It is good to be here once again and to bring to you God’s Word. If you will turn with me to the Gospel of John, chapter 7, verse 37.
Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying,
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
But this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to receive: for the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified.
—John 7:37-39
In the same Gospel, John 4:13:
Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
—John 4:13-14
In the last book of the Bible, Revelation 21:6:
And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
—Revelation 21:6-7
And in Revelation 22:16:
I Jesus have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches.
I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
And he that heareth, let him say, Come.
And he that is athirst, let him come.
He that will, let him take the water of life freely.
—Revelation 22:16-17
Beloved Lord, we are so thankful that we are found here in Your presence this evening. We have been worshipping You, and, Lord, we want very simply just to say: Lord, will You revive and quicken us in spirit, in soul, and in body?
You know the journeying, the travelling, the settling in, all of which takes its toll upon us. We all need You, Lord. We pray that this time, this evening, may not in any way be lost, but that right now, from the beginning, Lord, You will fill it with Yourself. Manifest Yourself here in our midst in the most wonderful way.
And for Your Word, Lord, You know we need You, both for the speaking of Your Word and the hearing of it. Therefore, Lord, by faith, since You have provided us with an anointing of grace and power and wisdom, we stand by faith in that anointing, both for the speaking and for the hearing, that You may touch our hearts, reach us, and do something within us.
We need You, Lord. We are living in very dangerous days, and we need You. As we see everything around us changing, the whole social structure being changed in world society, Lord, we need You. Come to us. Be gracious to us, and touch our hearts.
We shall be careful to give all the praise to You for answering this our prayer, which we ask in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
The words of the Lord Jesus in John 7:37-38 are these:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
It is interesting that the Lord Jesus uttered these words as a declaration. You will notice that He did not sit. In the old world, in the Bible world, people sat to teach, but they stood to preach or prophesy. The Lord Jesus stood. He had been sitting, obviously, I imagine, answering questions, teaching, and so on. But here He stood.
You will also notice that it was the last and great day of the feast. This particular feast, which we still keep in Israel, is the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot. It is seven days long, and the last day is called Hoshana Rabbah. It is the water festival, the great water festival.
We are told by Josephus and others that literally hundreds of thousands would pack themselves into the temple to see the water festival. There was also an eighth day, but it was a separate festival, called Simchat Torah, the rejoicing in the Law, when the cycle of Scripture readings in the synagogue comes full circle and begins again with Genesis 1.
This last day, the great day of the feast, was the water festival. On that day, the Levites bore twelve great jars of water upon their shoulders. They came into the women’s court and went up the fifteen steps from the women’s court to the court of Israel.
The sanctuary was here, then the brazen altar and the laver; and then there were the fifteen steps that led down into the women’s court. They climbed those fifteen steps, and one by one they poured out the water on the steps, so that it fell all the way down.
It was because of the Scriptures in Isaiah that spoke of the Lord pouring out His Spirit. There would come a day when the Lord would pour out His Spirit—also in Joel—but water was particularly mentioned a number of times in these prophecies in Isaiah and elsewhere.
The thought was this: there is coming a day when the Lord will fulfil this, and when the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon the people of God. On that day, Jesus stood.
When I was young, I heard an old rabbi say that on the last day of the feast, the actual water was poured out. I have tried and tried to confirm that this is true, which is why I mention it only as a speculation.
He said that on each day of the Feast of Tabernacles they came in and poured water; but on the last and great day they came with the great jars, and they were empty. They went through the motions of pouring out something which was not there.
The reason, he said, was that the promise—the prophetic promise—of these waters being poured upon God’s people had not yet been fulfilled. Well, whether that is true or not, I have been unable to establish. If anyone has been able to establish it, I would love to hear from you. Somewhere in the voluminous twenty-six volumes of the Talmud, we shall probably find it.
But the fact of the matter is that on that last and great day, Jesus stood. What depth of meaning comes to the words He used when we remember this water festival:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Water in the Middle East is immensely significant. I flew over your desert in New Mexico just a few days ago, and I noticed how unbelievably dry it looked to me. Every now and again, I saw green; and wherever I saw an amount of green, you could see it snaking through: there was a river.
