Without a doubt the most daunting position for a man of God to find himself in would be the one Micaiah found himself in 1 Kings 22, as he is brought before the king to give counsel to the leadership of a backslidden one-God people who had strayed from the ways of God’s word. His dilemma is compounded by the fact that he must give counsel at the mouth of the Lord to a king who is backslidden, but standing in company with a king who is not.

Imagine if you will the conundrum battling itself out in Micaiah’s mind as he comes before King Ahab. By the very implications in this passage, we can see that Micaiah has undoubtedly been before Ahab before on more than one occasion. He knows his job. He knows his calling. He knows his place…and so does the king. Their relationship is one of a young man in no position of leadership giving Godly advice and warning to a King who has long since determined not to listen to the voice of God in his personal life.

Micaiah has no armies. He has no retinue. He comes before the king with no body guards. No armor. No weapons. Those are not elements organic to his position. He is not a warrior by nature. He is a mouthpiece. If you will, he is an oracle of the Most High. His position is not to fight his king and his leaders. He does not draw a sword. His weapon is his words given by divine mandate of God, and with that weapon comes a possible death sentence.

To give the true word of God in the face of a leader who is God-fearing would be to find favor, but to bring a word from the Throne room of God before a man in leadership before God’s people who is in a backslidden or even a reprobate state, would be to invite possible, if not certain death. There is power in the word of a king.

Obviously the king’s prophetic retinue were already well-versed in Micaiah’s character, delivery and expected performance by the way he is addressed by the lying prophet that comes to fetch him for the king. The subtle message coming from the lips of this lap-dog prophet-for-hire is one that is well-known and has echoed down through the ages to find a resonance in this age we live in. It is the voice of the social network or country club of preachers have chosen to blend in with their surroundings and speak only good things to their flocks, leadership, subordinates and fellow ministers. Come hell or high water they will stand together and close ranks against anything that might upset their order or put their role, preeminence and structure at risk, even if it means condoning outright rebellion of a group of brethren, or worse, the spiritual murder of another minister or saint.

Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. It happened en masse last year in one our organizations and ultimately ended up in a split. The problem can start in a clique, a church, a section, a district, a board, or an entire organization. Leave it to God to determine the venue! He’s married to none of us yet despite our personal implications of lineage and pedigree. The ultimate responsibility of the Bride is to STAY PURE, not to maintain organizational structure and regulations. Sorry, but I’m going to say it. If splitting off to form another organization is rebellion and witchcraft, according to the word of God, then bitterness and hatred toward your brethren and calling them rebels (especially if you are the one that put the stumbling block or occasion to fall in front of them) is still murder in the holy writ.

Don’t cross spiritual swords with me about it, because I won’t play your petty modern Pentecostal political games. I sit in your churches. I watch what happens. I’ve sat under the best and worse from both sides in the past…literally. I could literally name names and fire this thing out to every single one involved in the mess by mail and email. Don’t think that time and circumstance will heal what has been done. The only thing that will heal is unity, forgiveness and restoration and if you think, teach or say anything otherwise, you are wrong. Paul rebuked and admonished the churches in Romans 16:17, 1 Corinthians 1:10 and 1 Corinthians 3:3 for having divisions among them and told them that it was because they are carnal. Let’s put it in modern black and white. Church splits are caused by carnal saints and carnal preachers…ON BOTH SIDES!

Now a special something for the few who ultimately plan church splits in advance and lie about it to cover it up…The eyes of the Lord run to and fro in the earth, to show himself strong on behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him, and because you have brought this device in private God will reveal and humble you publically. No man brings a deliberate division to the body of Christ and escapes unpunished, uncorrected and unscathed.

Frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord. Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. Proverbs 6:14-19

My pastor spoke on this at our last two Life groups here and explained the emphasis of “three yea, four” or “six, yea, seven,” in Solomon’s writings is to bring specific emphasis on the last item being mentioned. Yes, he mentioned lying in two forms above, because lies can destroy a man or woman’s character and standing in the church, the home, the community worse than anything short of murder. I have endured this in the past and survived it only by the grace and demonstrative intervention of God. Still, the emphasis of the wisest ruler who ever lived was to point that God hates those who sow discord among their brethren. The reason is simple, One God Apostolics…God works on the unity principle. The devil works in division. You will never divide the body of Christ and accomplish the work of God in doing so. Ultimately the answer is simple. The hand of God turned you over in judgment to something that you are now trying to self-justify your actions in without remedy. It is the beginning of God’s judgment on his ministry in this situation. You can still repent and restore the pledge you made at ordination. There is time, but the clock is ticking.

