So you have a blank page in your
notes, and what are you putting on the
top as a title?
What is prophetic or the prophetic call?
Something like that.
You want to identify, feel for, this great
phenomenon.
So what would you say would necessarily be
a required attribute or characteristic of one purporting
to be a prophet?
A respect for words and for their meaning.
He's not going to be one given to
a gift of gap.
He will not be loquacious, the word that
I used this morning, about God with frequent
prophesying.
So his word will be judicious, timed, reserved,
he will be circumspect, he'll be very careful
about what issues from him.
But not only will he be careful about
the content of the words, but also the
manner in which they're being expressed.
He will not give himself to soulish exuberance,
or raise the decibels in order to sound
more compelling.
The moment that he condescends to any device
by which he thinks it to be made
more impressive, or to sound more authoritative, by
effecting a certain tone of voice or appearance,
he's ipso, null, in fact, false.
So it has to be the most stringent
avoidance of flesh, the most careful avoidance of
any manipulative thing to enhance his prophetic impression.
That means that the weight of the word
will rest entirely upon the one who gives
it.
It will not be something enhanced by some
authority in his personality, or some winsomeness, or
some pseudo-anointing.
The word itself, and the authority of him
who has given it, even if it's spoken
in a mild monotone, will be sufficient to
convey it.
He does not need to enhance his speaking.
And that one who will, and seeks with
devices or such externalities, is by definition false.
So there's a real purity of soul.
The authority has got to be intrinsic.
That means that he's not one likely to
speak often, but when he does, it commands
a hearing.
We know that it's not a man giving
an opinion.
And so often in my own experience, and
I don't want to draw extensively from that
as if I'm a representative, I don't even
know about my own identity, but I will
say on the issue of Israel especially, I'm
not giving you an opinion.
I say to the congregation, what you're hearing
from me is not an opinion.
It's a perspective that I have by virtue
of the office that I enjoy.
And you need to distinguish between a man
giving an opinion and a man speaking out
of the authority of his office.
And I'm saying that what I'm now doing
is that.
Spit out your guts if you don't like
it.
Or you're faced now with the issue.
If it's not an opinion, the man says
he's speaking out of his office.
Does he in fact have that office?
Can we discern it?
Can we recognize it?
Can we sense the authority and the truth
of it?
Even if it's a perspective that is in
opposition to what we have all along believed.
Because almost invariably the prophet is going to
bring a perspective that is in collision with
that which has been up till now accepted
as normative.
It's not something that's going to be fitted
in alongside.
It's going to displace and utterly put aside
that which up till now has been received
as being the respected truth.
So that's to say that people will bristle
because it's insecure to be moved out of
the place of your conviction.
You believed it so long, it's been so
trusted, everybody else seems to subscribe to it.
And now you're hearing something that puts that
perspective in great question.
And even invalidates it.
You have to put it aside.
So there's an issue of security.
So for these reasons, prophets are resistive.
And in the last analysis, if they are
really threatening, they're killed.
The way to avoid the threat of a
prophet's word is to remove the prophet himself.
So almost invariably in the history of Israel's
prophets, they end with a death sentence.
Isaiah, according to legend, was sown in half.
Others were stoned.
So the prophet is a threatening phenomenon.
But if he delights in being a threat,
he's in question.
If he takes a personal delight and enjoys
being one who upsets the apple pot and
brings attention to himself as being the expose,
the radical purveyor of another truth, he's disqualified.
He cannot take any delight in upsetting the
apple pot.
In fact, really, he ought to have a
compassionate heart for the unrest of this quiet
that he will cause by his speaking.
He's not enjoying this.
I don't know that you'll ever find a
prophet who enjoys being one.
And those who enjoy it are at fault.
Those who run after it and want to
be it, their very excitement and their romantic
notion of what it means already indicates that
they're phony.
It's not a pleasant calling.
It means rejection.
And if it means that, how does the
man bear it?
Because two of us is not affected by
being rejected.
By being rejected, not by strangers, but by
those whom we know.
And even those who are close to us.
And the very church to which we're devoted
will have in it pockets of resistance that
the fiercest time that I've had in recent
memory was right here at Ben Israel.
With men from out of our own Ben
Israel community opposing me with such, what should
I say, alacrity, such vehemence that I was
astonished.
