Away With Palsied, Powerless Preaching

The church today is standing on the sidewalk, watching with fever and frustration, while the sin-dominated evil geniuses of Moscow strut the middle of the road, breathing out threatenings against “whatsoever things are lovely and of good report.”  Behind, follows the purple pageantry of papal Rome.  Moreover, the devil has substituted reincarnation for regeneration, familiar spirits for the Holy Spirit, Christian Science for divine healing, the Antichrist for the true Christ, and the Church of Rome for the true Church.

Agains these twin evils of Communism and Romanism, what has the Church to offer?  Where is the supernatural?  Both in the pulpit and in the press, somnolence seems to have overtaken religious controversy of late.  Even Rome does not call us Protestants any more; we have just the juiceless name of non-Catholics!  Significant, isn’t it?  Hell has no fury like that of this “Mother of Harlots” when she is stirred.  But who now “earnestly contends for the faith once delivered to the saints”?  Where are our unctionized pulpit crusaders?  Preachers who should be fishing for men are now too often fishing for compliments from men.  Preachers used to sow seed; now they string intellectual pearls.  (Imagine a field sown with pearls!)

Away with this palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb, and nourished in a fireless, prayer less soul.  We may preach and perish, but we cannot pray and perish.  If God called us to the ministry, then, dear brethren, I contend that we should get unctionized.  With all thy getting—get unction, lest barren altars be the badge of our unction less intellectualism.


[Replace “Moscow” and “Communism” with “Islam” for current affairs]

Leonard Ravenhill,  Why Revival Tarries (1959), pg.21-22