Skip to main content

Prophecy

             We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (II Peter 1:19-21)

 

“I can see that you are a prophet.” (John 4:19 b)

 

Prophesy: the ability to receive a divinely inspired message and deliver it to others in the church.

 

            I used to believe that prophecy had to do with foretelling the future. That made the comment by the woman at the well confusing to me. Jesus hadn’t told her anything about the future. He told her about her past and present. It came as a relief to me when I learned that prophecy is “just” receiving and delivering a divinely inspired message. The future may be the topic, but it doesn’t have to be. At the same time, false prophecy in the form of declaring the future incorrectly (which would prove the message was not from God no matter how much the prophet thought it was) was a capital offense.

            While I’ve wished for this gift from God, I’ve also always been wary of it because it is such a great responsibility. I’ve also been more than a little dubious about others claiming to be speaking a word from God, and that’s one of my issues with the book I’m reading. He wrote of several instances where he delivered “prophetic messages.” I struggle with his characterization because there’s nothing in what he says to verify that he’s heard from God or that God told him to say something. On the other side, while the prophets in the Old Testament regularly said, “Thus says the Lord,” he doesn’t quote himself saying anything similar.

            I think the writer in question may be from a fairly casual culture about such things, but it makes me uneasy. Today’s first passage makes clear it that it’s dangerous to declare something to be a prophetic word. Prophecy is not given as a matter of human will. I suspect we are more likely to deliver a prophetic message without recognizing that it is one. And I think that’s the best sort of prophetic message because we won’t pat ourselves on the back for doing something we  don’t realize we’re doing. Quoting Scripture is probably the one time we can feel reasonably certain that we are giving a prophetic message.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more