The prophet's handbook

church’s resistance to the officer’s reinstatement can be blamed. Add to that the church’s apostate stance on critical spiritual and moral issues, and you see the conflicting duality. On one hand, these issues clearly set forth God’s need for the prophet, and on the other, they answer why and how prophets are shunned and relentlessly persecuted. Still, the rising tide of demonism, looming greater than ever on the horizons of our last days, means the prophet, as God’s level-two power ministry, must be raised up and equipped to confront it. To better understand this, think about the worlds of Elijah and Elisha, two renowned prophets in ancient Israel during the era of the kings. Recall the state of affairs that motivated them and you see why God’s only response to earth’s deterioration today is prophetic reinstatement. The light in Israel had virtually been snuffed out by paganism, and God’s people no longer knew the real from the false. Their entire spiritual climate was black with demonic forces that had displaced Yahweh’s truth and glory in their eyes. It started with Solomon but reached its zenith of destruction through his successor, Jeroboam. If you remember, Jeroboam, who replaced Solomon as king of Israel, was extremely insecure about his new post as Israel’s fourth king. He knew he was not of noble birth and really should not have been considered for kingship. Yet, Jehovah saw fit to install him, which He did by the hand of a prophet. After surveying the situation, Jeroboam imagined unreal threats to his kingdom. Terrified that he would lose his position if Judah continued to serve the very God who put him in power in the first place, he concocted a deadly solution. The account of the story in 1 Kings says his emotional insecurity drove him to rebel against the Lord and hand the kingdom, which Yahweh had caused him to reign over, to devils. His defection, entirely spiritual, was nonetheless deadly. Today we would call it a new religious movement. Whatever the name, Jeroboam returned God’s favor by plunging His treasured nation of Israel into a darkness from which it would never fully recover. In selfish paranoia, he created his own religious system, taking the country right out of Jehovah’s hands, and delivering its dominion to the very gods (and demons) the Lord had rescued Israel from in the beginning. Jeremiah 2:11 calls it changing one’s god. Picking up from Solomon’s defection, Jeroboam expelled the Levitical priests from the Lord’s temple and put in their place those he chose out of his own heart. He installed all who showed an interest in the job, thus shifting the order