It is one of the most extraordinary things to see what water can do. Once water comes, even to the desert, things burst into life. They become almost like a jungle.
I could take you to gardens near me—in my own garden, for that matter—where you have just a little bit of water, and the whole thing bursts into life. The best example, of course, is the Nile.
If you have ever flown over the River Nile, it is incredible: this great triangle of deep emerald green, while everywhere, as far as the eye can see, both west and east, is golden-white sand—the sand of the Sahara and the sand of the Arabian Desert. But wherever the water comes, there is the most amazing vegetation and fertility.
Water is an amazing thing. In the Bible, water speaks of life—quite rightly—because physically, water brings life. Without water, we die. A large percentage of our bodies is made up of water. It is amazing just how much water signifies, especially in Scripture.
Wherever water comes, there is a profusion of life. When you have that kind of life, you have economy; and when you have economy, people are happy. There is everything that comes out of life.
The Lord Jesus did not say, “He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow a river of living water.” He said:
He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
In other words, the normal condition of a child of God, or a believer, is to be a watershed of spiritual life. Anyone who is not a watershed of spiritual life is an abnormal believer.
Now, we said right at the beginning that I do not want to upset you. I seem to be able to do it very easily. But I do not want to upset you. The fact remains that the norm is to be a centre of rivers of living water, like a watershed from which flow—not a river, not a stream—but rivers.
When I was young, I remember they used to call tiny little streams “quaggies.” You have them here as well—such small little streams. I think many a Christian has only a quaggy. That is all there is: a quaggy of living water. It is hardly visible. It is pathetic, really.
Then there are other Christians who have a little more. They have a kind of river. I grew up, not long after my birth, near one of the famous rivers of England, the River Thames.
But when I came to the States, I was so shocked. We crossed rivers, and I used to say to these folks, “What is the name of this river?” I was amazed because they were three times the size of the River Thames, and they would not even know the name. “Oh, it is a river.”
I found out that some of them were called the Piankatank and the Rappahannock, and I do not know what else. There were just rivers everywhere. I used to think to myself, we think about the River Jordan, but the River Jordan is like a stream compared with American rivers.
Then there are the great rivers of the world: the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Nile, the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, the Mekong—all these huge rivers that bring life to millions of people, that bring a profusion of vegetation and fruit.
Has it ever sunk into you that the norm for the believer is to be a watershed of rivers, bringing life to others, influencing situations, and impacting the world?
Some people say to me, “Is it necessary? We are on our way to heaven. We have been severed from the world, separated from the world. We are a heavenly people.”
What did the Lord mean when He said, “Ye are the salt of the earth”? A fallen earth. What did He mean when He said that we are salt, halting the corruption that is in the world? That is what He meant.
What did He mean when He said, “Ye are the light of the world”? Just as He said of Himself, “I am the light of the world,” He said, “Ye are the light of the world”—light shining in darkness.
The Lord Jesus was so extraordinary that sinners never felt unwelcome.
Sometimes I think that when we get into one of these holy huddles, as so many assemblies and fellowships are, the sinners in the world would feel like fish out of water.
“Well,” you would say, “should they not? They are sinners. They are unsaved. We are saved. We are on our way to heaven. They are on their way to hell. Is it not right that they should feel uncomfortable?”
But what about our Lord? How was it that His impact upon them was such that they could talk with Him? When the Pharisees and scribes criticised the Lord Jesus, they said, “He eateth and drinketh with sinners.” They enjoyed His company.
Rivers of living water. Jesus said, “Ye are a city set on a hill,” not a group in a deep bomb shelter, so separated from the world that the world has no influence upon it and it has no impact upon the world at all.
Rivers of living water are always having an effect upon the world.
It is such a picture of life in the Word of God. The Lord Jesus did not speak of a river or a shower. He did not say, “You are a shower of life-giving rain.” He did not say, “You are a storm, a downpour of rain.”
It all comes after you have been at a conference or a convocation for a little while: your life becomes a great monsoon downpour of rain, bringing life to everything, only to dry up again into a desert.
He said that from within you should flow rivers of living water. Not you, but from within you should flow rivers of living water.
