What If They Were Right? A Thought Experiment

Leonard Ravenhill wrote books with titles like, “Why Revival Tarries,” “Real Meat for Men,” “Sodom had No Bible,” “Revival God’s Way” and “America is Too Young to Die.”  These were sobering and prophetic warnings to the church. Ravenhill and others like David Wilkerson and Keith Green were voices crying in the wilderness.

We bought their books; we listened to their sermons, we sang their songs. And, like Ezekiel, God seems to have said to these prophets, “To them you are like a singer of love songs, one who has a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument; they hear what you say, but they will not do it” (Ezekiel 33:32, NRSV).

It is all too easy to dismiss Ravenhill, Wilkerson, Green and all the others as grumpy old men complaining things are not as good as that used to be. But let’s suppose for the sake of a thought experiment they were right and those warnings of compromise and shallowness were true.

Let us say, for example, our consumerism did consume our spiritual core, and we slowly replace His majesty with our celebrities.

Let us say our love for Scripture was replaced with our love for our own opinions.

Let us say we did give up the power of the preaching of the Word of God and we replaced it with inspirational talks; our version of TED Talks seasoned with a pinch of the Bible.

Let us say we did start going to church to meet our needs rather than to meet our God.

Let us say we gave on any belief in the Christian Mind because after all, that requires too much thinking.

And let us say God allowed us to be filled with the fruit of our ways.

What would it look like?

Would we suddenly wake up and realize we had sown to the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind?

Would we hear the voice of prophets calling us back to the fountain of living water?

Would we hear the voice of wisdom crying out in the streets?

Would our loud, stimulating, cacophonous world and our seduced, distracted hearts be able to hear the still, small whisper of His voice?

Would we believe Hollywood’s image of prophets as the bold and boisterous voice, or would we recognize the weeping prophet with the broken heart whose faint voice can barely be heard over the clamor of our lives, “Make straight the paths of the Lord”?

Let us say the warnings were correct and they came true. What would it look like?

I think we would become a fractionalized people, devoid of the Spirit’s presence and we would not even notice it.

I think we would easily be seduced by power. Power, after all, is far better at neutralizing the church than persecution. Power is more sinister, more destructive, and more alluring. Seduced by power, the church would become a religious version of “House of Cards.”

The seduction would start with a simple promise to fulfill an unmet hope, or to correct an unjust slight, or to restore a lost glory.

Once seduced, we would justify ignoring all faith and reason compels us to esteem. We would follow anyone, regardless of how devoid of reason and character they may be, if they promised to restore us to our promised land; never realizing this Pied Piper is taking us deeper into exile.

I think Truth would be our first sacrifice upon the altar of security.

I think we would gather our prophets to comfort us with lies, and God help any Micaiah who dares speak truth to Ahab and exposes our nakedness (1 Kings 22:13).

I think we would clamor for war, rattle our sabers, and even threaten civil unrest and revolution if anyone dares stand in our way.

And I think scattered among the ruins and relics of our former glory there would be a remnant who have not bowed their knee to Baal, a scattered few who weep between the porch and the altar, and from the seeds watered by their tears, God would raise up again a holy nation and a royal priesthood.

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