Vance Havner was truly one of a kind. He was not an expository preacher nor was he what many would call an evangelist. Havner was a "revivalist". The boy from Jugtown in the Appalachians mountains had none of the things people believe a vocational evangelist needs. However, Havner had the one thing few do have, a true anointing from God as a prophet to the church. A.W. Tozer once said that Havner was one the few men he didn't have to clean up after when he preached at Moody Memorial Church in Chicago. Sit back, read, and be stirred by the man who always called himself, "just a preacher."

In these wild and weird and wicked times, the work of the preacher is being

What kind of preaching do we need today? We need the same kind we've always needed. Nothing important has changed. Just because we've split the atom and sent a man to the moon doesn't mean we need a new kind of Christianity. We have a new kind of preacher in some quarters, but we don't need him.

The preaching that we do need is apostolic. Of course, there are no apostles today in the original sense, but an apostle is one sent, and a preacher is also a man sent from God. The apostles studied at the feet of Jesus Christ. Our Lord said, "Learn of me,” and that means studying in the school of Christ Himself. It's possible to have a magna cum laude from a college and be a first-grader in the school of Jesus Christ.

The apostles were witnesses of and to the resurrection. Paul did not look much like a success in his last days, although he did have stocks and bonds. But the stocks were on his feet and the bonds on his wrists. His only ambition was to know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suf­fering, and conformity to His death. When a preacher or anybody else has moved from "me" and "mine" to "Him^" and "His," he is in the apostolic succession.

The apostolic preacher was anointed by the Holy Spirit divinely appointed and divinely anointed. We have a new Madison Avenue school of the prophets complete with degrees, personality, travel experience, sophisticated methods, up-to-date communication, and public relations; but how many are God-appointed and God-anointed?

In Exodus 30:32-33, instructions are given about the anoint­ing oil for the priests: "Upon man's flesh shall it not be poured.... Whosoever compounded any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.^”

One of our problems today is that we're running an old Adam improvement society. An unsanctified flesh that has never died to sin and risen to walk in newness of life is running down church aisles to rededicate, and God wouldn't use it if you rededicated it a thousand times.

Not many wise, mighty, or noble have been called. Why? "That no flesh should glory in His presence." I wonder how long it’s going to take us to learn that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. We've never learned this, but perhaps there has never been as much flesh glorying in His presence as today.

The unction, the anointing oil, is not sold over any counter. Simon Magus tried to buy it, but it was not for sale. It's not compounded by any apothecary; it's not put together by chem­istry. A preacher may be wrapped in the robes of learning, and his study walls may be decked with diplomas. His home may be filled with travel souvenirs from many lands, and he may wear all the trappings of ecclesiastical prestige and pag­eantry. But he cannot function without unction.

John Wesley demonstrated that a long time ago. He began his ministry equipped with formidable qualifications. No man was ever better prepared and less ready to preach. Many a pre-Aldengate Wesley today starts out to convert the Indian without ever having been converted himself.

Now when I speak of being anointed by the Holy Spirit, I’m not advocating weird hallucinations, pretending to be the work of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit becomes the figurehead in any blueprint, that movement becomes eccentric because the business of the Holy Spirit is to magnify Jesus Christ.

But there must be divine enduement; and when God calls a man to apostolic preaching, he must be in the appointed place for his anointing as Matthew 28:16 ("Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them") tells us. The appointing and the anointing are God's business. All He asks of the candidate is consent and cooperation.. Now that doesn't mean that every one appointed and anointed will be a well-known preacher. He may be pastor of a little country church out at Frog Pond somewhere, but he's qualified to the task God gave him to do.

The preaching that we need today must be authoritative. My Lord taught us having authority and not as the scribes. Too much today sounds like the scribes. There's no king in Israel; every man does what is right in his own eyes. Authority goes out, and anarchy comes in. Jesus met the devil not in His own name, not in His own power, but with the Scriptures: "It is written…It is written…It is written." If He could de­feat the devil with three verses out of Deuteronomy, we ought to be able to do it with the whole Bible.

Don't be ashamed of the old-time religion. There is noth­ing newer. We have a New Testament about a new and liv­ing way. We enter that way by new birth. We are new creatures with a new name and a new song, walking in new­ness of life, living by a new commandment, headed for a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem. And almost the last word of the New Testament in Revelation 21:5 is, "Be­hold, I make all things new." No wonder the gospel is good news old time, new time; any time, all the time. God is not running an antique shop. "These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee" (Titus 2:15).

But you can’t preach it like it is if you don’t believe it like it was. If you don't believe that the Scriptures are God-breathed and that Jesus Christ was virgin born, that He died for our sins and rose bodily from the grave and is coming again, you can't preach it like it is. You can't preach "Jesus Christ the same yesterday" today, if you don't believe what He was yesterday. For what He was then He is now.

We must not be apologetic, with an inferiority complex in the presence of the new left and the hippies and the jet set. I heard a great black preacher say before twenty-five hundred preachers, "I don't belong to the right wing or the left wing. They're both flapping on the same old bird."

