<TITLE>12. Par -</TITLE>L-16-2 How typical it is today, how preachers can stand in the pulpit, and look upon sin and corruption of this world, and see people a-doing and acting the way they do, and then, just bless them because they're a member of their church or a denomination, it's more than my soul can understand. When God speaks, prophesy.
If the Spirit of God strikes a real prophet of God, he'll cry with the Word. I don't want to be critical, but who can hold their peace? Who can stand to look upon such a thing and profess to be a servant of Christ and not call it out? I don't care what a denomination would say or what any church would say; that's the reason I don't belong to them. They'd kick you out the first thing. But God's Word comes first. If you're a messenger, you've got something to say. And if you say anything contrary to this Word, you're not a messenger from God; you're a messenger of the covenant of some denomination or some theory. But a messenger of God has the Word of God. And our friend this morning, as we look at him, he had the Word of God, because he was a true prophet of the Lord.
Now, they thought they had the--the interpretation to it, and thought, "Why sure, look what we're doing."

L-16-5 Now, the thing of it is, we've got him standing there on top the hill this morning a-looking off down through the city, shaking his head, looking, his eyes narrowing, taking his sleeve and wiping the sweat from his face, and dust, hot sun shining down upon his bald head, his beard hanging down; he's rubbing it with his hands. He didn't see glamour; he saw sin. It didn't please him; it sickened him.
Why would he not say, "Me, an Israelite, look how my country's prospered"? How could he say that when he was a true prophet of God, knowing the results and what was going to become of such a thing as that?

L-17-1 Let's stand him on the hill today and let him look down: let him look in Jeffersonville at the people who call themselves Christians. Let him look anywhere in America for a people who call themselves Christian. His God-anointed eyes would narrow again. His hands would twist in his beard. Why? He don't see the glamor and prosperity that the world sees; He sees the--the going away from God; he sees the moral decay of the people. He sees the backsliding of the nation. He sees the rottenness in the church. How could he do anything but narrow his eyes and long to get into it, so he can tear it to pieces?

L-17-2 What if some bishop would've met him up there and said, "Now, are you the prophet of the Lord? Now, we'll tell you what you can say and what you can't," you think he'd have listened?
What if he'd said, "Come join our organization now, and we'll help you in your campaign"? You think he'd have listened? No, I couldn't imagine that out of a man like that. No, he was sent of God. He didn't have to have their cooperation. He had God's Word, and God's anointing, God's appointed time; and he was coming in THUS SAITH THE LORD; and that's the true prophet. That's the way he travels. He travels with nothing but THUS SAITH THE LORD.

L-17-4 Would this glamorous city of Samaria, this self-styled, high educated Israel, these fine polished preachers and priests receive this little unknown fellow? Probably his grammar was very poor: come from a poor family in the wilderness; left home, called of God, went into the wilderness to study God and His Word and become a prophet. The Lord borned him that way. Prophets are born a messenger for the age, who God by foreknowledge knows the age and has His agent there to call out sin.


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