The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1.16, ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ for it is the Gospel which is the Power of God to deliver everyone who believes’. All the Power of God, through the Holy Spirit, is in the preaching of the Gospel! It is the Gospel that is the Power of God – and this Power is in you! It’s not an emotion. When the Power of God falls, when the Spirit of God comes on you, you will fall on your knees, on your face and cry out to God. 

'For God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps. He never sinned, nor ever deceived anyone. He did not retaliate when he was insulted, nor threaten revenge when he suffered. He left his case in the hands of God, who always judges fairly. He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. Once you were like sheep who wandered away. But now you have turned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls.' ( 1 Peter 2.21-25)

There are three visions, three perspectives you need to have if you want to work for God: a vision of God, of the world and of what God can do through you. Most of you are younger than me, so I want to talk to you as a father, grandfather! I want to show you what vision can do in your life. If you do not have a clear vision and purpose, you will achieve nothing for God. I want to give you a clear vision for your future, of what God wants to do, and I want you to live with this vision for the rest of your life!

‘Where there is no VISION the people perish!’ (Proverbs 29.18, KJV). Only the King James Version is so clear, so blunt. In other languages, in other versions, it’s watered down. But without that VISION of who God really is, you are spiritually DEAD! The Power and the Authority that I have only come through the VISION of KNOWING who God is! 

This is the prophetic challenge, God is saying to us in Haggai 2.3: ‘Who is left among you that saw this House in its first glory – and how do you see it now?!!’ This is the challenge to the Church and to our nations: something HAS to happen to dramatically CHANGE us.

There have been times in my own life when I have had to experience this dramatic change and transformation. It was never a change of direction. My staff will tell you that what I wrote when I was fifteen in my magazine ‘The Evangelist’, is EXACTLY what I say now. What God put in my heart then, is EXACTLY what God is fulfilling in my life now. So the direction has never changed – but I have had to have the renewing. Without those times when God has stopped me, put me in a prison, laid me aside, cancer, or any other thing – there has had to be that dramatic realisation in my life of the need of change.

God is today saying to the Church EXACTLY what He was saying here to Israel through the prophet Haggai! I want to challenge you, every one of you – who is there still here in Britain (or wherever you are) who saw the Glory of God in this land, who saw the Power of God in the churches, who saw the repentance, who saw the demonstration of the Holy Spirit? I would say to you, what do you see now? Desolation. You don’t hear a call to repentance, you don’t see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I would say to you – the Glory has gone. And God is saying in this Scripture in Haggai, the Glory has departed from the House of God! WE are the House of God. And the Glory has gone! We have got to bring back the Glory and the Power into the House of God!

Where is the Power in the Church? I am concerned that the Church has lost sight of the power and effectiveness of the Pentecost experience. We all need to be empowered by the Holy Spirit. The Christian who wants to be effective in ministry first needs to be filled by the Spirit. 

The more I study the life of Christ, the more I realise the influence and the Power of the Holy Spirit working in Him, in His life and ministry. Just as the disciples had to wait in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came before they could begin their ministry, so Jesus Himself did not begin His powerful public ministry until after He had received the Holy Spirit! Matt 3.16- 17; Mk 1.9-12; Luke 3.21. That same Holy Spirit who was in Christ should be in us! And the Holy Spirit who has begun working in us, will continue until the Day Christ returns!

'Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God – my God – will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord,' (1 Chronicles 28). The hunger in my heart, which has driven me all my life, is still the underlying reason for the whole vision which burns so deeply in my heart today: the desire to see the Power of God poured out today in greater measure than at Pentecost!

"God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Behold, I have received a command to bless; He has blessed, and I cannot reverse it," (Numbers 23.19-20).

Balaam was paid by Balak to curse the people of God. But this is what Balaam said, “God is not a man that He should lie, neither a son of man that He should repent (change His mind) – what He said, shall He not do it, and what He has spoken will He not make it happen?!” God cannot lie, He cannot change what He has said. And in the next verse Balaam says, God has blessed, no one can change it! When you have learnt power with God, God will begin to bless your life, your home, your family, your finance, your job – everything about your life! God will bless you. No one can change it, no one can reverse it – your life is under the power and blessing of God!

I have seen many miracles. In a period of five years, only in Russia and Ukraine, we recorded more than 20,000 healings! I have a very long record with the KGB! One year I arrived in a city in Russia and they were waiting to stop me preaching – but their biggest problem was not the preaching, it was the miracles of healing! They are not afraid of preachers – they are afraid of the Power of God! They asked me, “What is your authority to heal the sick?” We opened the Word of God and showed them Mark 16, “This is what God tells us to do, it’s in the Bible, ‘Lay hands on the sick and they WILL be healed!’ We’re going to do what the Bible says,” and they couldn’t stop us!

In these last days God is saying to the church, NOW, “I am prepared to do something greater, bigger, more miraculous than anything that has ever been seen before in the earth, or in the church.” God is about to do the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. He’s going to raise up men like Elijah, men with an anointing to do the greater works than Jesus did! – John 14.12. Why? Because we are living in the days of the return of Christ, when we’re going to see Revival Fire bursting on the church, until we are working and believing and moving into spiritual victory – all in the preparation for the glorious return of Jesus!

I am very emotional when I preach the Gospel. In Matthew 9, when Jesus said to the paralysed man who had been laid at His Feet, “Son, your sins are forgiven”, the religious Pharisees accused Him in their hearts, “Only God can forgive sin!” Knowing what was in their hearts, Jesus made this amazing declaration, “So that you may know that the Son of Man has Power on earth to forgive sin” – He turned to the paralysed man and commanded him – “Get up and walk!” Jesus, in His own words said that He healed the sick to PROVE that He could forgive sin. How then can we separate healing and salvation in evangelism when Jesus linked them together so closely? And Matthew 8.16-17 records of Jesus that He healed all that were sick to fulfil the words of Isaiah the prophet, He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. There is no limit to God’s Love – Salvation, Healing – it’s already done – take it!

I grew up with George Jeffreys and was dedicated by him as a baby. I knew the miracles in his and in Smith Wigglesworth’s lives. But all my life, I have believed there is more Power available from God than anything yet seen on earth.

I grew up surrounded by what those who had received the Holy Spirit’s Power had achieved – the miracles – the thousands saved. Yet as I read the prophecies of Joel Chapter 2, I sensed there was an even greater Power available – which Joel calls the Latter Rain. But GREATER than the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the 20th Century, which everyone assumed WAS the Latter Rain.

Aged 14, I had received the Baptism of Fire after a year of prayer and fasting – but in my heart I believed that there was MORE. No one, not even the first disciples had ever seen the real Power I saw in parts of the Old Testament. I wanted to see how much Power the God of the Bible really had, the God who created the whole universe from nothing and formed man from dust. That’s why, in 1961, I risked my life to get to Jerusalem for the Conference on the Day of Pentecost which was to be held for the first time in 2000 years in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. I was simply believing that I could receive what Joel referred to in Chapter 2.

When I first received the Holy Spirit, I had asked for the Gift of Faith – now I wanted to see how far God could/would reveal His Power – if I stepped out in faith. 

My adventure going to Jerusalem in 1961 was the start. Going where no man had gone before. The first in the world to make the unknown and dangerous overland crossing behind the Iron Curtain, through the communist countries and Arab nations on a war-footing with Israel, I received a medal from the Israeli Government when I arrived, and I was on TV when I got home!

Now, aged 93, I have not reached the limits of God’s Power HERE, ON EARTH! But the faith driving me is not in my head, it’s in my heart.