Elijah - Part 7

But they're no good, so they tore them all up. He went into a town and the Lord said, George, I see you at the back. I thought I could see George at the back, no? George, you're so sunburned, I can't see you.

Is there a new country in Africa called Botswana? Yeah. Well, he went in there a while ago. When he got to a city, he said, what's that building? Oh, we would call it a stadium.

Oh. The Lord said, I want you to take the stadium. Before you take it, I want you to take the city hall.

He said, Lord, I couldn't fill the city hall, never mind. So he took the stadium. And the glory of God came.

And one night he said, I just said, how many of you believe the Holy Ghost is still the same, that he'll come on people of broken, contrite hearts? You walk forward, and a thousand people walk forward. And he said, I started laying hands. He said, they all fell on the floor, and I never told them to do that.

And then somebody said, oh, my eyes are open, I can see. Oh, my ears are unstopped, I can hear. Oh, my crippled leg, I can feel it.

And they began to jump and leap and praise God. And you know, you don't do that in any decent meeting. You only do that in indecent meetings.

You know, a lot of us, we lose our touch the first time the Holy Ghost comes on a meeting. We'll either bend, or we'll snap in two. Well, he filled the city hall.

And then he said, book the stadium. And he booked the stadium. We didn't fill it.

He said, more than 10,000 people came. And again, the Spirit of God worked. And criminals were saved.

And people were healed. Isn't it wonderful how many preachers believe the Bible from cover to cover till you come to the miraculous? But Christianity that isn't supernatural is superficial. You cannot separate the supernatural from this holy, magnificent God that we have.

Now, I'd better get on here, or else I'm going to be in trouble. Verse 36 of 18 again. Came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet came near and said, Lord God of Abraham and of Israel and of Isaac, let it be known this day that thou art a God in Israel.

Notice he doesn't pray for his own vindication first. Let it be known this day that there is a God in Israel and that I am thy servant. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord and thou hast turned their hearts back again.

Then the fire of the Lord fell. Verse 39. And when all the people saw it, they fell.

You know, there'll be a lot of falling once the fire of God falls. The fire fell and the people fell. Now, you'd think that when this man had seen the fire fall and the people fall and seen the whole nation cry to God, the Lord is God, that he'd feel kind of on top of the world.

Verse 42. Ahab went to eat and to drink. Elijah went to the top of Carmel.

Well, that's what Carmel people do. They go to eat and drink. Elijah went on the top of the mountain.

And he cast himself down on the earth and put his face between his knees. Now, you try that for an hour tonight and see how you get up. That's contrition.

That's humiliation. Why didn't he relax and say, Well, you know, I'm the big shot preacher in the nation. I mean, I pray and the people fell and the rain fell and the whole nation's heart was turned back to God.

He said to his servant, Go up now and look toward the sea. And he went up and he said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.

Now, here you've got the patience of prayer and you've got the persistence of prayer. I mean, when his servant had been once and said, There is nothing. Why didn't he say, Well, then it's not time for God to work.

I got wrong here. He says, Go a second time. He went a second.

Anything? No. Go a third. Anything? No.

Go a fourth. Anything? No. Go a fifth.

This may sound foreign to you right now, but maybe when you're on some mission field or in some other location, you'll discover that God doesn't always answer prayer on the button like that to get us out of difficulty and trial. Faith that he's going to be trusted, he's going to be tested. And here is a man who's seen the supernatural.

He's seen a whole nation fall down before God. He's seen the fire fall from heaven. And yet he persists in his praying, however painful it may be.

The next verse, 44, says, He came to pass a seventh time. He said, Behold, there arrives with a little trout out of the sea like a man's hand. And he said, Go.

Say to Ahab, You know, go tell the king again. I know I'm a thorn in his flesh, but I'm not leaving him alone. I'm not giving up until not just the nation falls, but the king falls.

Prepare thy chariot and get thee down, that the rain stop not. He came to pass in the meanwhile. The heaven was black with clouds.

And behold, there was a great rain. So here's the man. He prays, and the fire fell.

He prays, and the people fell. He prays, and the rain fell. Wouldn't you like him for a deacon in your church? The hand of the Lord was on Elijah.

Remember, before it was the word of the Lord. Now the hand of the Lord. And he girded up his lungs, and he ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jerusalem.

Wouldn't that have been something? The king's been living off the hog. The king has a beautiful chariot. And here's a guy who's only had two meals a day for over three and a half years, and he can outstreet the big, fast horses.

If that isn't supernatural life, what is? You know, we've got lots of Ahabs today, but we're pretty short of Elijahs. Maybe you should turn the question around. Not where is the Lord God of Elijah, but where are the Elijahs of God? Huh? Do you think you're prepared to hear God's voice? Say, look, whether you're teaching here or a student, and the Lord say, listen, I want you to get out of the car and go find a cave and stay in it for three and a half years till they hear my voice.

And then you come up and stand before kings and rulers. I say this in all due respect. You know, it's not very difficult to make records and stir people.

You know, it's not very difficult to make books. I can write books. But tell me, where is the man who can bring fire from heaven today? Anybody will buy our records.

Almost every day people write, are you writing another book? Are you going to give us a book on the judgment seat? Are you going to give us a book on worship? That doesn't take much moral courage to sit in a swivel chair and reach for my Bible and look through some references and find a lot of things come crowding into my mind. But what if I meet Ahab in the way? You say we've no groves to Ashcroft. What about the Roman Catholic Church? We have no false priests.

What about Mormonism? What about Jehovah's Witnesses? We've more false priests in this country or England today than these guys have anything about. They tell me that out at Berkeley there, there's a guru who goes out on the lawn there every lunchtime and gathers 2,000 students around him to come and sit around us for a year and listen. How is it men with unbelief and heresy can magnetize crowds and we with the truth of the living God can't? Paul says, My preaching is not in words only, much of ours is but in power and demonstration of the Holy Ghost.

There's nothing pleases me more than when I preach and somebody says, as one lady did, I said to my wife, Sweetheart, this lady that's looking around the church