SermonIndex Classics - Leonard Ravenhill

Leonard Ravenhill: I want God's best. God doesn't want, and the devil doesn't want you to commit adultery or drink or do some lying thing. You know what he wants to do? He wants you to get so tied up with the good you'll miss the best. Most Christian people are tied up with the good and they miss the best. So many preachers get in a church where they're successful and somebody gives them a new car, one guy gives them new clothes, and somebody gives them money. It ruins these fellows.

God is a jealous God. He wants you, spirit, soul, body, mind, faculty, and will. That's what he wants. That's what he got in John the Baptist. This is why he preaches the way he preached, and he says, "Bring forth fruit meet for repentance." I'll tell you when I went to that school and told the headmaster, I pulled that school door open and I saw him. He sat in a grand hall, larger than this, at a desk, a high throne. He was a pretty rough man. My heart was going like this.

I was 14 and a half years old, but I walked down that grand hall. He looked at me and said, "Aren't you Ravenhill?" I said, "Yes, sir." "What do you want?" I said, "Do you remember that school window that was broken?" "Oh, yes, that fellow Jones broke it." I said, "No, sir. He got spanked for doing it. I broke it." "Why did you come back now?" "Because, sir, I've become a Christian." "Oh, that's very good." I said, "I've got to put things right, and I brought money to pay for that window because the Word of God says that I am to bring forth fruit meet for repentance."

He didn't know much about that. You know, that cleared my heart and I thought, hallelujah, I'm great. I had a marvelous time for two days and then the Lord said, "Hey, do you remember that little thing you stole, you pushed up your jersey one day when you were six years of age?" I said, "Well, yes, Lord, but you know, we don't live in that part of the city." He says, "No, but the man lives there."

He was a big man. He used his wife as a punch bag. He was a tough character. Fortunately, he lived on the side of a hill. I went to his house and I got my bicycle and I put it pointing down the hill. So as soon as he came out with his foot, I'd be on that bike like that. I knocked at the door. I was hoping his wife would come, but he came and he said, "Who are you?"

I said, "Leonard Ravenhill." "Oh, you've grown." "Yes, sir. I'm eight years older now." "Well, why did you come to see me?" I said, "Sir, I was playing with your boy once when I was six years of age and I stole a little piccolo and I pushed it up my shirt there and I went home and told my mother I'd found it. Sir, look, this is my spending money and I want to pay for it." Man, that was half my year's spending money.

Do you know that big man stood there, folded his arms, and the tears rolled down his face? He said, "You say you're a Christian?" "Yeah." "Oh, man," he said, "That's the greatest thing you can be. I'm a drunk. I'm a bad man. But you know," he said, "Listen, Ravenhill, you keep that up. Don't ever let go of it. You just keep it up."

I got on that bike. I thought I'd got wings. I just went down. I don't know if there was a speed limit; if there was, I didn't keep it. I never saw anything until I got home. I think I was raptured half of the way, I'm not so sure. I just went home so happy, so thrilled, and oh man, my heart was at peace. I'd met two big battles. I'd done two things God asked me to do. You know, that's the reason a lot of us don't have joy because there are some things concealed in there we won't go and do them. Maybe make a long-distance telephone call and tell your parents you're sorry for something you did. Write a letter, do something else, but bring forth fruit meet for repentance. It's the only way.

All right, now let's get to the other part. John the Baptist baptized these people. It must have been wonderful. I think baptismal services in the spirit are really glorious. That is, if you do it right. It's become just an initiation rite with lots of people. But you know, if this is the level of water and you're baptized and you go under that water, immediately you go under it, you're cut off from the world above. You don't breathe its air. You don't see anything in it. You don't talk about anything in it. You're dead. You've gone under it. You're in another realm.

When you come out, that's a sign of burial. It's a sign of death. If people haven't died to self and sin, they've no right to be baptized. Repentance again is not nodding your head and saying, "I'm sorry." Repentance is an attitude. It's loathing the things that I've done. It's turning my back on them. It's changing my mind about God. It's having a total commitment and love to him. John says, "I baptize you with water." They said, "You must be the Messiah." He said, "No, no, no, no, no."