The voice of the lap-dog prophet is a simple one and echoes into the present day church. You can hear their voices if you listen closely. “We all agreed on this. We told our leadership this. It’s said. It’s done. So, you agree with us, or shut your mouth. Don’t rock the boat, you trouble-maker! This is a long standing tradition and law among us. It ain’t Bible, but it is our law, rule and regulation.” It echoes in the spirit around them like a shadow.

Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, was the leader and spokesman for his group of lying prophets. From his vocal presence in these passages, he’s stuck his neck out as the political leader of his fellowship and determined that they are the ones hearing the voice of God in their nation. Sadly, he takes his position of leader and spokesperson beyond the extent of just creating a program that he expects the entire group to look to, he takes it on himself to correct and try to strike down the voice of truth that rises up and speaks something contrary to what he has spoken. The only thing worse than a prophet who steals his words from another prophet is one who attempts to silence any word from God that does not come from his own throat.

Let’s strip the politics of modern day Pentecost off and just be honest for a minute or two before we die. Why is it that any time we speak of a man of God, a prophet of God, or a preacher speaking to leadership in this day and age it is always speaking to the nation, the world, the sinners and the national leadership or system of government? Why have we as one God Apostolic believers let the spirit of this hour so prostitute our souls, our doctrines and our philosophies of ministry, ethics, conduct and preaching that we turn the word of God outward from us, instead of inward, and establish bastions of power, leadership, preeminence, prestige and position in ourselves or our personal cliques, that are totally autonomous and devoid of correction from anything that does not directly flow through them from God or their select few elders? Because we chose who we will allow to correct us, does that mean that God must agree with our selection? What if God doesn’t like our choice, or worse, the one we selected is really a bureaucrat and doesn’t give a flip about us, just his own political posturing and benefit? God looks on the heart and we at best, preachers or no are still men. We can only see the outward appearance.

How is it, One God Pentecostals, that we can develop ministries in this last hour, some of which may have long developed among us, that after preaching in the spotlight of Pentecostal preeminence for decades, now will hear nothing that does not flow through their own loins or from the lips of a select few determined by them to be their only peers, equals, or mentors? How is it that with an untold numbers or men of God listed in the holy writ of varying ages, abilities and callings, went to whoever God sent them despite age, position, pedigree or political connections, but we Pentecostals can step out of the pages of Apostolic order and seize hold on a list of ethics, criteria and regulations that we adopted from men straight out of a denomination we regard as heretics, then somehow claim that God approves of our criteria? Not in the coldest day!

God will never be held in check by Parliamentary procedure and his idea of “decency and order” are far different than our Pentecostal Puritan parliamentary mandates. God’s idea of decency and order is “whatever I want you to do and say, you do and say.” End of story. God has been stepping on religious hierarchies and upsetting apple carts since the day David got out of the carriage and said, “Who’s the big guy with the smart mouth. Let me at him!”

Sorry, but I believe in a God who can knock a drunk off a bar stool, fill him with the Holy Ghost and put a word in his mouth to deliver to a king, president, religious leader or pontiff. If you don’t, then take down your shingle and go find another denomination that serves a dead God! That’s lap-dog religion.

Any body of believers who claim their preeminence is so rooted in the word that they can’t take correction from the word of God from an “outside source” is a body of believers that his headed for a spiritual shipwreck, regardless of fellowship, doctrine, size or gross-income. God did not respect the religious structure he established over truth in the days of the prophets, the days of John the Baptist, or when he walked on the earth, yet we as One-God Apostolics somehow have so prostituted our thought processes in these last days to somehow think that we can stray from the word of God and not be corrected. It is as if we feel our personal Pentecostal organization of choice cannot be wrong, cannot be corrected or cannot be called out for correction by someone in foul raiment and a voice full of the Spirit. Don’t tell that to John the Baptist. He’ll call you a viper to your face!

Write it down friend. Any body of One-God believers that have ruled their selves and their positions of power and leadership so exclusive that they cannot be corrected from within, God will attempt to correct them from without…and if they cannot be corrected from without, they will be corrected from above!

