I am very happy once again to be with you. I think I have overcome two doctors and overcome two huge meals—Thanksgiving and Texas to Brazil. I imagine all of you are overcomers too.
I would like to read a few Scriptures. First of all, in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16—very well-known verses, but very, very important, especially for the subject this evening.
Matthew 16:18-19:
And I also say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Peter is Petros, a little stone; and the rock is Petra, the massive rock.
Then, if you will turn to the Old Covenant, to Psalm 149, from verse 1:
Praise ye the Lord.
Sing unto the Lord a new song,
And His praise in the assembly of the saints.
Let Israel rejoice in Him that made him:
Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
Let them praise His name in the dance:
Let them sing praises unto Him with timbrel and harp.
For the Lord taketh pleasure in His people:
He will beautify the meek with salvation.
Let the saints exult in glory:
Let them sing for joy upon their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand;
To execute vengeance upon the nations,
And punishments upon the peoples;
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.
Praise ye the Lord.
Then Psalm 18, from verse 29:
For by Thee I run upon a troop;
And by my God do I leap over a wall.
As for God, His way is perfect:
The word of the Lord is tried;
He is a shield unto all them that take refuge in Him.
For who is God, save the Lord?
And who is a rock, besides our God?
The God that girdeth me with strength,
And maketh my way perfect.
He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet,
And setteth me upon my high places.
He teacheth my hands to war;
So that mine arms do bend a bow of brass.
That is a very important little statement that most believers do not understand: the word of the Lord is tried.
Psalm 118:8-17:
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
Than to put confidence in man.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
Than to put confidence in princes.
All nations compassed me about:
In the name of the Lord I will cut them off.
They compassed me about; yea, they compassed me about:
In the name of the Lord I will cut them off.
They compassed me about like bees;
They are quenched as the fire of thorns:
In the name of the Lord I will cut them off.
Thou didst thrust sore at me that I might fall:
But the Lord helped me.
The Lord is my strength and song;
And He is become my salvation.
The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous:
The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
The right hand of the Lord is exalted:
The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.
I shall not die, but live,
And declare the works of the Lord.
Just a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, as we come this evening to yet another aspect of corporate prayer, we need You. We need You to revive us, to quicken us, to renew us in our spirit, in our soul, and in our body. We need, Lord, to be able to give ourselves to Yourself in this evening time.
We stand with You against everything that would be wasteful, that would just be non-redemptive. We want this whole time to be redeemed by Your being here, by Your speaking, by Your working, by giving a vision to us—envisioning us, as it were.
Lord, only You can do all of this, but in Your name we turn to You. We praise You that You have provided us with an anointing of grace and power, and into that anointing we stand now by faith, both for the speaking of Your word and for the hearing of it.
Let Your purpose in our time be fulfilled, Lord, and we shall give You all the worship and all the praise of our hearts. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
I think you all know that we have been dealing with corporate prayer, not personal prayer. Of course, the principles are much the same for personal prayer as for corporate prayer, but I have been dealing with this whole matter of the church at prayer.
We have talked about the principle of corporate prayer, which is simply that the Lord is in our midst. He is both at the right hand of God and, by the Holy Spirit, in our midst. We are members of the body of the Lord Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is able, in the most wonderful way, to transmit to us the burdens that are upon the Head, our Lord Jesus. We might wonder why the Lord has to do this, but it is extraordinary that He refuses to act until, by the Holy Spirit, the burden that is in His heart comes into our hearts and is expressed in our prayer.
It is almost as if corporate prayer is a training ground for eternity. We have to learn how to discern the will of God, how to understand this book of His, the purpose of God within it, and how it applies to our day and generation, to our locality, to the municipality in which we live, and to the nation in which we live.
All these things are part of the education which the Holy Spirit grants to those who belong to the Lord Jesus and who are prepared to become disciples. If we really are prepared not just to be converts, but to be disciples, then corporate prayer becomes a training ground.
We shall make many mistakes in it. We have talked about the mistakes we normally make: horizontal prayer, world-tour prayers, shopping-list prayers, sentimental prayers—everything that kills a prayer meeting.
Really, the Lord does not need Satan. All He needs is His people, and we will make a mess of everything. Left to ourselves, we make an unbelievable mess of corporate prayer.
Yet the principle is so simple: we are harmonised, symphonised by the Holy Spirit as the conductor. When that happens, corporate prayer goes into another dimension. It suddenly becomes a powerhouse. Something happens.