I tell you that if anybody's embarrassed today, it oughtn't be the preachers. It ought to be that other crowd. We don't have to call in TV celebrities and athletic personalities to put the gospel over. We're trying to fix up something that doesn't need fixing up. We’re trying to gild the lily and paint the sunset, hobnob with Sodom, and get chummy with Gomorrah. You don't have to go to the loveins to find out what the hip­pies are thinking, or drink ginger ale at the country clubs to find out what that crowd's thinking.

What difference does it make what they're thinking? God says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8). The only thing that matters is what God is thinking and what God is saying. Some of these avant-garde boys ought to wake up.

The devil told me a long time ago that if I didn't get with it I'd have nowhere to preach, that I'd starve to death. Now from the way I look, you may think the devil's right; but I'm getting on all right. I'm busier at seventy than I ever was at fifty, and some of these dear fellows who are knocking themselves out trying to keep up with the procession ought to get up to date. We don't need anything new so much as we need something so old it'd be new if anybody tried it. They tell us we need a new lingo today. We must learn the new terminology. Instead of a problem, it's a “hang-up." In­stead of a blessing, it's a "meaningful experience." We must be relevant, communicate, dialogue with the now, study the spectrum, seek fulfillment in involvement, and get down to the nitty-gritty.

What difference does it make what they call it? They used to call it "itch" and now it's "allergy," but you scratch just the same. Too many people are stamping their feet and clapping their hands and singing "hallelujah" without the slightest idea what they're singing “hallelujah" about. They're getting on every bandwagon that goes by without asking who's at the head of the parade and where it's going.

Instead of setting the pattern, the professing church is tag­ging along today, imitating every new fad that comes by. If those things were so good, why didn't we lead? Why weren't we up in the cab instead of back in the caboose? You don't have to put on mod attire and pick a guitar and stage rock operas and drop all the way from hymns to hootenannies.

They tell us now that Isaac Watts did not speak the idiom of today. Well, neither did Shakespeare but they're still study­ing him. It's an insult to the intelligence of young people to give them the impression you have to cheapen the gospel to make it understandable. The medical schools do not simplify their phraseology to please this set. The legal profession hasn't changed its terminology. The young people of this generation are perfectly capable of comprehending as the Holy Spirit reveals it the truth of God.

All the church needs to do is be the church. God never told a church to be an accompanist. He called the church to be a soloist. We have our own song to sing; we don't have to sing anybody else's song. They say the end justifies the means. But the means determines the end. And if the means are unworthy, they spoil the end before you even get started.

When Spurgeon was preaching, Barnum and Bailey offered him a fat price to come over here and preach. And I know what we'd say today. We'd say, "Why don't you go? The devil's had the money long enough. Why don't you go over and preach?"

But not Mr. Spurgeon. He answered with Acts 13:10, "0 full of all subtly and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" But then, we don't have many Spurgeons. We plunge frantically in all directions trying to popularize the gospel.

The Ichabod Memorial Church decides to pack them in with folk music And then they say over at Ephesus, "Well, we'll try a TV personality." Then Pergamos says, "Well, we're gonna have a fella who can play a fiddle and beat tap drums and blow a harmonica all at the same time." Then over at Sardis they say, "We're gonna put on Aunt Dinah's quilting party. Come dressed like they were a hundred years ago, and we'll all see Nellie home." Then over at Laodicea they have a talking horse.

I heard of one of those horses some time ago. They asked him how many commandments, and he stomped ten times. How many apostles, and he stomped twelve times. Some nit­wit in the crowd asked how many hypocrites there are in this church, and he went into a dance on all fours.

We're living in a fog, and we can't distinguish the divine from the demonic. All we need to do is assert our delegated authority as preachers and preach the Word in the power of the Spirit. It must be authoritative. "If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God" (1 Peter 4:11).

Then it must be absolute. This is a day of relativism. Right used to be right, and wrong used to be wrong. Now black and white have been~ smudged into indefinite gray. We've had two wars that we've neither won nor lost. We're afraid to win them and ashamed to lose them. But General Douglas MacArthur summed it up when he said, "There's no substitute for vic­tory."

Joseph Parker said of Spurgeon, "The only colors Mr. Spur­geon knew were black and white. In all things he was definite. You were either in or out, up or down, alive or dead." 

Beloved, we're dealing in absolutes. The absolute authority of the Scriptures, the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ, the ab­solute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. It sounds too dogmatic to some people today because they blow from dogma to dogma. They're living in a fog.

Jesus Christ was and is absolute. He said, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad" (Matthew 12:30). You'll observe there's no third class there, and there's no such thing as an inactive church member. If you're not gathering, if you're not drawing people to Christ, you are driving them away from Christ; you are scattering. Sin is dogmatic. Death is dogmatic. Hell is dogmatic.

I remember when the Titanic sank in 1912, it was the ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. The only thing it ever did was sink. When it took off from England, all kinds of passengers were aboard millionaires, celebrities, people of moderate means, and poor folks down in the steerage. But a few hours later when they put the list in the Cunard office in New York, it carried only two categories  lost and saved. Tragedy had crossed out all other distinctions.