But had to bear it.
So you can say this, a prophet has
a history with God.
And it's a history in how to bear
rejection.
A man has to be dealt with.
Someone, our brother quoted this morning from Isaiah,
you'll fresh mountains and reduce them to chaff.
I don't know how many times people have
come to me and said, Art, I have
a word for you from the Lord.
Yes?
That's that word.
You'll reduce mountains.
You'll be a, what is that word?
Freshing instrument.
I smile.
Yeah, but what you don't know is that
I need myself first to be fresh.
If I'm going to be an instrument to
fresh others, I must myself first be fresh.
Because there are vagaries of soul and dispositions
that linger that need to be dealt with
so that when the freshing comes, it's a
pure activity and there's no vested interest or
satisfaction for the freshing instrument.
He's not enjoying it.
He's not getting even.
These things are so deep in our psyche.
So I'm saying all that to say this.
A prophet by necessity must have a history
in God of feelings, maybe even of an
excruciating kind that if he were only a
teacher, he would not be subject to that.
Because in teaching, there's a certain impersonality.
It's the word, the exposition of the word.
But in the prophetic exposition, the dimension of
the man himself is so integral to what
is expressed so that the man himself therefore
must be sifted, must be refined, must be
dealt with, must be purged, purified and not
just once, but often, if not frequently.
And that's why, more often than not, you're
not going to find prophets that are happily
married.
Pastors, yes.
Teachers, yes.
Prophets, rarely.
Because their marriage itself is part of that
refinement, part of that schooling, part of that
personal dealing.
And on top of that, the prophet needs
to come into the realm of God's own
heart and his own grief.
So if Israel has been unfaithful, apostate, or
gone whoring after other gods, often, in my
observation, prophetic men who are especially called to
the burden of Israel need in some measure
to know God's grief in their own life
and experience.
They've got to know infidelity, unfaithfulness, things like
that.
Who's the great prophet that married a prostitute?
Hosea.
So the prophet is not some impersonal bearer
of the Word.
He's relating the thought of God's heart, the
mood of God's speaking.
He's got to be in sync with God.
He's got to be aligned in a way
that few of us know.
And how does he come to that?
It will not be conspicuous.
It will not be visible.
The deep history of men like that is
hidden.
It's behind drawn shades and the interior life
of the man that very few know, but
he alone.
But of necessity, there must be such a
dimension.
So we need to respect that and be
in sympathy and prayer in the bringing forth
of these rare men who not only will
express for us the thought and heart of
God, but communicate it in the right mood,
the right tone, the urgency, the note of
God's heart, the disposition.
How does he know that?
Is this some kind of mechanical operation that
the prophetic man has an auditory sense and
he picks up the Word of God and
then he just communicates it?
That would be almost a travesty.
He picks up the valences.
He intuits the sense of God's disposition.
He shares the grief, the mood, the heart
of God and communicates that.
It's not just taking the Word and expositing
it, it's interpreting it.
He's communicating it in a way that God
intends that we should understand it in the
context of what our present life is and
our future.
He not only warns of judgment, more often
than not his Word is the judgment.
And we see that in many instances, maybe
the most conspicuous would be Isaiah 6.
Go and tell.
Who shall go for us?
Whom shall we send?
Send me.
Okay, you want to go?
Go and tell.
Say to this people, your ears shall be
stopped, your heart shall be heavy, you'll not
be able to understand, you'll not be able
to believe, you'll not be able to be
saved.
Your word will judge that nation.
How do you like to bring a word
of judgment?
We like to bring a word of encouragement
and receive a pat on the back and
a chuck under the chin.
Oh, thank you.
But how do you like to be the
bearer of a word that judges?
A judgment, by the way, under which the
nation of Israel stands to this day.
It has not been alleviated nor altered to
this day.
They are still under the judgment that came
with Isaiah's Word and he's the bearer of
it.
Who can bring a word that will offend?
Who does not need to be welcomed, applauded,
gratified?
Thank you, brother.
I needed to hear that.
Who wants to be despised for bringing a
severe word that judges?
But for reasons of many kinds, I think
that it's a man's calling.
Not the least of the reasons will be
that a woman would be much more sensitive
to being rejected, would be much less disposed
to bring hard things.