I was always amazed at Halford that the youngest believers, those just born of God, used to come to the prayer meeting. Sometimes I used to say to them, “Wouldn’t it be better for you to come to the Bible study and not the prayer meeting?”
“Oh,” they said, “yes, we will try to come to the Bible study, but the prayer meeting is the Bible study in action.” I have never forgotten those kinds of answers that they gave.
We see in corporate prayer the whole reality of what we are in. A Bible study can tempt us to believe in unreality, but the prayer time is where the thing is real and happens.
We have covered the Holy Spirit and prayer. There is no such thing as corporate prayer without the Holy Spirit. He is the conductor. He is the guide. He is the One who symphonises us, harmonises us, leads us, burdens us, and energises us.
We are to pray in the Spirit at all seasons—not meaning just speaking in a tongue, or prophetic utterance, or gifts. It includes that, but it is far, far more than that. It is to be under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
We have also spoken about the word of God and prayer. Now I want to speak this evening about what I call executive prayer.
Watchman Nee called it authoritative prayer. I call it executive prayer. What do I mean by executive prayer?
An executive is someone authorised by a firm to carry out the policies of the firm, whatever it is. You have many employees, but you do not have a lot of executives. An executive can sign in the name of the firm. He is the person who gets something done.
I am talking about executive prayer.
One of the problems, I think, in the prayer meeting is the lack of passion. Now, this might just be because you are all Southerners and you need perhaps a few Hispanics. I am not criticising, I hope. It is just that there is perhaps a lack of passion.
A lack of passion can come from a lack of vision. When we begin to see what the Lord is driving at, then there comes into our hearts a new understanding of the vital significance of what we are in, and the importance of really being with the Lord.
Did you notice the Psalms? Are they not interesting? “In the name of the Lord, I will cut them off.” Three times it is said: “In the name of the Lord, I will cut them off.”
All nations came against me. Well, that is something. It is not just a few people arguing with you. All nations came against me; in the name of the Lord, I will cut them off. They were like a swarm of bees. That is not something very pleasant. I do not know if you have ever been chased by a swarm of bees.
But he did not run. He just said, “In the name of the Lord, I will cut them off.”
Then did you notice something else? “The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.” Three times it comes. So when you cut off something, the right hand of the Lord does valiantly.
The right hand is always the place of authority. That is why the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Majesty on high—the right hand of God the Father, the place of authority. Into His hand all authority and power has now been invested.
If you and I do not learn how to use the sword, if we do not learn how to put on the whole armour of God, and then to use the word of God—to stand, to withstand, to understand, and to use the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God—the right hand of the Lord does not do valiantly.
The Lord could do all this without us, but He has chosen not to do it without us because we are in a training programme. It is so utterly simple.
No one ever becomes president who is not trained—you might question that—but no one ever becomes president who is not trained. No one ever becomes a king or queen who is not trained. They are trained specifically with a job in view.
This is very important for us to understand: corporate prayer is a training strategy of the Holy Spirit. The Lord will allow all kinds of situations to develop amongst us in order to teach our hands to war—how to face the enemy and how to discover the weapon within the word of God to be used specifically in any situation.
All these things are part of our training. So this matter of executive prayer is of tremendous importance.
We are kings and priests unto God. Priesthood is all the question of worship, of glorifying the Lord, of adoring Him, of prayer in a general sense. But kingship is the question of executing His will—the policies of the kingdom.
If you look at Revelation 1:6, we are told that we have become a kingdom and priests unto God. If you look again at Revelation 5:10, we are told that He has purchased us by His blood to be a kingdom and priests unto our God.
Now, you have a problem here because the Greek word may be translated “kingdom,” but it does not just mean territory ruled over. Most people think of a kingdom as territory ruled over. The United Kingdom—that is the British Isles: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England. That is a territory.
We tend to think immediately territorially: “Ah, that is what we are going to rule over.” With that mentality comes a great danger that we are going to throw our weight around. We are going to be big, big people and be able to throw our weight around.
You know, the idea of a king or queen sitting there in wonderful robes, with a huge crown on their head, a sceptre and an orb, and everyone bowing and scraping. This is not the idea of a kingdom at all.
