RAVENHILL ON 'PROPHETS'
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
-by Leonard Ravenhill.
The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally
rejected by men.
Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, "No
man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected." The
prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They
are his "brand name."
The group, challenged by the prophet because they are
smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in
their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him
"Man of the year" when he refers to them as habituates of
the synagogue of Satan!
The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work
is to call into line those who are out of line! 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! The function of the prophet, as Austin-
Sparks once said, "has almost always been that of recovery."
The prophet is God's detective seeking for a lost treasure.
The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his
measure of unpopularity.
Compromise is not known to him.
He has no price tags.
He is totally "otherworldly."
He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably
hostile.
He marches to another drummer!
He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration.
He is a "seer" who comes to lead the blind.
He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley
with a "thus saith the Lord."
He shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is
aware of impending judgment.
He lives in "splendid isolation."
He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright.
His message is "repent, be reconciled to God or else...!"
His prophecies are parried.
His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void.
He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.
He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when
dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and
honored with epitaphs when dead.
He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few
"make the grade" in his class.
He is friendless while living and famous when dead.
He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is
established as a saint by posterity.
He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers,
but he feeds the Bread of Life to those who listen.
He walks before men for days but has walked before
God for years.
He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by
the nation.
He announces, pronounces, and denounces!
He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire.
He talks to men about God.
He carries the lamp of truth amongst heretics while he is
lampooned by men.
He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing.
He hides with God in the secret place, but he has
nothing to hide in the marketplace.
He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual.
He has passion, purpose and pugnacity.
He is ordained of God but disdained by men.
Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover
its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair,
or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need
a God-sent prophet!
I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming
shortages in our national life: bread, fuel, energy. I read
between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk.
They feel that the "seven years of plenty" are over for us.
The "seven years of famine" are ahead. But the greatest
famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a
FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD.
(Amos 8:11).
Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last
twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak
through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have
been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution.
"Come-outers" have "come out" and settled, too, without a
nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled
preachers abound.
Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the
nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are
the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is
the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the
Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour
and sick spirituality?
GOD'S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR
SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated
during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.
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.
Let him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-
projecting, nonself- righteous, nonself-glorying,
nonself-promoting.
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!
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Copyright (C) 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale Texas -
http://www.ravenhill.org/
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