paineblog: December 2014

copyright 1959, 1987..ravenhill died in 1994..snippets of the book are..

(ravenhill's son speaking...'my mother was a singing mother. every day as she carried me in her womb she sang and prayed for me...an amazing thing happened two hours..after i was born. i was in a prayer meeting. my mother told me twenty years after, 'when the midwife went out, i reached over the bed and laid my hands on you and just prayed, 'Lord, make this boy a preacher or don't let him live.')

ravenhill's father...'was raised in a God fearing home that believed in the power of prayer. his earliest recollection of school was that of being taught the ten commandments as a five year old as well as having to memorize and recite many of the psalms. at the age of 14 he was attending all night prayer meetings-a passion he carried throughout his life.

he recalled: 'they prayed with tears, they prayed with brokenness. they prayed for a lost world, then they began to pray for nations i knew little about. they had signs of niagara falls, but instead of water falling over, it was people dropping down'.

chapter one - with all thy getting, get unction
'the offense of prayer is that it does not essentially tie in to mental efficiency. (that is not to say that prayer is a partner to mental sloth; in these days efficiency is at a premium.) prayer is conditioned by one thing alone and that is spirituality. one does not need to be spiritual to preach, that is, to make and deliver sermons of homiletical perfection and exegetical exactitude. by a combination of memory, knowledge, ambition, personality, plus well lined bookshelves, self confidence and a sense of having arrived-brother, the pulpit is yours almost anywhere these days. preaching of the type mentioned affects men;
prayer affects God.
preaching affects time; prayer affects eternity. the pulpit can be a shop window to display our talents; the closet speaks death to display.

the tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people. oh! the horror of it. there is a strange thing that i have seen 'under the sun', even in the fundamentalist circles; it is preaching without unction. what is unction? i hardly know. but i know what it is not (or at least i know when it is not upon my own soul).
preaching without unction kills instead of giving life.
the unctionless preacher is a savor of death unto death.
the word does not live unless the unction is upon the preacher.
preacher with all thy getting-get unction.

..preaching is a spiritual business. a sermon born in the head reaches the head;
a sermon born in the heart reaches the heart. ..
unction is not a gentle dove beating her wings against the bars outside of the preacher's soul; rather she must be pursued and won.
unction cannot be learned, only earned-by prayer.
unction is God's knighthood for the soldier-preacher who has wrestled in prayer and gained the victory. victory is not won in the pulpit by firing intellectual bullets or wisecracks, but in the prayer closet...unction comes not by the medium of the bishop's hands, neither does it mildew when the preacher is cast into prison. unction will pierce and percolate; it will sweeten and soften. when the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.

what a fever of church building there is just now! yet without unctionized preachers, these altars will never see anxious penitents. suppose that we saw fishing boats with the latest in radar equipment and fishing gear launched month after month and put out to sea only to return without a catch-what excuse would we take for this barrenness?
yet thousand of churches see empty altars week after week
and year after year,
and cover this sterile situation by misapplying the scripture, 'my word...shall not return unto me void.

but ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, PRAYING IN THE HOLY GHOST.
Jude

O that we were more deeply moved by the languishing state of Christ's cause upon the earth today, by the inroads of the enemy and the awful desolation he has wrought in zion
alas that a spirit of indifference or at least of fatalistic stoicism, is freezing so many of us. a.w. pink

whole days and weeks have i spent prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer. george whitefield

all decays begin in the closet; no heart thrives without much secret converse with God and nothing will make amends for the want of it. berridge

it seemed to me as if he had gone straight into heaven and lost himself in God;
but often when he had done praying he was as white as the wall.
a friend's comment after meeting tersteegen at kronenberg

chapter two - prayer grasps eternity

no man is greater than his prayer life.
the pastor who is not praying is playing;
the people who are not praying are straying..

poverty stricken as the church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer.
we have many organizers, but few agonizers;
many players and payers, few pray-ers...
lots of pastors, few wrestlers;
many fears, few tears;
much fashion, little passion...
failing here, we fail everywhere.

the two prerequisites to successful christian living are vision and passion,
both of which are born in and maintained by prayer.
the ministry of preaching is open to few;
the ministry of prayer-the highest ministry of all human offices-is open to all.
spiritual adolescents say, 'i'll not go tonight, it's only the prayer meeting'.
it may be that satan has little cause to fear most preaching.
yet past experiences sting him to rally all his infernal army to fight against god's people praying.
modern christians know little of 'binding and loosing', though the onus is on us
-'whatsoever YE shall bind...'
have you done any of this lately?
God is not prodigal with His power..
to be much for God, we must be much with God....

the secret of praying is praying in secret.
a sinning man will stop praying and a praying man will stop sinning.
we are beggared and bankrupt, but not broken, nor even bent.

prayer is profoundly simple and simply profound.
'prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try...
a niagara of burning words does not mean that god is either impressed or moved.
one of the most profound of old testament intercessors had no language
-'her lips moved, but her voice was not heard'.
...there are 'groanings which cannot be uttered'.

