This is the prophetic challenge, God is saying to us in Haggai 2.3: ‘Who is left among you that saw this House in its first glory – and how do you see it now?!!’ This is the challenge to the Church and to our nations: something HAS to happen to dramatically CHANGE us.
There have been times in my own life when I have had to experience this dramatic change and transformation. It was never a change of direction. My staff will tell you that what I wrote when I was fifteen in my magazine ‘The Evangelist’, is EXACTLY what I say now. What God put in my heart then, is EXACTLY what God is fulfilling in my life now. So the direction has never changed – but I have had to have the renewing. Without those times when God has stopped me, put me in a prison, laid me aside, cancer, or any other thing – there has had to be that dramatic realisation in my life of the need of change.
God is today saying to the Church EXACTLY what He was saying here to Israel through the prophet Haggai! I want to challenge you, every one of you – who is there still here in Britain (or wherever you are) who saw the Glory of God in this land, who saw the Power of God in the churches, who saw the repentance, who saw the demonstration of the Holy Spirit? I would say to you, what do you see now? Desolation. You don’t hear a call to repentance, you don’t see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I would say to you – the Glory has gone. And God is saying in this Scripture in Haggai, the Glory has departed from the House of God! WE are the House of God. And the Glory has gone! We have got to bring back the Glory and the Power into the House of God!
In Proverbs 29.18 we read, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ We need a strong vision – or the churches, the believers – and the rest of the world – will perish.
When Moses sent out twelve spies to view the Promised Land they all saw the same thing, a land flowing with milk and honey, with corn and grapes. They also all saw the walled cities and the giants. The difference was in the reaction. For ten, their fear of the giants and walled cities dimmed their vision. We cannot do it, it is impossible, we will be overcome. Only two, seeing the same thing, recognised the power and authority of God so that their vision of God’s power blotted out their fear. In His Name and by His power nothing is impossible, we shall overcome. It is just the same today. If we really knew our God and had a vision of Him, we would attempt the impossible and take the land! It is only this kind of vision which obeys in faith that will win the unbelieving nations and people, today.