The nature itself, the feminine nature itself would
militate against the severity that a prophet needs.
So I would say for that and for
other reasons it would be essentially a man's
calling.
If we look at Isaiah chapter 1, maybe
we should look at it.
There is an indictment of the nation of
the severest kind.
But the heck of it is that it
comes before the nation sees itself in this
condition.
The prophet stands in a kind of timeless
place.
He's not limited by the present moment.
He's not indifferent to it, but he's not
fixed in things as men presently see them.
He sees beyond.
He sees the thing, the reality to which
the nation is moving in its apostasy and
will come to that condition, but he speaks
of it as if it already exists.
He's in a special dimension of time by
which the thing that is impending in future
is already presently very real with him.
If it were not that, he could not
proclaim it.
So he's crying out and giving the nation
a picture of the condition into which it's
moving in time that if they repent of
it, they need not face it.
But he's got to project that image so
vividly that it frightens them to the place
of repentance.
In a word, he's got to verbally bring
a reality that has not yet come.
He's got to see a reality that no
one else sees, but he sees prophetically as
future, and he sees it as imminent.
That is to say, it's at the door.
It's threatening.
And he not only sees it, but he
has an ability to proclaim it in such
a way as to communicate the urgency to
those who are unaware that they stand in
such a place of jeopardy.
This isn't bad.
Are you guys writing this down?
It's good stuff.
That's a remarkable calling that a man can
see and articulate with such a reality those
things that have not yet come to pass,
which if he does not articulate them, they
will come to pass and those who would
have benefited from his warning will suffer the
consequence.
That is to say, he's a final grace
from God to avoid the judgment that he
sees as imminent, and for which he gives
warning by the vividness of what he sees
and his ability to describe it.
And that's what we see here in Isaiah
1.
It's the vision that Isaiah saw concerning Judah
and Jerusalem.
And he cries out, I have nourished and
brought up children, they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner, the ass its
master's crib.
But Israel does not know, my people do
not consider sinful nation.
Do you pick up on these A-H's
or O-H's?
This is a gut, a solar plexus cry.
The distress, the note of sorrow, anticipating what
will be the consequence if the nation continues
in this condition.
Sinful nation that is not even aware of
its present condition, because we learn as we
go on in the chapter, they're still performing
sacrifices.
They're still performing the mosaic requirements of worship
and think that by that they're placating and
serving God.
But he sees the nation as sinful, laden
with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that
are corruptors.
They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked
the Holy One of Israel into anger, they
have gone backward.
Why should you be stricken anymore?
You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole
heart faint from the sole of the foot
even to the head.
There's no soundness in it, but wounds and
bruises, putrefying sores that have not been closed,
neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
Your country is desolate.
Your cities are burned with fire.
He's speaking of something as if it presently
is, because that's how vividly he sees the
future thing as now.
Your land, strangers devoured in your presence, and
it is desolate, is overthrown by strangers.
And the daughter of Zion is left as
a cottage in a vineyard, a shack, as
a lodge in a garden of cucumbers of
the seed city.
So here's a beautiful picture of the detail
in which the prophet foresees Israel's coming devastation
and judgment because the whole nation is laden
with iniquity and sin and does not know
it.
So they've got to receive the word of
the prophet as being definitive and descriptive of
the truth of their condition despite any corroborating
evidence subjectively.
You following that?
As they look over their situation, they're prospering,
their vats are full, their barns are full,
the animals are increasing, they're performing worship, they're
doing all the necessary, they don't see the
truth of their condition.
Only this man is saying that what you
think is the truth of your condition is
an illusion.
From the top of your head to the
soles of your foot, you're full of sores
that need to be mollified and bound up.
So the nation is faced with a conundrum,
a predicament.
What has the greater weight?
The objective things that we see that tend
to confirm us in our comfort and our
safety zone and the status quo or this
strange freaky man who sees us as sinful,
full of sores that need to be bound
up and at the very threshold of terrible
devastation and judgment.
And he's all alone.
He's not a committee.
He's one man.
But that one man is speaking in behalf
of God and sounding a warning contrary to
every objective and subjective estimation that people employ.
And they have a choice to make whether
they continue in their false security on the
basis of that which they naturally observe and
feel about themselves and their self-satisfaction or
heed the voice of this strange man as
being the word of God and warning.
