My Dear Friend,

Just before Jesus arrived, God spoke to His people through another man. A different man. A man from the wilderness. His name was John.

When the Jews first met this new baptist, and began examining his ministerial resume, they found it unlike any other. It had only one entry: "divinely called, gifted, and trained - supernaturally inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit to hear from God and speak for God." And, indeed, John's ministry delivered as promised. He spoke God's very words. Clearly. Boldly. Accurately. Every time he delivered a message. Though unknown, he was the real article, a prophet's prophet!

For years John had been living an ultrasimple but intensely spiritual life of unparalleled closeness to God. But not where the people may have expected. Not among God's chosen people clustered in Jerusalem or Judea. Not among their learned, rabbinically taught, scribes and doctors of Torahic studies. Not among their respected priests and Levites in the temple precincts. And not in Israel's highly Romanized cities, such as, Sepphoris, Caesarea Philippi, or Tiberias.

To the contrary, John's training ground was the wilderness - the barren, unpopulated, dry, fruitless Judean desert. Instead of walking about in long, distinguished, beautiful priestly robes, John wore the plainest clothing - a camel's or goat's hair garment and a leather strap around his waist. Instead of dining on rich foods and choice wines, he lunched and supped on roasted locusts, wild honey, and spring water. Yet there, lonely and deprived, he received the richest, most enviable blessing, what Israel needed most: messages from God (Luke 3:2)! Composed of Spirit-filled words. Heart-penetrating words. Life-changing words. Soul-reviving words.

John's were not smooth words of worldliness or religious ritualism. They were soul-searching words of biblical righteousness and holiness. They did not flatter and deceive. Rather, John's words convicted, gripped, and awakened to full spiritual reality a people who had long been put to sleep by dead, ceremonial worship and meticulous but misguided Pharisaic practices. John's messages were swift, penetrating arrows of divine truth targeting Satan's strongholds in the Jews' minds and lives. They were full of new life, divine strength, and the most timely, practical instructions (Luke 3:10-18). Like the messages of the true prophets before him, John's words corrected as often as they encouraged. Most importantly, they accomplished God's will: they prepared a remnant of previously unprepared Jews for their Messiah's First Advent!

Where are our "Johns" today? It is time for them to appear. Past time! The time of Christ's Second Advent - specifically, His Appearing to take away His bride church to heaven - is at hand and getting closer every day. And, as I write, the American church is largely unprepared for this epochal event. In far too many cases, we are overly sophisticated and under-inspired, far too influenced by this world and not influenced enough by God's Word, far too led by mere human reason and not led enough by the Spirit of God. So, today, we need not words of worldliness - from the "smart people" in Washington, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, distinguished universities, or even our vaunted seminaries - but words from men and women of the wilderness. Prophets and prophetesses of John's mold.

Theirs are words given by the Holy Spirit. Words conceived in God's very heart. Words whispered by the Spirit to humble, divinely called messengers who have paid the price of ecclesiastical rejection - and not because they are strange, conceited, deluded, unteachable, immoral, or callous carnal Christians! Rather, because they are growing ever-more spiritually minded and Christlike - committed to living in uncompromised closeness to Him in a day when, not all, but far too many Christians keep Christ at arm's length.

Friend, we must start listening to these messengers who are divinely called, gifted, and trained to live in deep, sustained intimacy with the Divine. The uncalled and ungifted ministerial imposters, religious office holders, and fast-talking "smart guys" full of the latest polls and cutting-edge methods, often inspired more by the Internet than the Immortal, have, by their worldly words and ways, led us gradually but directly into the land of spiritual sleep - indifference to one's own true spiritual condition and the imminence of Jesus' Appearing (Matthew 25:5). And now it is "midnight." The hour is late and time short.

So, it is imperative that we stop listening to ministers who, whatever their fame, following, education, human knowledge, or psychological cleverness, evidently lack intimacy with the Living God; and, consequently, lack messages that, flowing from God's very heart, bring us the Holy Spirit's distinctively fresh anointings, heart probes, situational clarifications, timely encouragements, and soaring, overcoming strength.

Summing up, only John and his messages from the wilderness could prepare Israel's remnant for Jesus' First Coming, and only men and women of John's mold can awaken and prepare us for His Second Coming. Today, may we turn from words of this world to words from the wilderness.

Turning, listening, preparing,

Greg Hinnant

GREG HINNANT MINISTRIES