Prophets and Prophecy

It is amazing how almost any pastor or evangelist now fronts themselves as a prophet. In fact the world is flooded with prophetic word after another until it is becoming almost impossible to distinguish a pastor from a prophet; a singer from a prophet. In fact you will see almost anybody in Christian ministry wanting to demonstrate the prophetic in one way or the other.

Who is a prophet? What is prophecy? How does a prophet operate? What is a prophetic word? Does the Bible have anything to say about such things? Is there a difference between Bible prophets and our popular prophets? What about false prophets? Which yardstick do we use to gauge the whole area of prophets and prophecy? Can we use the Bible to know between the true and the false, the God-sent and the stomach-sent?

Where does a prophet get his mandate? Where does he get his affirmation? Who is the prophet answerable to? Is relevance a requirement for the prophet? What about popularity?

What really is a prophetic word? What is the purpose of the same? What is the difference between a prophetic word and a motivational speech, a prophetic word and an uplifting sermon? Are they all the same? Is there any difference between prophecy and soothsaying, prophecy and foretelling? 

You may be wondering why I am asking all these questions. But I am sure with all the confusion being caused by the use or misuse of prophecy, and especially the prophetic word you may have been wondering who will ask these questions.

I have on several occasions been confronted by confusion by one too many Christians wondering why a prophetic word seems to be a direct copy of another. This is how it happened. A person attends a meeting where a prophet is the leading light. The said prophet gives a prophecy which this person had heard almost word for word in another prophetic meeting or a TV program. How does it happen? I won’t have minded much if it was an isolated incident. But such incidents have become all too common.

This reminds me of a word in Jeremiah. ‘Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his neighbor’ (Jeremiah 23:30). This is not a new thing. True prophets have dealt with it age after age.

I believe that a prophet is a person who lives in so great proximity with God that he is able to paint a very accurate picture of His face. That is what I see when I study the Bible. A prophet is not a person who simply has words that can move people to admire him. In fact the opposite is the case. He knows God so well that he will be offended should he receive accolades for his prophecy because he knows that he is not the object of the same.

Foretelling is a very small aspect of prophecy, though that is what many people think prophecy is. Moses still remains the greatest of the prophets. How many events did he foretell? What about David? Read even Isaiah and Jeremiah to get to what I am trying to say here.

What we have as prophets in our days are people who, instead of painting that Face are busy painting caricatures. Some are painting a very grim face of a divine who does not care anything for His people as long as what the prophet has said comes to pass. In the past few months some things have happened and some people would tell me that it had been prophesied. The question is, under what context was it given and what was its purpose? Many times the purpose was to show that the prophet ‘knew’. That is sad because such would be disqualified from being called a prophet. Even the devil can foretell some things and we know of his servants who are specialists in that aspect. God does not foretell to demonstrate His knowledge as He does not need to demonstrate anything. 

The other will paint a cartoon sort of face, a harmless joke to all who look. These will present a god who really does not care as He has no standards. He might as well be a benevolent godfather who has enough goodies to share yet too senile to hold us accountable for what He gives us. To some He is a slot machine. With the right combination and a ‘seed’ we can be able to get anything we want.

But let us look at the prophets of old.

Samuel almost never spoke of the future as our ‘prophets’ do, yet he was among the most momentous prophets. What did he do? He simply brought about a revival in Israel. Among the highlights of his life was a prayer life that God mentioned more than once.

Moses is one person all religions agree was a prophet, yet in his books there is very little of foretelling we see. His prophetic role enabled him to guide the transition from slavery to self determination. He was known for being so close to God that anything opposed to him was known to be opposed to God.

Of course we know Jeremiah because of the seventy years prophecy. But what do you see when you read his book? It presents a preacher of righteousness instead of a grim foreteller of future events. In fact the few times he foretold a near event was in response to direct opposition to his call for repentance. ‘Repent and live’ was his message for most of his duration as prophet.

Haggai was concerned with the rebuilding of the temple, as was Zechariah.

Apart from revealing Christ to Israel (which in itself was not foretelling), we don’t have any foretelling in john the Baptist’s ministry, yet Christ said he was greater then the greatest in the kingdom.

