Prayer Changes the Outcome

Now I’m going to turn back to my theme and I believe we’ll start again at you know where: Matthew 5:13, and most of you know by now how to read this verse. Without changing the meaning, we’re making it personal. We say we in stead of ye, and we are instead of it is. Matthew 5:13. When I raise my hand we’ll read together.

“We are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.”

You’ll have to forgive me, I read it wrong. We are thenceforth good for nothing. That means me just as much as it means anybody else here this afternoon. I’ve pointed out to you that one main reason why the church is the decisive factor in world affairs is that we can participate in a spiritual conflict with the spiritual forces that decide the destiny of men and nations, and that there is no other agency on earth that can participate in this spiritual conflict. Paul speaks of this conflict in Ephesians 6:12:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of the present darkness, against spirits of lawlessness or rebellion in high or heavenly places.”

And God has provided us with the means of victory. The basis of all victory is found in Colossians 2:15:

“God through Christ hath spoiled principalities and powers, making a show of them, triumphing over them openly in the cross.”

At the cross Jesus Christ has already ministered total defeat to all these spiritual enemies, and all that you and I are asked to do as His representatives in His name is to apply His victory and make it effective. The working out of the victory which Christ has won is left to you and me as His church, the members of His body, His personal representatives. And because we have a spiritual warfare God has provided us with spiritual weapons: 2 Corinthians 10:4:

“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

Then I mentioned to you what I consider to be some of the major spiritual weapons. Let me just mention them again briefly: prayer, fasting, praise, testimony, preaching and the supernatural gifts of the Spirit.

Now yesterday afternoon we dealt with the theme of prayer. We began with Matthew the 18th chapter, verses 18, 19 and 20, what I call ‘the secret place of all power,’ where it says:

“Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.”

This is the place of all power. Nothing is omitted, no need is left out. If you are in that place you can achieve anything you need to achieve. God’s omnipotence is made available to you. You know what Jesus said:

“With God all things are possible. [But He said something else too.] All things are possible to him that believeth.”

In other words, through your faith God’s omnipotence is made available to you. But I pointed out to you that this secret place of all power has got a great big fence around it, and that fence is right relationships. You do not belong in here, you have no place here, you have no access to this power unless you have carefully cultivated it and maintained right relationships with every other person so far as lies within your power. If you are wrong with other people, if you have an attitude of resentment or bitterness or unforgiveness, you do not qualify for the administration of this power.

Then I pointed out to you that in 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 1 through 4, we are given a certain specific pattern and program of prayer, and I believe that I will read those verses again this afternoon,

because my aim is not so much to preach a brilliant message as to impart knowledge which will abide. When I was training teachers somebody gave me this little axiom, and it’s a pretty good one. Remember nothing has been taught until something has been learnt. You Sunday school teachers, you take that back with you. The measure of what you’ve taught is not what you’ve gone through out of your notes, your outline. The measure of what you’ve taught is what’s left in your pupils, and there may be a very wide gap between the two. The measure of what I’ve taught is not the outline I’ve gone through, it’s what you take away with you from this camp, and I’m prepared to accept that judgment.

“First Timothy 2, verses 1, 2, 3, and 4:
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men:
The first thing in the corporate life of the church is prayer. First of all, prayer.”

What’s the first item on the prayer list? Verse 2: ‘for kings and for all that are in authority.’ What are we to pray for? ‘Good government, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.’

Is this the will of God? Yes, it is. ‘For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.’ Why does God approve good government? Because ‘He will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’

In other words, He wants that situation and that state of affairs in which it is as easy as it can be to bring the truth of the gospel to all men. And good government promotes the work of preaching the gospel. Now the Scripture tells us in 1 John 5, verses 14 and 15, that if we pray for anything that we know to be in the will of God, we know that we have the thing that we prayed for. I’m going to read those verses again. First John 5:14 and 15:

“And this is the confidence that we have in him, [The word confidence is a very strong word.] This is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”

If we’re asking according to the will of God, we know that God hears us, and if we know that God hears us we know that we have the petition that we desire.

