Prophetic
by Stan Smith
It's one of the beloved scenes from the
book of Genesis: Jacob's wilderness
dream of a ladder between heaven and earth.
He woke up and poured oil on the stone he had used as a pillow, and then
named the place
Jacob's story shows three things God
wants in His dwelling place.
Jesus is the rock; the Holy Spirit is the
oil; and the open heaven is our access to Him and His to us. Wherever we might want to make God feel at
home - in our personal lives, our ministries, our churches - we need to make
sure these three ingredients are in place.
And
while these ingredients are relevant to every Christian and every ministry,
they are central to the call and the anointing of prophets. Any of us who relate to prophetic ministry in
any way, whether by giving or receiving prophecy, can use Jacob's story to help
us stay on track.
Are
we getting it right? The rock, the oil,
and the open heaven all show us what prophetic ministry is meant to accomplish.
The Rock: Jesus Himself
I
don't have to go through the many scriptures that liken Jesus to a rock. Any
chain reference Bible or concordance can lead you to them. But one key principle about prophetic
ministry is so simple and basic we tend to think we have outgrown it: "The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of
Jesus." (Revelation 19:10)
Don't
get me wrong. Not every prophecy will
focus on Jesus. God is free to speak
about anything that affects us. The
prophets in scripture gave battle plans, told how to access divine prosperity,
and gave direction in times of national crisis.
The list could go on and on, but anything that mattered to His people
was something God might speak about through His prophets.
Some
therefore have said that the testimony of Jesus is the testimony given by
Jesus, the words He is speaking about current events.
If
we read nothing but the Old Testament, we will find plenty of evidence that
this is what prophecy is all about. We see prophecies that came to pass
sometimes in their own generation and sometimes a century or two later.
But
when we read the New Testament, we see prophecies that had one meaning when the
prophets had given them and another higher meaning when Jesus came to fulfill
them. We see that many prophecies has
two or more fulfillments: a historical
fulfillment in their own day, another fulfillment in the ministry of Jesus, and
sometimes yet one more fulfillment in our own lives as Christ lives in us.
We
see these levels of prophecy in the life of David. He often consulted the prophets to find out
whether God wanted him to fight a battle or not, but few of these prophets'
words were recorded in scripture.
David's Psalms were recorded instead, and astonishingly many of them
give a clear portrait of Jesus.
The
testimony of Jesus is more than just what He tells us about the next election
or the next earthquake. It is a
revelation of Him, an opportunity to know Him better. This is what prophecy is meant to give us.
Do
you know Jesus better because of your connection with prophetic ministry? If so, you're getting it right; if not,
somebody is missing the point - either the voice that speaks prophecy or the
ear that hears it.
The Oil: The Supernatural Presence Of The Holy Spirit
Many
scriptures use oil as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The Bible uses other symbols as well: wind, fire, rain, rivers. If God wants to
live in a house built on the rock, He also wants to live somewhere anointed
with the oil of His Spirit. His house
must be a place where His Spirit can move.
Perhaps
more than any other ministry, prophets are people of the Spirit. Pastors can chatter amiably with people to
make them feel at home; prophets don't want to talk until they have a word from
God to deliver. Teachers can teach
anything they find in scripture, but prophets have to hear it from God before
they're ready to stand in front of people and speak it. Prophets can't bear to function without the
fresh touch of the Holy Spirit.
But
sometimes the prophets get so busy we start taking shortcuts. Sometimes we become so zealous to help the
whole church take its first steps in the prophetic that we dumb things down to
an intellectual level. Or rather than
taking time to hear something fresh from God, we present something that was
fresh long ago when God gave it, but like yesterday's uncollected manna it has
now bred worms and begun to stink.
I'm
not pointing the finger at others here.
This is a temptation I face myself.
I continually have to remind myself to slow down and take time to
receive something fresh from God. And I
have to treat my intellectual resources with the utmost suspicion; it's too
easy to fall back on knowledge rather than trusting God for something the flesh
can't produce.
Human
intelligence can never substitute for the Spirit of God. Human study and education can never
approximate the touch of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture makes it clear: the
natural mind of man fights against the things of the Spirit.
Some
have taught that the left-brain dominance of our culture has made us allergic
to the things of the Spirit and a right-brain dominance would cure the
problem. But the Bible doesn't say the
left side of your brain fights the things of the Spirit and the right side
doesn't; it says the whole mind is at war with the Spirit.
Those
of us who teach have tried to identify principles that will help us line up
with the Holy Spirit. I've done it
myself. Some teachings have been better
than others, and some students have grasped the material better than others.
But
increasingly, I am meeting people who are trying to get into the things of the
Spirit by human understanding. We have
gone into the depths of symbolism, finding that a dream about this symbolizes that. We have gone into deep research into history
so we can identify how God wants us to pray and strategize. We have worked out the numerical significance
of the notes we play in prophetic song and created a mysticism of sound.
Don't
get me wrong. There is a right way to
use these bits of knowledge. But let's
be careful not to begin in the Spirit and end in the intellect of the flesh.
Ask
yourself: has my connection with
prophetic ministry made me more dependent on Him and less dependent on my own intellect,
or has it been the other way around?
God's house isn't the stone with Jacob's head on it, sound asleep. It's the rock anointed with the oil of the
Holy Spirit.
The Open Heavens
The
open heavens are too big a subject for this short article, but this ingredient
is all-important if we want to make God feel at home. On our end it means we have access to the
things of heaven; on God's end, it means He has access to the earth through us.
Jesus is Jacob's ladder. He came right
out and said so in the last line of John 1.
Then in John 3, Jesus said He had come down from heaven and was still in
heaven, while He stood in the dark and talked to Nicodemus in
Does
Jesus live in you? If so, you are an
open heaven too. Hebrews 12:22 says you
are now in the heavenly Jerusalem; Ephesians 2:2 says you are seated in heaven
right now; Colossians 3:1-3 says your life is hid with Christ in God, and it is
your responsibility to seek the things which are above.
We
can't afford to neglect God's gracious gift of the open heavens. His dwelling place is the intersection of
heaven and earth, and that is what He has called you to be.
Again,
more than any other ministry, prophets are preoccupied with the open
heavens. Some preach and prophesy about
it. Some report encounters with angels,
with the visible glory of God, or of visions of Jesus. Some bring us into prophetic worship and an
opening of the heavens over the whole congregation, and the whole church gets
to taste more of the glory of God than they thought they would ever get to
access.
Ask
yourself: do the prophets bring a sense
of heaven and earth joining together, or is everything locked in the
earth? If the prophets are saying it
correctly and if their hearers are hearing correctly, the message is to change
our thinking, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand - not far away, but
close enough to touch.
The
Prophetic Church
I've
said these three ingredients characterize the house where God feels at home,
and that in a special way prophets are called to help the church align itself
with these three key ingredients. But
this ministry isn't reserved for the prophets alone, for Acts 2:17-21 Peter
made it clear that the whole church is meant to be prophetic:
And it shall come to pass in the last days,
says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall
dream dreams. And on My menservants and
on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall
prophesy. I will show wonders in heaven
above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, And
the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the
LORD. And it shall come to pass that
whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.
What is this outpouring of the
prophetic Spirit for? So all of us, by the Spirit of prophecy, can
have firsthand revelation of our Rock, Jesus Himself. So all of us can prophesy and see dreams and
visions, experiencing the oil of the Spirit as a supernatural flow of His
presence and power. So all of us can
experience the open heavens, seeing the wonders that are going on there.
This is what prophecy is for: more of Jesus, more of the Holy Spirit, and more of heaven on earth. Accept nothing less.