Transcript of a published conference session by Marrell Cornwell, transcribed from YouTube. An attributed primary source — not Acts 2:38 Life doctrine text.
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Summary
Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.
1. The opening: blessings, and a sermon picked back up
- He opens with a neighbor exercise: turn and tell your neighbor God is going to bless you — the next three months will be the best three months you have ever lived; whoever needs a financial blessing, hold up your hand. That's a lot easier than cursing people.
- Coming to the Alabama Revival Conference ruins the rest of his summer: the week after next he goes to the Impact meeting in Columbia, Mississippi — five conferences in one (men's, women's, youth, a PK retreat, pastors), and tremendous — but after Alabama it feels anti-climatic, because by the time the tape ministry is finished a thousand people will hear this conference, and these conference tapes are among the best-kept secrets in the world. He thanks the steering committee and sponsors, and brother Wilbanks (captioned as sending "to coleman"), especially for the orange rolls.
- He is standing between the congregation and lunch. Brother Foster was up before him; Foster and brother Godwin ministered last night. Now he picks up where he left off Wednesday night, with a lot more to add: he is going to talk about the anatomy of a revival, and he is not going to preach it — he will do what brother Foster intended, leave the mic up here and just talk. A visiting pastor (captioned "pastor August") from Biloxi, Mississippi, with the PAW is welcomed.
2. Added to what the Lord spoke: Deuteronomy 28
- A few minutes earlier the Lord spoke, and there was interpretation; Cornwell wants to add to what the Lord spoke in Deuteronomy 28, and reads the blessings chapter aloud: if thou shalt hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord thy God, all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee — blessed shalt thou be in the city and in the field, blessed the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground and the fruit of thy cattle, thy basket and thy store, thy coming in and thy going out; the Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face and flee seven ways; he shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses and establish thee an holy people unto himself, and all the people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord.
Scriptures: Deuteronomy 28:1-10
3. The text: Acts 16
- His text is the book of Acts, chapter 16, read aloud: at Lystra a certain disciple named Timotheus, well reported of by the brethren, whom Paul took and circumcised; the decrees delivered through the cities, and so were the churches established in the faith and increased in number daily; then throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, assaying to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not; passing by Mysia they came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night — a man of Macedonia, saying, "Come over into Macedonia and help us" — and after he had seen the vision, immediately they endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called them to preach the gospel unto them. "The anatomy of a revival — and you may be seated."
Scriptures: Acts 16:1-10
4. First dimension recapped: tongues
- Wednesday night he started the conference off by talking about the seven dimensions of revival, and he repeats the first five briefly. The first dimension is speaking in tongues: they spoke in tongues, and it was noised abroad, and men and women came together, and three thousand people received the baptism of the Holy Ghost because of the phenomenon of tongues. He is not talking about speaking in tongues as the evidence of receiving the Holy Ghost; he is talking about the sign of tongues that attracts the unbeliever — and it is not common in the Baptist church, the Methodist church, the Christian churches, or the barroom, nor to the visitor on your pews. If you read 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and chapter 14, tongues are a vital part of the Apostolic revival. (The two chapters are pointed to as reading, not read — see packet.md.)
5. Second dimension recapped: miracles
- The second dimension of revival is the miracle dimension. When you fast and pray for a miracle, that is a good sign you're not going to get one: they received the miracle on the way to prayer, not coming from prayer. The gift of miracles cannot be bought or favored from God; we fast and pray to humble ourselves, to press ourselves — not to pressure God, who is sovereign — so that when God gets ready to move he has a vessel to move through. And at the end of that day there was only one miracle, yet it carried the multitude.
- He does not understand the fake faith healers who heal only psychosomatic diseases: if the gift of miracles has taken place, wheelchairs will empty out; the visible healings need to take place, not just the invisible back pain and gallbladder problems — straightened legs will straighten up, blind eyes will be open, deaf ears will be unstopped.
6. A raw heathen raised (his own beginnings)
- He has no business standing in this pulpit this morning when he looks at his pedigree: his mother, a backslider, married his heathen father when they were sixteen; they left the Apostolic movement in 1942, and only in 1975 did his mother ever come back to God — his father never did. His mother's family were all preachers and church builders, but he was estranged from them and raised as a heathen. In college his first roommate was an apostolic, and the roommate converted him; he knew nothing about getting called to preach, and twenty minutes after he got up from the altar he realized he was called. It took a year before he was fit to be called a Pentecostal — he did not know how to dress, talk, or live for God. He got saved in what they said was the holiest church in America and sat on the front row in shorts with his bare feet, driving the preacher crazy and refusing to be run off: our churches are not the holiest churches in the world; they are incubators for people to be born, and God will help them become holy as they live for God — with rules (a curfew, the six-inch rule), but arms open to new people.
- When he got called, nobody helped him find places to preach, so he preached on the street, in people's homes, on the sidewalk: there is more to being a preacher than standing in this pulpit — too many young men want the pulpit ministry but not the work part of the ministry.
7. Third dimension recapped: judgment and authority
- The third dimension of revival came about as a judgment time — the establishing of the authority in the ministry: Ananias and Sapphira fell dead because Peter put his finger on them for lying to God, and God was simply justifying the authority of the man of God. If you vote on your preacher every year, you are not the church: he told his Wichita people that when they voted him in, that ended their voting — you're gonna live with me or die with me. The way to get rid of the preacher in Wichita is a petition signed by 51% of the voting members laid on the pulpit — and if it is for adultery or turning away, get rid of him; but if it is for preaching the gospel and preaching against your sin, he will buy the service station next door and the biggest speakers you've ever seen and call the paint off the building from the roof. You can't preach scared; the language of authority is the only language your enemy understands.
8. Fourth dimension recapped: persecution
- The fourth dimension is the persecution dimension (he corrects himself at the head of the recap — he first says "the angel," then "I'm sorry, the persecution dimension"): God brought persecution through Stephen and distracted the church while he was saving another people — and those people would never have been saved if the church had not been distracted by something. If you are continually going through persecution, it may be that God is distracting you so he can do a work over here, and you are not going to stop the persecution until you get in line with what he wants to do. There was a time when they had a black revival in his church and some did not want black people there; he watched God send persecution and tribulation to them until they were so distracted that black folks prayed through while they were distracted. Now the Hispanic people are praying through the same way: they started a Hispanic church within the church in January of this year (the sermon's year; no year is stated) and have already had over 200 people in it — and then an Asian revival, a lot of Filipino people praying through.
