What is Truth?

August 2008  Vol. II Number 8

A New Breed of Preacher

by Greg Gordon

A NEW BREED

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 this new century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the last half of the old, 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 stepped 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 men's 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 there's no mention of the blood of Jesus. It's an unclean place, so run! Run from churches where the worship leaves you cold, where there's no sense of God's presence, because they don't know God. Run! Run from churches where you're comfortable in your sin. If you enter God's house with sin in your life, but you're not convicted of it, you're 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 tells only stories and jokes. Run like you've 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 our attention. 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 lives. 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 Paul’s 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. Ravenhill's 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 God's 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!


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