God’s idea of a kingdom is service. That is why, when they reign for ever, it is all to do with service. We have no idea what God has got—if I may put it reverently. It is irreverent, but nevertheless I try to put it as reverently as I can. We have no idea what God has got up His sleeve.
All we know is that this world is so incredibly beautiful, complex, intricate, and designed in the most incredible way. In its fallen, disfigured, and polluted state, it is still a marvel. Whatever has God got in mind for the future?
People are always asking me questions. If they are Germans, they ask me, “What are we going to do in the kingdom?” If they are British—Anglo-Saxons—they ask me, “Do we wear clothes in the time to come?” If they are Chinese, they always ask me, “Oh, do we eat? What do we eat? Will we eat in the kingdom to come?”
You have all these questions asked, but the fact of the matter is very simple: kingship is a question of character, and the heart of kingship is service.
So it is not to be admired, and bowed and scraped to. Your word is absolute authority. That may come, but the real character of the kingdom is kingship.
So listen again to the word: He has made us a kingship and priests unto His God, and they shall reign on the earth. That is wonderful. Twice this comes. “Little flock, it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingship.”
But kingship comes with a price. You have to be trained. You have to be chastened. You have to be disciplined. You have to be ready for the Lord to do the work that is necessary in you.
Corporate prayer has a tremendous amount to do with this, because as kings, we are authorised to carry out the policies of the kingdom.
The Lord Jesus put it very simply. “Our Father”—this is how you ought to pray. He said this is the pattern prayer, not a prayer that we are supposed to pray at all times, but here we have a pattern prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
“Thy kingdom come”—that is executive prayer. It is the bringing to bear, on every situation we face, of the kingdom of God. We are bringing His kingdom to bear as kings.
The second thing is: “Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” Here is the second part of this: to see that the will of God is done as it is in heaven, so on earth.
Executive prayer is the authority to see that the will of God be done here on earth as it is in heaven.
That immediately means—you have to know what is the will of God. What is the purpose of God for the church? What is the purpose of God for each believer? What is the purpose of God for a family? What is the purpose of God for those believers who are at work in a fallen world, a demonised world? What is the will of God for Israel?
You understand? We have to begin to get some understanding. When we get that understanding, then we have to know that, after we have supplicated and inquired of the Lord, once we know what the will of God is, then at a certain point we can take action.
May the Lord help me to be clear on this, because there is a lot of mess on this matter. You can hardly have a meeting in certain circles where someone—normally some dear sister—is on her feet and, in some wavering and loud emotional voice, says, “I bind Satan.”
I am not at all sure that one single sister can stand up and bind Satan. The church has to be in this matter together.
My experience has been to see people like this knocked out by illness. They have uncovered themselves. There is a kind of arrogance, a kind of presumption, which is not faith.
To bind Satan means you must know what is the will of God in any given situation. Once together, it is a church matter.
The Catholics have made a colossal amount of Peter and the keys of the kingdom, because they have made out that he was the one to whom the keys were given. Actually, Peter, as spokesman for the other apostles, was dealt with by the Lord as the representative of the church. It is the church in action.
Keys are very small things. Keys represent authority. You are an incredibly stupid person if you give all your keys to someone you do not even know.
Normally, if you have keys to your safe, your home, and your car, you will only give those keys to someone you trust. Is that not so?
Let me take it a step further. Keys are incredibly small things. It is only when we have lost them that we realise what could be so simple has now become so complex.
How many of you here have, at any time, lost your keys, then gone home when nobody is there, and gone round and round the house to see if there is one single window slightly cracked? Then you have to climb up in the hope that someone does not phone the police that the house is being burgled, pull the window down, get in, and somehow or other open the door.
I remember once being down in the Sinai with a dear brother. We went swimming in the most gorgeous area and were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Only when we came out of the water, down in the southern Sinai with marvellous coral, did we suddenly discover that we had lost the key to the car.
We went up and down looking for these keys in the lagoon, but it was ridiculous. To find small little keys—how small car keys are! We went up and down looking for the keys and could not find them.
Finally, we did not know what to do, so we went to the moshav that was there. They came out, and I was very interested in how the fellow got into the car. He obviously knew how to get into cars. He got in within a few minutes, but he could not do anything with the steering wheel because it was locked.
So he then said, “Would we like him to saw through the lock?” But we said, “No, we did not think so,” since it was a hired car.