9. Fifth dimension recapped: the angel's intervention
- Wednesday night he stopped with the fifth dimension: the intervention of the angel in revival. Once before, the angel released prisoners without interfering with revival; but in Acts chapter 10, Cornelius was saved as a direct intervention of the angel of God, who came to Cornelius and came to Simon Peter. He meant to say Wednesday night — and hopes they'll forget he said it — that he believes in asking God to send the angel that went to Cornelius's house and to Simon Peter's house to abide in our city, and bring the preacher and the sinner together: he doesn't need an angel every day; he needs the angel to bring in that one family that will open the doors to another nation. Out there is somebody hungry — in Birmingham he guarantees there are more families than you can shake a stick at who are hungry for God and will otherwise join a Baptist, Church of Christ, Methodist, or Catholic church, because something is moving them and they are searching for God.
Scriptures: Acts 10
10. Sixth dimension: vision — the commission and its contradiction
- Now the sixth dimension of revival, and this is very important. The Lord said in Matthew 28, in Luke 24, in John chapter one, in Mark chapter one: go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature — that was the last commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. But in Acts 16 we find a contradiction to the commandment of God: the Lord forbade them to go into Asia and preach the gospel. Boards do it, and men of authority do it: a young man comes before the district board wanting to start a church, the wise old men look him over and say wait — and some young men throw in their license, go anyway, and end up shipwrecked. God will forbid you to preach the gospel in any city until you have a vision of that city. (The four commissions are named as the places the command stands; none of the four is read — see packet.md.)
11. The Stockton vision and the envelope
- He was preaching a revival in Stockton, California, right after brother Kenneth Haney went to Stockton, in Haney's old building, and had taken the 2:00-to-4:00 a.m. shift of an all-night prayer chain. In that prayer room the Lord showed him three things: first, you're gonna go to your hometown, your home district Louisiana, and preach at the Louisiana camp — and for a Louisiana boy, preaching at the Louisiana camp is a dream come true. Second, I'm going to send you back to your home church and give you a revival and a breakthrough. Third, I am going to send you to a city of 300 thousand, and there you will find your life's work, and there I will pour out my spirit and raise up a church. He had a bill he could not pay, in one of those window envelopes; he pulled it out and wrote down the three things God showed him, and what he was to preach when he went to Louisiana camp, and kept that envelope in his coat pocket every time he changed suits, for a long time.
12. Louisiana camp, July the 4th
- He bought his mother-in-law a little car and drove it from California back to Louisiana, and his father took him fishing — and every day the fish bit better, and he forgot camp meeting entirely until Thursday afternoon. He put his suit on, rode out to Louisiana camp, and a presbyter (the captions render the office in several forms) met him: we want you to preach tomorrow evening, July the 4th, in the youth service at 6:30. His dad said shut up, you're not preaching at Louisiana camp; his wife said the same; his mother was the only one who believed him — she bought a tape recorder and came along to record her son preaching. Behind the stage he was told he wasn't needed after all: there were two preachers coming, two of the biggest-named evangelists in Pentecost at the time, both in new Cadillacs, and he was driving an oil-leaking Ford. He walked back to his mother and wife, pulled out the envelope, and sat there depressed through the song service — and those two preachers, coming from different directions in virtually new Cadillacs, both blew out tires. As the last singer was singing, the presbyter came back: brother Cornwell, would you come up here and preach for us? Our evangelists didn't show up. Nobody will ever remember the sermon, but he will.
13. The home-church revival
- When he walked out after the main service, his pastor met him and asked him to preach a revival. Cornwell pulled out the envelope: I'll be glad to. But you don't understand, the pastor said — we just built a new building, we are broke, we can't pay you, there's no parking lot, eighteen inches of fill dirt and it has been raining and it's muddy, and my people are backsliding and I'm losing control. Cornwell said the envelope said he was going to preach a revival in the home church and God was going to pour out the Holy Ghost — I'll preach free of charge, you won't even have to take up an offering. They preached ten weeks; it rained 35 of the 70 days; they built a ramp from the street and held foot washing every night to get the mud off people's feet. At the end of the fifth week, on a Sunday night, as the pastor was getting ready to close, they had a breakthrough: about twenty people got the Holy Ghost that night, and almost two hundred in the next five weeks. You cannot discount the fact that you need a vision of what God is going to do — and a vision doesn't come just to a seasoned preacher; it comes to whoever God wants to give it to.
14. Lake Charles, and the call to the city of 300,000
- He preached a revival at his home church, then at Lake Charles, then at Baytown, Texas — the best revival that church had ever had — and the pastor from Lake Charles called him in and said: I want you to pastor this church. He had no idea why, but he said yes — and then objected: Lake Charles was only fifty-six thousand people; God, that's not what the envelope told me. God said, I told you I want you to pastor this church. Little did he realize the pastor in Wichita, Kansas, had resigned, then taken the church back, and God knew that two years later he was going to resign again: God put him on the shelf in Lake Charles for two years to prepare him for Wichita. In Lake Charles they had revival, growing from 80 people to running 355 in less than two years — and then he got run off. Let me talk to you about being run off: better preachers than you have been run off before; sometimes getting run off is the best thing that could happen to you. Then the call came from Wichita, and when he got outside the city limits there was a sign: Wichita, Kansas — 300,000.
15. Wichita: conquer the city in your mind
- Before you have revival in your town, you have got to conquer that city in your mind. You cannot pastor in your city scared to death, wondering if God is gonna bless you; somewhere in your heart God has got to send you to that city, and you have got to get a clear vision of reaching it before you're gonna have revival. Yes, God said go into all the world, but he forbade Paul from going until he could give him a vision. "The scripture says: where there is no vision, the people will perish" (quoted with no citation named — see packet.md). He came to Wichita broke: lost his home, lost his automobile, nothing left but a Toyota with (as this copy's captions render it) 170,000 miles, paint peeling and fenders caved in — and found a church that had gone through its third split in six months, all the money people, leadership, and the deacon board gone, hurting as bad as he was. All he could do was preach what God showed him: he held up the envelope — God told me a city of 300 thousand, and God said I was gonna have an outpouring of the Holy Ghost; if you're not ready to run a thousand, you need to walk out now or fire me now, because this church is going to run a thousand people. God majors in impossibilities.
