Get Real Prophets

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 5:58 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Get Real Prophets 2015-06-03T17:58:47-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Only the open narcissist admits that he will not listen to criticism.. Interview anyone for a job and ask. Some will go as far as to claim they welcome criticism. Hire them and you discover they may welcome criticism, but mostly as a way to find their enemies. Most of us have decided that the people who disagree with us are not just wrong or do not understand our arguments. They must be fools, knaves, or mentally ill.

How else could they miss the obvious truths we have learned? I have yet to find a community from atheists to fundamentalists that does not risk talking to itself and predicting the inevitable triumph of all their schemes. We call a crusade and then decide God wills it. God is never defeated, but our vision often is. How can we avoid this problem?

Look! What I want to hear!

Good leaders surround themselves by prophets. What is a prophet? He is not a Harry Potter character who did well in Professor Trelawney’s divination class. Instead, a prophet speaks the Word of God to the present circumstance. This Word may have future implications and it may not. Generally, when I have received a message I thought was from God, whether in prayer or from another person, I place it “on the shelf.” I wait and see what God does and when He does what He said He would do (often in utterly unanticipated ways) until I can say “this is that” the prophet spoke.

I use reason, advice, personal intuition, and seek God’s Will to determine what to do. When they all line up, I am sometimes still wrong, but a great deal less often than when I skip any part of the process. No system is so fool proof that I cannot find a way to fool myself in it. The surest way to miss God is to find predictable prophets. These prophets (if they are clever) will tell you “hard words.” (“I think you are too hard on yourself.”) They are the prophetic equivalent of the humble-brag interview answering such questions such as: “What is your biggest weakness?” If your prophet predictably tells you that your direction is right, but you need to take a break: get a new prophet.

Sometimes God does say: “You work too hard” but if the Biblical record is any indication, God says this a lot less frequently than He tells us to go serve the poor, give up our stuff, and do uncomfortable things. The bad prophet tells you what you want to hear. The really bad prophet adds some good-bad news (“You need to lay off this job you hate. I know letting this burden go will be hard for you.” ) to the mix.

The Bible tells this story:

And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Please inquire for the word of the LORD today.” Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?” And they said, “Go up, for God will deliver it into the king’s hand.” But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not still a prophet of the LORD here, that we may inquire of Him?” So the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is still one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD; but I hate him, because he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil. He is Micaiah the son of Imla.” And Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say such things!” Then the king of Israel called one of his officers and said, “Bring Micaiah the son of Imla quickly!”

Micaiah comes and tells Ahab what he knows is true in his heart: he is doomed. Why does he keep the sycophant prophets for profit around him? He knows they lie, but he enjoys their lies. He senses that real prophet is correct, but real prophets are disruptive, uncomfortable, and break up the harmony of the prophetic meeting.

Everything was much more unified in the court until Micaiah came.

A sure sign I have gone awry is when all my counselers tell me what I want to hear with some good-bad thrown into the mix. “Go forth to victory!” they say when the glory of the Lord has actually departed. Of course, if you are a depressive as I am, then hearing good news from the prophets is also hard. Sometimes God is saying: “I love you. Go forward to victory.”

He may be saying that to you today.

How do you know? You will know when the same voice in your heart has said: “You blew it.” You will know when the word comes from someone (I think of men like my Dad) who have been willing to say hard truths to you in the past. You will know when reason and experience do not scream: “What’s wrong with you?”

The simplest way to know the Word of the Lord is that it often brings a “lack of peace” if by peace one means harmonious marching toward a goal, but it always comes to pass. When you have a prophet that has a track record of failure, you have a false prophet. If he has said “God wills it” when God did not, call for Micaiah.

There are real prophets out there. If you will learn to listen to them, they will cease to proclaim doom, because doom happens under the accumulated weight of following the advice of false prophets. By the time Ahab hears Micaiah, it is too late for Ahab.

God help us to find real prophets and not those who tell us what we wish to hear.

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