In this sermon, the speaker discusses a period of 400 years of darkness and stillness without any prophetic voice. Suddenly, a man appears in the wilderness, wearing a piece of old camel skin over his shoulder. Despite his unconventional appearance, the speaker acknowledges the power of the Spirit of God upon him. The speaker also highlights the forgetfulness and lack of repentance shown by the people, even after experiencing God's love, power, and mercy. The sermon emphasizes the importance of truly knowing God and seeking a deeper relationship with Him, rather than focusing solely on ministry, power, or authority.

The Gospel is recorded by John, chapter 7. The key verse for us, anyhow, is verse 37. In the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. I think this is one of the most awesome events in the life of Jesus. Usually if I'm in another country I go to art galleries because they're free. And I ask how many biblical subjects they have in their art. I don't think I've ever seen this magnificent event in the life of Jesus portrayed in art. I think it's stupendous, awesome, breathtaking. It was the last day, the great day of the greatest feast. There were seven feasts. Three of them predominantly that we have brought down at least into Christian calendar. We remember Passover by the death of the Lord Jesus, the day of atonement, and we remember also the feast of Pentecost. But as yet we have not celebrated this feast. It's still got to come. It was the last day of the great day. The greatest of the feasts because it was a time of ingathering. We're told in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 16 there, without looking at it, that they were to bring in their servants, their friends, their neighbors for this great ingathering, this great celebration. This is the final feast. Incidentally it was a final feast in the life of Jesus. It was the fantastic feast, the greatest feast for this reason. It was a feast of ingathering. Prior to this there had been a celebration of remembering the scattered tribes that were in 70 nations and so they shed the blood of 70 beasts to commemorate and remember those who were absent. The last day, the great day of the feast, it's estimated more than a million people were in the area of Jerusalem. You may remember that they were ordered to build booths, that is they were ordered to take stakes and weave leaves into the stakes, put bushes across the top, protect them from the weather, heat, cold, whatever you got. Now can you imagine all those hills filled with thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of those little booths. But they did it in answer to the word of God, the law of God. The last day, the great day of the feast, began one day after the Day of Atonement, the greatest day in the Jewish calendar. On that day you may remember the priest, he went and found a sacrifice for himself. Then after he'd made an oblation for himself, he took two goats. He shed the blood of the goats. The blood of one he put in a basin, he took it into the Holy of Holies there, on behalf of the people. Then he put some blood on the head of the other goat which was called a scapegoat because it was taken to the edge of the wilderness and it was sent out to be lost. What he did, he pronounced the sins of Israel on the head of that goat and the goat carried them away. Typical, I think, of the fact that God says, our sins you will remember no more forever. Now after this, the next day was the great day, beginning this fantastic feast. And when I told that Jesus went up into the temple, the whole thing puzzles me. I don't know why. It says in the first verse of chapter 7, after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him. And the feast of Tabernacles was at hand. Verse 8 says, he said to his disciples, go ye up to the feast. I go not up yet unto this feast, for my time is not yet fully come. If you read carefully, you'll find that that time factor dominates the life all through the story of our Lord Jesus Christ. He lays emphasis on the time factor in the life of Jesus. It's not my time to go. Now it tells us in the Old Testament this feast lasted for seven days. Now verse 14 says now about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up to the people and taught. Why did he go at the beginning of the feast? It only lasted seven days. If he went in the midst of the feast, he must have gone the third day or the fourth day. It suggests to me that Jesus knew more than anyone how to redeem the time. He didn't want to talk to people, didn't want to listen to the crowds, watch any performance that they had. But he goes up in the midst of the feast. Jesus went up into the temple. Again incredible. I read an account somewhere where this great temple held at least 6,000 people. On one occasion a priest that was bringing in the holy water, as they called it, stumbled and they were superstitious. They thought it would be an act of judgment and panic broke out. There was a riot and 2,000 people were either killed or severely injured within those sacred walls. Now here you have thousands of people and you have a man who at the same time is the most unpopular man in the nation and the most popular. How in the world did he get into the midst of a feast? But here's more incredible thing about the midst of the feast. Again verse 40, he went up into the temple and taught. Who is this Aragon's upstart? A bit later they say, whence hath this man letters, having never learned? In the 8th chapter he says he had learned, he was taught of his father. Now he had built up an incredible record of hatred, bitterness, animosity, call it what you like. He revealed in the short period of his ministry the bankruptcy of the nation, the spiritual bankruptcy, the incredible stagnation of priesthood. He captured not only the attention of religious people, he captured the attention of all people by his first miracle, when he turned the water into wine. Don't you think that was number one gossip problem next day all through the city, where people went for tea or coffee or whatever they drank? Did you hear what happened? And then from there it's a case of from victory unto victory. He's causing sensation, he's causing waves as we would say. Here he walks into the midst of the temple with 6,000 people and he'd already been there and cleansed it and said this is a den of thieves. Do you think the thieves all ran up and patted him on the back and said boy you're a brave guy, we'll never have anybody dare tell this, bend straight and here you are. And there he stands to me in moral majesty. It says the Jews sought to kill him. If you read the chapter through a bit further you'll find out they say, the people say they've already sworn they'll kill him. Why don't they kill him? There he stands, nobody lays a hand upon him. His defense was his moral and spiritual strength. He stood there and cried. He knew what no man there, the high priest, anyone else knew that time was running out on that nation. Would to God somebody raise their voice over TV or somewhere instead of begging for money and all the stupidity. And tell our nation that time is running out, doesn't matter who gets in on Tuesday. The arm of flesh will fail us, we dare not trust our own. I think one man is better than the other, I won't say which, but I think you know. But by the same token that's not going to redeem our nation. I would to God we were as afraid of God's majesty and judgment as we are afraid of Russia. I wish we'd tried to come to peace terms with the almighty before he pulls out his wrath upon us. I was thinking this morning of this present agitation, this tremendous upset, raping almost of the nation of India. Afghanistan is bled day after day, tens of thousands of people. Pregnant women have climbed over the rocks to get into Pakistan, I think. Is it Pakistan over the hills? I think it is. They said they have no skin on their knees. Their bodies are bruised as they bounce those babies over the rocks. They're living on a starvation diet. There's the vast country of China shut up over all the rumours about revival and so forth. A while ago I talked with Brother Andrew, he said not so. The little pockets of believers that are making a bent on that nation of 800 million people, no sir. Now here is Jesus, and he knows the events that will happen. But on the last day, the great day of the feast, he stood there and he cried with a loud voice. Isn't it Isaiah who says, my servant shall not cry in the streets? He's not crying in the streets, he's crying to the people that really matter, the vital people, the priests, and the folk that have the opportunity to lead the nation out of darkness to light if they'll obey God. Why did he cry with a loud voice? It wasn't a scream, it wasn't a shriek, it was a cry of anguish. You'll find him later saying about the same people, oh Jerusalem, a word you can't learn by eloquence. The word that Jeremiah used, oh but my head were waters, because he saw impending judgment. The word that was used by David when they brought news that his son, his rebel son who tried to pull the crown off his head and steal the throne from underneath him, his son had died. What did he say? He deserved it, that's a relief anyhow. Instead of that he says, oh Absalom my son, good to God I have died for thee. Here he cries with a strong voice. Again it's not a shriek, it's not a scream, it's a voice of command. I can imagine that voice echoing through that vast temple and everybody turns their head and see what it is? You see they were disgusted with him. They