“Prophets are a strange breed of men. They are God’s emergency men for crisis hours. And the price of being a prophet is that a man has to live alone. All God’s great men have been very, very lonely men.”
When I read words like this from Leonard Ravenhill, I’m challenged. When I look at the state of prophetic ministry today, I’m grieved.
Ravenhill was known for his no-comprising, hard-hitting, sin-blasting messages. He carried the spirit of a prophet. He carried a spirit like John the Baptist that laid the ax to the root—but he didn’t do it with a critical, condemning heart. He did it with pure and undefiled love forged in the fire of God.
“The great need in America tonight, I’m convinced of this—as good as Bible schools are with their assembly lines and producing their preachers—the greatest need in America tonight is prophets,” Ravenhill once said. “Ah, the prophets were men who walked with God, they felt like God, they saw like God, they wept like God, they yearned like God. They had no satisfaction in seeing the beauty of the temple, the ritual, the formality.”
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John the Baptist came doing no great miracles. As Ravenhill put it, he didn’t raise a dead man—he raised a dead nation. He lead the nation into the First Great Awakening—the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a forerunner, preparing the way of the Lord. And they chopped his head off.
“Oh, I like to think of John Baptist standing there—no sponsors, nobody to agree or disagree with him,” Ravenhill said. “He stood there and they came to see this strange man anointed by the Holy Ghost. We have blinded our eyes to the truth and we have put our fingers in our ears to the voice of God.”
“And the judgments are going to fall if we don’t get revival, and maybe if it’s not an alternative of Christ or chaos but Christ and chaos, not revival or revolution but revival and revolution; not revival without concentration camps; maybe the only place we’ll get it is in concentration camps. Oh brother, we are heading for trouble, I’ll tell you. Ah, the prophets were men who walked with God, they felt like God, they saw like God, they wept like God, they yearned like God.”
I know there are prophets like the ones Ravenhill described in this video. I know there are thousands of prophets in the nation and around the world who have not bowed a knee to Baal. I know there are thousands who are not eating at Jezebel’s table; thousands who are not selling personal prophecy on monthly installment plans; thousands who are nameless and faceless, with no public platform but a private prayer closet where God reveals to them His secrets. And they pray; they stand in the gap; they get in the watchtowers; they make up the hedge; they release intercession that touches heaven.
For all the haughty, arrogant, prideful prophets who believe they are called to rebuke major movements in the body of Christ, there are many, many more who are weeping over the state of the nation. For all the doom-and-gloom prophets who release curses and leave no room for God’s mercy, there are countless forerunners of awakening who are pointing to the next great move of God that will see a massive harvest come in.
For all the false prophets speaking smooth sayings for money, there are more who refuse to compromise the Word of God for ungodly gain. For all the Jezebel prophets leading the church into false doctrines, there are many more who are calling the church to repent in humility.
Lord, let the true prophets arise and glorify Your name, declare Your plans and urge the church to be salt and light in a lost and dying world! {eoa}
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