The Preacher's Diary As Balaam set out on his journey with King Balak’s delegation, God was angry, ready to kill the greedy preacher. All the same, grace gave him one more chance, in case he hadn’t heard clearly enough. There would be a witness this time, any available witness, even if it was a beast. God found the prophet’s dumb donkey as first line, and an angel of death next, in case all the ‘warning’ road signs failed (Numbers 23:22-35).
Balaam was renowned for his power to pronounce blessings and curses. His words were so potent that kings considered them more powerful than all their armies, so they would usually put their trained soldiers in second place to the pronouncements of that great prophet. That was his CV, which attracted King Balak of Moab to hire him for the critical task of cursing the Israelites on their way from Egypt through his territory to their Promised Land.
1. The Uncommon Prophet
Like the lone lamp in the night, to which insect populations merrily flocked, Balaam was an internationally famed Old Testament prophet of God with a busy traffic of willing clients. He was a man so endowed that God and angels spoke with him freely and often. We might say that he had a hot line with Heaven. Unlike some of us, he did not need to go to asleep before God could get his attention in a dream or some other revelation. Like the clearness of a smooth mirror, he saw visions with his natural eyes open (Numbers 23:3-4). Unfortunately, this great prophet got seduced by his kingly clientele, by the material privileges that his office brought. He met one king the encounter with whom veered his path forever from the divine, until his name became a regrettable eternal metaphor for greed, for mercantile priesthood, for ministry that served the belly (2 Peter 2:15; Jude 1:11). His kind has not been uncommon in every generation.
Some crisis in the fulfilment of prophecy comes not only from prophecy missing its season but also from prophecy missing its station. If prophecy specific to Mr A were enforced on Mrs B, one would get fulfilment and other disappointment. If prophecy meant for me were announced as if it had been meant for all, there would be widespread disappointment, not because the prophecy was false or fake, but because it had been sent to a ‘wrong address.’ If one does not listen well, it is possible for handlers of prophecy sometimes to give national interpretation to a personal prophecy, making it seem as if the prophet had lied, whereas the interpreters were to blame. It is the stormy crisis of prophets fleeing to Tarshish with a message meant for Nineveh (Jonah 1:1-4).
Every prophecy is not for every person; every prophecy is not for every season. A prophecy could be right and potent, but if it should miss its season, it loses validity and potency while retaining authenticity. That a prophecy is authentic does not mean that it is still valid. That a passport is genuine does not mean that it might not have expired. Expired drugs could be dangerous, so are some prophecies, applied indiscriminately without regard to their season. We can learn from expired prophecies, but not so safe to put all our weight on them. Unfortunately, not always do we take time to check expiry dates when we pick up essential items.
Apart from the fact that God could confront a people with prophetic possibilities, even opposite possibilities at times, God’s particular message could sometimes be so large that the human agent is able to see and report only a part of it. Paul acknowledged that fact when he remarked that “we know in part, and we prophesy in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9). By using the collective personal pronoun “we,” Paul included himself in that handicap, lofty though he was in relation to God and spiritual matters. If the mighty Paul should say so of the class, who then considers themselves so prophetically exceptional as to exclude themselves?
Can such negative possibilities emanate from a good God? Can opposite prophecies proceed from the same God? Does He contradict Himself? The answer is in the verses between verse 15 and verse 19, where God shows that whichever of the options becomes a possibility was going to be determined not by His omnipotence but by the lifestyle and choices of the people, whether they would obey Him or rebel. In other words, the power to ‘fulfil’ any of such prophetic options would not be divine determinism but human prerogatives. In other words, some future (not every future) is a set of undetermined possibilities any of which can be ‘created’ by the human choice. God respects the choices that earthlings make in their space (1 Samuel 8:4-7; Psalm 115:16), which explains why He once lamented thus over Israel, without interfering,
Of the four divine options presented in two mutually opposite sets in Deuteronomy 30:15, two are positive (“life and good”) and two are negative prophecies (“death and evil”). Can opposite prophecies emanate from the same God? Does God contradict Himself? Is God so unsure of the future as to leave so wide a window open? Is He not in control of the world? Four verses later, in verse 19, the earlier list of four options is extended with the addition of four more possibilities.
Can God truly say something to one person different from what He says to another person about the same matter? Would it still be God when His prophets seem to be at variance in their declarations on the same subject? Can God be so uncertain of what to do with a nation as to leave an open door of multiple (sometimes opposite) options? Are some prophecies so determined that no prayers may change them, and others variable, so that they might be amended by human response?
