What is a Prophet?
If you’re going biblical you might think Jeremiah, or Elijah, or Samuel…If more secular perhaps Bob Dylan – at least he licked his finger and poked it the wind! These days some might say Jordan Petersen or even Russel Brand.
Prophets announce the imminent collapse of a culture too set in its ways and raise hopes of a new future.
But with biblical prophets, it would be a mistake to view them as merely postmen and postwomen of the Almighty as if their ‘Thus says the Lord’ pronouncements were not grounded in something. Their principal mission was to call the people back to the covenant…to have faith in its promises and to obey its vision rather than deliver impressive predictions disconnected from the foundations. That’s where the gnarly word ‘repentance’ comes from. ‘You’re going the wrong way!’ says the prophet. ‘Repent! It’s this way!’
In Old Testament times, therefore, prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah were calling the Jews back to the Abrahamic Covenant which is preserved in Genesis 12 and 15. Jeremiah also foresaw, as did Ezekiel, the need for a New Covenant, as Israel had proven faithless to the Abrahamic Covenant, now the Old Testament. (Testament and Covenant are interchangeable terms, hence Old/New Covenant/Testament)
When Jesus broke bread with his disciples just before the crucifixion he announced the inauguration of the New Covenant that Jeremiah and Ezekiel had prophesied hundreds of years previously.’This is the New Testament in My blood…’The church, then, needs to be called back to the New Covenant when it strays.
The terms of the New Covenant can be found in Jeremiah chapter 31 and Ezekiel Chapters 36
Jeremiah 31 v 33 ‘…this is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will write My laws in their minds, and write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be My people. No longer shall every man teach his neighbour…saying ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know Me from the least of them to the greatest…because I will forgive their iniquity’
Ezekiel 36 v 26 ‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My ways’
In the Old Covenant/Testament the Jews failed to keep the commandments, The Law, which was written in stone (Moses’ 10 Commandments) and lost faith in the promises in Gen 12/15. In the New Covenant what we could not do by our own efforts – God has promised to do. Now the law is written on our hearts and we have a new spirit and His Spirit within us.
It’s an inside-out faith, not outside-in.
A prophet in the New Testament will sound a particular note, reminding us of what God has promised us, warning us not to be ‘religious’ or try to be righteous, but to trust that His life has become our life and that we are designed to leak!
Not only to call us back to this if we have got lost but to speak in the present: to remind us that His Spirit lives in us and that He isn’t dumb! It’s a daily relationship. His life through us. Not just in church meetings!
Once that’s established then we have a window on the future and can begin to see what the prophet sees; then the battle is really on. The fire in the belly of a prophet will call us to jettison anything and everything that is not blowing in the wind; church traditions, styles, and practices included. Seat belts on.