...prayer is to the believer what capital is to the business man.

can any deny that in the modern church setup the main cause of anxiety is money? yet that which tries the modern churches the most, troubled the new testament church the least. our accent is on paying, theirs was on praying.
when we have paid, the place is taken;
when they had prayed, the place was shaken!

a religion of mere emotion and sensationalism
is the most terrible of all curses that can come upon any people.
the absence of reality is sad enough, but the aggravation of pretence is a deadly sin. samuel chadwick

when God intends great mercy for His people,
the first thing He does is set them a-praying. matthew henry

truth without enthusiasm,
morality without emotion,
ritual without soul, are the things Christ unsparingly condemned.
destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy,
an ethical system and
a superstition. samuel chadwick

i have seen faces upon which the Dove sat visibly brooding. charles lamb on the quakers

fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. paul

chapter 3 - a call for Unction in the pulpit-Action in the pew!

when a man who has crept along for years in conventional christianity
suddenly zooms into spiritual alertness,
becomes aggressive in the battle of the Lord, and
has a quenchless zeal for the lost, there is a reason for it....
the secret of this 'jet propelled fellow' we have just mentioned is that somewhere
he has had jacob like wrestlings with God
and has come out stripped, but also 'strengthened by the Holy Ghost!'

there are two indispensable factors to successful christian living. they are VISION and PASSION.
men battle mountainous seas of human carnal criticism
and storm the flinty height of devilish opposition
to plant the cross of Christ amidst the habitations of cruelty. why?
because they have caught a vision and contracted a passion....
friend, if you were as good at soul cultivation as you are in developing your business,
you would be a menace to the devil;
but if you were as poor in business matters as you are in soul, you would be begging for bread.

george deakin drummed into my mind many years ago..
a vision without a task makes a visionary
a task without a vision is drudgery;
a vision with a task makes a missionary.
...there are no reduced rates for revolution of soul.
if you only want to be saved, sanctified and satisfied , then the Lord's battle hath no need of thee.

isaiah had a vision in three dimensions.
WOE, a word of confession (6.5)
LO, a word of cleansing; (v7)
GO, a word of commission. (v9)

it was and upward vision-he saw the Lord
and inward vision-he saw himself, and
and outward vision-he saw the world.

...william booth of the salvation army is quoted as saying that if he could do it, he would have finalized the training of his soldiers with twenty four hours hanging over hell, to see its eternal torment.

...he who fears God fears no man.
he who kneels before God will stand in any situation.

...(speaking of isaiah in the 6th chapter)...'woe is me!
it's me, it's me, o Lord, standing in the need of prayer! how true.
are there chambers of the mind with unclean pictures hanging in them?...
are there not secret springs and secret motives that control and secret chambers where polluted things hold empire over the soul? there are three persons living in each of us: the one we thing we are, the one other people think we are and the one God knows we are.

unless we are desperate to get into real victory, we are so easy on ourselves and so hard on others!
self loves self...but too often we hide ourselves from ourselves lest the sight of ourselves should sicken ourselves. let us invite the searching eye of God to locate this corrupted, spotted, stinking Self in us.
let it be torn from us and 'crucified with Him, (so) that henceforth we no longer serve sin'. romans 6.6

it will not do to call sin by some other name, saying, 'the other fellow has a devilish temper; mine is just righteous indignation! she is touchy; my irritability is just 'a case of nerves'. he is covetous; i am expanding my business. he is stubborn; i have convictions. she is proud; i have superior tastes'. there is a coverup for anything if you want it that way.

do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh?
cannot the same wonders be done now as of old?
do not the eyes of the lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong
on behalf of those who put their trust in Him?
oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him!
where is now the Lord God of elijah?
He is waiting for elijah to call on Him. james gilmour of mongolia

we know the utility of prayer from the efforts of the wicked spirits to distract us during the divine office;
and we experience the fruit of prayer in the defeat of our enemies. john climacus

when we go to God in prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him,
and therefore he opposeth us all he can. r. sibbes.

I sought for a man. ezekiel 22.30

elias was a man. james 5.17

chapter 4 - where are the elijahs of God?

today God is bypassing men-not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self sufficient.

...how the God of Glory had departed! the salt had lost its savour! the gold had become dim! but out of this measureless backsliding, God raised up a man-not a committee, not a sect, not an angel-but A MAN and a man of like passions as we are! God 'sought for a man', not to preach, but 'TO STAND IN THE GAP'. as abraham, so now elijah 'stood before the lord'. therefore the blessed Holy Spirit could write the life of elijah in two words: HE PRAYED'.

...the preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it.
a man freed, fired and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation's sins;
unkind because his tongue is a two edged sword;
unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him.
the preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.

...in england..we stir national interest against the cruel, half-civilized mau mau (wicked enought!)
but powwow with and pander to the roman catholic church!
these priests who dope men's souls, these idolatrous 'masses', these calvary eclipsing prayers to mary, these miserable millions cheated in life and in death by the greatest forgery lucifer ever made-
all these do not seem to stir us to tearful intercessions and godly jealousy, as identical circumstances stirred elijah. the enemy has come in like a flood. is there no Spirit filled messenger today, armed with all the panoply of god, to lift up a standard against him?
one place alone will keep the heart in passion and the eyes in vision-the place of prayer.

