What would you do if your house was on fire? What would you do if your loved one was diagnosed with a terminal illness? Would you simply go about your business as usual? Or, would the pressing circumstances cause you to focus on the emergency at hand? Is it not true that when you are faced with a great calamity that your typical routine is dramatically interrupted?
It is not business as usual, how can it be, your house is burning down, your loved one is dying. Suddenly your life becomes simple in a sense. All of your thoughts and energies are focused on the emergency and what is truly important becomes crystal clear to you. You don’t even notice things that normally would have bothered you, you do not have that “luxury.”
Listen to the thoughts of Rev R.B.Meyers when describing what he saw at the Welsh revival meetings. ” Young men and women crowd the churches. The keynote is Calvary-no other aspect of the work of our Lord seems to satisfy. The personality and work of the Holy Spirit are in every prayer and on every tongue. The pent-up power of Godly people which has for too long been restrained has broken loose, and before it, ministers are silenced. One minister told me that he felt that things would never again be as they had been but that the liberty of utterance would have to be conceded to during a part at least of the ordinary services to the speech of the Holy Ghost through consecrated lips.”
Do you hear what he is saying, the pent-up power of Godly people, which for too long has been restrained, had broken loose. Now, who is doing the restraining? The general thought at the time is that things could never go back to how they had been. Never again could the one man system be allowed to restrain the Holy Spirit from speaking through His people and releasing a dam of power that can shake communities and nations and indeed the world. Yet all too soon the moment was gone and the silenced ministers took back the reigns of power and the Godly people, the Royal priesthood was once again silenced.
The opening paragraph asked the question “what would you do if your house was on fire?” Do you know that the vast majority of people killed in house fires are killed because they are sleeping? They simply never wake up, they are overcome by the smoke in the atmosphere. They breathe in what is all around them and they die. The second question asked what would you do if your loved one was diagnosed with a terminal illness?
Many people do not even realize they are dying. In that case there are no opportunities to put away the normal typical routine. It is in the vested interest of the Devil himself to keep people asleep. If he can keep them asleep, if he can keep them from realizing their condition then he will much more easily be able to go about his business which is of course to destroy the church and the people of God.
Can you see the condition of the church? Is it apparent to you that the power of God is being restrained by silencing the royal priesthood? The foundations of righteousness are being destroyed and the power that could be brought to bear is being silenced by our routines and systems. If we truly believed that we are being surrounded by gross darkness and the enemy is coming in like a flood then we would raise up the standard of the Word of God that never changes and allow the power of God to be released just as it was in the Welsh revival. Sadly, most are asleep and they refuse to be woken. Pride is a powerful anesthetic. It allows the blind to remain blind and those who are at ease in Zion to remain at ease.
Those in Jerusalem believed that nothing could ever happen to them because that city housed the temple. Jesus knew otherwise. The trappings and position of ministry cause those in ministry to be at ease. Tozer said that it is very difficult to persuade a man of something when his very livelihood depends upon him not getting it. It is the clergy that causes the word of God to be restrained and anointed words go unspoken and are dammed up inside the priest.
When that which restrains is taken out-of-the-way, steps aside, then God moves with power. Only repentance and turning from our wicked ways can change this. The Body of Christ needs to be edified and all the more so as that day approaches. God has clearly laid down in the Word how the Body of Christ is to be edified. Will we humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways? It remains to be seen.
A Call To The Remnant 