The days of visitation have come. The days of reckoning have come. Israel will consider the prophet to be a fool, And the man who is inspired to be insane, Because of the abundance of your sins, And because your hostility is great.
The event was the test. Of our Lord Himself, the Jews blaspbemed, “He hath a devil and is mad” John 10:20. And long afterward, “madness,” “phrensy” were among the names which the pagan gave to the faith in Christ . As Paul says, that “Christ crucified” was “to the Greeks” and to “them that perish, foolishness,” and that the “things of the Spirit of God, are foolishness to the natural man, neither can he know” them, “because they are spiritually discerned” 1 Corinthians 1:18, 1Co 1:23; 1 Corinthians 2:14. The man of the world and the Christian judge of the same things by clean contrary rules, use them for quite contrary ends. The slave of pleasure counts him mad, who foregoes it; the wealthy trader counts him mad, who gives away profusely. In these days, profusion for the love of Christ has been counted a ground for depriving a man of the care of his property. One or the other is mad. And worldlings must count the Christian mad; else they must own themselves to be so most fearfully. In the Day of Judgment, Wisdom says, “They, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This was he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach. We fools counted his life madness, and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!” (Wisd. 5:3-6).