This is the classic prophetic dilemma as the
issue of the salvation of the nation if
he's heeded.
And more often than not, he's not heeded.
He's rejected.
But he's got to speak with a certain
credibility that is compelling because everything stands in
opposition to things as he sees them and
proclaims them.
He alone is representing another view and has
the audacity to say that that view is
very God's.
So look, we're not told much about the
preparation of such men that when Elijah comes
on the scene of history and confronts Ahab
as the Lord my God lives before whom
I stand it shall not rain nor dew
but according to my word.
He's already a tempered, seasoned vessel.
But his history, how he came to that
is not given us.
It's hidden.
But you can believe that it has taken
place.
These men do not grow on trees because
they have to stand alone in bringing an
unwelcome word with great courage and be able
to receive rejection and maybe even the risk
of their own lives.
They have had to be prepared at the
hand of God.
So I'll say this.
We should not be sophomoric, adolescent and seek
such a calling or having been hinted that
we might have it be active in our
own fulfillment of it.
Because many purported young prophet ruins himself by
his self-conscious attempt to fulfill his own
calling.
If it's the calling of God let God
fill it and don't you go out of
your way to seek to it.
So this self-consciousness of being prophetic is
the undoing maybe of some valid candidates who
are immature about it and think that they
have an obligation themselves to become the thing
to which they're called.
He who called you will fulfill it if
indeed it's your calling.
If you're a real candidate, what you should
welcome is everything that comes from the hand
of God against your flesh.
You welcome all of the work of the
cross.
You want that ax to be laid to
the root.
You want the Lord to deal not only
with the root, the branches but what do
they call the tendrils of the subtlety of
those delicate roots that permeate the soul.
So that would be welcomed.
But a self-conscious attempt to be the
prophet is destructive of being the prophet.
So in a certain sense, isn't it remarkable
as profound as that calling is and men
knew themselves to be that there's ironically at
the same time a call for an un
-self-consciousness about it and a certain kind
of what naturalness without this preoccupation I'm the
prophetic man.
So if anything, such a man has got
to be real and any affectation, any self
-consciousness is already a step in the wrong
direction.
So God is eminently real.
God is the source of reality and the
prophet because of the measure of the reality
of his own soul is in the place
to sense and pick up the disposition of
God in his word so it's a remarkable
thing to have a calling of an ultimate
kind and to conduct yourself with a certain
kind of selflessness and artlessness that art has
got to be artless Did I say what
I'm saying?
Because if you're self-conscious and how am
I affecting, what impression am I giving it's
self-defeating.
Someone said that we shouldn't look for prophets
because they wear camel's hair clothing and are
radically conspicuous as wilderness prophets but be able
to recognize them when they wear free peace
suits and in no way does their apparel
or their awkward behavior in any way indicate
their call that in every way they are
natural, unaffected men because if they're not then
it detracts from the truth of their call
but when he says, woe is me, I'm
undone, I live in the midst of a
people of unclean lips, he's experiencing the truth
of the condition of the nation as being
his own and if he did not have
that identification, that union that awareness, he would
not be the mouthpiece of the nation so
he cannot be in a place that is
superior to the people that he's addressing but
he has to come to them in the
strickenness and brokenness that I share with you
that condition and we see that beautifully in
chapter 9 of Daniel when Daniel cries out,
we have sinned against you Daniel identifies with
the sins of the nation though he himself
is personally impeccable in his righteousness and his
relationship with the Lord he identifies with the
fallenness of the nation and God hears that
prayer so that's a remarkable ambivalence that the
prophet is called to holiness to a walk
with God of an exacting kind and yet
it cannot be the basis for a sense
of superiority over and above the condition of
his own people isn't that a paradox, that
Paul himself says I'm less than the least
of all saints he's not some kind of
false modesty of a self-effacing kind Paul
really believed that about himself and it was
true about him not just as the persecutor
but as the chief apostle he was less
than the least of all saints because the
greater that you grow in the depth of
your spirituality the more you're aware of the
truth of your condition that you're less than
the least so this is a remarkable contradiction
where you're called to holiness to walk with
God against the flesh and that you welcome
the ruthless dealings of God against your flesh
