Repent ye :for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Mat 3:2). Those words could be heard ringing  throughout the wilderness. As a man wearing a raiment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle about his loins, eating locust and wild honey (Mat 3:4), began to preach the only sermon he knew. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” (Mat 3:3).

I wish I could have been there to meet such a different individual. I wish I could have heard, with my own ears the sermon he preached. This man did not care about the religious order. He didn’t care about his ministry funds, he did not care about fame or fortune, nor was he on a power trip.  All he cared about was preparing the world for the coming of the Messiah. As I look over what ministry in this day and age has become, it saddens me. I cant help but compare the ministries of today to the ministries in the New Testament. I don’t see much of a resemblance. We don’t see the conversions, we don’t see the miracles, and we don’t see the deliverance’s that the apostles saw. Is that God’s fault? No! The reason we don’t see the miracles and all of those things is because it is hard to find people who are set apart, people who hear the voice of God, and follow his direction.

John was not sent to this earth to conform to the religious order of his day. He was sent to sound an alarm, to prepare the people of God for the move of the spirit that was about to take place. We find that John did not send out flyers or have a neon sign announcing his services. He went to the wilderness, and people came to him.

Mat 3:5  Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan.

John was sounding an alarm, he was letting the people know it was time to prepare themselves for the coming of the Messiah. The Prophet Joel  said it this way.

Joel 2:1  Blow ye the trumpet in Zion,and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;

Blow ye the trumpet. When someone blows a trumpet most of the time it will get some attention. That is the problem in the church we are not blowing the trumpet. We just fit in with all the noise of the world. John did not fit in, He was different and even the so called religious community didn’t understand him. The Church has spent too much time trying to fit in with the world, but God is beckoning us to sound the alarm, because Jesus is coming back.