the men who are outstanding in my life are men who pray. I think it's Montgomery that says in a hymn, All earthly things with earth will fade away, but prayer grasps eternity. It doesn't mind the colossal intellect. It doesn't demand a vast vocabulary. Montgomery again says, O thou by whom we come to God, the life, the truth, the way, the path of prayer thyself hath taught. Lord, teach us how to pray. And then he says, Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try. Prayer the sublimest strains that reach the majesty unheard. Answer this question, not to me, but answer it to yourself. Did you kneel and pray this morning? Did you believe that when you prayed this morning, the God who heard Elijah on Mount Carmel heard your prayer? Did you believe when you prayed about same eternal being there? Or heard the prayers of his son hears your prayer? The apostle Paul was a great man of prayer. Remember he said, May not always to pray. Again, not to sing. Again, not to preach. May not always to pray and not to think. The first time I went to Ireland, I went into a prayer meeting in a tin shed. The rain was running on the floor. I had to put my feet on the chair in front to keep the water from soaking me. And yet some people knelt down. I remember one old farmer quoted this prayer. And this is about 30 years ago. I still remember that rusty old voice. But how he prayed, Where all we seek thee thou art found, And every place is hallowed ground. That's from an old, old film of Wesley's. Let me come to Elijah a minute here. Elijah the Jewish writer in Evidence of Judah. He comes on the stage 58 years after the dividing of the kingdom. If you read a lot of parts of the previous chapter, which we won't do, 16th chapter. Oh, I will. I'll read it from verse 30. Ahab the son of Omri did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. And more evil than all that were before him. There had been six kings. The second king did more evil than the first. The third did more evil than the second. The fourth did more evil than the third. And then we come down to the last one. He doesn't exceed the iniquity of the previous king. He exceeds the iniquity of all the kings before him. And it's at this intervention that this amazing man comes. I don't know his pedigree. Nobody else does. He did more evil than all the kings that were before him. In verse 30, when it came to pass, As if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sense of Jeroboam, the son of Neba, that he took Jersulam. He defied God in every way. God said they couldn't marry outside of their own group. And he married deliberately. He took the wife of Jersulam, the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of the Sidonians, and went and served there. And he went and worshipped him. Not only, he built an altar to him. He built a shrine to him. He worshipped him. And he built in Samaria and he made a grove and did more to promote the God of Israel than all the kings of Israel that were before him. He rebuilt Jericho that God had said should never be rebuilt. And he rebuilt it in blood. He defies God on every conceivable opportunity. When he comes to the nation, it seems to me it parallels the day in which we live. It was a day of iniquity. It was a day of impiety. It was a day of impurity. It was a day of infidelity. As I said yesterday, you can combine all the holiest things in the world this morning. You know, our preachers don't have time to look after the flock. Do you know why? Because they're chasing goats. They can't look after the sheep. They're chasing goats, scapegoats. Oh, it's the school system. I get pretty angry. I get pretty mad sometimes during the time that they were trying to get the president back into office again. People were going up to buildings, cutting cards, put the Bible back in school, put prayer back in school. Well, don't you want the Bible back in school? No, not necessarily. Wouldn't you like to see prayer back in school? Not necessarily. I'll tell you what, I'd like to see the Bible. I'd like to see it in the home. I'd like to see prayer in the home. I guarantee if some of you men are honest here, I ask this. You've never even opened the word of God except on your preaching. How often do you open? I'm tempted to say this. Let me say it. I may be wrong, but I'll risk it. It seems to me in the average home that when the TV came in, the family also went out. You teach your children before that a wicked, corrupt shrine. You make the TV your babysitter. When they get 12 or 13, you buy them the one such they added in their own bedroom and watch all the corruption when you've gone to sleep. It's not the depravity of the school system. It's not the depravity of politics and the birth rotten. It's the chaos in the home that's the problem. The decays in the home. And it decays in the home because it decays in the heart of the father and mother there. My sweet wife and I spend more hours now than ever we've done in our lives. After breakfast we have our devotion. And then we read a classic. We're reading one now called, what's it called? Still something? Still what? Oh, The Still Hour. It was written in 1858. It's a fantastic