In my personal life I’ve run head-on into the voice of the lap-dog spirit that is creeping into Pentecost. I’ve sat across tables from men of God who would talk out of both sides of their mouths and tell me concerning an incident that I was placed into by the Holy Ghost in no uncertain terms, “God put you there to correct someone who would not and could not be corrected,” and then turn and a few days later and tell me, “Well, you weren’t their peer, so it wasn’t your place to correct him!” Same incident. Two different messages. Same preacher. Oh and you can bet your little Pentecostal organizational card that he wasn’t a Baptist!

Another man so persistently went after me about the same situation, that after the third or fourth time of berating me about taking a stand for truth against someone in his organization, I gave him scripture against his statements and he immediately told me to stop confronting ministers in his organization for doctrinal heresies and false doctrine. I referenced the story of Micaiah with him and he quoted the last words of the lap-dog prophet for me…”only speak good things.” At that moment he hung his head as the Holy Ghost rebuked him. I couldn’t help but laugh. What kind of generation could raise such a preacher. I referenced a time in his past where he came to a city to take over a church and I had sat in the congregation waiting for a key phrase from him…”God called me here.” It never came. I told him again as we sat talking, “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that one thing that I was waiting to hear and I have not heard it.” He sat in total silence. Even then, two years later, he could not voice it aloud. When confronted with the Word of God, there really is no correct answer. You can’t just sit and lie in his face when he knows you are lying. It doesn’t work.

We’ve raised a generation of ministers that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the lap-dogs of Laodicean. Men who have chosen the “vocation of the ministry,” but who have not been called by God to his ministry! How is it that we can run a generation through our colleges, then dress them up in the best suits and put them on the circuit to preach in our churches when God has not called them? Sure that doesn’t happen. If you don’t believe me, find someone else’s article to read. You aren’t my target audience if you think that. I’m looking for a few honest ones among us that are seeing and feeling some things resonating in the Holy Ghost.

Why is it that we can raise up a generation with a silver spoon in their mouths, hand down a pedigree of position, fame, family prestige in Pentecost and even pass on their lineage of leadership in churches and a fellowship…who have never been called by God? And for any Pentecostal fat-cats out there who think I say that with a personal axe to grind, forget it. I asked God about that very same thing a year ago and I got my answer in less than 2 seconds after it left my lips. “I will use you in areas I will never use them!” You can bet that God shut me up real quick and I did a reassessment of everything I was seeing, doing and praying about in my life and ministry.

And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel; and the name of his second, Abiah: they were judges in Beer-sheba. And his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment. Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. 1 Samuel 8:1-5

We see in 1 Samuel 3 that God called Samuel. We never see in the scriptures that God called Joel or Abiah, his two sons. God help us when preaches make their sons positions in the church when God never called them! Have we progressed so far in our relationship with God as a movement, that we can now circumvent the calling of God to an office, a position or a ministry and somehow by-pass the leading of the Spirit and surpass it with carnal programs, pedigree and lineage? Let’s not get so frustrated with the lethargic reaction time of a generation that we appoint our leaders by political appointment and not divine appointment! Dear God, help us.

I get my share of hate mail and fan mail. I’m sure this article will be no different. For every 8 or 9 letters of appreciation I get from someone that has been helped, blessed and encouraged by something I have said or written, I also get at least one who wants to know my pedigree, degree, organization or lineage with the implication that if I’m not a member of his organization of preference or the descendant of someone he knows and plays golf with, that I’m to shut my mouth. God help us if someone among us steps forward and like Amos the prophet, has to tell the preacher in their life, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit: And the LORD took me as I followed the flock, and the LORD said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.”

You walk into a Pentecostal church with that kind of pedigree nowadays and you are in for a fight. So, let me tell you the outcome of the matter before it happens. If any of you Zedekiahs out there want to challenge me with your iron horns of Pentecostal politics, have at it, but God is going to raise up men and women like Amos with no pedigree off our pews and among the flocks and bypass an entire generation of fat cat preachers who won’t hear his voice, obey his word or go in the direction he wants to go with his Bride.

Get ready, because as sure as I’m sitting here writing this, it is going to happen! He is going to raise up men and women to speak with prophetic voice and even now he is doing it and has been for some time in our churches. They will first call the ministry back to alignment with God’s word. Still, many, even most of you will not listen to them. You will “black ball” them and call them rebels. You will persecute them from your pulpits, scourging them in your synagogues as was prophesied at the mouth of Christ himself. You have and will drive them from your churches to attend in other cities. Some will listen, and yet again, some will drive them out again or crucify them. Jesus was emphatic about this, that it will happen and for a reason. God will have a church and not one that is led, ruled and run by politicians and servants who have made their selves kings and lords over God’s heritage. He will raise up spiritual eunuchs who will protect the Bride of Christ against the hard-handed abuse of leaders who will not lead according to God’s word. The things that were written of old were written for our admonition.

