Tozer Majesty 06

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A Divine Attribute:
Something True About God

The study of the attributes of God, far from being dull and heavy, may for the enlightened Christian be a sweet and absorbing spiritual exercise.  To the soul that is athirst for God, nothing could be more delightful.

Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breath the Name
Earth has no higher bliss.
               Frederick W. Faber

It would seem to be necessary before proceeding further to define the word attribute as it is used in this volume.  It is not used in its philosophical sense nor confined to its strictest theological meaning.  By it is meant simply whatever may be correctly ascribed to God.  For the purpose of this book an attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.

And this brings us to the question of the number of the divine attributes.  Religious thinkers have differed about this.  Some have insisted that there are seven, but Faber sang of the ”God of a thousand attributes,” and Charles Wesley exclaimed,

Glory thine attributes confess,
Glorious all and numberless.

True, these men were worshiping, not counting; but we might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasonings of the theological mind.  If an attribute is something that is true of God, we may as well not try to enumerate them.  Furthermore, to this meditation on the being of God the number of the attributes is not important, for only a limited few will be mentioned here.

If an attribute is something true of God, it is also something that we can conceive as being true of Him.  God, being infinite, must possess attributes about which we can know.  An attribute, as we can know it, is a mental concept, an intellectual response to God’s self-revelation.  It is an answer to a question, the reply God makes to our interrogation concerning himself.

What is God like?  What kind of God is He?  How may we expect Him to act toward us and toward all created things?  Such questions are not merely academic.  They touch the far-in reaches of the human spirit, and their answers affect life and character and destiny. 

When asked in reverence and their answers sought in humility, these are questions that cannot but be pleasing to our Father which art in heaven.  ”For He willeth that we be occupied in knowing and loving,” wrote Julian of Norwich, ”till the time that we shall be fulfilled in heaven…. For of all things the beholding and the loving of the Maker maketh the soul to seem less in his own sight, and most filleth him with reverent dread and true meekness; with plenty of charity for his fellow Christians.  ”To our questions God has provided answers; not all the answers, certainly, but enough to satisfy our intellects and ravish our hearts.  These answers He has provided in nature, in the Scriptures, and in the person of His Son.

The idea that God reveals Himself in the creation is not held with much vigor by modern Christians; but it is, nevertheless, set forth in the inspired Word, especially in the writings of David and Isaiah in the Old Testament and in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in the New.  In the Holy Scriptures the revelation is clearer:

The heavens declare Thy glory, Lord,
In every star Thy wisdom shines;
But when our eyes behold Thy Word,
We read Thy name in fairer lines.
                                Isaac Watts

And it is a sacred and indispensable part of the Christian message that the full sun-blaze of revelation came at the incarnation when the Eternal Word became flesh to dwell among us.

Though God in this threefold revelation has provided answers to our questions concerning Him, the answers by no means lie on the surface.  They must be sought by prayer, by long meditation on the written Word, and by earnest and well-disciplined labor.  However brightly the light may shine, it can be seen only by those who are spiritually prepared to receive it. 

”Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

From: The Knowledge of the Holy

Katz Prophecy 10

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The Spirit of Prophecy: An Examination of the Prophetic Call
Art Katz

10 – The Body of Christ – The Place of Formation

It is not to be imagined that God is going to send men like that out into the world and into the nations who have not first been sharpened and made acute within their own fellowship. They need to bring the word into the band of souls to whom they are daily joined. If the fellowship will not bear and be supportive of their prophets, then there will not be men to be sent.
He must be sent from a body who understands these things and recognizes the significance and the fatefulness of his speaking and acting. He needs to be sent with the laying on of hands, which means, “We not only identify with you, but we sustain you by our own intercessions, because we are going to suffer the consequence of what you are doing. We are in this with you.” That is the ‘Antioch’ that we are waiting for, that men could be sent out of such a context with such an identification.

