Prayer, with Meeting   (44:15)
               a. Message: Prayer   (23:16)
               b. Meeting   (20:59)

Matthew 7:8.  For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

…let anybody think that they can get to heaven without prayer.  Strange that anybody should think that he can get to heaven without prayer, any more than that he can live without breathing! 

When I was a little boy, I told you how first time they took me to a funeral, I looked askance at the corpse.  I said, “My, I thought he’d gone to heaven.” 

Well, they tried to explain to me that the soul had gone to heaven, but the body is going to go into the grave.  They says, “They’re going to put you down there too some day.” 

I says, “Not me!”  “No sir,” I said.  “I’m never going to die.” 

They laughed at me.  I must have been about three years old, and I still remember it as if it was yesterday—how they laughed at me.  I didn’t like that.  They said, “What are you going to do when you die?”

I said, “I won’t die.  I won’t stop breathing!”

I was positive that I would not stop breathing.  And when I got to find Jesus (…), I was still a boy.  I wasn’t twenty years old, but I became a passionate—passionately in love with prayer, because I found out that only in prayer could I meet God, and in prayer, God met me.  And I discovered that true Christianity is a love affair.  True Pentecost is a love affair, call it what you please—not signs, not wonders, not anything of that nature,  but it’s intimacy with Jesus Christ.  “Father, I will that they whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory.  I in them…”—oh!?—“…and Thou in Me.”

…

“Don’t pray like the scribes and Pharisees.  Go to your Father!”  That’s prayer; everything else is a farce, call it what you please.  But Father is waiting to reward you—Father, looking down from heaven.  He is being worshipped by the lips of men whose hearts are far from Him, but He’s looking for men that worship Him in the Holy Ghost, and in truth, whose bodies have become a “living sacrifice,” “a temple of the living God,” whose hearts are a shrine, who are so devoted to God that God the Father and the Son can come and make their abode in this heart.  What a call!

And without prayer, impossible!  Why, prayer is not talking a lot.  Prayer is not putting on a strait jacket and saying, “Now, I’ve got to be good, and gooder, and gooder still.”  Nothing like that.  Prayer is a new life.  “If any man be in Christ he’s a new creation.”  He breathes an entirely different air from the air he breathed before.  “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.”  You can tell today people who are loving the world.  They come to Pentecostal meetings, yes, but their hearts are far from God.  And I found out as a kid that God would meet me when I came to meet with Him.

…

I found out that God Almighty was looking for men and women who would devote themselves entirely to Him, who would give themselves to Him.  I found out that when Jesus died on the cross and paid so great a price, He didn’t do it just to get me out of hell, but He did it that He might possess me for His own, and that I might possess Him for my own.  Beloved, this seemed so perfectly wonderful to me that the world lost its charm, and everything in the world lost its charm, and there was a passionate love for Jesus Christ born in my soul. 

How did it come about?  Prayer, prayer!  Jesus Christ says, “Every one that asketh receiveth.”  What are you talking about, Lord?  Why, He says, “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly, and here, they forsake Me, the Fountain of Living Water, and they dig fountains that can hold no water.”  They’re foul, dug by men: man’s wisdom, man’s knowledge, man’s science.  God says, “It’s foolishness.”  But “He is made unto us wisdom.”

…

He is “All, and in all,” and all this is mine when I pray in the Holy Ghost.  That’s why He says, “Every one that asketh, receiveth.”  And that’s the place where you receive, when you really want Him, when you really want Him!

…

“God brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep” to “make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in His sight.”  And when you make your choice—when you choose Jesus because He is so attractive to you that you cannot live and you don’t want to live without Him—I tell you, He’s more than happy to come to you.

…

What a blessing when the Spirit of God can rebuke you, and you accept His rebuke.  “Turn you at my rebuke,” He says.  “Behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you.”  And you cannot claim the fullness of the Holy Ghost until you have been convicted.

…

We talk about the rapture.  People say the rapture may take place any moment.  Say, listen, what would you do in heaven with that flesh of yours?  Thank God, the Holy Ghost has come down from heaven to prepare a Church for the Bridegroom.

…

Let us therefore pray “always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication” “that in the evil day ye may have done all to stand.  It’s so easy to pretend to stand when everything is well, when you’re healthy.  But let a trial come your way and see how quickly you’ll fall on your nose, and see how quickly you’ll surrender to the enemy.

…

When I was in Venezuela, we tried to travel.  I saw on muleback, it would take you two weeks to make a short distance, and what a job!  And then, they built an airline, and you got onto that airline and strap yourself in and in one hour, you’d make the distance—you’d fly all over the mud and over the mules and everything.  And God says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings as eagles.”

…

“Every one that asketh receiveth”—what?  Why, the Kingdom!  “Every one that seeketh findeth”—what?  Why, “Me,” He says.  “You’ll find Me.”  “Every one that knocketh, to him it shall be opened”—what?  Why, that gate into the chambers of the King.  Let us pray like never before.

…

I’ve always said our worst enemies are not the communists and not the atheists, but backslidden Pentecostal people who take it easy.  They’re our worst enemies.  And you spend time with them, and you cannot get away undefiled.  And presently, those vultures that devour them will devour you.  That’s why God says, “Don’t cast your pearls before the swine.”  That soul of yours is the precious pearl for which that King of Heaven has given everything to purchase it unto Himself, and to make it an eternal inheritance of His.

…

A charlatan minister.  “He always had visions; he always saw ghosts; he could always tell you what you were thinking and how much money you had in your pocket and so on.  And I said, ‘He’s an old liar!’”    (from 5:02)

How love changed a lazy young man.  “He was in love, and it wasn’t any work at all—it was not a chore at all.”    (from 11:12)

I Dreamed That the Great Judgment Morning, a hymn by Bertram H. Shadduck, 1894:

I dreamed that the great judgment morning
Had dawned, and the trumpet had blown;
I dreamed that the nations had gathered
To judgment before the white throne;
From the throne came a bright shining angel,
And he stood on the land and the sea,
And he swore with his hand raised to Heaven,
That time was no longer to be.

Refrain
And O, what a weeping and wailing,
As the lost were told of their fate;
They cried for the rocks and the mountains,
They prayed, but their prayer was too late.

The rich man was there, but his money
Had melted and vanished away;
A pauper he stood in the judgment,
His debts were too heavy to pay;
The great man was there, but his greatness,
When death came, was left far behind!
The angel that opened the records,
Not a trace of his greatness could find.

Refrain

The widow was there with the orphans,
God heard and remembered their cries;
No sorrow in Heaven forever,
God wiped all the tears from their eyes;
The gambler was there and the drunkard,
And the man that had sold them the drink,
With the people who gave him the license,
Together in hell they did sink.

Refrain

The moral man came to the judgment,
But self righteous rags would not do;
The men who had crucified Jesus
Had passed off as moral men, too;
The soul that had put off salvation,
“Not tonight; I’ll get saved by and by,
No time now to think of religion!”
At last they had found time to die.

Refrain

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