were astounded with him, they were confounded with him, they were dumbfounded with him. Everything that said, the word of God said could be done, he had done. You remember the story in the Bible where a man asked, was it a farm? And he sent his servants out, or his servants, and then finally he sent his son. And they said, this is the heir, come let us kill him. Now they have repeatedly rejected the greatest men that ever walked this whole planet. And they're not scientists or inventors, they're prophets. They'd had Jeremiah, the broken-hearted man who could weave hours over his nation. And Zechariah, and Ezekiel, and Isaiah, the men that we call the major prophets, and then they are also minor prophets. I believe this is all wrapped up. I believe that this cry is a cry of anguish. It's a cry of a broken-hearted man over a blind dumb nation that still goes through its performance of religion, even as on this occasion, and yet they have no knowledge of God. Very much like our day. Jesus went up into the temple and taught. I wish I could find his sermon notes. Nobody can give me a suggestion as to what he taught. Have you any idea? Come on preachers, you got some ideas? No? These learned men have none what they expect me to have. But I'll tell you what it was, it says the Jews marveled at him. I wonder if he began to explain Daniel's image. I wonder if he began to tell them how near judgment was. But there they were, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, listening to this man, and they said, whence hath this man letters? Or as it says in, well that's what it says, whence hath this man letters, having never learned? Chapter 8, verse 48 says, no that's not, I'm sorry, that's not the quote. But anyhow, it's in that, oh 28, sorry. Then said Jesus unto them, when ye have lifted up the Son of Man, ye shall know that I am he, that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, so I speak these things. He has a direct line to the Father. He has a direct revelation from the Father. He knows this is his timing. His mother had tried to get him to do something in a wedding, and he says, no my hour is not yet come. Read the 17th chapter, and he says my hour is come. Read the 16th, he says my hour is not come. He's very conscious there's nothing haphazard in his life. He's working to a divine timetable, which every one of us need to know. Both in the affairs of the world, and in our individual lives. To use a common phrase in the world, we need to be at the right place at the right time, with the right word. Can you imagine all these people agitated? Who in the world invited him? I hear that this man will do anything he wants to do. There he has been, he's standing where the high priest has stood. And do you know, he's never been ordained. Isn't that awesome? The only ordination you need, friend, is in John 15. I have ordained you. If God hasn't, you can have an ordination certificate that brings this wall. Won't do you any good. Men can lay their hands on you, the measure will lay their feet on you. It won't make any difference. I would love to know what Jesus preached about. I'm sure he did what he'd done previously. He opened their understanding, as he did for the men on the Emmaus road. Remember they went with their eyes just cast down, and he opened their eyes, and then he opened the scriptures, and then he opened their understanding, then he opened their mouths. I wish he'd go around our seminaries and do that today. We've got dead men preaching dead sermons to dead people. And unless there's a divine intervention, we're sunk. The last day, the great day of the feast. You see, this was a tremendous ceremony to them. Historically, it was to remind them of the statements in the 17th chapter of where Exodus, where Moses smoked the rock. And then the 20th chapter of Numbers, where again he does the same thing, and the water gushed out. And this is reminding them of the water of life that was given to them when they were on a dry and thirsty land, and they were murmuring and complaining, and they had no water. And God brought water out of the most unexpected place, a rock. I've noticed how often in the Old Testament men were digging for water, and they never found oil. Isn't that great? Well, maybe because they didn't need oil then. Or maybe because they would become multimillionaires and forgot all about God, like people do so often when they get rich. But water sprang out of that rock, and it followed them to this weather they went, and that rock was Christ. Typical of the Lord Jesus Christ. Early in the morning, on the porch called Herod's porch, built onto the temple, called Herod's porch because he financed it. And if you finance anything, you want your name on it, surely. Built something for the Lord, you put your own name on it. Let's forget that, but anyhow. There's the great wonderful porch. And early in the morning, the priests go. And when their silver trumpets give a blast and awaken the community, the doors are open. The priests must go in the first. Then the people follow in their thousands. But then there's a break. The trumpets sound again. You know, this ceremony was something. 446 priests took part that day. I hope they all didn't preach, it would have been tiring. But 446 Levites as well were there. That's a vast number. The ceremony was that high priest went down to the pool of Siloam with a golden vessel someone else carried. And he dipped it in the pool of Siloam and put it on his shoulder. And he came to the center there of the of the temple. And he poured out that water. There was a great outburst. They sang the great Hallel. Had a Psalms 113 to Psalms 118. Can you imagine 6,000 excited people doing that with all the instruments they had around? Must have been like hearing the Messiah in our day, the Hallelujah chorus. This was a festival of joy, a festival of thanksgiving, a celebration that the mighty hand of God who made the universe had been their deliverer. And they poured that water out for seven, for six days. On the last day, the great day of the feast, no water was poured out. Then here comes this insolent young man, this itinerant preacher, this unordained man, and he stands where the priest has stood. He pours out no water, but he says, if any man first. There's an insult for you. Why do you invite anybody? Jehovah is regarded to Jews. But he says, if any man come. Remember in the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, where he says, if any man be in Christ, any man anywhere at any time. Now this brother David on TV this morning on Otto Roberts' program there. And he quoted again, he said, you know what, the power of God when I see a Nicky Cruz and all these other people, and see the mighty acts of God. That's a great poem. I think the greatest poem outside of the Bible is written by F. W. H. Myers. It has about 74 stanzas. And if I were a young man, I'd memorize them all. And then he says, God will forgive thee all but by despair. Despair is illegal in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He can say to the uttermost, all who come unto God by him seeing ever liveth to make intercession for us. They revered the high priest. He put on his garments of glory and beauty, the word of God says. And he started there as a king over an empire of religious people. But I like that lovely verse. I read it again this morning in Hebrews 726, For such an high priest becometh us, he is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher in the heavens. Who needeth not daily as those high priests to offer a sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's. For this he did once when he offered himself. Isn't that sublime? Their priest died. He had to be renewed. There had to be a fresh sanctification, new garments had to be made, a new helmet had to be made with holiness unto the Lord. And just as they got to love and adore their priest, he passed away. The writer to the Hebrews says, remember we have a permanent priest. He doesn't have to shed blood. He is the priest, he is the sacrifice, he is the offering, he is the blood. And he liveth forever to make intercession for us. I was thinking this morning, oh I'd just like to meet a few people before I go preach, I'd like to pray. And suddenly I remembered that even at this moment Jesus is making intercession for me there at the Father's throne. So here the last day of the feast, the eyes are not on the high priest, he's pushed on one side as it were, not physically. And this young man comes, this troublemaker, this disturber, not only does he go there and teach, but he lifts up a loud voice. It's a voice loaded with anguish, a voice loaded with authority, a voice that demands attention. If any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. You remember he had had a talk with a woman in the fourth chapter of this gospel. That woman by the well in which he said, well if you come to this well you'll thirst again. But I can be a well of water in you. She must have scratched her head and wondered about that, don't you think? The only well she knew was Jacob's well at Sychar. And Jesus says I will come and I'll be in you, a well of water, springing up into everlasting life. But here he generously opens the kingdom, if you like, to all believers. This is not a prerogative just for the Jew. There are people from all nations here, he's saying, it's the last day, the great day of the feast. People have been breaking their necks or hurrying for weeks, months and months, to get to this final festival, final festivity in the Jewish calendar. They're reminded