and yet you're called to identify with this
information not in some kind of symbolic way
alone but authentically as much as Jesus entered
the waters of baptism in Jordan and John
said what are you doing here and Jesus
said it's needful that all righteousness be fulfilled
I need to be baptized I need to
enter the waters of repentance and judgment I
myself am exempt from all sin but I
cannot be to Israel its savior if I
do not identify with the nation in her
condition that's true of all prophets see how
ambivalent how contradictory that is called to holiness
and yet to identify with the nation in
its worst condition I'm in the midst of
a people of unclean lips and I myself
am a man of unclean lips if Isaiah
did not see that and truly cry out
over that he would never have been sent
in fact we want to distinguish between true
and false prophets as is revealed in the
way in which they handle the subject of
Israel merely to applaud the present state and
desire its success and to pray for the
peace of Jerusalem though it's pleasing to hear
does not get at the mystery of Israel
as is propounded by Paul which is an
apocalyptic view that what has if they're falling
away has brought blessings to Gentiles what shall
their return be but life from the dead
that there's a death, there's a devastation there's
a judgment through which Israel must pass before
it shall be life for the nations so
I'll repeat this in different ways the issue
of the cross has got to be central
to the perception of all reality there must
be a term for this in Latin the
essential requirement both of the prophet and the
apostle is the recognition of the centrality of
the cross as the very underlying principle of
all reality understand that?
that it's the axiom of God that presupposes
everything it touches everything in the last analysis
the issue of all issues is the issue
of the cross even before the advent of
the cross Isaiah would know it in his
spirit Jeremiah, the prophets that the cross has
somehow to do with the necessity for a
suffering and a death that precedes a glory
a death that precedes a resurrection that there's
something foundational to all reality to which no
issue is exempt and no prophet is exempt
and the Lord himself was not exempt and
the nation is not exempt the false prophets
want a successful Israel without the necessity for
the cross they don't want an apocalyptic scenario
they don't want a suffering, they don't want
a time of Jacob's trouble they don't want
an Ezekiel 37 in which men are called
out of their graves they want a gradual
progressive amelioration of Israel's condition that is to
say an improvement which is another word for
humanism it's a cross avoiding thing so I'm
just making a flat out statement that the
cross in what it means, what it implies
is at the foundation of all reality and
in my own experience in 42 years of
the faith no matter what the issue in
the body of Christ or marriage or Israel's
situation if you scratch deeply enough in the
last analysis what I always see invariably is
the issue of the cross cross avoidance is
probably the heart of the church's present melancholy
condition we are cross avoiding we avoid suffering
we don't like calamity or devastation or judgment
we want success this desire for Israel's success
as the present state is only a projection
by charismatics who want a comparable success in
their own present life in their own religion,
in their own institutions in their own churches,
in their own profession and marriage and so
on success but what is at the heart
of the cross not the issue of success
but the issue of the glory of God
forever the issue of the cross as axiomatic
and central to all of his seeing but
that in the moment of the delivery of
the word of God he is experiencing the
cross the prophetic message in its delivery is
a cross experience it's a form of dying
you're looking into the face of rejection, of
hostility and you're called to speak something that
you know is calculated to offend and yet
you're required to bring it so it's a
death cross experience in the obedience of prophetic
delivery and it's not just subscribing to the
truth of the cross ideologically it's experiencing it
in the excruciating moments of your obedience that
I've had personally to bear for 40 years
is that my marriage is not a textbook
classic happy, successful marriage well then how then
can he occupy this office if his marriage
is not this and so not only is
it a stigma and a reproach to bear
but it's one that cannot be answered and
you just simply have to bear it but
you know that somehow it's intrinsic and necessary
to the calling but those who are outside
that calling that are seen only mechanically and
have this expectation that men who are in
positions of leadership should be the exemplars of
the successful marriage you can't answer them you
have only to suffer the reproach and that
suffering itself is part of the prophetic burden
so not only is the cross the experience
of the man in this proclamation it's his
experience of the reproaches that he bears in
