NEW BREED of MODERN PREACHERS
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
-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 our
consciences anymore then a worldly movie would. God is going to
raise them up, they will not be bred in modern day seminaries or
bible colleges. They will speak against the whole system that is
raising anemic preachers and teachers. Their messages will be
bold, strong, pointed, it will offend many but save many. Their
preaching will bear witness to their calling. God will be in their
messages 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, any
that knoweth how long. Yet they will come! They will come with
messages that will sear our consciences, Oh how we need a
modern day prophet. Will the modern day prophet agree with all
the theology and comfort of American Christianity? No, his
message will so contradict all of what we know of Christianity that
we will hardly believe he is from God. Jeremiah was a prophet that
heard from God and he prophesied: behold, I will make my words
in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them.
These new breed of preachers will be men that are shut-in with
God and hear from him and their words will be as fire and the
people wood.
D.M. McIntyre spoke of this same heavenly principle: Before the
great revival in Gallneukirchen broke out, Martin Boos spent hours
and days and often nights in lonely agonies of intercession.
Afterwards, when he preached, his words were as flame, and the
hearts of the people as grass. Oh these men will be much with
God and little with men. The things of earth to them will grow
strangely dim. They will be strange men to the ways and systems
of the world. They will speak against the hypocrisy in the pews
and the hirelings in the pulpits. The fear of man will not have any
hold on these men, the holy fear of God will be their overwhelming
vision. They will speak the word of the Lord in due season and
not 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 short
article prophetic preaching - this is the need of our day and it will
come: If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation, it must be by
other means than any now being used. If the Church in the second
half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in
the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper,
ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly
type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no
questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to
make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have
been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must
arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who
has 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 and
protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition
of 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 die
for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But he will
fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath. This is only to say
that we need to have the gifts of the Spirit restored again to the
Church. And it is my belief that the one gift we need most now is
the gift of prophecy.
Uncompromised, unsettled, unyielding, unmovable, unshakable!
These men will come with unbelievable message to those steeped
in unbelief. David Wilkerson said once, only praying men touch
God. These men will be men of God that touch God and hear
from Him. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Joel, Hosea, Zechariah,
these men will find good company with the coming prophets. They
will be fully accepted of God and fully rejected by men. God will
call 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 of
God and totally rejected by men. The group challenged by the
prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a
perishing world in their warm but untested theology are not likely to
vote 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 and
spirituality. In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers,
there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God
for 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 when
dead! He walks before men for days, but has walked before God for years.
"He announces, pronounces, and denounces! God talks to him
about men. He talks to men about God. There is a terrible vacuum
in Evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks
is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man
totally otherworldly. the man rejected by other men, even other
good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely
committed, too negative and unsociable.
"Let him be as plain as John the Baptist. Let him for a season be
a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnant
churchianity. Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle. Let him,
too, say and live, This one thing I do. Let him reject ecclesiastical
favors. 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 that
which will move men to God. Let him come daily from the throne
room of a holy God, the place where he has received the order of
the day. Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions who
are deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour of
material mesmerism.
"Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he
has seen a vision no man in this century has seen. God send us
this 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 commands
of the Lord. They will call for a turning away from sin and from sinful
practices. They will preach a God-exalting and men-abasing
message. They will not be worried about mens self-esteem or
happiness but rather their clarion cry will be: Holiness Unto the Lord!
Their message might sound like this excerpt of a message
preached by Carter Conlon: Run from gospels that focus on your
success and prosperity. Run from those that use the name of
Jesus Christ only for personal gain. Run from those that are picking
your pocket in the name of Jesus. Run! Run from gospels that focus
only 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 Canada
where there is no Bible, no cross, no searching Word, no
repentance from sin. Run when theres no mention of the blood of
Jesus. Its an unclean place, so run! Run from churches where the
worship leaves you cold, where theres no sense of Gods
presence, because they dont know God. Run! Run from churches
where youre comfortable in your sin. If you enter Gods house with
sin in your life, but youre not convicted of it, youre sitting at a
table of devils. Run! Run from pulpits that are filled with politically
driven 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 from
ungodly, 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 youve never run before.
Run from those that are only after money and they use one
gimmick after another to get your money. One foolish thing after
another 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 brothers
and sisters. Great times of shaking are coming. Are we standing
firm on truth of God or are we allowing the world and its cares to
choke our spiritual life? God is going to raise up a new modern
breed of preachers that will be uncompromising and unrelenting in
their proclamation of the heart of God. Hear this blunt blaring word
from the late Dr. Joseph Parker: Oh, ye white-faced, weak-kneed
believers! Believers in what? Ye shifty speculators, stealers of
prophetic mantles! go, drink yourselves to death, and go to your
proper devil! Ye are not the Church of Christ, might well be the
speech which ascended Pauls might deliver to us, as we reshuffle
the theological cards, and rearrange our credenda, and modify
and dilute our doctrinal positions and enthusiasms. Let us also
hear one of Mr. Ravenhills often quoted lines: Our pulpits today
are occupied with puppets rather than with prophets, with
organizers rather than with agonizers. Does that smite? It is true!
Let us start praying to see God revive, restore, renew and
revolutionize the Church as we know it. We need a mighty touch
of Gods Spirit and men that will speak with that anointing from
heaven. God is raising a new breed of preachers in these last
days. Oh how we need them!
-SOURCE: http://www.sermonindex.net
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