The prophet's handbook

Perhaps his fascination with the prophets began with Samuel, a chief prophet who inducted him into office. The fact that God’s prophet anointed him and made him king must have greatly impacted Saul. Add to it that the man was transformed into a king by the singing of a prophetic company and a season in their camp, and things become a little clearer. Saul’s heart, however, was not purged, just upgraded to think and act like a king. When he sat among the prophets as they prophesied God’s glory, Saul’s prophecies were then cursed and he stripped himself naked. The prophetic anointing upon him brought out the worst—not the best—in Saul. Over time, Saul went from bad to worse, especially after Samuel, the prophet who installed him as king, severed all relations with him. Being embittered by this action and the Lord’s rejection of him as king, Saul’s enchantment with the prophets turned to hatred, and he persecuted them. Here is a vivid example of the prophetic anointing and power creating a deadly mix. The fruit of such arrogance and presumptions is disastrous for the church and antagonistic to God. This unfortunate blight on an otherwise impressive institution is seen continually throughout Scripture in the false prophets who seduced Israel. The most amazing thing about the prophet’s office is that while it is one of the most abused and violently rejected, it tends to be among the most coveted because of the intrinsic power connected with it. While all the offices and every Spirit-filled believer receive empowerment and enablement from God’s Spirit of grace within, the prophet goes way beyond what is corporately distributed to that which is corporeally infused. There is just no better way to explain it than this. Exceeding the “collective dispensation” of grace for salvation, the people who fill this office receive by the Holy Spirit of God a capacitating imbuement. They are physically restructured within to accommodate the steady stream of God’s omnipotence and strength, without which they would react in much the same way that Daniel, Ezekiel, and the other prophets did. When confronted with the majestic holiness and power of God critical to quality performance in ministry, they continually crumbled under His glory. To prevent their collapsing under the Lord’s power, prophets are emotionally, psychologically, and mentally upgraded. God enhances their physical and psychological selves to better apply wisdom and keen understanding to their exercise of Christ’s resurrection power. The prophet is not only enlightened of mind, fortified in character, and enriched with supernatural knowledge and wisdom, but he or she literally “oozes” the peculiar texture of the Lord’s