Prophetic Confusion

Elijah fed by the Ravens

Any observant Ghanaian, Christian or not will notice a fad which seems to have caught Ghanaian Christianity – an infatuation with the “prophetic”. Today, we have “prophetic encounters”, “prophetic conferences” and all the what not. The favourite title of the modern man of God is now “Prophet”. It seems that everything that a lot of churches do today is prophetic. But has anybody actually stopped to ask themselves what the Bible says about prophets and their vocation, and what qualifies whatever they are doing to be prophetic?

Prophets in the Old Testament

The Jewish Bible (the Tanakh), from which we gain our Old Testament has 3 divisions – the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), the Neviim (the Prophets) and the Ketuvim (the writings aka Job, Psalms, Songs of Songs etc). When Jesus said in Mt 5:17 that “Do not think that I come to destroy the Law or the Prophets”, he was referring to these 2 sections – the Torah and the Neviim.

The Neviim was further divided into the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah,Ezekiel and the other prophets) for one very clear reason – the former were those whose work was before the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and exile, and the latter was those who were active during and after the Babylonian exile. One could say then that this division was pre-exilic and post-exilic.

Pre-exilic Prophets

In the books of the Former Prophets, we find prophets like Nathan, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha and their work. Anyone who pays serious attention to their work will find one thing clear throughout – they were concerned for the people’s relationship with God, ensuring that they will not depart from God’s commands. And when the people did, they made every effort to draw their attention to this. The one thing that the people of Israel prided themselves in was God’s special relationship with his chosen nation Israel, and a true prophet was therefore considered to be one whose ministry drew or kept the people’s mind on God and his will for the nation as encapsulated in the Torah.

And it was expected that if the leader of the nation at any point in time is doing what pleases God, he will lead the nation as a whole to do the right then and therefore God will continue to bless the nation and not take his favour away from it. This is why there seems to be a very close relationship (and not necessarily a happy one) between most pre-exilic prophets and the kings of Israel – between Nathan/Samuel and David, Elijah and Ahab, Elisha and Jehu etc. There are instances where their ministry involves helping individuals who may have one need or the other (including Elijah and the widow of Zarepath in 1 Ki 17:7-16), but their main task is to be the watchman of the people of Israel, and that was evidently clear in their ministries. Elijah and the incident of the priests of Baal is a clear example.

Post-Exilic Prophets

The prophets who lived close to the conquering of Judah by the Nebuchadnezzar carried on the same function as their forbearers – warning the nation of Israel of the coming destruction due to their hard heartedness and disobedience of God, which was bound to make God abandon them to their own fate. For example, God tells Jeremiah to go to the temple built by Solomon, and tell them not to think because they have the temple, it means they can do all they want. Of course, they didn’t listen (Jer 7). Interestingly by then false prophets had also come in their midst, who were doing what most false prophets do.

“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious.‘Peace, peace,’ they say,when there is no peace” (Jer 6:13-15).

After the destruction did come, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and the rest later on spoke words of comfort from God that he will return to them and save them (mostly echoing what Moses said in Exodus 30). But this return always was predicated by they themselves returning to serve God more faithfully. Throughout all this, we see a clear focus of their ministry on God’s plan for Israel, and by extension for the world through Israel. And just like the previous focus of God’s will being achieved through good kings, they prophecy again of a Messiah through whom God’s return will be truly felt not only by the chosen nation, but by the Gentiles as well. This Messiah will conquer the enemy, rebuild and cleanse the temple so that God will return to it in glory like he did before in 2 instances i.e. when the Tabernacle was first built and when Solomon dedicate his temple. Lastly God will then bring resurrection and judgment to the world including Jews, and reward those who had been faithful to God.

Prophets in the New Testament

Its 500 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the beginning 70 years of which been spent in servitude to the kings of Babylon. Since the return from exile, a new temple had been built and yet God’s “Shekinah” hadn’t descended on it like before. Though they lived in their own country, Greece and after them Rome were now their bosses, and there was no sign of the resurrection event or of God’s judgment. Messianic expectations were very high, as people waited for God to do the rest of things the prophets had spoken of.