Now good government is explicitly stated to be the will of God, therefore if we pray for good government, we know that God hears us. And if we know that God hears us, we know that we have the petition that we desired of God. So if we don’t have good government, what is the reason? We haven’t prayed, and that is the reason. And if we fail to pray, we are salt that has lost its savor. We are not any longer doing our job in the earth.

This is brought out again in 2 Chronicles chapter 7 and verse 14, where God gives this specific promise to the people on whom His name is called:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

The last phrase is God’s promise that He will heal our land. If our land is not healed, the reason is that we have not met the conditions which God has imposed. And these are the conditions, that His people will do four things: humble themselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from their wicked ways. It is not the sin of the unconverted or the unchurched. It is the sin of God’s people that holds back revival and cleansing for a land. ‘The time has come,’ the Scripture says, ‘that the judgment must begin at the house of God.’ That’s where God’s judgment always begins. If God’s people will submit to judgment, then the ways open for God’s blessing to flow out to the world. The one great statement that Evan Roberts at the Welsh revival made was this, ‘Bend the church and bow the world.’ And it’s still true today. Wherever God can bend His church, He has no problem in bowing the world. The problem is the church. It always has been.

Now I promised this afternoon that I would take a little while to give you specific examples of prayers in matters of matters and international affairs which I have prayed and seen specifically answered. Now I’m afraid that some of you may think, as I stand here and repeat these facts, that I am boasting, but I assure you that I am not. When we come to a question like this we are left with two possibilities, and only two. Either God does answer prayer or He doesn’t. Now if God does answer prayer, you’re silly not to pray, and if God doesn’t answer prayer, you’re silly to pray, and it’s up to you to decide which you believe. But as for me and my house, we believe that God answers prayer, and when we pray for a thing specifically in the name of Jesus and it happens, we accept that as the answer to our prayer with thankfulness.

The first example that I’m going to give you relates to the Second World War. When I was a British soldier, newly saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit in the North African desert, I was part of what was call the Western Desert Force of the British Army, which later became the well-known Eighth Army. At that time I was absolutely appalled by the behavior and the standards of the British officers. They were selfish, undisciplined, irresponsible, the men had no confidence in them and would not willingly work with them. And you know the result? Any army divided against itself cannot stand, and I had the doubtful privilege of taking part in the longest retreat ever recorded in the history of the British Army from a place called El Agheila in Libya (or Tripoli) to El Alamein which is approximately fifteen hundred miles of consistent retreat.

Now I saw the situation and I longed to pray and I longed for victory, and yet I thought to myself, How could I expect God to give victory with leadership like this? And so there came into my mind to pray this prayer, and I want you to listen carefully because it’s just as applicable today. ‘Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.’ I want to say that again: ‘Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them.’

Now, I’ll tell you how God answered my prayer. The British government decided to change the command of the Eighth Army. They relieved the commander and they chose another man. A man whose name was Gott, an officer up at the front line, and he was flown back to the base at Cairo to take command. As his plane landed, it overturned. He was thrown out and broke his neck, and suddenly the British government had to find a commander for this vital field and this vital force. And Winston Churchill, more or less on his own initiative, looking around, picked a comparatively unknown young officer named Montgomery. And so, without anybody’s planning it, contrary to everybody’s expectation, Montgomery was suddenly promoted to command the Eighth Army.

Now I want to tell you one thing about Montgomery. He is a born-again Christian. His father was a bishop of the Church of England and Secretary of the Society for Propagating the Gospel. No one knew much about Montgomery and a little later after that, first of all, he tightened up the discipline. He brought the officers into line, he changed the morale and the esprit of the entire force, and then the decisive battle of El Alamein was fought, which was the first real major victory for the Allies in the entire course of the war. And Winston Church called it the End of the Beginning. Certainly it was a major turning point.

The day after the Battle of El Alamein had been fought, I was up in the western desert in a group of soldiers around a truck, and on the tailboard of the truck was a little radio. Out of this radio came the words of a news commentator describing the preparations that had gone before the actual fighting of the Battle of El Alamein. And this news commentator described how General Montgomery, the commander of the Allied forces, publicly said before his men and his officers, ‘Let us ask the Lord, mighty in battle to give us the victory.’ And when I heard those words coming out of that radio it was as if heaven’s electricity went through my body from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, and it was as if God said, That’s the answer to your prayer. That’s one example.

