DO I NEED A PROPHET?  (Part 2 of 2)

In case anyone would argue that Saul’s case cited above was the exception for a young convert, let us consider the case of an ‘older’ covert, even a prophet.  David heard the voice of God about a temple to be built for God.  In fact, he received express structural and operational details on the temple project.  However, he interpreted that to mean that he was to be the builder of the house whose vision he had seen. After all, he had the resources to do so.  He heard God right but erred in interpretation.  He was going to start the building project when God told him, through another prophet, that he had been wrong in his interpretation of what he had heard.  His son Solomon would be the builder, not he.  In other words, David, while he communicated with God and got such great details about the temple project, knew only ‘part’ of the whole of God’s infinite mind about that truth.  It took a later encounter to let him know that all he had heard, grandiose at it was, was only ‘part’ of a greater whole.

If David had stood as spiritually conceited as some of us who insist that we are the alpha and omega of all that there is to know about ourselves because we can fast and pray and read the Bible for ourselves, he might have wasted great resources building a mighty temple that God could not have inhabited, because it was stained with unacceptable blood.  David was humble enough to receive the fact that all he had known was only a part.  He gladly received the other ‘part’ when God sent it through Prophet Nathan.

David confessed, “God said unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for my name, because thou hast been a man of war, and hast shed blood” (1 Chronicles 28:3).  How did God ‘say’ that ‘unto him’?  The proud reader of that verse, if they read only that verse, could go away with the impression that David had had no need of a third-party prophet.  In a supplementary scripture we find that how God spoke ‘unto him’ on that crucial subject was through another prophet (2 Samuel 7:4-5).

Sometimes God might send a prophet to another, merely to prepare the way – whatever is the way that needs preparing.  In Mark 1:2 we read: “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.”  If we had heard a prophet before something came, we are more likely to be better prepared (Revelation 2:10; John 14:29; 16:4).  So, a third party does not only reinforce what had previously been said but also prepares the way for what is to come.

As a child, President Richard Nixon of America was encouraged by his mother to read the Bible, and she often told him or read to him the stories of Old Testament heroes.  One afternoon that Nixon still recalled, she told him that someday he would stand in a critical position to help the Jewish people.  She said further, “And when that day comes, you must do everything in your power.”  Looking back, we can say that she prophesied.  Hannah Milhous Nixon was a great prophetess that did not carry the title or ply her ‘ministry’ in the celebrated pulpits of her day but at her dining table and to the no less great ‘congregation’ of her household.

Many years later in 1973, that day came of which Richard Nixon’s mother had spoken, at a critical time when the young nation of Isreal was about to be wiped out by their Arab neighbours.  The president received a direct call at about 1.00 a.m. in the night from Golda Meir the fourth Prime Minister of Israel; the only female to have held that office so far.  She wanted urgent help from the United States.  It was a very risky thing to do, bordering on the economy of the United States, international relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, and his own political career that was shaky at the time.  As he sat at the edge of his bed considering the risks, he seemed to hear his mother’s voice in the caller’s voice.  That night, despite opposite opinions, he gave an executive order for the immediate supply of munitions and materials to the endangered nation of Israel.  Over 500 missions were flown in the airlift that night.  Isreal was saved.  That was the historic Yon Kippur War.  Richard Nixon had been prepared years before by a prophecy from his mother, not by any voice that came ‘directly’ to him at the time of his critical decision.  That woman might never have preached at a convention; never mounted the great pulpits of her day; never saved a fly in a mammoth Billy Graham kitchen crusade, but she saved a nation, like Esther: a sent messenger that prepared the way.  Truly, “Behold, I send my messenger … which shall prepare thy way ….”

God will speak to me about me, but when I am where I cannot hear Him, when I lack the maturity to receive a message, when I am likely to misinterpret the message, God will send a prophet.  It is not a sign of inferiority to receive that prophet’s word after duly judging it (1 John 4:1).  On the other hand, it could be spiritual pride to refuse to hear what God could be saying through another vessel simply because it is coming through another rather than directly from Heaven to me.  It is similarly incorrect to call them all spiritual babes who receive a word for themselves from a true prophet.  We might never know their condition when that prophet was sent or sought.  Sometimes prophets are sent (2 Samuel 12:1); sometimes they are sought (1 Kings 14:1-4).

