The people of Israel rewarded the prophet Isaiah by sawing him to two [Hebrews 11:37].. Jeremiah was hated because he told Judah that they were going into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. They did. On just one occasion of the wrath of the princes against Jeremiah he was lowered into an old well where he sank into the muck to his armpits [Jeremiah 38:6].. He was rescued. Elijah, after God's victory over the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, ran for 40 days and nights [1st Kings 19:8],to save himself from wicked Jezebel because he was responsible for the killing of 450 of her pagan false prophets at Mount Carmel [1st Kings 18:22]. Stephen, the last man to prophesy to Israel as God's chosen people (when he was given the vision of Christ and said, "Look! I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!") was stoned to death [Acts 7:59].
Jesus Christ condemned the Jews (Matthew 23:37] for their long history of persecuting, killing, and stoning those "...of whom the world was not worthy..." [Hebrews 11:38].
And what of today? What does my church do to its Messenger? Stoning? Not quite....something more sophisticated; more politically correct; more corrosive; more insidious; more inwardly self destructive: We ignore her.
Someone is protesting; "Not me!" And perhaps they are correct but the point of this post is not the individual but the corpus; that is, the body of the church at large.
If a church does not respect the prophets; if the church ignores the prophets, where shall it profit?
God Bless. e.c.
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