Now there were at Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers: …And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,… (Acts 13:1a and 2a).
In other words, when men of those two callings were found ‘together,’ that is to say, something more than sitting in the same room, “the Holy Spirit said…” Anybody who knows anything about this knows the painful tension between a teacher and a prophet. It is not because they are wanting to act contrary, but both of them, acting out of the integrity of their call, of necessity rub the other raw. The teacher wants it to be according to the Word—line upon line, precept upon precept. If there was not, however, the press that comes of visionary things to get the teacher beyond the safe, prescribed place according to the Word, the teacher himself would be limited. There is, therefore, interplay, with both men acting out of the integrity of their call, and yet necessarily chafing one another. That is where love comes in, namely, to bear the strain and the tension of that, and to receive therefore the benefit of it, and not to flee from it because there is a painful or irritating tension of interrelationship.

The Spirit of God called out of the congregation at Antioch, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Paul for the work to which I have called them (Acts 13:2b).” It was in the fellowship that they became separated from their own ambitions and defects. The Body of Christ, the prophetic body, the supportive body, is an enormously crucial thing in the shaping, the perfecting and the sending of the prophetic voice into the earth. That is what we are talking about as a prophetic community. They do not all have that call, but they all have that awareness. They all understand the primacy and importance of the prophetic word. Institutional situations will never produce a prophet. But there will never be any ‘Antiochal’ sending bodies unless we desire them and are willing for the cost of them.

Do we have the ability to recognize those who give evidence of the call? We are not to dampen them but encourage them. At the same time we are to show to them the admixture of flesh and Spirit still operative. By such a process of gentle and loving admonition and exhortation the Body can be a help to them. The prophet needs to be separated even from the self-consciousness of his own calling, let alone any subtlety of ambition that needs for him to be seen, applauded and recognized. He needs to be able to bear the reproach and rejection of what will invariably be the consequence of his faithfulness. Indeed, the prophet’s whole life and history in God is calculated toward that end. It is aggravation, consternation and every divinely calculated thing, because that is how the prophetic person is formed. There is no cheap way to incubate it. He has got to pass through the essence of the issues of life in order one day to address them with penetration and authority in others, compelling them to decisions for or against God.

While his most radical obediences will most likely be performed alone, the prophet is a man both communal and corporate, not in an idealized sense, but as one himself frequently critiqued of others and desiring it. The moment of obedience may come as one standing alone before Ahab, but the thing that makes that moment powerful and confrontational is that which preceded it, that is to say, in the man coming out of a true corporate life.
That corporate life is not some idealized or romantic community out in the remote boondocks. It is rather a situation where that man is more subject to review and examination than any other that make up that community. If the community is not rendering that service, then I cannot think of anyone in greater danger than the prophet. The prophet must make himself accessible. A prophet who prefers privacy and who is unattended by others or is surrounded by a self-affirming, paid and mutually congratulatory staff is likely false or will become so. There is a difference between living in an interactive community and being surrounded and affirmed by a staff of paid employees.

It is another situation when you are living in proximity and relationship and where others have every freedom to critique you and speak into your life. The true prophet knows that unless he is receiving that kind of input and examination, then he will move into deception and that without even knowing it. Just because one has an anointing from God, it does not mean that one is invincible. The presence of an anointing does not necessarily mean that God’s statement of approval is on the individual’s life in its entirety. You can be anointed in the place of ministry, but the defects and contradictions in your life, personally and privately, need to be both attended and seen to.

Prophets are not to go out before they are threshed. They should be welcoming the threshing and expect it, because there are subtleties of soul in all of us—little insinuations of ambition, little presumptions of pride, little romantic notions of what we think prophetic service is—that God has got ruthlessly to deal with. This is necessary so that when the prophet speaks, it is God’s word, not only in its content, but also in the mood and spirit of its delivery.

END

The heat of a furnace

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Prophecy finds its birth in fire. The prophetic dimension is sustained by fire. The prophet brings fire. A prophetic utterance demands a listener to give himself to the fire on the altar. Prophecy brings separation – eternal values are one with the fire, earthly desires cannot share this communion.