The loss of that little key meant that we had a whole platoon of the Israel Defence Force enjoying themselves, swimming up and down the lagoon looking for this bit of key, but nobody found it. So I had to go all the way back to Eilat. The brother who was with me spent the night in the car.
Then we had to phone Tel Aviv and ask them to send down another key. I thought it was so ridiculous when this little key finally arrived. I thought, “We have gone to all this trouble over this little key.”
When I got it and went all the way back down to the southern Sinai, it took one single moment to start the car. “Oh, thank you. Where has he gone? Thank you, dear brother. You have executed something.”
I have never forgotten that little experience. It was so interesting, because I think the church has lost the keys.
The result is that what should be the simplest thing in the world becomes utterly complex. Things that should be settled, should be out of the way, suddenly take months, years, and sometimes never get settled.
It is so terrible, the loss of the keys. Keys represent authority.
What did the Lord Jesus say? He said, “Upon this rock”—the bedrock—“I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
I prefer the word hell to Hades, because Hades—what does that mean to most believers? It refers to death, and that is the weapon of Satan. But I think the old King James is much better: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
What does that mean? Listen carefully to me. It means this: whenever there is a real movement of the Holy Spirit, in however few people or however many, almost immediately the gates of hell move into action.
Gates were the place for the administration of government—the government of a city or of a region. Really, what it means is this: Satan has a purpose to destroy the building work of the Lord Jesus.
Can you believe—would you believe—that it is possible for the Lord Jesus, who is the Builder of the church, that His building work could be arrested, brought to an end, and His purpose frustrated?
I think you would probably say to me, “No, I do not believe it.” What has the Lord Jesus done? He has initiated movement after movement after movement.
Go right through the whole history of the church: Pentecost, then Samaria, then Caesarea, then the Donatists, the Montanists, the Paulicians, the Bogomils, the Petrobrusians, the Waldenses, the Reformation itself, and beyond the Reformation unbelievable movements in the Spirit.
Every time the building work of the Lord Jesus was arrested and almost frustrated, the Lord Jesus launched, by the Holy Spirit, a mini-Pentecost, if you like, and started the whole building work again.
Whether it was the Quakers, the Moravians, the Bohemian Brethren, the Pietists, or the Quietists—these are all names they never took but which were given to them—it is a long line of those who have been in the building work of the Lord Jesus.
Now here comes the big question. Listen: why does the Lord allow this? Could He not build the church in such a way that it cannot be brought to a halt, turned onto another path, institutionalised, denominationalised, or crystallised?
Of course, the answer is, of course He can do it. Then why does He not do it? Because in every generation He is training a generation to be part of the Bride. It is as simple as that.
There is no other way for the Lord to train you and me than to face these big problems.
Come back again to the words of our Lord Jesus: “You are a little stone,” He said; “upon this bedrock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Unto thee do I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”
Now listen. “Whatsoever you shall bind on earth”—listen carefully to the tense—“shall have been bound in heaven. And whatsoever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
The old version said, “Whatsoever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth is bound there.” It gives the impression that all we have to do is throw our weight around and say, “We bind this,” and it is bound.
Heaven says, “Oh, did you hear what they were doing in Memphis? They bound something. Well, if they bind it, it is bound. If they loose it, it is loose.” But it is not true. It is just not true.
You can use all the words, and it does not happen.
I remember a dear brother—I was present, and I was horrified—in a prayer meeting in Stockholm, Sweden. He said, “And now, we bind Satan in Stockholm from this night.”
Well, unfortunately, Satan was not bound that night in Stockholm. He went on doing his thing.
You cannot just take action without a history of prayer. When it becomes big national things or citywide things, there has to be quite an amount of history behind it.
In other words, you pray, and you pray, and you pray, and then there comes a time when somehow you know the Lord is saying, “Take action.”
Then some of the brothers, representing the whole church, must take action in the name of the Lord, and the thing is done—whether it is loosing something or whether it is binding.
But listen carefully: you cannot bind something that it is not the will of God to bind. You cannot loose something that it is not the will of God to loose.
Let me read you something else. Do you understand what I am trying to say, or is it too confusing?
In your New Testament, in James—listen very carefully to these extraordinary words. James 5:17-18:
Elijah was a man of like passions with us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth for three years and six months.
And he prayed again; and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
Oh, what a loosing there! What a binding there! Here is something very interesting: the Greek does not say, “He prayed fervently.” It says, “He prayed with prayer.”
