WHEN GOD KILLS YOUR WIFE TO MAKE A POINT

Strange things sometimes happen to great people, making them the target of unfortunate headlines.  When the one to whom it happens is unlucky to be a religious celebrity, especially a prophet, the headlines could be uncomfortably loud, sometimes even vicious.

You might have been drawn to this article by its rather sardonic title, wondering how a good God would kill anyone, not to talk of killing someone’s dear wife, worse still, the wife of a faithful server, or worshipper!  That’s exactly the true-life story that I am about to tell.  Stay with me.

It was an uncomfortable puzzle many years ago when I first got confronted with the matter, the sign.  It kept me thinking for many days, and I shared the mysteries of the puzzle in one of our publications.  Now it returns, with legs and hands and eyes, in sharper details than I then saw in the picture that He showed me.

One day, God came to a notable prophet with a very bizarre message, a kind that he had never heard, never preached.  Something was going to happen to him, the kind of which there was no precedence in his religious memory.  His lovely wife was going to die.  Strangely, there was little time to prepare for the tragedy.  The death was going to be very sudden, very soon.

I doubt that the wife had any input in the transactions over her life, between her man and his God.  If the record were not in the Bible, I might have felt more certain about how to categorise anyone in those strange shoes.  Let’s get it straight from source:

The woman in question was “very much” loved; she was “the person you love most,” and she was about to die “suddenly,” according to the God that the prophet served (Easy-to-Read Version).  She was also probably a very pretty woman, for the New International Version describes her as “the delight of your eyes” (v.16).

In one superheavyweight “blow” from the Almighty, in a mismatched contest between the Mighty God and a weak woman, a prophet’s wife was about to be technically knocked out of life when she had thrown no previous challenge at her terrible Challenger.  No cancer that gave a long notice; no headache overnight, but “suddenly” she was to be gone forever.  Her death was not her wish but the demand of the Spirit that her husband served.  That Spirit was coming to “take” her “away” from the faithful prophet.  What a reward for being a faithful priest!

If something has never come upon you, you would not know its weight.  If it has never happened to you, you will never know how it feels.  I have my sermons.

The short notice of death was tough, but how it came was harder.  Let’s see how bluntly it was introduced: “Also the word of the Lord came unto me, saying…” (Ezekiel 24:15, KJV).  Could such a macabre message have come from God, or from hell?  God is a God of good things, not bad and sad things.  How was this prophet going to convince his hearers that he had not suddenly gone mad or diabolic?  This purported new ‘message’ from the Lord did not agree with any previous message of the prophet, or with any message by any other preacher.  At the mouth of two or three witnesses, every truth would be established.  That’s what the Scripture says (Deuteronomy 19:15).  The present matter had no other witness apart from the prophet – and his God.  That defied traditional scriptures.

‘Intelligent’ members of the congregation (not the ‘sheepish followers’ who swallowed every deceit) would be right to question the ‘new trend’ in their prophet’s life; the sudden turn from giving life to preaching death.  These days, everybody says something and claims it is a word from God.  How can I tell?

Some encounters might find no reasonable parallel in the Bible, yet they are divine; but such encounters do not usually come to everyone, except the chosen.  It says of Jesus, for instance, that “being full of the Holy Ghost,” He was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness.”  How could anyone full of the Holy Ghost find themselves in a wilderness?

There in the wilderness, He kept hearing the Tempter say, “If thou be …”  Should anyone full of the Holy Ghost be hearing the voice of Satan?  How would you describe someone who hears the voice of God sometimes when they are before Prophet John the Baptist at River Jordan, and the voices of Satan when they are by themselves (Matthew 4:1-12)?

Does the blessed Holy Spirit lead into a wilderness, a place of temptations?  Would that be the Holy Spirit or a different spirit? Does not the Scripture say, “Lead us not into temptation”?  Does Jesus’ wilderness encounter then sound ‘scriptural’?

The Bible says that Jesus was led into the wilderness specifically “to be tempted…”  As if that was not bad enough already, it added, “…of the devil.”  So, Jesus was not only led into a wilderness, but was led there to be tempted; to be tempted by no less a devil than the headmaster of them all: Satan!

One account of the Temptation states that Jesus was not just ‘led’ but was ‘driven’ by the Holy Spirit “into the wilderness.”  Would that still be the Spirit of God, who drives or forces one into such a precarious place?  Does God ‘drive’ or ‘lead,’ according to Psalm 23:2 that we all know?