Shall I uncover it for you more? Let me break it down and make it plain as one old prophetess used to call out to our pastor during his message. God is sending men and women of low estate into our churches. Some may appear decrepit, from the wrong side of the tracks, or so messed up and have so many issues that the churches and the ministry will push them aside. Understand that God is testing you. If you push against his wounded sheep as the brutish pastors of Ezekiel 34, he is testing you and bringing you to judgment for you actions and for not sparing the flock. He will bring the judgment of Matthew 25:31-46 on his church and not the world. We are building a testimony for or against us in this last hour. Mark it down.

I don’t mind telling you. I’m not the son of a Pentecostal preacher, or the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher. I am the grandson of a Missouri sharecropper and if his son, my father, had not gotten a construction trade in the 60’s after being busted out of the Army for fighting, it would no doubt have been my career as well. I didn’t know that God was restoring a lost seed of a man who no doubt prayed for his brothers, cousins, nephews and their families because he had no heirs in this life.

A share-cropper was a man who was too poor to own a farm, so he farmed land for someone else and tried to make a living with his share of the crops he raised and harvested. For those of you who don’t know how poor that is, we were so poor that if our churches weren’t drawn down racial lines in the early 1900’s we’d have no doubt been put in the back of the bus and the church with those souls our nation and our churches disrespected based merely on the color of their skin. We were the modern indentured servants, too poor to truly be called free men. White slaves…white trash…any name would have fit.

I said I was not the son of a preacher, but I did not say I was not the son of a prophet. God knows how to restore a lost seed. In the early 1980’s after God brought my father into the truth, I was going through a closet at my grandmother’s home. She had suffered a stroke and had to be put in a nursing home. We cleaned up her home, which was bought for her as the wife and widow of a disabled veteran and got it ready for sale to finance her care and board in the nursing home.

Grandpa had gone blind due to an injury he got while in the service. He served in China after WW1 and grandma was little short of a pack rat. We threw away sale bills from newspapers from the 1930’s all the way to the 80’s. It’s quite common for someone who lived through the Depression. I’m still amazed that I found the clipping in an old shoe box about my father’s uncle, Press, who passed away years before I was born. It told how he had no children of his own but was a life-long member of one of our Oneness Apostolic churches in Chafee, Missouri. I remember handing that obituary to my father, who wept when he read it. God knows how to restore a lost seed. His uncle may have not had children, but God will not let a generation that served him faithfully die in a grave and leave no heirs in his kingdom. God is faithful. No torch he has ever given us to carry will ever fall to the ground on his accord!

My father started out in this truth in prayer, fasting and studying God’s word like some rabid Berean searching the scriptures and those things given to see if they were the word of God. God began to speak to him and give him personal convictions that changed his life and walk and made him far from popular. I’ve lived long enough to see men who attacked my father from behind the sacred desk, men bent on promoting their own agendas, creeds and plans and not what God was speaking. I also watched at an early age as in true Azusa Street fashion, God knocked that speaker from the pulpit in front of the entire congregation, not once, not twice, but three times that night. At that time, I had not read about Azusa Street or the wondrous happenings there. All I knew was that I saw something supernatural happen in my life and to my family.

Another time, a preacher bent on pulling his church out of the truth and holiness, called in several families including my parents and told them to withdraw their kids from the youth group in an attempt to offend them and run them all off. One by one those families walked out of his office and left the church, but dad being the way he is, looked him in the eyes and told him, “No.” The preacher screamed at him, told him he was listening to the devil, then told my mother she was married to the devil and told them they weren’t welcome there in his church. My youth leader came out and told me about it a few minutes later, only seconds after he resigned and walked out. Twenty-three years later my parents are still serving God and that poor backslidden preacher is gone, his family busted up by divorce and scattered to the world. God won’t be mocked, lied to, or deceived. He knows how to deliver the righteous.

