Post by Paul A. Kaiser on Dec 2, 2007 18:48:01 GMT -5
The Street Meetings Have Gone ....
Dear God, we've all kinds of ministries around here, but Tyler (Texas) goes to hell. How many churches do you have, megachurches in Dallas? I guess you can't find one--I spent fifty years of my life in street meetings!
Every Saturday night I went out from 9:30 til midnight and after, every night no matter if it was snowing or raining or what, we went to the same place and people would come out of taverns and out of movie houses and stay an hour and two hours in the cold.
No air-conditioned buildings, no attractive singers, just testimony. One man said this man was in jail, this man used to run around with women, this man has a prison record, this man over there used to beat his wife, and this girl was a prostitute, and put them up--living flesh and blood, nobody could argue!
People would stand and say, "Why are you the only preacher in the town that does this?" I don't know except God told me to do it and I'll do it. Well that's where the lost people are! A man would be an idiot to buy a hundred-dollar fishing gear and fish in his bathtub. And that's all we do in church, fishing with the same people every week. And people are dying without God.
We traveled the country! I walked the length of England, I walked the breadth of England, with five college fellows. We slept in fields at night, we slept in churches. We didn't get a penny's wage in six months and nobody ever said a word. Because we'd kneel at night at ten, eleven o'clock at night and people would get saved in the street. You don't give a hoot where you sleep. We slept in sleeping bags for three years. We slept on the floor of churches, anywhere they'd take us in. But we had revival, the churches are still standing today.
-- Leonard Ravenhill
Dear God, we've all kinds of ministries around here, but Tyler (Texas) goes to hell. How many churches do you have, megachurches in Dallas? I guess you can't find one--I spent fifty years of my life in street meetings!
Every Saturday night I went out from 9:30 til midnight and after, every night no matter if it was snowing or raining or what, we went to the same place and people would come out of taverns and out of movie houses and stay an hour and two hours in the cold.
No air-conditioned buildings, no attractive singers, just testimony. One man said this man was in jail, this man used to run around with women, this man has a prison record, this man over there used to beat his wife, and this girl was a prostitute, and put them up--living flesh and blood, nobody could argue!
People would stand and say, "Why are you the only preacher in the town that does this?" I don't know except God told me to do it and I'll do it. Well that's where the lost people are! A man would be an idiot to buy a hundred-dollar fishing gear and fish in his bathtub. And that's all we do in church, fishing with the same people every week. And people are dying without God.
We traveled the country! I walked the length of England, I walked the breadth of England, with five college fellows. We slept in fields at night, we slept in churches. We didn't get a penny's wage in six months and nobody ever said a word. Because we'd kneel at night at ten, eleven o'clock at night and people would get saved in the street. You don't give a hoot where you sleep. We slept in sleeping bags for three years. We slept on the floor of churches, anywhere they'd take us in. But we had revival, the churches are still standing today.
-- Leonard Ravenhill