book. Cost you $3, read it. If you want to know something about warfare in prayer, there's a book written in 1604. It has 1,140 pages. It will cost you a nice little sum of $26. It's written by a man by the name of William Gormley. G-R-M-A-L-L. I gave David Wilkerson a copy of that four years ago. We went for a vacation to the Bahamas. Somebody paid for it. That's why we went and we enjoyed it. When I came back he said, Len, I have read that book. I said, 1,140 pages? Len, he said, where have I been? I'm 51. He's 54 now. Where have I been all this time? I said, reading Pentecostal magazines. Little scrappy bits of sermonettes for Christianettes who often smoke cigarettes. That whole book of 1,140 pages is under just the final verses of Ephesians 6 on spiritual warfare. It's not the sloppy stuff these boys write about in magazines. Forget it. If you'll get that book and read it and stay with it, I guarantee it will revolutionize your prayer life. Teach us to pray. Here's an example. What did the king's bedroom run before that? The prophet knew what was going on. I say these are most exclusive men in my judgment. Not men that walk on the moon. What's walking on the moon? I walk with the Lord every day. That's more important than walking on the moon. What is science doing? Leading us to hell. There's been a lot of talk about the Holocaust lately. Oh, those six million Jews that were liquidated. Terrible. If there were six million, I don't know. Oh, isn't it awful? I'll tell you something more awful. It's more awful than in the last few years we've had a Holocaust in America. We've liquidated at least ten million babies. Put them down with John and flush them away. Somebody's going to meet them at the judgment seat. I'm not troubled too much about the Holocaust of the past that we went through World War II, World War I I went through, and then World War II. What about the Holocaust that's coming up? Science says that we can now What's my word here? We can now barbecue a city in less than five minutes. A whole city. New York could be barbecued in five minutes. In greater New York, twenty million people could perish. I don't care what science says. Well, would you like to know what the Bible says? The Bible says there's a Holocaust coming up when the man who went on the back of the donkey down Main Street and people sneered and said, He's a king. The Romans must have thought it was a joke. They'd seen their rulers come down Main Street, down the Appian Way into Rome, with their captives chained at their wheels and ridiculed and scorned, and then stopped the scorning and started applauding. Here's a man coming, and women are throwing rags down in the street and tearing branches off. There he is. Poor man, deluded man. Is this a way to set up a kingdom? Gentle Jesus, meek and... Wait a minute, you've got it wrong. That's only the first part. What about when he comes riding from heaven on a white horse? Not with a thousand people on either side, but two hundred million people there. And he's going to fight them. And he's not going to raise his hand. He's not going to raise a sword. He's going to kill two hundred thousand people quicker than you could barbecue a city. Why? What does he do it with? The sword of his mouth. He did it once, in the Garden of Gethsemane. Whom seek ye? We seek Jesus. I am he. They fell down. You people that like to go to churches and see people fall backwards. They used to call that backsliding when I was a kid. The only people who fall backwards in Scripture are sinners. If you learn to worship re-revelation, everybody you worship from Abraham right through the Scriptures, fell on their face. Dr. Tolbert said to me one day as I went in his office, Len, let other people do as they like. You and I will worship God face downward. Son, he said, always lay on your stomach to pray, either on the floor or across your bed. I've done it ever since. He wasn't the greatest preacher I ever met, but he had more intimacy with God than any man I've ever met. He knew the heartbeat of God. He knew the love of God. He gazed on the majesty of God. Are you wanting to be a preacher? Let me give you a couple of tips. One is, every week of your life, or two or three times in the week, read the 26th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul stands before a gripper and tells him what preaching is all about. This is what God called me to do, to open the eyes of the blind, to turn them from darkness to light, from the proud of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among them that is sanctified by faith that is in me. Heaven is a holy place prepared for holy people. Again, without holiness, no man shall see the Lord. You won't go there on your record of being one of the world's outstanding preachers or healers or singers. Everything is graded on this one level, whether we walked in holiness or walked in purity, or if you like, an old-world walk in sanctification. Everything, everybody was against this amazing man Elijah. What does he care? What does Proverbs 28.1 say? The wicked flee when no man pursueth. And they fled before this man. Again, in Psalms, in the Psalm, what, 3 verse 8, it says, I'll not be afraid of ten thousand. The odds against him are awesome. But there's an old saying which is still true, and I heard it at least 60 years ago. There's an old saying which is still true that one man with God is a majority. Everybody's on the bandwagon organizing. Not many on the bandwagon agonizing. They're all promoting. Few people are praying. I'd love to have seen this amazing man Elijah here. He says to Ahab, there's going to be no rain. Now who is that famous American that said, what did he say now, let me think of it. Come on now, give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry, must have been Irish. Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me, do you know what? If you really believe this word and believe the context of modern leading, every time we pray, we go to the prayer place and say, give me revival or give me death. If we don't have revival, it's going to be hell for you and your children ten years from now, I'll tell you that. You wish to God they'd never been born. We don't have a decade left. Give me liberty or give me death. He stands and defies the king, defies the government, he puts his key and he shuts up heaven and he says, you know what? There'll be no rain till I unlock it. Wouldn't you like one or two deacons of this classification? He prayed and the rain fell, he prayed and the fire fell, he prayed and the people fell. You don't need two or three like that, you could dismiss the others. Why do we establish deacons in our churches? Usually because they own two Texaco stations and a hot dog stand. We don't appoint them because we're full of the Holy Ghost. All right, Tommy, I love you, dear. I'm teasing Tommy here because he's in the fast food business, as you call it. He's a very precious man of God. But our deacons are not selected because they're full of faith and the Holy Ghost. Oh, I'm such a big... David Wilson, who was a pastor up on the West Coast, the Pentecostal pastor, and he said to him, brother, tell me this. How much time do you spend in prayer? And he just said frankly, he said, brother, how do you think I spend time in prayer? I have 3,000 people. I have so many churches to attend, I have so many hospitals. There's nothing in the scripture about the pastor going to a hospital. That's the deacon's job. Then they say, well, if the deacons have to take care of the hospital, who buries the dead? Well, that's clear from the scripture, the deacons. It says let the dead bury the dead. Don't tell your pastor I said that. He's set up heaven. Come on. Do you so love God? Are you so jealous for the holiness of God that you would dare get on your knees and say, God Almighty, I don't care if from today I have to stand in bread lines. If you have to put a squeeze on this luxurious living of ours, do we stand in bread lines? I'd rather stand in bread lines and see the nations shaking with revival from coast to coast, from Canada to the Gulf, than any other thing. Again, God does not answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer. I guess Rachel was the most beautiful person in Israel, a very beautiful woman. She got nicer clothes than her sister. She was better looking than her sister, but her sister had a brood of children. One day she comes into the tent and calls her son and says, Jacob, give me children or I die. And we don't get revival until we're willing to die for it. I read again in Exodus 32, 32 this morning, where that amazing man Moses said, forgive their sin. If not, blot me out. A bit earlier he says, I cannot manage these people. They're so rebellious. They're so unbelieving. They're so disobedient. If need be, kill me. I spoke to our class one Friday night about six weeks ago on that, the prayer that has never been repeated. I read 60 years ago where a pastor put a notice outside of his church, this church will either have a revival or a funeral. In the mercy of God, it had revival. Our prayers are so pathetic, so weak, so sickly. The effectual fervent prayer, it's this man that's quoted, the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man availeth much. He must have felt ten feet high, don't you think, when he rebuked the king? And he says, listen, you're going to get straight. You've gone down a twisted path, you've cursed this nation, you've brought every blasphemous thing here, but listen, it stops here. I'm taking over, I'll set up heaven so your economy will change, everything you have will change. According to my word, I love my God more than my nation. Do you love your God more than your nation? I'm not an American, in case you don't know. But you poor souls, you had to stay here, you were born here. We came here because, I can tell you the spot in London where God told me to go to America. I'm not regretting that I came. I said to somebody, I'm going to put a flag up outside our house. Because I love America. The top one is going to be the flag of America. The next one, the Union Jack, of course. And the third one, the state where we live, Texas, which of course is bigger than England and America, as you know. Oh, that's good from the Texans. They think I'm walking in the light now, you see, I've got where I