REPENTANCE BUT NOT PROCLAMATION PROVES GENUINE FAITH IN GOD
Church, the representative of God's will for the world should first repent her wrong motives and self-concerns, and genuinely serve the Lord...
Now there was a certain old prophet living in Bethel, whose sons came and told him all that the man of God had done there that day. They also told their father what he had said to the king. Their father… rode after the man of God. He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, ‘Are you the man of God who came from Judah?’ ‘I am,’ he replied…... The man of God said, ‘I cannot turn back and go with you, nor can I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. I have been told by the word of the LORD: “You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.”’ The old prophet answered, ‘I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the LORD: “Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.”’ (But he was lying to him.) …... While they were sitting at the table, the word of the LORD came to the old prophet who had brought him back. He cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, ‘This is what the LORD says: “You have defied the word of the LORD and have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you. You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors.”’ When the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. As he went on his way, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body was left lying on the road, with both the donkey and the lion standing beside it. Some people who passed by saw the body lying there, with the lion standing beside the body, and they went and reported it in the city where the old prophet lived …... So the prophet picked up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to his own city to mourn for him and bury him. Then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they mourned over him and said, ‘Alas, my brother!’ After burying him, he said to his sons, ‘When I die, bury me in the grave where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the message he declared by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel and against all the shrines on the high places in the towns of Samaria will certainly come true.’ 1KINGS 13:11-32.
Jeroboam, the first king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel established an idolatrous system of worship and held his own feast in Bethel, one of the two centres of calf worship.
This false religious system had an impact on a significant number of godly people in all ten tribes, leading them to immigrate to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, so that they could worship the Lord in Jerusalem as He had commanded. The people who remained in the Northern Kingdom fell into Baal worship and the whole society lost a healthy conscience. Nevertheless, under strong rulers, the apostate kingdom enjoyed material prosperity until it fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE and disappeared from history.
An anonymous man of God was sent from the Southern Kingdom of Judah to pronounce a prophecy of rebuke and doom to Bethel. His prophecy was one of the most remarkable in the Scripture, in which the name and actions of King Josiah who would appear 290 years later were precisely predicted. His prophecy was fulfilled by King Josiah, who demolished the Bethel altar and slaughtered the false priests there, as recorded in 2Kings 23:15-20.
This man of God predicted another miraculous incident to take place on that very day (splitting of the altar right in front of King Jeroboam) as a sign to verify his entire prophecy. The sign was enough to convince Jeroboam of God’s power. He offered the man of God an invitation for a reward. But he flatly turned it down and hurried back home. Thus, he obeyed God’s instructions then.
The old prophet in Bethel who had been unable to hear from God for long or may in fact had never heard from Him because of his life-long apostasy under the rule of the Northern Kingdom, was informed about the details of the prophet from Judah and his prophetic message.
Perhaps out of jealousy, the old prophet ran after him, intending to destroy the ministry of the prophet from Judah. The prophet from Judah did not discern that the self-appointed old prophet was lying to him and carelessly accepted his invitation to dine with him, and thus, disobeyed God’s command.
It was at that time that all of a sudden, the old prophet uttered a prophecy of doom to the man of God from Judah. A terrible consequence followed the man exactly as the old prophet prophesied.
The fact that the man of God’s death was caused under very unnatural circumstances in which the lion neither tore his body nor killed the donkey, but just calmly remained by the carcass, revealed it to be a divine judgment.
God’s severe judgment on the man from Judah was a contrast to the old man who also committed the sin of deception against him. The severity of God’s judgment seems to be proportionate to the importance of the man’s mission, whose prophecy of doom to the Northern Kingdom was publicly pronounced, while the old prophet’s sins were private.
However, after this shocking death of the man of God, the old prophet in Bethel completely changed. His spiritual eyes and heart were opened towards God, and he became a true prophet of God.
In the letter this month, I would like to emphasise the drastic change of a man by God through “wholehearted repentance”. The repentant prophet who first attempted to destroy the younger prophet’s genuine prophecy totally turned his life to God. He became the bold prophet who affirmed the dead prophet and his prophecy as being genuine from God even in the apostate Northern Kingdom.
Recently I have come across a very interesting series of detailed visions about the future of the US by a sister in Christ named Sonja Craighead.
She was given these prophetic visions at the end of 2016 and noticed that some of them began to come true this year. In them her emphasis is on repentance of the church, which represents God's will for the world. Among them, she poignantly gives warnings to self-concerned Christians, who have become intoxicated with President Trump, putting it:
But where was the humbling and turning from our wicked ways by many American Christians? Many spiritually asleep American Christians who seemed more concerned about losing their pampered American way of life, attended and participated in pre-election days of prayer. …The condition of our nation has gone from a pre-election fear of loss of our American lifestyles, to post election state of celebration for what is a faux confidence that America will have her best and greatest days ahead of her. …Are we so naïve as to think that G-d was appeased by a few days or weeks of public prayer meetings petitioning G-d for a specific American Presidential win, that now America is going to avoid G-d’s judgment for our nation’s continued rampant sins? Why does it appear that many American Christians are looking to President elect Trump as the person to “save” our nation, rather than continuing to repent and seek G-d?’ ‘Where was Trump’s repentance? Where was Trump leading the American people to repentance? I never heard the pride, arrogance, or defiance from Trump’s statements from 2001 repented of. Instead, …additional pride, arrogance, and defiance from Trump during his 2016 Presidential campaign mantras, … Many American Christians are deceived that prophetic scriptures describing the end time sorrows on Matthew 24 is for people living in other countries, and not America. Rather than drawing closer to G-d in repentance, Americans are being distracted by blind faith in Trump, and that distraction is blinding them to seeing the soon coming judgment of G-d on this nation. (Lines added)