That means—listen to me carefully—he prayed in the prayer of the Lord Jesus. It is literally in the Greek: “He prayed with prayer.”
Our translators have looked at it and thought, “Well, it must mean fervently. He prayed passionately.” Well, I am all for passionate prayer, but the fact still remains that that is not what it means.
What it means is that he could not bind up the rains and bring drought for three and a half years just because he willed it. He could not end the drought and bring back rain and fruitfulness just because he thought he should do it. He prayed within the will of God.
Now you are back to this principle of corporate prayer:
If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
There is the prayer of the Lord Jesus, and our prayer springs out of it.
Once we know the will of God—I hope I am not just making it difficult for you—but the fact of the matter is that once you grasp this, the whole attitude to prayer will change.
Most of our prayer meetings are just endless prayer. Nothing ever happens. No, I do not mean for you; I am just speaking in general. I mean, when things happen, it is tremendous.
Why did the Lord say, “First bind the strong man”? There are many families where the strong man has come in, and there are many situations where Satan seems to reign supreme.
We cannot just jump in. We have to pray, and we have to pray within the will of God. But once we know what the will of God is, very often the Holy Spirit can reveal to us, as we pray, what the root of the matter is.
Then we can take that thing in the name of the Lord. We can slay it. We can cut it off in the name of the Lord.
This matter of really knowing the will of God is the heart of intercession.
Prayer is a hit-and-miss affair, and the Lord is wonderful. I remember years ago Mary Kong in a prayer meeting. A dear sister had asked us to pray for her because she did not know which college she should go to.
This one was in such-and-such a place, this one was in another place, and this one was in yet another place. She did not know which she should take. All three were open to her. Could we pray?
Mary then piped up and said, in her inimitable way, “Well, is there one of them you would prefer to go to?” The sister said, “Well, yes,” and she mentioned one of the three.
So we all got to prayer, and everyone prayed very spiritual prayers. Then Mary came in and said, “Lord, our sister has got three possibilities, but she would like to go to so-and-so. Do You think, Lord, You could let her go there?”
She went there. I mean, it was quite remarkable how it all happened. That is prayer.
The Lord is wonderful. He is Father. Sometimes He actually changes things around. It is not fixed as we imagine, that the Lord has fixed every little detail. Sometimes, of course, you do not want Him to grant your request and send leanness into your soul.
But it is a great thing to know what you should be doing and not to be afraid. Prayer is hit-and-miss in many ways, but intercession is not hit-and-miss.
In intercession, you must know what is the will of God. He has to reveal it to you. Once He has revealed it to you, you stand, and you withstand, and you stand; and in the end, you will see it fulfilled.
Consider Moses and the Red Sea. Here is an illustration of executive prayer.
When Moses stood in front of the Red Sea and lifted his rod, I can imagine the devil coming to him and saying, “You stupid little man, do you really think that rod you are lifting over the sea is going to do anything? Look at the sea. Just look at it.”
Now, I know something about the Red Sea, so I know that it must have been surging backwards and forwards. Maybe the wind was already getting up. I do not know, but all I know is that Moses lifted up his rod and, in the name of the Lord, commanded the sea to part. Instantly, it parted.
The children of Israel went over as on dry ground. If anyone has any problem with this and thinks, “Well, maybe it was not as big a miracle as it is recorded in the word; that is a little bit of Jewish exaggeration,” Pharaoh’s troops were all drowned in the same sea when it came back.
That is executive prayer. They could have spent a whole year on the seashore of the Red Sea praying, “Lord, You are almighty. You are all-powerful. You can do anything. We need to get across onto the other side. We have got the Egyptian army at the back of us. We do not know when they are going to attack us.”
They could have spent not just days, but months praying and praying—so often in prayer meetings. But there came a point when the Lord said to Moses and to the others, “Take action.”
That little rod was all that was needed. It represented divine authority.
Here is another little illustration. When they all came to the River Jordan—the River Jordan was in full flood, not just a normal little stream, but thirty-four times its normal size. This was before they drew all the water from the Lake of Galilee.
The Lord had said, “Whatsoever the sole of your foot treads upon, that will I give you.” It specifically says in the word that only when the priests’ feet went through the water and stood on the riverbed did the Lord take action.
So they had to get their feet wet. Once they got their feet wet, there was no turning back then, with the ark of the Lord. Then the River Jordan immediately parted.
