Bigfoot in the Pulpit — E.A. Johnston

The Loss of Blood-Centered Gospel Preaching

Let me preface this message, friends, by saying I admit there are godly ministers out there who are preaching the gospel, but they are dying off, and I don't see any comeuppers, and that concerns me. The greatest void in the land today is preaching, and the greatest need is preachers, not teachers like we have now, but preachers like Spurgeon and Whitefield, men who will take the word of God and hold up the great doctrines of grace to the hellbound and preach a blood-stained Christ who suffered and died and was buried and who rose again and ascended into heaven where he now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross, but we preachers today don't mention the blood much, for we've gotten out our mop buckets, we've cleaned up all the sweat and pus and blood and gore around Calvary and made it so pristine you can sit and have your lunch there, and we no longer preach against sin and warn about the dangers of damnation in the devil's hell, so folks today don't know what sin is.

Sexual Sin and the Moral Consequences of Absent Preaching

The sin of fornication is just sleeping with someone. The sin of adultery is just fooling around, and because of the void of preaching in our day, every massage parlor in this town tonight is thriving with business.

Every bar and nightclub is jam-packed to where there's enough booze being drunk tonight to drown the entire nation. Blood splatters the streets of our cities as violent crimes are out of control, why, it's not even safe to go outside anymore without the risk of being gunned down by a madman.

We promote perversion like it's a normal, acceptable lifestyle, and a man is no longer a man, and a woman is no longer a woman, but a they. When will all this madness end? Will God have to destroy us?

National Decline, Religious Compromise, and the Loss of Revival

Most corrupt and wicked nations usually implode like ancient Rome and ancient Greece. What's happened to Great Britain, the land of the Bible? The churches are dying. Ministers are more afraid of men than God.

What's happened to Scotland, the land of preachers? Most of what you'll hear is an intellectual essay just to be considered. What's happened to Wales, the land of revival? She hasn't had a revival in 120 years.

Where are all the preachers? Why aren't we seeing revival? And what about America? What about the once great land of America? What about the American pulpit? It's as dead as a doornail, and that means twice dead.

The Need for Repentance and the Reality of Judgment

We have an abundance of teachers, but very few preachers. American evangelism has shrunken God down to man size and taken salvation out of the hands of God and placed it in the hands of men. Few are being warned today about a future judgment that awaits all mankind where every mother's son will be held up to the strictness and severity of God's holy, unbending law, and all will fail that test for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

So who can be saved if sinners are not told about man's duty of repentance? Who preaches repentance anymore with an only-believed gospel? I turn our attention, friends, to the Apostle Paul's exhortation in the book of Romans and chapter 10.

Romans 10 and the Necessity of a Preacher

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? I challenge you to go visit, like I do, churches all over your city, and go search out solid preaching and see what you find.

You'll be hard-pressed to find it. What you'll find will be plenty of teaching and not preaching. Preaching has a call to action, a motivating thrust. It's transformational. We just have a call for decisions today to grow our church numerically.

Spirit-Anointed Preaching and the Rarity of God-Called Men

But preaching under the Spirit of God is transformational. But few are being changed today because few are saved today. Where are the God-called men preaching a God-centered gospel in the full counsel of God under an anointing of the Spirit of God?

I know they are out there, for I know some of them personally. But I submit to you, friends, that they are as rare as Bigfoot in the pulpit. We need to pray that God will raise up men of God who will take the Word of God and preach it in the power of God without fear of their deacons.