“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.”
Comment: Stephen may well have lived if he had been gentle, evasive and skirted around the real issues. But it was such a key time in the development of the church and the progress of the knowledge of what God had done for the world in Jesus, that Stephen knew that he had to speak plainly. He did and it cost him his life, as we will see tomorrow! Or is it really a loss to step across the time-eternity border and be with God? Or is it like stepping from shadows into reality?
Prayer: Help to get the right balance between tolerance and a determined stance for the truth, O Lord God.
As I read it! 