A Voice Calling in the Wilderness
In the Midst of a Famine
These days are here.
"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land - not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD." - Amos 8:11
The current famine can be seen as a result of divine judgment. As very few people are willing to listen to the Word of God, He has granted them their wish. In the same way, God hardened Pharaoh's heart and allowed many Jews to have hardened hearts during the time of Christ. This is because they had repeatedly ignored the Word of God and showed no remorse for their actions. They did not have repentance in their hearts.
The word of God holds immense value. If a nation disregards, mocks, or fails to spread its teachings, God may withdraw it to the high places, mountains, or the dry places, the desert. The nation may become enslaved to its base desires and other idols in such a scenario.
I know Christians who want to rejoin local churches. But they miss the old days when the church felt like an extended family and the golden Word was preached unvarnished. The Christians I referred to are digging in their Bibles again and often quite alone, searching for threads they overlooked in the past. They search, explore, and find the old precious gold. The Bible seems like an unexplored wilderness they're exploring again ...for the first time. And they are the new "mountain men."
When these explorers, these “mountain men,” come with their nuggets of golden truth, looking for fellowship, they often find the preaching and teaching to be thin gruel, and they wonder if this is where the ears get tickled. The sermons are one inch deep, or Joel Osteen's imitator is trying to inspire them for personal success instead of picking their Cross.
Are these Christians, these reluctant "mountain men," the remnant? While many churches are dying spiritually and physically? Should these explorers, these self-exiled adventurers seeking the Face of God and His Truth, call from their high places like the young women in Proverbs 9?
1 Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. 2 She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. 3 She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, 4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says, 5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”
In days of old, a man came from the wilds calling out.
“Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”