...'got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
got any mountains you can't tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible,
and He can do what no other pow'r can do'.

the price is high. God does not want partnership with us, but ownership of us.

elijah lived with God. he thought about the nation's sin like God; he grieved over sin like God; he spoke against sin like God. he was all passion in his prayers and passionate in his denunciation of evil in the land. he had no smooth preaching. passion fired his preaching and his words wee on the hearts of men as molten metal on their flesh.

but 'the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord' psalm 37.23
the Lord said to elijah, 'hide thyself' and again, 'show thyself'. it would be wrong to hide when we should be rebuking kings for His sake; it would be wrong to preach if the Spirit is calling us to wait upon the Lord.
we must learn with david, 'my soul, wait thou only upon God'. psalm 62.5 WHO OF US DARES TO INVITE THE LORD TO CUT OUT ALL OUR PROPS? God's ways are not our ways. His ways are 'past finding out', but He reveals them unto us by His Spirit...

later, elijah's prayer at carmel was a masterpiece of concise praying.
'hear me, o Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God and that Thou hast turned their heart back again'. I kings 18.37
e.m. bounds is right in saying that short, powerful public prayers are the outcome of long secret intercession. elijah prayed, not for the destruction of the idolatrous priests, not for thunderbolts from heaven to consume rebellious israel, but that the glory of God and the power of god might be revealed.

we try to help God out of difficulties.
remember how abraham tried to do this and to this day the earth is cursed with his folly because of ishmael.
on the other hand, elijah made it as difficult as he could for the Lord.
he wanted fire, but yet he soaked the sacrifice with water!
God loves such holy boldness in our prayers.
'ask of Me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession'. psalm 2.8

...much of our praying is but giving god advice!
our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves or for our denomination...
our goal must be God alone. it is His honor that is sullied, His blessed son who is ignored, His laws broken,His name profaned, His book forgotten,His house made a circus of social efforts.

does God ever need more patience with His people than when they are 'praying'?
we tell Him what to do and how to do it.
we pass judgments and make appreciations in our prayers.
in short we do everything except pray...
no bible school can teach us this art. what bible school has 'prayer' on its curriculum?..

..God's problem today is not communism nor yet romanism, nor liberalism nor modernism. God's problem is dead fundamentalism.

revival is an experience in the church; evangelism is an expression of the church. paul s. rees

God never intended His Church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety.
He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch out converts. f. lincicome

Lord, is it I? the disciples

God helps us seek popularity where it counts-at the court of God! zepp

chapter 5 - revival in a bone yard

...preachers deal with possibilities, prophets with impossibilities.
isaiah had seen this nation full of wounds and putrefying sores; but disease had galloped on to death, death to disintegration and now these disjointed bones spell out despair. written over the whole situation in large capitals is I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-T-Y. now obviously no faith is required to do THE POSSIBLE;
actually only a morsel of this atom powered stuff is needed to do THE IMPOSSIBLE, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of.
again and again God asks men to do not what they can, but what they can't.
to prove that no sleight of hand does it but that they link their impotence to His omnipotence, the word impossible is dropped from their vocabularies.

prophets are lone men: they walk alone, pray alone and God makes them alone. for them there is no mold; their patent rights are with god, for the principle of divine selection is 'past finding out'. but let no man despair; let none of us say, however we may have been or have not been used, that we are too old. moses was 80 when he took command of an enslaved and broken people. after george mueller was 70 he went around the world several times and, without the aid of radio, preached to millions of people.

as for ezekiel, he called no committee and set out no prayer letter; he solicited no funds and loathed publicity. but this situation was a matter of life and death...

to this mountain of bones, then, ezekiel was asked to say, 'be thou removed!'...the world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel...
where are the men not of doctrine, but of faith? no faith is required to curse the darkness or give staggering statistical evidence that the dikes are down and a tidal wave of hellish impurity has submerged this generation. doctrine? -we have enough and to spare, while a sick, sad, sin sodden, ex soaked world perishes with hunger.

at this grim hour, the world sleeps in darkness and the church sleeps in the light;
so Christ is 'wounded in the house of His friends'. the limping church militant is derisively called the Church impotent. yearly we use mountains of paper and rivers of ink reprinting dead men's brains, while the LIVING HOLY GHOST IS SEEKING for men to trample underfoot their own learning, deflate their inflated ego and confess that with all their seeing they are blind. such men, at the price of brokenness and strong crying and tears, seek that they may be anointed with divine eye salve, bought at the price of honest acknowledgment of
poverty of soul.

..sign outside..church..'this church will have either a revival or a funeral!'

..by overstating the sovereignty of God and blundering on in an atmosphere of stagnant dispensationalism, we safeguard our spiritual bankruptcy.
all the while hell fills...

..these days we are more fond of travelling than travailing, hence-no births...
right now God is preparing His elijahs for the last great earthly offensive against militant godlessness(whether political or wearing a mask of religion)....

..john citizen has heard of the gospel with the hearing of the ear,
but his eyes have never seen and his soul has never felt the power of a divine visitation.
he has every right to ask, 'where is your God? ' what shall we answer him?

..a razor is blunt, compared to Spirit edged truth.

herein are three very vital issues: BROKEN HEARTS, MOURNING, SIN
first,'a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise' psalm 52.17;

in fact, God only uses broken things. for example, Jesus took the lad's bread and brake it; then and only then could it feed the crowd. the alabaster box was broken; only then could its fragrance escape and fill the house -and the world. Jesus said, 'this is My body which was broken for you'.

and next, mourning for sin! jeremiah cried, 'oh that my head were waters, while the psalmist says, 'rivers run down my eyes continually'...
our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry.
we live in a day when we can have piety without pity.
it is passing strange.
when a couple of struggling salvation army officers wrote to william booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, 'try tears!' they did. and they had revival.

bible schools don't teach 'tears'.
they really cannot, of course. this is Spirit taught..a preacher..has not gotten far unless he knows soul bitterness over the sin of this day..

thirdly, what of sin? fools mock at it...the Schoolmen of the church have classified 'seven deadly sins'. we know, of course, that they are wrong,for all sin is deadly.