This man is an embodiment of something that's so beautiful. He is an embodiment of humility. Read all the "musts" in John 3. "Ye must be born again." "If I be lifted up, Jesus must be lifted up." And then when you get down to about verse 33, what does John say? "He must increase, and I must decrease." One day they came to John and they said, "John, hey, you know that man you baptized the other week? He's getting a lot bigger crowds than you. The crowds are flocking to him. Notice your crowd diminishing?" They thought he'd say, "Well, you can't always be number one. You just try harder if you're number two."

No, he didn't say that. He said, "That's good news. That proves that what I said is true." Immediately Jesus came on the scene, John knew this. Just as I may take this pencil and I put that up, what have I done? I've just excluded the pencil. John knew immediately that Jesus came, he was going to be excelled by the Lord Jesus, and so he's eclipsed by Jesus. He's not only eclipsed; he's going to go to jail and be exiled. He's not only going to jail; he's going to be executed. And yet he rejoiced in it all.

He said, "This is the very reason I came into the world. I've been training 30 years just to preach for six months. I knew as soon as he came I would be eclipsed. I knew I would be exiled. I knew I would be executed. Hallelujah, I've done the will of God." It isn't how long you live that matters; it's how you live. Some of the greatest missionaries that have lived haven't been on the mission field six months. I could give you a list of names, but I won't. But they did what God asked them to do. They went where God told them to go.

John says, "You get excited about my ministry. Listen, I want to tell you something. There's somebody coming after me and you know what? I'm not even worthy to carry his shoes. I have baptized with water." I tease the Baptists. I preach at a lot of Baptist churches once. I tease them because I say the first man that ever preached on the baptism of the Spirit was a Baptist. Then when I go to the Pentecostals, I say, "Listen, don't you get too proud because you weren't the first to preach this message. It was a Baptist who preached it, and they don't like that." But anyhow, it's what the book says, isn't it?

John says, "When he is coming, I think when John saw Jesus and the dove come upon him, if God hadn't held him together, he would have exploded. He would have disintegrated." He said, "My Lord, my Lord. Isaiah prophesied of this. This is the one that the ages were concerned about, that the whole creation is to glorify him, and I introduce him to the world. Oh, I can go out now. I've seen everything." He says when he comes, he shall—two baptizers, John and Jesus. Two elements, fire and water. Two recipients, the body and the inner man of the spirit. One an external baptism, visible; one internal baptism, invisible.

"He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Well, you know we say God is love. Oh, you'll hear that said a thousand times. "God is love," for every time you hear the word quoted, "Our God is a consuming fire." There's an awful word. I read it last night in Isaiah: "For behold, the Lord will come with fire and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and his sword will the Lord appear with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many." That's in Isaiah 66:15, if you want to read it later.

Quickly let's go through this. God is a consuming fire. I saw a man the other day who was as fat as I don't know what, a beer barrel. He was down in Beverly Hills there in California. We happened to be down there. He had an enormous cross on his chest, a big cigarette in his hand, and he was strutting up and down. I thought, brother, it's easier to wear a cross than bear a cross. The symbol of the church of Jesus Christ is not a cross. The cross was a method of Roman crucifixion for the worst criminals ever. The symbol of the church of Jesus Christ is a tongue of fire. It sat upon each of them. When that fire descended and went from head to head, that was the initiation of the church of Jesus Christ.

I say sometimes, I hope you'll understand, and if you don't, I'll still say it. The Holy Spirit has no gifts to give of his own because the Word of God says that Jesus Christ was crucified, he died, he ascended, and he led captivity captive, and he gave gifts unto men. There is nothing you and I receive this side of eternity that is not purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son. The Holy Ghost is the executor of God's will. We say the Spirit, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost was the agency because the scripture says very clearly that Jesus was the only begotten of the Father. The only begotten of the Father. The Holy Ghost is the agency.

But oh, what a difference when the Holy Ghost comes. The last visitation of the Holy Ghost in this country really was the Azusa Street, 1905 and six, a hangover partly from the Welsh revival. The Welsh revival spread into the Khasi Hills of India. A man went from India to China. They had revival in China. He went from China to Korea. They had revival in Korea. Fire begets fire.

