Holy Provocateurs—YHVH’s Human Agents to Wake People Up

From the beginning of time, YHVH has raised up secret human agents and sprinkled them—like grains of salt in a wound—in various places at various times to be his mouthpieces to warn humans to repent of their sin and turn to him. These divinely appointed pot-stirrers have been thorns in the sides of both sinners and YHVH’s lukewarm saints. They are his agent provocateurs slipped into the ranks of humanity to incite, provoke and stir humans to action. Are you such a person, or do you know someone like this, who, quite frankly, is nettlesome and irksome to be around? Whether we like it or not, these individuals are simply YHVH’s mail carriers, carry his message of repentance to a sin-sick world.

These agents, who are part of the Creator’s secret service, are unusually zealous and passionate for YHVH. Their mission is to warn people away from evil and to encourage, no, rather irritate them toward him. These people have never been popular, but have typically been barely tolerated by their contemporaries, if not outright hated and rejected. Typically they are loners and have few if any friends. At the very least, they have been nettlesome thorns in the sides of those around them, and at the most have been hated, despised, hunted down and even killed, while often being viewed as a pariah and anathema to society. The problem is that this is their calling and mission, and they cannot run from it. They are YHVH’s divine mail carriers, and to reject them is to reject the Creator himself. Such biblical holy provocateurs whose divine mission was to warn people of impending judgment and to call them to repentance include such notable biblical personalities as Noah, Elijah, Jonah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Stephen and, most notably, Yeshua the Messiah himself. Despite their unpopularity, these provocateurs have been significantly impactful at chiding, if not scaring, people toward repentance and a more holy, Elohim-centered spiritual walk.

Elohim’s provocateurs are often viewed by those around them as holier-than-thou kill-joys, legalists, Jesus-freaks, Bible thumpers, religious fanatics and zealots, and the list of pejorative terms thrown at them goes on and on. It boils down to this: If you can’t deal with the sin issues in your life, then project your guilty conscience onto the preacher who is calling you to account by labeling him or her with some derogatory epithet. In this way, you somehow justify your sin by transferring onto them your anger as you resort to ad hominen attacks. As a longtime pastor, I witnessed the employment of this tactic countless times by disgruntled congregants. If they could not argue against the biblical Truth you were preaching, then they would attack you personally by criticizing your style of preaching, the length of your sermon, your hairstyle, how hard the chairs were or how hot the building was in summer…and when they had exhausted their arsenal of verbal grenades, off they huffed to terrorize another pastor and congregation somewhere else. 

 All of this is because YHVH’s provocateurs have the dubious distinction of acting as a sort of societal conscience and moral compass as they go about constantly telling people to turn away from sin and the idolatrous pleasures of this mortal existence and to turn back to the true north of YHVH’s Truth. They passionately declare that the love of this world is enmity with Elohim, and their call to turn away from the mortal, sinful pleasures that are the heartbeat of sinners and to lukewarm saints, and to turn to righteousness and holiness is a perennially unpopular message.

Not everyone is called to the ministry of being a heaven-sent secret agent provocateur, and very few people understand much less appreciate the role that these troublesome individuals play in YHVH’s spiritual economy. Moreover, why would anyone choose to be a divine thorn in the side of humanity? Such people only become targets for hatred, derision, scorn, mocking, rejection, persecution and even death. Who in their right mind would ever choose this as a spiritual vocation?

And being a provoker has never been a popular job. Only a smattering of people have will every heed the divinely mandated warnings of these provocateurs. These human hammers in the hand of the Almighty to smash the hard rock of the sinner’s heart (Jer 23:29) are in the company (though not at the same level) of such biblical giants of Noah, Elijah, John the Baptist, Yeshua, Stephen Paul, and the apostles and all of the other prophets. Even Yeshua’s own brothers rejected him until after his resurrection which was undeniable proof of his divinity.

These provokers never chose this calling; rather, YHVH chose them and compelled them to fulfill their mission to warn those around them. Till the present time, he has had such people sprinkled all over the earth, strategically positioned in all social stratum and geographical locations. They are there to warn sinners to repent, and on judgment day, no one will be able to accuse Elohim of not warning them. 

The following is a list of Scriptures that refer to such people whose divine mission is to stir up, provoke, incite, irritate (involving contention and disputation) one another to love and to good works as per Hebrews 10:24, which is the flagship passage of this teaching. There we read,

And let us consider one another in order to stir up [i.e., to provoke, irritate, incite] love and good works…

To be sure, some of YHVH’s provokers are more salty than others. As we all know, salt in a festering wound, though a cleansing agent, can be a painful irritant. With this in mind, Yeshua declared of his disciples,