16. The second vision: one door at a time
- He started calling prayer meetings and would lay that envelope out before God: Lord, the first two things came to pass; now I'm involved in the third thing, and I don't know how you're gonna do it — I need your help. In a prayer meeting in a dark church without windows, he saw his second vision: the mailman coming up to the door and putting mail on it; the gas man kneeling beside the gas meter and reading it; the newspaper boy in a little Volkswagen flipping the paper over the car onto the parking lot; the water man pulling up the meter cover and reading the meter. The Holy Ghost spoke to him: you're gonna reach people one at a time — if the mailman can go to one door at a time and reach it every day, and the gas man can reach their meter every month, then you can start reaching every door in the city one door at a time. And when God gave him the vision of how it was going to be done, he knew Wichita belonged to him. That day in church he started the bus ministry: you are never gonna have a revival until you help people that cannot help you back.
17. No humble bone
- He has been coming to Alabama nine years — an appendicitis attack cost him one year. Brother Godwin is a really nice guy, not near as mean as he sounds; brother Foster preached a while ago. He has yet to see a humble man in this pulpit: we fake humility to satisfy jealousies, and we mistake arrogance for confidence. The difference between a successful man and an unsuccessful man is that he has had a vision of what God can do with him and he uses authority. He has no business having this kind of confidence — not raised in Pentecost, his father not a pastor, his mother not in the church, come out of a heathen home — but when God gives him a vision he has to stand up and say this is what God wants us to do. A pastor who has pastored a long time is not finished: you have more wisdom, more knowledge, less strength, but more authority.
- When he finished his building he was depressed as a man could be: twenty months non-stop, six days a week; almost a million dollars more than they were authorized to spend — he just kept borrowing money the bank kept giving him, neither he nor the bank knowing they hadn't voted on it — and the note would take every penny of the tithes and offerings. Driving home quiet after the Sunday-night dedication, he told his wife: honey, Wednesday night I'm gonna resign; God's finished with me. That sweet little lamb became the Lion of the tribe of Judah: shut your mouth — we are not resigning. So how do you keep the vision? You stay on your knees and pray by yourself: Lord, show me what you want to do; I've got to know that you're with me.
18. Revival is people, and problems grow
- The congregation stands at his direction ("let's all stand up") for the closing movement. You can't get a Sunday school teacher? Haul in about a thousand kids, and you'll get Sunday school teachers glad to take them out and keep them for an hour. You may have the plumber out every Monday morning to unstop the commodes; you may redecorate the bathrooms every three months. Revival is people, and people are problems, and problems are headaches. When he was just a kid preacher he went to Alexandria (captioned "alexandria") and heard them have 849 in Sunday school that morning, and listened to a man preach and thought, I don't know why that old fogey doesn't resign and let somebody like me take over — he thought the larger a church gets, the more comfortable things become. On May Street the electric bill was $300 a month, insurance $600 a year, and the whole church ran on about $1,000 a month; then they built the new building — twenty-three of the old buildings would fit in it — and the utilities went to $6,000 a month, the note from $280 to $26,000 a month, insurance to $37,000 a year, and the bus ministry from $15 a week to about $50,000 a year. Problems grow as your church grows, and unless you have a vision you'll never get beyond them: your vision may cause you to lose your home; your vision may cause you to lose your car. (Here the shorter copy, row 24's upload, cut him off mid-sentence; this copy continues to his close — next section.)
19. The close (recovered in this copy)
- He finishes the sentence the shorter copy cut ("okay, we don't talk about that") and closes the sixth dimension on its own terms: without a vision you won't go forward. "How many wants revival? How many wants God to show you what he can do?" — everybody said amen. He thanks them — "I love you; thank you for letting me be at the Alabama Revival Conference; if I come back next year I'm going to keep on keeping on the same thing" — and ends, "God bless you." The host's thanks then begins inside the same caption segment; the host's words, the channel's outro fragment, and the appended material that follow are preserved in source-panel-capture.txt only (see packet.md). Nothing in the recovered closing minutes names or reads any scripture, and the record's index is unchanged by them.
Scripture index: Deuteronomy 28:1-10; Acts 16:1-10; Acts 10.
Transcript
hallelujah eternity neighbor and say god's going to bless you now turn to your neighbor and say the next three months is gonna be the best three months you have ever lived anybody need a financial blessing all right hold your hand if you need a financial blessing now somebody next to you i want your turn to say god is going to bless you amen isn't that a lot easier than cursing people praise god i when i come to the alabama revival conference it just kind of ruins the rest of my summer week after next i've got to go to the impact meeting in columbia mississippi and the impact meeting is an awesome meeting it's just a tremendous meeting it's a unique conference in that it is five conferences in one it's a men's conference it's a women's conference it's a youth conference it's a pk retreat and it's a pastor's conference and it's tremendous i i don't take anything away from it but when you have been to the alabama revival conference and then you have to go to impact impact is kind of anti-climatical because you receive so much at the alabama revival conference and i i sit there a few minutes ago and and contemplated the fact that we have heard to this point seven or eight outstanding pieces of the word of god and every pastor and i realize that there's not a thousand people here this morning but i promise you by time the tape ministry is finished a thousand people will hear this conference amen the tapes of the alabama revival compass are probably some of the best kept secrets in the world praise god every pastor needs to hear and experience what the lord has done here this week can i have it amen and i'm not here to judge why they're not here there's a lot of reasons why preachers are not here some cannot afford to come and some i feel like they're too far away or maybe some have been to other conferences or whatever but we have heard some things that can help all of us amen i want to say thank you to the steering committee and the sponsors of this conference for the nice room in these rooms nice and the basket of fruit and things that you put in my room are so appreciative your hospitality and brother wilbank's sent to coleman especially for those orange rolls they were mine and a thief broke through and stole lay up not treasures were thief in my it's so much easier to get repentance than it is for permission hallelujah and i do i miss going to coleman this year but this this conference has just been unbelievable praise god now i i realized that i'm standing between you and lunch and did did we hear from god