again of the rock that was smitten and the water that came. Now Jesus says, if any man thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. Historically he's talking about a rock that was smitten. Prophetically he's speaking of the outpouring of the Spirit in joy too. When the Spirit shall be poured on the Jews, you know, on all flesh. And it ain't yet to happen. He stood and cried with a loud voice. I say it's a voice of anguish. I'd never thought of this till about two o'clock this morning, but I'm, I'll tell you what, it really broke me up as I thought of it. This is the last feast, this is the last day, this is the last time he's going to be there. They're offended because he has turned the attention to himself, but he says, I don't seek it, I seek it only for my Father's glory. Again they're disturbed because he's a miracle worker. I think under his breath Jesus is saying, you dumb crowd, here I am crying for you to come, you don't hear me any more than you heard Jeremiah or Isaiah. His brothers urged him to go up there and do some miracle. No, no, not yet. What miracle can he do? Zechariah said, thy King cometh unto thee meek and lowly and sitting upon an ass. He'd fulfill that. Isaiah says a virgin shall be with child. He'd fulfill that. Isaiah 35 says that there's going to be a highway open. There's one coming and when he comes the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a heart and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. And he's gone through the whole gamut of healing from A to Z. They hated it. He stood in the previous chapter and said, I am the bread of life. Now he's asserting that he is the water of life. He's going to say, I'm the door of life. Most of all he's going to say, I'm the resurrection and the life. There he stands in his moral and spiritual supremacy. And they were too blind to see. They just say in the chapter that the people said, you say when Messiah cometh that he'll do miracles. What more miracles can he do, the people say, than he has done? What more convincing? What does God have to do? Does God have to strain to try and get our attention? The staggering thing to me is the dumbness of this people. Notice this is not bringing fire from heaven. He was the water of life. Water has to come down before you can have it in a well. He came down from the Father. Water is the most essential thing almost next to breath. We need it for cleansing. We need it to restore our parched throats. Again, we need it for purification. We need it for everything. He is the water. Water is essential. He says, I am the bread Bread is essential. He says, he is the door. He says, he is the good shepherd. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. Go back a minute here again. They had gone through some traumatic experiences for sure. You see, when people heard, did you hear what that man did? That strange man? You see, from his birth he had been haunted with unbelief and hatred. They said he was born illegitimately. Well, before he could walk or talk, they tried to assassinate him. He went to the temple. They kicked him out. He went to his house. They threw him out of his own house. It was antagonism, opposition, bitterness, the whole course right from the moment that he breathed. Now, this people had seen manifestations of God that no other nations ever had seen or ever will see as far as I'm concerned. He had rescued them. Some say there were five million. They got out of Egypt with a miracle deliverance. They had water out of the rock. There was a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. He sent angels to deliver them. He sent prophets to teach them. And then suddenly there was a cut off. You see, between Malachi and Matthew you have 400 years of prophetic darkness without any prophetic voice. 400 years of darkness without any prophetic light. 400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice. And then suddenly, dramatically, unexpectedly, there's a little man appears there in the wilderness. And he's an Orban too, by the way. And he doesn't wear a clerical collar. He wears peach, beef and old camel skin over his shoulder. And I said in one meeting, boy, how easily he can get into trouble. I said he wore leather shorts. And it so happened it was in a holiness meeting. They nearly crucified me after the meeting. One man got on my shoulders and jumped on me and said, you put the clock back 10 years. Why? St. John the Baptist had shorts. We're telling our young people not to wear shorts. I said, well, the thing is this, whether you like it. Did he? Or didn't he? There were 11 good, the most unusual, unexpected man you could ever. And he is the mouthpiece of the eternal God. Oh, well, they flock from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Read the third chapter of Luke. While he was preaching, the soldiers, the heathens, what may still be called the leather breeds outside of the law. They were standing there in their lovely uniforms, their pruned helmets, their breastplates. And yet his words went through those breastplates as though they were arrows of fire. They began to cry. What shall we do? And the Pharisees, boy, they're a bunch. And the Sadducees, you see, there was division in the temple because of him. Why? Because he said he was the resurrection. Oh, but the Pharisees loved him because one day he went and performed a super miracle. He raised the man from the dead. Oh, that's one for us. You see, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection. The Sadducees did not. That's why they were Sadducees. But anyhow, they did not believe in the resurrection. But Jesus is asserting his authority, his power, and he's looking back and thinking there's a terminal coming soon. His spirit doesn't always strive with men. You get again that blank situation, that gap of despair between Malachi and Matthew. And Jesus is thinking of this, I'm sure. When he lifts up his voice and commands and says, hey, come, everyone listen. If any man thirsts, well, who doesn't? Hey, come unto me and drink. This spake he of the Spirit. But it says that the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. Verse 39. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. The Holy Ghost was not yet given because that Jesus was not yet glorified. Come on, you've been asking for the Holy Ghost. Well, how can he come if you're not glorifying him before he comes? They were ready to receive the Holy Ghost. They received the Holy Ghost before Pentecost. Didn't he go into the upper room and breathe on them and say, receive ye the Holy Ghost? People say we need another Pentecost. So miracles. Well, tell me a miracle, lady, that's a Pentecost they didn't do before. Then they come running back to Jesus. Oh, we had a marvelous hour. Even devils were subject to us. In thy name we cast out them. We did many mighty works. And Jesus says, don't glory in that. Glory in the fact that your name is written in heaven. But even though they've done all those miracles in their ministry, he says go into all the world. But before he says go, before they go, he says carry it to receive power from on high. This spake he of the Spirit. Verse 38. He that believeth on me, as the scripture said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit. Anybody who's filled with the Holy Ghost knows this. There are periods of awesome endowment. You have a time of tremendous victory in anointing, in preaching, and sometimes for some reason God removes that power, just to show us it's him and not us. It's his indwelling. It's Christ in you, the hope of glory. Friday night I read to the class there. You're welcome to that class. It's over in last day. It starts half past seven on Friday night. It's a very, very powerful prayer meeting. We read from Romans 8, where the apostle says the Spirit of God is in you, the Spirit of Christ is in you, and the Spirit of the living God, the Holy Ghost. Come on, the triune God lives in me? Is sin going to have dominion over me? A popular evangelist says that he preached for 20 years, and then somebody casts 17 demons out of him. I won't doubt either. I don't discount the fact he preached for 20 years. But don't tell me he was saved with demons in him. Does the Holy Ghost live in a man as God, to have partnership? Does he sit halfway on the throne, not on your life? That's a false doctrine. It's popular, but it's false. They didn't need the power of the Spirit to do miracles. They had already done miracles. Before Pentecost, God did miracles through them. At Pentecost, he did miracles in them. Jesus said to all the disciples didn't like when he said in, what was it, the 14th of John. I think it's verse 26 there. Verse 25 says, John 14, these things have I spoken to you, being present with you. But the comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance. You know, I think so often we think of the Trinity like this. We'll put here F for Father, Son, and HS, Holy Spirit. We think of them, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, as though the Holy Spirit is a junior partner in the Godhead, which is wrong. It's F, S, and Holy Spirit, all on one level. Equal in glory, equal in majesty. There was a dispensation, if you like, of the Father in the Old Testament. There's a dispensation of the Son when he was on earth. And now we live in the great dispensation of the Holy Spirit, plus the Father, plus the Son. Again, what manner of persons ought we to be? Christ in you, the hope of glory. Paul doesn't stammer and stutter about it. He says, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. He's