One touch from the Lord and we are changed eternally.

We are transformed. We are healed. Our fiercest problems dissolve. Peace floods into our soul. What we have attempted to do for years is accomplished in a moment.

He is Christ, the Son of God. When our hour comes He stretches out His hand and touches our mouth, our heart, our emotions, our will, our mind. Then we are filled with the fiery Presence of Him who dwells between the Cherubim of Glory. Then we are ready to ride with Him in the chariots of Israel. Then the lightning flashes, the thunder rolls in our soul, and we are commissioned to announce the awful Words of the most high God.

Then people either will accept or reject the testimony, sealing their destiny for eternity.

See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. (Jeremiah 1:10)

This was a weighty charge to give a novice!

Notice that God must pull down before He can build and plant. Sometimes when we seek the Lord our problems increase. Why is that? It is because God is preparing to build and plant what we have desired. But first of all He must tear down and destroy what is hindering His work in our life. God often wounds before He heals.

Jeremiah’s commission was both negative and positive. The prophet must declare what the Lord is speaking. Whether people say Amen, enjoying and approving what we are stating, or whether they seek to kill us, or merely ignore us—none of this must ever move us from doing the Lord’s perfect will.

The prophets of the Scriptures were not popular. They were not administrators of large groups of worshipers. They were hated more often than not. They were threatened. They were abused and scorned. They were killed. It is no different today.

A true prophet is never popular.

Did Jeremiah actually pull down and build and plant nations and kingdoms? Yes, he did.

As we read his prophecies we can find the Word of God to Israel, to Egypt, to the Philistines, to Moab, to the Ammonites, to Babylon.

What was Jeremiah’s responsibility? It was to prophesy clearly what God had said to him. What was God’s responsibility? It was to bring to pass what was spoken.

What was Ezekiel’s responsibility to the dry bones? It was to prophesy to them.

What was the responsibility of Haggai and Zechariah at the time of the restoration of the Temple of Solomon? It was to reveal the mind of the Lord to the builders.

The responsibility of the prophet of God is to declare plainly the mind of the Lord. Ordinarily, that is where his responsibility ends. It is important that the task of proclaiming the Lord’s mind be performed well, that it be taken seriously.

Often there are many people who are glad to do what God has commanded. But first there must be a person who will seek God until he is abiding in the Divine Presence. Then he is able to speak as the oracle of the Lord (I Peter 4:11) and a number of willing workers will arise and build.

The prophetic anointing that rests on the true Christian saints, the members of the Body of Christ, is a high and holy calling. When God’s witnesses hold back from telling the whole truth or are seeking their own glory and gain, the will and work of God are thrown off course.

In some instances the churches of Christ are attempting to do what they assume to be good and proper when in fact their actual God-assigned responsibility is to prophesy what God will do. This is not always the case, but sometimes it is. We must be in touch with the Lord in order to know when to prophesy and when to act.

We may be ready and willing to attempt to attach the bones together when God is commanding us to restrict ourselves to prophesying to the bones.

After we stick the bones together according to our own plan we are unable to breathe into them the breath of life. What we have before us is a dead, manmade structure. Then we are obliged to prop up our creature and make it sing and dance by our own inventions.

Let us rather prophesy to the Church and to the nations what the Lord God is speaking today. It appears that God has determined to move in the greatest revival in world history, and interpreters (prophets) are needed who can explain clearly to people what is taking place around them and happening to them.

The purpose and way of God must be announced for all to hear and understand. Those who have been charged with ministering what is being revealed today must be extremely diligent to preserve and communicate the vision; otherwise the corn of the Word of the Lord that is being given, which will be necessary for our survival in the future, will end up wasted and rotting on the ground.

Therefore thus saith the Lord, If thou return, then will I bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord. (Jeremiah 15:19,20)

The above is the commission of every true prophet of the Lord, of every member of God’s elect, every saint, every witness of the Lord.

We are to abandon the popular ways of the churches and return to the fervent seeking of the Lord Jesus Christ, keeping His Word diligently.

If we do that, God will bring us to the place where we are standing before Him, in His very Presence; for this is where His faithful witnesses stand eternally.

Then the Lord God will give us a spirit of judgment so we may be able to remove what is holy to the Lord and acceptable to Him from what man has added to the churches. If we will be faithful in separating between the clean and the unclean, between what is of the Spirit of God and what is of the flesh, God will establish us as His spokesman, His prophet, His witness to the churches and the nations.

We never are to return to the ways of the churches. If we are in the Lord’s will, the Lord’s people may decide to come our way. We never are to change and go the popular way. We must be prepared to walk alone.

God will make us a fortified bronze wall. The Lord’s people may strive to overcome us and our words, and the world will attempt to deceive us, to tempt us, to overcome us. But no person or spirit has the wisdom or power to conquer one of God’s elect when he continues steadfastly in the Presence and will of God, extracting the precious from the worthless, making clear to everyone the mind of God.

The Christian Church is in confusion today, and the nations of the earth are in darkness as a result. When the light of righteousness in the churches has been extinguished the nations of the earth have no moral guidelines to follow. The Apostles of the Lamb performed their work faithfully and therefore we possess the New Testament Scriptures. But the Scriptures are not being taught. The traditions of men, such as lawless grace and the pre-tribulation "rapture," are being presented in their place.

What is God’s attitude today toward the churches and the nations?

The two witnesses of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation portray to us that just before the Lord returns, the Body of Christ will become—as it never has been before—the Prophet of God among men.

The number two (of the two witnesses) reveals that the double portion, the two loaves of the feast of Pentecost, will be poured on the saints so they may bear the most powerful witness of all history to the nations of the soon coming of the Kingdom of God (Leviticus 23:17).

The need of the hour is for the elect to be filled to overflowing with a double portion of Acts 1:8 so we may bear a true witness of Christ to the farthest reaches of the earth. We have been invited to pray for rain in the time of the latter rain (Zechariah 10:1). When God fills us with His power we shall be able to bear witness of the Word of the Lord to all people.

O earth, earth, earth, hear the Word of the Lord. (Jeremiah 22:29)