Go to the third chapter of Genesis, you have fire: an angel with a flaming sword won't let the couple get back into the garden. Genesis chapter three. Exodus chapter three, you have fire: a burning bush called Moses to the place where he heard God as he slipped his shoes off his feet. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus chapter three: a sin offering consumed with fire leaped down. You have a gap of 400 years between the testaments. The last man on the other side of that chasm of 400 years is a man by the name of Malachi. He's looking into the piercing, long darkness, that tunnel of 400 years, and this is what he says: "Who shall abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth? He's like a refiner's fire."

You come to Matthew 3:11: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." You come to the third chapter of Luke: "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." You come to the third chapter of 1 Corinthians: the fire. Oh, one of the most exciting things in eternity is we're going to be able to sit there maybe for a million years or ten million and watch God put every song you've ever sung and every sermon I've ever preached, put the fire to it. We will see how much of self and pride or itch for money or other things it had. The fire shall try every man's work, not what size it is, but what sort it is. Not the quantity, the quality.

You can't escape fire. I'm convinced as sure as I know my own name and my own existence this afternoon that one reason why the present generation is going to hellfire is that the church has lost Holy Ghost fire. That's right. John says, Luke says, "He shall baptize you." Well, it's John Baptist says, "He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire." You know, the marching orders of the Salvation Army were written by a man who was half Jew and half Gentile: William Booth. Their battle song, you should learn it because it is just tremendous.

It starts like this: "Thou Christ of burning cleansing flame, send the fire. Thy blood-bought gift today we claim, send the fire. Look down and see this waiting host, give us the promised Holy Ghost. We want another Pentecost." I'm not so sure that we do, but we need it. We want another Pentecost, send the fire. To make our weak hearts strong and brave, send the fire. To live a dying world to save, send the fire. Oh, see us on thine altar lay our lives, our all, this very day. You see, the altar exists only for two things: sacrifice and death.

It's not to come just to get blessing. If you don't die, keep away from it. I don't try to get people to the altar. They're so used to running to the altar for every evangelist. I say, "Get out of here. You don't come and stain this altar with a few blub-blubbery tears and self-pity." The altar is for two things: death and sacrifice. Oh, see us on thine altar lay our lives, our all, this very day to crown the offering now we pray, send the fire. To make our weak hearts strong and brave, send the fire. To live a dying world to save. You know, the Salvation Army went into 70 countries in 90 years.

In your bookshop there you've got the life of Brengle; read it. I don't think he was more than in his twenties when the guy that used to make what—he made a beautiful automobile later, used to make carriages. Anyhow, he heard this young man speak and he said, "You're the greatest orator I've ever heard. Stay here and I'll build you the greatest church in America. I'll give you the greatest salary." The young man said, "I'm going to London." "Why?" "Because," he said, "there's a fire burning." "A fire?" "Yes, a Holy Ghost fire." William Booth had started the Salvation Army and Colonel Brengle with his PhDs and all his other degrees went.

The Salvation Army got folk out of the gutter. It got some of the lords and ladies of our country. Do you know what they did? They scrubbed lousy floors, girls that never even put their own hair up. They went to Paris and turned part of the city upside down. They went to Belgium. I stood more than once with the Marechale, the eldest daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army. I've seen her craggy face and the tears running down as we were singing a hymn, a beautiful hymn that she wrote. I knew when she sang it she was thinking of the time she had two prison sentences to serve the same week, one in Belgium, the other in Paris, the one in Belgium, the other in Switzerland for holding street meetings that blocked the street to hear a woman on fire for God.

Charles Wesley takes it up, let me rush through this now. Charles Wesley wrote many hymns on fire: "See how great a flame aspires, kindled by a spark of grace. Jesus' love the nations fires, sets the kingdoms on a blaze. To bring fire on earth he came, kindled in some hearts it is. Oh, that all might catch the blaze, all partake the glorious bliss." He has another one: "Refining fire, go through my heart, illuminate my soul. Scatter my life through every part and sanctify the whole."

And finally, Edwin Hatch. I don't think there's a lovelier hymn, at least that I like to hear sung, and the Baptists even sing it: "Holy Spirit, Breathe on Me Until My Heart is Clean." The chorus is magnificent. It's majestic: "Breathe on me, breathe on me, Holy Spirit, breathe on me. Take thou my heart, cleanse every part." You see, if you got the baptism of the Holy Ghost and didn't get cleansed, you didn't get the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I don't care how many gifts you got. The least emphasis that's put on the baptism of the Spirit, the emphasis is always power, never purity.

