Someone Must Speak

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand. (Ezekiel 33:6)

 

The ancient Babylonians (and their Assyrian counterparts) were an incredibly fierce, merciless, and barbaric peoples. Yet God brought them against His own precious possession – Israel – to  conquer and enslave them. God had repeatedly, over and over, warned His Chosen Ones through prophets and natural disasters that His judgment would sweep them away because of their flaunted national and personal sins.

The Old Testament book of Habakkuk was written by one of those prophets. It’s only three short chapters, but is an important message to read in its entirety for context and application to 2015. Here is part of Habakkuk wrote as he awaited the Babylonian army’s sweep through Israel – though by this time the warning was too late: 

I heard and my inward parts trembled,
At the sound my lips quivered.
Decay enters my bones,
And in my place I tremble.
Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress,
For the people to arise who will invade us. (Habakkuk 3:16)

I confess to be stunned, frustrated, and not a little angry, at the deafening silence I hear from many (thankfully, not all) of today’s church leaders.  I don’t expect non-Christian talk show hosts and politicians to invoke prophetic warnings, but I DO expect Christian pastors, and bishops, and deacons, and teachers to perform their God-appointed duty as Watchmen on the walls (see what another Old Testament prophet said about warning others of impending judgment in Ezekiel chapters 3 and 33).

America (I won’t even mention Europe) kills more than 1,000,000 babies in the womb each year – without so much as a whimper from the Church or civil governments. And in the last decade we have flaunted our sexual sins with increasingly depraved perversity to increasingly greater applause from the highest levels of government to the smallest of churches – yes, even churches.

Why does anyone who names Christ as Lord think it so unthinkable that what we witness every day in the media about the descendants of the Babylonians and Assyrians (e.g. ISIS and groups like it) – why is it considered beyond the scope of possibility that such barbarism is yet another of God’s repeated warnings – maybe His final warning – before Christians in the pew, and especially church leaders, cry aloud too late:

I heard and my inward parts trembled,
At the sound my lips quivered.
Decay enters my bones,
And in my place I tremble.
Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress,
For the people to arise who will invade us.

Christian! If Church leaders shirk their God-ordained responsibility, we must not follow their example. Someone – someone must be a Watchman.