Choose Your Prophets Carefully
I believe that the entirety of the Bible is valuable for life and faith. If I’m honest, however, I admit that the prophets are not my favorite place to read and ponder. Amidst the promises of God, bad news rules. Ultimately, God wins but the current state of things often receives strong words of correction. Reality is a friend to all, but it’s rarely easy for anyone. The prophet’s job proved hard. Jeremiah spoke God’s truth and experienced little if any, outward success. The office of the prophet in the Old Testament contains two elements, one foretelling, and another forth-telling. Foretelling predicts the future while forth-telling speaks reality into the present situation, whether comforting or convicting. This week’s reading felt like a journey with a few modern-day prophets.
This week’s authors were not the first of their kind I’ve encountered. In the year 2000, I read a provocative book by a man dubbed a Christian futurist. “What is that?” I wondered. His name: Leonard Sweet. His book Soul Tsunami predicted coming changes across all spectrums of society. One thought, in particular, stuck with me over the years. Paraphrasing his prediction, he related how the next, twenty-first, century will culturally be closer to the first century (the Roman Empire) than it will be to the twentieth century. He called for a postmodern Reformation in the church. His insights prove true today and his call for effectiveness remains.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 speech, “Men Have Forgotten God,” read like a forewarning call to a nation heading toward impending doom. Drawing from his experience under the strong, totalitarian anti-church hand of the Soviet Union, he relates how the removal of God leads away from unity and a sense of accountability. “Faith was the shaping and unifying force of the nation.”[1] Removing Someone and something greater than humankind removes a sense of purpose greater than oneself. No sense of divine purpose or accountability leads humanity to act out some of its darkest intentions. “When external rights are completely unrestricted, why should one make an inner effort to restrain oneself from ignoble acts?”[2] Almost forty years ago, Solzhenitsyn cautioned about the inevitable implications of elevating mankind beyond its intended place. “In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.”[3] Solzhenitsyn’s words ring true forty years later.
N. S. Lyons, in “The Upheaval,” speaks about the present as “an era of epochal change”[4] and predicts future implications on a grand scale. More specifically in the current reality, his predictions target “three concurrent revolutions, one a geopolitical revolution, a second an ideological revolution, and a third a technological revolution.”[5] No aspect of culture will remain untouched. “A mass movement that is scrambling every aspect of traditional American political, cultural, religious, and even corporate life” [6] presently progresses. He sounds a clarion call that if unanswered promises to bring seismic shifts for the worse. “It would be naïve to assume that any liberal democracy (or any society) can long survive with all of its conceptual foundations gutted. Either it will collapse into civil conflict, or those foundations will be replaced brick by brick by the New Faith, until it is transformed into an unrecognizable edifice that is neither liberal nor democratic.”[7]Time will tell whether or not Lyon’s foretelling proves true.
This week, we were challenged to find an objective news source. I discovered an online site titled ProPublica. Its goal is to investigate the abuses of power, covering a broad spectrum of issues. One article on the opening page sounded like another predictive plea to change the present direction of democracy around the world from its current course. An article titled “How America’s Democracy is ‘Ripe to be Exploited’” sounds like one contemporary illustration of Lyon’s claim about geopolitical and technological challenges combined. Eric Umansky interviewed political scientist, Barbara Walter, about the decline of healthy democracies around the world. When discussing social media, Walter asserts that unregulated media only begins to explain the implications. “It’s not that it’s unregulated per se. It’s that it’s being driven by algorithms that selectively push out the more extreme incendiary messages.”[8] The same technology that fueled the Arab Spring and current protests in Iran also contains the potential to undermine freedom with false information and increased political polarization.
In the Old Testament, the bar was set high for any prophet. False prophets did not fare well. Today, any person is wise to set a high bar when choosing someone to give insight into the future or relay objective truth to the present state of things. Many people say many things, calling for selectivity in choosing the voices to give credence. Who one listens to and what is done with the insights received requires a special measure of discernment. Choose your prophets carefully.
[1]Solzhenitsyn, “Remembering Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Men Have Forgotten God’ Speech,” National Review, December 11, 2018, accessed October 3, 2022, http://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-men-have-forgotten-god-sppech/.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] N. S. Lyons, “The Upheaval,” Substack Newsletter, The Upheaval, April 7, 2021, accessed October 3, 2022, https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-upheaval.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Eric Umansky, “How America’s Democracy Is “Ripe to Be Exploited,” Propublica.org September 26, 2022, accessed October 4, 2022, https://www.propublica.org/article/democracy-demagogues-fascism-elections-barbara-walter.