not merely there in the glory, he's indwelling me. Remember how Ephesians 2 begins that ye, in time past, you ought to go into the power of this world according to the power of this world, the principle power of the earth. If you're demons, you're not saved. Go to the end of chapter 2. What does it say? Ye are the habitation of God. I've quoted before about a distinctive scholar, a Chinese scholar who read the Quran and the Vedas and all the sacred books. Someone gave him the New Testament and he read it. And they said, now what do you think of this book? Wonderful. Are you a Christian? Yes. Oh, you are the most wonderful thing in the world today. Oh no, I'm just a poor Christian. Don't give me any medals. I mean, I'm a nobody. He said, but I read Ephesians chapter 2. At the end it says, ye are the habitation of God. Christianity is the only religion in the world I know of where a man's God comes and lives inside of him. Jesus says, I've been with you, but he shall be in you, the comforter which is the Holy Ghost. My dear old teacher Mr. Chadwick used to say, yes he's the comforter, but he's not a nursing mother for spiritually sick children. The word comforter there is from a Latin word, comfortis, com, if you want, or cum, dash, f-o-r-t-i-s, with strength. Isn't that what it says there in Acts 1.8, ye shall receive power or strength after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. I say again the miracle is in them, not just through them. Again they went out and they turned the world upside down. Just ordinary men went in the upper room and tarried till they were endued with power from on high. They'd received a witness of the Spirit, or as Paul calls it, the Spirit of adoption. If they'd known it they could have sung Blessed Assurance with real joy. He testified that they were his. He had breathed on them. Remember how God did that with Abram, A-B-R-A-H-M, Abraham. He breathed on him. He became a different personality. Years ago, 19, I think it was 1950, I was in Newcastle, my first trip to America, I was in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. The old train came through one night. We went down there, it came, the old steam train, there was something. Came chugging in, you know, and people getting off with all their baggage and what not. I thought of a young man who about 1880 got onto one of those trains. One of his college friends said to him, I wish I was as sure of becoming the President of the United States as you are of becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury. That young man was considered the greatest orator in the university. His name was Brangle. Colonel Brangle. He became the right hand man of William Hood in the Salvation Army. He went to England, reported it for duty. And the General said, oh, tomorrow morning you can clean the shoes of all the students. What? Do you know I've got two degrees? All the better qualified to clean the shoes. And he said while he was spit polishing those shoes, that was it, you fool. You should have stayed in America. I forget who it was, one of the, I think it was one of the multi-millionaires. Come on now, he made automobiles. The last one he made, I think, had a spiral nose. Remember who was it? Pardon? Who? No, it wasn't Ford then. It was a thank you, Studebaker. Studebaker said, you stay in this country, I'll build you the largest church, I'll be the most beautiful home, I'll get you the most beautiful carriage, and I'll give you the biggest salary of any preach in America. You just stay here, we need you. He went and joined the most despised gang of preachers in the world at that time, the Salvation Army. And he rose to the top of the spiritual special. He wrote a lovely book, When the Holy Ghost is Come. He remembered after he was born again, an encounter with God because his heart was full of pride and jealousy and envy and bitterness. You see, we have laid the emphasis of Acts 1-8, or Acts 2-4, we've laid the emphasis on power. We've referred it always to Acts 1-8, you should receive power of the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost came upon the people, the Gentiles, Peter reports in Acts 15, 8 and 9, he's reporting to Jerusalem, to the big shots, and he says, God that knoweth the heart, bear them, that is the Gentiles witness, giving them the Holy Ghost even as he did to us. And immediately people say, well they had balls of fire, and the rushing magic went and spoke in tongues. Maybe they did, but he doesn't say so. What Peter remembered, the crisis in his life was not hearing a rushing mighty wind or a ball of fire on his heart, it was the fire of the Holy Ghost that came in his heart, and he said, purified their hearts by faith. You don't find him vacillating after the upper room, he's the boldest man that there is on the day of Pentecost. Now this is a fulfillment again of the word of Jesus, pour out thy spirit on all flesh, sons and your daughters shall prophesy, young men see visions, and old men dream dreams. Let me go back a minute here, because this is the thing that really burdened me this morning, in fact it broke me, I'll tell you that quite honestly. Here is Jesus the Son of God, he has said awesome things to them, no mother ever loved their children like Jesus loved his nation, nobody ever grieved over anything like Jesus grieved over them. They rejected and rejected, one day they're going to reject him, but he says just a minute, I got in first, your house is left unto you desolate. And from that day to this the Jews have had no profits, they've been kicked around like a football in the nations, five times in the history of the world since Jesus said your house is left desolate, five times in the history of the world they've almost been annihilated. The last one to try to do that of course was Hitler. At one time they were reduced to less than five million in the population of the world, they're back to what now, I don't know, but they're a very very large crowd anyhow. These people were watching the Son of God, listening to the Son of God. He invites them, if any man thirsts let him come unto me and drink. Just before he came there'd been an upheaval again, this dramatic character by the name of John Baptist. It clearly says John did no miracle. Nobody ran with a baby saying have mercy on my son, he's a lunatic. No leper cried, please preacher cleanse me. He did not deliver people from their physical bondage. He did not raise the dead, he did infinitely more than that, he raised a dead nation. He had no committee, he had no auditorium, he had no choirs, he had no financial system. He was in the worst howling wilderness, or at least the desert, with every disadvantage. But he proved again the old saying that one man with God is a majority. 400 years. Now I'm not facetious here, but this is my definition of a fool, a man that falls in the same hole twice, is going to have been in bondage for 400 years. Oh you say, I wish God would speak to me. Do you really mean that? You wish God would unveil the future to you and show that all that's going to happen in the next 25 years to the nation, to your children, to the church, to every human system? Because every system now is Babylonish anyhow, whether they're democrats or autocrats or plutocrats or what in the world you've got. You know what Babylon means? Confusion. Dear brother Dave has said some awesome things in my years, I remember 20 years ago he made prophecies about people dying and they died within two or three weeks. Remember about three months his newsletter was violence? It hasn't happened because he said it would, he had a full view if you like, a prophetic view of it. And the worst is yet to come. Already they're making predictions that the recession is on the way, it will be next but in 85, it will be worse in 86. There's a word at the end of the 12th chapter of Hebrews that says that everything that can be shaken will be shaken, that the kingdom that cannot be shaken may remain. God will pull down the mighty American nation if he wants to, to glorify his son. He'll pull down the IBM and every almost infallible corporation. Our gold will become dim and it will become like dross. Last Sunday night David was preaching in the largest, I guess the largest church in Denver. I preached there once, I didn't get back. So there were about three thousand, it is a very, very beautiful church. He called me when he got home he said Len, I said well what first, what about the meeting Sunday? Well he said Sunday night I was to get up to preach, I was sitting there and he said I just got off my seat and I sat on the floor, didn't go to the desk, I sat on the floor and for 15 minutes I groaned, I wept. I said Dave, God bless you, maybe there isn't another preacher in America who'd do that. He said oh I've got a sermon here, I've had it on my heart for three weeks, I'm going to deliver it, deliver it. Of course I do feel a bit strange about Sunday in the meeting but if you'll join, if you'll pray with me, everybody raise your hand if you'll pray, hands with the gun up. He forgot all about his sermon, he said I groaned and then he said there's a girl in this audience tonight who has been molested sexually and the man who's done this thing is going to jail. The girl ran weeping and groaning down the aisle and she said Mr. Wilkerson I'm the girl, my daddy is the man, he has to go to jail. A stream of young women came who all were being molested by brothers or fathers or some other people and David said I just groaned and wept for 15 minutes, God bless him. I turned out to a well-known