The Church is facing a very serious crisis. This crisis is best demonstrated by the pictures of the best performing students in this country that are usually displayed on the Front Page of the Newspapers.

When these students are asked about what they intend to become, here are the answers they usually give: "I am planning to be a Lawyer. I am planning to be a doctor. I intend to become a Parliamentarian. I am going to become a prominent business man."

I have never seen or heard anyone of them say, "I want to become a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Now this means that there is a crisis in the Church for without pastors, how is the Church going to survive? And this in turn means that there is a crisis in the nation because if there are no prophetic voices that are declaring to the people of God their sins, then there will be more and more corruption, violence and HIV-Aids. There will also be more greed and sexual impulses and these things will destroy this nation unless there are preachers of the word of God. This indeed is a very serious crisis!

Who will pick up the mantle of Elijah and say, "I have been called of God to be a preacher of the word of God and I can do nothing else but become a preacher of that word?"

In this message, the Vice Chancellor of African Bible University, the Rev. Dr. O. Palmer Robertson, will point us to a man named Elisha who picked Elijah's mantle. Dr. Robertson will use Elisha's example to show us several characteristics of the kind of man that God might favor with a call to the Gospel ministry.