up a notch. And sadly, the church that feeds on such a "sugar and junk-food" diet will very quickly become utterly 'fat' and lukewarm. The apostle Paul wrote: "For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their OWN DESIRES, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their ITCHING EARS want to hear" (2 Tim 4:3, NIV). I have to say, there has never been a time in history that more blatantly fulfills this Scripture than today. We have literally PILES of "entertaining" teachers. We have never-ending conferences. We have every man and his dog on the "gravy train", tickling the Christians' ears and getting very well paid to do it. If you took away the ability to 'tickle ears', half the preachers (and prophets!) in America would be out of business overnight. They would have nothing left to say. They spend almost their WHOLE TIME preaching "agreeable" and exciting things to gullible Christians who will happily pay the registration fee, AND put money in the offering, AND put money in the 'second offering' AND THEN buy the set of tapes for some exorbitant fee. "Itching ears"? -We have them by the truck-load today. Sadly, the old saying comes to remembrance: "Amusing ourselves to death." And thus, Humanism comes to dominate the church. So what is God going to do about this state of affairs? -Just what He has always done. He is going to find some hidden "nobodies" somewhere and He is going to put them at the back-side of the desert for just the right number of years, and He is going to train them up to be a company of 'John-the-Baptists' for such a time as this. And at the right moment they will come forth out of nowhere, speaking a piercing and uncompromising word: "Repent!" Such were the Finney's and Wesley's and Whitefields of centuries past. The history of Revival is the history of God's prophets coming forth at His divinely appointed time. Here is an incisive quote from A.W. Tozer which I have always loved: "God has always had his specialists whose chief concern has been the moral breakdown, the decline in the spiritual health of the nation or the church. Such men were Elijah, Malachi and others of their kind who appeared at critical moments in history to reprove, rebuke and exhort in the name of God and righteousness.... Such a man was likely to be drastic, radical, possibly at times violent, and the curious crowd that gathered to watch him work soon branded him as extreme, fanatical, negative. And in a sense they were right. He was single-minded, severe, fearless, and these were the qualities the circumstances demanded. He shocked some, frightened others and alienated not a few, but he knew who had called him and what he was sent to do. His ministry was geared to the emergency, and that fact marked him out as different, a man apart." (-From the Foreword to Ravenhill's 'Why Revival Tarries'). Humanism is in many ways the "unseen enemy" that is taking over the church today. It is a 'gospel of selfishness' that is infiltrating by subtlety and cunning. And the people love to have it so. They love men who can make them laugh, and avoid those who will
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