his calling but it's also the power of
his proclamation something is issued when it comes
forth out of death that carries a power
that is needful than a communication of the
unwelcome message if you're willing to bear the
reproach and bring the unwelcome word and suffer
it something issues in a power that was
released by what Jesus bore at the cross
so we need to factor in that if
the bearing of the message is not itself
a cross experience it likely will not have
the concomitant power anointing confirmation to register that
message upon the hearers so who can bear
the cross like that as reproach as experience
as part and parcel of being formed at
God's hand the prophet has the most intimate
knowledge of the cross and in his moments
of ultimate obedience he's again required to experience
the cross in his faithfulness and proclamation and
because he will the word will have a
power and an authority that it would otherwise
lack but the cross is central so one
of the ways of distinguishing true and false
prophets is to sense or see to what
degree are these men knowledgeable are they in
the realm of the cross have they made
themselves open in tender days for the dealings
of God, the requirements of God, the siftings
of God or are they insulated, protected and
kept can you sense in meeting a saint
the degree to which the cross has been
part and parcel of his or her life
do you have to hear the actual testimony
or can you sense from the personality the
demeanor, the way in which that person conducts
himself, even the voice what kind of history
that person has with the cross you know
that there's a measure of suffering in that
life and you don't need to know the
particulars you can intuit and sense that this
one has such a history such a relationship
and I would just assume that we ought
to discern that in men who purport to
be prophetic and if it's missing then there's
something telltale that's gone, their play acting a
role is itself ipso facto a pretty conclusive
evidence that such a one is not a
prophet if he were the thing that would
be most alive in his spirit is that
which is most pertinent to the church in
this hour and I can't think of any
subject more pertinent to the church than the
mystery of Israel as Paul propounds it so
the absence of that consideration is itself an
evidence that would put in question the truth
of that calling so often I will run
out of my way to hear men who
are called the prophets or the oracle of
the hour to hear what they're saying and
what I hear more often than not is
a little homily they'll give a little bible
sketch in order to get the word out
of the way that they can go more
directly into the things which the people have
come the personal prophecy but I do not
hear oracular statements if you're an oracle of
the hour then the oracles of God should
be forthcoming we need to hear the weighty
statements of God pertinent to the hour and
for me that has got to center in
the issue of Israel as God would have
us to perceive it so I've said in
many places to those Christian Zionists who applaud
the present state of Israel and desire its
success that not to see the issue of
Israel apostolically and prophetically as mystery and the
necessity for a time of Jacob's trouble and
a sifting, a dying, a resurrection is not
to see it you're as much opposed to
God in your humanistic applause of present Israel
as those who might be patently antisemitic and
opposed to Israel that the only true definitive
position is that which is in agreement with
what Paul states in Romans 9-11 and
that can only come by revelation Paul said
I would not have you to be ignorant
of this mystery it's a mystery that they
have not apprehended or been apprehended by we
have to ask why and that they're not
even chafed for the inability to understand that
mystery to just let it go by is
itself a statement but it may well be
that the mystery cannot be revealed to those
who are proud who are hostile, who have
an antagonism toward Israel, toward the Jew who
do not want to consider that there's a
national destiny that they don't deserve it any
of those attitudes would ipso facto nullify anyone
for the communication of the mystery and therefore
the ability themselves to express it but it
ought to be the thing that's looked for
the Lord, as we mentioned a few days
ago the Lord's calling for me to Germany
as the nation key to Israel's final redemption
living in Denmark and having frequent occasions to
be in Germany, but silent so that the
Lord gave the burden years in advance of
any prospect of expressing it in which something
had to be contained and not expressed so
for example the prophetic man will go to
a public meeting and he'll see horrendous things
of a carnal kind that need to be
identified or rebuked but he has not as
liberty to address them so the spirit of
the prophet is subject to the prophet that
is to say, merely because he sees something
is not ipso facto invitation to express it
he's got to wait for the moment of
God's choosing something like Paul in Acts 16
that the moniachal women went for days crying
out, these are the men of the Most