..to our knees..desist the folly of sprinkling today's individual and international iniquity with theological rose water. turn loose against this putrefaction those might rivers of weeping, of prayer and of unctionized preaching until all be cleansed.

power from on high is the supreme need of today. charles g. finney

if Christ waited to be anointed before He went to preach,
no young man ought to preach until he, too, has been anointed by the Holy Ghost. f.b.meyer

BEWARE OF REASONING ABOUT GOD'S WORD-OBEY IT. oswald chambers

i cannot work my soul to save,
for that my Lord hath done;
but i will work like any slave,
for love of God's dear Son.    unknown

as soon as we cease to bleed, we cease to bless. dr. j.h.jowett

chapter 6 - revival tarries because

harnack defined christianity as
'a very simple but very sublime thing; to live in time and for eternity under the eye of God and by His help'.

..it has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today;
those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid and those who know their bibles...

almost every bible conference majors on today's church being like the ephesian church.
we are told that, despite our sin and carnality, we are seated with Him.
alas, what a lie!
we are ephesians all right; but, as the ephesian church in the revelation, we have 'left our first love,.
we appease sin-but do not oppose it.
to such a cold, carnal, critical, care-cowed church, this lax, loose, lustful, licentious age will never capitulate.
let us stop looking for scapegoats.
the fault in declining morality is not radio or television.
the would blame for the present international degeneration and corruption lies at the door of the CHURCH.
IT IS NO LONGER A THORN IN THE SIDE OF THE WORLD.
..it has not been in times of popularity but of adversity that the true church has always triumphed.

..we are not protestants any more-just 'non catholics.
of what and of whom do we protest?
were we half as hot as we think we are and a tenth as powerful as we say we are, our christians would be baptized in blood, as well as in water and in fire...

..if, in the new testament, christians were stoned and suffered every ignominy, how is it then, since sin and sinners have not changed, that we..no longer raise the wrath of hell?
why are we so icily regular, so splendidly null?...

..we will write about prayer power, but not FIGHT while in prayer...
who will storm hell's stronghold? who will say the devil nay?

..revival tarries because we steal the glory that belongs to God. listen to this and wonder:
Jesus said, 'I receive not honour from men' and
'who can ye believe which receive honour one of another and seek not the honour that cometh from god only? john 5.41,44
away with all fleshly backslapping and platform flattery!
away with this exalting of 'MY radio program, MY church, MY books!
oh the sickening parade of flesh in our pulpits:
'we are greatly privileged, etc'.
speakers (who are there really by grace alone) accept all this, nay-even expect it!...

POOR GOD! He does not get much out of it all! then why doesn't God fulfill His blessed and yet awful promise and spew us out of His mouth?

the gospel is a fact; therefore tell it simply.
the gospel is a joyful fact; therefore tell it cheerfully.
the gospel is an entrusted fact; therefore tell it faithfully.
the gospel is a fact of infinite moment; therefore tell it earnestly.
the gospel is a fact of infinite love; therefore tell it feelingly.
the gospel is a fact of difficult comprehension to many; therefore tell it with illustration.
the gospel is a fact about a person; therefore preach Christ. archibald brown

true preaching is the sweating of blood. dr. joseph parker

chapter 7 - is soul-hot preaching a lost art?

..we need more 'good and fervent preachers'.
isaiah was one such with his 'woe of confession'
-'woe is me! for i am undone; because i am a man of unclean lips
and i dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.'
..paul was another such, with his 'woe' of commission
-'woe is unto me, if i preach not the gospel!'
..richard baxter of kidderminster, england..in answer to the taunts that he was idle:
'the worst i wish you is that you had my ease instead of your labor.
i have reason to take myself for the least of all saints and yet i fear not to tell the accuser
that i take the labor of most tradesmen in the town to be a pleasure to the body in comparison to mine,
though i would not exchange it with the greatest prince.
their labor preserveth health and mine consumeth it.
they work in ease and i in continual pain.
they have hours and days of recreation; i have scarce time to eat and drink.
nobody molesteth them for their labor, but the more i do the more hatred and trouble i draw upon me.

...this is the baxter who ever sought to preach as 'a dying man to dying men'.

we may have an all time high in church attendance with a corresponding all time low in spirituality.
..have we to confess with one of old, 'the fault, dear brutus, is within ourselves'?
...do we endeavor to bring 'the powers of the world to come' into every meeting?

consider paul. with a powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit upon him, he went out to ransack asia minor, mauling its markets, stirring its synagogues, penetrating its palaces. out he went, with the war cry of the gospel in his heart and on his lips..
paul was not merely a citywide preacher but a city wide shaker and yet he had time to knock on the doors along the street and to pray for lost souls in the street...

i am increasingly convinced that TEARS are an integral part..
this is the time to blush that we have no shame (note: and disgrace)..
this is the time to weep for our lack of tears...
the time to groan that we have no burden,
the time to angry with ourselves that we have no anger over the devil's monopoly in this 'end time' hour
the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.

pentecost meant PAIN, yet we have so much pleasure.
pentecost meant BURDEN, yet we love ease.
pentecost meant PRISON, yet most of us would do anything rather than...get into prison..

...the devil wants us to major on minors.
many of us in the 'deeper life' bracket are hunting mice-while lions devour the land.

chapter 8 - unbelieving believers

..we have adopted the convenient theory that the bible is a book to be explained,
whereas first and foremost if is a book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).

..there is a world of difference between knowing the word of God and knowing the God of the word.

