Prophecy is not an end unto itself

Prophecy is not an end unto itself, “For the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev.19.10).

• It can mean the witness that the Christian bears to Jesus.
• It can equally mean the witness that Jesus Christ bears to men.

This is the kind of double meaning of which the Greek language is capable. It may well be that John intended a double meaning; that we are not meant to choose between the meanings, but accept both of them.  If so, since true prophecy is the witness to Jesus, any witness to Jesus can be identified as prophecy, and thus prophecy is not limited to those who are designated “prophets” in a special sense. It is therefore the word spoken by God and attested by Jesus that the spirit takes and puts in the mouth of the Christian prophet. At the end of the first century there were many charlatans about, like the Jezebel of Thyatira who claimed to speak with authority in virtue of their prophetic gift, and the ecclesia was under the necessity of devising tests to distinguish the true from the false. John insists that his friends shall “test the spirits (those who claim the spirit of prophecy) to distinguish the true from the false” (1John 4: 1).

God reveals himself to his people in different ways.   In the past this was through the prophets or “holy men” until the appearance of his Son, Jesus Christ who is the word made flesh. His son poured out the Holy Spirit on the First Century Church and a community of “new age” prophets was born to guide and encourage believers through the crisis of AD 70. However, God also reveals himself through his written word in allegories, patterns, echoes and direct prophecies etc. This repetitive pattern of lesser and greater fulfilment (or already/not yet) may seem strange until we realise that two unchangeable forces interact in the development of history, (1) The nature of God and, (2) The nature of man. As both these forces are unchangeable, the same mistakes (from man’s end) are repeated. His fallible nature makes him predictable as he seldom chooses the good (unless he is that man=Jesus Christ) and therefore divine Biblical patterns repeat.

However, when it comes to interpretation, man’s unchangeable nature is also reflected in his propensity to self-delusion.  Sometimes this is simply “confirmation bias” we confirm what we want to believe and ignore contrary facts. We all do this to a degree and it is a mistake that all interpreters must guard against.  At other times, interpretation is deliberately skewed and misinterpreted – such a malicious interpretation is the mark of a “false prophet”.  Usually wrong interpretation is simply a case of ignorance and an unwillingness to accept correction or guidance.  Sometimes God deliberately obstructs an interpretation and the vision becomes “sealed” from the learned and unreadable by the ignorant because of their attitudes (Isa.29.11-14).

At other times people delude themselves such as in Jeremiah’s time with the proverbial saying:

“Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these” (Jeremiah 7:4).

This was the saying that the people comforted themselves with.  God has his temple in Jerusalem, He dwells amongst us – therefore we will not see any trouble. After all, did not Yahweh rescue Hezekiah and Jerusalem?  The pattern has been established and we will hold Yahweh to his pattern despite His warnings and our intransigent behaviour.

We could go on with many, many more historic examples, but are we any better at interpreting the prophetic word?  As a community we have been blessed with a unique understanding of first principles but we are sorely lacking in our understanding of the prophetic word. We have not progressed from milk to meat. A recent viewing of certain online prophecy day video’s leave me with a distinct queasy feeling as they provide a unique insight to everything that is wrong with our prophetic approach:

• A misreading of current geopolitical events – an oversimplified view of goodies versus baddies and a failure to see the absolute hypocrisy and corruption on all sides (including USA/Israel)
• A misreading and ignorant understanding of the original prophecies. If you don’t understand the starting point how can you understand the outcome?
• A misreading of the patterns. So we will all be gathered to Mt Sinai for judgement when we are explicitly told that is not the case?
• Confirmation bias in spades.
• A kind of hubris that will not contemplate that we might (actually might) be wrong sometimes.

So, we can only end with Jeremiah’s exasperated lament:

“The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?” (Jeremiah 5:31)