Prophesy

As I am reading Jeremiah thinking about prophesy I remembered a cherished hero of mine David Wilkerson. Wilkerson thought of himself as a prophet in his last couple of decades. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

David Wilkerson died suddenly, tragically, well if you can call dying at age 79 tragic. But he did not die of old age diseases. He died in an auto accident. He was driving without his seat belt on. His wife was with him and had her seat belt on. She survived with few injuries. This has got to be hard on her, survivor's guilt. I guess this is his first wife, the one that survived advanced cancer more than once. Surely everyone thought he would survive her.

Prophets make people uncomfortable. I have talked to two church leaders who made faces when I mentioned how much I admired Wilkerson.

James Dobson, Jim Wallis, and Chuck Colson are three other major Christian leaders who have entered into the prophetic realm.

I wondered about the wisdom of Dobson getting into the arena because his ministry to families would be affected. I think it was affected but he obviously felt the risk was worth it.

Wallis always makes me uncomfortable. Yes i admit to avoiding him. I guess you could add Jesse Jackson into Christian leaders who work to be prophetic voice in the political arena.

All these people get criticized and ridiculed. If you feel called to be a prophet it comes with the territory. But we should avoid listening solely to the critics and see what they say and judge for ourselves. It makes us uncomfortable but it is the only way we really have the right to say anything.

Having said that this country needs honest God fearing, God obeying Christians to speak out prophetically about our nation, our culture, our political leadership, and so on. And we need to listen. I think church leaders feel uncomfortable because they also might be the object of prophetic statements. Just as Jesus spoke out against the hypocrisy of religious leaders so to our present leaders may deserve criticism.

Jeremiah too spoke with dangerous honesty. There were other prophets and clerics trying to shout him down, assuring people that all was well and God was with them. Jeremiah worked to get them to repent because he said God would punish them if they did not. We still know what Jeremiah said because he turned out to be right. The others turned out to be false so their prophecies have been forgotten.

Prophesies today do not have the strength of scripture. Some may be correct. Others, as someone mentioned last night may no mean what the original speaker thought they meant. Usually they will only partially be fulfilled in our time, like the prophets of the Old Testament. They had partially fulfillment at the time but many were also about the Christ to come, centuries later.

But we should listen to current prophets, those who say things we like and those that make us uncomfortable. It can help us to remain humble. We need to allow it to correct us. Of course the Holy Spirit has to confirm in our hearts what we hear or read. We need to be careful to not go with every wind of doctrine.

I probably need to read and listen to our modern prophets myself.