“The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times.” Ps 12:6. Apprehending a word from a furnace requires a heart willing to adjust to intense temperatures and pressure. The first requirement of the prophetic realm is a heart which is willing to bear the ferocity of the aliveness of heavenly realities. The fire of the furnace produces a mind perplexed and shattered by the complexity and otherness of the thoughts of God; a mind ready to violate common codes of the self-sustaining structures which defines and defends manageable religion.

Micah, a “minor prophet”, had taken the necessary steps into the fire, and he knew the reality of heavenly heat and pursuit, and wrote: “ But I am full of strength and skill and courage, inspired by the Eternal, to let Jacob know its crimes, and Israel its sins. Leaders of Jacob, listen to this, you judges over the house of Israel, who spurn at justice and twist equity, who build your Zion up with bloodshed and Jerusalem on crime, judges passing verdicts for a bribe, priests pattering oracles for pay prophets divining for money, and all the while relying on the Eternal.” Micah 3:8-11 – Moffatt.

What kind of man dares to go; what kind of inner constitution will carry a man into the presence of men of authority of this world as well as before the revelling, raging mob bringing words with fire? What kind of burden, what kind of inner pressure produces enough bravery to allow a man to reduce himself to mere sacrifice, a burnt offering, an offering by fire? What happens in the secret place, what is wrought in the inner parts of man to for the sake of bringing forth moral stamina corresponding with the words from the furnace of Heaven?
Too many among us dismiss the burning bush as yet another thorn bush devoured by spontaneous combustion. The prophetic mind is occupied with the maintenance of and the operations of the fire of God. A prophet’s heart is set on fire, it burns because God speaks. A word purged seven times will bring fire. A word from the Lord reveals what His fire is like.

The main concern of the prophet is the fire itself. Fire is the driving force in his life. The fire on the altar shall be kept burning, it may under no circumstances be quenched – and the prophet is there, brought into office, to keep it burning. This fundamental necessity has taken him into the priestly realm, into the business and ministry of priesthood. A mind set on fire, occupied with the fire, is a mind given to priestliness. A priest cannot allow the fire to fade, to be quenched, to go out. A priest cannot allow the realities of Heaven to fade; the testimony may never fade.

A testimony of the heavenly realities carries the fire of the altar at its core. The fire ignites words – a testimony is not words, a prophecy does not consist of words primarily but is an outburst of heavenly fire. Baptized with fire. Baptized with passion for reality. A prophetic word brings purging. A word from the furnace brings separation. It never leaves the people slumbering with an “All is well”. It reveals necessary pursuits of holiness to be made by a righteous people. The fire provokes positively where righteousness is already rooted. The very same fire disqualifies and destroys where unrighteousness has established inroads.

The disposition of the prophetic man is to be defined by the fire itself. It is not generated by sternness – holiness is not harsh, not stirred by lively imagination or a bright intellect, not produced by strange moodiness or altered states of perception. Coming out from the presence, having been at the furnace, having had an opportunity to look into His face – all this, and nothing but this makes a heart burn and sets a mind on fire.

Why is the prophet of the Old Testament times so alive to, so direct and immediate in his approach as to moral issues? Why is he dramatically on target in relation to dealing with malicious practices among his people, even among foreign nations? Why do we suffer from charismatic shallowness regarding sin, regarding attempts to promote injustice, regarding any and every evil practice? Why do we suffer from a common charismatic shallowness regarding prophetic negligence in this realm? Baptized with Spirit, but not with fire. Baptized into spiritual pragmatism and religious conformity, but not with the Holy Spirit and His fire.

The fire is gone from the altar. The priest and the prophet are not present an in proper position for its maintenance. There is no passion for heavenly realities. The state of affairs is worse, much worse than when a minor prophet stood up to speak to a nation gone astray. How did he dare to speak? How long do we have to wait for a prophet carrying a burden of that kind again? Is there anybody ready to give himself to the altar? Is there anybody out there ready for that fire?

