Picture of a Prophet

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 -
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