High God who want us the way of
salvation, and this did she many days and
Paul never said a word, but at a
certain given moment, Paul turned and commanded that
spirit to come out of her, and it
did and that sent him to prison, to
beatings, and to confinement so Paul as apostle
prophet he could have brought a rebuke, he
could have attended to that spirit at an
earlier time but he had no release, it's
something like watchman knee, lifting his arm to
knock on a door and the life is
out of his arm, the spirit of the
prophet is subject to the prophet, shows there's
a tension that a man has to weigh
up and to know when he's at liberty
to express and to contain, and that the
moment of execution is critical he's not to
do it because he's irritated was Paul bugged
by this woman with a mocking demoniacal voice
these men are the servants of Most High
was there some impulse to shut her up
long before but he dared not indulge that,
there came a moment in the timing of
God when it was right so a prophet
is one who can keep his spirit he's
not subject to impatience he's not moved upon
by by factors that will relieve him of
tension or anxiety he doesn't need an immediate
relief he's not the now generation he can
hold something and contain it that's a discipline
but most of us, we hear something right
away we need to express it and we're
instant so that means that the man himself
is tempered, and the issue of his relief
is not the issue, the issue is the
issue of obedience in the moment of God's
timing that the purposes of God be served
and not that he be alleviated of a
personal tension so again, what's the word for
all this I would say maturity, the prophet
is a tempered vessel with the history in
God by which his impatience has been dealt
with he has gone through situations where he
has seen things that he had every impulse
to address and maybe the Lord had allowed
him and then wrapped his knuckles by showing
him it was a premature thing and he
has learned through an experience like that to
wait upon the Lord and the Lord allows
that tension of freedom where the prophet will
exercise himself in obedience we're talking about not
just the calling of a single man we
need to be reminded we're talking about the
calling of the church can you imagine the
church that comes to this maturity this selflessness,
this ability to maintain a control and does
not act out of impulse for the moment
because it brings an immediate relief it does
not need immediate relief it can bear a
tension that is yet unresolved but what characterizes
our present Christianity is that the one meeting
has got to be all that people have
got to be sent home happy you don't
send them home where they're rattled and they've
been shaken and faced with a new dilemma
and it's not resolved for them in the
first hearing they have to go home and
brood over to come back but the tendency
of our present Christianity is to bring immediate
satisfaction this is the now generation you get
it all at one time but the prophetic
man can wait he can live with something
yet unanswered with unresolved tension and not come
apart at the seams knowing there will come
a time when that resolution will come when
you come to a paradox in the faith
when you come to a seeming contradiction that
rattles your cage that threatens your faith and
there's no immediate answer, hold tight wait upon
the Lord and sure enough however long it
takes that when that resolution comes and clarity
comes it's a door of revelation into depths
of God that would not otherwise have been
seen so I'm saying all that to say
this are you prophetic sufficiently to bear the
tension of things yet unresolved how about an
unresolved marriage an unresolved family an unresolved situation
in the church a tension for which many
people will leave rather than bear it because
they can't stand the tension my definition of
a saint is one who bears the tensions
of the faith and does not insist upon
an immediate relief can wait upon the Lord
for when his answer comes it will be
an entree into a dimension of revelation and
glory, worth waiting for we are guilty of
contributing to an atmosphere in the church that
desires novelty diversion, excitement we want to hear
a thus saith the Lord we want some
kind of radical pronouncement because there's a kind
of boredom that prevails in the church for
which we want uplift what is that saying?
we can't live with monotony we can't live
with the ordinariness of life it has to
be relieved by an excitement that encourages that
soulish soul to bring something of a thus
saith the Lord that the Lord hath not
said so there's a requirement for the church
to be able to bear monotony I remember
when we first came out here and our
kids wanted to go to the shopping mall
in those days we didn't have a car
in every garage we had maybe one or
two cars for the entire community and every
ounce of gas had to be waived because
of our poverty you couldn't just go into
town and so I would say to the
kids of those who want their goods what
do you want to go in for?
what do you need to get?
