“Nathan said to the king, “Go and do what you really want to do, because the LORD is with you.”
But that night the LORD spoke his word to Nathan, “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the LORD says: Will you build a house for me to live in? From the time I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until now I have not lived in a house. I have been moving around all this time with a tent as my home. As I have moved with the Israelites, I have never said to the tribes, whom I commanded to take care of my people Israel, “Why haven’t you built me a house of cedar?”’ 2 Samuel 7:3-7.

What do you go to hear today from your pulpits? Will you sit down and stand up as you are told to do Sunday after Sunday, singing the same songs that you have always sung? And what of those who hear the words from the Father, and they aren’t in your hallowed halls of stone and wood?

Do they hear and are they obedient even though they don’t sit beside you in your varnished pews? Even though they don’t drop their money in as you are told to do, will they still be counted among the living? Or must they also go through the motions that many of you do on this great day?

Does not God speak outside the walls of your great cathedrals? Must the organ be played and hymns be sung, in order for the truth to be spoken? Surely, the heathen must come to sit beside you to know what the truth is. Surely, they must also stand when you stand, and sit when you sit.

And indeed, shake hands with the robed man that speaks at this great assembly. The only truth that can be spoken must come from his lips.

Yes, there are those that speak and share the true words from the Father in your churches of stone and wood. But are their agendas the same as the one that they are speaking for? Or has the organized church become yet just another business? Or has the system of man replaced what was first practiced in the early church? Where were the pastors then? Were they steeped in what was to be spoken and what was prescribed for them to say? And what of those who spoke in the name of the Lord then; what of those apostles and prophets who were called to come?

But now it is another era, another dispensation you say. We now have progressed beyond that time. Now we have the written word. Now we have our great seminaries and places of learning — even though Peter and James and John were trained by the Lord himself. Surely, they could learn much just by attending a seminar? Surely, they could learn much by not speaking and just by quoting scripture?

And yet those in the great wilderness that reside outside the walls of your churches are not lost. They hear the word and many even now, are listening. They are the Jeremiahs and the Ezekiels. They are the Nathans who will come and speak a true word to the king when needed. They are those who will come at the appointed time and turn over the money changer’s tables.

But for now, sing your songs. Pass the plate around and go to your potlucks. Follow the routines that you know to be true. That still small voice is not from above, it must come from a dangerous place. Don’t listen to it, you may venture beyond tradition.

What happens when the steeples are toppled? What will happen and where will you go when the churches are destroyed? Where will you meet, and what will you do? Will you follow the same prescribed sermon that is written down for you even then, or will you hear that still small voice that beckons you to him?

~ Stephen Hanson

Stephen Hanson of In His Truth Ministries came to the Lord is a special way in 1975 and has been prophesying regularly since. In these end-time birthing pangs we are to be reminded that judgment must first begin with the household of God. Will we be prepared and ready?