scribes, is the object of the vicious and venomous hatred of all Jezebels. Little religious clerks complain be cause they cannot control him. His contemporaries stone him and the next generation builds monuments to his memory. Bishop Kilgo once wrote: “The fine opportunists who know the gen tle arts of getting on with perfect adjustment do not understand a mqn in whom righteousness has its im perial sway. To them he is of a hard head, a stubborn will, an autocratic soul. So the man of righteousness must make up his mind to be mis understood and to be happy amid it all. He must have fellowships out side the circle of present movements and endure as one who sees the in visible.” The prophet has his compensa tions. For him there is the joy of hours in solitude with his Bible. For him is the satisfaction of walking into the pulpit free to speak his message without regard for praise or blame. He is accountable to no board or committee and he does not take the teeth out of his sermon in the study and “ gum it” in the pulpit to please any human sponsor. Mor- decai Ham said of Paul: “ He was a strategist who thought out his strat egy on the field of war, not in some Jerusalem war office where parch ment and sealing wax were more plentiful than experience and fore sight.” The prophet thinks out his strategy in the solitudes far from the petty bickerings of church poli tics. His policy is not determined by swivel-chair experts. He is not the product of any assembly line and, like Paul, he confers not with flesh and blood but works out his theology in the desert. He is accused of living in an ivory tower far from the front line of battle. As a matter of fact, the front line is too close to the con flict to see the whole field in proper
perspective. One cannot see the for est for the trees. The prophet is a man apart who views the whole pano rama. He is not identified with any clique or clan nor does he champion any one little school of thought. He belongs to none that he may minister to all. He is not the elected delegate of any religious party but speaks for and to the whole commonwealth, the “ holy nation” of the people of God. He speaks for the Almighty both to church and state and is a watchman on the wall, not a “ dumb dog that cannot bark.” Is it too much to hope that there may yet arise in the sunset of this age one more prophet of the Lord be sides? Or, are we too far gone to look for another Amos in our Bethel today? Could there yet be a lad who will hide in the woods with his Bible until it becomes a fire in his bones, wait on the Lord until he is anointed from above and then appear not with the speech of today’s schools of the prophets but the language of the courts of God? We can still pray that however unthinkable such a calling may seem to the average seminarian some hardy soul will see to it that the prophet shall not perish from the earth.
The prophet uses colorful lan guage which shocks all resters-at- ease in Zion. He is not afraid to employ pulpit weapons long since ruled out by nice little books on “ How to Preach.” He fits into no conventional grooves, is not a link on any chain, is on nobody’s payroll, rides nobody’s bandwagon, is under no sponsorship but God’s. He is not an expert at the art of almost saying something, talking out of both sides of his mouth. His theology is not trimmed or slanted so as to give no offense .to a godless generation. No financial provisions have been made for prophets. “ Priests retire but prophets never.” They end as they began, with the brook and the ravens. No ecclesiastical set-up will endorse the prophet. He is respected and feared but not welcome in the inner circles. While four hundred false prophets bid Ahab and Jehosha- phat go up against Ramoth-gilead, God’s man is always “ a prophet of the Lord BESIDES” and Joseph Parker says “ The world hates the four-hundred-and-first prophet.” Such a man is oft beset with subtle doubts and fears and poignant lone liness. After all, he is human and the unseen powers which control this dark world hate him. He tops the list of Satan’s most wanted men and every demon is offered a prize to de stroy him. He is a disturber of the peace, a Daniel who keeps Darius awake all night, a John the Baptist who spoils for Herod the pleasures of a king’s palace. He turns the light on entrenched evil and shows up the hypocrisy of formal religion. Nobody realized how bad things were at Bethel until Amos came to town. No body saw anything wrong with Pharasaism until Jesus exposed it as a sepulchre full of dead men’s bones. The’ prophet is without honor in his own country, is scorned by the
MARCH, 1965
9
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online