The Old Prophetic Curiosities

He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD, saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him. (1Kings 13:18)

What will be your feeling when you find someone who has been sent to do what you had delayed or refused to do for a long time? How will you feel when you see someone performing a task you had been assigned but thought impossible? How would you feel when you found out that the job you had been procrastinating is being done by somebody else?

When you read the passage this verse comes from (1 Kings 13), it appears like the scenario we are dealing with. There is an old prophet, we can say a retired prophet; otherwise why was he not around when the message was being delivered? He also appears not to be surprised by the message judging from his reaction to the death of the young prophet.

What had happened to him? Why was he not on hand to receive the young prophet instead leading him to his death? How come he was so zealous to get to this young prophet and even bury him in his tomb and order to be buried next to him? What was so special in this young prophet to him?

I dare say that this young chap aroused in him all the potential that he had buried when he backslid. This young man aroused in him all the regret he had buried in his heart. This obedient chap was a rebuke sharper than a slap on the face. And this chap showed him how useless he had become when he decided that his calling was secondary to living a life whose comfort quotient was positive.

But why then did he lead him to his death? I think the primary reason is that he thought he had to see someone who had dared to take the assignment he had thought impossible. Even the express conditions he had been issued with were a confirmation that it was a tough assignment. Do not eat or even take water there and do not even use the same route on your way back. But I also think he felt bad that God finally gave up on him which might be the reason for leading the young man to his death. He may have thought God was not fair to finally overstep him with the assignment. Regret is dangerous. But he may have thought that due to his long life of ‘reasonable’ disobedience there were no risks to this young ‘radical’. God could not simply do something to someone who had crossed borders to deliver the message that had been impossible to deliver due to his prevailing circumstances just because he had listened to the old prophet’s ‘innocent’ lie.

I was told about this missionary who was sent to another continent and given an assignment that was impossible to him. Since he had also been sent by a mission’s agency, he overlooked God’s assignment and went on doing the mission’s assignments.

Forty years down the road a young man from his native land is sent by his home church to him for mentoring and assessment as he had shared what assignment God had for him. He had even resigned from a very good job to take it. When they got to know each other this young man told this old missionary that he had been given the assignment that this old missionary had refused to take forty years earlier. The latest I heard was that the old missionary had refused to recommend him. The young chap had to go back to his homeland and I am scared that the young man may be in the same danger that befell the young prophet.

Does that appear familiar? Is this not what happened to the young prophet?

Regret is a long and torturous journey. Disobedience is a painful experience. However logical it appears it can never ever come anything close to the joy obedience brings however painful it appears.

I know I am speaking to people God spoke to long ago. I am speaking to someone who thought the kind of obedience they were pursuing earlier was crude and needed to be smoothed a bit especially after success in ministry started bringing more ‘polished’ friends. How can you fast with your first dinner invitation to a five star hotel? How can you give your old cars to other ministers who need them when your ‘newest friend’ has five? How can you give that ‘blessing’ to a struggling brother when you haven’t installed a satellite dish in your home? How do you give your tithe to that hungry family when you must have the latest smart phone? How can you speak rebuke to the only ‘friend’ who was instrumental to your most enjoyable holiday? How can I take a bus to a speaking engagement when my church only needs me to sneeze and they would hire a private jet for me?

How do I feel when someone as radical as I was wants my counsel? How do I respond when he asks me for support? What wells out of my heart when I am seeing success from the ‘foolish exertions’ of the radicals who remind me of what I was long ago?

Could I be working in league with the retired prophet? Am I like him even though I am in the middle of ministry? Do I contribute to their death through my ‘revelations’?

As I say this I remember this young man I am mentoring. Recently, a ministry leader called him telling him that God had asked him to invite this young man to stay with him. Since he had earlier trained him, the young man dropped everything (even studies) to join his teacher in ministry. Not long after this the teacher informed him that he had to fend for himself, yet this was nowhere near anyone he knew and this teacher was not willing to help him even look for a casual job. It was painful being in a foreign land with no friends and no food, all because a ‘prophet’ had heard from God.

Why do you think that happened? Could it be that this ‘old prophet’ felt threatened by the radicalism of this young fella and was looking for a way to trim his radicalism? Could it be that he wanted that radicalism to seep into him initially but gave up when it started shouting rebuke at his complacent life?

Even as I write I remember this time at work when my salary was stopped for six months for refusing to go to a bar ‘even to take a soda’. The bosses gave me a long leave then wrote a letter to headquarters immediately reporting my desertion of duty. It was a huge battle but I am glad that God fought for me because the aim was that I lose my job by refusing to agree with sin and especially living with them but having convicting standards.

Does it excite or rile you when you hear someone planning a mission before knowing how the money will come in? How do you feel when someone asks you to help them decide how to give their only asset because God has spoken? What will you tell this person who insists that God is asking him to leave college or resign a job to join ministry?