Lars Widerberg

Katz Prophecy 09

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The Spirit of Prophecy: An Examination of the Prophetic Call
Art Katz
9 – Prophetic Formation and Integrity

It is an ultimate calling that points us again to the premium, not of the office as some abstraction, but that it rests and inheres with the man himself. The man is the thing in himself. He is the prophetic man. His message is not some kind of an addendum. He is not a disembodied spirit who simply brings a word. He is bound up with the word. If you reject him, then you are rejecting the word with him, which is to say, rejecting the Word made flesh. We need to see the inseparability of the office and the man, and that is why prophets are not born in a day. That is why they are not going to be produced in a three-month school, or any comparable kind of thing. It is a work; a process whereby God invests Himself into the man in His own essential Person.

The prophet does not come to an identification with the seeing of God in a day. There is a history of dealings, of heart-rending and heart-aching disappointments, setbacks, castings away and conflicts that he just lives with as being inherent with the call; and he bears it. He grew up in the world, and the values of the world as a man. He is recruited and called in, and brought out of the world, its values and seeing, and brought increasingly into the place of God’s seeing.

If the prophet’s word is going to devastate others, then he himself must first experience devastation. He has first to come out of his own false alignments and come increasingly into the place of God’s seeing, and then in coming to that place, a courage to bear the reaction against him. You wonder why anybody would want to be one! The first evidence of a false prophet is somebody who likely wants to be a prophet! It has nothing to do with what you want to be; it has to do with the God who calls. It is nevertheless remarkable how many people are attracted to becoming a prophet because their definition and view of prophet is other than what we are describing. Their view is of something much more exciting, romantic and self-glorifying.

Scribe and prophet

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Between the scribe who has read and the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea.

We are today overrun with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where are they!

The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but the Church waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated the veil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God.

A.W.T.

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The yearning to know What cannot be known, to comprehend the Incomprehensible, to touch and taste the Unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man.  Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its Source.  How can this be realized?

The answer of the Bible is simply ”through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love.  Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.  God came to us in the incarnation; in atonement He reconciled us to Himself, and by faith and love we enter and lay hold on Him.

”Verily God is of infinite greatness,” says Christ’s enraptured troubadour, Richard Rolle; ”more than we can think; … unknowable by created things; and can never be comprehended by us as He is in Himself.  But even here and now, whenever the heart begins to burn with a desire for God, she is made able to receive the uncreated light and, inspired and fulfilled by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, she tastes the joys of heaven.  She transcends all visible things and is raised to the sweetness of eternal life….

Herein truly is perfect love; when all the intent of the mind, all the secret working of the heart, is lifted up into the love of God.”’

That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as

Darkness to the intellect
But sunshine to the heart.
         Frederick W. Faber
From: The Knowledge of the Holy

Fire in the Bones 06

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5. Prophetic speech, finally, is not an act of criticism. It is rather an act of relentless hope that refuses to despair and that refuses to believe that the world is closed off in patterns of exploitation and oppression.13 It stands against a closed present tense that is either excessively complacent about social relations or excessively despairing about an unbearable present tense. This speech knows that such closed-off life inevitably produces brutality, the child of despair, either out of strident control or out of hopelessness. It dares to assert in any and every circumstance the conviction known since Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Aaron, namely, that there is a God who can and will make all things new, even in the face of our most closed-down, self-satisfied present tense. This is what the text means when it asserts that God works an impossibility in order that “all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel” (1 Sam. 17:46).

From:
Like Fire in the Bones
Walter Brueggemann

Getting smaller

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On Getting Smaller Trying to Get Big

Some time ago we heard a short address by a young preacher during which he quoted the following, “If you are too big for a little place, you are too little for a big place.

It is an odd rule of the kingdom of God that when we try to get big, we always get smaller by the moment. God is jealous of His glory and will not allow any man to share it with Him. The effort to appear great among men will bring the displeasure of God upon us and effectively prevent us from achieving the greatness after which we pant.