Later on, in the year 1947 and -48, my wife and I were in Jewish Jerusalem when the State of Israel came into being on the 15th of May, 1948. Jewish Jerusalem was besieged by five Arab armies. The entire little State of Israel on the day that it came into being had war declared on it by the five surrounding Arab nations, and about forty million Arabs, well-armed, were facing about two million Jews, prepared to push them into the sea and annihilate them.

Now my wife had been almost twenty years, at that time, in Jerusalem. She’d been through many of the previous riots, commotions and conflicts, and she’d seen how previously the Jews had been totally unprepared to defend themselves. She had seen the Jews in previous riots tied bread knives onto the staves of brooms and tried to defend themselves. She’d seen little Jewish babies taken and the arms torn off their bodies and thrown down from the roofs of buildings. And as a matter of fact, shortly before the state of Israel came into being, we were in that particular building in the center of Jerusalem, and our youngest little girl at the time, Elizabeth who was aged four, came to me one day came to me one day and she said, ‘Daddy, Daddy. There’s a lot of dead men in the street.’ And I went to the window and this is what I saw: a patrol of volunteer young Jewish people, boys and girls (they weren’t really men and women) had been ambushed somewhere outside Jerusalem by a group of Arabs who had killed them and cut them up into small pieces. And when I say small pieces, I mean smaller than your hand. And a British truck had gone out, gathered up these bodies, brought them into the center of Jerusalem just outside our house and were delivering them to a Jewish ambulance to take them away for burial. And as a matter of fact, as I looked out of the window I saw the rather unpleasant sight of somebody with a piece of a gasoline can scraping a little bit of human body off the pavement of the street and dumping it in the back of an ambulance. So that we had good first-hand evidence of what to expect if the Arabs should prevail at that time in their attempt to capture Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, without being melodramatic, I can state as an actual fact that every Jewish mother was recommended to keep a loaded revolver with one bullet for each of her daughters and one more for herself, and to use it if the city was taken.

Now in the midst of this my wife and I turned to God in prayer. We were praying together and with the background of what I’ve told you (I want to avoid any charge of being nationalistic), I heard my wife pray this prayer. ‘Lord, paralyze the Arabs.’ Then after that the fighting developed into open war, and the Haganah, the Jewish volunteer army, asked our permission to set up an outpost in our back yard, and I knew they’d set it up whether we said yes or no, so I politely said yes. And there they are, they were. They settled in and we gradually got acquainted with these young Jewish men. When the first cease fire was imposed by the United Nations, after about two months of fighting, or a little less, these young men had got to know us and they’d come into our living room and talk with us. And they had been right through the fighting, right in the center of it.

And one day they were talking in our living room and they said, ‘You know, it is most remarkable. We go into a building or some other place, the Arabs far outnumber us. They’re far better armed, and yet they seem unable to do anything. They are just as if they were paralyzed.’ And that young man used in our living room the very word that my wife had prayed. You see how good God is? Not merely does He answer our prayer, but He can let us know that He’s answered our prayer in the most authentic up-to-date way.

Now I’m going to go on a little bit to the 1950s when we had a mission in London, England. We were still very much interested and concerned with the Jewish people, and at a certain point we received authentic news from Russia that Stalin was planning a fresh persecution of the Jews in Russia. Now we were not directly involved in this, but we were concerned for God’s people, Israel. There was a little group that used to meet in our mission in prayer, and we knew some other groups up and down the country, Spirit-filled people, that were burdened for Israel. And so we agreed amongst ourselves that on a certain day we would set aside the day for prayer and fasting on behalf of the Jewish people in Israel. We did that, and you know what happened? Within less than two weeks from that day, Stalin was dead. We did not tell God to kill Stalin. You don’t have to tell God what to do, He knows. And you will agree with me that that marked a total change in Russian policy, so that we now speak about the era of ‘de Stalinization.’ It started with the death of Stalin. Why did it start with the death of Stalin? Because we prayed—that’s the reason. I wonder whether you believe that? You don’t seem very sure.

