The role of the prophet in the Church

Mention the word prophet today and many people have some idea of a hirsute soothsayer in long robes preaching hellfire and damnation to a recalcitrant bunch of sinners. Or maybe they think of John the Baptist, preaching to crowds of religious zealots in the Wilderness or down by the River Jordan.

As someone who has been privileged to be closely acquainted with several New Covenant prophets and has experienced their ministry, I’m happy to say that these images are very much caricatures which represent very little of how prophets operate today, which they most certainly do.

This article is unusual inasmuch as I normally just write as I feel predisposed to write, but on this occasion do so in response to a specific request by an old friend who is also my senior pastor and a recognised prophet. And when I say ‘senior pastor’ don’t get the wrong idea, he’s actually more than twenty years younger than me, but God has called my wife and I to minister to him and his wife as assistants, so the age difference is completely irrelevant.

You would think that would be an easy question to answer, but it isn’t, because it is a word that carries a lot of baggage. Indeed, one reason why so many people have difficulty understanding what a prophet is, is the Bible. This is because our modern Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek, some of whose nuances have become lost in translation.

Our modern Christian Bible is comprised of two main sections: The thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Old Testament and 27 books of the Greek New Testament. But these are human designations placed there for our convenience and not on God’s say so, and what we call the Old Testament comprises of the books that the Jews call the Tanakh.

The material in our Old Testament is essentially identical to that found in the Tanakh but arranged in a different order, and with some books combined together so that the Tanakh begins in Genesis but ends in what we call Second Chronicles, and while our Christian Old Testament has thirty-nine books, the Tanakh has only twenty-two.

The reason of course, that we call the books of the Tanakh 'Old Testament' is because Christianity recognises the New Covenant ratified in the Blood of Jesus Christ, which traditional rabbinical Judaism does not.

An analogy would be the relationship between our current queen, Elizabeth II, and Elizabeth Tudor. Until the accession to the throne by her modern namesake, Elizabeth Tudor was simply known as Queen Elizabeth, but since 1952 she has been Elizabeth I because quite naturally, she could not have been Elizabeth I until there was an Elizabeth II.

Likewise, there could be no Old Covenant with God until a New Covenant was effected and the New Testament therefore relates to how that was done and the ramifications that ensued.

But what does Tanakh mean? Quite simply, it is an acronym, of the full name of the Hebrew Bible which is Sefer Torah Nevi’im VeKetuvim, which literally means ‘Book [of] Instruction, Prophets and Writings’, although often rendered as ‘The Law, the Prophets and the Writings‘.

Nevi’im is the plural of navi (pronounced nahvee) the word the Hebrew Bible almost exclusively uses to refer to a prophet. It is also often found written as nabi, because the Hebrew letter represented as both ‘b’ and ‘v’ in this case is beth (ב) which can be rendered as either, which are differentiated only by a dot or point marking called a daghesh which hardens the ‘v’ to ‘b’. So, whichever version you encounter, either may be considered correct.

While navi means 'an inspired man or woman who prophesies', our English word derives from the same Greek word used in the New Testament prophètès (from pro - ‘for‘ and phanai - ‘to speak‘) because the prophet is one who speaks for God to the people as his representative, as opposed to the priest who represents the people before God.

No surprise then, that most of the Old Testament comprises of the writings of prophets. Even Torah and Ketuvim are largely the works of prophets. Moses in the case of Torah, and various others, like King David who not only wrote the most of the Psalms but was an acknowledged prophet in his own right.

The Nevi'm as a category therefore does not indicate that these books are an exclusive source of prophecy, but are simply the recorded works of specific prophets, which is why, while our Christian Bibles list the major and minor prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, the Hebrew canon recognises six books of prophets as follows:

Joshua and Judges are the first book of prophets;

Samuel, I and II Kings, the second book;

Isaiah, the third;

Jeremiah, the fourth;

Ezekiel, the fifth;

While Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah,

Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi all comprise the sixth book of prophets.

The reason is simple. As the Tanakh, the Old Testament books were originally scrolls, each of which was considered a book in its own right, irrespective of the number of writers’ works it contained.

Ordained by God and anointed by his Holy Spirit, anyone could be called as a prophet. Male or female, young or old. Some were nobles, some were priests, some were ploughmen. If you’re looking for a prophetic type in the Bible you’ll have a long wait because there is none. Some were diligent and Godly like Daniel, while some were petulant and rebellious like Jonah and Balaam. Some were bold like Deborah, some were hesitant like Moses, while others, like Elijah, were somewhat volatile, with wildly oscillating moods, ranging between spectacular courage and craven cowardice. Many of them, like Jeremiah, didn’t want to be prophets at all.

The only obvious qualification to be a prophet was that God wanted you to be one. He wanted someone to speak for him and be his mouthpiece one the earth and speak what we call rhema, the inspired living Word of God.

The thing about a word is that it is a thing in its own right, because ‘word’ is a noun. Except that in Greek it is several, the two most common of which we find in the Bible are logos and rhema. To a large extent the two are interchangeable, separated only by quite subtle nuances, but in general, when they occur, logos refers to the written word, whereas rhema tends to be the spoken word. The following delineation is my own far from set in stone, but I find it a useful rule of thumb.

