Have you ever wondered what would have happened, if when Jesus was born, no one helped Him? What if Joseph didn’t believe what he was told about Mary’s pregnancy? What if he didn’t believe that they needed to go to Egypt to save His life? What if John the Baptist was so filled with ego, he rejected Jesus instead of baptizing Him? What if the fishermen He asked for help told Him to get lost? The thing is, they all chose to do what they had to do to help Him do what He was sent to do.
Since humans have free will and were able to decide what to believe, as much as they had the choice to reject something, it could have happened, even to the Son of God. That was the greatest fear for the Ministers Of The Mystery.
Let a man so account us as the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
1 Corinthians 4:1
The Ministers of the Mystery were all given different gifts to serve God.
7 The Holy Spirit is given to each of us in a special way. That is for the good of all. 8 To some people the Spirit gives a message of wisdom. To others the same Spirit gives a message of knowledge. 9 To others the same Spirit gives faith. To others that one Spirit gives gifts of healing. 10 To others he gives the power to do miracles. To others he gives the ability to prophesy. To others he gives the ability to tell the spirits apart. To others he gives the ability to speak in different kinds of languages they had not known before. And to still others he gives the ability to explain what was said in those languages. 11 All the gifts are produced by one and the same Spirit. He gives gifts to each person, just as he decides.
1 Corinthians 12:7-11
Among the ministers, were master ministers, given more powerful gifts for the greater good. During the centuries between the time the Holy Spirit delivered the gifts, and 1692, they had many successful years, but that year, they failed to protect the master minister sent to prevent the trials.
If you believe that God knows all, then to think He saw the trials coming, is not that far of a reach of imagination. There was, in fact, a minister sent to Salem Village in 1680. His name was George Burroughs. “At the time of Burroughs arrival, Salem was in a constant state of conflict and many of its residents were feuding.”
“Burroughs’s tenure was shorter and more turbulent than Bayley’s. In April 1682, merely a year and a half after coming to Salem, one of Burroughs’s parishioners wrote to him complaining that ‘brother is against brother and neighbors against neighbors, all quarreling and smiting one another.” By the spring of the following year the village committee stopped paying Burroughs so he left town. The resettlement of Falmouth was under way, and Burroughs was preparing to resume his old post there.”
History of Massachusetts
Ten years after he left, the resentment remained and while he was serving in Wells Maine, the warrant for his arrest was issued in Portsmouth NH, and he was tried for witchcraft, with nothing more than wild accusations against him. What if the people in Salem listened to him ten years earlier?
Some dared to stand up for him and risked their own lives.
Despite the wealth of testimony against him, historical records have credited Burroughs with many character traits uncommon for a wizard (male witch). There is “evidence that he was self-denying, generous, and public-spirited, laboring with humility and with zeal.” By another account “he was an able, intelligent, true-minded man; ingenuous, sincere, humble in his spirit, faithful and devoted as a minister, and active, generous and disinterested as a citizen.” These are hardly the characteristics one would expect to find in a close companion of Satan. Papers in the Statehouse in Maine indicate that he was regarded with confidence by his neighbors and looked up to as a friend and counselor. As a result of his untarnished record, despite the danger to themselves, thirty-two of the most respectable citizens of the Village signed a petition on behalf of Burroughs’ innocence, and even before his execution, one of his accusers recanted her accusation as groundless and made out of fear. It was no use. Burroughs was hanged on August 19 along with three other men and one woman, all supposed witches.
Famous Trials
The theory behind the witchcraft trials was many of the accusers were dealing with what we call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you have flashbacks, nightmares, mood swings, paranoia, and everything else that goes with it, it is easy to see how that could happen. After all, they had no understanding of what surviving did to them, especially to the children. They didn’t have an understanding of much at all back then. Consider all we know today about it, and then realize how most people have no clue what PTSD is, and you get the idea.
The defeat of the Master Ministers in Salem was not the last time they would fail. In 2019, they made sure that they would not fail when one of the darkest times for this country would come. All they had to do was make sure the one sent to deliver the miracle would not kill himself before he opened his eyes to the power he had within himself.
Within the long list of characters in these books, all of them have PTSD and healing at different levels. They join forces to make sure the master ministers did not fail without a fight this time.
The Scribe of Salem is book one.
The Visionary of Salem is book two.
13th Minister of Salem is book three.
Coming next week on Amazon!