Now I’ll move on to East Africa. We were in East Africa for five years from 1957 through 1961. We were in Kenya. When we went out there it was British East Africa and when we left it was three nations either independent or just about to receive independence. Kenya was just due to receive independence in the next year or two. Now Kenya had been torn asunder by the Mau Mau problem, which I won’t attempt to describe in detail except to say that, in many ways, it was among one of the most fearful and bestial things that you could ever imagine. The Congo had received independence a little previously (to the west of Kenya) and had immediately been plunged into destructive civil war, and many of the Full Gospel missionaries that escaped from the Congo actually came and took refuge in our mission station for quite a while.

Now all the political and social experts were of the opinion that Kenya was going to go the way of the Congo, but worse. Everything there was to promote civil strife and destruction in the Congo was there in Kenya in a more definite state. In the year 1960 my wife and I took part in a conference of young African people, mainly students and some teachers. We were gathered for about a week, two hundred or more young people and a few missionaries and a few African workers. The last day of that conference was a Sunday. The last service was held on Sunday evening and it lasted four hours. Another missionary preached and after that God moved in. The last two hours of that service were not under the control of any human being. They were under the control of the Holy Spirit and believe me He knows how to control things.

During that latter period I was somewhat down in the body of the hall and I had the impression that we had touched God, that His power was now available to us. I’ll tell you the thought that came to me and I don’t want to offend anybody, let me say that I had been associated with the Pentecostal movement for at least twelve years then. But the thought came to me, Now let’s not do as Pentecostal people sometimes do and just squander this power in selfish spiritual self-enjoyment. Let’s use it for the purpose for which God made it available. And the thought came to me out of the Scriptures just as I presented them to you, that the Christians in a land are responsible for the destiny of the land. And here were the pick of some of the young Christian future leaders of Kenya, right there and it was their responsibility to pray for the future of their land.

So wherever I was I arose and made my way to the platform with the intention of challenging those young people to pray for the future of their country. I happened to walk past my wife who had been sitting in another place and she put out her hand for a moment and stopped me. And I said, ‘What is it?’ And she said, ‘Tell them to pray for Kenya.’ And I said, ‘That’s just what I’m going to the platform to do.’ And you see in that way I knew I had the mind of the Lord.

So I got to the platform and I silenced those two hundred young people and I told them in essence what I’ve been telling you about the responsibility of Christians in prayer for the government of their country, and I said, ‘Now, we are in contact with heaven. Now is the time for you Africans to pray for the future of your country.’ And I led them in a prayer and, believe me, they prayed. Something happened. I knew it. Things were changed. Things would never be altogether the same from that hour of prayer.

Beside me on the platform was a young man who had been interpreting for the previous missionary. He was a teacher who had graduated from our college and gone out and started teaching. He was kneeling beside me as we prayed. When we finished he stood up and he said, ‘I would like to tell you what God showed me while we were praying.’ Now somewhere in my documents I have this written out, dated and signed by that young man. And what he said was this, ‘While we were praying I saw a red horse and it was very fierce, and it was coming toward Kenya from the east. There was a very black man sitting on it, and behind it were other horses, also red, and also fierce, coming towards Kenya.’ And I would add a parenthesis, I doubt that young man had ever read the prophet Zechariah. But if you look in Zechariah you’ll find that the picture that the Holy Spirit gave him was absolutely scriptural. Then he said, ‘While we were praying I saw these horses turn around and move away from Kenya up toward the north. And while I was wondering what this meant, God spoke to me and He said this. And I can quote Him word for word, and I’m going to. This is what God told him. Only the supernatural power of the prayer of my people can turn away the troubles that are coming upon Kenya. Now I’m going to say that again. Because if you change Kenya to the United States, you don’t need to change a single other word. Only the supernatural power of the prayer of My people can turn away the troubles that are coming upon Kenya.

