If we were asked why the Church is as it is today, in so large a measure of impotence and disintegration, and what is needed to bring about an impact from heaven by means of the Church, could we say? Is it presumption to claim to be able to do that?
The prophets knew; and remember that the prophets, whether they were of the Old Testament or of the New Testament, were not an isolated class of people, they were not some body apart, holding this in themselves officially.
They were the very eyes of the body. They were, in the thought of God, the people of God.
You know that principle; it is seen, for instance, in the matter of the High Priest.
God looks upon the one High Priest as Israel, and deals with all Israel on the ground of the condition of the High Priest, whether it be good or bad.
If the High Priest is bad - "And he showed me Joshua the high priest... clothed with filthy garments" (Zechariah 3:1-5) - that is Israel.
God deals with Israel as one man.
The prophet is the same; and that is why the prophet was so interwoven with the very condition and life of the people.
Listen to the prophet Daniel praying. Personally he was not guilty; personally he had not sinned as the nation had sinned; but he took it all on himself and spoke as though it were his responsibility, as if he were the chief of sinners.
These men were brought right into it. There is such a oneness between the prophets and the people in condition, in experience, in suffering, that they can never view themselves as officials apart from all that, as it were talking to it from the outside; they are in it, they are it.
My meaning is this, that we are not to have vision brought to us by a class called ministers, prophets and apostles.
They are here only to keep us alive to what we ought to be before God, how we ought to be; constantly stirring us up and saying, 'Look here, this is what you ought to be.'
It ought therefore to be, with every one of us personally, that we are in the meaning of this prophetic ministry.
The Church is called to be a prophet to the nations.
May I repeat my enquiry - it is a permissible question without admitting of any presumption...could you say what is needed by the Church today?
Could you interpret the state of things, and explain truly by what the LORD has shown you in your own heart?
I know the peril and dangers that may surround such an idea, but that is the very meaning of our existence.
It will be in greater or lesser degree in every one of us, but, either more or less we have the key to the situation.
God needs people of that sort. It must be individual.
~T. Austin Sparks~
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