Where Have We Gone? by Bro. Kenneth F. Sheets
- Rebecca Miller
- 12 hours ago
- 2 min read
Where have we gone . . . and what have we done . . . how have we become so far removed from an accurate concept and relationship to God, the transcendent Creator of all that exists? We have made our perceptions of the Creator to be the definitions of His person and design; we have made our word-definitions of our "translations" of His written revelation to be the authorities over His original words in the languages He chose for giving that revelation to humanity . . . what have we done?
It is somewhat as A.W. Tozer has been quoted as saying:
"If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation it must be by other means than any now being used. If the church in the second half of [the twentieth] century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher.
"The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone.
"All these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne.
"When he comes (and I pray God there will not be one but many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom."
We have become more concerned with "success" and "acceptance" as defined by other humans and not by the Creator Himself . . . and rare are those who truly seek Him! Where, then, are the men and women of God who are truly and continually seeking to know and represent Him more and more accurately, not in human terms and human thinkings, but as He revealed Himself, and has preserved, in the perfect language which He built into the first two humans?
As this is on the blog for comments, I am going to speculate, using my sanctified imagination, whether God has put certain types of leaders in His Body for specific purposes, not all the same.
I will base this on the entire chapter of I Corinthians 12 and on various teachings I have received through the years.
First of all, many doubt that there has been a perfectly balanced leader since Christ returned to Heaven. I would agree with that. If there were, he might be afflicted with deadly pride.