But Peter, recording in Acts 15:8 and 9 about the Holy Ghost coming to the Gentiles, says, referring to the Day of Pentecost, "And God, who knoweth the heart, bare them," in the house of Cornelius, "witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us, purifying their hearts by faith." What miracles did they do after Pentecost they didn't do before? They raised the dead before Pentecost, they healed the sick, they cast out demons. They came excitingly to Jesus: "Devils are subject to us." And Jesus says, "Don't get too excited about that. I tell you something more exciting: your names are written in heaven."

Do you think everybody that gets filled with the Spirit is going to sell the house and go to the mission field? I wish a lot of them would, I'm glad a lot of them don't. When a girl said to me, "I'm going to the mission field," I said, "Are you going to tell them how much victory you have in your own life? Are you a cleansed personality? Do you have victory over sin? Have you power over grudges? Have you power over temper? Have you power over anger? Is your heart purified?" "Well, no." "Well, what are you going to tell them? Something they told you in some Bible institute? This is the outline of Romans chapter 1 to 7, 8 through 11, 12 to 16. What are you going to do?"

Oh come on, let's face it. What are we doing? Are we playing games? Edwin Hatch was a successful preacher. He didn't lack crowds, he didn't lack money, he didn't lack popularity. But one night he knelt in his own little office there and he prayed. He said, "Lord, I don't have any needs except one: in my meetings, the Holy Ghost is not brooding. The Holy Ghost is not brooding."

And he said, "I snatched a piece of paper and I wrote this hymn out." I don't think he corrected it. He wrote this lovely hymn: "Breathe on me, breath of God. Fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do. Breathe on me, breath of God, till I am wholly thine, till all this earthly part of me glows with thy fire divine."

That's something to pray about, isn't it? "Until this earthly part of me, my spirit, my soul, and my body." You can't be a Christian and have a grudge. I don't care if you sing your head off or preach your head off, you can't be a Christian and have a grudge. You can be a backslider and have a grudge. You can't be a spirit-filled believer and have covetousness in your heart, or hatred, or bitterness. Everything in the temple of old was pure. They didn't have electric light, they had lamps, and you say, yes, and they filled them with oil. No, they did not. They filled them with pure oil.

The desk was covered with gold. No, it was covered with pure gold. The priest had a linen garment. It was pure. It could have no wool in it because wool makes you sweat and sweat is a sign of the curse. Everything in the temple had to be pure: pure oil, pure gold, pure men standing there. The obstruction to revival in our nation today is impurity in the church of the living God. It's not the rottenness in government, it's not the rottenness of sex perverts, it's not the filth of Hollywood. The thing that holds up revival, as it says in the seventh chapter of John, Jesus says the Holy Ghost—or John records the Holy Ghost was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

And you'll hear a hundred sermons or a thousand sermons on wait in the upper room and Pentecost. I've never heard a sermon in my life on the ten days they spent searching their hearts and humbling themselves and breaking. Some of us old folk, Tony's people, I guess, remember the time he used to have tarrying meetings. You went to church every night and there was somebody there to counsel you. You didn't come out for five minutes and they don't ask if you're a drunkard or a pervert, "Let's lay hands on you." That's from the pit. And I'll answer to God for that.

I've been to banquets and they say, "Anybody want the baptism, come and stand up here, we'll lay hands on you." Do you know people have bypassed Calvary? There are people trying to get in the upper room that never bent their knees at Calvary. They're trying to get power when they're polluted. I'd rather come to this fellowship if there were only a dozen people here with a dozen people who are pure in heart and want God than if you have 10,000 people here at every conference. I just drove all the way out to California, and I'm not a young man, and it was hot and tiring. And we drove to Phoenix and took the plane the rest of the way. And I spent all those days preaching to 20 people in a room over a bank. And we had a very blessed, enjoyable time.

