Tozer: Only God can Prepare a Prophet

Jacob knew Esau lived for his stomach, so he waited for the right moment and then brewed up a mess of good stew. The aroma would make any man hungry, and when Esau arrived hungry, Jacob took the advantage and said, “Sell me your birthright and you can have the stew.”

Even Jacob’s own mother, Rebekah, led him down the road of treachery and deception in deceiving her husband to bless Jacob in place of Esau.

When I read this story, I do not really like Jacob very much. I think his

Tozer: The Prophet Brings God's Message

The true prophet is called to be a voice of God to his generation. His mission is to bring God’s message to God’s people, in such a way that they hear it and obey it. Therefore, he needs to be rooted deeply in the Word of God. What is the purpose and mission of the Word of God? To find us, to locate us—to identify us and our times—and to reveal truth to us. Its purpose is to show what is wrong with us, but also to show what is right with us.
...
Now, the work of the prophet is to convey God’s Word to God’s people in the proper balance. God never says anything negative to His people but what He also presents the positive side. We are to deal with the negative, but we are to focus on what is right about our walk with God. It does not matter if things are either negative or positive in the world. Out in the world, people are lost, and until they come to faith in Jesus Christ, God has nothing really to say about them. They are headed for judgment to come. In the church, it is a different story. Regardless of how badly a person has backslidden, God always has a way to come back prepared for him or her. Nobody has ever done anything that was a surprise to God. I am sure that it did not shock God when Adam and Eve did what they did in the Garden of Eden. He was not standing in the heavens rubbing His hands together, worrying about what He would do next. God’s plan is always built in eternity and cannot be destroyed by time.

Tozer: The Message Should bore into...

This generation has forgotten that the message does not clean up and shine the outside of a person; rather, it bores into the very heart and core of a person and radically changes that person from the inside. The time has come to hear once again the voice of God through His prophets. A prophet is not cultivated; a prophet is called and sent by God. One of my passions is to see God once again in the center of His church—to see Him honored and glorified in such a manner that it will push out all the things that are contrary to the holiness of God. O, God, God of the prophets of old, fall upon us in our utter weakness and radically transform Your Church today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Tozer: The Prophet Called to

One of the main factors of the New Testament church is the prophets. They were used of God to lead the church through tumultuous times and prevent her from falling into heresies. Heresies began almost the day the church was born.

 When you read through the New Testament and follow up with the early history of the church, you can see that the church was successful as they listened to the voice of the prophets. When they turned a deaf ear to that voice, the church quickly sank into heresies. Some of those heresies linger on to this day. My great passion and love for the church leads me to cry out in desperation that what we need today are prophets. Where are the prophets to guide today’s church through the quagmire of heresies around us? Those early church prophets were successful to the degree that the church listened to them. The voice of the prophet today is seldom heard, not because there are no prophets speaking for God, but because the noise and clatter of our culture have so invaded the church that they have drowned out that voice. Because the voice is not being heard, the church is in danger of falling into the quagmire of heresy.

Tozer, Voice of the Prophet, page 17