God's 'Avengers' (The Nazirites Are Coming)

I, like most of America, just saw the Avengers movie that has been a big hit in the theaters worldwide. In fact the Avengers set record sales for both opening weekend and its second weekend, previously set by Avatar in 2009. There has been great interest in the theme of the Avenger heroes, a group of unlikely people who unite in a time of crisis and then disappear again after the crisis has ended. After seeing this movie I recognized a clear parallel between this story and a Bible story that has great application to today!

God has a group of Avengers called Nazirites. The Nazirites were a group of people found in the Old Testament called by God only in times of extreme crisis. In fact, some Nazirites even had forms of superpowers, such as Samson (Judges 13) and many of the major prophets in the Old Testament who performed great signs and wonders. The purpose of the Nazirites was not about superpowers, however, it was about the message they carried. These were messengers that God raised up in times of crisis to turn the nation of Israel back to the Lord.

You can find the Nazirite Vow defined in Numbers 6, "If a man or woman wants to make a special vow, a vow of dedication to the Lord as a Nazirite. . . Throughout the period of their dedication, they are consecrated to the Lord." There were three distinctions to this vow: those dedicated could not cut their hair, not eat or drink anything related to grapes, and they could not be around death. So whenever you look throughout scripture and see the prophets who dedicated themselves in this way, they are referring to the Nazirite Vow (Samuel, Elijah/Elisha, John the Baptist, etc...).

Scripture also makes it clear that the Lord called Nazirites from the youth of the nation in Amos 2: "I also raised up prophets from among your children and Nazirites from among your youths." The scary part of Amos 2 is that the Lord was preparing to crush Israel for rejecting the Nazirites that the Lord had called! 

When Israel was in crisis, the Lord called a special group of people out of the youth of the nation to a high calling of consecration and holiness. This was not a calling of consecration from sin, but to abstain even from permissible pleasures in order to pursue the Lord in a dedicated way. These Nazirites became symbols, icons in a generation of the message they carried, the message of repentance. And these Nazirites were the Lord's anointed messengers with power on their words and their actions, endorsed by heaven.

While the literal Nazirite Vow no longer exists in the New Testament and present day, the principle of the Vow endures through all generations. Even today the Lord is calling a group of people out of the youth of America to radical consecration and to carry a message. 

Right now our nation is the crisis of impending judgement from the Lord for our iniquities. I remember 6 years ago I sat at an Acquire the Fire conference and listened as Ron Luce declared clearly the urgency of the hour, calling hundreds of thousands of youth to be messengers in their generation. 6 years ago, Ron Luce declared the statistics that exposed the destructive trends of our nation's youth culture, warning the church of what would happen if we failed to respond. Now the youth documented in those statistics are of voting age, and the polls taken of the young voters are revealing devastating moral decline. Since then Ron Luce has traveled the nation repenting on behalf of the previous generation that failed to act in the youth's time of need. That was the first time I had ever heard of this call from the Lord to be a messenger in my generation.

Since then I have seen clearly how the Lord is calling modern day Nazirites to arise. It's not about growing long hair or not eating grapes or going around cemeteries. It's about standing for truth in a day when truth is slain in the streets like in Isaiah 59. The Lord is calling out of the youth of America a group of radically devoted prayer warriors who carry a message burning in their bones like Jeremiah. We have a window of mercy to respond to this call from the Lord as He gives us every opportunity to turn back to him. The Lord is raising up musicians and artists out of the youth of America who carry the message of the cross and who refuse to bow their talents to the gods of this age or the praises of man. The Lord is raising up students who are committed to praying every morning at their school for revival, teenagers that defeat darkness as they prepare the way for an open heaven over their school.

There is a new breed of American teenager emerging who the Lord has put his hand on as they return to Christianity's ancient paths (Jeremiah 6:16), the paths of the Nazirite messengers. They don't care about being "cool" or going with the flow. They care only about the fire in the eyes of their Lord as they gaze upon his beauty and share his jealousy for their generation. Their message will go out to the entire generation, and it starts with the church! Return to the Lord.

Suddenly are they called forth to define the next phase of human history. How will you respond?