If anybody could manage 12,000 people, Jesus could. He chose 12 and they didn't all turn out good. You get a lot of failures here. I don't care how good a guy is, you'll have somebody flunk it and somebody let you down. You'll have a Judas that will sell you and a Thomas that will deny you and a Peter that will forsake you. After all, Jesus had 12 disciples. How many of them went in the Garden of Gethsemane with him? Jesus had 12 disciples. How many went on the Mount of Transfiguration? God always works with the minority.

But I'll tell you the next time, if I can use an awful mechanical phrase, the next time God pulls the switch, this whole world is going to shake from center to circumference. Washington, London, Rome, Moscow. The last time God gives an act of mercy before he plunges this world into the most devastating judgment that's indescribable to any of us, the last time he does it, earth will shake and hell will shake and heaven will shake. And maybe I'm going to have to sit on the side of the road and watch you young people do what I wish I could have done years ago, because he's going to bypass us old boys. We had our day.

You young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. If I were a young man, I'd seek God two or three hours every day to be amongst those who are going to be anointed in that way because it's not going to be everybody. But he's going to raise up 10,000 Jeremiahs and 10,000 John Baptists and 100,000 Isaiahs. Yes, sir, God is going to pull the kingdoms of this world down and exalt his son. All right, let me sum this up. What does fire do? Well, I was in a burning fire in a hotel after preaching for two weeks for Dr. Tozer.

And I'll tell you what Tozer said. He said, "We got so far into Satan's kingdom that week," he said, "the only thing is let's kill these men." So he set the hotel on fire. Well, some of the devil's kids got burned to death, but I didn't. So the devil lost that round anyhow. But you know what? I reckon more and more there's a price for all of us to pay if we're going to keep the anointing. You see, if I say to you, "Have you had the baptism?" You say, "Yes, 30 years ago." Look, I'm not concerned when you were filled with the spirit. That does not interest me at all. I want to know right at this moment as you sit there, are you filled now?

Now don't get it confused. I don't try to drive folk to an altar. I met a man a few weeks ago, came to my home, talked to one, he said, "Brother Ravenhill, do you have the anointing of God on you just now?" I said, "No, I don't need it." An hour from now I could feel as flat as anybody. My nervous energy will be down, my physical energy is gone, I don't have much of it. Happen to be on a diet, that doesn't help me right now. And two hours from now I could feel flat.

But you know what? Doesn't matter whether I feel flat or not, God's just the same. He loves me just the same. He didn't set out me to sit on cloud 19 with a guitar or without a guitar. He just says, "Love me with all your heart." And if the devil attacks me between here and getting back to Ogden, I'll spit in his face and say, "No, I love him as much now as if I were preaching." I must stay filled with the Holy Ghost, but there are anointings on top of those fillings as far as I'm concerned. Mr. Finney said he had repeated anointings, anointings, anointings, anointings.

A man said to me, "You know, I've heard you preach one sermon three times." I said, "You'd be amazed how many times I've heard it." But I'll tell you what, it takes me as long to get that message ready when I'm going to preach it as it did the first time, because if it doesn't burn in me, it won't burn in you. See, too many of these preachers carry a little release full of sermons. When they open it, you see the moths come out. And you know they preach them.

I heard a man preach a sermon up in Calvary Baptist Church in New York. I preached there a few times, a lovely church. But I heard a man preach so mechanically I was nearly asleep in five minutes. 20 years ago when he preached that, he could turn an audience upside down, or God did. But you see, it become repetitious. It become words, it become terms, theology, philosophy, reason. Fire is wonderful.

But you know, we have a fireplace in our house. And we haven't had one since we lived in England. In fact, we didn't have a home for 17 years. We've a nice home now. People say you've a nice home. I say, "Nobody ever said when we were tramps for 17 years"—well, not tramps. I don't like that word. I'm not a tramp, I'm a child of a King. But I've noticed this, when I put a log on the fire last winter, I thought, "Now I can read, Martha, relax dear, I've got a nice log on the fire." And I'd read a little and I'd say, "The fire's going out. I thought that log would last all night. Didn't last half an hour."

Oh, it's one thing to have the fire; it's another thing to keep the fire going. You've got to keep taking the dirty cinders out. You've got to keep taking the junk out, the ashes out. If you don't, the air won't get it. You know on the Day of Pentecost, the two most powerful symbols in nature got married: wind and fire. Amen.