What did the Lord Jesus mean when He said, “As the Scripture hath said”? I find this very interesting because I have searched and searched, and I cannot find this exact statement in Scripture. Perhaps someone can help me with it.
First of all, Isaiah 44:3-5:
For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground:
I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing upon thine offspring:
And they shall spring up among the grass, as willows by the watercourses.
One shall say, I am the Lord’s; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob;
And another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel.
—Isaiah 44:3-5
What a tremendous thing—the results of this water. This is people getting saved. This is people joining the people of God. This is people who apparently were not even surnamed with the name of Israel saying, “I am going to belong to the people of God. I am going to belong to the house of Israel.”
However, it does not quite say, “From within him shall flow rivers of living water.” It says, “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and streams upon the dry ground.”
Then there is Isaiah 43:19-21:
Behold, I will do a new thing; now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it?
I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
The beasts of the field shall honour Me, the jackals and the ostriches;
Because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert,
To give drink to My people, My chosen,
The people which I formed for Myself, that they might set forth My praise.
—Isaiah 43:19-21
There is another wonderful Scripture.
Then consider Psalm 1:3:
And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water,
That bringeth forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also doth not wither;
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
—Psalm 1:3
Is that not wonderful? He shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, bringing forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither. So many of us get withered. We come to a conference like this and we are all green for a while, but then slowly the withering comes.
But it speaks of being planted by the streams. And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Or what about Psalm 46:4?
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:
God will help her, and that right early.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
—Psalm 46:4-7
There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
Consider Isaiah 41:17:
The poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst;
I, the Lord, will answer them, I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.
I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.
I will put in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, and the myrtle, and the olive tree;
I will set in the desert the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together:
That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together,
That the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it.
—Isaiah 41:17-20
That comes a little nearer to what our Lord said.
Then there is Isaiah 12:3:
Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.
—Isaiah 12:3
Now, in Hebrew, I think “wells” is not the best translation. There is a Hebrew word for a well into which water seeps. It does not spring up; it seeps in. When there is heavy rain, it slowly fills.
But this is another Hebrew word, a word for a spring. Therefore, it may rightly be understood as, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the springs of salvation.” It is something springing up all the time—that kind of well.
Jeremiah adds something to our understanding. In Jeremiah 2:13:
For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
—Jeremiah 2:13
I have already said that it is really amazing to me that our Lord speaks here of a life that is a watershed. There is an area in the Himalayas, far up in the mountains, where some of the greatest rivers on the face of the earth find their source: the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, and the Yangtze.
Can you believe that you could become such a watershed? Or do you think that it is only very special people who are meant to know such a thing in their experience?
No. Listen again:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Faith is the difference between knowing the Lord within as a watershed of rivers of living water, or somehow or other living in the desert.
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Now, I would like to take you a step further, if you are with me. I do not know if you are. I do not blame you if you are not; you have all been travelling for hours. But if you are, we will go one step further.
In my estimation, two spiritual conditions are defined in these words of our Lord Jesus. Here is the first:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
Here is the second:
He that believeth on Me, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Two conditions. Every single child of God in this place this evening comes in one or the other of these conditions.
The first condition is interesting: “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.” The Greek tense is very interesting. It could be translated, awkwardly but accurately, like this: “If any man thirst, let him keep on coming to Me, and let him keep on drinking.”
That is the first condition. Some Christians are just like that. The source is not within them. The watershed is not within them. They have to keep coming to have a drink.
Well, thank God that you come to have a drink. The Lord Jesus Himself said it: “If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.” Let him keep on coming to Me, and let him keep on drinking.
But it is a quite different condition to have the source within you. It is like having a well, a pump, in the old-fashioned days somewhere down the lane. Every time you need water, you have to go down there and pump it up.
It is the difference between that and having piped water in the house. Oh, what a blessing it is. You do not have to go down and pump up water or draw it up with a bucket. When you have water in the house, you just turn it on. It is there whenever you need it.
Some of you may wonder whether I am not getting a little overboard on this matter, going a little too far. No, I do not think so. Listen to this. The Lord Jesus said:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.