Humility pleases God wherever it is found, and the humble man will have God for his friend and helper always. Only the humble man is completely sane, for he is the only one who sees clearly his own size and limitations. The egotist sees things out of focus. To himself he is large and God is correspondingly small, and that is a kind of moral insanity. Humility is a coming back to sanity like Nebuchadnezzar. The humble man evaluates everything correctly, and that makes him a wise man and a philosopher.

Young Christians often hinder their own usefulness by their attitude toward themselves. They begin with the innocent notion that they are at least a bit above the average in intelligence and ability, and consequently they feel shy about taking a humble place. They want to begin at the top and work upward! What happens is that they usually fail to secure the high place they feel qualified to fill and end up developing a chronic feeling of resentment toward everyone who stands in their way or fails to appreciate them. And as they grow older that comes to include almost everybody. At last comes a deep permanent grudge against the world. They settle at last into a state of sour saintliness and develop a look of holy hurt they fancy must have been on the faces of the martyrs in the arena.

This is too serious to be funny and too tragically harmful to take lightly. The simple fact is that no one can stand in the way of a completely humbled man. There aren’t enough mountains in hell to hold down the true man or woman of God even if they were piled on him or her at once. God chooses the meek to confound the mighty. “From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.” Babies pass for just what they are – they have no pride in themselves and they bear no grudges. Here’s a tip for Christians.

A.W. Tozer

From:
This World: Playground or Battleground?

Fire in the Bones 05

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4. Out of God’s justice, prophetic speech characteristically takes a criticalposture over against established power. Established power, in predictable ways, always manages to legitimate itself until it drives every other factor out of the social equation and history comes to equal not only the play of power but finally the embrace of this particular arrangement of power.
Prophetic speech refuses such a seductive domestication of the historical process. Prophetic speech not only insists that the raw use of power is wrong and must pay heed to human reality but also makes the more difficult claim that, in the end, raw power cannot succeed and is not the final datum of human history. Prophetic speech is realistic in knowing that massive power matters enormously; it is equally insistent that massive power does not matter ultimately as regards the outcome or significance of the human process. This view of power is not an obscurantist supernaturalism that bails out with reference to God. Rather it is the studied conclusion that there simply is not enough power in the long run to sustain itself in the face of human restlessness among those who refuse to be eradicated as an inconvenience. Moreover this human restlessness that refuses eradication is rooted in God’s own resolve for the world.

From:
Like Fire in the Bones
Walter Brueggemann

Katz Prophecy 08

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The Spirit of Prophecy: An Examination of the Prophetic Call
Art Katz

 
8 – The Anatomy of False Prophets

We need to be jealous for the truth of the prophetic calling. If the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, then we cannot be careful enough in the consideration of this subject. Do our present-day prophets speak out of their own hearts and spirits? Do they draw from each other, or do they come to us out of the secret place of God? Out of what formative relationships in the Body have these prophets come? Has there been an appropriate nurturing, not only of the gift, but also of the character of prophetic men before they minister to the church? How long and how rightly have they been part of a local fellowship? Have they been sent out by the same in a sending that is more than a ceremonial, officious thing? Do we even know what a true sending is?

False prophets validate each other, where the one applauds, affirms and establishes the other, but it is not a fellowship that has validated them. They have not risen up out of the organic work of God itself, like the church in Antioch. Instead they pay tribute to each other and compliment each other, especially as those who are flowing in much the same thing. What is the source of their prophetic speaking? Where does the prophet get his word? If it is not out of the council of God, the secret place, how is it then God’s word? If men do claim to be commissioned, we have a right to look for evidence that they have indeed stood in that place.

In Jeremiah chapter 23, God gives us a powerful statement about true and false prophets. It is one thing to have an indictment against Israel, but when you begin to indict the prophets of Israel, the loftiest, the best and the noblest thing, then that must be a symbol or a statement of the low condition of a nation prior to its judgment.

”For both prophet and priest are polluted; even in My house I have found wickedness,” declares the LORD (v.11).