when brother foster was up here did we hear from god last night with brother foster and brother godwin my my my my amen and i am going to pick up where i left off wednesday night and i have a lot more to add to what i i done wednesday night i'm going to talk about the anatomy of a revival and i am not going to preach this sermon i i'm going to do what brother foster intended to do that was leave the mic up here and just talk and i am going to attempt that and give me 10 minutes to be a baptist hallelujah oh praise god are we having a good time or what we're glad to have all of our visitors all of our guests and we're glad to have a pastor august from biloxi mississippi with the p.a.w visiting with us and we just welcome him amen the book of acts chapter 16 the acts of the apostles chapter 16. and when you come to these conferences you don't have to pray for three months for a sermon you just got to click on the tape oh hallelujah chapter 16 of the book of acts amen a few minutes ago when the lord spoke he spoke and we had interpretation but i want to add to what the lord spoke in deuteronomy 28 he said and it shall come to pass if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the lord thy god to observe and to do all his commandments which i command thee this day that the lord thy god will set thee on high above all nations of the earth and all these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee if thou shalt hear hearken to the voice of the lord thy god blessed shalt thou be in the city blessed shall thou be in the field blessed shall be the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy ground the fruit of thy cattle the increase of thy kind the flocks of thy sheep blessed shall be thy basket and thy store blessed shall thou be when thou comest in blessed shalt thou be when i go us out the lord shall call thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face they shall come out against thee one way and flee before these seven ways the lord shall command the blessings upon thee and thy storehouse and all that thou set us thy hand to and he shall bless thee in the land which the lord thy god giveth thee the lord shall establish thee on a holy people unto himself see i swore unto thee that thou shalt keep the commandments of the lord thy god and walk in his ways and all the people of earth shall see that thou art called by my name of the lord and thou shalt be afraid of thee that's what the lord spoke amen amen acts chapter 16. then came he to derby and to lystra and behold a certain disciple was there named timotheus the son of a certain woman which was a jewish and believe that his father was a greek which was well reported of by the brethren that were in lystra and iconium him would paul have to go forth with him and took and circumcised because the jews which were in those quarters they knew all that his father was agree as they went through the cities they delivered them to decrees for to be kept that were ordained to the apostles and elders which were at jerusalem and so were the churches established in faith and increased in number daily now when they had gone throughout fijia and the regions of galatia and were forbidden they were forbidden of the holy ghost to preach the word in asia and they came to messiah they are so they are saved to go into bithynia but the spirit suffered them not the spirit would not allow them to go can i have it amen and they passing by mission came down to troas and a vision appeared to paul in the night there stood a man of macedonia and prayed him saying come over into macedonia and help us and after he had seen the vision immediately we endeavored to go into macedonia assuredly gathering that the lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them the anatomy of a revival and you may be
seated wednesday night i i started the conference off by talking about the seven dimensions of revival if you would just bear with me for a few moments i want to repeat the first five dimensions that i have already talked about the the first dimension of revival is speaking in tongues and they spoke in tongues and it was noised abroad and men and women came together and 3 000 people received the baptism of the holy ghost because of the phenomenon of speaking with other tongues that had sat upon each of them so we cannot discount the fact that when we come to a pentecostal church and someone speaks in tongues we've got to be careful that we don't take that for granted if you read first corinthians chapter 12 and chapter 14 tongues are a vital part of the apostolic revival i'm not talking about speaking in tongues as evidence of receiving the holy ghost i'm talking about the sign of tongues that attracts the unbeliever can i have it amen we speak in tongues we hear speaking in tongues and it does not have the impact on us that it should have because we take it for granted and it has become so common to us but ladies and gentlemen it is not common in the baptist church it is not common in the methodist church it is not common in the churches of christ or the christian churches or the other churches of our area nor is it common in the bar room nor is it common to the visitor that comes and sits on your pews so we have the dimension of revival called the tongues dimension and then secondly the second dimension of revival is the miracle dimension and i have it amen when you fast and pray for a miracles it's a good sign that you're not going to get them they receive the miracle on the way to prayer not coming from prayer the gift of miracles is a guilt that can be operated whether you're praying or fasting or not you cannot by god you cannot by favor with god we fast and pray to humble ourselves that we might be used of god can i have it amen oh my goodness if we start trying to deserve revival we're not going to get it you fast and pray to help people live for god and it's a part of our religious experience to fast and pray we're not going to pressure god we can pressure ourselves and we can pressure each other but god is sovereign gonna have it amen and you need to fast and pray to make yourself a humble vessel to god that when god gets ready to move he'll have a vessel to move through can i have it amen and that miracle of tongues had 3000 people when it was known as the broad came together and received the holy ghost that day and then at the end of the miracle there was only one miracle that took place that day you would have thought that the evangelists had called everybody out and told them where they hurt and heal their back and their psychosomatic diseases i don't understand these fake excuse me faith healers they're only healing psychosomatic diseases if the gift of miracles has taken place wheelchairs will empty out the visible healings need to take place not just the invisible back pain and the gallbladder problems amen straighten legs are straightened up blind eyes will be open deaf ears will be unstopped can i have it amen and there's room for that there is a place for that in the scripture which we'll talk about a little bit later praise god but it's it's amazing we we need god's sovereign act to come into our place can i have an amen and can i share with you the atmosphere that we have around here is conducive for god to move when he wants to move and move through whom he wants to use can i have it amen i have no business standing in this pulpit this morning when i look at my pedigree my mother
and father my mother was a backslider a rebellious backslider that married my heathen father when they were 16 years old and they left the apostolic movement in 1942 and it was only after not in 1975 did my mother ever come back to god and my dad never came to god and my my mother's family were all preachers and pastors and evangelists and church builders and i was estranged from them did not know the scope of their ministry or what they were up to my father my mother moved away from them and i was raised as a heathen and when i went to college my first roommate was an apostolic and and my roommate converted me to this apostolic movement that i'm a part of and when i got the holy ghost i knew nothing about how to get called to preach i knew nothing about preaching nothing about testimonies i didn't know nothing about the church i was a raw heath a literal raw heathen that came directly out of the world and into the church in a moment of time can i have an amen and it took god 20 minutes before i realized i was called to preach and i got up from the altar nobody i knew nothing about soul winning i knew nothing about living for god i knew nothing about dressing right it took a year before i i was fit to be called a pentecostal i did not know how to dress i did not know how to talk i did not know how to live for god i wasn't i was a i got saved in the holiest church in america or they said they were the holy church in america they run about 30 people they had run about 120 but the pastor succeeded in running off about 80 of them and and i was raised in church it was full of backbiting and envy and jealousy and hatred and all that kind of stuff and they had fights in the church and adultery in the church and and i sit on the front row with a pair of moody shorts on and raised my hands my hairy underarms showing and my belly button sticking out my bare feet praise god and i drove the preacher crazy because he had the holiest church in the united pentecostal church and i was messing his church up and that's what we all need we need somebody to get the holy ghost sit on our front pew and a pair of shorts and refuse to be run off and shout and talk in tongues and you spitting on them every service trying to get them straightened out and they don't have a clue to what you're talking about amen folks our churches are not the holiest churches in the world we are an incubator for people to be born and god will help us become holy as we live for god can i have it amen and if you're worried about somebody coming and getting saved and not straightening up quick enough because your brother's gonna come to your church