..the bible, the christian's checkbook from the Lord of glory, says:
'ALL things are yours...and ye are Christ's and Christ is God's'.

...a familiar cry is: 'we believe that the Lord would have us broadcast over ten more radio stations;
we are looking to Him to supply our needs;
send us your letters before next week'.
that may be faith and hints, but it is not being shut up to God alone.

...if we displease God, does it matter whom we please?
if we please Him, does it matter whom we displease?

until self-effacing (efface-remove or obliterate) men
(note: for every comment in this book about spiritual leaders please add 'regular' disciples of Christ...we ALL will be held accountable for every thought, word and deed amiss, without a hint of 'blameshifting' or 'discounting' of the culpability of our sin going on in that day when we stand before God)

return again to spiritual leadership,
we may expect a progressive deterioration in the quality of popular christianity year after year till we reach the point where the grieved Holy Spirit withdraws-like the Shekinah (glory) from the temple. a.w.tozer

no man is ever fully accepted until he has, first of all, been utterly rejected. unknown.

no boasting for me...none!-except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which the world has been crucified to me and i crucified to the world. galatians 6.14(moffatt's translation)

if i had a thousand heads i would rather have them all cut off than to revoke. luther at the diet of worms

i fear not the tyranny of man, neither yet what the devil can invent against me. john knox in 'a godly letter'

the business of the truth is not to be deserted even to the sacrifice of our lives,
for we live not for this age of ours, nor for the princes,but for the Lord. zwingli

chapter 9 - wanted - prophets for a day of doom!

paul's head is already halfway into the lion's mouth. what of it? before agrippa this daring, dauntless disciple paul has neither nerves nor reserves! he can be no 'tongue-in-cheek'

(note: joking, ironic..difference between apparent and intended meaning)
preacher anytime or anywhere.
physical courage will make a man brave one way and moral courage, which despises men's opinions whosoever they be, will make a man brave another way.
both these types of courage made paul a christian daniel in a roman 'den of lions'.
men may try to destroy a prophet's body, but they can not destroy the prophet.

the clock creeps up to midnight as i write and a peep through the window reveals a sky of velvet blackness.
transfer this into the realm of politics and it is a sky without a guiding star.
put that midnight sky in the realm of morals and you must multiply it to gross darkness.
come not to the realm of religion; count your t.v. audiences for top line evangelists;
tell me how many 'big tops' are operating in evangelism at the moment;
quote me the 'converts' of all last year's gospel efforts
and when you are done, i shall shout, with the roar of a tornado.
'the moon of revival has not yet risen on this hell bound, Christ rejecting, speeding-to-judgment generation'.
we don't 'sit at ease' in zion anymore.
we have gone past that; we just sleep.
in the church, pillars have given place to pillows.

as i began to say, paul, as he stands before agrippa, has his head half into the lion's mouth.
with an awareness that the feet of pallbearers are not far away, he now 'turns on the heat'
until that wretched immoral king agrippa stammers, 'thou almost persuadest me to be a christian'.
then festus a mere guest, forgets his manners and barges in with
'paul thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad'.
paul parries, 'i am not mad, noble festus'.
(i think the tone of his voice infers that the listening sinners are mad.)

but tell me, today when we preach the everlasting gospel, does anybody think that we are 'raving'
(as rotherham translates mad) or going 'insane' (as weymouth translates it)?on the contrary, we have our love offering in view, our big name to defend, our crowds to consider and our extent of days to think over..

the methodist in england have just finished their 'yearly corporation of the people called methodists',
a thing that john wesley formed in 1784.
it was held in newcastle, england (1958).
in spite of the colossal efforts of mass envangelism in the past two years
and the boasted 'lasting value of much follow up work',
it was acknowledged almost with tears that 'the evangelistic candle' is almost guttered out.
there are men among them large of mind, large of heart and large of vision.
peep into the dabating hall. yes, there on his feet is edwin sangster-scholar, theologian,author
and now head of methodism's home missions.
he is not refuting the charge that methodism is sick and (some add) nigh unto death.
the man is moved and moving.
listen to him.i quote:
'we are combating something deep in the soul of the nation.
for this deep malady, we need some deep xray therapy that we have not found'.
he adds, 'i think, with passion, that agnosticism is flourishing in britain
in place of the great religious revival for which methodists so fervently hoped.
...we thought that, even if our numbers were smaller,
we could count on the total conviction of the people who came.
but even those in the pews are having their battle for faith.

CHAPTER 10 - fire begets fire

a baptism of holiness, a demonstration of godly living is the crying need of our day. duncn campbell

the same church members who yell like comanche indians at a ball game on saturday
sit like wooden indians in church on sunday. vance havner

there can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience.
charles g. finney

men of prayer must be men of steel,
for they will be assaulted by satan even before they attempt to assault his kingdom.

praying which is merely putting in a request sheet to the ruler of the universe
is but the smallest side of this many faced truth.

like everything else in the christian's life, prayer can become lopsided.
prayer is no substitute for work;
equally true is it that work is no substitute for prayer.
in his masterly but little known work, the weapon of prayer, e.m. bounds says,
''it is better to let the work go by default than to let the praying go by neglect'.
again he says, 'the most efficient agents in disseminating the knowledge of God,
in prosecuting his work upon the earth
and in standing as a breakwater against the billows of evil, having been praying church leaders.
God depends upon them, employs them and blesses them.'