—Revelation 21:6-7
You have the first condition again: anyone, any sinner, may come and drink freely. Then He says, “He that overcometh shall inherit these things.” That is another condition, the second condition.
The same thing appears in Revelation 22:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
And he that heareth, let him say, Come.
And he that is athirst, let him come.
He that will, let him take the water of life freely.
—Revelation 22:17
The Holy Spirit has produced the Bride. The Bride is the second condition; now the order is inverted. The first condition is, “If any man thirst, let him come.”
Thank God that any time we are thirsty, we can come to the Lord and drink. But it seems to me that there is something far, far more wonderful in this salvation of ours than having to come back again and again and again.
There is the possibility of having within us the source of rivers of living water.
Can you imagine what would happen in your family if rivers of living water started flowing out of you? Can you imagine what would happen in your office if rivers of living water came out of you?
You would not have to plaster people with tracts or give them a New Testament. They would see it in you. They would see something in you. They would see it lived out: something that somehow transforms a human being.
Did you notice what the Lord Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar? He said that anyone who drinks of this water will thirst again. But He said:
Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
But the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
—John 4:14
Again, in the Greek, I think modern translations are better in this instance. I do not always think modern translations are so wonderful, but here they translate it as “a spring of water springing up unto eternal life.”
The Lord did not mean some well from which you have to draw water, or a system by which you must somehow get the water up. This is a spring, springing up unto eternal life—not something you will only have in the future, but something that you have now.
You have eternal life within, and within that life is every single thing you need to overcome.
I can only say what the Lord said: He will give you the water, and this water will become in you a spring of water springing up unto life eternal. It is the same thing all over again.
Let me take you one step further. There was a whole generation that died in the wilderness. Were they unsaved? No. Were they saved? Yes.
What did they experience? They experienced the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They heard the voice of the Lord thundering on the mountain.
They had manna miraculously every day—six days out of seven—and on the sixth day a double portion to cover the Sabbath. Do not tell me they were unsaved.
These were believers. These were covenant people, saved by the blood of the Lamb, brought out of Egypt, delivered from the power of darkness, transferred into God’s kingdom.
They were led by the Lord. They heard the Lord. The Word of the Lord was given to them. The pattern of the house of God was given to them. All these things were given to them.
And there was a rock. According to 1 Corinthians 10:4, there was a rock that followed them. Now, whether the rock actually followed them, I do not know. But I do know that every time Moses and Aaron stood before the rock and commanded it in the name of the Lord, lifting up that staff, that rod, and touching it, water came out of it.
And the rock was Christ.
—1 Corinthians 10:4
Do not tell me they were unsaved. They were believers, born of God, we could say in New Testament language.
Their sandals never wore out. Their clothes never wore out. The diseases of the Egyptians never came upon them. Now, would you not think that was amazing?
What kind of experience is this that these believers, these children of God, this house of Israel, were having? The diseases they saw in Egypt did not come upon them. They walked for forty years in the wilderness, and their sandals did not wear out. Is that not remarkable?
Sandal makers must have had a very bad time. And clothes tailors—what a bad time. Jews have so many tailors, and good ones. The only reason you would get new clothes was simply to look better, change the colour, and look a little more interesting. But your clothes never wore out.
Do you not think that is amazing? Yet there was altogether a different world to which they had been called.
God never, ever expected them to live in a wilderness for forty years. He wanted them through the wilderness. It would only take eight days from Egypt to the promised land if they had gone directly with God. Even allowing for detours, it would not have been more than a month or two.
But instead, for forty years they had an endless cycle of spiritual experience and got nowhere. That is a perfect example of thousands of Christians: going round and round and round, ever learning and never coming to a full experience of the truth.
In the land, there was no need for the rock, because in the land the water came down from above. If you read Deuteronomy 11:10-12, it tells you that the land to which they were going was not like Egypt.
In Egypt, you had to work to bring the water up. Everything was from below: leeks, garlic, and onions—everything for which you had to bend down. But when you went to this land, there were figs: pick them. Dates: pick them.
Do you see the difference? Egypt was everything to do with the earth. The promised land was everything to do with a heavenly kingdom—everything above. It does not mean that they did not grow onions and leeks, but Egypt was everything to do with the earth.
