LEONARD RAVENHILL was an English Christian evangelist and author who focused on the subjects of prayer and revival. He is best known for challenging western evangelicalism (through his books and sermons) to compare itself to the early Christian Church as chronicled in the Book of Acts. His most notable book is Why Revival Tarries.
Here is what he said about sin.
We have to get a concept of how, day by day, we offend God. As a nation we offend God in millions of ways.
When I was praying in the Bahamas one day, I saw a great column of smoke, which happened to be coming from tyres that were being burned. It was as black as could be, and over there I saw a wisp of smoke going up from the ground.
I didn’t think much of it until about a year after. I was praying and the Lord said, “That volume of black, thick smoke is like the volume of sin that goes up every day.”
All the blasphemy, all the unbelief, all the dirty stories, all the lying, all the deception, all the sex-perversion, all the drunkenness – this tremendous column of iniquity goes up in the sight of God.
And here you have a little wisp – of what? That is the praise that God gets out of His people.
If we are going to realise how much we need revival we need to recognise the dimension of sin. We have to recognise that sin offends God.