I recently published a commentary on the ministry of Jeremiah, a prophet in the 6th Century B.C. who was called by God to warn people in the capital city of the Jewish Empire, Jerusalem, of pending judgement and disaster that God was about to unleash in judgment against them.
I wrote how the moral decay of the Jewish Empire mirrored the moral decay of the United States today, and that if anything, the United States is probably more evil today than the Jewish Empire that was completely destroyed in 586 B.C.
Jeremiah was referred to as the “weeping prophet,” because the visions of the future that awaited his country and his people were so horrible, it almost drove him mad.
Everyone abandoned him, including family members, and it almost cost him his life to deliver the message that God had given him to bring to the rulers and population of his country, because it was not a message of hope that they wanted to hear, but a message of doom, where a significant majority of the population were about to die horrible deaths.
And while Jeremiah prophesied from the Jewish capital of Jerusalem, there were many people who had already been captured and taken away into captivity in Babylon, including the then-king of Israel, and members of the royal family who were no longer living in Jerusalem.
One of those people was a priest named Ezekiel, who like Jeremiah was called by God to warn his people that judgement was imminent, and that there was no "returning to normal" as so many false prophets who were living in Babylon were predicting, giving false hope to the people living in captivity that soon they would be able to return home and to their former way of life.
Ezekiel was called by God to be a "watchman," because he knew the truth, and God made it clear that if he did not tell the truth, even in the face of hostile opposition, that when judgment came and many people died horrible deaths, that their blood would also be on Ezekiel's hands if he shrank back in fear and failed to warn the people.
Is God calling you to be a watchman today?