MODERN-DAY PROPHETS

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

One can barely turn a page of Scripture without encountering a prophet in both the Old and New Testaments, and I’m confident the American Church isn’t getting the memo Scripture is trying to communicate.

In almost every instance where people turned away from the Lord for worldly, sinful things, God places a buffer of time (a prophet) between the immoral actions of a group of people and the consequences which follow.

Prophets typically fulfilled both a teaching and a revelatory role, declaring God’s truth on contemporary issues while also revealing details about the future. Isaiah, for example, preached boldly against the corruption of his day (Isaiah 1:4) and delivered visions of the future of Israel (Isaiah 25:8).

God gave the prophet Jonah a message for the Assyrians, an enemy of Israel at the time (Jonah 4:6-9). The prophet Daniel carried a dispatch for the Babylonians about their imminent demise via the hand of the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:25-28).

God commanded Jeremiah to speak against Israel’s idolatrous ways, and if they heeded the warning, He would let them stay in their land (Jeremiah 7).

A question I have been contemplating as of late is… Where are the modern-day prophets? Are there none willing to stand up and preach Joel 2:12-14 to this generation which says, “Even now— this is the Lord’s declaration— turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God. For he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster. Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, so you can offer a grain offering and a drink offering to the Lord your God.”

After multiple states just passed legislation to abort babies up until birth, the Church now more than ever before needs to find a backbone and be the voice in the wilderness, calling people to radical repentance and change.

Andrew Kern once wrote, “Human society and the human soul need three and have always had three functions performed to flourish: they need the prophet, the priest, and the king. The king is the governor/administrator. He executes the will of what he rules in order to keep it strong, healthy, and magnanimous. The priest is the teacher, the bearer of the tradition, and the one who makes offerings to the gods or God. The prophet is the conscience, the one who reminds the community what it is for, what it is committed to, what it ought to be. Modern society and especially the conventional school has regulated and systematized itself to the point where the prophet cannot be heard.”

In our little corners of the world, God is calling us to be the modern-day prophets who remind our community what it is for, what it is committed to, and what it ought to be. That’s how repentance and revival breaks out, which are the two things our communities urgently need.

Most of the prophets God sent were despised and their message unheeded, and unfortunately, we will face many of the same challenges. Isaiah described his nation as a “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, ‘See no more visions!’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions’” (Isaiah 30:9–10).

I believe many, even Christians, view prophets as being the most depressed, anxious, and pessimistic group of people to exist. I would like to argue that, in reality, they are the most hopeful, courageous, and optimistic group of people, and that our weary world is in desperate need of a few more in our modern day.

I see a stone wall that needs to be rebuilt. It’s time we begin building with one hand and battling with the other. A true prophet will say, with the prophet Micaiah just before his fateful confrontation with Ahab, “As surely as the Lord lives, I can tell him only what my God says” (2 Chronicles 18:13).

Make no mistake, you and I are the modern-day prophets.

SO, WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?

= Are you willing to speak the truth boldly to those around you?

= How can you invite repentance and change into your own life?

= What are you going to do differently?