preacher, I was going to say Baptist but I won't say that, he was just a well-known preacher and he said, oh brother Rodney, he said I'm not as sensitive to God as that. Evan Roberts in the Welsh Revival stood up to a packed congregation, he was a towering man, Welsh people are fairly small and suddenly they said that it was put in this language that he had his Gethsemane publicly. He quit preaching and roiled on the floor and he groaned and he traveled. It was awesome to watch him. Somebody ran up and somebody said don't touch him, don't touch that man, don't lay your hand on him, this spirit of God is on him. Again you see, this people had known the most amazing manifestation of God's love, God's power, God's mercy had delivered them from the enemy. He sent angel fruit from heaven when they were hungry, he sent water out of the rock and yet they forgot him. Then he sends John Baptist and they still did not, this is the staggering thing, they did not repent. Do you remember what happened to the Psalm 137 when the captives were taken to Babylon, what did they say? They said by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept. Why? When they remembered the glory that there had been in Zion. I'm convinced in my spirit that while Jesus stands here in this temple, he's remembering that it was the temple of Solomon and the glory of God filled the place and the priests couldn't minister, they had to cease their ministering for God's glory. We've never seen that. We say Lord come to the meeting, if he came the choir would be in chaos, the pews would panic, the deacons would be in despair. If he came with his glory and power it would be so foreign to us we'd be shattered. Jesus is remembering the men that had walked in that place before, Jeremiah again and Isaiah, would have thus saith the Lord, they had predicted everything and he had fulfilled it, he had been born of a virgin. Zechariah's word was fulfilled, he had come into the city on an ass, meek and lowly, he had opened the eyes of the blind, he had unstopped the ears of the deaf. Everything predicted of him had been done and still he was blind. He was living flesh and blood, evidence of the mercy of God. These people sat down by the rivers of Babylon and they wept when they remembered the glory of God. Do you know why we don't weep? Because we've never seen the glory so we don't miss it. We go to church. As I say so often, did you come here this morning to meet God or did you come to hear a sermon about him? Did you expect him to unveil his holiness and show you your corruption? To show you his purity and see your defilement? Now I read this, I didn't sleep much last night, I cried a lot of the night, I tell you that. Because we're in the same mess that Israel was in when they rejected the Son of God. We've had personal deliverances, we've had national deliverances, where are we now? As near hell as we've ever been. We had the great awakening in the 1700s when, not because he's English, but one of the greatest preachers ever came to this country, George Whitefield. Out of his spiritual loins came some men by the name of Tennant, the father was an astounding preacher. The two sons they said drew bigger crowds and had more power even than that amazing man Whitefield. It cleaned up the nation, it gave us the greatest men that the nation's ever had. One of the greatest sermons ever preached was brought preached then, wasn't it? Who wrote, or was it preached, sinners in the hands of an angry gun? Thank you, Jonathan Edwards, thank you, Jonathan Edwards. He became principal of what? Maybe it was Yale. Anyhow, one of the outstanding universities. God cleaned up areas of the world and then the nation turned on him and vilified him, which it does. Jesus opens the floodgates on this bunch, he says, which of the prophets of your father's not stoned? They're going to hear him say, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that ascend unto thee. I understand now the humanists are making a concerted effort to get Jimmy Swaggart off the air. I don't agree with everything Jimmy says. I believe he's one of two great voices. I think the other is Dave Wilkerson. He's number one, Jimmy's number two, but anyhow, they're trying to get Jimmy off the air. Why? Because he's blasted humanism. He's trying to do a cleaning up job. He's trying to get the eyes of the blind open. So what have I? What do you do to prophets? Stone them. What do you do to the prophet of prophets? Crucify him. Listen to this. The glorious departed here, okay. In Lamentations 2, read it afterwards before you get to, it's after Jeremiah, but read it not now. I'll read it to you. Lamentations chapter 2, verse 8. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He has stretched out a line. He hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying. Therefore he made the rampart of the wall to lament. They languish together. Her gates are sunk into the ground. He hath destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles. The law is no more. Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. Now get this. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence and have cast dust on their heads. They gird themselves with sackcloth, the virgins of Jerusalem, hang down their heads to the ground. Mine eyes do fail with tears. My bowels are troubled. My liver is poured out. Can you imagine a part of the first Baptist church, or first Methodist church, first Pentecostal church standing up and saying, I've been through an awesome experience. God has shown me now, this week, the corruption in our nation. We're as rotten as they were in Isaiah 1. We are 15 million people with herpes, an incurable disease. Millions with AIDS. Millions with the middle disease. Over 10 million alcoholics. Excuse me. Over 12 million captives with drugs. An estimated 20 million children tossed between broken homes. Father and mother. Excuse me. How much longer can we decay? Crime. Only in the last four or five years, this horrible cursed thing, beating wives, has come up. Sometimes in a Christian country, I've had places of protection for women to run at night when their eyes are almost knocked out. Their bodies are bruised. Little children abusing children. We have never had a curse like this before. I sat with my dear wife the other day. They showed a little boy there. I think it was a bad showing anyhow. Remember about five years ago, his daddy took him into a motel and poured gasoline on him and set fire to him? One ear was burned off. His face was all drawn. He has already had, I think, 32 operations. They've taken skin from his body and plastic surgeons have done all kinds of things with him. And he has a dozen, a dozen at least, more operations to have. He's horribly disfigured. His face was white. There's that wall and drawn. And the photographer had no idea. He put a cowboy hat on. It wouldn't have been bad, but it was a jet black one. Made the poor little thing look like a ghost. And there he has his fingers are burned off. One hand is burned off. One ear is burned. By a daddy in a so-called Christian country. Oh, sure, things like that happen in England too. I'm aware of that. But you see, the elders of the Daughters of the Zion, they sit on the ground. They're silent. They've nothing to talk about. They're grief-stricken. They're dumb. They're dumbfounded. This God who has delivered us so often and can then come in mercy, delivered us. And yet we turn our backs on him. We break his commandment. We ignore his laws. We pollute his Sabbaths. Oh, sure, we've got some wonderful Christian ball players. They break the Sabbath every Sunday afternoon and draw thousands of people away from church. We've had riots in India. We had riots a month ago in Detroit when somebody won the World Series. So they set fire to buildings and set fire to cars. As David has said, it's a day of violence. It's a day of lawlessness. Jesus said just before he comes, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. What were the days of Noah? The earth was filled with violence and corrupt before God. There's only one answer to this. It's not up with the academic folk. It's not with the politicians. If God restores our economy, if we get more people, less people unemployed, so what? They'll have more money to get drunk, more money to gamble, more money to get tied up in sin. I'm saying this, the thing that got me is this, that right after God in mercy had come and given them John the Baptist, even though for 300 years they'd insulted him, broken his laws, the priest was stagnant, the ceremonies they'd gone through meant nothing. How many people this week, or next week maybe, that'll be the first Sunday, is this the first Sunday of the month? Yeah. Millions of people across the nation will take a piece of bread and a cup and a, and it doesn't mean that much to them. Sentimentally they sing, we're the whole realm of nature, mind, and they'll spend more on the hairdo than they give commissions, or on tobacco, or on some other thing. The elders of the daughters of Zion sit and weep, they're speechless with grief, they throw dirt on their heads, they gird themselves with sackcloth, the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads, their eyes fail with tears, their bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out. It makes sense. Four years ago, James Robertson, a good guy, called preachers from all over the nation, 20,000 I think, or 15,000 came there into Dallas. They were cheerleaders for the coming president. Many of them stopped off and came to our house. I