Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar
By Leonard Ravenhill
Joel 2:17 Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar,
I spent an afternoon in Wales in 1931 or 32 with an old man who had
been one of the right hand men in the Salvation Army revival back in the 1880's.
The man was eighty years of age. He told me about the amazing things that
happened in their revivals. The men that would sit in the back seats, almost the
scum of the earth, came in just to get warm, but they would get so worried when
the old preacher William Booth was preaching one of his hell-fire messages, that
they shred their hymn books. Begby, in his definitive work on William Booth, in
the first volume I think, talks about the holiness meetings. And he said, "When
the Holy Ghost came down and men resisted the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God
would lift people from the back of the sanctuary and carry them over the
audience and drop them at the altar." And we think we've seen everything because
two or three people get healed.
You cannot standardize revival. I am not
thinking of a church revival; I'm thinking of a national revival. There is only
one hope for America and that is that we have a Divine intervention in the
nation. Forget your denomination, forget your empty seats.
Let's see first of all how God grieves over the sin of the people, and
after all, when you look in the Old Testament, God's argument was not
with the Amalekites, and Hitites and all the other "ites". God's
problem in the Old Testament was Israel. God's problem today is not
communism, Mormonism, Moonism or any other "ism." God's problem is His
church today. We are so worldly.
A city wide crusade can cost two million dollars. Revival doesn't cost
a red cent, except broken hearts. You can stage your revival; you can
stage a city wide crusade; you cannot stage Revival. Revival is a
mysterious divine intervention. I think one of the most awesome tasks
given to man was given to John Baptist, when God said, "Prepare YE the
way of the Lord."
You know, you talk about revival in this country and everybody has got
tunnel vision. They think revival must come like Finney had it. We are
not living in Finney's days. It would be nice to have him around, for
sure, but we are not living in Finney's day. It is a new day. Iniquity
has never swaggered like it swaggers now. You know what has happened in
the last twenty three years in England? In the last twenty three years
in England the Muslims have built 300 mosques and at the same time they
were building their 300 mosques the Church of England has closed 660
churches. Does it drive us to despair? There are more people lost in
this world at the moment than in any period in history. And yet we go
on as though we were on the edge of the millennium instead of on the
edge of judgment.
I believe the key to revival is given here in Joel, "Let the priests,
the ministers of God, weep between the altar and the door posts."
I was preaching in a well known college two years ago. I was preaching
on Hannah, because I think Hannah is typical of the true intercessor.
The intercessor believes, "The thing will happen through me. I have to
stand in the gap." You know, when you talk about intercessors we always
go back and say, "Well, America's had some of the best intercessors."
You're right; we had. We had praying Payson of Portland back in the
eighteen hundreds. The floor in his room was as hard as this metal and
yet there were two grooves side by side where his knees used to rub in
the floor.
What about Jonathan Goforth that went out and had revival in China?
What about John Hyde, one of the greatest men ever in prayer?
You know, the first thing that really moved me to God after I got
saved? Somebody gave me an abridged edition of the life of David
Brainard. I just could not believe it; I could not take it in. Could a
man be so utterly selfless?
The thing that is crippling us is our prosperity. Materialism is
choking the church as well as the world. We want ease and comfort. When
I read of a young man that could walk out in the snow, snow up to his
chin sometimes, wrestling in prayer from sunrise to sunset with a
tubercular body...When I read about a man that wrestled in prayer like
that, I was dumbfounded.
And since the church I went to was pretty sleepy and I was only about
seventeen, I went out into Sherwood forest - I lived on the edge of it
- and started praying by myself at night. We have some bracken there,
and it grows seven or eight feet high, I used to creep in it and weep
and groan and pray for revival. And revival came. Because I prayed? No,
No. I was one of a number.
But a man called George Jefferys came. Very humble... He never stopped
to meet you... never mentioned money...He just came there, they sang
about one chorus, but the ministry and the authority of God was upon
him, and again the Acts of the Apostles were repeated. I don't think
that a move of miracles like that is the only answer. In fact I think
we could by-pass that. In the last thirty years America has had more
healing crusades than all the nations of the world put together.
What we need now is
A revival of holiness!
A revival of character!
A revival of people who are utterly selfless!
Preparing to lay their lives on the altar for God!
Paul Koffman went to Nagaland,
India, to see what happened and expected something like Finney. When he got
there saw signs and wonders and miracles, cripples were healed, blind people
were seeing, every distorted, perverted thing was put right. So what? Hey, did
you ever hear of a revival like this? The government has made an inquiry. Why
has the drink traffic gone down? Why is it the kids are behaving in the street?
Why are we not having a problem with drugs? Why is the nation convulsed? Why is
the government inquirying? They were the most rebellious, lawless state in India
and now they are the calmest. The crime has gone. People are civilized and
gentle and loving. Well, it's the same old story. They discovered a group of
people, underground people, who had been praying twenty years for revival.
No man - I don't care how colossal his intellect - No man is greater
than his prayer life.
To stand before men on behalf of God is one thing.
To stand before God on behalf of men is something entirely different.
We've urged people to tithe, haven't we? But we only mean their money.
You see, we want a "revival" which is a painless Pentecost. We want something
that won't disturb our status quo. It's "easy street" everywhere else, so why
not here?
There never has been a revival that I can trace, that hasn't
been birthed back there with true, true, true intercession.
Comments or Prayer Requests
Email
Us