SURELY REVIVAL DELAYS BECAUSE PRAYER DECAYS.
nothing do satan or hell fear more than praying men.
but to live well you don't have to live long.
a man only 28 years old may die a hundred years old in wisdom...
fellow missionaries envied henry martyn's spirituality.
one says of him, 'oh to be able to emulate his excellences, his elevation of piety, his diligence...
his love for souls, his anxiety to improve all occasions to do souls good,
his insight into Christ and the heavenly temper!'
these are the secrets of the wonderful impression he made in india.
martyn says of himself, 'the ways of wisdom appear more sweet and reasonable than ever
and the world more insipid and vexatious.
the chief thing i mourn over..is my want of power and lack of fervour in secret prayer,
especially when i plead for the heathen.
in proportion to my light, warmth does not increase within me.
..would we not all have to say that in intercession we lack 'heat'?

by its very nature fire begets fire.
if other combustible material is about, fire will only spread its kind.
'see how great a matter a little fire kindleth'.
fire can never make ice, the devil certainly cannot make saints;
neither can PRAYERLESS PASTORS produce warriors of intercession;
yet one spark from an anvil may set a city on fire.
from one candle, ten thousand others may take a light...
from the life of david brainerd....!

william careu read brainerd's life story and a dynamo started within the young soul winner's story
and a dynamo started within the young soul winner's breast, finally landing him on india's coral strand.
at the flame of brainerd's molten soul, the candly of edward payson's heart was lighted under God.
thus from just the diary of the pain-wracked, cowhide-clad apostle to the north american indians,
payson caught the motivating inspiration and began at 20 a prayer life that almost eclipsed brainerd's.
to add yet another soul-kinsman of brainerd's, another master of prayer,
who tottered into his grave at the 'ripe old age' of 29..we speak of robert murray mccheyne..
this giant in prayer was first magnetized to this 'greatest of all human offices that the soul of man can exercise' by reading about brainerd.

then another soul, the great jonathan edwards, watched brainerd (while his daughter jerusha wept),
as the tides of consumption (tuberculosis) grew greater over brainerd's body.
godly edwards wrote
'i praise God that in His providence B should die in my house so that i might hear his prayers,
so that i might witness his consecration and be inspired by his example'.
when B was dying, wesley was in about the prime of his spiritual conquest.
listen to master wesley talking to his conference in england. ..
'what can be done to revive the work of the Lord where it has decayed?'
and then the relentless, tireless evangelist..answered his own question by saying,
'let every preacher read carefully the life of david brainerd'.

...payson, mccheyne, cary, edwards, wesley..all debtors to the sickly but supplicating brainerd.

chapter 11 - why don't they stir themselves?

could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry?
could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die?
could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand?
can you sit at ease in zion with the world around you DAMNED?

give me the love that leads the way,
the faith that nothing can dismay,
the hope no disappointments tire,
the passion that will burn like fire,
let me not sink to be a clod:
make me Thy fuel, Flame of God. amy wilson carmichael

..among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life...phil. 2.15-6

ye are the light of the world...matt. 5.14

america cannot fall-because she is already fallen!
this goes for britain too.
she cannot go into slavery-because her people are fettered at the moment in the chains of
self forged, self chosen moral anarchy.
here are millions, diseased morally, with no longing for healing.
here are men paying for shadows at the price of their immortal souls,
men who not only reject the Substance, but who openly sneer at and caricature it.

an unprecedented tidal wave of commandment breaking, God-defying, soul-destroying iniquity
sweeps the ocean of human affairs.
never before have men in the masses sold their souls to the devil at such bargain prices.
'there is none...that stirreth up himself to take hold of Thee. isa. 64.7
what hell born mesmerism holds them?
how does the spell bind?
who brainwashed them?
why don't they wake and stir themselves?

...this is an hour in need of BURNING HEARTS, BURSTING LIPS and BRIMMING EYES!
...shaking at the calamity that has brought the church to be
the unlovely, unnerved, unproductive thing that she is!

chapter 12 - the prodigal church in a prodigal world

...we must be hot of cold, flaming or freezing, burning out or cast out.
lack of heat and lack of love God hates.

Christ is now 'wounded in the house of His friends'.
the Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents!

we are loose in the use of scriptural phrases, lopsided in interpreting them
and lazy to the point of impotence in appropriating their measureless wealth.
Mr. Preacher will wax eloquent in speech and fervent in spirit,
serving the Lord with vigor and perspiration to defend the bible's inspiration.
yet that same dear man a few breaths later with deadly calmness
will be heard rationalizing that same inspired Word by outdating its miracles and by firmly declaring:
'THIS TEXT IS NOT FOR THIS DAY'.
thus the new believer's warm faith is doused with the ice water of the preacher's unbelief.

...'Oh, my God! if in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness
we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit,
then in mercy spue us out of Thy mouth!
if Thou canst not do something with us and through us,
then please, God, do something without us!
(note: this written decades ago... answered in the evangelization of the muslim world?)
bypass us and take up a people who now know Thee not!