Then the Lord said, “This land will be watered from above, and springs will come out of the ground.” Is that not amazing?
Through unbelief, many Christians spend their whole lives just going round and round and round in an endless circuit. They are led by the Lord. They are blessed by the Lord. They are provided for by the Lord. They do eat manna. They do drink the water.
But it is what the Lord said: “Let him keep on drinking. Let him keep on coming, and let him keep on drinking.” It is another condition.
When you are in the land, there is an enormous difference. I wonder if this makes it clear to you. The normal condition of a child of God is to have the source of life within.
If life is within, there will be rivers of living water. If there are not rivers, something is blocking the flow.
It is interesting. When I was younger in the Lord, I often used to think, “Why did the Lord Jesus not say, ‘I am the water of life’?” He did not say that.
He said:
If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink.
He that believeth on Me, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
Then John says, “This spake He of the Spirit.”
So you have two things. You have the Spirit of God as the source of this life that is in Jesus. Make no mistake about it: the watershed is in the Lord Jesus, but it is the Spirit of God who makes it a reality.
But you can have the Spirit and a blockage—a damming up of the whole life of God—so that it is trapped within.
Well, dear friends, I think this is enough for one evening. But it is certainly true, if we look at church history.
Think of Paul. Think of the apostle Paul. Rivers of living water. Just think what flowed out of this emaciated, broken man. Are you going to tell me it was his personality? I think not.
Something tremendous happened in that man who had been the murderer of believers. Out from his innermost being, as the New American Standard Bible puts it, flowed rivers of living water. To this day, we are still drinking from them.
We have never plumbed the depths of what came out of the apostle Paul by the Spirit of God. It was the treasures of knowledge and wisdom in the Lord Jesus, released by the Holy Spirit in a human being.
“Unsearchable riches of Christ”—that is how he put it. “I preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.” That means you can never come to an end of them. They are so vast, so infinite.
I think of Luther. From one point of view, Luther was nothing: a rough, country-like figure who loved to drink, was coarse, and always spoke his mind.
But, oh, the rivers that flowed out of that man. The whole established church could not destroy him. He turned Europe upside down. One man in whom God did something.
Or I think of George Fox—just an ordinary man. But when the Spirit of the Lord fell upon him in the hills of Britain, in the British Isles, something happened.
Out of that man came something extraordinary. At one time, two-thirds of the Quaker preachers were in prison. It was not just Fox. What was in Fox had come into all the others.
When they were put in prison, they turned those prisons into evangelistic crusades. Then they turned them into Bible schools and taught those in the prisons from the Word of God.
They turned the world upside down. Rivers of living water. Your whole nursing system comes from them. The whole prison reform that took place both in Britain and in other European countries began with the Quakers.
I think of Zinzendorf, a count, an aristocrat, normally not very interested in peasants or ordinary working people. But when God got into Count Zinzendorf, the rivers began to flow.
In the end, men and women went to the ends of the earth, to the lepers. They actually had themselves sold as slaves so that they could reach African slaves being brought over from Africa.
They went to lepers; sometimes they contracted leprosy. They went to the hardest places on the face of the earth. Rivers of living water. Oh, that God could do something in our lives like that.
What about Wesley? Wesley was a dried-up old legalist. Forgive me if anyone here has a Methodist background. But it was not for nothing that he was called a Methodist.
He was a legalist, totally. He absolutely believed that you got up at a certain time, knelt for so long, read the Word for a little while, did something else, fasted once a week—and he was not even saved.
When he came over here to convert the Red Indians, he wrote in his journal, “Oh, God, who will convert me?” But when he went back to Britain as a failure, broken and feeling that he had got nowhere, he went to a little Moravian meeting place.
He listened to one of the Moravians speaking from Luther’s preface, either to Romans or Galatians. He said, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”
He was such a reserved Englishman. The English people—I have lived among them for years—are so incredible, so level. Do not get excited. Do not get volatile. Never shout “Hallelujah.” You have to be very level-headed, unflappable, phlegmatic—because that is what the Lord Jesus is like. He is basically British.
