Leonard Ravenhill on the Affirmation Statement

[stmatthew]

Well, not exactly, but it is similar.:) It is attributed to JB Phillips

We pause here to get a refreshing and profitable view of the early church as it is portrayed by Dr. J B Phillips. As I remember it, he said that the Book of Acts describes the Church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity, and muscle-bound by over-organization. This was the church where people were not forced to sign articles of faith, instead they acted in faith. Here was the place where worshipers did not "say" prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. His final slam is not less biting. These folk did not gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick!


taken from book, "Sodom Had No Bible", by Leonard Ravenhill

[mizpeh]

Well, not exactly, but it is similar.:) It is attributed to JB Phillips

We pause here to get a refreshing and profitable view of the early church as it is portrayed by Dr. J B Phillips. As I remember it, he said that the Book of Acts describes the Church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity, and muscle-bound by over-organization. This was the church where people were not forced to sign articles of faith, instead they acted in faith. Here was the place where worshipers did not "say" prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. His final slam is not less biting. These folk did not gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick!


taken from book, "Sodom Had No Bible", by Leonard Ravenhill

Are you liking the book, Matt?

Who is Leonard Ravenhill?

[Barb]

Well, not exactly, but it is similar.:) It is attributed to JB Phillips

We pause here to get a refreshing and profitable view of the early church as it is portrayed by Dr. J B Phillips. As I remember it, he said that the Book of Acts describes the Church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity, and muscle-bound by over-organization. This was the church where people were not forced to sign articles of faith, instead they acted in faith. Here was the place where worshipers did not "say" prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. His final slam is not less biting. These folk did not gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick!


taken from book, "Sodom Had No Bible", by Leonard Ravenhill
I love it...where might I get one?!

[stmatthew]

Are you liking the book, Matt?

Who is Leonard Ravenhill?

The book is very heart stirring. I am only finished with the first chapter. Actually, anything he wrote is powerful reading and will send the seeker to their knees.

Check my thread on Leonard Ravenhill quotes to see a short bio on him.



I love it...where might I get one?!

Several of his books are now out of print, but you can get the ones that are still in print at most Christian book stores, or online stores. I have seen all of them, including the out of print ones, on Amazon.com



Probably his most known book is "Why Revival Tarries".

[Sister Alvear]

I love his books they are very stirring.

[Brother Price]

OOOhhhhhhhh, the dreaded affirmation statement. My goodness, so evil and dark. :)

Below is a copy of this dreaded affirmation statement. If it is in the Lord's will for me to ever join the UPCI, I will sign this in a heartbeat...

“Whereas the Fundamental Doctrine and the Articles of Faith of our organization are Scriptural teachings and our pledge to wholeheartedly teach and preach our standards of holiness which we all agreed to abide by when we applied for membership in the United Pentecostal Church International, and which we are forbidden to speak or write in opposition to (General Constitution, Article VII, Section 7, Paragraph 15), and…

“Whereas some have endeavored to retain their current fellowship card while departing from the faith as outlined in our Articles of Faith, and have even threatened to go to law and sue the United Pentecostal Church International if they are dealt with by their District Board,

“Therefore be it resolved that the following statement be sent to each minister to be signed before his or her fellowship card for the following year is mailed from the World Evangelism Center."

“We wholeheartedly disapprove of our people indulging in any activities which are not conducive to good Christianity and Godly living, such as theaters, dances, mixed bathing, women cutting their hair, make-up, any apparel that immodestly exposes the body, all worldly sports and amusements, and unwholesome radio programs and music. Furthermore, because of the display of all these evils on television, we disapprove of any of our people having television sets in their homes. We admonish all of our people to refrain from any of these practices in the interest of spiritual progress and the soon coming of the Lord for His church.”

Seems to me that the UPCI is working, at that time, to keep holiness a priority among the ministry. May we pray the spirits out of this group, and come back to the faith 100%, as it should be.

[Barb]

OOOhhhhhhhh, the dreaded affirmation statement. My goodness, so evil and dark. :)

Below is a copy of this dreaded affirmation statement. If it is in the Lord's will for me to ever join the UPCI, I will sign this in a heartbeat...



Seems to me that the UPCI is working, at that time, to keep holiness a priority among the ministry. May we pray the spirits out of this group, and come back to the faith 100%, as it should be.