asked them all who came, where are you from? New Jersey, New York, or up in New England. Oh, what are you going to come? Well, we're going to share with the model majority, we want to get Mr Reagan in. Okay, that's okay. I asked everyone of them, supposing James Robertson said my, my, my anxiety is not about the next president, it's about how near to judgment we are. And I want you to come for two days of fasting and prayer and seeking God and lay on your bellies. Last week there was a great festival in, I think it was in the Cow Palace up there in Frisco. I was invited to go, I didn't go. It was just going to turn over the pages of revival history and have some great speakers and profound expositions on revival. I didn't answer the letter. The director called me, won't you come? No, why not? For the simple reason you're just going through a formula. Tell me you're going to spend two days on your bellies fulfilling the prophecy of Joel, the priest weeping between the altar and the doorpost, howling. Do you know a Bible school in the country that teaches young men that go into ministry to weep for lost souls? Do you know a school where they're instructed to howl at night, some given night? Oh, you can't do it mechanically. You can't do it in an oratorical sense. To get so grief-stricken that like the old saint says, look at Jerusalem, the walls are broken down and the gates are burned with fire. The voice of the prophet has gone. They said, sing a song for us. How should we sing the Lord's song in Babylon? You see, this was a festival of joy. That's about the least emphasis we've put on the Holy Ghost, isn't it? And yet the fruit of the Spirit is love, and what? Love and joy. The disciples were nonplussed when Jesus said, I'm going to leave you. Somebody come greater than... No, no, no, no, we don't accept that. Somebody greater than you. You know, when love is disappointed like that, it's petulant. We can't... You're telling us a story. How should somebody be greater than you? Because he said, I have been with you these three years, but now I'm going to come in you. I'm going to be Lord of your life. And the Holy Ghost is coming, and he's going to constrain you when you're lagging, and restrain you when you're going too fast. He's going to dominate your thinking, dominate your living, dominate the appetites of your body. And then out of you, because he is indwelling you. It's not out of you, it's out of him, because he spoke this of the Spirit. And when he indwells, what will come out? Rivers. Rivers, not trickles. Rivers of what? Rivers of what? Rivers of joy. Rivers of peace. Rivers of longsuffering. Rivers of tears. Rivers of grief. Come on. We've got a thousand billion years in eternity to be happy. Why should we be ashamed if somebody says, oh you know that group get together, and they are premy, and they weep, and they groan, and they cry. I would to God we did. I would to God every church did. Paul says that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his suffering. I think I told you about two years ago, we listened to the news before we went to bed Saturday night. And the news report was, the new census of human beings has just been completed. There are five billion people in the world. I woke up at two o'clock in the morning, I was having a breathing problem, which I get sometimes. And I'm sure there was a voice in the corner that said, five billion people, and I own them all. What can the church do about it? I said as she is now, nothing. What can you do about it? Well as I am now, very little. Now I own the five billion people in the world, and I'm going to take them down into a lost eternity. Now I had been praying that word in Philippians, Lord I want to know you. Remember the man who said this had done all the exploits in the name of Christ, he'd raised the dead, he'd healed the cripples, he'd turned cities upside down, and he's still striving that I may know him. Not no ministry, not no power, not no wisdom, not no authority. I want to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his suffering. Not suffering for him, but suffering with him. Again I believe that when Jesus went into this temple, he thought of those holy feet that had gone before him, Jeremiah's and others in the older temple. And here it is, your house is left desolate. You go through the performance every year of pouring out water, but you never have any solid lasting joy. Do you know why we need so much entertainment? Because we've no joy, that's why. Jesus says in John 16, my peace I leave with you, my joy I give to you, and no man take it away. Notice he doesn't say happiness, happiness depends on happenings. You go up and down like that with happiness, happen to be good, or when an accident happens to be the opposite, we go down like the yo-yo. Joy is independent of circumstances. Again from a filthy prison in Rome, Paul writes his epistle to the Philippians, and Ephesians, and Colossians, and he urges them to rejoice. What has he got rejoicing for? As I said last Friday, I believe the secret of Paul is not just a summary of his theology in 2 Corinthians 5, where he talks about having a home eternal in the heavens, where he talks about going to the judgment seat of Christ, where he speaks about having love, the love of God in him, the love constrains him, knowing the terror of the Lord, knowing the love of God, all those things. I believe again the motivation is in Philippians 1.20, when he says that Christ may be magnified by my body. Saying again, if you look through a magnifying glass at a dandelion, you'll be staggered at its beauty. Paul says, I want people to look through my life, and Jesus Christ is magnified. He's not asking for more power, or more authority. He isn't saying that Christ may be magnified by my ministry, Christ may be magnified by my epistles, but that he may be magnified by my body, all that's in it, my intellect, my emotions, my mind, my will. That when the world looks through me, it sees Jesus Christ more clearly than it would if I wasn't there. Come on daddy, that's why you're a daddy, so that your children can see through you, and they see Jesus Christ. Mummy, come on, Jonathan Edwards surely was a grave looking man, he had a solemn job to deliver. Man doesn't deliver with a smile on his face, sinners in the hands of an angry God. Now we've got God in the hands of angry sinners, and nobody's worried about it anyhow. There's no smile on his face, he's dealing with it, he is the man that prayed, God stamp eternity on my eyeballs. Pray that if you dare. Come on you young preachers, come on now. Do you think you dare pray that? Because if you do, you get into the fellowship of his suffering. Every time Jesus passed that great wonderful temple, every day of his life he was grieved and crushed in his spirit. The glories departed by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion. We can't sing God's song in a strange land, we can't, so do you know what we do? We invent pretty little choruses that itch our feet and make us clap our hands. Every man that God has used has been a man with a broken heart. Again Jeremiah 9, O that my head were waters, mine eyes a fountain of tears. O that you people see the glories departed, my eyes fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out for the destruction of the daughter of my people, and the children and the sucklings, they swoon in the city, and the children say to their mothers, where is the corn and wine? You tell us about a country that our forebears came into, a land flowing with milk and honey and the glory, where is it? God help us. Do you think the Pentecostals have any grief that they've lost the glory they had at Azusa Street in 1905? If so, tell me where they are, I don't know. Do you think the Salvationists are troubled at the glory that they had? After all, they had an outpouring of the Spirit. They put on their banner blood and fire, blood for the cross, fire for the Holy Ghost, and they conquered spiritually for God, they entered 70 countries in 90 years, not 70 cities. Where's the glory? It doesn't break our hearts, does it? Can you remember the last time you wept over this nation not to recover its economy, but that God would come and purge us of our iniquity and restore our honesty and our purity in His sight, our holiness? Make us uprising characters, let the out of our innermost being flow rivers of compassion, rivers of mercy. There are more lost people in the world this morning than ever they've been in history, and the Church of Jesus Christ is responsible for them. More captives to the devil, more areas where the barriers are so high we can't get in. Albania, a country I don't think has a missionary even. China, questionable how many are being reached there with its 800 million. Again India with its 700 million. Russia with how many, 150, 200 million, I don't know what it has. Nobody talks about Afghanistan. If there were some oil wells there we would, but there's no oil wells. It's a poverty-stricken country, all it's got is mountains and barrenness. The nation has been raped, women have been raped, cruelty exists, the devil rides the right horse, the black horse of death through the place. Finally here, Jesus prays. Jesus lifts up his voice with anguish. There's a terminal coming. All the judgment that should have come down from God when they refused the word of Jeremiah and the other prophets, is all being finalized in him. Again he's going to say to them before long, your house is left unto you desolate. The floodgates of judgment are coming. What happened? Well