There, in that wilderness, Jesus’ companions for forty days and as many nights were: Satan, “wild beasts,” and, only lastly, angels that ministered to Him.  If angels were there at all, why also Satan, and beasts (in the plural) – “wild beasts” for that matter, in their numbers, one after the other, one battle after the other, one threat after the other, one ‘short-lived’ victory that was often followed by the next beastly conflict or threat (Matthew 4:1; Luke 4:1; Mark 1:12-13)?

Sometimes we find ourselves in encounters that appear to defy seen scriptures.  When life thus ‘contradicts’ common sense and common scriptures, how does one convince the religious jury who must input iniquity upon the sufferer (John 9:2)?  At such times, the Almighty usually shuts your lips, until “that day [when] your mouth will be opened” again, as He told Ezekiel (Ezekiel 24:27, NKJV), because no explaining can help you in the court of some formed minds.  You simply wait, “until the time” that “his word” comes to vindicate you (Psalm 105:19), meanwhile proclaiming to yourself, like Job, “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).  He knoweth the way …  yes, He knoweth … and I shall surely come forth – pure and precious – as gold. Amen.

God kills your wife, or husband.  How do you give such an ‘unscriptural’ ‘testimony’ in a modern day bless-me church?  You find yourself in the wilderness, veritably guided thither by the Spirit’s GPS.  How do you mount the marble altar in any of our mega churches today to give such a wilderness ‘testimony’ about wild beasts mixed up with confused ministering angels and a misleading Holy Spirit that drives one into a wilderness?

When to the loud applause of shallow hearers others are telling how they have been led into grandiose palaces by the Holy Spirit, how can you boldly claim that you are where you are – in the wilderness – by the leadership of the same Holy Spirit who had led the other testifiers to their green pastures and still waters?

When others have climbed there to tell how the Sprit led them to a beautiful wife that they love, how do you testify in the same place that God killed yours that you claim you also loved?  You could be quickly dismissed as a discourager, and the microphone promptly plucked from your hands and lips, before you polluted the faith of faithful ones with your faithlessness masked as deep spirituality.

When somebody finds themselves surrounded by Satan and wild beasts, should they not seek ‘deliverance’?  What Bible passage can such a person muster to convince anyone that it is God who has put them there – for a season?  Well, sometimes what is important is not convincing anyone but pleasing the Father by serving your term in the wilderness: forty days and forty nights. To Peter, Jesus said, “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32).  That takes me to the next example.

Once upon a time, Jesus announced to His followers that Satan had applied for Peter to be tried, and that the application had been approved by the Council in Heaven.  “Why me?” Peter might have wondered.  Apart from a nearly similar case in the story of Job (Job 1:6-12), what Bible passage was Peter going to find to prove his case to his ‘very concerned’ colleagues in their comfortable cocoons, that it was not his sin that led him there but Heaven’s determinate Council?

For the called and the chosen, there could be genuine encounters for which sometimes there would be no ‘Bible verse’ explanation, although there would usually be a referenceable principle, or pattern.  For example, Jesus, speaking on the Sabbath, could not find an exact ‘Bible verse’ to answer the Pharisees but referenced the case of David with his team who, not being priests, ate the exclusive hallowed bread, to save lives (Luke 6:4).  Sadly, principles seldom help inflexible theologians in their rigid sanctuaries of privileged calm.

Every encounter is not for social media.  Once upon a time, God made that point clear to Apostle John as he was about to write down what the mystery Thunders had said in the realms of the spirit.  God said, “Keep secret what the seven thunders said, and do not write it down” (Revelation 10:4 New Living Translation).  If prophets should say everything they see or hear, the world might end sooner. Every revelation is not for publication.

About the potential sudden death of Mrs Ezekiel, the Spirit that the prophet served warned: “you must show no sorrow. Do not weep; let there be no tears” (Ezekiel 24:16, Living Bible).  Is that how any holy man should treat a “lovely wife,” if he truly loved her?  Or had the prophet been acting ‘love’ merely to please the cameras?

The prophet was forbidden from public tears and from any traditional mourning sign for the dead.  His clothes were to remain normal, as if nothing had happened.  He was not to eat the ceremonial food for the mourner, as he might have done if that Spirit had not had a hand in the matter.  No condolence register was to be signed, no condolence message was to be received, no lavish obituaries to be made (vv. 16-17).   He was never to publish his pains.

