17. Quotes from Leonard Ravenhill's Personal Letters
Quotes from Leonard Ravenhill's Personal Letters, number 17
In the following letter, Ravenhill gives a little Bible study. I hope you take time to look into your Bibles and meditate on it. And then, he singes hides with his graphic language!
Feb. 12: Precious friends. Greetings in His holy name. We hope you are all well and in the fullness of the blessing. What about the three-fold fullness? Romans 8, v.9 - Spirit of God; V.10 - Spirit of Christ; V.11 - Spirit of holiness. Making v. 37 a glorious reality. More than conquerors… or victory with a margin.
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan said, “A man is not an apostate just because he keeps on teaching heresy. He is apostate, because he has come right up to true light and backed away from it. So then, Oral Roberts and Bakker are apostates. I think that the cause of our national moral degradation and spiritual stagnation is not due to the strength of humanism, but to the weakness of evangelism. The old hell-fire vocabulary of the soul-disturbing, conscience-awakening preaching has vanished. No adulterers now, just folk having “an affair”, no seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, just cults. No whores or harlots, just call girls. No bastards, just outside kids. No liars, just prevarications. No hell, just limbo. So what shall the harvest be?
I’m still painfully struggling with my book, The Judgment Seat. Maybe Volume I will be - Preacher, Go to Hell! One chapter is Mass Evangelism = Mass Murder. Yes, by the way, it leaves converts abandoned at the altar. “Be not many teachers, my brethren” said James.
David will be here and Nancy and family next week. They expect to live near Dallas…
I’ve noticed that the doctrines about the Holy Spirit in the churches, even Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches, haven’t helped much in a practical sense. Ravenhill begins the following letter… The churches today give almost no place to the Holy Spirit. And missions give little more. It’s all about man-power, equipment, and respect for culture. A lot of humanitarianism and little spirituality. Read this letter and believe it, because Len is telling it as it is:
April 9, 1988: Pardon this delay to answer your welcome letter and material. The churches today give almost no place to the Holy Spirit. They do give place to the devil. No more wolves in sheep’s clothing, just plain wolves. Drug wolves, sex wolves, crime wolves, all are welcome via TV. I’m all for the restoration teaching, if it is to bring all deacons to the level of Acts 6 and all evangelists to the level of Acts 8 and Acts 21. O for a crusade with a deacon like Philip: Many with unclean spirits, many with palsies, cried out. We just run such off to the psyco boys! In the past 3 years the Pentecostal testimony has been defamed, defiled and degraded better by its exponents than the last 100 years of opposition from all types of critics. Why not have all Pentecostal people, wearing black, march down Main Sreet with banners, “WE LAMENT THE DEPARTED GLORY FROM OUR MIDST”.
O, the empty professions today. After 500 Friday night prayer meetings, I felt clear to end it and give more time to prayer and to writing, but we had over 40 people come last week for counseling. How it is today - Meat is costly, but flesh is cheap! The Christian life is one of ups and downs, but not one of ins and outs. It is easier to teach church history, than to make it…
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