Your heart burns with a righteous indignation, but beware lest that holy fire become a strange flame of carnal wrath. The Lord Jesus did indeed threaten the Jezebel of Thyatira with sickness and death unless she repented, yet that is His own sore work, and not a weapon delivered into your hand. “The Spirit itself also beareth witness with my spirit that I am born of God,” and there is a witness of the Spirit that we are His. That same Spirit is the great discerner of spirits, and it is by Him alone that the chaff is sifted from the wheat. You speak of pastors lacking discernment, alas, how many a time the church has slumbered while the enemy sowed tares. But I fear that your anger, if it be not mingled with tears, may itself grieve that Dove whose sensitive nature we are charged not to wound. “Let us cease to grieve the Spirit of God, and look to him for help to the faithful ministers who are yet spared to us.”
What is the Church but a company of men who have received the Spirit? “A Church must be taken upon its own profession, consisting as it does of persons who avow themselves to be followers of and Believers in Christ, having been converted from darkness to light by the Spirit of God.” There is no salvation outside her pale, but mark well, her pale is not these stone walls, nor a roll of members, but the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. If any have crept in unawares, having not the Spirit, they are not of the true Church at all. Yet the invisible Church is safe in the hand of her Lord. “The hope of the continuance and increase of the church lies in the remaining of the Spirit with us.” Do you not trust the Spirit to cleanse His own temple? “I would to God that we had a cyclone of the Holy Spirit! What a sweep it would make of a great many rotten Church buildings which now stand upright! Many a magnificent pile would fly before it like dust and chaff from the summer's threshing-floor!” That is the tempest we must pray for, not the whirlwind of human fury, but the blessed hurricane of the Spirit’s conviction.
You speak of the spirit of witchcraft and Jezebel. It is a sad and certain truth that wherever the Spirit of God does not reign, another spirit usurps the throne. But who shall cast it out? We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, and our weapons are not carnal. The most needful thing is not that you and I should point the finger with trembling rage, but that we should fall upon our faces and cry to the God of Elijah, “Let it be known this day that Thou art God.” “Praying in the Holy Spirit”, there is the secret of power. “Our new-born spirit has a certain degree of power in it, but the power is never fully manifested or drawn out except when the Spirit of God quickens our spirit and excites it to activity.” How often the church attempts prayer in the energy of the flesh, and it returns void. But when the Spirit Himself makes intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered, then the heavens bow down. Instead of a long complaint against men, let your spirit be overshadowed and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, that your prayer may be a mighty force. “It were well to be so sensitive of the Spirit of God that His faintest breath should cause a ripple upon the sea of our soul and make it move as the Spirit would have it.”
You demand judgment upon the false shepherds. Let us leave that to the chief Shepherd. I have marked that they who are swift to call down fire from heaven forget what manner of spirit they are of. The true Church groans and travails for the sincere conversion even of her enemies. Yet God is not mocked. If men have made the house of prayer a den of thieves, the Lord of that temple will suddenly come, and His fan is in His hand. But few of us are fit to wield that fan with unsoiled hands. Let the Lord’s own word search us first! “Jesus would put Jezebel on a sick bed and kill her children with death if she doesn't repent”, that is the Lord’s own sentence, and He will execute it in His time. Your part is to sigh and cry for the abominations, but also to plead, “Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach.” For all the sleepiness of the church, “the Spirit of God still remaineth, and therefore churches go to be awakened.”
The great mistake is to look more at the devil than at the Holy Ghost. The darkness flees not because you curse it, but because the light shines. “We must have the Spirit of God.” Without Him we do nothing; with Him no foe can stand. Every holy minister, every faithful deacon, every praying mother is a candle lit by Him. “You godly mothers, you are the glory of the Church of Christ! You hard working men and women who endure patiently, 'as seeing Him who is invisible,' are the crown and glory of the Church of God!” There is yet a remnant according to the election of grace, and the Spirit abides upon them. Let your prayer be less that men be exposed, and more that the Spirit would mightily fall upon the whole company of believers, so that the chaff is blown away by reason of the winnowing gale of His presence. Pray that every member recognise his ordination to service, and that the whole body be so filled with life that no counterfeit can abide the test.
Purge your own heart first, for a wrong spirit within is more dangerous than Jezebel without. “Let us cry aloud to the Holy Spirit, who is certainly grieved with his church, and let us purge our churches of everything that is contrary to his Word and to sound doctrine, and then the Spirit will return, and his power shall be manifest.” Begin upon your knees, not upon your feet as an accuser. The throne of grace is the place for a breaking heart, not a judgment seat. The Lord will hold His servants accountable, but woe to that servant who judges another man’s servant in a manner not allowed by the Master. Oh for a baptism of the Holy Ghost upon a prostrate Church! Then many a deceiver would flee of his own accord, unable to endure the white heat of that indwelling presence.
Thus I seal this word with the text that is ever before my own soul: “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.” And let him that heareth say, Come. Even so, come, Holy Spirit! Come as a mighty rushing wind, and sweep away everything that defiles, but let the fire of Love be our crown, and the Spirit of Holiness our only trust.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
