If you have never read Leonard Ravenhill’s “Why Revival Tarries” then you are missing out on some good, soul searing hard preaching. He wrote:
I do not marvel so much at the patience of the Lord with the stonyhearted sinners of the day. After all, would we not be patient with a man both blind and deaf? And such are the sinners. But I do marvel at the Lord’s patience with the sleepy, sluggish, selfish Church! A prodigal church in a prodigal world is God’s real problem.
Oh, we bankrupt, blind, boasting believers! We are naked and don’t know it. We are rich (never had we more equipment), but we are poor (never had we less enduement)! We have need of nothing (and yet we lack almost everything the Apostolic church had). Can He stand “in the midst” while we sport unashamedly in our spiritual nakedness?
Oh, we need the fire! Where is the power of the Holy Ghost that slays sinners and fills our altars? Today we seem much more interested in having church air-conditioned than prayer-conditioned. “Our God is a consuming fire.” God and fire are inseparable; so are men and fire. Every single one of us is treading a path of fire — hell-fire for the sinner, judgment-fire for the believer! Because the Church has lost Holy Ghost fire, millions go to hell-fire.
The prophet Moses was called by fire. Elijah called down fire. Elisha made a fire. Micah prophesied fire. John the Baptist cried, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Jesus said, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” If we were as scared to miss fire baptism as we are to miss water baptism, we would have a flaming Church and another Pentecost. The “old nature” may dodge the water baptism, but it is destroyed in the fire baptism, for He shall “burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Until they were fire-purged, the miracle-working disciples who beheld His resurrection glory, were held back from ministering the cross.