...until they were fire-purged, the miracle working disciples who beheld His resurrection glory,
were held back from ministering the Cross...

chapter 13 - wanted-a prophet to preach to the preachers

let me burn out for God.
after all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing.
oh, that i may be a man of prayer! henry martyn

love is kindled in a flame and ardency is its life.
flame is the air which true christian experience breathes.
it feeds of fire; it can withstand anything, rather than a feeble flame;
but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals.
true prayer MUST be aflame.    e.m. bounds

O for a passionate passion for souls,
O for a pity that yearns!
O for the love that loves unto death,
O for the fire that burns!
O for the pure prayer-power that prevails, that pours itself out for the lost!
victorious prayer in the Conqueror's name,
O for a PENTECOST! amy wilson carmichael

john the baptist probably had not one qualification for the priesthood,
but he had every quality to become a prophet.
immediately before his coming there had been 400 years of darkness without one ray of prophetic light-
400 years of silence without a 'thus saith the Lord'-
400 years of progressive deterioration in spiritual things.
with a river of beasts' blood for its atonement and with an overfed priesthood for its mediator,
israel, God's favored nation, was lost in ceremony, sacrifice and circumcision.

but what an army of priests could not do in 400 years, one man 'sent of God',
john the baptist, God fashioned, God filled and God fired, did in six months!

i share the view of e. m. bounds that it takes God 20 years to make a preacher.
john the baptist's training was in God's UNIVERSITY OF SILENCE.
God takes all His great men there.
though to paul, the proud, law-keeping pharisee of colossal intellect and boasted pedigree,
Christ made a challenge on the damascus road,
it needed his three years (note: not 14?) in arabia for emptying and unlearning
before he could say, 'God has revealed Himself to me.'
God can fill in a moment what may take years to empty. Hallelujah!

Jesus said, 'God ye!' but He also said, 'Tarry until'!
let any man shut himself up for a week with only bread and water,
with no books except the bible,
with no visitor except the Holy Ghost
and i guarantee, my preacher brethren, that that man will either break up or break through and out.
after that, like paul, he will be known in hell!

...who, i ask, could be greater than john?
truly 'he did no miracle', that is, he never raised a dead man;
but he did far mare-he raised a dead nation!

this leathern-girdled prophet with a TIME-LIMIT MINISTRY so burned and shown
that those who heard his hot-tongued, heart-burning message, went home
to sleepless night until their blistered souls were broken in repentance.
yet john the baptist was
STRANGE IN DOCTRINE-no sacrifice, ceremony or circumcision;
STRANGE IN DIET-no winebibbing nor banqueting;
STRANGE IN DRESS-no phylacteries nor pharisaic garment.

yes but john was great!
great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone-alone with God.
such LONELINESS is HARD to endure and impossible to enjoy UNLESS GOD ACCOMPANIED...

...200 years ago, charles wesley sang
'O that in me the sacred fire might now begin to glow,
burn up the dross of base desire and make the mountains flow!

dr. hatch cried,
'breath on me, breath of God, till i am wholly Thine,
until this earthly part of me glows with Thy fire divine'....

an automobile will never moe until it has ignition-fire;
so some men are neither moved nor moving becuse they have everything except fire...

..to make my weak heart strong and brave,
send the fire.
to live a dying world to save, send the fire.
oh, see me on Thy altar lay
my life, my all, this very day;
to crown the offering now, i pray:
send the fire! f. de L. booth tucker

we have a cold church in a cold world because the preachers are cold.
therefore, 'Lord, send the Fire!'

chapter 14 - an empire builder for God

no hat will i have but that of a martyr, reddened with my own blood.
-savonarola, when rejecting a cardinal's hat

apostolic preaching is not marked
by its beautiful diction, or literary polish or cleverness of expression,
but operates 'in demonstration of the Spirit and of power'. arthur wallis

there are three things i would have liked to have seen...
1. Jesus in the flesh.
2. imperial rome in its splendor.
3. paul preaching. augustine

most joyfully will i confirm with my blood that truth which i have written and preached.
john huss at the stake

the primary qualification for a missionary is not love for souls...
but love for Christ. vance havner

a man with an experience of God is never at the mercy of a man with an argument,
for an experience of God thatcosts something is worth something and does something.
paul's was not an experiment that day; it was an experience...

paul calls the Holy Ghost as a witness
that he could wish himself 'accursed' for his brethren. rom. 9.3...
we cannot have big results from our small praying.
the law of prayer is the law of harvest:
so sparingly in prayer, reap sparingly;
sow bountifully in prayer, reap bountifully.
the trouble is we are trying to get from our efforts what we never put into them.

chapter 16 - 'give me children or i die'

i have begotten you through the gospel. paul

O brother, pray; in spite of satan pray; spend hours in prayer; rather neglect friends than not pray; father fast ans lose breakfast, dinner, tea and supper-and sleep too-than not pray.
and we must not talk about prayer, we must pray in right earnest.
the Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber. andrew a. bonar

it was seven years
....before carey baptized his first convert in india.
...before judson won his first disciple in burmah.
...that morisson toiled before the first chinaman was brought to Christ.
...declares moffat, that he waited to see the first evident moving of the Holy Spirit
upon his bechuanas of africa.
...before henry richards wrought the first convert, gained at banza manteka.   a. j. gordon

prayer-the soul's blood.   george herbert

revival is imperative, for the sluice gates of hell have opened on this degenerate generation.
we need (and we say that we want) revival...

we wish revival would come to us as it came in the hebrides, said a pastor recently.
but fellow servant, revival did not come to the hebrides by wishing!
the heavens were opened and the mighty power of the Lord shook those islands because
'frail children of dust...sanctified a fast and called a solemn assembly',
and waited tear-stained, tire, and travailing before the throne of the living God.
...they had no double motive in their praying.
no petitions were colored with desire to save the face of a failing denomination.
THEIR EYE WAS SINGLE TO GOD'S GLORY.
they were not jealous of another group who was outgrowing them,
but jealous for the Lord of Hosts, whose glory was in the dust,
the 'wall of whose house was broken down and whose gates were burned with fire'.