Hey, we finally agree...it certainly is!!:winkgrin

[Jason B]

Interesting in light of recent threads. I ought to Amazon Leonard Ravenhill books.

[Pressing-On]

We pause here to get a refreshing and profitable view of the early church as it is portrayed by Dr. J B Phillips. As I remember it, he said that the Book of Acts describes the Church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity, and muscle-bound by over-organization. This was the church where people were not forced to sign articles of faith, instead they acted in faith. Here was the place where worshipers did not "say" prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. His final slam is not less biting. These folk did not gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick!


taken from book, "Sodom Had No Bible", by Leonard Ravenhill

Interesting in light of recent threads. I ought to Amazon Leonard Ravenhill books.

:thumbsup :thumbsup

[Digging4Truth]

I just downloaded 3 of his books to my Kindle app on my Ipad. Sounds worth the read.

[Esaias]

Honestly, most here (and most in the religious world at large) would not receive Ravenhill's message. He would be considered kooky, a legalist, one of those nasty 'perfectionists', etc etc etc.

Just like Keith Green.

[Esaias]

Here's some things Leonard Ravenhill DID say:

http://www.gospeltruth.net/ravenhill.htm

Nobody else can give you a clean heart but God.

There's one thing we need above everything else; it's something we don't talk about these days. We need a mighty avalanche of conviction of sin.

We're living in an unprecedented day (when) evil is no longer evil. We've changed the terminology-- iniquity is now infirmity; wickedness is now weakness; devilry is now deficiency.


David had one of the most blessed experiences in the world, and the blessedness was that he was miserable about his sin.

Are we sorry for grieving the heart of God... for denying God the right to own our personality... to own our mind... to own our thoughts... to own our emotions? (If not) we're robbing God.

Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live!

I'm concerned in my spirit (that) the reason the world goes to hell-fire tonight is because we've (the church) lost Holy Ghost fire.

I'm sick and tired of (only) reading about church history; let's make (some) by the grace of God!

Someone asked me, "Do you pray for the dead?" I said, "No, I preach to them!" I think every pew in every church is death row. Think about that! They're dead! They sing about God; they talk about God, but they're dead! They have no living relationship (with God).

We've got people today that are very happy to celebrate Christmas or Easter or even Pentecost Sunday as long as nothing happens.


One said, "If I lead somebody to Christ on the street, which church should I send him to?" (Sending someone to church today is) like taking a newborn baby and putting it in a refrigerator. I want a place that vibrates with God, vibrates with eternity.

We say, "Let the Spirit have His way in our church." We don"t!! We mimeograph what He has to do last Wednesday in the church office!

I want to see the house of God where it's open 24 hours a day so people can come. We don't close the hospitals after eight hours a day or the police station. Why should the churches be locked up tonight?

If you know a church on fire for God, tell me and I'll go. A church where (after) you've gone in, you don't come out the same, believing that God is there (and) you've been in His holy presence!

God is taking His hands off of America. We've had so much light and we've rejected it.

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

How can you have a dead service with a living Christ?

Fifty years ago, you never heard of a divorce in the Christian church. You never (even) heard of marriage counseling in the church... We're putting up with sin in the church.

I believe every church is either supernatural or superficial. I don't believe there's any middle ground.


If the church was doing their business, the psychologists wouldn't dare to sing their dumb song.

The church is supposed to do what? To stop corruption? Is the church doing that? No! The world is corrupting the church!

If I don't believe the Word of God, why should you believe it? If we don't believe it, why should the world believe us?

We're blind to the fact (that) we have an obligation to five billion people in the world. This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of lost souls!

Our blessings have become a curse. They attract us. They take too much of our time and concern.

There isn't a "Pentecostal" Church in America. If there is, tell me where it is.

In the early church, signs and wonders and miracles followed. They cast out demons, blindness and paralysis. That's normal Christianity! We're so sub-normal, if we ever became normal, they (the world) will think we're abnormal.

I'm astounded, bewildered, confused, baffled when people tell me there are 75 million people in America that are filled with the Holy Ghost and we're the most rotten nation on earth.

I want to see a fellowship where your burdens become mine! Your grief over your children becomes my grief! Where we really bear each other's burdens; where we love each other and let the world come and see that we are the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus who cared only to do the will of His Father.

