I have often thought that people who desire a modern-day gift of prophecy ought to be careful what they wish for. After all, the biblical prophets were often asked to speak words that immediately brought about their own persecution or even death. And even if they did not suffer to quite that degree, they were often asked to speak words that brought sorrow more than hope and alarm more than encouragement. The calling to be a prophet was the calling to speak difficult words and to suffer terrible consequences.
Samuel was just a young lad when God tasked him with being the bearer of bad tidings. God gave Samuel knowledge of events that would soon come to pass and it fell to him to tell old Eli the news—news so bad that “the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.” Samuel had to tell Eli that God had said “I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:11-13). Eli may have been a good priest and a good mentor, but he was a poor father
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