Month: September 2023

4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.  

5 Awake, ye drunkards, and weep… 

Joel 1:4-5.

1. Able to Read the Signs 

A pattern of successive calamities is often indicative of a manipulating mystic finger.  When one disaster strangely follows another like a mischievous Olympic relay, we might be watching much more than mere coincidences.  Jesus was sorry not only for those with an ear adamantly deaf to the prophetic voice but also for those with hearts and eyes naïvely blind to prophetic signs (Matthew 16:2-3).  In other words, signs speak no less than voices – for those who can ‘hear,’ and the element of the prophetic could be as much in the voluminous voice of the fiery Elijah as in the mellowed tunes of Solomon the sage.  Sometimes, as redemptive pointers (for those that can discern), nature signs a signature in the landscape and in the patterns of life.

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The missions of God are sometimes not on carriages of gold.  Not always might a divine ride seem pleasant.  Sometimes the safest way might be through the dusty path; and ‘destination’ is not the same for everyone even on the same road.  If we should judge divine approval solely by the pleasures of the ride we could miss some rides to Paradise.  Jonah rode in the slimy belly of an underwater ‘machine’ that God had sent to transport him to Nineveh.  It was no pleasant ride.  He called it an “affliction,” and it made him cry (Jonah 2:2), yet it took him to Nineveh where destiny was forever to announce his name.  It is true, though, that if he had not missed his first call, if he had not chosen first to flee, he might have had a better ride on a calmer sea than under it in the belly of a fish. 

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Some prominent prophecies could be immediately annoying, being clearly at odds with the people and place to which they seem directed.  It therefore happens that the proclaimers of such prophecies get readily tagged as false or fake prophets because what they predicted didn’t come to pass as generally expected.

Sadly, sometimes, the error in such cases is not in the prophet but in the hearers who had assumed an interpretation because they felt sure that the prophecy was clearly understood.  A long time ago, a prophet called Zephaniah was there, as the following scripture would reveal:

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