Ten years of being outside the church would not steal from me all that I saw while growing up. Especially the times like the night my father drove a van-load of our church youth group to hear a well-known name in Pentecost do his thing at a local church. Asked after the service when asked how he enjoyed it, my father in true share-cropper fashion bluntly told my entire youth group. “I didn’t like it,” then went into detail about what sin the man was involved in. They were shocked and in total disbelief. I was more astonished several years later when I found out that dad hit the nail on the head. You can’t replace “God-called” with “chose the vocation of the ministry.”

And Micaiah said, As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I speak. So he came to the king. And the king said unto him, Micaiah, shall we go against Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we forbear? And he answered him, Go, and prosper: for the LORD shall deliver it into the hand of the king. And the king said unto him, How many times shall I adjure thee that thou tell me nothing but that which is true in the name of the LORD? And he said, I saw all Israel scattered upon the hills, as sheep that have not a shepherd: and the LORD said, These have no master: let them return every man to his house in peace. And the king of Israel said unto Jehoshaphat, Did I not tell thee that he would prophesy no good concerning me, but evil? 1 Kings 22:14-18

There comes a time in your life, walk and ministry that you are going to have to nail some things down and determine that you are going to speak the unadulterated word of God without fear or favor from friends, family, peers, leaders, subordinates, the affluent, or even the “landmarks.” Don’t let your ties to others determine what you will speak if you have a heavenly mandate. If God calls you to be an apostle, don’t stoop to being a secretary for a district if that isn’t your calling. If God called you to be a prophet, don’t settle into an office or a pastorship that heaven did not ordain for you to do.

It’s time we in Pentecost stop following Catholic and denominational models of leadership and organization and start getting back into the book. If you can’t feed yourself as a pastor, do as Paul did and work in a craft of your own. There is no harm or foul in that and we need to stop dictating that from organizations when we send our ministers in to Metro areas where the cost of living eats them and their families alive and mandate that they not work outside the church for years...And for the love of God stop sending them out alone! Jesus didn’t send Peter out with his wife. He sent them out by twos, in pairs with another apostle, another minister. Get back into the book, Pentecost. Why did he do that? Because even preachers need a preacher in their life! Our problem is we can’t get enough of the guys WE called to ministry to get involved and do something like that. We could if we’d let God start doing the calling and election!

Trouble in Pentecost: Lying preachers!

Maybe I’ve just sat under some of the wrong people, but my old mentor, Rev. James Gilbert once preached us a sermon when I was just a young Marine, newly returned from a year in Okinawa, Japan. During his message that gentle giant of a man confronted everyone one of us young men in the church and screamed from the pulpit with his fists clenched in the agony of vision for the future that only a truly God-called preacher could ever know, as he yelled out across the congregation, “You young preachers listen to me. You’d better preach the truth. When I’m dead and gone, you’d better not water this gospel down. You’d better preach it straight and preach it true, because if you don’t, I’m going kick my casket open and grab you by the throat and scream in your face, “WHY!”

It’s been sixteen years since that sermon. I’ve never forgotten the look in his face, the fire in his eyes or the passion in his aging voice. He and his wife are retired now in poor health down in Texas, but how can a young man forget something like that. It burns like a red-hot poker in my soul and wakes me up at night. I have to constantly reevaluate where I am in my walk and ministry. I can’t let that torch fall in the dirt. Nor can I disgrace that mentoring and tutoring they gave me over the years.

Now years later I remember that old pioneer telling me how one of my Pentecostal icons once stood before an entire conference of ministers and threw their ministerial manual at the feet of the district board. He told me how he went to him after his message and tried to speak to him to correct him but he would not be corrected. He stomped off, refusing to hear correction from that elder minister. It was no wonder that when I ended up under that icon’s ministry 15 years later that I met the same response. Jesus never came to bring peace to the earth but a sword. The situation had the gloss and finesse of a small nuclear war. All I can say is that the prophecies given to him came to pass and now I’m worse than the devil to him. You never have to be ashamed when God gives you a word. Hate you or love you, you still have to give them what thus saith the Lord and keep on loving them.

I remember once in another state, not too many years ago, I ran across a preacher laying hands on young people, speaking some gibberish and telling them to repeat it. Those who would he told them had they had received the Holy Ghost. Those who would not, he would walk away in frustration. I was not allowed to intervene. A young man in leadership had grabbed me before he did it and told me not to interfere, but to “pray silently and “let him pray them through to the Holy Ghost.” I won’t be so brash as to tell you what organization he was in, but when “Slick” got up the next day and told all those young people that my former mentor was his mentor, I was ready to explode. They never taught him that trash!