The Bible that we have is principally prophetic; the work of inspired writers recording the words of the Holy Spirit. As such, all Scripture began as Rhema (God-breathed revelation) which, when it was written down, became Logos.

To envisage this graphically I consider rhema as water and logos as ice, which works like this. God speaks his word as prophetic revelation into the spirit of a man who then records it; setting it in stone, as it were. Or according to our analogy, freezing it like a block of ice. Subsequently, we come along and take that ice which God’s Spirit then breathes upon, melting the relevant portion which then becomes liquid again, flowing as rhema from the logos; becoming living water again.

That‘s what makes the difference between the Bible, as a mere collection of pages, and the Living Word that it becomes when spoken by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and as it is so often described in Scripture. It is also why non-believers often have so much difficulty in understanding the Bible, because for them it is largely a dead book of little relevance. Nor should this come as any surprise when Paul wrote in Romans 8:6-7,

‘For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can it be.’

For this reason Paul had a great deal of patience and tolerance for non-believers whom he saw as not merely bloody-minded but blinded. In a word, he had greater tolerance of those of whom he had a lesser expectation. Maybe that’s something today's Church could learn from. Because the way to help a blind man is to open his eyes, not to condemn him for being blind.

Inasmuch as they are God‘s spokesmen and women on earth, little has changed of what God expects of his prophets. Except, that is, for two things: the message they are to speak and the manner by which they receive it.

In the Old Testament, God would call out a prophet from among his people and speak to them by his Holy Spirit into their spirit. However, under the Old Covenant, no-one could receive the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit because all men were sinful and therefore unclean vessels in whom the Spirit of Holiness could not reside. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit could come upon an individual rather like a mantle, whereupon they could receive and convey revelation, which is what happened to the Old Testament prophets.

Under the New Covenant, however, the believer becomes a new creation, cleansed by the vicarious sacrifice of the Blood of Jesus and old things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Now, instead of receiving an external word from a remote God, the believer receives an internal word from the indwelling Spirit of God, which is why Jesus said the following in Luke 7:28,

‘For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.’

What Jesus was revealing was that, as the last Old Covenant prophet, his cousin John had no parallel, but that compared to the least New Covenant believer John’s gift paled into insignificance.

Under the Old Covenant, then, the prophet’s role was to deliver God’s message to a largely unspiritual people, and a message which under the Law was largely one of condemnation and judgement.

Under the New Covenant, all that changed, as God had prophesied by none other than Jeremiah himself, in Jeremiah 31:31-34.

"Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares Yahweh. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, 'Know the Yahweh,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."

This, in essence is the New Covenant we discussed earlier; not one based on the outward conformity of a fallible people to written laws, but firmly established on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross whose grace we appropriate by faith.

The difference this made was profound because now, instead of God speaking his rhema to his people through the mouths of a select few, his Spirit could now dwell in vessels cleansed and renewed by the Blood of the Messiah. Henceforth, any believer would be able to hear directly from God. This much Jesus prophesied in Matthew 16:13-19.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

I discuss this scripture in more detail in my hub entitled Keys of the Kingdom - Part 1: The Foundation Stone, so for brevity here I will just say that in this scripture Jesus reveals what would be the very foundation upon which his Church would be built - the ability of all believers to hear directly from God.

I’m sorry to say that much of today’s Church is profoundly immature and lacking in Scriptural any training or background. This should not be so, but comes as no surprise to the Lord, who has installed certain ministers in his Body with the specific remit to equip all the others for the task of ministry.

These men and women are often referred to in some Christian circles as the ‘five-fold ministry’, a term I really don’t like, not only because it is unbiblical but quite misleading. Where this concept is derived from is the following scripture in Ephesians 4:11-12.

And truly he gave some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

This one scripture has been misrepresented to a huge degree for many years, and even misrepresented by some to build empires of their own and lord it over the flock in a way that Paul never intended.

First of all, many saw it as a list of ministerial hierarchy, with apostles at the top, teachers at the bottom and the common herd subject to them all. This is outrageous and an utter perversion of a principle directly addressed by Jesus himself when he warned his immediate apostles in Matthew 20:20-28.

Then the mother of Zebedee's children came to him with her sons, worshipping and desiring a certain thing from him.

And he said to her, “What do you desire?” She said to him, “Grant that these my two sons may sit in your kingdom, the one on your right hand and the other on the left.”

But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”

They said to Him, “We are able.”

And He said to them, “You shall indeed drink of my cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

And when the ten heard it, they were indignant concerning the two brothers. But Jesus called them and said, “You know that the rulers of the nations exercise dominion over them, and they who are great exercise authority over them. However, it shall not be so among you. But whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

If that scripture could be any clearer, I fail to see how.

There is government within the Church and also a place for honouring those in positions of service, but it is respect in recognition for the anointing of God on their lives and not obeisance towards any individual.