About the Author
Roy Gruber
Husband, father, pastor, student, and sojourner in Babylon14 responses to “Choose Your Prophets Carefully”
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Wise. Who decides what wisdom is? In our day of competing Christian worldviews, who decides what is and isn’t biblical wisdom?
Andy, I didn’t answer by hitting “reply” but did respond.
Andy, great question and it makes me remember your call not to ask questions on a Sunday night that require a paper! You asked on a Friday, but I will still give a short answer to a big question. Just as the first step to overcoming bias is admitting that we are biased, the first step toward wisdom is acknowledging that we need. it. I also believe biblical wisdom needs to be biblical – I realize that sounds obvious or trite but I do believe we have to think deeply and biblically. You wrote about another strategy to gain wisdom – be widely read. Personally, I would want to see the “track record” of a modern-day spiritual “prophet” as I believe many blog and tweet but some are gifted with discernment and theological depth (i.e. Leonard Sweet). I think there is a built-in frustration with assessing wisdom as it takes time to see wisdom or the lack thereof. Jesus said “Yet wisdom is justified by all her children.” (Luke 7:35 ESV) It may take a generation to fully display wisdom. The older I get, the more I try to lean into Micah 6:8 generally speaking – act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.
I’m not familiar with Leonard Sweet’s book “Soul Tsunami” but it sounds compelling. Combined with Lyons and Solzhenitsyn, they all make an insightful analysis of change and what’s coming. I agree, the call of the prophets of impending judgment can be hard to hear. In your preaching do you find yourself balancing the good news of the gospel, with the necessary call of repentance?
Troy, I sure try to strike a balance. I find that most people know there is something broken in the soul of all, including themselves. The challenge, I find, is directing people to the solution found in Christ. I also fear in this day a lot of prophetic language in churches is about current politics rather than a biblical diagnosis of what ails us – one man’s opinion.
Roy: I’m interested to know how you lead your congregation in the realm of discernment. In such a polarized society, can two people come to differing conclusions on a subject matter and both realistically have discerned correctly – or maybe wholeheartedly? Do you think Christians today really understand true discernment?
Kayli, such a good and deep question. As I mentioned in my reply to Andy, I believe wisdom/discernment takes time to be proven true. I also believe it is hard for anyone to separate their own bias from even the most sincere attempts to seek God’s discernment on some hard issues. I do hope that in the church, there can be people who disagree and still love one another. I fear we, as a culture in America, are losing that ability rapidly. I like the statement I’ve found attributed to many authors: “In things essential, unity; in things non-essential, liberty; in all things, charity (love).”
Roy, your call to choose prophets wisely has indeed been the call of God for a very long time.
What have you discerned from the varying “prophetic” voices we heard from in Cape Town? How can we as humans balance our own biases with hearing the challenge from voices we would prefer not to face?
Oh….and I don’t expect you to write an answer….just putting it here for reflection sake 🙂
Nicole, did you take Andy’s tirade to heart?? Just kidding. Here is my one big takeaway from the prophetic voices in Cape Town: If you prophets never challenge you, you really don’t have a prophetic voice in your life.
Yes, as Andy said, wise! I totally agree. Choose your prophets carefully. I asked Troy this question as well, but I will also ask you (but no need to respond). In light of the fast-pace and changing of times, how do you maintain a mindset of awareness, but also hope? It would be easy to give in to a spirit of defeat. How do you fight this for yourself?
Eric, a good question, especially for someone who finds new and hard challenges in ministry these thirty-one years after starting. I hold a high view of the Bible, and that makes a huge difference for me. I remember a class in College where the professor gave us the executive summary for all prophecy: God wins! Our hope is found there, not in ourselves.
Roy,
I found your points to be very interesting. Specifically, that the “media is unregulated”. I think that it was intended to be that way. Somehow, I can’t help but feel that our current media is strongly influenced by money. I don’t know that regulation is the key, as regulations are always biased by the person or persons doing the regulating. I’m not sure what the answer is apart from well differentiated individuals having the guts to be as unbiased as possible.
Denise, I appreciate your thoughts. I feel that money is a form of unregulated regulation. Instead of the government setting the parameters, those who the financial resources decide them. I also do not favor heavy regulation about media. I believe we will have to live with its ability to inform or to distort reality. May God give us wisdom.
Wise words.