The Prophetic Call part 6

Prophetic Perception

            The prophet sees God in all events throughout history including earthquakes, wars, and holocausts. This is another huge point. It is one thing when we believe that God has the ability to either allow or stop such things. It is completely different when we see God as being the very cause of it. Not only is He the cause, but He also has the power to ensure what kind of destruction and devastation comes to whom and for how long and if they will be utterly destroyed.

            Lets take the Nazi Holocaust as an example. There are very few options that can be taken. Many have commented on the Holocaust and few have said God was present. Either God was not present, or He was. If He was not present, then He is either not real or He is flawed in character to not intervene. If God was there, then we need to wrestle with the implications that that brings.

            The Nazi Holocaust challenges everything that we have supposed. It is nice and simple to get by with clichéd opinions and shallow perceptions of God. But when times of extremity come, we will either forsake the faith or be challenged to reconsider.

            So it was with the Holocaust. I believe that God was there. Any prophet would have to see it in this perspective. God caused it, and God was the one who ended it. He was the one who preserved Israel at all. What conclusion can be made?

            This can only be interpreted as a judgment of God. If we admit that God was present, then He was either judging Israel for their sins or trying to obliterate them completely. He obviously wasn’t the one trying to obliterate them completely. To Israel He has said many times in the prophets, “Because you have forsaken me, I will give you over to your oppressors. But if you will be humble and cry out to me in sincerity, I will hear from heaven and I will rescue you.”

            It begs the question of what God was judging. The message of the prophets always does beg this question. When we read our New Testaments, what exactly was Jesus so upset about when dealing with the Pharisees? Nicodemus visited him, and Jesus didn’t pronounce the woes against him. So Jesus wasn’t against all the Pharisees. He was against something else than their title.

            I think what God is against comes down to the religion that cheapens God. When we set up limits and restrictions and traditions beyond what God has said and willingly look for guidelines instead of God, we have set up a false religion. God said that we should follow certain dietary laws. What was the purpose? What was God’s intention? Instead we debate whether this Hebrew word means this kind of animal or that kind of animal. We debate whether Jesus has abolished such dietary laws and called them obsolete or whether we still need to follow them.

            Do you see the problem? God has spoken. Can He not speak and guide us? Why is there so much confusion? We have rejected God. We have utterly and totally neglected God and His Law, and in its place we have substituted a cheap forgery that will give us all religious obligations to feel satisfied. How have we neglected God and His Law?

            To this day the passages like Deuteronomy 15 aren’t taken seriously. Take care of the poor. Open your door to the foreigner. Give yourself beyond your limits. Don’t mistreat the orphan and widow. Instead, be their voice. Stand up for them. Rise against the powers that oppress them. When God delivers Israel out of Egypt, He tells Israel that there will be no poor among them. Why then were there laws about not oppressing the poor and taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves?

            God knew the heart. He knew they would be unable because they were unwilling. There will be no poor among you when you will provide for one another. When you share with one another and take care of one another and have all things common with one another, you won’t see poverty. There will always be an abundance given to the people of God. God will always give more than we can imagine.

            So you can understand the offense when you read in the prophets that the poor and the orphans and the widows are being crushed. This is a violation of God’s Law. Why did God send the Holocaust? He sent it for the same reason that Israel endured the Babylonian exile.

            That doesn’t let Germany off the hook. They don’t need to repent for being the ones who brought about the Holocaust. In that they take upon their own shoulders a blame that is not theirs to take on. But they are guilty of the same sin.

            Where was the Church in Germany? What was it doing? There are a few Corrie Ten Booms and Dietrich Bonhoeffers who opposed the Nazis. I know that. But by and large, where were the rest of them? Why was there such a small voice to stand up to this system? Why was there such a small amount to be willing to die on behalf of Israel? Why were so few in the Church willing to forsake their own lives for the lives of others?

            This isn’t only Germany’s sin. This is the sin of the whole Church by and large. The majority of us are all guilty of taking lightly the Scriptures. We are all guilty of putting self first. We are all guilty of forming our own religion in which we are at the center. We are all guilty of framing the Bible around our lives instead of our lives around the Bible. That is the same sin of Israel.

            The lack of power to stand up to such a demonic presence as Nazism is only a revelation of the lack of power that has always existed. It isn’t that we have power and we can feel the presence of God and we can pray down heaven until a massive demonic force is in our way. That is a lie from the pit of hell. Either you have the power and authority or you don’t. If the power and authority are lacking in the moment of terror, then they have been lacking the whole time.

            Now I’m not about to say that if the Church had responded with power that they would have stopped the Holocaust. What I am saying is that the lack of power and the lack of gumption shows too well that they never had obtained it ever. This was the age that declared, “God is dead.” This was the age that tried to fit the Bible into world culture. They tried to fit evolution and the Bible together. The historians and philosophers and scientists who are all atheists are telling us that the Bible is a joke. Well, to fix that lets take everything they believe in and try to reword the Bible so that it teaches it.

            We’re still guilty of it. We still have made humanism the religion. We have yet to pass beyond the flesh and obtain eternal life. This is why such events like the Holocaust happened. This is why in World War 2 the bombs were dropped on Japan. The same amount of casualties that Japan suffered from those atomic bombs is the same amount of casualties in China from the Rape of Nanking.

            God will not be mocked; a man reaps what he sows. The same goes for a nation. America has faced severe weather for the last 5 or more years. Don’t think for a moment that this is just “mother nature.” God is sending judgment. His judgment isn’t for the secular American atheists. It is for the Church that has rejected Him in the same way that Israel has rejected Him. They have desired so much to be Israel that they imitated even their sins. And now God has given the Church its wish. We will suffer the judgment to the extent that we reject the unbroken continuum of the authentic faith to embrace the Pharisaical religion.

