Prophecy III / What?

(Belshazzar's Feast / Rembrandt)

In Daniel chapter 5 we find a vivid image of the prophetic; one which has become an idiomatic phrase in our own language.

King Belshazzar of Babylon had become haughty, and during a feast he had the sacred golden vessels from the Jewish temple brought to him that he and his guests might drink wine from them. Suddenly the "fingers of a human hand" appeared and wrote something on the wall, which was undecipherable for the king and any in his court.

After some time, Belshazzar's wife reminded him about Daniel, and that, in the days of Belshazzar's father, "light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him."

Daniel comes and is able to read the writing on the wall.

What is a prophet? One who can read the writing on the wall. That is, one who comprehends and verbalizes the meaning of things before others.

As mentioned in my first post, the word "prophet" can be literally translated "to bring forth". The prefix "pro" is fairly flexible. It can mean forth, before or forward, (e.g. pro-ceed, pro-duce, pro-pel), thus there has become a very literal misnomer regarding the prophetic; namely, that it is solely future-telling (speaking things before they happen). Certainly this has been an aspect of the prophetic from the OT messianic prophets to the NT, taking the form of everything from premonition to the forecasting of specific events. In this sense, the prophet does "speak before".

However, one can also speak before in another sense. Daniel was merely the one who was capable of reading the writing on the wall. When we use that expression today, we mean that there are indicators of the reality of a situation that need only to be recognized. Often it is the person who gives voice to such things that ostensibly foretells the future. Such people, who presciently recognize things as they are, and declare them before others are speaking prophetically.

Thus prophetic can be have different "types": expertise (which gives one penetrating insights that others may miss), experience (thus the ability to recognize and extrapolate a trend) or even innocence (as in Hans Christian Andersen's fable The Emperor's New Clothes). Moreover, there are insights that are of a spiritual type, and this is the proper biblical usage of the term "prophet".

Here, too, we discover another prophetic idiom in Scripture, because such people are often described as a "voice in the wilderness." In other words, they are standing alone declaring something while the masses are yet to see or acknowledge it. The prophet is literally the one who "brings it forward."

BUT WHAT IS IT?

In the Narnia books, Lucy is the prophet. It is she who enters Narnia first. It is she who first meets Aslan. Throughout the books, she is the one who has first-hand encounters with him. What she states is sometimes counter-intuitive and often far fetched.

After her first foray into Narnia, one recalls her sibling conversation with the professor in whose house they are living. They convey their incredulity at their sisters "story", and are surprised that he is less skeptical. "Have you ever known her to lie?" he asks.

Each of Lucy's siblings have their own gifts, but Lucy is the prophet and healer (an aspect of the prophetic I will discuss in my next post). In several of the books, the plot hinges on whether they will listen to her. At one point, Peter (the leader) explains their reluctance by saying, Aslan "didn't appear to us." The conundrum of the prophetic is just this: that God speaks to one person through another. How can we be sure it is authentic? I'll get to that in a later post.

In the same way, prophecy is a gift that is given to some in the body whereby they are given a firsthand experience with God or insight into the spiritual realm that is meant to be communicated to others.

We see this in the examples of Isaiah and Ezekiel, both of whom communicate about God based from their encounters with Him. We see a vivid picture of this in the interaction between Elisha and his servant when they are pinned down in the town of Dothan by the king of Syria.

Elisha tells his fretful servant, "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." His servant, however, still struggles to believe or comprehend what Elisha is saying. So Elisha prays, "O Lord, open his eyes so he may see." God does so, and Elisha's servant is enabled to see myriads of heavenly chariots surrounding them; to see things as they are.

So the prophet is one who is given a glimpse into the spiritual realm in order to see something and convey it to others.

SPECIFICALLY?

Paul makes a list of the uses of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 that may or may not be exhaustive. He tells us that the prophet "builds up the church" by speaking words to others for their "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation." [v. 3b]

What he is getting at is that prophetic words benefit.

I contend that the prophetic is God's way of speaking through people to people for the sake of:

1. Healing
2. Awakening
3. Calling

But that will be my next post, "Prophecy IV / Why?"

Please post with comments, questions or even objections. The hope would be that this could create clarity.