By Jon Beaty
In the early 19th century, amidst the fervor of a spiritual revival, a young man named Hazen Foss from Maine experienced something extraordinary.
In 1831, a retired military captain named William Miller began preaching across New England that Jesus Christ would soon fulfill His promised return to Earth. His reading of Bible prophecy in the Book of Daniel convinced him that Jesus would return in 1843. As others heard this message and clung to this hope, they came to be known as Millerites.
After embracing the message of Jesus Second Coming, Hazen Foss received Divine visions, vivid and compelling, painting images of the journey to the heavenly city and warnings of trials and persecutions to come.
These visions were a divine call, a mission to share God's message with others. However, Hazen was gripped by fear—fear of ridicule, fear of the unknown, and fear of the responsibility that came with such a calling.
Overcoming Fear
A greater fear gripped the biblical prophet, Jonah.
The Assyrian Empire bordered Israel. They served demons, disguised as pagan gods. The Assyrian military was known for using brutal tactics against the nations they conquered. They would impale on stakes the leaders who resisted their occupation and put them on public display. They would skin people alive. They would torture their victims by blinding and other forms of mutilation. Entire populations would be deported from their homeland and enslaved.
When God called Jonah to take a judgment message to Nineveh, Assyria’s capital city, we can imagine that knowledge of the nation’s atrocities caused him to question God’s call.
God gives a call to every Christian. None of us are assigned to sit as spectators on the sidelines. God always calls us to a mission that draws us out of our comfort zone. The Christian walk is a journey of growth. We can’t grow stronger without carrying responsibilities that stretch our spiritual muscles. The only alternative to growing stronger is to grow weaker.
Fear is the emotion that follows when we believe we are faced by circumstances with which we can’t cope. Faithful Christians lean into the power of God to overcome difficulty despite fear.
Accurately Calculating Risk
Jonah was not faithful. Jonah fled his home near Joppa, boarded a ship and sailed toward Tarshish, in a direction that would take him far from Nineveh. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Tarshish by boat was at least a 2000-mile journey to what we know today as Spain.
It’s human nature to weigh the risks and benefits of accepting God’s call. In finite, human terms, God’s calls are always a call to sacrifice something we value. The benefits are always defined in spiritual terms—eternal--and therefore impossible for our finite minds to calculate. Our human nature is to avoid loss at all costs. Our carnal nature will tell us to hold on to what we can measure, even at the cost of eternal life.
God to the Rescue
In God’s goodness, when we run away from Him, He comes after us. He chased Jonah with wind and waves. When life’s troubles start bogging you down, look behind you. Just as God came after Adam and Eve to find them hiding from Him in the Garden of Eden, and chased after Jonah sailing away at sea, God is coming after you. God comes not to harm you, but to prosper
you, “to give you a future and a hope,” (Jeremiah 29.11).
If we decide to refuse God’s call, there is a potential cost to people around us. It may put our family, our neighbors, or strangers at risk of terrible loss. As the storm stirred up by God threatened to destroy the ship Jonah sailed on, Jonah saw the cost his actions about to end the lives of the ship’s crew. He pled with them to throw him overboard.
In a strange turn of events, a gigantic fish swallowed Jonah. God’s rescue plans often defy our understanding. Like Jonah in the belly of the fish, we can find ourselves surrounded by darkness. In the darkness, we hope for even a small ray of light to help us find our way.
Don’t Let Your Call Be Transferred
Jonah’s experience in the fish’s belly reminds us of the best way to find hope in our moments of darkness: Prayer. By God’s grace, fervent prayer leads us to repentance and God brings us back into His presence and His purpose.
Not every wayward Christian’s story ends this way. While Jonah turned back toward God and His calling, we know Jonah later stumbled into a pit of despair.
Hazen Foss chose a similar fate. God called Hazen to serve as a modern-day prophet. Despite the urging of the Spirit, Hazen chose silence over proclamation. He hesitated, delayed, and ultimately found himself unable to recall the visions when he finally attempted to share them. It was then he understood the gravity of his refusal. Hazen had, in his own words, "grieved away the Spirit of the Lord."
Soon after, the visions given by God to Hazen were bestowed upon the teenage sister-in-law of his brother Samuel, Ellen White. She embraced this divine gift and became a central figure in the movement that grew into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. When Hazen heard Ellen recount her visions, he recognized them as his own, now passed on because of his reluctance to fulfill his divine duty. History records Hazen as losing his faith and giving up the gift of eternal life in Jesus.
The Ultimate Equation
These stories of Hazen Foss and the prophet Jonah serve as sad testimonials to the importance of heeding God's call. No matter how daunting God’s mission for us, we must allow God to enable us to overcome our fears and respond with the faith and courage He promises to give us. Counting the cost in human terms will never convince us to do what’s right. Putting our faith in Jesus, His word, and His power is the only equation that gets us to the right answer.