Stephen

Acts 7

The craziest thing that Stephen does in my eyes is that he preaches without fear to the Sanhedrin. This seems like no big deal, but really he is like the precurser to John Huss, Jerome, Martin Luther and all those other brave men that stood before powers and authorities and loudly proclaimed, "You can take my body, you can take my life, but you will never get me to turn from my God whom I Love and will gladly die for!"

Whoa, sorry about that, went preaching there for a sec. Something that I always found intriguing is that I can't follow his logic of where he is going with any of what he says. The best I can come up with is that he is saying don't be like the grumblers of old, accept the truth. One thing I learned while I was in Hebrew class with Leatherman and we were going through the book of Ruth, was that there needed to be certain witnesses. So they would get the parties involved together at the gate of whatever city, and they would call the elders, and there would need to be at least three elders. These elders had to be men that knew the particular situation that they were dealing with, all its history, and could make a fair ruling. When Stephen was stoned, God was following the rules that he set up in Israel. vs. 54 says that they were cut to the heart, then vs. 55 says [stephen] was full of the Holy Ghost (so obviously he is present). and later in vs. 55 Stephen says he saw...Jesus standing on the right hand of God. There were three Elders (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) there when the Sanhedrin was fully rejecting Jesus, and throwing out God's covenant. I don't know why it is neat to me that God follows the rules, because it shouldn't be.