Down through the ages of man there have been men and women who have had an inspired purpose. But they have been ridiculed and even persecuted by their contemporaries for their faith and resolve, only to be lauded by later generations. When Galileo announced his conviction in a heliocentric solar system, he was laughed to scorn by his academic friends and colleagues, and finally placed under house arrest for life by the religious leaders. Today, he is honored as the father of modern astronomy. Isaac Newton was ridiculed by the scientific world of his day when he postulated that sunlight consists of many colors. Today, everyone recognizes this phenomenon in the rainbow and spectrum produced by a prism. Columbus was considered crazy to attempt to sail around a flat earth. Einstein's announcement in 1905 that light rays would be bent in a gravitational field was met with derision until it was actually observed in the total solar eclipse of 1919. Marie Curie's experiments with radioactivity were met with skepticism until she isolated Radium. We could mention Pasteur and sterilization which debunked spontaneous generation of life, William Jenner and his conclusions as to why milkmaids didn't get smallpox which led to the discovery of immunity through vaccination, and Becquerel's discovery of the mysterious and ghostly X-rays. All were considered crazy fools in their day.
The Bible enumerates many individuals who were considered fools. I am sure that Abraham was considered foolish by his friends and neighbors in Ur when he decided to move to an unknown country for an unknown reason, but now he is called the father of the faithful. Moses with staff in hand was laughed to scorn by the Egyptian Pharaoh and even by his own people when he demanded the release of the Hebrew slaves. Gideon was a fool to face several thousand Midianite troops with 300 men. Elijah looked foolish to stand alone against 300 priests of Baal. Even the Apostles were considered fools in their proclamation of the resurrection of Christ. King Felix considered Paul mad when he talked about the resurrection of the dead. Paul declared that it was through the foolishness of preaching that the gospel should be proclaimed (I Cor. 1:20,21). How foolish were the martyrs to sacrifice their lives for their convictions! How foolish it was for Martin Luther to defy the Pope! How foolish it was for Tyndall to sacrifice his life to print a Bible in English! And so the list of those who chose to be fools goes on and on.
How about today; how about you and me? Are we reticent, apologetic, ashamed to appear foolish for our faith, or do we dare to stand alone if necessary for a purpose true and dare to make it known? We are commanded to preach the gospel of salvation, of a crucified and risen savior, as did Paul and the disciples. We must stand by the truths of the Bible in spite of the evidence of pseudo-science; we must champion the genesis record of creation as fact and not fiction; we must assail the citadels of humanism, idolatry, and new-age mysticism. We must prevail in our attacks so that the very gates of hell and death shall not prevail against our onslaught. In this battle of the great controversy we must not be swayed by public opinion nor public favor; we cannot be afraid of ridicule or persecution; we must go forward in the name of the Lord as "an army with banners"; we must be willing to "dare to be fools."