Now very briefly I want to tell you in the years that have elapsed everything has happened exactly as God showed that young man it would. The communists, shortly after Kenya gained independence, made a determined, planned attempt to take the country over and they came in from the east. From the island of Madagascar, and the agents that they used had been trained in Cuba, and some of them actually were speaking Spanish, they got into Tanzania, the country south of Kenya, and in a most unexpected way, Jomo Kenyatta, the president of Kenya, stopped them short, turned them out and refused to allow the country to pass under their control. In fact, he took a very strong stand against communism and Russian and Chinese infiltration and dismissed one of his right-hand leaders publicly with ignominy because he had been involved in receiving financial assistance from Red China. And today most commentators would agree that, contrary to all expectations, Kenya is probably about the most orderly and the most successful of all the nearly fifty new nations that have emerged in Africa since World War II.

Some years ago I picked up a sixteen page supplement to the London Times which was entirely devoted to a summary of Kenya since independence, and this was the conclusion that it came to: that Kenya was the most orderly, the most successful, and the most hopeful of all the newly emerging African nations. And just recently I had a letter from some missionary friends of mine who have been in various countries of East Africa, and they said this: ‘The brightest spot is Kenya. It is a center for missionary expansion from outside. The government of Kenya is far more favorable to Christian missionary activity than any of the other governments in the whole of that area.’

Now, why did that happen? Do I need to tell you? Because we prayed. And in the circumstances, if we hadn’t prayed we’d have been very silly, wouldn’t we. And shall I tell you something? In your circumstances if you don’t pray you’ll be very silly.

Now I’m going to give you a couple more examples. One is almost comical. I hope you’ll believe it. I mean, I can understand maybe if you were listening, if I were listening to you I’d find it hard to believe. But not many months ago— Let me mention this, every one of these prayers that I’ve referred to except the first one which I prayed as a soldier in the British Army, my wife and I prayed together in harmony. ‘If two of you shall agree, it shall be done.’ My wife and I normally pray together every morning and every evening, and I don’t believe any Christian husband and wife should ever allow a day to pass without praying together. And there came into my mind while we were praying—

Let me also add this: as sinners, we have nothing good to give God except what He’s first given us. We have nothing of ourselves. There’s nothing we have that’s worth giving to God. This is equally true in prayer. Most people don’t realize it. You’ve got nothing to pray to God that’s worth praying until God gives it to you. God has to give it to you by the Holy Spirit first; then it’s good to pray. Romans 8:26 and 27:

“We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself helpeth our infirmities for he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, for he maketh intercession according to the will of God.”

Do you understand? We do not know what to pray for as we ought. Left to ourselves without the Holy Spirit we are incapable of praying aright. This is an infirmity which is shared by the entire race. So the only time we can pray effectively is when the Holy Spirit comes to our help and gives us prayer.

So this morning as we were praying, the thought came into my mind about DeGaule. Now I could pass a month without thinking about DeGaule, you know that? And the thought came into my mind, if I’m to say it in a very simple word, that he’s rather a nuisance. And it came to me that he was making a determined effort to bring about devaluation of the dollar, and I couldn’t see that any useful purpose would be served by that. And so almost without thinking I prayed about DeGaule, and I don’t remember the words I said, but, ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘You deal with DeGaule.’ And you know it wasn’t many weeks before France was staggering under one of the most fearful crises that have ever hit that country. And believe me—

Now God didn’t put DeGaule down and the results would have been far worse if He had, but I think you can say He put him in his place. And he has so many problems of his own now that he’s not likely to bother about the dollar being devalued for quite a little while. And I’ll tell you honestly, I’m not jesting, when I read in the newspapers what was happening to France I thought to myself, ‘I’d better be more careful next time how I pray.’

Now I’m going to give you one other example. Some years back it just occurred to me, and I don’t know, you can look at things and not see them until the Holy Spirit shows them to you. You can look at the obvious and not see it until the Holy Spirit illuminates it. But looking at the world it occurred to me one day that a vast block of hundreds of millions of people united under atheistic communism simply could not help but be a hindrance to the purposes of God in the world. Now you may have some fanciful way of explaining that away, but I don’t. To me it is a hindrance, it is a block. It wasn’t produced by God; it was produced by the devil. And I’m not speaking with any nationalistic bias, because I find it easy to love the Russian people, actually, as far as I’m concerned.

