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Baker Publishing Group - Leonard Ravenhill

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90 pages

English

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Leonard Ravenhill's call to revival is as timely now as it was when ¹rst published over forty years ago. The message is fearless and often radical as he expounds on the disparity between the New Testament church and the church today. Why Revival Tarries contains the heart of his message. A.W. Tozer called Ravenhill "a man sent from God" who "appeared at [a] critical moment in history," just as the Old Testament prophets did. Included are questions for group and individual study.

Sujets

Christianity

Christian worship

Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 août 2004
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781585588268
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0360€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 1959, 1987 by Leonard Ravenhill
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan. www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2010
Ebook corrections 04.14.2016 (VBN), 12.20.2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-58558-826-8
There are more than 500,000 copies of Why Revival Tarries in print, including editions in Arabic, British, Chinese, Finnish, French, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Malayan, Nigerian English, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Telgu, and Urdu.
Cover design by Eric Walljasper
To Martha, my gracious wife
CONTENTS
Cover
Title
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
Preface
1. With All Thy Getting, Get Unction
2. Prayer Grasps Eternity
3. A Call for Unction in the Pulpit — Action in the Pew!
4. Where Are the Elijahs of God?
5. Revival in a Bone Yard
6. Revival Tarries—Because
7. Is Soul-Hot Preaching a Lost Art?
8. Unbelieving Believers
9. Wanted—Prophets for a Day of Doom!
10. Fire Begets Fire
11. Why Don’t They Stir Themselves?
12. The Prodigal Church in a Prodigal World
13. Wanted—A Prophet to Preach to Preachers!
14. An Empire Builder for God
15. Branded—For Christ!
16. ‘‘Give Me Children, or I’ll Die!’’
17. ‘‘The Filth of the World’’
18. Prayer As Vast As God
19. As the Church Goes, So Goes the World
20. Known in Hell
Study Questions
About the Author
Other Books by Leonard Ravenhill
Ad
Back Cover
Tribute to a Godly Man
I knew a man who gave his life To see revival fire He prayed by day, he prayed by night to birth this one desire.
He had but one obsession To see a glorious bride Arrayed in spotless purity Brought to her bridegroom’s side.
His power while in the pulpit Was matched by very few And yet he loved the closet There with the God he knew.
While others strove for man’s applause For fortune and for fame He had but one ambition To exalt his Master’s name.
For eighty-seven years He lived just for eternity A man of faith and wisdom And true humility.
He knew one day he’d have to stand Before God’s judgment seat And so he ran to win the prize His mission to complete.
The fortune that he left behind Was not in stocks or gold But lives transformed and challenged— Their stories yet untold.
There is no greater privilege Than this that I have had Of knowing this great man of God And having him as Dad.
—D AVID R AVENHILL , A UTHOR AND I TINERANT T EACHER L INDALE, T EXAS
FOREWORD
Great industrial concerns have in their employ men who are needed only when there is a break-down somewhere. When something goes wrong with the machinery, these men spring into action to locate and remove the trouble and get the machinery rolling again.
For these men a smoothly operating system has no interest. They are specialists concerned with trouble and how to find and correct it.
In the kingdom of God things are not too different. God has always had His specialists whose chief concern has been the moral breakdown, the decline in the spiritual health of the nation or the church. Such men were Elijah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and others of their kind who appeared at critical moments in history to reprove, rebuke, and exhort in the name of God and righteousness.
A thousand or ten thousand ordinary priests or pastors or teachers could labor quietly almost unnoticed while the spiritual life of Israel or the church was normal. But let the people of God go astray from the paths of truth, and immediately the specialist appeared almost out of nowhere. His instinct for trouble brought him to the help of the Lord and of Israel.
Such a man was likely to be drastic, radical, possibly at times violent, and the curious crowd that gathered to watch him work soon branded him as extreme, fanatical, negative. And in a sense they were right. He was single-minded, severe, fearless, and these were the qualities the circumstances demanded. He shocked some, frightened others, and alienated not a few, but he knew who had called him and what he was sent to do. His ministry was geared to the emergency, and that fact marked him out as different, a man apart.
To such men as this the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives, but the next generation builds his sepulcher and writes his biography, as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation the previous generation to a large extent ignored.
Those who know Leonard Ravenhill will recognize in him the religious specialist, the man sent from God not to carry on the conventional work of the church, but to beard the priests of Baal on their own mountaintop, to shame the careless priest at the altar, to face the false prophet and warn the people who are being led astray by him.
Such a man as this is not an easy companion. The professional evangelist who leaves the wrought-up meeting as soon as it is over to hie him to the most expensive restaurant to feast and crack jokes with his retainers will find this man something of an embarrassment, for he cannot turn off the burden of the Holy Ghost as one would turn off a faucet. He insists upon being a Christian all the time, everywhere; and again, that marks him out as different.
Toward Leonard Ravenhill it is impossible to be neutral. His acquaintances are divided pretty neatly into two classes, those who love and admire him out of all proportion and those who hate him with perfect hatred. And what is true of the man is sure to be true of his books, of this book. The reader will either close its pages to seek a place of prayer or he will toss it away in anger, his heart closed to its warnings and appeals.
Not all books, not even all good books come as a voice from above, but I feel that this one does. It does because its author does, and the spirit of the author breathes through his book.
A. W. Tozer
PREFACE
Here is my simple offering of loaves and fishes—just plain diet, lacking the ice and spice of the wedding cake. Like a sailor I once saw pounding a soldier ‘‘because,’’ said the sailor, ‘‘he insulted my mother,’’ so my Lord is insulted and His Church slighted. And, believe me, under this double injury, I smart. The Church has many adversaries. Can my sword sleep, then, in my hand? Never!
I estimate that in the English edition alone, a million people read each issue of the ‘‘Herald of His Coming.’’ Some of the chapters in this book are articles in old Heralds and have been read by millions. (I am neither ashamed nor proud of this.) There are a dozen other ‘‘Heralds’’ in Spanish, German, French, etc. Enough to say that through this paper, along with the ‘‘Alliance Witness’’ and other periodicals, God has seen fit to make non-academic essays a means of blessing to many. I pray that you gentle readers may be helped by them.
My sincere thanks to my esteemed friend and spiritual counselor, Dr. A. W. Tozer, for his kindness in writing the foreword. My unstinted praise to Mrs. Hines and her daughter, Ruth, for their fine work in typing and correcting the manuscripts. (All profits from this book go to overseas missions. May we live with eternity’s values in view.)
Leonard Ravenhill
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.
—E. M. B OUNDS
Bear up the hands that hang down, by faith and prayer; support the tottering knees. Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.
—J OHN W ESLEY
Before the great revival in Gallneukirchen broke out, Martin Boos spent hours and days and often nights in lonely agonies of intercession. Afterwards, when he preached, his words were as flame, and the hearts of the people as grass.
—D. M. M CINTYRE , D.D.
How many Christians there are who cannot pray, and who seek by effort, resolve, joining prayer circles, etc., to cultivate in themselves the ‘‘holy art of intercession,’’ and all to no purpose. Here for them and for all is the only secret of a real prayer life—‘‘Be filled with the Spirit,’’ who is ‘‘the Spirit of grace and supplication.’’
—R EV . J. S TUART H OLDEN
CHAPTER ONE With All Thy Getting, Get Unction
The Cinderella of the church of today is the prayer meeting. This handmaid of the Lord is unloved and unwooed because she is not dripping with the pearls of intellectualism, nor glamorous with the silks of philosophy; neither is she enchanting with the tiara of psychology. She wears the homespuns of sincerity and humility and so is not afraid to kneel!
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 a