God places great and grave responsibility on the shoulders of the leadership. We must all share the responsibility for the condition of the world, our nation, our church, our families.
by Donald Ward
The prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Hosea
prophesy of a time in which people would lose the will and desire to
lead. Isaiah writes: "O my people they which lead you cause you to err, and destroy
the way of your paths" (Isaiah 3:12). Ezekiel writes of a time in which
God, "sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand
in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it and I found
none" (Ezekiel 22:30). Hosea writes of a time in which, "the LORD has a
controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth,
nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and
killing, and stealing and committing adultery, they break out, and blood
touches blood" (Hosea 4:1-2, KJV throughout).
The contexts of these prophecies
reveal that God places great and grave responsibility for Israel's
failure on the shoulders of the leadership. As a result of men shirking
their leadership responsibilities, God says that He, "will give children
to be their princes and babes shall rule over them. And the people
shall be oppressed, everyone by another, and every one by his neighbor:
the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the
base against the honorable. As for my people children are their oppressors
and women rule over them" (Isaiah 3:4,5,12).
