Who Has Heard?

I really appreciate people who recognize the truth when they see it, especially because most people see it as an alien thing, which is nothing new. Greater men of God than myself have felt that way throughout the ages: “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” (Isa. 53:1). That was not a casual question from the prophet to the Lord. It was born of long enduring the contradictions of his peers against the simplistic truth of God’s law that he preached. All that the prophet was preaching was the original truth that God had delivered to all of Israel for their blessing and good. But God’s people had by that time fell away from that truth for over six hundred years into idol worship, and the popular man-made traditions of their day, and the imaginations of their own hearts. At one point the great prophet Isaiah felt such frustration with not being heard, that he wrote the following: “Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain…” But deep down he knew better, for in the same breath he immediately said, ”yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, and my work with my God” (Isa. 49:4). He surely wasn’t the first to feel that way. Elijah before him knew what it was to be the odd man out among God’s people because of the real word of God: “and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers” (I Kin. 19:4). So why did Elijah feel this way? “And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away” (I Kin. 19:10). After Isaiah, Jeremiah learned the patience of being a true prophet of God among an unbelieving nation filled with false traditions of men, and plenty of erring prophets to contradict the truth that he preached: “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me” (Jer. 15:10). This noble man of God also echoed the sentiment of Elijah before him: “Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad” (Jer. 20:14,15).

Among these great men of God let’s not forget about God’s Son Jesus, who in prophecy was in perfect unison with those who heard the same voice of God that he heard, and spoke the same words of the living God that he spoke: “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head … I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me… They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song of the drunkards… Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none” (Psm. 69:4,8,9,12,20). At the end of the apostle Paul’s life, after laboring greatly to establish congregations in Christ, his report to Timothy was as follows: “This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me… Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica… Only Luke is with me” (II Tim. 1:15; II Tim. 4:9-11). Christianity today would have you believe that the Gospel is something acceptable among men, even to the point of being “politically correct.” That is not the Gospel of Christ my friend. Jesus was clear to that point: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets… Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Lk. 6:22,23,26). As I like to say, nothing ever changes, and that is most certainly true with God, his truth, and those who patiently uphold his truth. And there simply is no truth TO uphold other than the holy love, and soul cleansing power, and divine peace, and the unspeakable joy that comes through the baptism of the holy Ghost that Jesus died and rose to give us (Mk. 1:7,8; Acts 1:4,5; Rom. 5:5; I Cor. 6:8; Tit. 3:5; Philip. 4:7; Rom. 14:17; I Pet. 1:8). Read the references for yourself, and you tell me: Is there something else that matters? Not hardly. But simplicity has never been popular among God’s people, and that has not changed either. Yet the few who embrace it are and will be blessed. Oh yeah, you do have to let go of everything else to embrace the simplicity of God’s truth and be blessed thereby. (Philip. 3:7-9; II Cor. 4:3,4). Amen.