“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.” Jeremiah 6:16
We have entered into a time of crisis and that crisis has spread around the world. I am besieged by many pastors from many countries for help, but there is little to help them with. This crisis has been coming for a long time now, and it is just beginning to break out onto the surface of our lives. I would like to share with you my response to one of those pastors in Africa:
Dear Pastor,
We are in a time that is much like the time when Elijah was hidden by the widow of Zarepath, who was a picture of the Church. There was nothing left in the barrel other than enough for a last meal before they starved to death. And yet the Lord preserved her and her son through the famine because of their faithfulness to His prophet.
We have brought this famine upon ourselves because, just like the Israelites, we have forsaken the true Gospel for a golden calf that was more to our liking. He has taken that golden calf away, and we are left with the empty promises of a false Gospel based on the illusions of prosperity and wealth, on blessings that are based on wishful thinking, and on a love that is defined only by our hope for an excuse to get away with worldliness and sin. We are reaping what we have sown.
While I scrape together something to send you, please remember that I have always warned the ministers in Africa who thought they had obtained a position of honor rather than a ministry of selfless humility. That mode of thinking is endemic in Africa. It’s as if there is such a lust for personal recognition and a desire to become tribal chieftains that they have forgotten what the Lord really called them for – to serve, not to be served. It is evident in how they adorn themselves with their titles. Everyone calls themselves a pastor, they are full of apostles, and everyone is striving to attach the title of bishop or prophet to the front of their name.
So where are all these great and mighty powerhouses of God now? Like cockroaches, they are scurrying for cover. Where are all the great promises they have given us now? They are empty milk cans with holes punctured throughout the bottom of the can. Where are all their prophesies of prosperity and blessings now? They have dissipated like wisps of empty clouds before the wind of their own vanity. The Grace of God is not cheap, and the blessings of God are not bestowed upon a lukewarm, anemic pretention of righteousness.
You remember that I warned everyone of a coming storm, that the dark clouds of war are on the way. I pleaded with congregation after congregation to dive deeply into the Word of God and to sink their roots in deep or they would be blown away in the storm. How many bobbed their heads up and down in an superficial acknowledgement! They believed that I was a prophet, but they didn’t take my words to heart – and I told them right to their face that that’s exactly what they would do. And now we are beginning to see those spoken words take on a harsh substance.
This is not the storm yet. This is just the winds that precede it. The worst is yet to come.
And still, they refuse to hearken, clinging instead to a desperate hope that the empty promises of blessings will come to an unbroken, unrepentant church whose hope is based on wishful thinking rather than righteousness. We would so much rather listen to the songs of false prophets about a loving “Daddy, than face the stark realities of the fear of God.
Today I was reading Ephesians, and stopped at the scripture in chapter 4: “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” The word “sleight” actually refers to a gambling die. We throw the dice each time we lean into the easy “feel good” messages we turn to on the radio and TV, and the Christian Self-Help books we rush to for an easy solution. Oh, how we hope we can find an quick answer to our plight by taking the easy way out and skirting around the hard messages of repentance and righteousness that is found in the Bible!
And by doing so, we throw the dice and gamble with our souls by lending our ears to some new thing- ANYTHING but the Fear of God. Instead of going up the mountain to face God like Moses did, we will pay our $19.95 to anyone that will convince us of an easier way. And we end up creating gods in our own image that will allow us to skirt the call to repentance.
But the great stone wheel of Judgment continues to roll in spite of our objections to a critical Gospel that we try desperately to avoid. We thought that the calm before the storm was our reprieve, but the storm clouds are gathering, and now we feel the winds that are beginning to blow.
The lush fields that Ahab looked to when Elijah first brought his message of judgment have withered to a brown and dusty land of drought. We have done our best to put away the prophets that stood for that old fashioned Gospel in an attempt to replace them with the prophets of Baal that promise rain, and we seek to persecute the prophet that proclaimed these warnings to us, but it is not the words of the prophet that have brought this upon us – it is our own failure to fear God.
We have an appointment on the top of Mount Carmel, and judgment will fall before it begins to rain.
Brother Dale
For prayer request or support,
dale@revivalfire.org
www.RevivalFire.org
“Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again.” I Kings 18:37
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Early Today 