Out on life's sea there are scores of classifications. But when the voyage is over, it won't matter whether you were a rich man; poor man, beggar man, thief, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, whether you lived in the backwoods or on the boule­vard, whether you drove a Cadillac or pushed an apple cart to town. All such distinctions disappear and only two lists remain, lost and saved. We're dealing with absolutes.

But whereas our preaching is authoritative and absolute, it ought to be affectionate. "Speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:l5). Some preach the truth and don't have love. Some preach love and don't have the truth. Get the mixture right. You have to mix it. A man puts one foot in hot water and the other foot in ice water and feel very uncomfortable. But when he mixes the waters, he's quite all right.

The truth will keep you from dissolving into sentimentality; love will keep you from hardening into severity. Truth will keep you from turning to sugar, and love will keep you from turning to vinegar. The Lord preserves His saints; He doesn't pickle them. The Lord drove the money-changers from the Temple and wept over Jerusalem with a broken heart. I don't want to finish my course hard and embittered. I've seen some examples. It's a snare of the devil and a very poor advertise­ment for the gospel.

Finally, it ought to be apocalyptic preaching. It ought to sound like the book of Revelation, for we are living in a grand and awful time, in an age when to be living is sublime.

I heard a preacher take Luke 21:28 as his text, "When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." But he went on to say; "In this new time of brotherhood and socialism through educational legislation under religious auspices in the social gospeler's paradise, just as the crocuses are coming up so we are beholding the dawn of a new era."

I couldn't help saying, "Lord, have mercy on any preacher who can live in a cataclysmic hour like this and then stand in the pulpit croaking about crocuses." I'm glad I got my escha­tology straightened out a long time ago. I didn't believe it quite like I do now, but God cured me, and I've been immu­nized against a relapse. May that be the experience of every preacher today.

Beloved, we're living in a terrible time, in a day of beasts and seals and trumpets and four horsemen and the harlot on the beast and scorpions and dragons and a sea of glass mingled with fire and earthquakes and falling stars and Babylon and the bottomless pit and the lake of fire and Gog and Magog and six-six-six and the downfall of the devil and the great white city coming down.

It's no time to tiptoe through the tulips in the ministrative end. In such an hour, good news is bad news and bad news is good news. “When they shall say peace and safety" sounds like good news, but no: "Destruction cometh."

Good news is bad news. "But when you see all these things come to pass, famines, wars and rumors of war, men's hearts failing them for fear," that is bad news. But "lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." It's exactly the other way around for the Christian. I'm not waiting for the abolition) of war and poverty or urban renewal. I'm living in the great "until." If somebody asks you what time it is, tell him it's "until." He might look at you funny, but it will give you a chance to get in a word. We are living in the great "until"

"He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

I'm waiting "until he [that hindereth] be taken but of the way" (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

I'm judging "nothing before the time, until the Lord come" (I Corinthians 4:5).

I'm waiting "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24).

I'm waiting "till he Hath put all enemies under His feet' (1 Corinthians 15:25).

I'm waiting until He subdues "all things unto Himself" (Philippians 3:21).

I want to "be sincere and without offense till the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:10).

I want to "hold fast" what I have until He comes (Revelation2:25).

And when I partake of the Lord's Supper, I "show the Lord's death till He come" (1 Corinthians 11:26).

And He told me, "Occupy till I come" (Luke 19:13).

I'm waiting "until" His enemies be made His footstool (Psalm 110:1).

I preached down in Georgia along that line some time ago. A fine layman wrote a letter to me, and instead of signing it, "Yours truly," or, "Sincerely," he just signed it, “until” That's a good way to sign a letter.

How is He going to subdue all things and make all His enemies His footstool? By the preaching of the gospel? No. By social action? No. By building better hogpens out in the far country instead of getting the prodigal home? No.  Somebody said the other day, "When you're up to your ears in crocodiles, it's no time to discuss draining the swamp."

How's He going to subdue all things? When He comes cataclysmically apocalyptically, and suddenly. He's not coming to hold a summit conference with His enemies. He's not coming to reconcile. He did that the first time. He's coming to destroy and conquer and subdue. The day of reconciliation will be over; the day of retribution will begin.

The first time He came quietly, a babe in Bethlehem. He did not cry aloud, and His voice was not heard in the streets.

The next time there will be a shout, the voice of an arch­angel, and the trump of God to wake the dead. People used to ask how an angel's voice and a trumpet sound could be heard around the world. You don't ask that now. A man can blow a trumpet in New York and be heard in Australia. Our eardrums have been shattered by the devilish dissonance of rock and roll and even gospel jazz. And if a man can blow a trumpet loud enough to deafen the living, God's angel ought to be able to blow one loud enough to waken the dead.

I'm not looking for signs. We've had plenty of them. I'm listening for a sound. Every time you see a scoffer who says there are no signs of His coming, you've just seen another sign. I'm listening for a shout.

It's a great day for preaching, apostolic, authoritative, absolute, affectionate, and apocalyptic.

"Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

To hear a sermon by Vance Havner in Real Audio click here

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