Leonard Ravenhill Quotes

A man who is intimate with God is not intimidated by man.

A man may study because his brain is hungry for knowledge, even Bible knowledge. But he prays because his soul is hungry for God.

The greatest miracle that God can do today is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world and make him holy, then put him back into that unholy world and keep him holy in it.

Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.

How can you pull down strongholds of Satan if you don't even have the strength to turn off your TV?

The early church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity.

There are two kinds of people in the world—only two kinds. Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin.

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

You can't live wrong and pray right.

If we displease God, does it matter whom we please? If we please Him does it matter whom we displease?

Preacher, keep your knees on the ground & your eyes on the throne.

When there’s something in the Bible that churches don’t like, they call it legalism.

My goal is GOD HIMSELF. Not joy, not peace, not even blessing but HIMSELF...my GOD.

One of these days some simple soul will pick up the book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed.

Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. The more joy you have in the Lord the less entertainment you need.

Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?

There are three persons living in each of us: the one we think we are, the one other people think we are, and the one God knows we are.

LORD strengthen me where I am too weak and weaken me where I am too strong!

Is the world crucified to you or does it fascinate you?

Satan fools and feigns, blows and bluffs, and we so often take his threats to heart and forget the "exceeding greatness of God's power to us.

The Church right now has more fashion than passion, is more pathetic than prophetic, is more superficial than supernatural.

If we had more sleepless nights in prayer, there would be fewer souls to have a sleepless eternal night in hell.

The apostles had no gold, but lots of glory. We have lots of gold, but no glory.

Some Day Someone is going to pick up this book (The Bible) and believe it, and put us all to shame.

The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if, through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.

The opportunity of a lifetime needs to be seized during the lifetime of the opportunity.

One thing and one thing alone keeps us from complete decay in this hour - the church, the true Church.

If Thou canst do something with us and through us, then please, God, do something without us! Bypass us and take up a people who now know Thee not!

there is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word.

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

One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed).

A vision without a task makes a visionary; a task without a vision is drudgery; a vision with a task makes a missionary.

Where,oh,where are the eternity-conscious believers? Where are the souls white-hot for God because they fear His holy name and presence and so live with eternity's values in view?

Who or what takes priority over God in our lives?

If Christ waited to be anointed before He went to preach, no young man ought to preach until he, too, has been anointed by the Holy Ghost. —F. B. MEYER

The Christless cults and deity-dishonoring mushroom religions of this midnight hour tempt the Lord God. Will no one sound the alarm?

The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known.

The secret of praying is praying in secret.

Sodom, which had no Bible, no preachers, no tracts, no prayer meetings, no churches, perished. How then will America and England be spared from the wrath of the Almighty, think you? We have millions of Bibles, scores of thousands of churches, endless preachers—and yet what sin!

Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great deterrent.

But you know if God should stamp eternity or even judgment on our eyeballs, or if you’d like on the fleshy table of our hearts I am quite convinced we’d be a very, very different tribe of people, God’s people, in the world today. We live too much in time, we’re too earth bound. We see as other men see, we think as other men think. We invest our time as the world invests it. We're supposed to be a different breed of people. I believe that the church of Jesus Christ needs a new revelation of the majesty of God. We’re all going to stand one day, can you imagine it- at the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the deeds done in the body. This is what- this is the King of kings, and He’s the Judge of judges, and it’s the Tribunal of tribunals, and there’s no court of appeal after it. The verdict is final.

Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.

Today God is bypassing men—not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!

John the Baptist’s training was in God’s University of Silence. God takes all His great men there.

Prayer does not condition God; prayer conditions us. Prayer does not win God to our view; it reveals God’s view to us.

It has been well said that there are only three classes of people in the world today: those who are afraid, those who do not know enough to be afraid, and those who know their Bibles.

The evangelists today are very often prepared to be anything to anybody as long as they can get somebody to the altar for something. They glibly call out: ‘‘Who wants help? Who wants more power? Who wants a closer walk with God?’’ Such a sinning, repenting ‘‘easy believeism’’ dishonors the blood and prostitutes the altar. We must alter the altar, for the altar is a place to die on. Let those who will not pay this price leave it alone!

Christianity today is so subnormal that if any Christian began to act like a normal New Testament Christian, he would be considered abnormal

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.

When the hammer of logic and the fire of human zeal fail to open the stony heart, unction will succeed.

No man is greater than his prayer life. The

The tragedy of this late hour is that we have too many dead men in the pulpits giving out too many dead sermons to too many dead people.

To copy copies is not normally safe, but it is safe to copy Paul, for he was fully surrendered, wholly sanctified, completely satisfied,

And before we can be clean and ready for Him to control, self-seeking, self-glory, self-interest, self-pity, self-righteousness, self-importance, self-promotion, self-satisfaction—and whatsoever else there be of self—must die.