and you're afraid he's gonna call you a charismatic you're never gonna have revival because you're operating scared to death and we gotta quit operating out of peer pressure we got to operate out of the will of god i believe you ought to dress right it don't hurt to have a curfew in your church for your young people you can't even be a member of our youth group unless you're off the streets at 11 o'clock at night we have a six inch rule you can't you you cannot hold hands and lollygag around and and get behind the parking lot and smooch in church we have rules and aren't you i wouldn't give you a plug nickel for a church that didn't have rules and real churches let their wholeness go because the preacher ain't got guts god grits or grace to stand up and preach anything but at the same time we got to have our arms open to new people coming in and realizing that if god brought them here he'll help you train them and disciple them and get them straightened out and there's no rule in the bible that says you've got two weeks of straighten up or you've got to get out some of you ain't straightened up yet you've been living for god 30 years can i have an amen and and i i'm just going to share with you today what i feel in the holy ghost okay and and and and when the lord saved me and i got called to preach i i had nobody helping me preach or or finding me places to preach the only thing i could think of i had to preach on the street i had to preach it in people's homes had to preach on the sidewalk and and i got started like that let me tell you something there's more to being a preacher than standing in this pulpit we've got too many young men that want the pulpit ministry but they don't want the work part of the ministry okay amen but the second the second dimension that revival was the healing the miracle and and 5 000 got the holy ghost because of that one miracle can i have it amen the third dimension of revival came about as a judgment time the establishing of authority in the ministry ananias and sapphira fell dead because peter put his finger on them and said
that was not lied unto men but lied unto god and god was simply justifying the authority of the man of god if you vote on your preacher every year you are not the church i told our people when you voted me in that ended your voting you're going to live with me or die with me praise god but ain't no deacon board or demon board going to run me off and i told our people i said now here's how you get rid of the preacher in wichita you get a petition that says pastor cornwell is to be removed from the pulpit you get 51 percent of the voting disciples or voting members to sign the petition and you led on the pulpit and i'm out of here praise god but when you get rid of me for preaching the gospel and preaching against your sin now if i commit adultery get rid of me if i turn into a queer get rid of me but if you want to get rid of me because i'm preaching straight narrow amen i'm gonna i'm gonna buy that service station next door and i'm gonna buy the biggest jbl speakers you've ever seen and i'm gonna stand on top of that building and i'm gonna scale the paint off this building and every time you walk in this room or this building you're gonna face the wrath of the preacher praise god you can't preach scared folks you can't preach afraid that you're going to run somebody off the same gospel that brings people in will separate the sinner but i have an amen and and we need some ananiasis in the fire us to fall dead and from this pulpit would anybody like to volunteer to be the first one here today amen we need the fear of god we need the establishment of authority and the reason we need authority in the man of god is because the language of authority is the only language your enemy understands you cannot patty cake around with the devil you have to use authority on the devil can i have it amen okay and then the
fourth dimension of revival was the dimension of the angel i'm sorry the the persecution dimension and that's where god brought persecution through stephen and it distracted the church while god was saving another people the other people would never have been saved if the church had not been distracted by something if you're going through a time of persecution or tribulation and you're continuously going through it it might be that god is distracting you that he might do a work over here and and you're not going to stop the persecution until you get in line with jesus and what he wants to do we don't choose the people that god saves he chooses the people there was a time when we had a a black revival in our church and and and during that black revival we had people that did not want black people in our church and and i watched god send persecution and tribulation and trials to them and they got so distracted that we played a bunch of black folks through in our church while they were being distracted and now the hispanic people are praying through and we got people that don't want spanish people in our church and i'm seeing the same thing happen and we're we're having an outstanding outpouring of the holy ghost among our hispanic people and we started a hispanic church within our church this this year i think in january of this year we have already had over 200 people in hispanic church because we're having a revival among the spanish people and and and then we started having an asian revival we started praying a lot of filipino people through and it's just i love filipino people my god can they cook amen i love mexicans because enchiladas and tacos and burritos and when they put on a lunch and my god you just want to love them hallelujah i love blackout peas and cornbread and black folk can they can spread that soul food out honey hallelujah and when you have a great mixture of whoever god is trying to save then you can say i'm the church of the living god he is our father praise god and i have an amen and so they had a persecution revival and then on wednesday night i stopped with the fifth dimension of revival and i talked about the the intervention of the angel in revival now one time before we find the angel in the book of acts where they were being harassed and they were put in prison for a short time and an angel came and released them from prison but he did not interfere with revival in in acts chapter 10 with cornelius cornelius was saved as a direct intervention of the angel of god that came to him and came to simon peter now i meant to tell you wednesday night and i hope that when i say this you'll forget it praise god but i believe in asking god to send the angel that went to cornelius house and send the angel that went to simon peter's house and lord come and abide in our city and help us find that new oikos that new household that needs to be saved that desires to be saved and bring the preacher and the center together can i have it amen i don't need the angel with me every day all time i just need the angel to bring that one family in that's going to open the doors to another nation can i have it amen i know my physical abilities and i know my physical limitations i cannot knock on every door in wichita i cannot speak to everybody in wichita but out there there is somebody that is hungry in birmingham i guarantee you there's more families than you can possibly shake a stick at that's hungry for god and they're going to go join a baptist church they're going to join churches of christ they're going to join the methodist church they're going to join catholic churches they're going to go through catechism they're going to go to the bible today with jehovah witness and they're not joining churches out of just because that's what they want to do something is moving them and they are searching for god can i have it amen and now i want to talk about the sixth dimension of revival now this is very important
