“Raphael? What exactly are you doing
here? Besides eating a bagel, I
mean.”
He
nodded, as if he’d forgotten the original purpose. (Maybe he had. They’re good bagels, and apparently, he’d never eaten
one before.)
“My apologies, Miguel. I have
kept you waiting too long. Let me see if I can explain my role succinctly for
you.
“As I said, you are to be a prophet
for the Lord God Almighty. With most people whom He chooses, He actually goes
out of His way to make sure they are NOT otherwise qualified for the task.
Moses was highly introverted, so making him into a leader of a two-million
person exodus meant that it could not have been of Moses’ own doing, but of God’s.
“Gideon was a shy, rejected young
man who felt disowned by his very family. Therefore, he was the perfect choice
to lead Israel into battle, because all the glory went to God.
“Jonah’s faults were legendary – not
only did he not earn the credit for Ninevah’s salvation, he desperately
hoped that they would NOT be saved through his proclamations. And yet, the city
was saved from wrath and destruction.
“This situation, however, is
a bit different.
“You see, Miguel, what We are going
to show you is so far beyond what an
ordinary man could even comprehend that it would not do to take
the least qualified person to tell
the world this message. The Lord needs a prophet who can at least understand
the message he is being asked to deliver, or else it will be utterly
meaningless to him and therefore undeliverable. Despite evidence to the
contrary in this strange nation of yours, in this strange century of yours, scientific
knowledge is still respected enough that God’s message, delivered by a
simpleton, would be of little worth, whereas when a man of your education
and background shares it with the world, your audience will at least
believe that you have some inkling of what you are saying. Whether they believe
you or not is, as always, up to them.”
“What,
ah, what IS the message I’m being
asked to share?”
Raphael
scooted forward, his long frame bringing him within whispering distance.
“That
your universe is one. That everything that your science is learning and will
learn correlates exactly with what God has said it is all along. That
there is no conflict between science and religion, because our
Lord God Almighty was the One Who gave you the tools of science to begin
with.
“That
you cannot discover anything that contradicts the Bible, because
the Universe was created by the same God Who created the Bible!”
Light
bulbs went off in my head. A small part of me expected to wake up at that
moment to discover it had all been a dream. This
is exactly what I’ve been praying for over the last ten, twelve years!
For it to come true like this is… is beyond my wildest dreams!
“But NOT beyond your prayers, Miguel. God
still grants big prayers.”
If you peruse the roster of powerful voices in the Bible, you'll find that rule holds true throughout. Noah was a crackpot in the minds of his community for building an ark so far from water - "nevertheless, he persisted", as they never said back then, for a century until the floods came.
And in the New Testament, there was no one more "foolish" than Peter, the first leader of Christ's church. Peter was a fisherman, not an educated man in any sense of the word. More relevant, he was impulsive and rash. He blurted things that he couldn't back up (famously the last words he said to Christ before His arrest).
And yet, when he was brought before the "rulers and elders and scribes" in Jerusalem for healing a lame man in Jesus' name in Acts 4, he spoke with eloquence and power. Why? Read the verses and notice the key phrase (this is Acts 4:7-8):
And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders..."
"Filled with the Holy Spirit". Christ tells us this at the Last Supper, where He says in John 16:13-14,
"When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into
all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are
to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you."
And the response of the Pharisees was revealing. It showed exactly what they thought, but also what our non-believing counterparts think of us when we speak the 'foolishness' of the Gospel.[I have the great pastor Richard Ellis to thank for the germ of this analysis, by the way.] Read Acts 4:13 → Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that
they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they
recognized that they had been with Jesus.
The first thing they noticed was Peter's boldness. This illiterate fisherman dared to scold the leadership of the church, at risk of imprisonment or worse, when they were already ticked at him. That comes from Peter's trust in the Holy Spirit. But the other two words are far more damning than they appear in English. "Uneducated" and "common men" sound relatively innocuous. But in the original Greek, consider their meanings and roots:
"unschooled" = agrammatoi → a / gramma / toi → not / school / ed. Not schooled in any form. Illiterate, and thus in the minds of the men whose pride in their own identities stems from their education is about as insulting as you can get. But the next word is worse.
"common" = idiōtai → exactly what it sounds like. Idiot. The actual definition in my Bible dictionary literally translates the Greek with the word "ignoramus".
So, the Pharisees looked at Peter and thought him illiterate, unschooled, an idiot and an ignoramus. But with his boldness, and his apparent level of knowledge in this situation belying all of those earlier descriptions, "they recognized that they (Peter and John) had been with Jesus."
How does that relate to me?
I am an idiot and an ignoramus. I am illiterate and unschooled.
But Gordon, you say, that can't be true. You have college degrees! You're well-read - a teacher, even!
Yes, but the moment that I start talking about my beliefs to someone who isn't a believer, suddenly I am an ignoramus. Dies and raised from the dead? Healed cripples with a touch? Without a touch? Creation with God's words? A worldwide flood? The sun standing still for Joshua? Revelation?
That's all the talk of a fool. And that's what the Bible warns us. We will sound like fools to those who don't believe. But we will be fools if we allow that to stop us from sharing the gospel with a dying world! We MUST share the Word of the Lord if we call ourselves Christians.- that is the purpose of our being left on the planet rather than simply being gathered home. If you're afraid of looking foolish, get over it! (And that's one of my big problems - my pride is my biggest sin, even though my health has taken away many of the reasons I had to invoke pride.) We will look foolish, at least to those who find God a foolish belief to begin with. No matter how eloquently you express yourself, no matter how inoffensively you present the Gospel, it will happen - as Richard Ellis says, the Gospel is offensive enough on its own without your help!
Share the Gospel, and disregard the consequences of your foolishness. Any earthly reaction pales to what happens after death if we fail to share His Word during our lifetime.
Let me leave you with Paul's words to the Corinthians in his first recorded letter, starting in 1:18 →
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
Where
is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of
this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
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