It is remarkable how self-serving this reciprocal thing is between heads of apostolic and prophetic movements or fellowships and their prophets, and how comfortable they are with one another and how they affirm one another. The people are in an unspoken agreement with their ministers: ”You present a biblical message. We will pay the bill and have a Sunday service that will leave our lives free from any kind of demand that would really touch our true vested interest and values. We don’t want a message that is going to challenge where our heart really is.” As the priest, so also the people. As the pastor/preacher, so also the congregation. Into that situation we have to come prophetically—and likely be stoned!

Therefore their way will be like slippery paths to them, they will be driven away into the gloom and fall in it; for I shall bring calamity upon them, the year of their punishment,” declares the LORD (v. 12).

It implies that there is not an immediate judgment, but rather an appointed future time in which God judges those who profane His house—even those who originally had authentic and holy callings. That may well be why the Lord is allowing to continue that which is presently being called prophetic or apostolic and is so popular, but for them, as with the priests and prophets of old, there will be a year of visitation or a time when God calls a halt.

Moreover, among the prophets of Samaria I saw an offensive thing: they prophesied by Baal and led My people Israel astray (v.13).

There is a consequence for false prophecy. It will affect the entire nation and therefore the entire church by the same principle.

Also among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing: the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood; and they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one has turned back from his wickedness. All of them have become to Me like Sodom, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah. (v. 14).

Their view of truth and God is corrupted by their sensual and ungodly living. Walking in lies and committing adultery (or the frequency of divorce and remarriage) go hand-in-hand. If you are going to commit adultery spiritually or physically, then there is a way in which you have to inwardly justify yourself, and you can only do that at the expense of the truth of God. There is also a consequence in that it strengthens the hands of evildoers. There is nothing about their proclamation that causes repentance and return, but rather a condoning of those who are in a place opposed to God, who Himself hates divorce. It is something like judges today who cannot bring sentence upon transgressors. They cannot bring the severity of the law against the lawbreaker, because their own life personally is itself a transgression.

Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets, ‘Behold, I am going to feed them wormwood and make them drink poisonous water, for from the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land.’ Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you…’ (vs. 15-16a).

Notice that God still calls them prophets! It is maybe because the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. They still retain their official title, but what they are performing under that title is in God’s sight an abomination. There is nothing more profane than when the sacred is not authentically sacred. When we take the sacred phrase, ‘Thus says the Lord’ and merely employ it as a device to obtain the attention of our hearers, then we are desecrating the sacred. We are making the sacred profane and once we have done that, what can be hoped for? If we are not as a priestly people setting forth the distinction between the profane and the sacred, what can be hoped for in the world?

They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the LORD. They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘The LORD has said, ‘You will have peace’; and as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’ (v.16b-17).

This must be the very quintessence of what a false prophet is, namely, the giving of a false comfort and a false assurance of peace that does not regard the truth of the conditions that need to be faced. It is an unwillingness to bring a hard word. The things that are prophesied are normally flattering and encouraging to the flesh, rather than challenging or threatening. False prophets have historically prophesied peace when there is no peace. ‘Calamity will not come upon you’ is unhappily the kind of prophetic statement that is coming forth even today, especially in Israel. They are giving a false comfort to those who are not even properly aligned to God. Humanly speaking, we would not see these people as those who despise God. God sees them, however, as despising Him, and we need to see it as God sees it. The false prophets are actually bringing a kind of encouragement to those people who are already out of right relationship with God and give them an assurance that their relationship with God is in order.
But who has stood in the council of the LORD, that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? (v.18).

Here is the key verse. Everything in God, in the last analysis, comes down to the issue of relationship. He will never give anything independent of relationship. When He called Moses up to the Mount to receive the tablets of the law in order that he might teach them, Moses was first to come up and be there. How dare we say, ”Thus says the Lord,” who have not stood in the council of the Lord and heard His word? I think it is impossible for a flamboyant, gainsaying, gain-seeking minister to even be in that place. To be in the council of the Lord requires a certain humility, a certain brokenness, a certain utter dependency upon God, a certain capacity to wait and a certain separation from self-interest, fame, fortune and recognition. Men given to those things cannot be in the council of the Lord, and yet they are the first ones to so readily say, ”Thus says the Lord!”