should be. He must have felt wonderful. I defied the armies against God, I defied the king, I defied the government, I defied my own feelings, I had to have an extra time of prayer to get the courage and endurement, but I did it. And then God says, go hide thyself. Oh Lord. I mean, I could be front page news if this got around, that I defied the king. All I've done. And God says, go hide yourself. And he hid himself. His whole life is explained in this statement here, in the 17th chapter, and verse 3. Get thee hence from Ternesewood, and hide thyself by the brook Kirit, that is before Jordan. In case I forget, because I lapse, you know, sometimes in my thinking. I'm not losing my mind, I'm losing my memory. Sometimes. You know, there are three signs of old age. The first is loss of memory. I can't remember the other two. Here's the first half of his success, go hide thyself. In the next chapter, go show thyself. It's wrong to hide yourself when you should show yourself. It's wrong to show yourself when you should hide yourself. It's a forgotten art. I went to see the pastor, and his wife said he'd gone away for three days of a fight. Boy, doesn't he waste time. Look at this little old guy here. According to tradition, he's only about five feet high, he had a bit of a hump, he had a big nose. And there he is scribbling, hey, you were in jail when I came here a year ago. What are you doing? Making notes still? Yeah. What are you doing? I'm secretary. For who? The Holy Ghost, he says. What are you doing here? Come on, you've got a healing ministry. Get out and heal the sick. You raise the dead, you cleanse the lepers, you drive demons out. Come on, get up and do something. We're killing ourselves, we're activists. If we don't go to sleep, tired out, and fall into bed, almost paralyzed, we tell you we haven't worked for God. When maybe we've been insulting him all day. I nearly had you sing that hymn, Take Time to Be Holy, this morning. I didn't know if you'd know it, but anyhow, it's a great hymn. There's a great insistence everywhere, from Pentecostals now, to, I nearly said Pharisees, no Presbyterians, on tithing, tithing, tithing, tithing. If you die without being paid up in your tithes, you won't make it. You'll be turned back at the pearly gates. You haven't got your tithes paid up. You've got all those empty packets in the church. But the scripture in King James says, bring all the tithes, and it's the, that's the problem. The tithes, doesn't take any moral courage or discipline to take your purse out and give a tenth of your money. How often do you tithe your time? You give God two hours and twenty-four minutes of every day, in personal close communion with him, reading his love letters, communing with him. I believe you could fill the altar with a hundred people every hour, every hour of every day and disappoint him. Napoleon, an outstanding diplomat, and wherever he went, and he used to go to China and other countries, he'd find rare artworks and bring them home to his wife. One day as he came in his chateau there, his wife was there, beautiful, and he says, darling, I found you the greatest treasure in the East. I, I don't want it. The house is full of treasures. You don't want my treasure? What do you want? I want you. Do you think God Almighty is excited about your ministry? He's trying to build character into you. He's going to pull the pots away from you so you'll live on him and you'll live for him only. Go hide thyself. Who wants to go live in a cave? And the Lord says, go down there, by the group curious. I don't like this next part. He commanded the ravens to feed him there. I wish it had been a dove, but he commanded the ravens, one of my historic folk apparently. Now, of course, the scholars come along and say, Mr. Raven, you don't think a bird came along and fed him every morning, do you? Brought him bacon and eggs? No, he's a Jew. He wouldn't eat bacon, but any eggs and toast and something else? Do you think he came every morning? No. I don't think so. Yes, I do. I was thinking in the way that they interpret it. That word raven there is also interpreted in the scripture. The Hebrew word is Arab. That's great. You think it's a miracle for a bird to bring his sandwiches through the sky? That's a miracle, sure. Isn't it more, a greater miracle for an Arab to feed a Jew? Thank you. You're very quick, but anyhow. But notice what happened. What happened? The brook dried up. The natural supply dried up before the birds dried up. I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there. And if he commanded the ravens to feed thee there, you'll starve to death if you're over there. That's why he said, go hide thyself. And then after, go show thyself. You know, God knows your name and address, and he's promised to supply our needs. Go hide thyself. I was preaching up in the Carolinas a few years ago, and I gave an illustration. And the man at the back nodded and nodded and nodded and smiled and nodded, and I thought, well, I wonder what this is about. He came up after I finished preaching, and he said, Brother Rainey, and I so enjoyed the message, particularly the part about Dilma. Dilma was a little