Unctionized by the Spirit’s might, John cried, ‘‘Repent!’’ And they did! Repentance is not a few hot tears at the penitent form. It is not emotion or remorse or reformation. Repentance is a change of mind about God, about sin, and about hell!

We are not Protestants any more—just ‘‘non-Catholics’’! Of what and of whom do we protest? Were we half as hot as we think we are, and a tenth as powerful as we say we are, our Christians would be baptized in blood, as well as in water and in fire.

God never intended His Church to be a refrigerator in which to preserve perishable piety. He intended it to be an incubator in which to hatch out converts. —F. LINCICOME

Prayer makes the soul tender.

(A man escaped from his cell is not free who still drags his chain.)

For this sin-hungry age we need a prayer-hungry Church.

Preacher brethren, this is the time to blush that we have no shame, the time to weep for our lack of tears, the time to bend low that we have lost the humble touch of servants, the time to groan that we have no burden, the time to be angry with ourselves that we have no anger over the devil’s monopoly in this ‘‘end time’’ hour, the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.

Jesus said, ‘‘Go ye!’’ but He also said, ‘‘Tarry until!’’ Let any man shut himself up for a week with only bread and water, with no books except the Bible, with no visitor except the Holy Ghost, and I guarantee, my preacher brethren, that that man will either break up or break through and out. After that, like Paul, he will be known in hell!

We have not yet resisted unto blood in prayer; nay, we ‘‘do not even get a sweat on our souls,’’ as Luther put it. We pray with a ‘‘take-it-or-leave-it’’ attitude; we pray chance prayers; we offer that which costs us nothing! We have not even ‘‘strong desire.’’ We rather are fitful, moody, and spasmodic. The only power that God yields to is that of prayer. We will write about prayer-power, but not fight while in prayer.

Oh that believers would become eternity-conscious! If we could live every moment of every day under the eye of God, if we did every act in the light of the judgment seat, if we sold every article in the light of the judgment seat, if we prayed every prayer in the light of the judgment seat, if we tithed all our possessions in the light of the judgment seat, if we preachers prepared every sermon with one eye on damned humanity and the other on the judgment seat—then we would have a Holy Ghost revival that would shake this earth and that, in no time at all, would liberate millions of precious souls.

He who fears God fears no man.

The great evangelist Leonard Ravenhill was the last person on the planet you’d ever accuse of mincing words. “Five minutes after you die, you’ll know how you should have lived.

Oh! my ministering brethren! Much of our praying is but giving God advice! Our praying is discolored with ambition, either for ourselves or for our denomination. Perish the thought! Our goal must be God alone. It is His honor that is sullied, His blessed Son who is ignored, His laws broken, His name profaned, His Book forgotten, His house made a circus of social efforts.

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him. —J

Prayer is our reliance on God and the lack of prayer shows our independence from God. "If weak in prayer, we are weak everywhere. A sinning man stops praying, a praying man stops sinning." (Leonard Ravenhill)

The proof of our love for God is not in how much time we spend in meetings or chasing drug addicts or whatever. But in how much time we spend with Him. How much time do we spend listening to God?” (Leonard Ravenhill)5

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off.

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.’’ —REV. J. STUART HOLDEN

Almost every Bible conference majors on today’s Church being like the Ephesian Church. We are told that, despite our sin and carnality, we are seated with Him. Alas, what a lie! We are Ephesians all right; but, as the Ephesian Church in the Revelation, we have ‘‘left our first love!’’ We appease sin—but do not oppose it. To such a cold, carnal, critical, care-cowed Church, this lax, loose, lustful, licentious age will never capitulate. Let us stop looking for scapegoats. The fault in declining morality is not radio or television. The whole blame for the present international degeneration and corruption lies at the door of the Church!

The ugly fact is that altar fires are either out or burning very low. The prayer meeting is dead or dying. By our attitude to prayer we tell God that what was begun in the Spirit we can finish in the flesh. What church ever asks its candidating ministers what time they spend in prayer? Yet ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen, degrees or no degrees.

In the sight of God, there are no great men and small men, but only faithful and unfaithful.

True preaching is the sweating of blood. —DR. JOSEPH PARKER

The greatest miracle God can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, make him holy, put him back into an unholy world, and keep him holy. L.R.

At this grim hour, the world sleeps in the darkness, and the Church sleeps in the light;

An experience of God that cost nothing, does nothing, and is worth nothing.

Some Christians cannot say when they were saved. But I never knew a man yet who was baptized with the Holy Ghost and Fire and was unable to say when it happened.

Such a sinning, repenting ‘‘easy believeism’’ dishonors the blood and prostitutes the altar.

