This sermon emphasizes the unique and lonely calling of prophets, highlighting the solitude and dedication required in their role. It reflects on the significance of John the Baptist as the greatest man born of woman, who spent years in the wilderness before his impactful ministry. The message stresses the need for modern-day prophets who are willing to preach repentance and endure hardship for the sake of God's truth and revival.

Prophets are the strange breed of men. They're God's emergency men for crisis hours. And the price of being a prophet is that a man has to live alone. All God's great men have been very, very lonely men. I've said very often that when I turn over the pages of the Bible that one of the most challenging pages is the white page that divides the Testaments. It's a white page, but it covers a period of 400 years of total darkness. 400 years of darkness without any light. 400 years of silence without any prophetic voice. If I were to say to you tonight, I'll give you a paper and pencil and you can write and give me from your knowledge of the Word of God, who is the greatest man that ever lived outside of Jesus Christ, I guess you might come up with Moses, or you might come up with Paul, and you'd be wrong. Because the greatest character reader of all time was Jesus himself. And he said that the greatest man that was ever born of woman was John Baptist. A man who spent some 20 years there in the fastness of the desert. A lonely man, a strange man. And the great need in America tonight, I'm convinced of this, as good as Bible schools are with their assembly lines and producing their preachers, the greatest need in America tonight is prophets. Amen. And as D.A. Troese used to say, if you're going to be a prophet, brother, you better settle. Or as Dr. Parker originally said, if you're going to be a prophet, you'll have to preach repentance. And before you start, dedicate your head to heaven, because you won't last much more than six months, maybe. John the Baptist himself didn't. He went into the wilderness until the day of his going forth. Oh, I'd love to have heard John Baptist preach, wouldn't you? I'd like to have seen this man when God said, John, you've been here 20 years now, you better go out and preach. I told you this morning, it takes God 20 years to make a man. It took him 20 years to make John Baptist, and then he preached for six months. You boys went to Bible school for six months and been preaching 20 years. No wonder you're dry. You better go back. Go back to the wilderness. Go back to the desert. Get into the wilderness. There's nothing on God's earth like silence. Just take your Bible, forget everything and everybody, and shut yourselves away, till you have a new revelation from God himself. But John wore no strange garments. He was strange by the fact he wore only 11 girdles around his loins. That was his strange dress. He was no gourmet. He didn't go through the, you know, the long, long menu and say, well, I don't know, my jaded appetite, there's nothing. You sure you don't have shrimp with a special dressing or something? He just caught the flies as they were going past. The locusts. Pulled the wings off and put them on a hot rock. He had locust burgers every day. Breakfast, dinner, and supper. A lot of people want Jesus to come today because they're scared stiff of suffering. That's right. After all, the church has been getting lashed and tormented and stripped and prostituted. 400 years and God never moved. 400 years of ritual and formality of sacrifice and all the ritualism that they went through. But somehow, it was a form of godliness. And God decided to upset the apple cart, if you like. What did he do? Send a legion of angels? No, no, no, no, no. He took a little man, a baby, out of the womb of its mother. He separated this man and he educated him in the spirit and sent him into the wilderness. And he came out and he had no forward man and he asked for no program and he wasn't seeking prestige and he didn't beg for anybody's power and he didn't find some secret way of promotion. If you'd walk down the desert there, you could hardly tell the man the color of his skin. There was sunburn on the inside and fireback tides on the inside and fireback tides with the sun on the outside. And you could almost see the way he'd gone because his tears were rising like steam off the ground. They have broken my laws. You see, we think if we're really blessed and successful evangelists, you get a bigger home, a bigger car, more prestige and brother, you'll feel good because now you can buy $150 suits whereas you wore $30 suits not too long ago. But brother, if you've walked up with God, I'll tell you what you're doing. Your heart's more broken now than it was when you started ten years ago. You see the nation going down here more rapidly than she's ever done before. Prostitution is increasing, crime is increasing, immorality is increasing, lawlessness is increasing. And in the richest, most comfortable country in the whole world, we're stinking the nostrils of almighty God tonight and England is equally true and it's equally true of England as well. Ah, the provincial men who walked with God. They felt like God, they saw like God, they wept like God, they yearned like God. They've no satisfaction in seeing the beauty of the temple, the ritual, the formality, all the things that they went through, no, no, no, no, God has done for them. We keep up the formality, the money is coming in, people are nice, one or two come to the altar. But oh, what a difference when a man gets a heart that craves for revival, that longs that God will make very sad, that all nations will have to acknowledge when John Baptist came, he came with no lip that was buttoned, he had nobody to please, he had no program, he had no priorities that he was trying to push ahead. He never raised a dead man, no, he didn't raise a dead man, he raised a dead nation. And he did it without the miraculous in the realm of the flesh. He did it in the power of the Holy Ghost. Oh, when John came, I came with no success of any level. I think John had already had his program from God, and the Lord said, you better get busy, boy, because you're not going to be around here very long. No, sir, they'll chop your head off if you start preaching this. Boy, we're dealing with a few men that are prepared to lose their heads for Jesus right now. I say again, most of you men ought to preach better than you do, than you do preach, but you won't do it because you'll get kicked out of the synagogue, that's why. You'll really have to trust God and that'll be trouble, won't it? And you've been paying in the minister's pension fund. Oh, brother, wouldn't that be awful to have to sacrifice God for Jesus? You say, I'll lay everything on the altar, I'll set my golf clubs and my minister's pension fund and my big TV, and anything else you can have, Lord, but don't intrude just too much on me kind of thing. Oh, I like to think of John Baptist standing there, no sponsors, nobody to agree or disagree with him, he stood there, and they came to see this strange man, anointed by the Holy Ghost, and I tell you this, if a man is anointed by the Holy Ghost, folk will seek him. We have blinded our eyes to truth and we have put our fingers in our ears to the voice of God. And the judgments that are going to fall if we don't get revival, and maybe it is not an alternative of Christ or chaos, but Christ and chaos. Not revival or revolution, but revival and revolution. Not revival without concentration camps, maybe the only place you'll get it is in concentration camps. Oh, brother, we're heading for trouble, I'll tell you. Ah, the provincial men walked with God. They felt like God, they saw like God, they wept like God, they yearned like God.