In short, the function of the ’five-fold’ ministry is to equip the saints, not strip the saints. And, as I say, I don’t actually like the term anyway, because it ends up by being misleading, the corollary of which is that the flock are ultimately misled.

What it does is conjure an image of the Holy Spirit as some kind of Santa Claus, who dispenses gifts like Christmas presents, all wrapped up in little boxes which he then delivers to individual believers to use. This is not the Biblical paradigm at all. Rather, the Holy Spirit himself is the Gift, and the abilities he empowers in us are actually used by him through surrendered vessels.

I don’t see the so called five-fold ministry gifts as separate functions but as overlapping roles which are differently emphasised. The analogy that I prefer to employ is that of the ministry operating as the fingers of God’s hand. Because, just as our fingers differ in length, so too do the relative strengths of each gift vary in different individuals. Thus, those in whom the prophetic gift is most pronounced are placed as prophets, while those most at ease with evangelism are installed as evangelists, but all may pastor, all have some degree of teaching ability and all are capable of being ‘sent out’ to accomplish whatever God wants done anywhere, which is the literal sense of apostle.

The New Testament prophet, therefore, is not placed in the Church to govern or rule but to edify and encourage. Not necessarily to reveal new things to believers that they have never heard before (although that may happen from time to time), but by and large to independently confirm and release whatever rhema God’s Spirit has already spoken to the hearer's own spirit.

Does that mean they can never bring a word of correction or rebuke? Certainly not. God is our Father and loves his children far too much to let them poke their fingers in electrical sockets or run across busy roads, if you’ll pardon the analogy. But even then, God’s correction is always as gentle as possible. Only when some people’s foolishness goes beyond the pale, as happened in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, where Paul berated the whole church for being complicit in the gross and unrepented sin in their midst of a man sleeping with his stepmother, does God sanction a prophet to come down hard and deliver a harsh word with a heavy heart.

I would look very closely at the credentials of any purported prophet with a reputation of riding into town and shooting all and sundry with a spiritual sawn-off shotgun. It’s rather like a policeman drawing his weapon on a child who has littered the street with a sweet wrapper.

“Assume the position, punk!”

“But officer, he’s only three years old”.

Hmm. I think not. That’s not my Jesus.

If someone disrupts a service with shouting and swearing, I would generally recommend the laying on of hands by two ushers as they eject him from the meeting, but that’s just common sense. And even then, the Holy Spirit might direct otherwise. It’s his meeting and he’s the Host, not the Guest of Honour. We do well to remember that.

One thing that makes any prophet stand out is the specificity and focus of their revelation. Speaking whatever God gives them without fear or favour, they can be quite disconcerting to those unused to the manifest power of God operating right before them, and I have lost count of the number of people I have seen lose colour when confronted by a true prophet and say, “How did you know that”.

I know one man who, a few weeks prior to the timeof writing this, was staring disconcertedly out of a patio window when the prophet sitting next to him, said, ‘You see that angel too’. The guy nearly freaked. Even more recently, at one of our services two people gave independent testimony of exactly the same dream they had received that week. Now that’s dramatic. It’s one thing to tell a person what their dream mean, quite another to tell them what they had dreamt.

Unfortunately, this spectacular display of prophecy has a downside inasmuch as it is often mistaken for a psychic gift, which it is not. A prophet only knows what God shows them, and God does not embarrass people. And this can lead some to doubt a prophet who is unable to tell them next week’s Lottery numbers. But here we have a clear example from Scripture, involving one of the most powerful prophets in the entire Old Testament - the prophet Elisha, in 2 Kings 4:25-27.

We break into the context of a story about a woman to whom Elisha had prophetically promised years earlier that she would miraculously have a son. Now that son has died tragically whereupon she sets out to see the prophet.

And she went and came to the man of God, to Mount Carmel. And it happened when the man of God saw her afar off, he said to Gehazi his servant, “Behold, the Shunammite. Please run now to meet her, and say to her, ‘Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the boy?” And she answered, “Well!”

And she came to the man of God to the hill, and she caught him by the feet. And Gehazi came near to push her away. And the man of God said, “Let her alone, for her soul is troubled within her. And Yahweh has hidden it from me and has not told me.”

As I say, Elisha was a byword for mighty and effective prophecy, yet he sent his servant out to enquire what was troubling the woman because he hadn‘t a clue what was wrong, for the simple reason that God had not revealed it to him. And that should be a lesson to any who mistake the gift in which the prophet operates for psychic ability.

So, there you have it: my vision of the Biblical paradigm of the so-called five-fold ministry is actually the five fingers of god’s right hand - the hand of power and grace. Indeed, five is the number of grace. And God’s hand can be held out in love, extended in grace, or clenched for a fight.

It’s his Church, his hand and his fist. What he decides to do with it is his business. How much he can use us to accomplish his business rather depends on how surrendered we are to his will. Are we fully flexible or are we spiritually arthritic? Let me put it another way: Does he consider us a pleasure to work with? Or are we just a pain? How we answer that question will very much determine how much God will want to use us.

Remember, every believer has the gift of prophecy, but that’s not same as saying that God is keen to make a gift of them to the Church to be his prophet.