Not one to bump heads during a service, I just stood back and that day it was a repeat performance. I was praying for a young person and “Slick” pushed me out of the way and true to Pentecostal politics, his buddy, the youth president of that district was right there beside me again, telling me, “Just like yesterday. You stay out of the way and let him pray with them.” I backed up and prayed silently alright! I bound that spirit and commanded it not to work and as soon as he gave up in frustration I walked up and prayed with the young men he had laid hands on and prayed them through to the Holy Ghost, then I sent them to their pastors to tell them exactly who had tried to mislead them.

Later, I went home and told the pastor I was under at the time what had happened. Unfortunately, contrary to his pedigree, he did nothing, so I called my mentor and he and his wife confirmed that there were some who had been under them in their ministry that attempted to propagate such nonsense, but they did not get it from them. They still preach against trying to teach people to speak in tongues, because God doesn’t need any help filling people with the Holy Ghost! Praying with them is one thing. Spouting some gibberish and telling them to repeat it is a lie from hell! Stand on it.

About a year later I was on my way to a service while on vacation from another state and that young lap-dog called me. I had been on the way to take some new converts to be baptized and someone had called his church and left a message to see about using their baptistery and left my number as a point of contact. I explained that I had taken them elsewhere out of personal preference and “Slick” made a mistake…he blew up at me and demanded to know why I had preferred to take new converts elsewhere. Being the non-pedigreed Pentecostal that I am, I told him bluntly and point blank what I had seen him do and heard him say. He began to lie to me and I confronted him openly with what was said and done and told him that we don’t teach that doctrine in Pentecost and rebuked him sternly. He said he’d be in contact with my district officials. I gave him their names and he promptly shut his mouth. Amazing how even a lap-dog knows not to go barking around lions! My pastor at that time would have had him for lunch.

And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him. And the LORD said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so. Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee. But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me to speak unto thee? 1 Kings 22:19-24

Imagine if you will that you are among a group of men, women, priests, kings, leaders and potentates and God has tried to steer them in a direction that they have absolutely refused to go in. Maybe it was repentance? Maybe it was into a new horizon or direction? Maybe it was simply to return to the anchor of the word of God and back into alignment with God’s word? No preacher wants to ever get into Micaiah’s shoes and be the one telling an entire group of leaders they are being deceived. What was the punishment of a prophet who spoke lies? God said he would destroy them from among his people. That’s a harsh punishment, but would you want to head off to into a dense jungle or some minefield on a battleground with a map and a compass that won’t hold true direction? God doesn’t want his people to do so either.

Jehoshaphat had absolutely no business keeping company with Ahab. He knew he was an unrighteous scum-bag who was living the life of a hypocrite, had the moral fiber of a dog and with the leadership if his God-hating wife, had turned the nation of Israel against God and troubled the nation. (That's where we are today.) Still, God loved Ahab enough to send him preachers and prophets to try and turn him back to righteousness, but he would not hear. Jehoshaphat knew better than to hang with him, make alliances with him, fellowship with him. Yet here he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it nearly cost him his life. Don’t let earthly alliances, whether in the church or out of the church pressure you into doing the wrong thing or silencing truth. Speak the truth. We are in a generation that will neither hear truth nor speak truth. Where are the men and women of God who will step forward in this hour and speak what is not popular to draw the body back into alignment with God’s word?

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: Matthew 23:34

Whether it costs you a prison sentence, as it did Micaiah, or whether it costs you your life, there comes a point in time when you have to answer your call and speak what the Spirit is saying to the church. Answer that call. Don’t look back and don’t look to either side. Forget the past and your peers. Speak what the Spirit is saying to the church in this hour. I pray God gives us men with backbone and grit who will stand and say to this generation exactly what the Spirit is saying to the church in this hour.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:34-38

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be published among all nations. But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. Mark 13:8-13

Unless I miss my guess, the synagogue was where the religious people and hierarchy met. Jesus wasn’t talking to the world. He was speaking to his church. Don’t be spineless, lukewarm and blind. Stay on fire, open your eyes and see and have some backbone. If God can use an Amos with no pedigree in ministry he can use you. God give this generation some Micaiahs with backbones of iron. God help a generation that expects you to take a blow on the cheek from them but won’t take a word of correction in return.

God bless.

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. Revelations 3:14-22