J. Thomas Johnson
Like Jonah was sent to Nineveh and preached a three-day sermon in the city, over the last three years I have been sent to preach a message of repentance and warning. The message I’ve been sent to preach is for individual followers of Jesus, for the Church of the Nazarene, and for the Church of Jesus Christ around the world.
For individual followers of Jesus, you must lay down your idols. You must return to loyalty to the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your self, and with all your strength. And you must, out of loyalty to God, be loyal to those with whom you labor. The Lord has been offended by your worship of your nation, your worship of your children, your worship of your right to leisure, your worship of your desire for respect, your worship of your rights and of your own values, your worship of your own feelings and inner turmoil. “These are idols in my presence,” says the Lord God. “My faithful ones will leave the worship of these things and return to me.”
For the Church of the Nazarene, the Lord says, “I raised up the holiness movement to call my church in America back to repentance and back to the teachings of my Son. But, you have exalted yourself over the word entrusted to you. Rather than submitting to my prophets and apostles, you have wielded authority over those I have chosen, adding what you thought was lacking and removing what you thought was superfluous. Rather than bearing the message I had entrusted to every generation of my church, you wrote your own message. You have added and taken away. Unless you repent, I will remove your lampstand from its place.”
For the church throughout the world, the Lord says, “You have forsaken the gospel of Jesus for a gospel of demons. You have neglected the way of righteousness for the way of indulgence and licentiousness. Your forgiveness was for holiness, not for the covering of wickedness. You have claimed promises I have not made, and you have hidden your deeds from your own eyes and called that concealment, grace. No one who puts his hand to plow and then turns back is worthy of me. Understand this parable. No one who receives my forgiveness and turns back to the life he lived beforehand has placed faith in me. I am not with him. He remains in his sin. Repent, or the judgment coming on the world will come on my people, as well.”
All these things have been embedded in the sermons I have preached over the last three years in central New York and the six years that preceded them in New Hampshire. I have proclaimed a gospel of repentance in both places where God’s revivals were born in America. And in six more weeks, the sermon He has sent me to speak will be completed.
The Lord will not forsake those who repent and follow Jesus.