Pentecostal preacher Jonathan Martin says in late 2016 the Holy Spirit impressed Hosea 2:6-7 on him as a message for the church. The verse addresses how God can use turbulent seasons of shaking for His glory. Martin says the Holy Spirit wants to use shaking today to reveal hidden giftings in some and to exorcise sins in others.
“I am at heart very much a Hillbilly Pentecostal,” Martin says. “I believe that America is in need of nothing less than an exorcism from a very old principality of white supremacy. … I want to share a text with you briefly that I felt like the Holy Spirit gave to me in 2016, actually about a week before the election. It is not in any way a partisan word.”
Martin says the verses the Holy Spirit gave him were Haggai 2:6-7: “For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once again in a little while I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land and I will shake all the nations so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I shall fill this house with splendor.'”
“I’ve been fascinated by this idea that God sends a shaking that will come to all the nations,” Martin says. “No one is exempt. Ecclesiastical systems are shaking. Political systems are shaking. Foundations are shaking. Some things are shaking that we think ought to be shaken. Other things are shaking that we don’t think should be touched. It’s indiscriminate. The shaking comes to us all. The people of God are not exempt from the shaking. As a matter of fact, what God says here is that he has a unique purpose for his people in the shaking.”
Martin says God reminded him of Acts 16, in which Paul and Silas are freed from prison after an earthquake shook the prison’s foundations and loosened their shackles.
“The earthquake that would seem to threaten Paul and Silas, the earthquake that would seem to threaten to kill them at the end of what has already been a long and difficult season, is actually the thing that God uses to set them free,” Martin says. “What is an earthquake for everyone is going to be a jailbreak for some. … [And] the same earthquake that God uses to set free the oppressed is able to redeem the oppressor. This gospel is so good and so beautiful that it’s not only good news for the imprisoned. It’s good news for the jailer. If it’s not, it’s not yet good news.”
Click on the embedded video to watch Martin’s full sermon.