How do you feel when someone much younger than you wants you to help them deal with God’s voice when you haven’t heard it in a long time? How will you give direction to someone who walks with God in a closer and clearer manner that you are?

It becomes very sad when you are from a past that showed clear direction from God. It becomes very painful when you realize that you lost it, even worse when you can’t pinpoint the point at which you stopped hearing from God. It is pure pain when you meet someone with the fire you had when you started ministry, who like you long ago has let go of all that is holding them back. You see he is almost identical to you, yet at this point that radicalism looks like sheer foolishness.

Why did the young prophet die? The old prophet wanted to connect to his past obedience without seeking to deal with the reasons for his stopping to hear from God. I am sure he may have thought that this young prophet had a message specifically to him. He wanted a miracle without paying the price. He wanted to hear without unplugging his ears. But he simply had to have the audience of the young prophet. It was so desperate that he resorted to lying in God’s name to convince this obedient chap to follow him.

In my discipleship and mentorship I have seen a common trend. Many times God directs me to a young person whose only positive is energy. I have even been warned against making friends with some of them because they had character issues. But God keeps me there. After a short while the discipleship starts showing and bearing fruit though the person is still very green in the process. I can’t recommend him to anyone because even though they show some progress I know how far they are to dependability.

Then an ‘old prophet’ who may have warned against my involvement notices what my ministry is doing. All of a sudden he will pick this person and start giving him responsibilities, even recognition that I have no capacity of giving to make sure he leaves me for them. He will so crowd this young person that he will have no room for me, yet he was so far from maturity. I have been rebuked by some of those people for my ‘whatever’ as concerns ministry which many times has been influenced by the ‘old prophet’.

I know that many disciple makers are always dealing with this distraction to their discipleship. The only problem is realizing that this disciple or mentee is half cooked and not yet ready for the kind of responsibilities they are being handed. Many times they will very soon ‘crash’ either through pride or sin and there is nothing the discipler or mentor can do because this ‘old prophet’ has completely shielded each from the other.

But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me to speak unto thee? (1Kings 22:24)

How close do you relate to the old prophet? How excited are you to see young prophets flourish? Is God’s voice limited to you and yours?

May we exhibit God’s character when we are dealing with these ‘offshoots’ whether we agree with their logic or not. And I am speaking specifically speaking to some of us who in our earlier years were really on fire for God. We were known for daring to break tradition because we were clear what God wanted. We left everything from job to studies to pursue God’s call. We were not scared of being called fools or mad people because only God and His call made sense to us.

May we repent of wanting to be relevant to the world at the expense of hearing from God. May we start hungering and thirsting for the touch and voice of God in our situation.

As an aside I remember in the 70s reading some magazines from some ‘radicals’ who dared dream of reaching the farthest reaches that they had a ministry that even produced a magazine sharing that vision. I was very young then and the magazines used to really excite my heart as I read that I knew all those visionaries by heart though I had never seen any of them though I could recognize them from the pictures in the magazine.

Years later I came to Nairobi which I thought was their base. But the script had changed. I guess that after their radical ministry started achieving success, demands were placed on them to start harnessing the harvest. Eventually each one of them became a bishop of their denomination and I stopped hearing the name of the ministry mentioned. I remember when I was seeking registration for Restore Hope Ministries being told to stop wasting time through the long process and pay one of them to give me cover to do ministry and I know many churches that operate under his cover.

Recently I went for a seminar and was taken to a church that bore the name of the ministry. Even the overseer is one of the ‘radicals’. But I did not see anything reminiscent of the ministry whose magazines I used to read.

Was the ministry a front to establish denominations or to take the Gospel to places that need it? What happened to the vision? Are these bishops obedient to the call they were putting very clearly to anyone who read their magazine? Or did God tell them that their magazines were the musings of some misguided young men?

Can you entrust yourself to them to get direction for ministry if you have the record I have? Are they like the old prophet? Can they really mentor people into the kind of radicalism they exhibited in their ministries then? The reason I am not talking about their lives or persons is because I was only able to interact with them through the magazine. By the time I was in a position to see them they were ministry executives and I lost the urge to interact with any of them as they had simply flown off their magazine.

The cry of God’s heart is that we kill the old prophet in us by seeking to reconnect to our past radical obedience. Only then will we be in a position to be of positive use to these young prophets God is raising for this generation.

Let us not begrudge God for refusing to bend to our hypocrisy, sin and rebellion. Let us not feel that God has been unfair to us when He raises prophets from afar (Judah) instead of using us to run schools of prophets because if truth be told we are more like these Christ addressed.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)

May we use our positions and authority to rebuke complacency and comfort from our hearts. May we delight in seeing the young prophets not only living but becoming all that God has purposed them to be. Above all may we be so alive so that like Elijah and John the Baptist God will use us to raise our replacement at our peak and not as we are expiring.

Above all may we be so tuned to God that He is the one who will send us to search the young prophets so that we can help them maximize their ministry instead of killing it.

God bless you