Some of Paul’s Jewish opponents grow impatient of the deliberate slowness of a court process. Forty of them swear to fast from food and drink until they kill Paul (Acts 23).

These are thugs, street activists who start riots and assassinate Romans and collaborating Jews. But they have friends in high places. They ask the chief priests and elders to conspire with them by drawing Paul out in the open where they can kill him.

Think of it. The Sanhedrin is full of elderly Jewish priests and elders. The high priest is there, in his garments of glory and beauty, sparkling with gold and precious stones. Chief priests are there, in all their elegant finery. Beneath the veneer, they’re wolfish. At least, they consort with wolves.

Don’t be fooled. It’s the way the world works. Clean, well-dressed, well-spoken elites, with not a speck of dirt under their fingernails and not a spot of blood on their hands, are perfectly willing to call out the brutes to intimidate and kill.

And don’t be distracted about the source of enmity to the gospel. In most of the New Testament, the great enemies of the church aren’t governors and kings, but priests and elders. The land beast of Israel, the harlot city of Jerusalem, is more bloodthirsty than the sea beast of Rome.

Jesus called it. “Whitewashed tombs,” He called the Pharisees, clean on the outside but full of dead men’s bones. Jerusalem, He lamented, is the city that kills and crucifies prophets and wise men and scribes. The blood of the righteous is charged to them.

And so too in our time. Throughout the world, states crack down on Christians. Here in the States, we face pressure from states trying to shut down free speech or to force us to conform to their gender insanity.

But our enemies are often members of our own house. We long for unity in the church, but we can achieve genuine unity only if we recognize the church is plagued by wolves in the guise of sheep and shepherds, well-dressed priests only too happy to cooperate with thugs to murder the faithful.