in 70 AD, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, what happened? Jerusalem was sacked by Titus. Blood flowed up to the bridles of the horses. They never repented of their sin. They never realized how they defended God, hurt God. So all the sin that should have come down in judgment upon them, it came when Jesus Christ finally was rejected. And they said that horrible word is blood be upon us and upon our children. It was and is and will be. It's amazing when you think a little country, you could pick it up and throw it in one of the great lakes and lose it, just as you could with England. There Israel is the thorn in the side of America, the thorn in the side of Russia, the thorn in the side of every nation. And Jesus said when you see Jerusalem surrounded with armies, well isn't Israel surrounded with armies this morning? Whichever way you look. God hasn't finished with her yet. I kind of think they'll still think they'll get kicked out once more. And in anguish they'll return for a Messiah. They didn't return for the Messiah when they went back in, what was it, 48? It was something economic. It was to get out of the way of Hitler and other persecutions. But they're going to go back. Jesus is going to triumph there. I read a statement somewhere here. I thought this was very applicable to the situation I'm talking about. The writer says, the dispensation of the law could only end in tribulation and the curse, for it is the ministration of death that the dispensation of grace must end in glory and victory, for it is a ministration of life. Religion continues to patch up that which God has declared useless. The veil that was rent in twain has been sewn and patched up again. The flesh rules and continues to rule in the place of the spirit. Instead of the blood of Christ, there are the works of men. Instead of the new birth, we talk about moral rearmament. Instead of the Holy Spirit, there's fleshly entertainment that the day of the Lord is at hand. Then he goes to talk about Joel. When Joel says God will pour out his spirit on all flesh, not one denomination, all flesh, what's the work of the spirit? Conviction. We don't see it. You see people coming to the altar on a crusade, chewing their gum and smiling. Where's the brokenness of heart? When he comes, he convicts the world of sin. When the Holy Ghost is outpoured next time, people won't sleep for two weeks. Their religion strives with their condemnation, with their guilt, with their conscience, with approaching judgment. He says it shall therefore be a great tribulation. You know there's all kinds of interpretations about that, but you know this morning I thought, if I lived in Russia, my darling wife had been torn out of my arms, I haven't seen my boys for 10 years, I haven't had a bath for months and months, I haven't had a meal for months and months, I haven't been out of my prison cell, I'd lost my wife, my children, my church, my bible, everything, everybody. Do you think God would hold it against me if I thought that was great tribulation? What greater tribulation can they have? It may not be the total final, but if we had that tribulation, brother, we'd be storming the White House and every other house to try and get out of the mess. But they've got a captive nation. Let me read this here then, okay. Not only wrath, but the glory that's ever been administered to all preceding generations shall be heaped together and laid on our generation when the day of the Lord is revealed. It shall therefore be a great tribulation such as was the great glory, such as was never known from the foundation of the world. To one class of people it shall be, as Joel says in Joel 2.2, a day of darkness and of gloominess, but to the other the morning spread upon the mountains to run the great tribulation, but to the manifest ages of the sons of God. This is the focal point of history. The glory of Moses' day is for us. The glory of David's kingdom is for us. The glory of Solomon's kingdom is for us. The glory of the restored temple of Ezra's day is for us. The glory of Enoch's day, the glory of Elijah's day, the glory of Paul's day. All this glory and much more is available if we hear his voice and if we obey him. I have a man that constantly writes to me and he thinks I'm a fool. Of course, he's got a lot of company. You talk about revival. Come on, there are five billion people. Am I going to sit back and let the devil take almost five billion people to hell if we have a revival that sweeps a billion people into salvation? It will be the greatest thing that's ever happened in history. And there'll still be four to one for everyone that goes to heaven, four will go to hell forever and ever. Am I going to sit back and let the devil do all he wants to do to my generation? I'm going to back off and say we're not adequate. Well, I'm honest about that, we're not adequate. If God the Holy Ghost could come and indwell us, first with his purification sweeping out our carnality, then with times of refreshing in the presence of the Lord as we are communally. If out of us could flow rivers of compassion, rivers of prayer, rivers of concern. If we would look back and say, remember the visitations even America has had since the 1700s. Look at my country that gave the world the Bible, that gave the world Methodism, that gave the world the Salvation Army, that gave the world the modern hominist movements and modern Pentecostal movement. She's a scrapheap today. I had a letter just this week from one of the greatest preachers I'd ever heard. I remember what he preached on one Sunday evening in our church in 1926 in England. He took out his little vest pocket book and he read, not everyone that saith Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom. I remember it was Dr. Paul Rees had a letter from him this week. He said, Len, I wish, he said, I've just been in your old country and Switzerland and around there. I wish I could tell you that there's a pulsating of life, but no, no, there's no sign of life. Is death everywhere? There's got to be travail before there can be birth. There's got to be sorrow before there can be joy. No, I'm not hanging my harp on the willows. I have no confidence in organized Christianity. I think Malcolm Muggeridge is right when he said this is the end of Christendom, not the end of Christ, the end of multi-million corporations. One of the biggest religious systems in America owns the greatest mill in America, which is Burlington. They own the main stock. Some of you know who it is, I guess. They not only own the main stock, they own the main stock in Sears Roebuck in South America. God Almighty, when were we asked to be an investment corporation? When the church is poor as she reaches. Oh, that blessed apostle says, I have nothing, but I possess all things. Isn't that wonderful? He possessed power over death, power over disease, power over all the opposition of the devil. He went to cities and he had one or two things. Revival or riots, we have neither. I prefer a riot with a revival and have nothing. One man filled with the Holy Ghost. The man was filled with the devil going down to the master's road, fired out of his master and building out threatenings, carrying a certificate that said he could murder every Christian. Then he becomes the greatest ambassador of Christ the world has ever known. Jesus is coming for what? Begins with B. A bride. Keep it in memory. He's not coming for a widow. He's not coming for a dilapidated, staggering, diseased, ridden body of the church. He's coming for a church purified and sanctified and edified. A church that knows where it's going and why it's going. A church that doesn't care a hill of beans about Babylon except to embed it with the glory of God. A church that is leaning to fill up the sufferings of Christ. Now don't pray about that. I prayed about that and it will kill me. Pray if God tells you. Don't pray because you feel sentimentally, I'd like to have a little more power. I'd like to know a little more about the knowledge of God and God's concern about for my generation. Charles Wesley has a verse of the hymn. Let me give it to you. He says, The waves and storms go o'er my head. The wealth and health and strength be gone. The joys be withered all and dead. And every comfort be withdrawn. On this my steadfast soul relies. Father thy mercy never dies. What happens immediately before that outpouring of the Spirit in joy? Well I'll tell you what it says. Joy is withered from the sons of men. Do you know a sanctuary where there's real jubilation every Sunday morning because the Christ of God is risen and exalted? Where he's just waiting to come and invade our personalities with a measure of revelation, a depth of love, a depth of grace, a depth of power that has never been seen since Pentecost. I still believe in my poor little feeble mind and heart. I still believe the last generation with all the opposition, hell is goodness, that we're going to see a Pentecost but without Pentecost, Pentecost. Glory that will supersede that was ever in the temple in the super days when the glory came and they couldn't minister for God's glory. Oh I long for that to come to this fellowship. I believe we're moving up there doctor. There's a preparation going. I hear of the hunger in hearts of people. There was a great outpouring of the Spirit in Wales in 1904. One of the great men in that revival, I believe he was a, I believe he was an American. As a matter of fact I think it was Paul Reese's father Seth Reese who was one of the founders of the Pilgrim Holiness Churches. He