May this stir the passion and zeal for otherworldliness
A NEW BREED of MODERN PREACHERS-by Greg Gordon
A new movement of fearless uncompromising preachers:
God is raising up a new breed of preachers in our day. People are sick of modern-day soft preaching that does not move ourconsciences anymore then a worldly movie would.
God is going toraise them up, they will not be bred in modern day seminaries orbible colleges. They will speak against the whole system that israising anemic preachers and teachers.
Their messages will bebold, strong, pointed, it will offend many but save many.
Theirpreaching will bear witness to their calling. God will be in theirmessages and the fear of God will come with their message.
God has always been faithful to have a voice in every generation.Surely we find ourselves in a time as the Psalmist lamented:“There is no more any prophet, neither is there among us, anythat knoweth how long.” Yet they will come!
They will come with messages that will sear our consciences, Oh how we need amodern day prophet. Will the modern day prophet agree with allthe theology and comfort of American Christianity?
No, his message will so contradict all of what we know of Christianity thatwe will hardly believe he is from God.
Jeremiah was a prophet thatheard from God and he prophesied: “behold, I will make my wordsin thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them.”
These new breed of preachers will be men that are shut-in withGod and hear from him and their words will be as “fire” and thepeople “wood.”
D.M. McIntyre spoke of this same heavenly principle:
“Before thegreat revival in Gallneukirchen broke out, Martin Boos spent hoursand days and often nights in lonely agonies of intercession.Afterwards, when he preached, his words were as flame, and thehearts of the people as grass.”
Oh these men will be “much withGod” and “little with men.” The things of earth to them will growstrangely dim.
They will be strange men to the ways and systemsof the world. They will speak against the hypocrisy in the pewsand the hirelings in the pulpits. The fear of man will not have anyhold on these men, the holy fear of God will be their overwhelmingvision. They will speak the “word of the Lord” in due season andnot refrain from being a mouthpiece in the hand of the Lord.
PROPHETIC Preaching
A.W. Tozer spoke of this new breed of preachers in his shortarticle ‘prophetic preaching’ - this is the need of our day and it willcome:
“If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be byother means than any now being used.
If the Church in the secondhalf of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered inthe first half, there must appear a new type of preacher.
The proper,ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestlytype of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks noquestions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how tomake the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these havebeen tried and found wanting.
Another kind of religious leader mustarise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man whohas seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne.
When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many),he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking,smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce andprotest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and oppositionof a large segment of Christendom.
Such a man is likely to be lean,rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world.
He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to diefor the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he willfear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.
This is only to saythat we need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to theChurch.
And it is my belief that the one gift we need most now isthe gift of prophecy.”Uncompromised, unsettled, unyielding, unmovable, unshakable!
These men will come with unbelievable message to those steepedin unbelief. David Wilkerson said once, “only praying men touchGod.”
These men will be ‘men of God’ that touch God and hearfrom Him. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Joel, Hosea, Zechariah,these men will find good company with the coming prophets. Theywill be fully accepted of God and fully rejected by men. God willcall them ‘blessed’ and men will call them ‘cursed.’
PICTURE of a PROPHET
Leonard Ravenhill in his book “America is too young to die” speaks of the true picture of the coming prophets to Christendom. Oh how sorely we need them: “The prophet in his day is fully accepted ofGod and totally rejected by men. The group challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from aperishing world in their warm but untested theology are not likely tovote him ‘man of the year’ when he refers to them as habituates of the ‘synagogue of Satan!’"
He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality andspirituality. In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers,there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to Godfor a prophet! He has not price tags. He is totally ‘otherworldly.’
"He lives in the heights with God and comes into the valley with a‘thus saith the Lord.’ He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.
He is excommunicated while alive and exalted whendead! He walks before men for days, but has walked before God for years."He announces, pronounces, and denounces! God talks to himabout men. He talks to men about God. There is a terrible vacuumin Evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranksis the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness.
The man totally otherworldly. the man rejected by other men, even othergood men, because they consider him too austere, too severelycommitted, too negative and unsociable."Let him be as plain as John the Baptist. Let him for a season bea voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnantchurchianity. Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.
Let him,too, say and live, ‘This one thing I do.’ Let him reject ecclesiasticalfavors. Lim him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-projecting,nonself- righteous, nonself-glorifying."Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself, but only thatwhich will move men to God. Let him come daily from the throneroom of a holy God, the place where he has received the order ofthe day. Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions whoare deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour ofmaterial mesmerism."
Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because hehas seen a vision no man in this century has seen. God send usthis Moses to lead us from the wilderness of crass materialism,where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where enlightened men,totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.God have mercy; send us PROPHETS!”
RUN for YOUR LIFE
The message of these men will seem strong and extreme to most.They will call for utter immediate implicit obedience to the commandsof the Lord. They will call for a turning away from sin and from sinfulpractices. They will preach a God-exalting and men-abasing message.
They will not be worried about men’s self-esteem orhappiness but rather their clarion cry will be: “Holiness Unto the Lord!”
Their message might sound like this excerpt of a messagepreached by Carter Conlon: “Run from gospels that focus on yoursuccess and prosperity.
Run from those that use the name ofJesus Christ only for personal gain. Run from those that are pickingyour pocket in the name of Jesus.
Run! Run from gospels that focusonly on self-improvement, or on three steps to a better personality.Run from churches where men and not Christ are glorified. Run,get out of that place! Run from churches in America and Canadawhere there is no Bible, no cross, no searching Word, norepentance from sin. Run when there’s no mention of the blood ofJesus.
It’s an unclean place, so run! Run from churches where theworship leaves you cold, where there’s no sense of God’spresence, because they don’t know God. Run! Run from churcheswhere you’re comfortable in your sin. If you enter God’s house withsin in your life, but you’re not convicted of it, you’re sitting at atable of devils. Run! Run from pulpits that are filled with politicallydriven men who use the pulpit of God for a personal agenda.
Run!Run from those who preach division between races and cultures.Run! Run! Get out!
Turn it off. They know nothing of God. Run fromungodly, spasmodic movements and endless empty prophesying.Beloved Church. Run for your life! Run from preachers that stand,who tell only stories and jokes. Run like you’ve never run before.
Run from those that are only after money and they use onegimmick after another to get your money. One foolish thing afteranother to get your money. Run.”God is going to get the attention of us. He is going to shake“everything that can be shaken.” We should be on our face brothersand sisters. Great times of shaking are coming. Are we standingfirm on truth of God or are we allowing the world and its cares tochoke our spiritual life? God is going to raise up a new modernbreed of preachers that will be uncompromising and unrelenting intheir proclamation of the heart of God.
Hear this blunt blaring word from the late Dr. Joseph Parker: “Oh, ye white-faced, weak-kneedbelievers! Believers in what? Ye shifty speculators, stealers ofprophetic mantles! go, drink yourselves to death, and go to yourproper devil! Ye are not the Church of Christ, might well be thespeech which ascended Pauls might deliver to us, as we reshufflethe theological cards, and rearrange our credenda, and modifyand dilute our doctrinal positions and enthusiasms.”
Let us also hear one of Mr. Ravenhill’s often quoted lines: “Our pulpits todayare occupied with puppets rather than with prophets, withorganizers rather than with agonizers.”
Does that smite? It is true!Let us start praying to see God revive, restore, renew andrevolutionize the Church as we know it. We need a mighty touchof God’s Spirit and men that will speak with that anointing fromheaven. God is raising a new breed of preachers in these lastdays. Oh how we need them!
SOURCE: www.sermonindex.net
