So I was reading this page yesterday by Leonard Ravenhill and I could not keep my mouth shut! The Words He uttered were like fire. I posted this here so we can all share in the same experience. I’m deeply sorry if it a long post. But I’m never in doubt of the facts hidden in His words.
Here's an extract from the book... "Why Revival Tarries"
Praying men are always our national benefactor . Elijah was such. He had heard a voice, seen a vision, tasted a power, measured an enemy, and, with God as partner, wrought a victory. The tears he shed, the soul agonies’ he endured, the groans he uttered, are all recorded in the book of the chronicles of the things of God. At last Elijah emerged to prophesy with divine infallibility. He knew the mind of God. Therefore he–one man-strangled a nation and altered the course of nature.
This “crag of a man” stood as majestic and immovable as the mountains of Gilead, as he shut up the heavens with a word. By the key of faith, which fits every lock, Elijah locked heaven, pocketed the key, and made Ahab tremble. Though it is wonderful indeed when God lays hold of a man, earth can know one greater wonder-when a man lays hold of God. Let a man of God “in the Spirit” groan, and God will cry out, “Let me alone.” We would like Elijah’s accomplishments, but not his banishment!
Brethren, if we will do God’s work in God’s way at God’s time with God’s power, we shall have God’s blessing and the devil’s curses. When God opens the windows of heaven to bless us, the devil will open the door of hell to blast us. God’s smile means the devil’s frown! 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.
Ah! brother preachers, we love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, reformers: our Luthers, Bunyan, Wesleys, Asburys, etc. We will write their biographies,
reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their cenotaphs. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch the first drop of our own!
John the Baptist did well to evade prison for six months. He and Elijah would not last six weeks in the streets of a modern city. They would be cast into a prison or mental home for judging sin and not muting their message.
Evangelists today are wide-eyed to the might of Communism, but tight-lipped at the menace of Romanism. America would shake from coast to coast in twenty-four hours if some preacher, anointed with the Holy Ghost, gave the Roman Catholic Church a broadside! In England we are worse. We stir national interest against the cruel, half-civilized Mau Mau (wicked enough!), 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.
This man Elijah, with a volcano for a heart, and a thunderstorm for a voice, came to the Kingdom for such a time as this.
Related Posts
The Prophecy of – Elim (‘Eylim) fulfilled!
THE ART OF PRAYER
THE PROPHECY OF JESUS IN THE STORY OF ISAAC, JOSEPH AND MOSES
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 were 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. God ordered Elijah to Cherith, then to Zarephath-to lodge at a swank hotel? No! No! This prophet of God, this preacher of righteousness, was commanded by the Lord to stay at the home of an impoverished widow!
Later, Elijah’s prayer at Carmel was a masterpiece of concise praying. “Hear me, 0 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, nor 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).
Oh! my ministering brethren!
What Bible School has “Prayer” on its curriculum?
The most important thing a man can study is the prayer part of the Book. But where is this taught? Let us strip off the last bandage and declare that many of our presidents and teachers do not pray, shed no tears, know no travail. Can they teach what they do not know?
The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known. There is no fault in God. He is able. God “is able to do. ..according to the power that worketh in us.” our problem today is not Communism, nor yet Romanism, nor Liberalism, nor Modernism.
The man who can get believers to praying
Leonard Ravenhill
would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known.
Have you been blessed! Do well to share with others!
