Judges 6:11-24 And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained to Joash the Abiezrite… Can we not catch some echoes of Gideon's complaint in the thoughts that are cherished among ourselves? That God wrought wonders once, that He raised up men to open new views of His truth and of His will and thus renewed the Church's strength, and sent her forth conquering and to conquer — all this we hold, of course. We call the man who doubts it an infidel or a heretic. But the man who believes that similar things may take place in our day, who believes, for instance, that God makes His will as plain in ways suited to our time as He did in other ways at former times — does not such a man run great risk of being called an enthusiast or a fool? That any man now may be guided in actual fact, and guided unerringly, by God in common life, or that things going on among us may be as important and as Divine as what was done in any former age, is an assertion that few would dare to make. If we are sensible of the strange contradiction implied in our thus demanding credence for such things in the past as we deny the very possibility of in the present, we shall the better understand Gideon's state of mind when the angel of the Lord appeared to him. (W. Miller, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. |
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