So I thought to myself, Well, how do we pray? And there came to me a prayer that David prayed when he was faced with political opposition and persecution. And you’ll find it in Psalm 55 and verse 9, Psalm 55 and verse 9. Now my wife is my witness. Off and on as I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit concerning the entire communist bloc for quite a number of years I’ve been praying this prayer. What I say is something like this, ‘Now, Lord, with regard to those who deliberately and knowingly oppose You and Your Christ and Your Spirit and Your Word and Your people and Your purposes in the earth,’ and by that time I’ve got them pretty well identified. I say, ‘Lord, I’m praying as your servant, David, prayed: Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues.’

You see, I saw that was an inspired prayer, because it goes to the very core of the whole position. If their tongues are divided, if their tongues are turned one against another, they cannot take care of themselves. And I have consistently prayed that, and this is what I have been seeing. First of all, Russia and China split and spent much more of their time abusing and vilifying one another than they did any of the other rest of the world.

Now there has been for quite a while evidence of very strong internal strife inside Red China, and it is very clear that the satellite nations of Eastern Europe are doing the best that they can to break away from Soviet Russia. So I just keep on praying, ‘Lord, thank You for what You’ve done. Destroy and divide their tongues.’ A lot of people are very concerned about what’s happening in Czechoslovakia, and I can understand it, but let’s remember, basically it’s communists fighting communists. We can feel sorry for the Christians, but who knows that the previous government was better than the next one will be. As far as Christians are concerned, we have no special reason that I know of to believe that. The truth is that the enemies of God are fighting amongst themselves because we have been praying. ‘Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongues.’

Now I’m going to go on just a little further. I’m going to open my heart to you. I’m going to tell you certain things I pray about, and far be it from me to suggest that you should pray exactly the way I do, because we are individuals and God uses us as individuals. He doesn’t want anybody to be a carbon pattern or copy of anybody else. But some little while back, and it’s easier for me to say as a Britisher than it may as you as an American. But again it came to my mind that the situation in Vietnam cannot be the will of God. And furthermore, that it cannot be the will of God that the whole of Southeast Asia

should be submerged under bloodshed and strife and atheistic communism. Now if you think that’s the will of God, well pray for it. Some people tell me they think it’s the will of God that they should be sick, and them I’m always surprised that they go to the doctor and ask the doctor to remove God’s blessing. See, they don’t really mean what they say, but they’re not willing to face facts.

All right, if you believe the situation in Southeast Asia is the will of God, ask God to make it worse. And if it’s not the will of God, why don’t you pray about it? At least I feel a responsibility to pray about it, and I’m not an American citizen. This is how I seek to pray.

Let me remind you again that every one of the spiritual weapons that we use is effective only insofar as we realize that we’re using it to administer the victory which Christ has already won over these principalities and powers. So I pray something like this. I don’t have a set pattern of prayer, but I say, ‘Lord, You know about Southeast Asia. You know the principalities and powers in the unseen realm that are ruling and dominating and seeking to destroy and to plunge into bloodshed, and to bring down a total veil of spiritual darkness over those areas. Now God, I do not believe this is Your will. And in the Name of Jesus, on the basis of the finished work of Calvary, because Christ has already defeated these principalities and powers, I stand against them and I demand that they withdraw. I resist you Satan, in the Name of Jesus. And the Bible, which is the Word of God, says, Satan, that if I resist you, you will have to flee from me.’

Now I was so blessed by what Genevieve said when she prayed about that man that had this hemorrhage from the nose and she suddenly realized that she had to do something—stand up and resist. And it wasn’t done in one moment, but she pushed that demonic infirmity back, back, back, back until it toppled over the precipice. And I do not flatter myself that if I pray that prayer once that it’s going to change the whole situation. The Bible says that in the continuous present tense: ‘Resist the devil [continually] and he will flee from you.’ And I believe that you and I have an obligation to continually resist the encroachments of Satan in any part in the world where the Holy Spirit directs our attention to it, and shows us that it is not the will of God. And I intend to go on doing it.

Do you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to ask for some reinforcements, because I don’t believe I’ll

get it done by myself. That’s my feeling. I think that there’s a kind of test case in Southeast Asia. I’m not going to get involved in politics because I’m an ignoramus. I just believe from every point of view it’s a test case, and we cannot afford to accept defeat because the next battle will be fought much closer home both in the material and in the spiritual.