the lord said in matthew 28 and luke 24 in john chapter 1 in mark chapter 1 go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature that was the last commission of our lord jesus christ go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature but in acts 16 we find a contradiction to the commandment of god the lord forbid them to go into asia and to preach the gospel amen i understand why boards do it and i understand why men of authority do it a young man come before the district board and says i want to go into such-and-such town and i want to start a church and the wise old men of the board they look down their nose they put on their reading spectacles and they look him over praise god and and they say well son we think you just ought to wait our or they say no and and so that young man goes and said bless god that disney board didn't know what they're talking about i'm gonna go anyway and then throw the license in and they go and start a church and they end up shipwreck i thank god for district boards i thank god for men of wisdom can i have an amen now whether they do that in a right attitude or wrong attitude is not for me to decide but let me say this god will forbid you to preach the gospel in any city until you have a vision of that city i'm sweating and i haven't even moved from the microphone yet can i have it amen now i was preaching a revival in stockton california and it was right after brother kenneth haney went to stockton and it was the first breakthrough that brother haney had when he went to stockton california and we had called prayer meetings and was having an all-night prayer meeting chains of prayer and i had taken the two to 4 a.m shift because that was the one that was hardest to get people to to volunteer for and in that prayer room and in kenneth hagin's church in this old in his old building the lord i had a vision now at that time i was just young and did not realize the extent of that vision but the lord showed me three things he said first of all he said you're gonna go to your home town you're going to go to your home district louisiana and you're going to preach at the louisiana camp now i don't know if you don't think about louisiana camp they don't let novices preach at louisiana camp i mean the average joe on the street is not going to be invited to preach at the louisiana camp and i'm just a very young unknown unnamed preacher and the lord said you're going to go to louisiana and you're going to preach at the louisiana camp now you have to understand for a louisiana boy to preach at the louisiana camp is is a dream come true i mean that gives you bragging rights that gives you an edge on everybody else and and then i discounted that and the second thing the lord said i'm gonna send you back to your home church and you're gonna have a revival and a breakthrough and i am gonna set that church on high and i'm going to pour out my spirit and they're going to have a great revival in your home church now i like that part and then the third thing the holy ghost said to me he said i am going to send you to a city of 300 000 and there you will find your life's work and there i will pour out my spirit and i will bless you and i will be with you and and and you shall raise up a church in that city i had an envelope where i had a bill that i could not pay one of those windowed envelopes where you get to duns and i i was trying to raise enough money to pay that bill and i had not got enough money yet and so i pulled out that envelope and i wrote down those three things that god showed me and then the lord said this is what i want you to preach when you go to louisiana camp so i wrote the sermon down on that envelope in that prayer room at two o'clock that morning and and so i put it in my coat pocket and i kept that envelope every time i'd changed suits which was not very often i'd take the envelope and i'd put it in that another coat pocket and and i kept that envelope in that coat pocket for a long time praise god and so i was preaching in california i had a lot of good revivals and i i had bought my mother-in-law a little car and i said i got to take it to my mother-in-law and i i we drove from california back to louisiana and i got to louisiana and my father said i want you to go fishing with me now when somebody said let's go fishing that's like saying sick them to a dog i hadn't fished in years and years and and i said okay and and the devil made all the fish start biting and i mean the fish started biting and i forgot about camp meeting i forgot about going to church i pulled my suit off i put my blue jeans and hush puppies on and i went fishing every day and and every day the fish would bite better and better and and i got pictures of those fish that we caught and my dad and and it was just a glorious time with my father and on wednesday on thursday night we come in from fishing thursday afternoon i said oh i said i think i'm gonna go to camp and i think i'll just ride over to louisiana camp and i put my suit on and that envelope was in my pocket and i got over to louisiana camp sitting on the back and a pressberg came up to me he said brother cornwell when did you get the camp meeting i said i just got here tonight he said we want you to preach tomorrow evening on july the 4th in the youth service at 6 30. and i thought my god i you know preach on monday or tuesday but to preach on july the 4th at the louisiana camp that's almost a miracle and and so i said okay i'll be here he said beat us behind the stage and so i i left and went home that night my dad was wondering if i want to go fishing i said nope i'm preaching at the louisiana camp tonight my dad said oh son why don't you shut up you're not preaching losing a camp and my wife said you're not preaching at louisiana camp and my mother was the only one that believed me she went and bought a tape recorder praise god and she said i'm going with i'm going to take my son preaching if it had been back in the video days she'd had 14 cameras there and so i drove over to camp on friday night july the 4th and i was supposed to meet behind the stage and went back there and and a president said well you need sonny boy i said i'm supposed to preach tonight in the youth service said no said we don't need you i said well the president told me he said well he's not gonna be here tonight and i'm gonna take his place and i got my two preachers gonna preach now if i told you who the two preachers were you would really think i was ignorant but it was two of the biggest named evangelists in pentecost at the time both of them had new cadillacs i was driving an oil leaking ford and i said so you don't need me to preach they said no we don't need you to preach and so i said okay and so i walked out and i walked down that aisle long aisle to the back where my mother and my wife were sitting and she said what are you doing here i said well i'm not preaching listening to him i told you so and my mother said you're not preaching and i brought this tape recorder and i was going to record you and you're not i said mom i'm not preaching they got somebody else oh it just my wife said i told you i knew you wasn't gonna my mother was so heartbroken and i was so depressed and i pulled out that envelope and i looked at it and it said i was gonna preach at the louisiana camp and i said well i guess i had too many spaghetti meatballs the night before it didn't really happen and so i sit there and i waited and and during the youth service and they had the song service and and the president kept looking around and looking around and i never did see no preacher get on the platform did you know that those two preachers coming from different directions and new cadillac both of them had blowouts on their tires get in my way honey and gotta blow your tire out what's the odds of two cadillacs that are virtually new driven by two events and they're blowing out going to the same meeting and as the last singer was singing the prestor got off the platform and cooked his head and come back back to where i was sitting and said brother cornwell would you come up here and preach our evanders didn't show up i said i'd be glad to i wished i'd have been older and wiser i said look jack preach yourself and i preached my little sermon nobody will ever remember the sermon nobody will ever remember me preaching but i do and when i walked out of the service that night after the main service my my pastor met me he said brother cornwell said would you preach me a revival i pulled out that envelope i said i'd be glad to preach your revival he said but you don't understand we just built a new building we are broke we can't pay you and on top of that we don't even have a parking lot and we put in 18 inches of field dirt and it's been raining and it's muddy if he said my people are backsliding and i'm losing the control he said i i needed i said look i said right here i said i was going to go to ferrity and preach a revival in the home church and god was going to pour out the holy ghost i said i tell you what i'll do i'll preach a revival free of charge i said i won't charge you anything you won't even have to take up an offering i'll do everything i can but i said god told me i was going to come and preach you a revival and we preached a revival for 10 weeks it rang 35 out of the 70 days that we were there we had to build a ramp from the street to the building and we had foot washing every night to get the mud off of people's feet when it came in the building and people were swearing we can't have revival that was fussing and fighting and bellyaching praise god but i had a little note on my envelope that said god was going to give me an outpouring of the holy ghost and at the end of the fifth week the pastor was getting ready to close and i said lord all i can do is say it's written on the envelope god you've got to have to fulfill what you're saying and on sunday night when he was getting ready to close revival we had a breakthrough praise god and we had about 20 people get the holy ghost that night unexpectedly and we went on and we had almost 200 people receive the holy ghost in the next five weeks and god poured out the holy ghost can i have it amen let me tell you you cannot discount the fact that you need a vision of what god is going to do a vision doesn't just come to a seasoned preacher a vision comes to whoever god wants to give that vision to
