The prophet's handbook

surprise that behind every real prophetic encounter there is a Creator revelation. Nor should it be difficult for prophets of this era to accept that they do not have to manufacture the word of the Lord for His people. Psalm 139:16 emphatically states that God wrote down the days of our lives before they began. The psalmist, for example, understood how his life would turn out because what the Lord had written before his birth concerning him was revealed. It is accepted that David, because he was also a prophet, had the ability to discern the Lord’s eternal writings and interpret them for his existence on earth. He was thus shown by the Lord that all the earth’s past, present, and future inhabitants had inscribed destinies in His archives that orchestrated the days of their lives. David realized that the almighty God even wrote about those who would reject Christ before time began and penned this truth for our time. Psalm 37:13, 18 says this, and throughout the Bible it is recorded how the Lord wrote a book for this or that. For instance, God wrote the book of life regarding earth and man, the book of the generations of Adam, and the book of the generation of Christ. There is the book of the wars of the Lord, the book of the law of God, and the books of blessings and curses. God has books on kings, kingdoms, nations, and judgments. The most common ones are the books of His prophets. He had His prophets write numerous books to chronicle His dealings with humanity and their diverse reactions to it throughout the years. The prophets’ writings included God’s reactions, as well as the detailed judgments that correspond to humanity’s crimes against Him. When the priests of ancient Israel failed Him, the Lord wrote a book of remembrance to record the special deeds of those who courageously feared Him during His nation’s reprobate times under the Mosaic dispensation. (See Malachi 3.) The Bible mentions or refers to books nearly two hundred times. In the vast majority of those references, the books contained prophecies. Apparently, this amount of references to books and records says the Lord’s respect for earthly as well as heavenly records is important to Him. In the New Testament, John’s Apocalypse discusses books in relation to the activities of God at least twenty five times. Overall, God’s books contain the governmental guidelines His spiritual protocrats are using to administrate His will on earth as revealed to the prophets to be uttered to the earth at various times. Genres such as end-time prophecy and the second coming of Christ, the records of the living and the dead, the deeds of each group, and how the Creator disposes of the earth and its godly and godless inhabitants in the end comprise its subject matter. Scripture’s discussion of books is not just to show how important records are