I was reading Acts 7
the other day about Stephen and the martyrdom he endured when he preached to the council about resisting the Holy Spirit. I noticed something present in the last verses of the chapter where it is stated:
When they heard these things they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed at him with their teeth But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
Then they cried out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and ran at him with one accord; and they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul. And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
I noticed that the very first thing that this council of religious leaders tried to do in order to stop the message from being preached (and the potential exposure of the actions of the leaders) was to kill the messenger . Why is this very important to notice? Because it is the same tactic that the big time religious leaders are attempting to perform when a prophet is bold enough to tell the truth about the God they have attempted to box up and begin exposing the stiff hearts of the leadership.
I remember when an expose about a famous televangelist appeared on prime-time television that featured a man who had done research on this televangelist. This man was shown going through photocopied records and computer files while smoking his pipe.
A couple of days later, when the famous televangelist appeared on a major Christian network to address the allegations brought forth by prime-time television, he went after the researcher. The first and main thing that was stated about the allegations…
“He smokes a pipe, he’s not a real Christian…”
In other words, this televangelist decided in order to kill off the message in the expose, he had to kill the research methods and research data of the messenger by attempting to denigrate and kill the character of the messenger.
Attempting to kill the message by killing the messenger did not work in Stephen’s time. Attempting to kill the God spoken message by attempting to kill (and possibly succeed) the anointed messenger from God still will not work in today’s time.
