Urgently Needed Preachers

We live in a desperate day, right before the appearance of Antichrist. All hell is breaking loose upon a sin-loving society that has rejected the God of the Bible. The nation drowns in its lust for greed and gain, while immorality and perversion spills across the land like a filthy sewer, contaminating all its contacts.

God is mocked, and few are being saved in the land. The churches grow with new baptisms, but few conversions. A great spiritual declension has the church in her grip, as churches slumber on the pillows of conformity and compromise, while hell fills by the hour.

Pulpits are filled with teachers, but we have a dearth of preachers. One of the great judgments from God on a people is a dearth of preachers. In the prophet Jeremiah's day, this was the case.

In Jeremiah, chapter 23, and verse 11, we read, For both prophet and priest are profane. Yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord. I repeat, friends, the immediate need at this tragic hour is an urgent one.

We urgently need preachers. We have a generation of young people today who know not the Lord. They don't even believe the Bible, as God's word is despised among them.

The apostle Paul laments in Romans, How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? But I submit to you, friends, that people sit Sunday after Sunday under ministers who are not preachers, but they are teachers. There is a vast distinction between teaching and preaching. Teaching informs, preaching transforms.

Where is the spiritual transformation in our congregations today? I was speaking to a seminary professor who told me few men are signing up to be pastors because of the low salary. Many in seminaries today are training to be counselors because that career path is more lucrative. Fewer men are going into the preaching ministry.

But every great spiritual awakening had preachers whom God sent forth to spearhead the movement of God. John Wesley said, Give me 100 men who fear nothing but God and hate nothing but sin, and I will shake the gates of hell. But where today is the John Wesley or George Whitefield for this hour? We need God to raise up preachers in the stamp of these men.

Listen, friends, the Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley, Whitefield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, each shared a common denominator of fire in their belly. They were so eaten up with the gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with the Holy Ghost that they could not stand idly by while others perished. They saw nothing but eternity, worshipped the Holy God and served the risen Christ, living not for earth nor its gains, but living only for heaven and its rewards.

When they preached, they linked the devil with sin and the cross with salvation. They preached hell and its fire, and Christ and him crucified. Not one of them feared king, queen, or pope, and not one of them sought the compliments of men.