How does a true husband hold his emotions at such a sudden death for which little notice was given?  Didn’t the loving God think about the children, the domestic department, and the management of other businesses? Is that the colour of the love of God, the different God that Ezekiel served?

The TV cameras focused long in vain to catch a sign of mourning on the prophet’s face.  His face remained generally expressionless, as if nothing had happened.  He groaned only in his soul.  Nobody was to see his tears.  So it was demanded by the Spirit he served, the One that had taken his wife from him suddenly “with one blow.”

If that were your sister or daughter, would you not have sought a forensic explanation, or requested other investigations?  If you were that pastor’s in-law, would you continue to be a member of his church?  If you were his financial partner, what would have become of your regular supports after hearing the believable widespread rumours about his wife’s mysterious sudden death, which the silenced prophet dared not refute?

We know that Satan counterfeits whatever God does, and takes sacrifices of cherished ones, too, but counterfeits merely say that the original exists.  Jesus on the cross was a kind of the human sacrifice of a dearly loved one upon an altar; and Isaac was a symbolic sacrifice of a much loved child that Abraham his father might have offered.  Satanic altars demand loved ones too, but every counterfeit merely points to the original.  A singer lost her husband, a pastor lost his brother, a prophet lost his wife, a preacher lost his first son, an elder lost his businesses.  Sometimes the mystery is not in the devil but in the unquestionable God of Ezekiel.  The mockers would never know.

When Mrs. Ezekiel died, the prophet was forbidden from speaking about it.  The press came to interview him but got nothing, so the gossip rumours blazed more fiercely.  God had shut his lips.  No TV interviews, no explanations to be made, just silence.

People wondered: had the mourner been rendered speechless by the shock of the wife’s death, or was it karma from the spirit of his killed wife?  Heaven imposed a silence on him.  He owed no mortal a further explanation, until the signs were fulfilled.  God assured him, “on that day your mouth will be opened” (v. 27, NKJV); then he was going be “able to speak again” (Contemporary English Version), but until then, silence…

That a prophet does not show his tears does not mean that he does not cry.  He might only be respecting a higher demand on his soul.  That he does not scream for you to hear does not mean that he does not pain.  He is also flesh.  That something has not been explained to you does not justify your explanations of it.  Sometimes the spiritual realm makes demands of its faithfuls that outsiders would never understand.

When Prophet Ezekiel’s mysterious bereavement happened, the people asked, “What does this mean?” (v. 19).  I do not blame them.  Why shouldn’t they ask?  They wanted to understand the meaning of the mystery.  It was very unusual.  One evening, a man encounters a Spirit that tells him that his wife is going to be sacrificed to make a national point.  He preaches that prophetic message the next morning, and “in the evening my wife died,” he reports, “just like that” (as we would say in Nigeria).  A healthy, holy woman “suddenly” dies, without prior medical conditions, apparently sacrificed on the altar of the God that her husband faithfully served (v. 18), and people would not wonder what was happening?

She dies in the evening after her husband’s ‘special service’ in the morning.  By the next morning, they are ready to bury her, quickly and quietly, without lamentations.  Her husband, who claims to love her most dearly, shows no visible sign of mourning that the cameras might have recorded for posterity (v.18).  “What does this mean?”   Did he sacrifice her?  Did he really love her?  Is he a true believer in God?  Is he ‘called’?  Is he a true prophet?  Is …

Have you ever wondered why something strange happened, or did not happen to you?  Do not worry.  You are not the first, and would not be the last.  I have my stories too. Even Jesus once cried out, calling upon God not once but twice, quoting the Psalms: “My God, my God, WHY…?”  (Matthew 27:46).  King David was also at that point, prophetically wondering, “My God, my God, WHY…?”  (Psalm 22:1).  And Gideon, too, when national calamities seemed to becloud the face of his God: “if the LORD be with us, why then …” (Judges 6:13).

Unfortunately, God doesn’t often answer our whys.  In his season of great perplexities, Jeremiah asked many whys, and ended a chapter that way, without divine response in the same form as he had asked (Jeremiah 20:18).  In the case of Jesus, nature responded with a great earthquake and an eclipse when, on the cross, He wondered why.  The Father’s voice was not heard in the same way as it had been heard at the River Jordan and on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 3:17; 17:5).  Have you ever wondered why?