The characteristic of ministries today is toward the separation of ministry from relationship. We have made ministry a thing in itself. We talk about worship and the Lord, but somehow we are able to perform it out of an independent, virtuoso ability. Relationship is not only the key to the bestowing of the gift or the tablets of the Law, but the ongoing ability to rightly teach them. Once you sever relationship from ministry, you are on exceedingly dangerous ground. The ministry flows out of the life and the life out of the relationships, and if we break that connection and have a ministry independent of that, then it is not going to be a ministry that God recognizes, employs or honors.

But who has stood in the council of the LORD…?

This phrase implies a closeness to God. How is it, then, that these prophets who were speaking prolifically and influencing the nation toward evil were not in this place? Why did they not get the word of the Lord out of His council and out of His presence? That there should even be a moment’s hesitation about answering this question is a real statement about us! They were adulterers and walking in lies, and therefore, how can such men be in the council of God? This God is holy and you cannot come into that presence in that condition. You do not even desire to come into that place in that condition. That is why you get your words from others, or out of your own skull. Standing before God requires sanctification. It requires something about our own condition that permits that kind of relationship, particularly as it is in abiding.

It is being in the council of God and being in the presence of God that the word may come, but if you make the word and the attainment of it the condition for entering the presence, then you have already stepped off holy ground. You are coming in the spirit of utility and not in the spirit of devotion to God for His own sake. Moses was told to come up the Mount and be there, not for the benefit that was going to accrue to him for coming, even the ministerial benefit, but simply because God is God!
He is the Creator and we are the creation. We are simply to be there, and if no word comes, then no word comes. If we come looking for a word in that expedient, utilitarian sense that we have, then it is no longer the holy ground. It is the spirit of the world that has the underlying premise that one must do this in order to obtain that. We simply do not know what it means ‘to do’ or ‘to be’ for its own sake. If we have never come to that place first with God, then how shall we come to it with men? There is, therefore, a warp in all that we do and say that does not have its true place out of the presence of God, which place cannot be entered in the spirit of utility.

Seeking the Lord is an extraordinarily difficult thing and few there be that have the incentive. It itself is a suffering, and in fact, just to be more ruthlessly honest, it is a dying. Living on the earth, in the flesh, in the world and in time, and to confide and to commune with God, is an extraordinary and ultimate attainment. If you attain it, then maintain it, because you do not want to have to do it all over again. We are talking about something very critical. What then shall we say for the whole rash of popular and sought-out prophets that have arisen in recent years? Are they speaking from the council of God? God’s judgment about the failure to obtain His word in that place is severe:

Behold, the storm of the LORD has gone forth in wrath, even a whirling tempest; it will swirl down on the head of the wicked (v. 19).

The word ‘wicked’ is almost exclusively used for those who should know better. It is those who profess or should have every reason to know God and are yet, by intent, acting wrongly. That is wickedness.

The anger of the LORD will not turn back until He has performed and carried out the purposes of His heart; in the last days you will clearly understand it (v. 20).

Notice that the judgment is deferred. It is not immediate, but it will come later for something now that is an offense to God, namely, the whole compromise of His prophets and the way it has affected the nation.

I did not send these prophets, but they ran; I did not speak to them, but they prophesied. But if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds (vs. 21-22).

We can know when the word is out of the council of God because it has this salutary effect. It will affect the nation or fellowship in turning it toward God, rather than away from Him and from their evil ways and their practices. Generally speaking, when men will invoke the phrase, ”Thus says the Lord,” it is almost a testimony to the fact that the Lord is not saying. If He is saying, then we do not have to embellish the statement by legitimating it. The statement itself will ring with the truth of God and the sense of God. Is it a quickened statement of God of an original kind that we need to hear in the crisis place that we are, or is it just some kind of an embellishment to give a charismatic endorsement to our meeting? If it is the latter it will have the effect of cheapening the whole integrity of that which is prophetic and make it a shamelessly light kind of thing that anyone almost at will can offer¾ and does!