to draw the brooding Holy Ghost, a church group fundamentlly sound in the bible
is not in itself a decoy.
beloved, we have thousands of such groups over the world.
a girl of sevnteen years and a boy of the same age may be equipped physically to parent a child
and even legally married.
but does that in itself justify their offspring coming?
would they have financial security to cover all the need?
and would they be mentally mature enough to train a child in the way he would go?
revival would die in a week in some 'bible' churches,
for wher are the 'mothers in israel' to care for them?
how many of our believers could lead a soul out of darkness into light?
it would be as sensible to have spiritual births in the present condition of some of these churches
as to put a newborn babe into a deep freeze!

the birth of a natural child is predated by months of burden and days of travail;
so is the birth of a spiritual child.
Jesus prayed for His Church but then to bring it to spiritual birth He gave Himself in death.
paul PRAYED 'NIGHT AND DAY EXCEEDINGLY' for the church;
moreover, he TRAVAILED for the sinners.
it was when zion travailed that she brought forth.
though preachers each week cry, 'ye must be born again', how many could say with paul
'though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers:
for in Christ Jesus i have begotten you through the gospel'?
so he fathered them in the faith
he does not say that he merely prayed for them; he implies that he travailed for them...
'we must pray to live the christian life', we say;
whereas the truth is that we must live the christian life to pray.
'if ye abide...ye shall ask (ie. pray)....but prayer is more than asking.
prayer, surely is getting us into subjection to the Holy Ghost so that He can work in and through us....

we evangelists get a lot of credit-and very often take what is not ours at all.
a woman in ireland who prays for hours, prays each day for this poor stammerer.
others tell me 'never a day passes but what i lay hold of God for you'.
they have brought to birth many that are credited to me,
whereas i very often only act as the midwife.
in the judgment we shall be amazed to see big rewards go to unknown. disciples....

it is true that science has alleviated some of the suffering that our mothers knew in childbirth;
but science will never shrink the long slow months of child formation.
in the same way we preachers have also found easier methods of getting
folks to our altars for salvation...
for salvation, folk are permitted just to slip up their hand and presto!
the groaning at the altar is eliminated....

...the mother to be wearies more as the time of the birth draws near
(often spending sleepless but not tearless nights);
so the lamps of the sanctuary burn the midnight oil as distressed, sin-carrying intercessors
pour out their souls for a nation's iniquities...

...rachel..was gripped with grief, stunned with shame and bowed low in barrenness...
sincerely but passionately invite the Holy Ghost to PLAGUE YOUR HEART WITH GRIEF
because you are spiritually unable to bring to birth.
oh, the reproach of our barren altars!
has the Holy Ghost delight in our electric organs, carpeted aisles and new decorations
if the crib is empty? never!
Oh that the deathlike stillness of the sanctuary
could be shattered by the blessed cry of newborn babes!

there is no pattern for revival.
though babes are everywhere born by the same process, how different the babes themselves are
-all new! no repeats!
by the very same process of soul grief and protracted prayer and burden because of barrenness, revivals of all ages have come
-yet how different the revivals themselves have been!

jonathan edwards lacked no congregations and had no financial worries.
but spiritual stagnation haunted him.
the blemish of birth bakruptcy so bucked his knees and smote his spirt
that his grief stricken soul clung to the mercy seat
in sobbing silence until the Holy Ghost came upon him.
the church and the world know the answer to his victorious vigil.
the vows he made, the tears he shed, the groans he uttered
are all written in the chronicles of the things of God...

political and military histories are wrapped up around individual men.
history is sprinked with the names of men who invested themselves with certain power
and often made the world tremble.
think of that evil genius hitler.
what kings he overthrew!
what governments he tottered!
what millions of graves he filled!
to our age he was a bigger scourge than ten plagues.
hitler had one thing to do and-he did it!
the bible says that in the last days when wicked men do wickedly,
'the people that do KNOW THEIR GOD shall be strong and do exploits'.
not those who sing about God,
not those who write or preach about God,
but they that know their God shall be strong and do exploits.
not talking about food will fill the stomach;
not speaking of knowledge will make us wise;
not talking of God means that the energies of the Holy Ghost are within us.
we do well to ponder the fact that revival comes as a result of a cleanse section of the Church,
bent and bowed in supplication and intercession.
it views an age shackled with false religion and sickened at the sight of perishing millions;
then they wait
-perhaps days, weeks and even months until the Spirit moves upon them
and heaven opens in revival blessing.

women of the bible who had been barren brought forth its noblest children:
...sarah-issac...manoah's wife-samson...hannah-samuel...
ruth-obed, who begat jesse, the father of david, of whose line came our saviour.
elizabeth-john the baptist...

as a child conceived suddenly leaps to life, so with revival...

the church of our day should be pregnant with passionate propagation,
whereas she is often pleading with pale propaganda.
to be sure, methods of child delivery have altered with the advance of science;
but again we say that science, that darling of the doctors, cannot shrink the 9 months of (gestation)
brethren we are beaten by the time element.
the preacher and church, TOO BUSY TO PRAY,
are busier than the Lord would have them be.
if we will give God time, He will give us timeless souls.

paineblog

Followers

Blog Archive

About Me

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

12.16.14 WHY REVIVAL TARRIES by leonard ravenhill

Friday, December 12, 2014

12.12.2014 how much PRACTICAL ATHEISM is being practiced by 'church goer' aka 'christian' TO MAINTAIN MY JOB?