That is executive prayer. That is the keys. They had to get across from the wilderness into the land. Put it another way: they needed keys to open the door, and God had given them the keys, just as He had given Moses the key.
Then again, here is another one. You remember Rahab? She was not exactly a model lady. But dear Rahab hid the spies in her home.
She said, “We are pretty sure that God—your God—is going to give you this whole land. Will you remember me, and my father, mother, and my whole family?” They said, “Yes.”
She let them down by a red cord, which means it was not some flimsy little cord. It was really a bit of rope. Why it was scarlet, I do not know, but she let them down. They had said to her, “Put that rope, that thread of scarlet, in the window.”
Executive prayer is genuine faith. Let me put it this way: genuine faith is always concretely expressed. Faith is not faith when it is all up in the air—maybe, maybe, perhaps.
Faith is when you burn your boats behind you. When Rahab put that scarlet thread in the window, that was the only bit of the wall that stood up when the whole lot came down.
This is it—the keys. It is as simple as that. For Rahab, that scarlet thread was the key. It was executive prayer in action.
Here is another one. When they went round and round the city walls of Jericho, all the Jericho folk were up on the wall watching, wondering what these strange people were doing, walking round and round once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day.
And no talking. It was the best thing that Joshua did when he heard the Lord on this matter. We all demoralise one another normally.
Unless it is presumptuous prayer, where the enemy is not even interested. He is quite happy with that kind of prayer, because it just leads into a lot of unbelief in the end.
So what is the key? The shout. They blew the shofar and shouted, and in that moment the walls came down. Executive prayer.
Unless we learn how to execute the will of God in prayer, we get nowhere. Let me give you a few illustrations.
Years ago, we had a prayer and Bible week led by Dennis Clark, Alec Buchanan, and myself in Jerusalem. This must have been in 1981, perhaps 1985 or 1986. We were in Christ Church, and I have never forgotten it.
We had been praying because the brothers felt it very much on their hearts to pray against the spirit of Islam. Many of the folks who lived in Jerusalem had said, “There is like a brazen ceiling, a roof over the whole of Jerusalem. Nothing ever happens.”
All kinds of works had been started, and they had failed. Nothing ever happened. There was something over the whole city, and they felt it was the spirit of dead Christianity, dead Judaism, and the spirit of Islam.
So they began to pray about Israel. After quite a few days of prayer in this prayer and Bible week, one of the brothers, Dennis, said, “I think that we have reached the place where we need to take action.”
He had already asked me privately whether I thought that was right. He had asked Alec Buchanan and three other brothers, and we all said, “Yes, we feel the time has come.” A few days earlier we would have said no, but now we felt the time had come.
Then he said, “I am going to ask Lance if he will pray.” So I was the designated person to pray about Islam. With great fear and trembling, I went forward. I remember saying the first thing: “Let us hide ourselves in the Lord Jesus. We cannot come against the spirit of Islam easily.”
We spent a few moments just hiding ourselves in the Lord Jesus, saying, “We are in Christ. We are absolutely safe in the Lord Jesus. He is our armour. Every single part we need for protection, we have in Him.”
Then I said, in a very matter-of-fact kind of voice, “In the name of the Lord, we bind the spirit of Islam over this city.”
Nothing due to me—entirely due to the prayer times that we had that week. Something did happen. Up to that date, there was one Hebrew-speaking assembly in Jerusalem. Today there are about thirteen, and some of them are quite reasonably large.
Not in thousands, I mean in hundreds; but nevertheless, for us, that is something tremendous. Do you see the difference between simply praying and taking action?
I remember Florence Gantt. She was like a prophetess—an extraordinary lady. She was a Broadway actress originally. She found the Lord, felt Him call her to Israel, and came to Israel in 1946 at the end of the Second World War.
She was not Jewish. When Israel was declared a state, they told everybody locally to queue up to get their identity card. When she came to the man, she said, “I am not Jewish.”
He looked at her and said, “Name.” She said, “I am not Jewish.” “Your name?” You have to know Israel to know how rude people can be. “Your name.”
So she said, “Gantt.” He said, “My dear woman, the time for being ashamed to be a Jewess is over,” and he went, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang—and she got a passport.
Can you imagine that? When you know the difficulty people have had with visas, she got a passport—everything. She was a prophetess.