black African, and he lived in Pietermaritzburg, I think, or somewhere down there, anyhow. But anyhow, he lived in a town on the east coast of Africa. He went into a Baptist meeting one night, and really heard the gospel, and he came to the altar and prayed. As he was going out, the pastor looked at him and said, We're glad to see you. You're a stranger, because in those parts, black people do not go to white churches. And he said, Yes. Oh, I realize now, you're the man that was kneeling at the front. He said, I'm not. He said, Yes, you are. I said, I'm not. You're the only man in this community with a suit like that. What do you mean you're not the man that No, sir, he said, you're wrong. He said, the man that went down there died. I'm a new man. Well, isn't that what the Bible says? If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Well, the pastor said, What can I do for you? He said, Give me a church. He said, Give you what? Give me a church. Have you had education? No. Been to high school? No. Bible school? No. That was an advantage he didn't realize. But nobody got him mixed up and messed up with theology. He was no training. Now, what can I do for you? Give me, he said, a church. He went out. The pastor said, Sorry. His story was, let me say this, I went to Dr. Torser's office one day and he said, Whenever you're in Chicago, my door is open. I treasure the hours I spent with him. One day, he was reading a piece of dog-eared paper from this very man, Doomer. He said, I'd rather have it than have a letter from the president. It's a personal letter from Doomer who had read one of his books. Doomer went out from that church. He walked up the road till he came to a forest. He searched the edge of the forest till he found a path. He walked down the path till he came to a stream. He walked up the stream till he came to a cave. He picked up a rock and he put a mark outside on the wall of that little old cave. He stayed there 21 days and 21 nights and all he did was drink water from the stream. He said, Lord, they won't give me a church. You call me to preach. I will not leave this cave and you give me an assurance that I am to preach and I'm not to preach. And for 21 days and nights he was solitary with God, gazing on God, talking with God, getting revelation from God, getting anointing from God, getting a commission from God. God said, Son, I've chosen you not only to preach but have a healing ministry. Oh boy, that's a setback for a Baptist, isn't it? To heal? Well, he came back. He went to church again and told the pastor what had happened and the pastor said, Well, we have a little tin building down in town in a ghetto and there are five people go and if you'd like to try your preaching ministry on those five. Oh sir, yes, yes. I'll do that. He went. I have a book in my home which is called Give God the Glory or Get the Glory, Lord. It's the life story of this amazing man. Uneducated? Forget it. More educated than half of the PhDs or DHDs or other Ds you've got. Shut up with God for three weeks and he came out and people called for him and he went and cast out devils. He went and healed the sick. He called the deacons. Please meet with me at a certain hospital. He went to this certain hospital. The deacons were there. By the way, it's after twelve if you're starving, go. A few starving. Fine. He went out. Healed the sick. He went to the hospital. He got to the desk and said, I want to see so-and-so and the lady behind the desk said he's in room 13. His number is 22. The deacons backed off one second. Did you hear that? He's in room 13. So they chased the pastor down. He's going down to room 13 and pastor, pastor, you've been in this hospital many times and seen miracles. Listen, this man is in room 13. That's the morgue. So what? People ask me sometimes, do you pray for the dead? I say no, I just preach to them. He went in the room and he pulled the screen on one side and there's a corpse covered up. Little Buma, B-U-M-A went in. He pulled the clothes down. The poor old deacons were terrified. He was a small man. And he climbed up on top of the body, laid his hands on it and said, in the name of Jesus Christ who is the resurrection of the life, stand up! And the corpse went. Boy, if he'd done that with me on top of him I'd have hit the ceiling I'm sure. What happened? The corpse slipped off there and he took it by the hand and walked it home. He did that on three occasions. He maintained his power until instead of having to get the government to do something, do you know what? I like to think of God as fire. Do you know what? You never have to advertise a fire either physically or spiritually. Every time you advertise your church meeting you're telling the world you've no fire, you've no power, you've no indwelling God. God's symbol is a fire by night, a cloud by day. Elijah comes up with the same argument. The God that answers by fire, let him be God. On the day of Pentecost he came as fire. There's one simple, very solemn reason why the world is going to hell fire this morning. Do you know why? It's because the church has lost Holy Ghost fire and that includes Pentecostals. We're living on a theology, we're