and then the third thing i was going to a city of three hundred thousand and he didn't tell me what city i was going to he just told me i was going i had it written on the envelope right there praise god and and so i preached a revival at faraday i went to lake charles i preached another revival and then i went to baytown texas and i preached another revival and i was having a mighty outpouring of the holy ghost and baytown the best revival they had ever had in the history of that church and and the pastor from lake charles called me and wanted to see me and so i drove to lake charles and i told my wife i said this is what it's going to tell us and he spoke exact words i said he said i want you to pass to this church and so i i i have no idea why but i said okay i'll pastor the church i lost my burden to evangelize i couldn't get up a a a enough spirit to evangelize anymore i took the church and i looked on the outskirts of wichita of lake charles it was only 56 000 people and i said god that's not what the envelope told me and god said i told you i want you to pass this church and so i started pastoring little did i realize that the pastor in wichita kansas had resigned and then he took the church back and god knew that two years later he was going to resign again and god put me on the shelf in lake charles for two years to prepare me for wichita kansas and while we was in lake charles we had revival we went from 80 people to running 355 in less than two years and then i got run off now let me talk to you about being run off i had a pastor call me one day and and and and he was so upset because he had gotten run off from a church i said would you shut up i said better preachers and you have been run off before sometimes getting run off is the best thing could happen to you and so when i got run off from lake charles i received a phone call from wichita kansas and i drove to wichita kansas and when i got outside the city limits of wichita kansas there's a sign that says wichita kansas 300 000. praise god you see it's very important before before you have revival in your town you've got to conquer that city in your mind you cannot pastor in your city scared to death okay i'm hoping other preachers are here this sermon you cannot pastor in your city wondering if god's going to bless you can i have it amen you cannot go to a city and say well i'm going gonna just pick a city and this is one i'll just i think i'll go there somewhere in your heart god has got to send you to that city and you've got to get a clear vision of you reaching that city before you're going to have revival yes god said go into all the world but he forbid paul from going there until he could give him a vision can i have it amen the scripture says where there is no vision the people will perish we have to have a vision of our area can i have an amen and so when i went to when i went to wichita you have to understand i've just been run off from lake charles i'm broke i have lost my home i have lost my automobile all i have left is a toyota with 170 000 miles on it the paint's peeling the fenders are caved in and that's how i went to wichita kansas when i get to wichita kansas i find out that the church has just gone through its third split in six months now it's all right to have one split but to have three splits in six months is a different story now we can we can major on the splits or we can major on our vision we can major on our problems or we can major on the fact that god can overcome everything hello praise god you can major on what you don't have or you can measure on what god can do can i lord have mercy praise god praise god praise god i feel the holy ghost i want to help a pastor if i can today it's very important to understand that the reason you're in that church is because nobody else wanted it if your church was a soul-winning church then i never elected you the previous pastor would never have resigned and so when i got there i realized that that that they was hurting as bad as i was hurting i'd been kicked out of of lake charles and and now they have gone through three splits and and and all the money people are gone everybody that's anybody's gone all the leadership is gone all the deacon board is gone the the the former pastor appointed a deacon board and appointed a new bus director and appointed disappointed and these were people that had never been in any kind of position in the church they were hurting we were broke amen and so what do you do all i could do was preach what god showed me he i took out that envelope and i said god told me i was going to a city of 300 thousand and i held the envelope up and i said god said i was going to have an outpouring of the holy ghost and i said if you're not ready to run a thousand then you need to walk out now or you need to fire me now because this church is going to run a thousand people that's easy to say when you're already running 900 but you ought to say it at the end of the third split you ought to say it when you've just lost your home y'all understand when you just lost your automobile praise god god majors in impossibilities can i have a name if you can see how it can be done it won't be god if you can do it it won't be god you got to face impossibilities before god is going to take over your situation praise god now we was trying to have revival and and and it was just it was a rough go so we was having i started calling prayer means when all else fails start praying amen and and i would go to church and i'd lay that envelope out before god and i said lord this is what you told me i preached to the louisiana camp and you said when i preached louisiana camp it's going to be a sign i was going to preach in my home church i preached in my home church and you poured out the holy ghost and now that church is one of the best churches in louisiana and you said that was going to come to pass that the third thing is going to come to pass i said now i'm involved in the third thing i said i don't know how you're going to do it praise god i need your help and it was in a prayer meeting in a dark church without windows and it was real dark that i saw my second vision and in that vision i saw the mailman come up to our door and put mail on our door i saw the gas man come up and and and kneel down beside our gas meter and read our gas meter i saw a newspaper boy in a little volkswagen automobile come up and flip the paper over the car and it landed on my parking lot and and and i saw the water man coming and taking a little a hook and pull up the meter cover and read my water meter and i said god what are you trying to tell me and the holy ghost spoke to me in that vision says you're going to reach people one at a time if the mailman has to go to one door at a time and the gas man's got to go to one door at a time can i have it amen and if they can go to your door every day can i have it amen if the gas man can reach your meter every month if the paper bar can send a paper to your door every month then you can start reaching every door in this city one door at a time and when god gave me the vision of how it was going to be done it was katie bar the door praise god you got to have a vision and god's got to give you the conquering of that city before you ever conquered that city praise god when i had that vision i knew wichita kansas belonged to me praise god somebody said amen if you're you can't sit around and worry and fret yourself to death what you need to do you know that god called you to preach you know that god's called you to be a saint you know he's called you to be a soul winner you know he's called you to be a bible study teacher you know god has called you or you wouldn't be sitting here this morning praise god you know i said you already know that the lord is with you you've already felt enough holy ghost in this meeting to know that god is with you what more does god have to do to show us that he's called you that he's with you amen i mean it only takes one holy ghost bump for me to shout it he don't have to send chills up and down my spine and then send them back and forth just i just need one goose pimple on the side of my neck i'm in it but hallelujah what we're doing is we're running to and fro and going so fast that we don't stop long enough and pray until god gives us the vision of what he wants to do in our city can i have it amen when paul had the vision of the man over in macedonia saying would you come over and help us paul immediately endeavored to go into macedonia being assured that god was sending him praise god and when you have a vision of what god can do there's not enough devils in hell or out of hell to stop you now i'm going to address one thing that