I wish, in America, (that) we were as concerned about separation from church and sin as we are about separation between church and state. Church and sin-- it's a monstrous problem.

Young people come to our churches and what are they seeing?) I went to a church not along ago-- they got thirty acres. (So what are their plans with it?)

They want their own football field and tennis courts. Dear God, do children go to church to learn to play tennis? God help the preachers! Why can't we get them spiritual so they want prayer and revelation and the Word of the Living God. The young people come inside the church but there's no glory.


Do you go to church to meet God or to hear a sermon about Him? How many come to church expecting a confrontation with Deity?

The best title of the (professing) church of God today, in my judgment, i s "Unbelieving Believers."

Philip the deacon. Boy, wouldn't you like a half a dozen deacons like him in your church?

(Acts shows us) the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and short of breath by prosperity.

I'm embarrassed to be a part of the (so-called) church of Jesus Christ today because I believe it's an embarrassment to a Holy God !

I'm sick to death of the so-called Christianity of our day. What's supernatural about it? When do people come out of the sanctuary awed and can't speak for an hour because God has been in glory there? Dear God, as soon as they get out, they're talking football, or sports or something or there's going to be a big sale downtown or somewhere. We are not caught up into eternity!

When did you last tip-toe out of the sanctuary? (When) you couldn't say a word to anybody (because) you were so overwhelmed (with the glory of God).

I've heard a million words, sermons, and read books: (and) I'm accountable to God for everything I have. Every moment of my time, every dime of my money.

You can't help what you hear, but you can help what you say. You're going to be accountable for every word you speak.

This silly world outside thinks it is finished with Jesus Christ (but) they haven't even started (with Him) yet.

Ten million years will not put a strain on the clock of eternity.

The surest thing in the world is not death and taxes, it's death and eternity. Yet, we're so unconcerned.

We are not eternity conscious enough.

I read through Hebrews 11. These staggering men and women through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtain the promises, stopped the lions; women received their dead raised to life again. All the devilish things (they endured) and not one ever had a Bible! Well, in God's Name, (what) are you and I going to do when we stand before Him?! When I get there, I'll have to face up to having the whole revelation of God. Finney didn't have a bigger Bible; Wesley didn't have a bigger Bible, but somehow they got nearer to the heart of God. They got a revelation from God, they got convictions of the Spirit and they laid their lives on the line.

I find the Book of Revelation a book of mystery: I don't understand a lot of it. It's a book of majesty: (it shows) Jesus in all His glory and His majesty: and it's a book of misery because it shows me the collapse of world systems; it shows the final judgment that's going to come on the world, and it shows the anger of God that's going to be poured out before long.

I still believe in the majesty of that eternal court. Oh the awesomeness of it... God will say to some, "Come ye blessed!" and (to) the rest, "Depart from Me !" I don't want to stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ and God say to me, "I left you a book of blank checks signed in the blood of Jesus and you didn't use half of them!"

I can think of one thing when I get to the Judgment Bar and Jesus will look down and say, "I had many things to tell you but you couldn't bear them." We're too busy running our own lives: praying when you want to pray, eating what you want to eat, going where you want to go, spending what you want to spend, reading what you want to read, (Do you) call that a spiritual life? Brother, it is carnal as carnality!

I've had something burning in me for years and it burns more fiercely than ever to write this book (on the Judgment Seat of Christ). There are times (when) I can't go in my office'I'm awed with the awesomeness of God and the task that we're right on the verge of tremendous judgment unless we have a tremendous, tremendous, earth-quaking revival. I know people say, "Why don't you pray and ask God to take it (the burning) away?" I've prayed for 60 years to get it! I'm not going to ask Him to take it away! I'm asking Him to deepen it! I'm asking Him to intensify it!


The surest thing in the world is not death and taxes, it's death and eternity. Yet, we're so unconcerned.

We are not eternity conscious enough.

We have a crowded house for once in six months. Normally you could pick a chair anywhere you like. Are you suggesting that you or anybody else would live its normal course if we all believed that all men outside of Jesus Christ are going to perish for ever and ever and ever ? !

Once inside eternity, we're going to be very embarrassed at the smallness of our faith.

