“Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.” 
(1st Kings 19:18)

Oh LORD of the harvest, raise up true and faithful labourers, preachers and shepherds. Labourers who are not concerned for worldly honour, gain, nor possessions, but for the spiritual welfare of their hearers, the glory of God, and the preeminence of Jesus Christ. Labourers who fear neither men of the world nor men of the church, who fear not loneliness nor failure, whose only fear is “the fear of the LORD.” Labourers who know how to be abased and how to abound, how to live with poverty and plenty, and to treat those two imposters as the same. Labourers who are COMPLETE IN CHRIST and CONTENT WITH CHRIST, and who are quite determined to preach Christ and Him crucified. Labourers who love their Master and have no complaint with where they labour nor how long they labour and are willing to leave the harvest in His hands.

Are we as destitute for true labourers as it seems? Is the famine of hearing the Word of God as wide-spread as it appears? Oh God, where are THE 7000 who have “not bowed their knee to Baal nor kissed him with their mouths”?

This is truly the order: first, THE KNEE buckles under the strain of fear, opposition, criticism, loneliness, and trial; then THE MOUTH follows with soft words of compromise and smooth intellectual words of man’s wisdom, which lessens the offense of the cross.

Oh, to be a member of THE 7000 CLUB!

Henry Mahan – 1987