There can be no revival when Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes are not found in the audience. —CHARLES G. FINNEY

There is something very questionable and unbiblical about those who claim a baptism of the Spirit and yet know nothing of extended periods in prayer.

He who would teach the people to pray must first himself be given to prayer.

Do you have a weekly prayer meeting in your church? Your answer reflects how spiritual you are and how much you are depending on God or on human ability and organization. The first thing the early church did was pray. It’s the last thing the modern church does today. The early church saw mighty things in answer to prayer. We see little today because of the neglect of prayer. Prayer was their first choice. Today it’s our last resort. Before the early church did anything else, they prayed. We do everything else but pray. It was their first priority. It’s our last priority. The New Testament saints had divine enduement without any equipment. Today we have the equipment but not the enduement. If we are weak in prayer, then we are weak everywhere.

If the fires go out in the boiler room of the church, the place will still look smart and clean... but it will be cold. The prayer room of the church is the boiler room for the spiritual life.

The Spirit-filled believer will hate iniquity, injustice, and impurity; and he will militate against all of them. Because Paul hated the world, the world hated Paul. We, too, need this disposition of opposition.

Broken Hearts, Mourning, and Sin. First, ‘‘a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise’’; in fact, God only uses broken things. For example, Jesus took the lad’s bread and brake it; then, and only then, could it feed the crowd. The alabaster box was broken; only then could its fragrance escape and fill the house—and the world. Jesus said, ‘‘This is My body which was broken for you.’’ If such was the way the Master went, should not the servant tread it still? For in saving our lives, we not only lose them, but we lose other people’s too.

was exceptional in suffering, which was often by the choice of others, but exceptional in prayer, too, which was by his own choice. If more were strong in prayer, more would be suited to suffer. Prayer develops bone as well as groan, sinew as well as saintliness, fortitude as well as fire.

One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed. We have adopted the convenient theory that the Bible is a Book to be explained, whereas first and foremost it is a Book to be believed (and after that to be obeyed). The fact beats ceaselessly into my brain these

Is life’s span so dear and are home comforts so engrossing as to be purchased with my unfaithfulness and dry-eyed prayerlessness? At the final bar of God, shall the perishing millions accuse me of materialism coated with a few Scripture verses? ‘‘Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, GIVE ME REVIVAL in my soul and in my church and in my nation—or GIVE ME DEATH!

Do not we rest in our day too much on the arm of flesh? Cannot the same wonders be done now as of old? Do not the eyes of the Lord still run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong on behalf of those who put their trust in Him? Oh, that God would give me more practical faith in Him! Where is now the Lord God of Elijah? He is waiting for Elijah to call on Him. —JAMESGILMOUR OF MONGOLIA

When Leonard was invited to come to the youth service at the local church, he replied in all seriousness, “I’m not interested in a dog and pony show,” to which they said, “Well, it’s going to be a prayer meeting.” He then asked, “How long are they going to pray—ten minutes?” “No”, they said, “It’s going to be an all-night prayer meeting.” Leonard said, “Well then I’m interested; I’ve not been to any youth meetings where they want to pray all night.

One sees more and more that folk either have head religion or dead religion, or a very shallow view of the real thing. It seems these days the average evangelist offers too much for too little. A shallow repentance, if that is what it can be called, is accepted and then the person is guaranteed immunity from divine justice, eternal security, escape from hell, and the title deed to a first class mansion in heaven. What a travesty of the real thing. May God pity us. Newsweek has reported that six prominent Americans have been converted to Christianity recently. But none mentioned conviction of sin or of receiving Christ as Lord. So I see more than ever the weakness of modern evangelism. We get folks to walk an aisle and say a sinner’s prayer to ask forgiveness. But when do sinners, who are rebels against God, ever cry for mercy? Mercy, like repentance, is a dirty word with most evangelists. The old school view of evangelism is that people did not come to an altar for five minutes and leave, but would stay seeking the face of God until they had a real breakthrough.

Madness, you say? Exactly! A sober church never does any good. At this hour we need men drunk with the Holy Ghost.

Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails. —E. M. BOUNDS

The price is high. God does not want partnership with us, but ownership of us.

The man whose little sermon is ‘‘repent’’ sets himself against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral tone he challenges. There is but one end for such a man—‘‘off with his head!’ You had better not try to preach repentance until you have pledged your head to heaven. —JOSEPH PARKER

No man is greater than his prayer life. The pastor who is not praying is playing; the people who are not praying are straying. The pulpit can be a shopwindow to display one’s talents; the prayer closet allows no showing off. Poverty-stricken as the Church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, few pray-ers; many singers, few clingers; lots of pastors, few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, little passion; many interferers, few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.

I believe the failure stems back to our poverty in prayer. To offer different brands of politics as a cure-all for this sick age is like handing out aspirins to incurable cancer patients.