In fact you will find that on the whole the prophets were more involved with the present than the future. Their glimpses of the future were in fact meant to influence the present for God.

Our prophets have grossly misrepresented God by taking prophesy to mean what the agnostics believed – that they have a deeper awareness of the spiritual, or by making God to be at our mercy, providing our every whim. This brings God down to materialism, equating spirituality with material prosperity, forgetting what Jesus asked, ‘what will it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?’ If that is the purpose of our prophets, then they are false. If that is what we are looking for in them, we are deluded.

There are more important things in life than that visa or scholarship. There is more to life than the excitement you get from the prophetic word. God is interested in your future, not just concerning your education or promotion but even beyond this present life. That car does not define you. That new house is not your heritage in God. There simply is more to life than this present life. Prophecy that will keep my focus here and now is not from God. This is because I might in the pursuit of this life lose the life without end. That is why these prophets rile me. They are not seeking to bring people to God, though they profess to do so. They are not confronting sin in the camp. They are more interested in Prados than patience, Range Rovers than revelation. They seek to whet your appetite for things of this world than increase your thirst for things that are eternal.

Let us address some issues common today. This girl dresses very flimsily, it can be called provocatively, if not temptingly. She comes to me her pastor who on looking at her notices the danger she is in, if not the one she places me in (in fact you will see them sitting in the front pews where the preacher is in plain view) I then proceed to tell her that I can see that men are seeking to exploit, even abuse her. Now that might be accurate, but it does not take a prophet to see. And this is the distinction – a prophet steps in to guide the person to avoid danger. He will thus confront the girl concerning her dressing and tell her why her continuing in such is likely to attract abuse because it sends the wrong signals to men. The Bible calls such the attire of a harlot. A prophet is saddened by his word coming true because the reason he speaks it is to help the people he ministers to to connect to God’s purpose for their life. But these prophets are more interested in what they get out of the prophecy than in changing the world for God. You see confronting the girl might drive her from giving you that offering, planting that seed. It might ultimately drive her from sitting in front of you to ‘excite’ you. Sorry I have to become this harsh. But it does not need any spirituality to ‘see’ the end of such dressing.

Or you see parents who are too lenient on their children to the point that they have become ‘sons of Belial’. They are becoming a nuisance wherever they are, from school to the church. The prophet tells the parents that he can see them weeping in the near future. Any fool can see that. What the prophet ought to do is confront the parents early enough on their neglect of their parental responsibility and warn them to stop making gods out of their children since any god who is not the creator will be feeding from the devil. They may run out of his church but sooner or later they will see the sense in such prophecy even leading them to deliver their children from hell. In any case truth is not negotiable for the prophet.

One thing I will say is true of every true prophet of God is their unflinching attitude towards sin and hypocrisy. A true prophet can not be bought however high the price is taken. Trying to do so will take your sin from the private realm where he was trying to correct you to the public arena where he will expose your attempt to muzzle God’s message by trying to buy it. At one time leaders approach Ezekiel seeking to know God’s will. But then God exposes their hearts by confronting them with the fact that they were holding to their idols in their hearts. Even Jeremiah was approached in a similar way and He told them to stop trying to pretend to want to know God’s will when they had already decided on their cause of action. In both cases the attempt at pleasing the prophet was met by judgment from God Himself.

One of the greatest differences between the prophets in the Bible and our present day prophets is the impact of their prophecy. While today prophets are feted, in the past they most likely died for their prophecies. A confrontation with a true prophet left you with two distinct options; you either changed or sought to eliminate that voice. That was how most prophets died. Jonah, the reluctant prophet led a revival in the most wicked city of his time. Jeremiah was detained severally without trial. In fact several assassination attempts were made on his life. They severally sought to compromise him and when that failed sought to defame him. In fact that was the fare of most prophets.

Compare that to the prophets of today. They are constant guests in state dinners and are always delivering prophetic words even to wicked rulers, and not confronting them to change. Imagine John the Baptist in such a situation! He died for refusing to lie low as a very ruthless despot broke God’s laws, especially because he was keen to be identified with the Jews. He knew that he would most likely be killed but he did not consider his life of a greater premium that God’s message.