MBC president to messengers: ‘Sound the trumpet’
By Brian Koonce
Staff Writer
November 1, 2005
SPRINGFIELD– In an age where tradition morals and values are increasingly under attack, the president of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) has identified the culprit.
Mitch Jackson called the more than 1,500 messengers packed into Second Baptist Church here to rise up as believers and accept responsibility for the moral decline of America during his presidential address Oct. 24.
“It’s our fault,” he told crowd at the annual meeting. “We have failed to stand up and be heard when we needed to be heard. We have allowed the moral decay in America. It would never have happened if Christian pastors and leaders of all denominations had stood up.”
Jackson held up the example of Ezekiel. In chapter 33 of that book, the Lord speaks to the prophet saying “Son of man, , speak to your countrymen and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of that land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not take warning and the sword comes and takes his life, his blood will be on his own head’” (33:2-4 NIV).
“We are living in constant spiritual warfare,” Jackson said. “We need to be the watchman on the wall. We need to be ready. We need to realize that the battle is escalating greatly and the stakes are getting greater and greater in our country and in our world. We have to be the watchman on the wall of God’s Word, blowing the trumpet when the enemy comes and attacks that Word and attacks the precepts of that Word.
He went on to say that though the need is still great, the Christians have failed to blow the trumpet in the past, making today’s stakes even higher.
“How could our nation and the world get so far away from Biblical morals?” Jackson asked. “The watchman of the church failed to blow the trumpet. It’s not the fault of the lost that the morals of America have decayed, they’re lost! It’s not the fault of the homosexual movement or the abortionists, they’re lost! They don’t have the truth. We have the Word! We have the truth! It’s our responsibility. If we don’t sound the alarm, we’re as guilty as they are”
“Too many times the church as a whole has been seeking the approval and praise of the world,” he said. “In John 15:19 says ‘if you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.’ That is why I would say to you that a church that is politically acceptable and acceptable to the world as a whole is no church at all. If you are preaching and teaching the Word of God, the world will hate you.”
Ezekiel 33:7 goes on to relate God’s promise that by sounding the call the blood of those who do not heed it will be responsible for their own destruction.
“We must be Ezekiels,” Jackson said. “We must be the watchmen of today. We’ve left God’s Word and we’ve left God’s ways. Disaster is coming if we don’t repent and take up our place as the watchman.
“God is looking for those watchmen that will blow the trumpet,” he said. “God is not looking for preachers that will fear for their jobs, or preachers that will fear for their salary or preachers that fear for their positions of power, but God is looking for men that will sound the trumpet regardless of the consequences.
There are a lot of preachers, church leaders and teachers in America, many of them in Baptist life, who are going to be held accountable with blood on their hands,” Jackson said. “Let us be the watchman on the wall. Let us sound the trumpet.”