went round Wales with those and he said listen, God is coming. Before long God is going to come from heaven in his glory and majesty and shake the whole of what they call the principality because they have a prince not a king in Wales. Prince of Wales, they have a principality. And he went round for about two years before the revival. You might think it was a gimmick and he'd say now I'm glad to have ministered to you tonight. Now remember God's coming. He may come this Tuesday night to the prayer meeting. So for two years before the revival everybody went to church because they thought God was coming. And he came in awesome power. It was a revival like the revivals of John. John had not a miracle ministry, Jesus did. That revival was spiritual entirely. No miracles. But the whole nation was purged. The taverns were emptied. They didn't have movie houses so they couldn't be emptied. But the other questionable place is closed. We don't get, we haven't a man in the country who can preach like that. One fellow on TV is always saying you know revival is sweeping the land. Nobody can stop it. I challenged him to show me one place where he can go and after he's been in that city and he said oh we're turning crowds away. The man who gets the biggest crowds in this country will not use TV and he will not use newspaper advertising. I had a letter from him recently. A little guy, I had dinner in his home about 1952. Who is it? Bill Gossett. He said in his letter to me last week Len we had a marvelous, we had a hundred thousand people. Well no building halls a hundred thousand. What do they do? They have TV. A closed circuit TV in big auditoriums around the city. He never says a word about his crowds. That was privately to me. This other little boy on TV says oh we're having revival. We're turning, he goes to churches holding a thousand and turns three hundred away. So what? Jimmy Swaggart has buildings every weekend holding ten thousand and still turns two or three thousand away. But what's in the numbers game? Nothing as far as I'm concerned. Turning a crowd away is no sign of revival. Revival is when devil, the devil has to quit the city. Revival is like they had in the Salvation Army when tavern after tavern after tavern closed and brothels closed. What in other countries where porno houses are closed. It's an invasion of God. It's not a brilliant preach of personality. God works, I say this and quit. There's a little island off the coast of Wales. There's a bridge there. They call it Telford's. It was the first suspension bridge I think ever built. I went over there to the Isle of Anglesey into an old old house with an old old lady sitting in the chimney corner. I couldn't speak a word of Welsh and she couldn't understand English so we got an interpreter. Do you remember the revival? All that wrinkled old face lit up. Yeah. And she said to the interpreter Evan Roberts who was only about 23 years of age, before he ever crossed the bridge the Spirit of God had worked in five different churches. Evan would come in and put his head in the room and just as you say you're burning the toast or something's burning. He put his head in the building saying God is here, obey him. And she said revival swiped through this whole community, this whole island without him once opening his mouth. Why? Because people were touched by the Spirit of God. He's going to pour out his Spirit on our flesh. When? Why doesn't he do it? Jesus was not, the Holy Ghost was not given because Jesus was not yet glorified. He had to go through Gethsemane to the cross. We stand maybe in more peril than any other nation in the world. We have more Bible schools in this nation than in all the other nations of the world put together. We have an average of three Bibles for every home in America or every person in America. And still some people don't even have one page of scripture. God said to Israel I'll take away your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh. Until he moves that insensitive heart. I'm not sensitive to the needs of people, not because they need more food, not because a million people will die in Ethiopia or there's an equally great famine in the middle of Africa. That's awesome. I see those horrible skeletons. I see little babies swarmed with flies and bloated bellies. I think of the extravagance in this country, another country. But most of all I think of how we're responsible for the teeming millions of lost people. All right, they had received the witness of the Holy Ghost in the upper room. They received the endowment of the Holy Ghost. The mantle fell upon them and read the mystery work where God purified their hearts. After that they had no worldly desires, no worldly interests, no worldly concerns. They were consumed with God. I preached in Ireland some years ago. There's a big picture behind me of a beautiful lady, lovely hairdo and a choker collar, you know. Little Irish girl from Belfast. She went out to India on a one-way ticket. That's how missionaries used to go. No return ticket. One-way ticket. Went to stay. Amy Wilson Carmichael. She had a curvature of the spine for 30 years. The last three years of her life she had to be lifted in and out of bed every day. She wrote this. Give me a love that leads the way, a faith which nothing can dismay, a hope no disappointments tire, a passion that will burn like fire. Listen to this little frail woman, less than a hundred pounds. Let me not sink to be a clod. Make me thy fuel flame of God. John Wesley was a burning and a shining light. The only way to shine is to burn. The only way a candle can light, you light it and it gradually burns and its life goes out. It's consumed. God wants men who want to be consumed with the Holy Ghost. Drained of every self-interest, selfish desire, self-glory, self-seeking, self-righteousness. Self out of it. Going to the cross and being crucified and coming back resurrected. And the life which I now live in the flesh, Paul says, my head is the same, my ears are here, my hand, but I'm not the same. I'm dead yet I live. Christ liveth in, and the life which I live in the flesh, and brother did he live it. Do you want me to finish? Now you have to finish too. Do you want me to finish writing to Timothy? I fought a good fight. Boy had he fought. I'm not a shadow boxer. I really have, I have conquest with the devil. I fought a good fight. I finished my course. He was a runner. I've kept the faith. He was obligated as a servant with a treasure. If God introduces you to grief, don't get troubled about it. I think it's a genuine grief for the lost. Don't worry about criticism. Jesus got loads of it. But he stood defiant in a hostile crowd. I say, I see him in his moral majesty and his assurance of God. This was the hour for which he had come, and he knew that this was the end of the line for them, and it was the end of the line for him, and yet out of him and out of them were going to flow rivers of living water. God wants to bankrupt us as he may make us rich. Strip us that he may clothe us. Empty us that he may fill us. Show us our poverty that he may reveal his majesty and his grace. Dear brother, David is preaching in a college today. Sorry, he preached in the college last night and Friday night. He's in some church today. Remember to pray for him. Father, I guess we need to weep because we have no weeping, and groan because we have no groans. We're not watching a nation go to destruction as Jesus did. We're watching this whole human race getting ripe for judgment. Not only violent in acts towards each other, but violent against God. Destroying your Sabbaths, breaking your commandments. We've, a nation and other nations, we've gone whoring after the things of Babylon. Babylon's kind to us. Babylon gives tax exemption to us for our gifts to God, which may be that we're only giving the government money anyhow. Babylon likes us. It doesn't persecute us. We're not an offense to it. We're not a thorn in its side. Our righteousness does not stand out clear against their unrighteousness. Our holiness does not stagger people who are in unholiness. God give us brave hearts. Ask us to get to the place, and show us how to get to a place where we can't sing the Lord's song in a strange land. We're not prepared to try and be happy in the place of holy joy. We're not satisfied to go to church banquets instead of feasting on the things of God. Give us grief over our generation. Give us grief over our impotent churches. Give us grief over our dead seminaries. Give us grief over super organizations that seem to want nothing but money. Never show us God's glory. Have mercy upon us. We don't deserve it. We deserve judgment. We've had more lies and truth than any nation on earth may be. And yet here we are staggering in blindness and unbelief and sin and drunkenness and immorality and sex perversion. Give us the ability like these daughters we read of here in Lamentations 2 to sit down and weep and throw dust over our heads and gird ourselves with sackcloth and otherwise take a place of humility and poverty and grief until we move into the blessing that Jesus has provided for us. Until we get to the place of the fullness of the Spirit and join the Holy Ghost. We pray for Brother David today. You'll give him a great day in that church. For other ministries around here that are now scattered around preaching. Bless every church represented here. We ask that we may carry some light and power and love and zeal into those areas. Pour your Spirit upon us, in us and through us. We give you praise in Jesus name. Thank you.