sorting the prophets from the nut jobs

Working at a church, I have talked to a lot of nut jobs claiming to be prophets, that is spokesmen (and women) for God. Perhaps I sound unkind, I do not mean it. They are people dearly loved by Jesus and should be treated with the compassion and dignity of children of God. Nonetheless, they are “unbalanced,” to say the least.

Like this one guy – I asked him his name, and he said, “Well, it was ‘Sky,’ but as you get to the higher levels, you know...” Frankly, I don’t know. “Josh” has always worked for me (though I used to introduce myself as “Joshua” because “Josh” didn’t sound important enough).

But one thing has frequently bothered me: Reading about the prophets in the Bible, many of them seemed like nut jobs. So how can we tell the difference between the prophets and the mentally unstable?

Talking to one of the other pastors here, I had something of a realization that helped me on this. First, you have to start with this premise:

God wants us to hear and obey him more than we want to hear and obey him.

Stated differently, God is not out to fool us. Sounds simple, but the sheer agony some believers go through to “find God’s will,” demonstrates that they believe else wise. So this is a very important, presuppositional understanding of God that has multiple ramifications.

Next, we need to understanding that when we can look back at the prophets in Bible, we see that God validated their message through other means, such as accurate predictions of the future. (Note: the most important role of the prophet was not foretelling the future, but speaking on behalf of God and calling his people to obedience.)

I wonder if there was a relationship between the lengths God would go to validate the messenger and the extent to which the message was new revelation, beyond the already accepted Scripture.

No where is this more evident than in Jesus’ ministry. The message he spoke plainly contradicted his audience’s understanding of the Bible, so if all Jesus had was his message, the Pharisees would have had ever right to reject it. But God validated the message so clearly through miracles that they had no excuse.

To ignore these miracles or attribute them to someone other than the Holy Spirit (such as the devil) was such an act of defiant unbelief that it could be called “blaspheming the Holy Spirit,” and would indeed be unforgivable simply because there was nothing else that could be done to validate Jesus as the Christ (see Matthew 12:1-45).

Now to sum it up: When ever a person claims to speak for God and their message isn't simply illuminating Scripture, we should expect that God would validate it through unmistakable means, because God wants us to obey him and he is not out to trick us.