living on shibboleths, we're living on terms. If you didn't have a sign outside your church Pentecostal, that would be whatever dream it was. Or your other denomination, or as the old lady called them, abomination. There is no substitute for the Holy Ghost. Not even Holy Ghost theology, not even Holy Ghost singing, not even Holy Ghost Bible schools. He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands, he invades human personality and transits it and transforms it and crucifies self and pushes self off the throne, self-seeking, self-ambition, self-worshipping, and he takes the reins. The supreme work of the Holy Ghost is not to give you tongues, and I'm not fighting gifts. It's not to give you power. It's not to give you the fruitfulness, but the supreme work of the Holy Ghost is to glorify Jesus. When he is come, he will glorify me, and now he does it, it's not my business. This blessed little man spent three weeks with God. Fifteen years after, he says to his precious wife and beautiful little children, he gives them a hug and a kiss, and he says, I'm going for my usual vacation. Do you know where he went? He went back to that same cave all, as long as ever he lived. Now he's the most anointed man in South Africa, most powerful black creature. I wish to God I'd heard him. I'd love to have done it. If he was still alive, I think I'd go. I guess Tommy would go with me. I'd love to see that little man dynamic in God. He's got a nation against him. He's got all the government against him. He's got religion against him. He's black. He's an outcast. He has no denominational tag. Well, he had. He stayed with the Baptist tag, as a matter of fact. And that Pentecostal didn't like that. And on the other hand, the Baptist, Baptist didn't like it. But do you see the sense of the man? He knew in that cave where he met God and humbled himself to twenty-one days a night and never saw another face, never heard another voice, never needed food, except the stimulating power of the Holy Ghost and drank water from that stream. Every year of his life until he died, he spent twenty-one days with God. See, the trouble with all of this, I'm going to hit you hard, and you know it's true. You got filled with the Holy Ghost after the Bible school. You got filled with the Holy Ghost at a camp meeting, and that's the last time you met the Holy Ghost. The last time you had his anointing, almost. There's no one such one thing as a one-pound down payment for the Holy Ghost. I'm sure I could preach more eloquently and with more apparent success fifty years ago than I do now. I had bigger ministries. I went to many countries. But I'll tell you what, I've never enjoyed God as much as I have in the last three or four years, along with my dear wife, too, in meditation and reading some of these deep, profound books, best of all reading this book of God. Again, the Apostle says, men are always to pray and not to faint. I say that my daddy and mummy took me to a central Methodist church in Leeds, England. At that time, I didn't know a thing, because I was about five or six. Samuel Chadwick, the great theologian, was the pastor. He became the head of the Methodist church. He became head of a little college I went. I went to a college, a Bible college, of thirty-five men. The president wouldn't let women in. They're too distracting. I noticed some of you talking, yes, and nibbling each other almost. If you'd done it today, I would have rebuked you. Don't you think for thee all the follies of the whole realm of nature, and you won't give God your mind very often in anything. You won't concentrate on God. You're squeezing a Jew's hand and trying to put your arm around it. Forget it. If I had a Bible school, I'm sure you're glad I haven't. If I did, I wouldn't let the boys and girls sit together. Girls over here and men over here. Whether you realize it or not, these are the most precious days in your life. I say I was favored to go to that college because that precious man, he wrote a book. You can find it. It's reprinted now. It's called The Path of Prayer. And his other book is The Way to Pentecost. And The Path of Prayer leads the way to Pentecost. He has another one on Christian perfection. He influenced my life as a child. I know that. I remember going to a big church, but I went to his college. My bedroom was here, and away across the quadrangle was a wing, and his bedroom was there. I was the monitor of my corridor. I had to see all the men got to bed by half past ten. Lights were pulled at the main at half past ten. There were no sports. I wouldn't have sports at any Bible college. You get distracting. You get competitive. You get thinking of how strong you have to be, or who you're going to beat next time, and before long, sport turns into jealousy, and jealousy into pride, and you're back where you started from. You don't have time to fool around with sports. It's a hundred percent job. Time, sport, interest, emotions, everything. You can't take things to the office and then take them off. You can win something more if God adds it to what you already gave, but that's his property. You get the chosen goal if you take it back. Let