I don't need to get anything there, I
just want to see the merchandise I'm bored
by looking at the same faces every day
I need to break the monotony I want
to get out there for the diversity so
we're much more sensual the world is schooling
us for novelty, for diversion, for distraction for
excitement we don't know how to live in
the constancy of the everyday and to delight
in its ordinariness and to find how very
precious and special it is it does not
have to be alleviated by pseudo-excitements we
need to enjoy the saints probe them and
receive the depths of what is in each
vessel so there's a remarkable connection with the
condition of the church and the condition of
its priests or its prophets we reflect and
react upon one another as I'm saying, we've
created an atmosphere that encourages the excitement of
false things so we're guilty for affecting that
atmosphere and what we're betraying in the last
analysis is an inadequate knowledge of God as
if we can assume that God does all
that much speaking and in fact when those
prophecies come what in fact is being said
that is more than commonplace that is more
than just matter of fact kinds of things
that need not be articulated why would God
go through the process supernaturally of speaking inanities
and yet no one criticizes it, no one
takes it to task no one raises the
question, is this God or is this man
and because we don't raise the question we're
allowing something to go forth as being valid
which is not valid, and not the least
of the consequences is to dull us so
that the next time we're less able to
hear God and more disposed to the thing
that is false so there's a certain obligation
for the church to keep its heart with
all diligence and to be careful about false
prophecy and things that emanate from the souls
of men rather than the spirit and to
weigh them and that the atmosphere of the
church is such that if it is false,
if it has issued out of the soul
we can bring that correction in the moment
and the person who gave it will not
come apart at the seams she, likely, or
he will even be more grateful for being
corrected so we're diligent to keep an environment
of truth in which correction can come to
keep us from moving in the realm of
soul and no one comes apart at the
seams for that reason or is embarrassed, quite
the contrary we count ourselves privileged that we
live in an atmosphere of truth, of honesty
and love in which those things can be
publicly expressed and be received as being very
grace and very love without offense because we
know it's coming, the correction is coming from
a brother or a sister or leaders who
desire our best interest, they're not being malicious
they're not fingering a personality that's supposed to
make her an object of public ridicule can
you imagine an atmosphere like this?
this is the church, this is the prophetic
church and in the absence of that, we're
letting so much go by that is spurious,
questionable if not outright false and it lessens
the whole credibility of the church itself our
basic problem?
we don't know God as we ought if
we knew him better, we know he's not
all that loquacious he's not all that talkative
he's not all that chatty he's not given
to bring predictable statements that add nothing to
what we already understand so that when he
speaks, it's unique, it's distinct it's born of
the moment of a radical kind and we're
in a place to hear and to appreciate
the rare pronouncements of God that are not
all that frequent and we don't need that
frequency because a lot of it is just
confirmation or fleshly security that because he's speaking,
we know he knows us or we're loved
why don't we know that we're loved without
these supposed confirmations why don't we know, as
I said at the end of the prayer
time, that we are accepted in the beloved
we don't have to run to receive a
personal prophecy to know that God knows us
and that we're loved there's a deep insecurity
in the church we don't know as we
ought to know and because of that insecurity
we're guilty of participating in the atmosphere of
unreality and pseudo-prophecy and novelty and excitements
that lessen the whole quality, the character of
the church, its witness and robs us from
being the witness to Israel for which they
wait as much as he foresees the future
judgment has a sense of the things that
are imminent that are at the door he
also sees the past he has as much
a grasp of the past as he has
of the future that is to say, the
issue of covenant God's historic faithfulness to Israel
the whole deep tradition that the nation has
forgotten is alive in his spirit so that
part of his function is not only to
communicate the immediacy of the future but to
bring the nation to the awareness of its
past that it doesn't lose its significant past,
its origin with God so he's a remarkable
man, standing between the past and the future
in a way that the church would otherwise
lose it in this little book, Gerhard von
Rad German Old Testament scholar speaking of the
prophets they are conscious of being placed inside
a historical continuum with wide perspectives over both
past and future within it, each prophet stands
as it were at the crossroads where God's
dealing with Israel have been almost stationary, suddenly
dramatically begin to move again the place in
which they raise their voice is a place
of supreme crisis, indeed almost a place of
death, insofar as the men of the period
of crisis were no longer reached by the
force of old appointments and were promised life
only as they turned to what was to
come all the prophets share a common conviction
that they are exactly at that turning point
in history which was crucial for the existence
of God's people this awareness of the past
what God has spoken, the covenants that he
has made the things that have been forgotten
are alive in the prophet's spirit and even
when he speaks of the things that are
present on future he's either expressing or intimating
that history, that past, that tradition to bring
the nation into the correct reassessment and awareness
of its own identity because there's something in
the national consciousness that forgets but for the
prophet this is alive so he has a
remarkable capacity for the past as well as
for the future you can almost say that
he will only be effective for the future
to the degree that he has a grasp
on the things that are past so there's
a place for that kind of prophetic remembrance
in such a way as to vividly bring
it to the recall of the nation that
tends to forget their God