Bonhoeffer asked the powerful question:

When will it be that Christianity says the right word at the right time?

Then… he lived it out. As he watched German universities fall into line with the Nazis and then watched the German church fall in line with the demands of Nazi “preaching,” Bonhoeffer began to speak the right word in what he saw to be the right time.

He called out churches who tried to split hairs on Nazi propaganda. Churches would denounce the Aryan Paragraph and then support the new German state. They wanted to parse out their “agreement” but the Nazi machine was built on whole cloth belief, not a “pick and choose” system. Bonhoeffer called out the churches who thought they could parses Nazi doctrine.

The prophetic church… the prophet as the speaker… isn’t always “popular.” Bonhoeffer was ignored.

In 1933, more and more German Protestant leaders were proclaiming, “Christ has come to us through Adolf Hitler.” (p. 176)

Hitler had stepped into a void. Germany had been such a proud nation until World War I. Now, it was beaten and crushed and they wanted to feel “big” again. Hitler brought that hope.

It felt good to be German again. (p. 176)

The prophetic voice is called by God to “cry out.” The results aren’t in the hands of the prophets. They are simply to proclaim the word given to them. They are to bear witness.

The German Church didn’t heed the prophetic words of Bonhoeffer. They ignored all his warnings. There wasn’t national repentance. No huge altar calls.

The work of the prophet isn’t about turning crowds around. It is to speak the word of the Lord and allow the Spirit to handle what happens next. It is interesting to me that two powerful prophetic voices of the 20th Century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., let the word of the Lord ring out… and both were dead by the age of 39.

The prophet has work to do and they may not get to see the end result of their labor.

The American Church is too often pathetic. We need the prophetic. It seems the cost is too high for us.