Wesley was typical—a typical Brit. But when that happened to Wesley, rivers of living water flowed out and changed the whole of the British Isles. It came right over here and changed the whole eastern seaboard.
Everywhere they went—Whitefield and Wesley. Whitefield was another one of them. He had a cast in his eye: one eye looked there and one eye over there. That meant that whenever he preached on sin, at least two people were convicted.
It is a fact. Whitefield was nothing to look at, and yet when the rivers of water flowed out of him, whole communities turned to the Lord.
Dear child of God, we are not talking about a fairy tale. The difference between having to keep on coming and keep on drinking, and having the source within, is living faith.
But I will not stop even there. I could speak of R. A. Torrey, who had an experience of the Spirit that turned him into one of the finest evangelists America and Britain have known. And Moody too.
I myself knew Billy Graham when I was a boy, because he used to stay at Auntie Dagmar’s home. I knew him when I was only fourteen years of age.
I remember going to hear him preach at Westminster Chapel. I was at the point of backsliding. I really wondered what there was in the Christian life, and I was so disappointed and disillusioned with the church. They were all fighting one another.
I thought they were such wonderful people to begin with, but I found out that the world was in them. That meant the bottom dropped out of my own Christian life, because it had been built on them.
I went to hear Billy Graham, and I saw him acting out the arena in Rome where the Christians were being mauled by lions. He literally leapt over the pulpit and down onto the second platform.
He was only twenty-six, and I was amazed. I had never seen a preacher do that before. Then, when they gave the appeal, there was all this soft, blues-type music with Bev Shea singing. They appealed and appealed and appealed.
I was also sorry for Billy Graham because only three or four people went forward.
One year later, when Billy Graham came back, he was a different man. He stood in Harringay on that platform with a Bible in his hand, and he never acted anything. He simply said, “The Word of God says this. The Word of God says this. The Word of God says this.”
When he gave the appeal, there was no soft music. He only said, “I am only going to ask you once.” Thousands got up and went forward.
He had had an experience in that year, in his mountain home.
I remember T. Austin-Sparks, who had been both a Congregational minister and a Baptist minister. He was sick to death of everything. He said, “I have taken all these ‘Get to Know Your Bible’ weeks.”
He was one of Campbell Morgan’s young men, one who did all the research work behind much of what is now found in Campbell Morgan’s books. But he said, “It was not inside.”
He told me the story himself. He said, “I was finished, and I said to my wife, ‘I am going upstairs to my study, and I am not coming down until God does something. If He does not do it, I am resigning.’”
He sat before the Lord for a whole day. In the end, he began to read Romans. Then he came to Romans 6, and, in his own words, heaven opened and the Spirit of God fell on him. He saw what the cross was.
From that moment, rivers of living water flowed out. It was no longer just academic. It was no longer just objective Bible teaching, important as that is. There were rivers of living water.
It was amazing. I remember Dr. Stoney telling me, “I went up to Kilcreggan, and I do not know what it was. I listened to Austin-Sparks speak, and I could not sleep all night.”
That is what happened with people. It was rivers of living water—the impact, the influence, the fruit—so tremendous.
And, of course, what could I say about Watchman Nee? Those rivers of living water not only went all over China but over the whole world.
Such is the power of simple faith that causes a person to know Jesus, the Lord Jesus, as the source of the rivers of living water, with the Holy Spirit causing those rivers to flow out.
Well, dear child of God, that is enough for one evening. I am sure you are tired. I am. If you are tired of hearing me, I am tired of speaking.
But I cannot let you go without asking you a question: what about you?
Into which of these two conditions do you come? Are you one who has to come again and again and again to drink? Well, thank God that you know where to drink.
Thank God you know it is the Lord Jesus. He is your Saviour. He is your Lord. You know that. But there are no rivers of living water.
May the Lord speak to us, do something in us, and somehow or other bring us to a new place in Him.
Beloved Lord, You know us. You know every one of us. You know just where we are spiritually.
Dear Lord, will You take these words on this first night and make them a living reality in our hearts? Somehow, break the blockage, Lord, in many of our lives. Undam those living waters.
Lord, give us a new vision of Yourself, and we will worship.
We ask it in that name of Jesus. Amen.