Let me give you now two verses from the Psalms. Psalm 2, verses 6, 7, and 8. I referred to these verses when I spoke about Jesus, our representative, meeting Satan on the cross, defeating him and rising again still as our representative, our risen Head who has become the first begotten of the dead and the Prince or ruler of the kings of the earth. And this is what the Scripture says prophetically. God the Father says, when man has rejected Jesus Christ, cried, ‘Crucify Him,’ condemned Him, sent Him to the cross and had Him put away in the tomb…:

“Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
[And the Son then takes up and says] I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee [that is, from the dead.]
[Now look at the next verse:] Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen [or the Gentiles] for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

On the basis of what Christ did through His death and resurrection, the heathen and the uttermost parts of the earth have become His legally-entitled inheritance. But I do believe that the Scripture does not leave it to Jesus to do all the asking. That it is the Body of Christ, the Church, which is placed under an obligation to ask the Father to give Christ His rightful inheritance in the heathen nations. To apply the victory of Calvary in prayer in such a way that the doors are open for the whole heathen world, the whole Gentile world, the whole un-evangelized world, to hear about Jesus Christ and to have the opportunity to accept Him as Savior and crown Him as Lord.

Then again in Psalm 149 verses 5 through 9, we find another revelation of the power and the responsibility of God’s people in relation to this spiritual conflict of which I am speaking. Psalm 149 and I’m going to read verses 5 through 9:

“Let the saints be joyful in glory:”

And I’ve noticed that the saints always are joyful in glory. Did you notice that? When the glory comes down people get joyful.

“…let them sing aloud upon their beds.
[Now look at the next verse:] Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand:”

Notice two of the spiritual weapons: praise and the two-edged sword of the Word of God. Now what is that to do?

“To execute vengeance upon the heathen, [And you’d better say the nations, because it means all nations other than Israel] and punishments upon the people:
To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;
To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints.”

Do you see that? This is the privilege of all the saints of God through Jesus Christ, by high praises, by prayer, by the sharp two-edged sword of the Word, to execute God’s judgment on the rulers of the darkness of this world, to bind them with chains and with fetters of iron by prayer in such a way that their kingdoms can be spoiled and their captives liberated and taken from them. ‘And this honor have all His saints.’ You’re one of them. You’re entitled to join in it.

“To execute upon them the judgment written:”

Now in the 12th chapter of John, when Jesus went to the cross, on the basis of what He was about to do on the cross you know what He said? ‘Now is the judgment of this world, and now is the prince of this world cast out [how?] through the cross.’ Friends, through the cross this world has been brought to judgment in the sight of God and the power of the prince of this world has been cast out on the basis of what Christ did on our behalf on the cross through His shed blood, His atoning death, and His triumphant resurrection. But He’s gone back and He’s left it to you and me to obtain the inheritance for Him, to apply the victory, to drive the enemy out of their positions.

“Jesus said in Matthew the 16th chapter:
Thou art Peter [petros] and upon this great craggy cliff [petra] I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Most Christians interpret that to mean, ‘Well, here we are beleaguered and besieged inside the city, but maybe if God is good to us the gates will hold out and Satan won’t get in.’ Is that how you understood it? You couldn’t be further from the truth. The picture is totally opposite. When the church is built upon the Rock, Christ Jesus, then the church can go out and storm the gates of hell and the gates of hell cannot keep them out.

One of the great Messianic promises to Abraham and to his seed was this, you’ll find it repeated in the book of Genesis, ‘Thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.’ We are the seed of Abraham through faith in Jesus Christ. We have a legal, scriptural right to storm the gates of hell, to take them and possess them in the name of Jesus. And do you know what? There’s nothing that the devil is more scared of than that the saints of God should find out this fact and start to do it. There’s nothing that he wants to keep from you and me more than this truth, that it’s up to us and in our power to administer the defeat which Christ has already inflicted. And I believe both heaven and hell are waiting for us to do it. What about you? Do you intend to do something about it? Praise the Lord. You sound as if you did.

