Voice of a Prophet: The Challenge of the Prophet

Voice of a Prophet 

By A.W. Tozer

The Challenge of the Prophet ( Excerpted)

And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.

1 KINGS 18:24

The one thing I have never really been able to figure out is why those who have a religion that is right do not believe it half the time; and those who have a religion that is all mixed up, false, miserable and degrading believe it fervently?

What did Baal offer? 

What does the world offer, and 

what does the chief shallow religious world offer?

They offer the customary fun and conformity. Conform and go along with the crowd. Jehovah calls you to the good, hard way with its present cost and its eternal compensations.

What has Baal to offer? 

What has the world to offer when we surrender to the world?

The world would lead you to believe it has a lot to offer; but how utterly helpless it is when disaster strikes. 

Only a Christian knows how to die. 

Everybody has to die, but only a Christian can die with dignity. 

Only a Christian can die with peace in his heart.

The world makes you believe it has the answer, but the world does not have the answer. 

The world is a painted mask, and behind that painted mask is fear upon the faces of the men and women who march up and down. 

They have to have amusements, fun, liquor, dope, immoral dance and all the rest in order to keep from crying out in fright like a child in the dark. 

They cover up the fact that they are scared, by making a lot of racket and calling it fun, and then they pay people for it.

God calls you to be a soldier, a good, hard soldier. 

I never could figure out why ministers feel they have to pat and paw over everybody to get them in, why they have to dilute and edit and modify and amend and trim down the gospel. 

It does not work this way. 

A trimmed-down gospel never saved a soul. 

A trimmed-down, diluted, edited religion is not the religion Christ died to establish. 

Heaven is not filled with weaklings who had to have somebody go along and help them over the rough spots. It is full of soldiers and martyrs, and the dreamers and the prophets and the clean man who loved his God and loved his generation and lived and died living a good life—a hard life.

We have to make up our minds. 

Are we going to go the way the world goes?

Of course, sin has its pleasure. But you have to break with that. You have to break from it and follow Jehovah. The worse the country is, and the worse the state of society, the harder it is to break, and the more it is going to cost you to break.

The world has something to offer, all right. 

If you do not want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, if Baal be God, then follow him. 

But if the Lord Jesus Christ be God, follow Him. 

See to it that you make up your mind. 

Do not be in the middle because you are neither hot nor cold.

i) What the World Has to Offer

What does the world really have to offer? 

Let me just name a few.

a) Entertainment

The world entices us with its offering of fun. If you are able to enjoy it, if you have health, you can have fun. If you are in an economic position so that you have time off, then you can have fun. One thing capitalism has done in this country is enable us to have time off for fun. The average person works for a short time so that he might have fun for a while. He is willing to work hard at a price for the fun that he will have later. So the world will give you fun if you want it.

But when it is all over, what then?

If Jehovah should be God, if this is true, and if Jesus Christ says, “Take up your cross and follow me,” and if there is to be a judgment, and God is to try every man’s heart according to his thoughts and his deeds, then what about that thing the world offered you? 

You had your fun. Now take your medicine. 

Every time you are led astray, remember that the person who led you astray leaves you in the lurch.

b) Material Goods

The world also offers you possessions. You can pile up possessions. Here in the Western world, we are rich, and we have piled up possessions as high as a mountain.

Did you ever stop to think that if you are not delivered from your possessions, they will curse you? If you get delivered from them, you can have them and lose them and it will be all right.

c) Temporary Success

The world also offers position and fame. 

Most of us will not make it as far as fame is concerned. The only time we get mentioned in the newspaper is when we get into the obituary section. The world offers position and fame, which is about as temporary as anything going these days.

Success is also something the world offers. The world is full of successful people, and there is always room for one more. As far as the world is concerned, success has a dollar sign to it. The more money you have, the more successful you are. I have met those successful people, and very rarely do you find one who is truly happy. They are anxious about hanging on to their success.

The world can offer you position, fame, fun, entertainment and all the rest, but what can the world do for you at the last?

ii) What God Offers His Followers

You want forgiveness of sins, but there is not a boxing arena in the world that can give it to you. No theater in the world can give it to you. No tavern on the continent can give it to you. You want inward cleansing, but there is not anywhere in the world where you can get it.

a) Forgiveness of Sin

The world has its fun, but it cannot cleanse you on the inside. Only the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ can provide that inward cleansing that we so desire.

The world cannot offer a power to direct your life in the right way. You want someone who can guide you and lead you through. Baal cannot do it. The world cannot do it. Baal can give you a big-time Saturday night, but come Sunday morning, he leaves you with a frightful hangover.

b) Guidance Through Life

The power of true religion is seen in the power it has to direct our way.

This is the day of counselors. Everybody has to be counseled; but I read in the Scriptures that His name shall be called Counselor. 

There is one who knows, and it is not Baal.

Elijah challenged the Baal prophets. It was the true religion challenging the false religion. He stood up against that when everybody else had faded into the background. It was one man, Elijah, against the world of Baal. This is the responsibility of the prophet of God, to challenge the false religion. God’s man cannot back down. The sacred contest before Elijah demanded that he be committed utterly to the true religion of Jehovah.

Elijah knew who God was, and when he prayed, God answered. The Baal prophets prayed all day and cut themselves, but nothing happened. Elijah, confident in his standing with God, mocked them, made fun of them, which only infuriated them and caused them to work harder to get Baal’s attention.

When the prophets of Baal had exhausted themselves, it was Elijah’s turn. When Elijah prayed a prayer that you could read in less than 30 seconds, the fire came down. God confirmed Elijah’s faith and witness to his obedience.

That is what God wants to do for us today. Let us take up Elijah’s mantle, challenge all the Baal prophets of the world and demonstrate to the world the mighty power of God.

Oh, Christ, Emmanuel—God with us—the Word made flesh to dwell among us, who has risen again and who is with us now, make us strong to take up our cross, to turn our backs upon Baal and all he stands for. Help us in this hour to make up our minds and let Christ be our God. 

Amen.