What if some present-day preacher stood in his pulpit and persistently declared that God was on the side of the communists? That God was against America and that he was raising up the communists to be his people and his servants? That God cared nothing for the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution or the long heritage of religious worship that our nation has had? In fact, that the things we emphasize were an offense to God?
And what if this preacher even advocated that Christians renounce their loyalty to their country and join the Communist Party? And what if the preacher -- subjected to house arrest, or flung into prison, or slapped in the face in public and his writings burned, or half-drowned in a pit of slime -- would not only stubbornly refuse to take back one word of what he had said but would only repeat it again? Well, this is something like the situation that is recorded in the book of Jeremiah. This is exactly what Jeremiah was called to do.
Imagine yourself as that preacher. Imagine how you would feel when no one listens to you and persecution hounds you every step of the way. You are unable to seek comfort in marriage because the days are too difficult and God has said to remain unmarried. You feel abandoned, and alone; all your friends turn from you.
And if you try to quit, and refuse to be this kind of a preacher, you find that you cannot quit -- that the word of God burns in your bones and you have to say it whether or not you want to. And despite the message that you are called upon to deliver, your love for your country is genuine and deep -- as you see it surrounded by its enemies and ravished and conquered and despoiled, you are overcome by a deep sorrow that breaks out in grief's lamentations.