Ezekiel might have wondered that Isaiah was a national prophet, but he did not have to lose a wife to make a prophetic point to the land, “Why me?”  He might have pointed to Moses too, whose wife or sons God did not have to kill.  But God had explained ahead to him, so the prophet did not have to ask why.

Supposing God had not previously explained the case to Ezekiel, or he had been too distracted by ministry and love for his dear wife to hear when God gave notice, what might have happened?  Then, there might have been many cries and unanswerable questions, and earnest prayer vigils to call back the soul of the dead; prayers which, unfortunately, God would not have answered.  Discouragement would then have set in, and the gossip of blind preachers would have spread farther, about the prophet’s sins that killed his wife, or his occult links now exposed, or his weak God that could not bring her back, or the miracle worker who could not heal his own wife … and God would have been silent in all …

What was the meaning of God’s shocking interruption of the prophet’s life?  Why did He kill the prophet’s wife?  It was to make a message of the faithful prophet’s life to a wayward nation.  It was meant as a prophetic foreshadowing of a “time” to come when the “dearest treasure” of the people, the “lovely, beautiful Temple” of the backslidden worshipers as well as their “beautiful city that makes them so happy” were going to be lost suddenly, with their cherished sons and daughters and wives slaughtered in the judgment that the offended God was ultimately bringing upon the rebellious land (vv. 21-27).

God told the prophet that He was making him “a symbol” to his people; “a sign” by which they would “know” that “I am the Lord” (v. 27, NKJV, New Living Translation).  The prophet’s wife was a symbol of that beautiful temple of their talismanic confidence, the “desire of your eyes.”  She was the summary of the city and the people and all the treasured things that the nation was going to lose suddenly in the coming judgment.  God had to kill a prophet’s cherished wife, suddenly, merely to make an indelible message to a stubborn nation, leaving them with a witness, but without excuse.  God told them, “Ezekiel is an example for you” (v.24, Easy-to-Read Version).

In other words, a prophet proclaims not only by the words of his mouth but also by the signs of his life, by the ‘voice’ in the sweet and bitter things that God allows on the pulpit of his life, as a reference point to others.  God did not consult him, but merely notified him.  He had little say in the matter. He was merely to submit.   He was being raised as a sign, a symbol, a national prophetic reference point.  I ask, should a prophet be wounded sometimes for God to convey His message to a people who otherwise might not have heard?  Yes (1 Kings 20:35-43).  About prayers, about marriage, about finances, about family, about church management, there might be issues for which God could be raising you as the only referenceable ‘verse’ to a future or present generation.  It costs, sometimes.  But those who point only to the tokens that God sometimes sends to you through faithful men would never know.

The prophetic call is not merely about honorariums, good as those might come (1 Samuel 9:6-8; 2 Kings 4:42; Luke 10:4; 1 Corinthians 9:9-14).  It is first about the sacrifice of life, and the shepherd pains that must sometimes be endured as a prophetic reference point to others.  In Ezekiel’s story, the sacrifice was not only on the part of the prophet but also his wife, for she might not have died that death if she had been married to a different person.  (Mind whom you marry.)  She had enjoyed the privileges and benefits of being a national prophet’s wife, but it came with its costs.  Of that, the mockers would never know.

When, like Prophet Hosea, you must marry a prostitute like Gomer and cope with severe unfaithfulness just to be a national prophetic voice while your other priestly colleagues can find faithful Sarahs and pretty Rachels; when, like Isaiah, you must name your children with names not of your choosing but of the national prophetic determination of the God you serve (Isaiah 8:3-4); when others of your colleagues dine freely at kings’ tables but your meals are bare and your sleeping patterns rigidly dictated by their national prophetic symbolism (Ezekiel 4:1-17), it can be tough.

It can be expensive to be a prophet, especially a prophet to the nations.  We speak often of Abraham’s ‘sacrifice’ of Isaac, his beloved son.  What about this prophet, and others?  Some things that God allows in some lives are a message, like His omniscient and embarrassing disruption of a prophet’s marriage just to convey a message to his land (Hosea 1:2).  It is the voice of signs.  But how can one tell whom God kills, and who was an occult sacrifice on the counterfeit altars of Satan?  That will be for another day, but this I pray: O Lord, open our eyes that we may see You.  Amen.