Now I’ve got about one minute and I want to close with a very personal application to each one of you. I don’t believe that I should preach like this and just leave you feeling enthusiastic, because enthusiasm has a habit of waning. I believe that I should press you to the point of a very real, intimate, personal decision and I’m going to do it right now. I’ve said to you that the most natural two people to agree are husband and wife. And my firm conviction is that this is the most important thing that can happen in America at the present time. I wish I had another ten minutes. I’d like to preach to you on the recovery of the home.

All right, well, I’ll show you one thing. I didn’t mean to say that, but I…. (applause). Do you know the word that the Old Testament ends with in the King James Version? Do you know that last word? Curse. Did you ever know that? God’s last word under the old covenant was a curse.

Thank God for the New Testament; otherwise we’d have been left with a curse. And the last two words of the Old Testament, Malachi chapter 4 verses 5 and 6 say this:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

Did you see the greatest single problem that will vex the earth in the last days? The breakup of the home, and the thing that’s needed to avert the curse is that the heart of the father shall be turned back to the children, and the heart of the children turned back to their fathers. And this is the only thing that can avert the curse, and it’s the only thing that will avert the curse in the United States. It’s the restoration of the home.

Now I’ve preached long about the fathers and the children being reconciled, and I’ve said publicly and I’ll say it again, basically the United States is a nation of men who’ve reneged from their responsibilities. As husbands, fathers and church officers, they’ve left it to the ladies. Shame on them! But what God showed me while I was preaching yesterday is the real focal point of reconciliation is, first of all, between husband and wife, and then the children can be brought back.

Now this is a general principle and I know that there are individual cases in which it could not be applied, but I believe that it’s the heart and core and center of the spiritual need: Restored unity in the Christian home. And I’m therefore going to ask now that those of you who are here as husband and wife, and with the help of God, would like to dedicate yourselves and your home to become a center of effective, united prayer on behalf of your nation, will stand to your feet? Husband and wife. I’m going to take one minute longer and ask those that are united here, husband and wife together, if they’ll walk down to the front and stand in front of this altar.

Now that those of you that are not here with your partner, but you want to make a decision, probably you know some brother or some sister with whom you can unite in prayer, and if that is so and you would like to determine to do that, then I want you to stand up, but not to move out of your place. Is that clear?

You cannot for some reason or other at present cannot commit yourself for uniting in effective prayer with your partner, but you find some other prayer partner, at least one, perhaps two, and as God enables you subject to all your human weaknesses, and God knows how weak we are, you will dedicate yourself from this hour forward to pray in a new effective way for divine intervention in the leadership of this nation and in the nations of the world. Is that understood? Praise God.

I want to tell you something. I was in Dallas just recently at a convention, and I preached on the same theme. It so happened that I reached the climax of my message the night they were holding the Republican Convention in Miami, and I didn’t do it, but one of the brethren said, ‘In the line of what Brother Prince has said, let’s pray for the Republican Convention.’ And I cannot but conclude that God immediately intervened. And, mind you, as I say, I’m not a politician. I have no allegiance to any party. And even what has been happening in Chicago, I must be careful what I say, disastrous though it is, I’m not so sure it isn’t God’s intervention.

I lived in Chicago until just recently. Again I want to be careful, God forbid that I should give any impression of spiritual pride—but I said to the people in the congregation to which I ministered, one thing I’ll tell you for sure something is going to happen to Chicago and not much later.

Now I want to pray for all of you that have made this personal decision here this evening. First of all let us just have a moment of quietness.

‘Now God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come You in behalf of every one of these people who have stood to their feet on the basis of making the decision which I have outlined to them from Your Word. And, God, in the precious name of Jesus, I pray for each one that, from now on, Your blessing shall rest upon them in a new way, because, Lord, they’ve identified themselves by deliberate choice of their will with Your purposes for the world and for the extension of Your kingdom. And, Lord, on this basis I ask You from now on to bless them, to unite them in a new way, to give them a new vision, a new dedication, a new purpose, and to bless every home that’s represented. And where there is heartache and tragedy and division and some are scattered and apparently lost, Lord, I pray now in the name of Jesus for the restoration of these homes and for the restoration of the homes of the United States, in Jesus name, Amen.’

“And all the people said, ‘Amen.’ And ‘Praise the Lord!’ Amen. God bless you.”