PROPHETS and POSERS
We need to remember that Jesus said his people slew the prophets (Matthew 23:29-31) but there's something of a wonder in the fact that any of them survived as long as they did.
I know better than to say they were held in awe by everyone—they weren't; still, in some of them there was the capacity to put the fear of God in leaders and kings alike—didn't powerful Ahab call Elijah the "troubler of Israel"? We're to understand that Jeremiah worked as God's prophet for something like forty years, saying outrageous things about the leaders and the people, predicting the certain downfall of the city, the temple and the nation. Even though he had a few influential friends, how he managed to survive is something of a mystery.
Then there was this southerner from the wilderness around Tekoa who came and dared to speak against the Northern Kingdom (Israel), verbally tearing it to shreds—priest and layman, men and women, leaders and supporters. The wonder is they didn't lynch Amos straight away; but the worst he got (on record) was a rebuke from the court-prophet: "Go practice your prophesying elsewhere!" It appears there were some prophets you just didn't mess with.
I sometimes think that for a while we see in a man or a woman the face of God, the compelling proof (though we can't quite put our finger on how we know it with such certainty) that in them God is among us. While we do, we give them the respect that that warrants. After a while, if familiarity does not breed contempt it utterly destroys awe and we shrug at such prophetic type people; we grow tired of them. Perhaps it's more accurate and truthful to say we grow tired of the God in them who confronts us. (We don't kill prophetic figures any more—we utterly and knowingly ignore them to death.)
Of course there's always a host of us who don't recognize a prophet (or prophetic figure) as God's approach to us. Prophets didn't always come wrapped in camel skin and have lumps of rough leather for shoes and they didn't always build little model forts and attack them from behind big flat iron griddles or walk around naked (or virtually so) for a couple of years. Sometimes they showed up a young boy who didn't really want the job or an ordinary husband whose wife, after a while, grew tired of him and looked for adventure with other men. It was a rare thing when the people saw a prophet, confessed he was indeed God's servant and consciously chose to murder him. No, they always had "good" reasons for doing away with him. You know what I mean; he was undermining people's faith, destabilizing the government or promoting heresy—something like that.
Just the same, the way some of them spoke they were simply asking for trouble. It wasn't only what they said, it was the way they said it! Rabbi Heschel was of the opinion that to the prophet "everyone else appears blind…everyone appears deaf. No one is just; no knowing is strong enough, no trust complete enough. The prophet hates the approximate, he shuns the middle of the road."
In many ways the speech of some of them was "over the top" and was bound to be misunderstood or dismissed as outrageous. What made Jeremiah or Ezekiel think they'd get away with saying there wasn't a single righteous person in the nation (Ezekiel 22:30, Jeremiah 5:1)? But these men didn't care much that they wouldn't be invited back to spearhead conferences or hold meetings! If one of us had gone to the Baptist or Micah and asked him to soften his speech he'd probably have pushed past us saying, "And you're who?" They hadn't entered a popularity contest and while the message was part of them they didn't choose their message—sometimes they didn't even like it! Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel all explicitly took issue with the vision they were given—"surely not, Lord!" Even the tough Amos, whose speech peels the skin off the roof of your mouth just reading it, cried our (7:5), "Sovereign Lord, I beg you stop!"
What's the difference between a pulpit comedian and a prophet? What's the difference between a skilled homiletician and a prophet?