me tell you another man. There was a revival in the Hebrides, a bunch of islands off the west coast of Scotland, in 1950. In 1939, the day that war broke out, I was preaching in the head church of the Nazarene in Glasgow, Scotland, and Duncan Campbell came, and he began to talk about the revival he had fifteen years before. After that, God called him to revival work. I'll tell you how it started. He'd been preaching with success at a very, very big Scottish conference. When he came home, his daughter, she's a brilliant student in the University of Edinburgh, and she took a cup of coffee or tea or something before he went to bed. She said, Daddy, could I ask you a question? Oh, darling, of course. Mercy, this would take some courage. Daddy, you're a popular preacher, but Daddy, you don't have the anointing you used to have fifteen years ago, do you? Oh, yes, he's a fully-fledged Presbyterian minister with his three-quarter coat and his collar turned backwards way. You don't have the anointing, darling. People used to fall off their seats when you preached, and it didn't work any magic. It was the power of God, the Holy Ghost. Sure, people fell down, and they put them in another room, women in one room, men in the other. It took them hours to come through, not just hit the ground with your head and get up and go away and live in the flesh as you did before. There's a miracle attached to it. He said, Brother Raymond, I went to my side room there. I took off my collar. There was no rug on the floor, just Koh-li-no-lim. And I laid there before God and said, God, where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? What is this so refreshing view of Jesus and his Word? I think of those memories, but now I feel an aching void. My ministry doesn't fill, success doesn't fill, popularity doesn't fill. Lord, something must happen tonight. He said, Brother Raymond, I stayed there. I heard the clock strike twelve. One, two, three, four, five, six. At six o'clock I heard, my daughter came walking over the room, laid her hands on me and said, Oh God, please don't let my daddy go insane. He's been here for hours. Look how he's arriving. God, do something for my daddy. And he said she waited a few more minutes. And then she said, instead of saying, don't let my daddy go insane, she said, please God, don't let my daddy lose his mind. Would you please restore that that he's longing for more than anything? He doesn't need popularity. He doesn't need opening to big churches. He needs that anointing that money cannot buy and nobody can give. It's your prerogative to give it. Would you give it to my daddy? He said, I felt this anointing before the Holy Ghost came. I was broken. I had to say, God Almighty, why did my daughter have to plead for me? I used to plead for her. And now she knows the glory of God. I have the vocabulary. I have the popularity. I have the personality. I do not have that mystery of the anointing. My words don't have life and power and authority. They're empty. They bounce off the wall. The Holy Ghost came. Let me jump over this quickly. You can leave if you wish. I won't be embarrassed. I'm going to talk a few more minutes anyhow. He was preaching in a big Irish convention years after. The final speaker on the final night. That's an honor. He's sitting there leaping through his Bible. And the chairman said, Now, the crowd is very expectant. As you see, the place is packed to the rafters. This, of course, is the crowning meeting. The crowning message. And he said, Sir, would you excuse me? I'm going. All right, he said. I guess he thought he was in the bathroom or somewhere. We'll sing till you come back. He said, I'm not coming back. Where are you going? To Scotland. To Scotland? Two more hours of meeting. You're going to Scotland? Yes. Why? I have orders to go. When did you get the orders? Two minutes ago. You're going to leave this crowded place? So he went. He got the boat overnight. Got off the boat and walked across to a boat. Pardon me. Got off the... Yes, he got off the boat and walked across the dock to another boat and went across to Little Island. When he got there, he saw a young man on the beach and he said, The Kirk, as they call the empty church. Who's the... Where is the nearest elder? He said he's up there in the house. I think his name's McLeod. Would you go and tell him that Duncan Campbell has come, which is about as like saying John Smith in England or Billy Jones in Wales. There's thousands of Duncan Campbells. The young man went. The big gangling Highlander or Heelander as they say, about six feet tall, comes out. Ah, so your brother Duncan Campbell. Yes. He said, Brother Campbell, there's the Kirk. There hasn't been a meeting in it for, I think, three years, he said. It's all right, he said. I went round the island on my bicycle this morning telling the people that you were coming to preach at eight o'clock. He said, What? You told the people I was coming at eight o'clock? How did you know I was coming? He said, How did you know to come? The same Holy Ghost that told you to come told me you were coming. He said, Brother Campbell, there's my barn. You know this island? It's right...