"SLEEPING GIANT"

"SLEEPING GIANT"
by Leonard Ravenhill

Solemnly and slowly, with his index finger extended, Napoleon
Bonaparte outlined a great stretch of country on a map of the world.
"There," he growled, "is a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! If he
wakes, he will shake the world." That sleeping giant was China.
Today, Bonaparte's prophecy of some one hundred and fifty years
ago makes sense.

Today Lucifer is probably surveying the church just as Bonaparte
did China. One can almost behold the fear in his eyes as he
thinks of the Church's unmeasured potential and growls, "Let the
Church sleep! If she wakes, she will shake the world." Is not the
Church the sleeping giant of today?

Consider Samson's fall. He didn't get drunk; he didn't commit
murder; he didn't steal. Samson fell simply because he
succumbed to the natural, and fell asleep.

That one small act put him into captivity, made a false god
popular, and scattered the forces of the true and living God.

Alas that today there is more evidence of religious sensation
before our eyes than evidence of spiritual regeneration and
supernatural phenomenon! Not many Christians today can forget
the fact that the devil goeth about as a roaring lion, but we seem
to have lost sight of the fact that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has
defeated the roaring lion of hell, and therefore every anointed
Samson or Gideon or church can also slay the lion of hell. Though
wicked men are doing wickedly, God's promise to us is that "the
people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits"
(Daniel 11:32).

This much is sure:

If we could merit revival by fasting, there would be many
martyred by starving.
If we could organize revival, we would pool our thinking to outwit
the powers of darkness.
If we could buy this elusive revival with the mammon of
unrighteousness, we could get a score of what we call Christian
millionaires to underwrite the thing for us.
If we could blast the devil from this present world, we would
pledge the politicians for an atom bomb.

God pity us that after years of writing, using mountains of paper
and rivers of ink, exhausting flashy terminology about the biggest
revival meetings in history, we are still faced with gross corruption
in every nation, as well as with the most prayerless church age
since Pentecost.

We need the miraculous but we also need Christ-centered
teaching. Our crucified, exalted Christ must have preeminence
over all other slants of truth, for while the Church is languishing,
the world is perishing. "Awake, awake, put on strength, 0 arm of
the Lord..." (Isaiah 51:9)

Let us remember, too, that Samson, who began in the Spirit, fell
into the flesh, and so had a prison term to bring him to his senses.
Finally, by one last mighty miracle, he finished in the Spirit.
Backslider, this is a word for your recovery, for God can restore
the years that the cankerworm and the caterpillar have eaten. He
who is able delights in mercy.

Is this the dying hour of this dispensation? Many say it is. Some
Christians have already hung their harps on the willows, and yet
others seem to delight in speaking of the Church's present lapse
as a proof of divine inspiration. But I myself believe that if the
Church will only obey the conditions, she can have a revival any
time she wants it. The problem of the Church is the problem in the
garden of Gethsemane - sleep! For while men sleep, the enemy,
sows his seed through his cults. Lest men sleep the sleep of
eternal death, Oh arm of the Lord, Oh Church of the living God, awake!

"The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained
by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, were
toiling upward through the night!"

In a brilliant sermon called "Discipleship," G. Cambell Morgan
says, "Jesus Christ could speak to the sorrow-burdened heart of
humanity words so full of mother-love and father-love as to make
men crowd and press round Him. On the other hand, He could
suddenly speak words that flashed and scorched and burned until
men drew back in astonishment." Bracketed in the last group
would be these two commands: "Take my yoke upon you" and
"My disciple, take up your cross and follow me." Both of these
words imply discipline.

After I spoke at a session in the Bible School of Wales, Mrs.
Rees Howells called me for a private talk. We stood on the
veranda of her home overlooking beautiful Swansea Bay I can see
her finger upheld as she said, "Many talk of my husband's buying
this place with a shilling (fourteen cents) in his pocket. What they
forget is that he prayed twelve hours a day for eleven months to
know the mind of God." Brethren, that's discipline!

The storm of the ages is about to break. Let the church call its
crew to a new dedication. Remembering that Christ is at the helm,
and with Christ's Crest as our ensign, let us run into the storm.
After the storm, we, too, shall return-to see upon the shores of
time the battered, piled, wrecked, hell-inspired ideologies of the hour.