What are you going to do when you get to eternity, if you can't stick in an hour with God down here? In God's name, what are you going to do in a million year s in God's presence? Expect some reports from earth about football or something?

The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible is the religion of Christ's church.

The devil's aim today is to keep one away from the Bible.

Sin will keep you from this Book or this Book will keep you from sin.

Most people are bothered by those passages, which they cannot understand; the Scriptures which troubles me the most is the Scripture I do understand.

We're going to get into this Word and eat it. It'll hurt us at times (but) it will revive us. It may unclothe us to clothe us, empty us to fill us, cast us down to lift us up and yet this is all we need.

If we had a super, super revival of a billion people being saved, it would still be too late. Could you imagine a billion people being saved-- in governments, in hospitals, in universities, in schools, business people? Yet there would be four billion people in the world still unsaved.

The sinner's prayer has sent more people to hell than all the taverns in America.


The only vision (many) of you have is television.

America is not dying because of the strength of humanism; it's dying because of the weakness of evangelism! We take people to the cross, (but) we don't put them on the cross.



There should be a birth chamber in every church; (it) should be a room for travail.

I doubt if 5% of professing Christians in America are born again--and that's true of England!

Here's the world with millions, millions, millions dying. They were dying while you were sleeping last night, while you were fooling around somewhere! God is saying, "Who will go for Us?"

Can you remember the last time you didn't go to bed because people were dying without Christ?

I think one of the serious breakdowns in modern evangelism is this: it has offered too much for too little. What we do mostly is offer forgiveness. We need cleansing! There is no true conversion until a man takes up his cross.



(More at the link)

[MawMaw]

Wow. Incredible.

Does anyone know all the titles of this man's books?
Was/is he considered a oneness Pentecostal?

[soopy]

Icredible, why? (I'm totally lost here--do you guys agree with the affirmation thing, or no?)Here's some things Leonard Ravenhill DID say:

http://www.gospeltruth.net/ravenhill.htm

Nobody else can give you a clean heart but God.

There's one thing we need above everything else; it's something we don't talk about these days. We need a mighty avalanche of conviction of sin...et al
Esaias, this is all true, in its context-but I would argue that it is for the saved, and not the lost? I believe if one just goes and, radiates positivity, for lack of a better phrase, does the right thing in a circle around themselves, that sin leaves the room anyway? I mean for believers, acting among the lost-or the found, for that matter. I wonder if this is not a central issue with our empty churches (and minds?) pounding on the negative without reinforcing (introducing?) the positive. Telling people what not to do is not leading them in what to do, sort of.

[Titus2woman]

Yeah.... kind of not my cup of tea... but read on and enjoy! :)

[rgcraig]

A six year old thread - - always interesting to see them pop up.

[houston]

A six year old thread - - always interesting to see them pop up.

And then you remember the convo like it was yesterday...

[FlamingZword]

Well, not exactly, but it is similar.:) It is attributed to JB Phillips

We pause here to get a refreshing and profitable view of the early church as it is portrayed by Dr. J B Phillips. As I remember it, he said that the Book of Acts describes the Church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by prosperity, and muscle-bound by over-organization. This was the church where people were not forced to sign articles of faith, instead they acted in faith. Here was the place where worshipers did not "say" prayers, they prayed in the Holy Ghost. His final slam is not less biting. These folk did not gather together a group of intellectuals to study psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick!


taken from book, "Sodom Had No Bible", by Leonard Ravenhill

The only thing a person had to do to join the church was to believe in Jesus Christ, there was no other statement required in the book of Acts.

People were baptized immediately, no one was required to go thru a period of probation or sign any type of statement.

the fact that some churches have an unbiblical (Yes I did say non-biblical) Affirmation Statement is just another sign of how far we have strayed from the real church of Acts.

[Servetus]

Wow. Incredible.

Does anyone know all the titles of this man's books?
Was/is he considered a oneness Pentecostal?

Incredible indeed. I ordered some of his books tonight "Why Revival Tarries" "Meat for Men" and "Sodom had no Bible". The "look inside" previews on Amazon piqued my interest.

But from what I know of Ravenhill, he was not a oneness pentecostal. He did have a pentecostal background, but I think He would be considered by most oneness pentecostals as "charismatic" and, of course, lost.