i think is very important for alabama and and and you can be seated i i'm going to cover this and i'm going to stop i've been coming to alabama for how many years we've been having ark 11 years so i have minus the appendicitis attack and the next year she was mad at me i've been coming nine years okay and you got brother godwin brother god will stand up just a minute this guy's really a nice guy y'all get y'all need to get to know him he is really he's not near as mean as he sounds he's a nice guy brother foster did you hear brother foster preach while ago my lord help him brother sam memory's gone preach tonight praise god and y'all have had great men of god feel this bullpen i have yet to see a humble man in this pulpit brother god when he can act humble all he wants to but they're not a a humility bone in his body oh yes we get up here and we try to fake our humility i am so glad to be here this week i'm not worthy to be here and i don't know if i'm gonna be able to preach or not all we're doing is satisfying your jealousies we're trying to be humble so you won't turn us off and we mistake arrogancy for confidence can i have it amen the difference between a successful man and an unsexual man is that he has had a vision of what god can do with him and he uses authority can i have it amen and because he's always fighting devils and winning victories that's all he knows and that's what he preaches now i'm going to just be honest with you i don't have a humble bone in my body i told you the other day i i want to be a christian i'm trying to be a christian but i'm going to still be apostolic till i get to be a christian i'm hoping i get to be a christian before i die and i hope that i i have piousness and and humility and and all that other stuff praise god that we really don't like because it doesn't help us and he praise god but the truth of the matter is the only difference between a person that that is humbling and hanging their head down and a person that holds their head up is we have a clear vision that god is going to work through us and with us i have no business having this kind of confidence i wasn't raised in pentecost my pa my father was not a pastor my mother was not in the church i come out of a heathen home i have no business being where i am in the united pentecostal church but when god gives me a vision i'm sorry i gotta stand up and say this is what god wants us to do i'm sorry i have built the kind of church in wichita that i have built i'm sorry i feel so good about myself i'm sorry that god is blessing and you almost have to apologize for the blessings of god that are coming to your life and that's not the will of god we don't need to apologize to the devil we need to stand up and say look god has more for us god has more for you praise god my god i feel the holy ghost and if you're waiting around until i get old enough to resign so you can try out for my church you might as well forget it honey because i am not i haven't even began to fight yet praise god listen pastor because you pastored your church for a long time god is not through with you yet you're just now in a position that god can use you you have more wisdom you have more knowledge you have less strength but you have more authority sometimes we need a strong wife you may see this when i finished my building i was on my way home after sunday night after dedication i was depressed as a man could be i'd worked for 20 months non-stop six days a week we spent almost a million dollars more than we was authorized to spend don't know how we'd done it but we did it anyway i just kept borrowing money and the bank just kept giving me money and i didn't know we hadn't voted on it and he didn't know we hadn't voted on it and i just kept collecting money and spending money praise god right and left and when we got through the building it was going to take every penny of the tithe and offerings coming in just to pay the note that's scary i mean you ain't got enough left to live on so i told my wife was twill up the red light very quiet in the car i looked over at that little sweetheart i said honey wednesday night i'm gonna resign god's finished with me and my wife looked at me and that sweet little lamb became the lion of the tribe of judah and she said shut your mouth we are not resigning yes obey them to have a rule over you yes ma'am so we all go through depression we all go through trouble we all go through trial but it's very important that we have a vision of revival how do you have that vision you stay on your knees and you pray by yourself and you beg god lord show me what you want to do lord god i got i got to know that you're with me praise god and when god gives you the assurance and he gives you the vision there are enough devils in or out of hell to stop that revival can i have it amen so the first thing i done after i saw that vision that day in church is i started bus ministry now you don't want to hear this but i i have serious doubts about whether you have a revival not unless you have a bus in your parking lot oh i want a family revival you know what you you know what you're saying when you say i want a family all you want is to collect tithe without problems you're never going to have revival until you help people that can't help you back all right you didn't hear what i said you're never going to have revival until you help people that cannot help you back well i can't get sunday's good things i can't i tell you what you you haul in about a thousand kids in your church and you'll get sunday school teachers they'll be glad to take them out of the auditorium to some sunday school class and keep them for an hour while the arrest of people out of church amen you you may have to flush have the plumber out every monday morning don't stop the commodes amen you may have to redecorate your bathrooms about once every three months because they don't tore the wallpaper off and kick the the locks off the stall doors and and and pull up the carpet and poured kool-aid on the on the floors and and oh i don't got a problem i thought y'all said y'all wanted revival revival is people and people are problems and problems are headaches and headaches are nervous breakdowns okay let's all stand up close we haven't hallelujah when i was just a kid a preacher i went to alexandria and i never forget they had 849 in sunday school that morning and i listened to brother man can preach and i'm sitting there as a young preacher and i thought i i don't know why that old foggy don't resign let somebody like me take over i mean you have to understand i had an ego back then big as a watermelon and i i just had this idea that the larger your church gets the more comfortable things become and when i was on may street our electorate bill was three hundred dollars a month and our insurance was six hundred dollars a year and our sunday's cool literature was very small and and we could we could operate our entire church on about a thousand dollars a month and then we built our new building and and we could put 23 of the old buildings in this new building and and then all of a sudden the utilities went from three hundred dollars a month to six thousand dollars a month and the note went from two hundred and eighty dollars a month to twenty six thousand dollars a month and the insurance went from six hundred dollars a year to thirty seven thousand dollars a year over three thousand dollars a month and the and the bus ministry instead of costing us fifteen dollars a week all of a sudden we found ourselves paying about fifty thousand dollars a year for bus ministry a thousand dollars a week and i found myself hoping when i started running a thousand i started saying god is there a church running 19 somewhere i could pastor you see problems grow as your church grows and unless you have a vision you'll never get beyond that can i have it amen your vision may cause you to lose your home your vision may cause you to lose your car can i have an amen okay we don't talk about that and without a vision you won't go forward how many wants revival how many wants god to show you what he can do everybody said amen god bless you i love you thank you for letting me be at the alabama revival conference if i come back next year i'm going to keep on keeping on the same thing god bless you
Scripture references as spoken: Deuteronomy 28:1-10; Acts 16:1-10; Acts 10.