Prophecy and the Human Element

Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. (Amos 3:7)

How absolute is prophecy? How much does it depend on human effort?

I ask this because there have been many arguments concerning prophecy and its accuracy, especially when it appears like the prophet got it all wrong.

But let me repeat something I have always said. If prophecy is even 99 percent accurate, it is false simply because God has all the facts and eternity in His hands when He proclaims it. He is therefore not dependent on anything outside Himself to keep His word.

You see, meteorologists depend on the accuracy of their instruments to be accurate. A spell checker depends on the width and depth of its dictionary for accuracy. That is why almost all who use spell checkers remember a situation where they had egg on their face when it put a very wrong word in a message without their knowledge (of course because they trusted the spell checker especially on a smartphone). God depends on Himself to keep His word.

But today I want us to look at another dimension of prophecy.

What determines true prophecy? Is prophecy absolute? Does it depend on people to be fulfilled?

Was Samuel a false prophet because he prophesied that Saul was the anointed of God when he proclaimed his rejection and the anointing of another?

Was Ahijah the Shilonite a false prophet when he prophesied that Jeroboam will be king yet later prophesied the annihilation of his whole seed?

Was Jonah a false prophet when he prophesied that Nineveh would be destroyed in forty days?

As opposed to what many peddlers of prophecy teach, prophecy is actually God’s call to action. And that is the reason Jonah fled the scene of his mission. He was simply not ready to face the consequences of his prophecy. He knew his prophecy had the capacity to rally the whole city to repentance, a repentance that would then ‘nullify’ his prophecy.

Human element is what determines how the prophecy turns out. Look at these verses.

Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. (1Samuel 2:30)

And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the LORD hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the LORD hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee. (1Samuel 13: 13, 14)

Like I like to say, IF is a constant element of all these promises we love claiming.

Let me give us one prophecy that will make this clearer.

Jeremiah prophesied the seventy year captivity in Babylon. Then look what happens.

Daniel connects to the prophecy and starts praying. Incidentally, he could not have gone back.

As a eunuch he would have been an outcast, then he was very old. Assuming he was in his teens when captured he would be in his late eighties when the captivity ended, or probably in his nineties if he was older. And of course the kings needed him around to sort those tough issues that required someone with the spirit of the holy gods.

Yet he prayed for the actualization of the prophecy.

Then we have Nehemiah, another eunuch who receives the burden of building the walls of Jerusalem and establishing administrative structures.

God does what He promised He would do to raise the heathen king Cyrus to issue the decree for the return of the exiles.

We then have Ezra who had taken his Levitical duties to captivity and was thus ready to instruct the returnees and set up the spiritual foundations.

Then we have Haggai and Zechariah, prophets who gave God’s encouragement to the returnees.

The bulk of the Jews had all but forgotten that the prophecy required their input and had messed it big time, some to the point of defiling the holy seed and others by being collaborators with the enemy.

The prophecy was definite. But it required the human element to come to pass.

Let me repeat; prophecy is not just God’s proclamation, though it is. Prophecy is God’s call to action.

Let us also look at Jesus’ time on earth.

It is interesting that the people who were best placed to receive Him failed. Remember they even knew where He was to be born? Yet for the most part they became His adversaries.

The people who were ready to connect with that season were the commoners, the undesirables, the rejects. They were the ones that reaped the most from that prophesied event and Person.

You will see the same when you read stories of the revivals of the past.

For example, John Wesley did not organize a revival. He did not plan to hold outdoor meetings.

He and his message were locked out of every pulpit. Then God opened the hearts of people in markets and all those other places.

Whereas he had thought that the message God had given him was for the pulpits, like Paul said, the pulpits adjudged themselves to be unworthy of eternal life. And that opened the door for the Methodist revival, if we may call it that.

And it is not much different today.

God is doing a new thing. But the ‘right’ people are sunk into relevance to notice it. They are so fixated with the virus and its narrative that churches have become centres of excellence as far as the virus is concerned. There are pastors whose messages are more about the virus that about Christ. To the point that churches have been made vaccination centres!

Their submission to Caesar has gone way beyond the accepted that whereas he can order them to stop teaching their congregation he can ask them to call them to be vaccinated. They cannot use the church for fellowship but they can use it for vaccination. They have given what is God’s to Caesar. And they wonder why Caesar despises them!

Yet we will be surprised when God bypasses us and chooses another generation!

God’s agenda is unstoppable. But He doesn’t have to use me or you. He only uses the one who is ready for His season.

Sadly for many of us, He may have to bypass us when He realizes that we are swallowed up by the world and its systems that we become like ministers of Christ’s time or the Jews where Paul went preaching. He may already have bypassed us but like Saul and the priests we are too stuck with the instruments of power to notice it.

Where are you in God’s agenda for this generation? Are you in or just wondering why some offshoots seem to be killing their tens of thousands?

God must move. He is on the move. Am I aligned to His move?