I have never forgotten her, and I have never forgotten that same Bible week when we prayed about pastors and leaders in the institutional churches in the city—not Hebrew-speaking churches.
She got up, and with her booming voice in that chapel with its round acoustics, she said, “Lord, there are a whole lot of shepherds in this pasture that ought not to be here. Move them on, Lord.”
I was so embarrassed, because a number of them were sitting there. Within a year, every one of them had moved on. Then something happened to the locality.
Here is another story. Listen to it. It comes from history: Fraser of Lisu Land.
James O. Fraser was part of the China Inland Mission. He felt called to the Lisu tribe in south-west China, but the China Inland Mission would not allow him to go. He was a doctor and a surgeon, and they made him part of the big hospital in one of the big cities.
He repeatedly asked for permission to go to Lisu Land, but they would not let him go. Finally, they said to him, “You can go.” Fraser went to Lisu Land. He was alone.
He prayed in Lisu Land. I always remember the story he told. He said, “Many times I felt a hand round my throat, choking me, so I could not pray. Then I learnt a lesson—that I had to proclaim that Jesus was Lord.”
Then he said, “When I saw that nothing happened and that all our labours and endeavours came to nothing, the Lord breathed into my heart an idea: I should climb the highest peak in Lisu Land.”
“When I got to the very summit, I would stand there and shout to the north, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord of Lisu Land.’ Then I would turn to the south, then to the west, and then to the east.”
He did it, feeling almost a little bit stupid to do such a thing without any audience of any kind.
As he came down, one of the chieftains of the Lisu people came to him and said, “I want you to tell us more about the God you serve.” That man found the Lord, and in the end the whole Lisu people turned to the Lord.
About ten years ago, the Bible was finally completed in the Lisu language. Most of them moved, because of the Maoist government, over into Burma, where they have now been persecuted greatly by the junta in Burma. But it is an amazing story.
Suppose James O. Fraser had never climbed that summit and never proclaimed that Jesus Christ is Lord of Lisu Land. That tribe would never have come to the Lord. That is executive prayer.
It is taking the will of God and not making it a perhaps, a maybe, or a “will You,” but proclaiming, “It will happen.”
It is the same thing that John Knox prayed for Scotland. In the famous prayer meeting, where they prayed for days on end with fasting, he stood and said, “O God, give me Scotland, or I will die.” God gave him Scotland.
So incredible is this thing. Francis Xavier, the Catholic missionary, died on a little island off Hong Kong. As he died, he prayed for China and said, “It will happen.” And it happened.
This is executive prayer.
I can only tell you from my own little experience that the whole work in Richmond, England, began in four months of prayer.
We were never less than six, I think, and never more than ten.
We had all heard about the Hebrides Revival, when the Holy Spirit fell upon a very—not lifeless, but pretty dead—Church of Scotland in a Sunday evening service.
I knew the young man with whom it began. When he stood up and prayed, the Holy Spirit fell. Duncan Campbell had given the message—a good message—but it was when that young man stood up, confessed sin, and prayed for forgiveness that the Holy Spirit fell upon the whole place.
So powerful was that Hebrides Revival that shepherds, who knew nothing about what had happened, fell on their faces on the mountains with their sheep and found the Lord. Fishermen in boats, while trawling, actually fell on their faces and found the Lord.
On one occasion, when people came out of a meeting—and I spoke with many of the people who heard it—they said the whole heavens were filled with music. They said, “We all fell on our knees and remained in the cold on our knees for some hour while we listened to this heavenly choir.”
It was amazing what happened. It was killed, I might say, by three planeloads of American pastors who flew across to see what was happening, and it died. But it completely reverberated through the British Isles.
We were a little bunch of young people with one older couple in their late forties. We were all in our teens and twenties, so to us anyone in their forties was ancient.
We really felt the call of God to pray that something of the Hebrides Revival would come to the Thames Valley. We were in a church where, if you took the whole church out of Richmond, nobody would know it had gone. The only way you would know it had gone was if you took the building.
I mean, they had no effect on the town. There were really big meetings. People drove in from all over the place, but it had no effect on the town.
I do not think it was coincidence. The most terrible killer fog hit London that November, so terrible that all transit stopped in the whole city. No trains, no buses, nothing.
We walked every night through the fog. You had to put a thing over your nose because it was black—whatever you put over your nose, when you arrived at where we were praying. We never stopped praying. Three thousand people died that week from lung troubles.