The caution to repeat here is, discernment, because the devil not only exploits our ignorance but also our knowledge.  People are limited not only by what they don’t know but sometimes also by what they know much of, like the medical student who trembles at a little fever, conjuring sophisticated new names to label old feelings, while the village boy dismisses the same fever as a passing experience and goes to kick it off with friends in the evening football games.   Discernment is important, because there are false prophets, wrong prophets, fake prophets, lying prophets, infected prophets, and stubborn prophets.

While I would hear him who says he has a word, my antennas are usually up to receive or reject the word.  A pastor called a few days back.  He had had a worrisome dream or vision concerning one of my family members.  I listened.  At one point as he went on, I promptly stopped him.  The message was bordering on fear, not faith (Psalm 119:130; Romans 10:17).  I told him that whatever he saw was not me or my family member; but I thanked him for calling.  Then he tried to placate me by saying that I needn’t be worried because the matter had been “tackled in prayer.”  Why then did he have to call me, I wondered?

To have listened to that message through could technically have meant that I had ‘received’ it, only thereafter to start resisting it in pointless prayers when it begins to ‘manifest.’  I could not give the enemy that chance.  I rejected it outright and politely.  That was not the only time.  I won’t bore you with those, but let me tell an opposite story.  At a retreat of The Preacher early in the year in London, we were blessed to have had the ministry of Prophetess Sharon Stone, a woman of great respect.  After speaking, she felt led to prophesy on some of the participants one after the other, as she often did.  She got to me.  At one point in her prophesy, she paused strangely for nearly a minute, like the proverbial silence in heaven for half an hour at the opening of the seventh seal (Revelation 8:1).  Then she cited a Bible passage and connected it to ministry issues in my life.  She seemed to have been cautious with what she saw and what she had to say, which suggested that she realised it was a weighty word.  Those at the meeting who knew the part of my private story that she was struggling to address in that public space knew what the Spirit was saying, which the speaker herself did not naturally comprehend.  I received the word.  It strongly reinforced something crucial that I had hitherto felt certain about, and it also pointed a light into the future.  Discernment.

The Church at Antioch was one of the most spiritual and most vibrant in the early dispensation.  That church had teachers and prophets in the plural, as well as other great disciples. It was during one of their services that a prophecy came, calling Barnabas and Paul out for a further mission.  Crucial as that message was, it did not come to the recipients ‘directly’ but through third parties.  The message might merely have been confirming something that Barnabas and Paul already knew about themselves, but they got a word from a third party all the same.  So, sometimes the word we hear might give a direction or simply confirm one.

It could be personal pride, spiritual ignorance, scriptural shallowness, or all of them, to speak as if we were sufficient in ourselves and do not need another’s dependable voice even in matters that concern us.  Prophets have their place despite the abuse of their office by themselves and their clients.  Even when they might be expiring Old Prophets that once lied, they could be an only accessible truth at certain critical times (1 Kings 13:11-25).  Even when they were true prophets that later fell into a snare, we can receive the old truth and reject the new lie (Matthew 16:16-23).  Discernment.   In Scripture, individuals as well as rulers and their nations not only sought God privately (Genesis 25:22; Joshua 7:6-9:) but also inquired to prophets on the mind of God for them (1 Samuel 9:9; 2 Chronicles 16:7).

May we not be like the “rebellious people” who “say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things” (Isaiah 30:9-10).  May we not be like “the men of Anathoth” who threaten prophets and say, “Prophesy not in the name of the LORD, that thou die not by our hand” (Jeremiah 11:21), or like kings that put seers “in a prison house,” being enraged at their unflattering word from the Lord (2 Chronicles 16:10; Jeremiah 20:2; Matthew 14:3).

King Saul killed priests and threatened prophets when he was strong (1 Samuel 16:1-3).  Years later when he was weaker and needed their voice, they were no more reachable (1 Samuel 28:6).  In desperation, he slid down to a witch and died (1 Chronicles 10:13).  O Lord, guide our tender feet in Thy paths.  Amen.

Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper (2 Chronicles 20:20).  Amen.