The prophet's handbook

The fundamental aim of any prophecy from God will not deviate from the nature of the Lord. When a nation sins against Him, He judges it. When His children do the same, He judges and chastens them that they may not be destroyed with the world. God forgives sin, but He has been shown throughout Scripture to still deal, in His own way, with its actual deeds. (See Psalm 99:8; 89:24–37; 2 Samuel 7:12–16; and Hebrews 12:5–6. Also refer to 1 Corinthians 10:1–10.) The prophet who receives a word from the Lord must not try that word by his own emotions, personal preferences, viewpoints, and patterns of belief. Instead, he or she must deny the natural self and face squarely and objectively God’s truth. Each time a prophet is tempted to compromise, he or she must ask the following sober question: Am I accustomed to thinking God is like me, or that I am just like God? Read Psalm 50:21. It bitterly disdains this notion. If a prophet maintains it, he or she is prone to release false prophecy. If a prophet is one who finds it difficult to separate his feelings from God’s wisdom, the inclination to “prophe-lie” is great. Other probing questions that may shed further light on the subject include: Does the prophet tend to sacrifice righteousness and truth for brotherly love and imbalanced tolerance of the sin-ridden variations of all humankind? Is he or she the sort who feels salvation and the new birth are subordinate to the human experience and must be reconciled with the real life of man? Perhaps the prophet believes in his or her heart in the universal salvation of all mankind, or in the contention that the entire human race will be saved and restored in the end, regardless of its treatment of and response to God. Maybe the prophet finds it impossible to rise above his or her empathy with carnal suffering to be a minister who maintains allegiance to God, His Word, and His truth. Or lastly, does the prophet in his heart tend to lean on the human side more than the spiritual side and manipulate truth to cause it to line up with his or her five senses? These and possibly many other questions have to be resolved within prophets before they can accurately and objectively take up the mantle of prophecy, or ever hope to boldly confront and refute false prophecy. If not, the prophet has little hope of discerning or challenging the deviations from revealed truth that God gave us His Son, His Word, and His Spirit to uphold. Today’s moral decay and corruption, added to sin’s brazenness, have caused many of the righteous to be cowered. Contemporary Christians have allowed themselves to be backed into a corner like whimpering animals under threat of attack. They have bowed to the rising revolt against the truth of God and have bought into the philosophy of preferential service to the Creator, adopting free-