Introduction

Recently while combing through what questions would get replies on the blog and in what order I have spotted a disturbing trend. A variety of questions, several of which I will address this week, involve the suppression of or squelching of what is God, what is godly, and what is Truth. The quantity and pace of the injustice and persecution that people, God’s people, are facing is accelerating at an alarming rate, especially here in America where I am located.

It is in reading these questions, emails, articles, watching these new stories and counseling these people that God has grown within me the burning desire to be actively involved in activism on behalf of Jesus’ people. Well hidden from public view, because mainstream mass media does not deem it news worthy, thank God for the Christian press and media, there are lives being affected everyday by a society and a church that are abandoning the principles of and solid dedication to Christ, and the principles of God found in His Word. By the time, most pew warmers who call themselves Christians wake up to what is going on their right to speak of religion outside of their church building may well be gone.

Then there are those who are speaking out, those the world and the apostate church find hard to tolerate because they are not politically correct and tolerate of all things, basing morality upon independent choice. They are the ones who firmly believe true morality is based on the unchangeable Word of God and nothing else. They are the moralists, the prophets, the godly forecasters, the godly foreseers, the godly foretellers, the godly predictors, the godly prognosticators, the godly prophesiers, the godly futurists, the godly seers – regardless of the label you slap on them, they are on the side of God, on the side of holiness and morality, they are the people gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight. They use that gift of spiritual and moral insight, which comes from God Almighty, to confront the individual, the community, the state, the country, the leaders both spiritual and secular, and the church when any have slid down into the sewer of sin.

These individuals, these prophets and moralists, are on the rise like never before in my lifetime and they are because God knows they are needed and has ordained it so. This is why I have decided once I answer a few of those questions, the back stories of which God used to prompted this action, I am going to spend some time writing about understanding the prophet and their role in society, as well as the Body of Christ.

I have studied behind several people, some of whom were modern prophets, over the course of some twenty years and as there should be, there is consistent collective views of these “prophets” presents by reliable sources I have read and studied. Please know that the thoughts expressed in each part of this series will not be merely my own but will be thoughts expressed and shared by that collective group of people who have spent years in study of this topic and whose views are harmonious in both context and content. I will only share thoughts, beliefs, and views that I personally believe and that have also been views, which I have observed to be a consistent pattern of belief by respected reliable individuals, prophets, and scholars.

The individual writer who seems to have been the most in-depth and objective of them, in my opinion, is Abraham J. Heschel. It seems of those individuals I have read he spent more time pulling together all the views, thoughts, and beliefs many people share, into two bodies of work. I am a firm believer in Jesus and follow Him faithfully. Heschel was a devout Jew. However, on the topic of studying the Ancient Biblical Prophets as well as Modern Prophets, this Rabbi is one of the best – this I must acknowledge and therefore glean what I can from his research, though I might not agree with him on everything and especially on Jesus. Nevertheless, I will use his teachings, which are really just a collective set of beliefs held by most scholars on prophet, as well as most actual prophets, thus I will quote him throughout this series.

Therefore, to familiarize my readers with this scholar, I would like to share some information about Abraham Heschel.

Abraham J. Heschel was an “American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century” according to academia. He went to the University of Berlin, where in 1934 he received his doctorate for a study of the biblical prophets.  His book, “The Prophets” is recognized as a masterpiece of biblical scholarship.

According to an interview Heschel gave, “it is the Bible—particularly the prophets—that provides a primary model for authentic spirituality. Biblical revelation is not a mystical act of seeking God but an awareness of being sought and reached by Him: The prophets bear witness to an event that they formulate in their own words, but the event itself is God’s reaching out.” Heschel believed that prophets do not speak for God so much as they remind their audience of God’s voice for the voiceless, the poor and oppressed. This did not mean that Heschel did not believe prophets spoke on God’s behalf, as God directed, it was meant to direct people’s thoughts to the fact that prophets today are not adding to truth, to the Word of God, they are pointing Truth out, they are directing people to the Word, they are carrying a Standard that they do not believe mankind has a right to escape – as they owe their very existence to God.

Heschel considers Hebrew prophets as receivers of the "Divine Pathos", expression of the wrath and sorrow of God over his nation that has forsaken him. Do we not face that today in our nation, the United States of America, as well as many other nations throughout the world? Have we not as a society forsaken the things of God, the Will of God, and the Ways of God? Has society not abandoned holiness for self and sin?

Heschel though Jewish considered prophets to still exist in modern times. His publisher states, "The standard Jewish view is that prophecy ended with the ancient prophets, somewhere early in the Second Temple era. Heschel demonstrated that this view is not altogether accurate. Belief in the possibility of continued prophetic inspiration, and in its actual occurrence appear throughout much of the medieval period, and even in modern times.”

Spiritual/Political Disclaimer:

This blog will not be for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It will not be in any way politically correct. It will make every effort to share the truth in love, [Ephesians 4:11-16], to a decaying and dying society and church. I share what I share not to hurt, harm, or offend any person[s] or group; I do it because Christ’s Standard and Truth is not being represented by enough of His Followers and I do it out of love. I love enough to tell His Truth.

Ephesians 4:11-16 NKJV

¹¹And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, ¹²for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, ¹³till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; ¹⁴that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, ¹⁵but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.