Then, all of a sudden, in December, we felt the burden lift. We knew that it would be flogging a dead horse to go on praying, yet we felt terrible that we had stopped praying.
At the same time, a little fellowship began—the same week we stopped praying. That was on a Friday evening, and it grew and grew and grew. Most of the folks who came to be part of the work were saved during those times. It was amazing.
Now listen carefully. Ten years later, without our even knowing it, to the same date—the first of September—that was the first of September 1951, the burden had lifted during the end of December.
Ten years later, on the first of September, we felt called as a fellowship to give ourselves to sacrificial prayer. We put everything aside. We had prayed for those four months every single night.
The last time, when we came together, we decided to put everything aside except the Lord’s Table and the evangelistic service on Sunday evening. We took the after-time of the Sunday evening service as a prayer time.
We prayed that God would do something, this time not just for Britain and not just for the Thames Valley, but that God would do something about the church—that He would somehow open eyes.
In those days, if you used the word church, everyone thought of a building where you left your umbrella, Bible, or purse. Nobody understood the church as us. But we began to pray.
After two years—almost three—we began to get reports. In a dead Primitive Methodist chapel in Cornwall, right at the tip of western England, the Holy Spirit had fallen on a little group of people. People were healed, people were delivered, and they spoke in tongues.
Now that horrified us—and a few other things as well. We thought, “This is not what we are praying for.” Then a bit later we heard that in western Wales the same thing had happened in a company of people. We could not believe it.
Then we heard in the north of England, in the area of Hull, that the same thing had happened. Then it became like a huge swamp.
Before that happened, we ourselves had our own experience. It was a Wednesday evening. It was as hard as hard could be. I shall never forget that Wednesday evening.
I was tempted during it to say to everybody, “We are flogging a dead horse. The power has gone out of our prayer. The enemy seems to be here. We are obsessed with an idea. Should we not let it go?”
But I did not say it. Praise the Lord, I kept my big mouth shut, which is quite a miracle.
I sat there for a while, and then suddenly one of our old sisters—who has just gone to the Lord at ninety-eight—Muriel Weston, suddenly said, “I have a Scripture: within a year, the walls will come down.”
Someone else said, “I witness it,” and someone else said the same. We always went by this: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses.”
Suddenly, this dead prayer meeting—it was as if we were looking into heaven. Everyone was full of joy, and not just full of joy. I mean, it was real. It was as if we were looking into heaven. It was glory.
It went on for hours. We said, “What shall we do?” We decided, “We cannot pray any more. The Lord has said yes. Now we will come together each night and praise the Lord until it happens in full.”
Within the year it happened in full. All over the place, things happened.
I have never forgotten some of the stories that I was involved in myself, such as a pastor near us in a dead hole of a place, I might say—Putney, actually. He had never seen anyone saved in the fellowship, and all the rest of it.
Suddenly he was taking the dog for a walk on Putney Common, and he felt strange, as if his legs were going to give way. So he saw a bench, went over, and sat down there.
He said the next moment he threw back his head and prayed in tongues. He had never spoken in tongues, had never been in a Pentecostal meeting, and did not know what glossolalia was. His dog sat there looking at him as if he was balmy.
So he thought, “I had better go back home.” He went back home only to find that his wife had had the same experience in the kitchen.
In that dead little place called the Evangelisation Society, people for the first time in thirty years got saved, delivered, and healed. They had their first baptisms.
Then the Evangelisation Society moved in, threw the whole lot out on the street, and threw him out as pastor from the manse. This was replicated everywhere.
What does all this have to do with executive prayer? It does not happen in an instant.
When they crossed the River Jordan, it was instantaneous. When they came to Jericho, it took one whole week. When they came to Jerusalem, it took hundreds of years.
It is faith and patience that inherits the promises.
May the Lord help you. I hope I have not bored you after Thanksgiving Day, when you might all be slightly prone to sleep anyway.
The fact of the matter is that the key to so much is those keys that the Lord has given us—how to use the authority given to us in the name of the Lord. Thank you.
Lord, will You make this real in our hearts? This is the missing link in so much prayer.
On the one hand, Lord, You know we have folks who sometimes presume and really do not understand this matter. What we need, Lord, is that Your Holy Spirit teach us how to use the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Teach us how to know what Your will is and how to stand with You for the execution and fulfilment of it. Hear us. We ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.