Sensitivity to Evil

            It is at this point that we must now study the acute sensitivity to evil. The prophet doesn’t care a hoot about civilized society. The most “civilized” and the most prestigious are the ones who are the most in sin. The prophet comes like a bullhorn exposing the complete lack of morals. We pass by the poor and think nothing of it. We continue on in our daily lives pretending that nothing is wrong while CEO’s and banksters are getting rich by oppressing the poor. Society has been raised to pretend the slums don’t exist. We’re all middle class white Americans anyway…

            A prophet sees the most common everyday injustice and calls it a cosmic diablerie. Listen to the prophet Isaiah: “Hear oh Heavens! Listen oh Earth! For the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its master, the donkey his owner’s manger, but my Israel does not know, my people do not understand… Your hands are full of blood; wash and make clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong; learn to do right! Seek justice; encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

            How many orphans and widows do you think there were in Israel? How many in Jerusalem? How many people do you think suffered from oppression? I’m sure that it was probably the same percentage we face today. And countless people continue to go on and never even care. We’re taken from the high and lofty civilization where we don’t have to see the ghetto, and the prophets take us right into the heart of the slums.

            A prophet cannot stand sin. He cannot stand injustice. The problem isn’t that one poor person is being oppressed. The problem is that at the beginning of Exodus God said, “There will be no poor among you.” The very fact that there are poor is a statement that Israel has rejected the Law. They have forsaken certain aspects and oppressed one another. Someone somewhere has decided to neglect the laws that talk about setting the captive free and giving generously to the poor and taking the foreigner in and pleading the case of the widow and caring for the orphans. This is all found in Deuteronomy 15.

            It is almost as if entire passages of the Law had been ripped out and forgotten. God said there would be no poor among you. Why are there any poor at all? Has God not prospered Israel? We know that isn’t true. There are people who are getting wealthy off of taxing and oppressing others. This was forbidden in the Law. Yet, the rabbinical and Pharisaical traditions were promoted to keep people “holy.”

            Maybe this will help explain why Jesus was so fierce. People have purposefully held such a high standard on these laws that they are now impossible to obey, and then neglected other laws completely. The prophets were called hysterical. They were over exaggerating. But if we call the prophets hysterical, what then shall we call the blatant indifference of the multitude?

            This leads us to the understanding that in the prophet’s mind, few are guilty, but all are responsible. God holds each man who sees such things as responsible for not ever standing up. No one ever raises a voice. No one ever stops in the midst of everything and asks the simple question, “What are we doing?”

            Day by day we continue to go through the motions. We continue to live our lives according to the many habits that we have formed. We continue to ignore the homeless man we pass everyday. We continue to ignore the man who has the sign saying that he is willing to work, but can’t find a job. We continue to walk past the coworker who is struggling to make ends meet. We continue to block out the cry of the oppressed. We continue to dull our ears to the ever present nagging that the system is killing people.

            Though we might not be a part of that system that is destroying many lives, our lack of response to it shows that we are indeed responsible for it. Every day we continue to harden ourselves to it. Every day we continue to live as though it doesn’t exist. In New York City, the gangs are mostly teenagers. By the time these kids are in their 20s, they’ve wound up in prison or are simply drug dealers forming more gangs to be hooked on.

            We continue to ignore the silent screams. Wisdom cries out in the streets. She wails upon the wall. She shouts from the hilltops. She proclaims her words from the marketplace. We never hear. We never listen. We never stop.

            Few are guilty; all are responsible. It is because of the lack of voice that we have against such things that we are held accountable. Though we might not be the ones who are actually oppressing others, we are given the same rebuke. You might not be the one who is causing for millions to go into debt, but you also aren’t the one who protests the credit card industry or the loan offices or the housing industry or the IRS.

            The prophet brings it all to the attention of the hearer. He exposes everything. He lays it bear. He cries out and is considered a madman. “What am I supposed to do?” Are we really not saying that we fear the industry? Are we really not just saying that things will never change? How big is your God? Is He too small to take down the corporations? Is He too small to bring freedom again?

            It exposes more than just our lack of voice. It exposes our true opinions. Where does your faith lie?

            The prophet starts proclaiming his message, and the people will either be struck to the core or they will be hardened even further. Something happens. Either we will join in the voice of the prophets and cry out with them, or we will be the same people who oppose the prophets and rejoice over their deaths. The Beast at the end of the age will slay the two witnesses (Revelation 11). The whole world rejoices. “These are the men that tormented those who live on the Earth.”

            But lets be honest… they never torment anyone. The prophet is accused of torment and speaking blasphemy. He speaks against God. He speaks against the people. He speaks against the Temple. Anywhere they can blame the prophet, they do. Why? His message is not a well received one. In this, we find out who are really the people of God.

            Those who will kill the prophets and rejoice over their death, are the very ones who have given alms to the system that oppresses and torments. The prophet takes upon himself the sins of the people. They were the tormentors; he is the one called a tormentor. They were the oppressors; he is the one called the oppressor. They were the ones promoting injustice; he is the one called unfair. The cycle continues throughout history.

            The prophet takes upon himself the very sin of the people. They called Jesus a blasphemer. Jesus is God in the flesh. Who is really blaspheming? Who is really oppressing the people? Who is really casting out spirits by Beelzebub? Who is really leading the people astray? And yet Jesus did not open His mouth on the cross at all. He took it all upon Himself. All of the names, all of the sins, all of the threats, all of the mocks, all of the scorns.

            In this the prophet is the priest. It is intrinsic to them. They will take up the sins of the people and repent for them. They will die on their behalf.