The Saints Follow the Lord’s Example

Our Lord, then, as I said before, offered himself in this way for all. And the saints received this example from their Savior, for all of them, before his coming, and indeed always, were under his teaching. So in their struggles with their persecutors they acted lawfully in fleeing and hiding themselves when they were sought. Being ignorant, as men, of the end of the time Providence had appointed for them, they were unwilling to hand themselves over at once into the power of those who plotted against them. But on the other hand they knew what is written, that “the portions” of man “are in God’s hand,” and that “the Lord kills” and the Lord “makes alive.” So they rather endured to the end, “wandering about,” as the apostle has said, “in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, tormented, wandering in deserts,” and hiding themselves “in dens and caves of the earth.” They did this until either the appointed time of death arrived, or God, who had appointed their time, spoke to them and halted the designs of their enemies, or else handed the persecuted over to their persecutors, as seemed good to him. [a]

We may well learn this about all people from David. For when Joab urged him to kill Saul, he said, “As the Lord lives, the Lord will strike him; or his day will come to die; or he will go down into battle and be handed over to the enemies. The Lord forbid that I should stretch out my hand against the Lord’s anointed.”