Previous in this series: Prophecy 1
What is more fascinating than prophetic methodology, for me, is prophetic theology. The ways in which various cultures and traditions recognize, initiate, train, develop and transmit the faculty is not nearly as interesting as what various cultures and practitioners think about the gift itself – the part it plays in the scheme of things. What the ability tells us about man….or God…..or the nature of being itself.
In fact, it is that vision that for me encapsulates most of the lessons I think I have learned about why prophecies finally, must fail and what really matters in the end, is not human ability (or ‘divine gift’ then for the hair splitters), but human relationship (and again for the legalists among us, Christian scripture in so many instances shows the futility of separating the human from the divine – (1 John 4 does a good job of summation of that argument).
What vision? The vision of how one’s god treats with human will. The human ability to choose, to make choice, to select one thing over another, to elect, to choose, to will. This is what I mean by the theology of prophecy.
It speaks volumes of one’s vision of God – the Cosmos, the Creator, the Self, The Nature of being, what the ‘I am’ ( identity) says about the ‘I will’ (intention). Understanding intent….and honoring it, is not a particularly mastered skill-set in cultures birthed through force of bloodshed and maintained by threat of same. I understand why what Jesus called the ‘kingdom of God‘ is such a foreign concept in the modern mind.
But understanding and honoring human intent is the foundation of good human relationships, and at the very heart of what we call love.
All who authentically prophesy in the name of Christ, regardless of magnitude of gifting, mark themselves by that test. 1 Corinthians 13.
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