We see the first mention of a prophet in Lk 2, where an eighty-fourish year old woman called Anna is named as a prophet having received baby Jesus at the temple (v 36-38). Previously a certain righteous and devout Simeon who had been “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (v 25-33) is also given a chance to see the baby, and they all thank God for the same thing – the redemption of the people of Israel has finally come in the person of baby Jesus.

We see in the Gospels the life of John the Baptist, who is considered a prophet by the people, not because he was saying “peace peace”, but was rather preaching quite unpleasant things about what the future held for them – “John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?’”(Lk 3:7). And quite similar to the rocky relationship between the previous prophets and the leaders of the nation Israel, we find Herod arrests him because of the things John says about him and ultimately John the baptist is executed.

Jesus’s life as a prophet was no more comfortable to the establishment than his cousin John. Jesus went about healing, teaching, feeding and many more. But the point that many readers of the Gospels fail to see about Jesus prophetic ministry is how close Jesus’s ministry was to the other prophets who came before him. The reason why Jesus performed miracles, fed thousands and healed many was to point them to one thing – the kingdom of God and its fulfillment which would come through Jesus himself. In this way, he was not different at all from the other prophets – pointing to God’s will for the world through his nation Israel, but focusing that hope on himself.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, we see his disciples taking up the task of being a witness to the announcement of God’s kingdom and of the reign of Jesus, saying that by defeating death, Jesus is King of the world. Again, we see opposition to this announcement, from their hometown Judea all the way to Rome. This opposition is not just from the ordinary Joe walking about, but from the leaders themselves. See the obvious pattern of what prophetic life and ministry leads to? Not praise, but condemnation.

We see an example of someone called a prophet in the New Testament in the person of Agabus (Ac 21:10-14). Agabus predicts Paul’s arrest if he goes to Jerusalem, which happens as expected. What most people fail to realize about this event is that this will seriously affect Paul’s ability to continue carrying out his God given mission of announcing the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. This is not Paul going on a normal business trip to probably buy some raw materials to expand his tentmaking business (as he was a tentmaker by vocation), this was a trip related to his work for the kingdom of God, and he responds that he was“ ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (v 13).

So What’s Gone Wrong

There are multiple other angles to explore on the subject of prophetic vocation and work, but I’ll pause here and come to what prevails today. And I can’t help but be appalled by what is going on today amongst Christians in Ghana. We are busy jumping from one “prophetic nonesense” to the next. We gather people who will tell us “peace, peace” when in fact our house is seriously burning. We prefer those who will twist the word of God to give us a jolt of personal motivation to pursue our selfish goals, whiles we totally ignore the corporate and cosmic dimensions of the kingdom of God. We live in a nation with supposedly 70% christian population, but with corruption up to our jaws. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing by the second, and yet we are busy collecting more money to enrich the clergy and pursue more magnificent infrastructure projects which the poor amongst us will never have access to. We have become a people driven only by individualistic pursuits, looking in the bible for phrases and verses that will give us a boost in the pursuit of personal success. We are the beginning and end of our world, and the political structures pay less and less attention to us because we’ve lost all moral authority to challenge the establishment. Our messages is no longer met with the hostility that prophetic ministries truly elucidate. Sin is no longer something shameful to us, but something we glory in and give nice names. We no longer desire truth that will push us to open our eyes to Jesus’s mission to the world and how we may participate in it, and rather only gather to hear sweet things from our preachers.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:3)

If prophecy is not making us uncomfortable in our comfort zones; if it’s not encouraging us to be strong whiles we pursue Jesus and his will for the world through his new Israel – his church; if prophecy is not showing us as a people together what to do in preparing for God’s future, but is only here to speak to our personal desires for self-fulfillment; if prophecy is not leading us to be a changed people, who place the other’s needs above ours; if prophecy is not leading us to show in our own selves, to take up in our own bodies and as churches the announcement that Jesus is indeed running the world – that the poor are friends with the rich, the friendless find friends, the rejected find a new faithful family all through the active work (not just talk) of Christians, please don’t call it prophecy. Any other name will suffice.