When Israel’s prophets said, ”Thus says the Lord,” then you know that what is following is going to be a judgment that is so horrific that God validates even the words that bear His resonance, because they are words of ultimate judgment. It must, therefore, be clear from the inception that this is not the prophet speaking out of himself. We have it passed down to us as written prophecy of a kind that has affected the history of Israel. But in contemporary spoken prophecy we need to discern whether it is the Lord speaking authenticated by what is being said in terms of the anointing and the authority it bears, rather than in having it labeled for us.

The call to the prophet is the call to the Cross. It is a frequent, if not continual form of suffering of an exquisite and ultimate kind. Can we say, ”Thus says the Lord” without actually articulating those words or implying those words in our statement, except that our word has indeed come through the Cross? It is out of a death. It is not our own word, but His, which can only come from that Cross-centered place. That was true for the prophets before the advent of the Cross. Elijah preceded the Cross historically, but he knew the death of it when he said, ”…there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.” Jesus knew the Cross before He became crucified on it. The Cross only exemplified and made visible the thing to which His life was all along submitted.

‘Can a man hide himself in hiding places, so I do not see him?’ declares the LORD. ‘Do I not fill the heavens and the earth?’ declares the Lord. I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy falsely in My name, saying, ‘I had a dream, I had a dream!’ (vs.24-25).

The heart of the offense in being false before God is that all of this takes place as if He is not seeing and does not understand and is not aware of what is being done. It is an enormous presumption, one that God notes. It is, in effect, a complete absence of the fear of God or the reverence for God as God. Those that do so really believe they are hearing from God and that what they are communicating is the council of God! They have reached such a place of deceit, that they have persuaded themselves of it, and that when they say, ”Thus says the Lord,” it is in fact the Lord saying. We can come to that condition by a gradual erosion, a little day-by-day, slight kind of a thing, that when the process is finished, one is not only false, but one thinks that one is still true. Thus there is a daily vigilance required over the issues of the heart in order that deception does not have its ultimate work, where the man deceived thinks that he is in the right while leading many to their doom. That is why God urges us to exhort one another daily while it is yet today, because tomorrow is already too late.
…who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they relate to one another…(v.27a).

That is to say, to communicate a sense of God that is not God and allow those listening to think that it is God because they have attached the name of Jesus to it. False prophetic things and things that are deceitful will affect how people perceive and understand God, especially if it affirms them in their shallowness or a certain lightness and frivolity is communicated. God cannot help but suffer loss. They are prophesying ”in the name of the Lord,” but because it is false, the effect of it is to get people to ”forget His name,” which is to say, to lose the sense of God as God, of what He is fearfully and majestically in Himself.

We can know that it is God’s word because it is likely to be the word that is expressed in verse 29:
‘Is not My word like fire?’ declares the LORD; ‘and like a hammer which shatters a rock?’

In other words, ”My word breaks up the deeps; it demolishes and it burns.” If you want to distinguish between a prophetic word that is God’s word and a prophetic word that is assumed by man, conjured out of his own mind and imagination and that is false, then here is the distinction: God’s word is like a fire. His word burns and is like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. It is devastating and brings an effect and contains a power that breaks in or burns through. It will never be some innocuous, syrupy thing that confirms us in what we already are, especially when our lives are slovenly and slack. His word should burn in our heart and reveal its true condition and not as we presumptuously thought it to be.

Every true word requires, and if we do not respond, then it means that we have not really heard. ”Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts (Heb. 4:7b).” If we have heard, then it should evoke a response in us. Not to respond is to harden. There is no such thing as neutrality. The word of God when it is the word of God has to have consequence for ill or good. We can never ignore it or allow it to pass and nod our heads by saying, ”Yes, that was a good and interesting word. I enjoyed that.” It requires or we harden, and that is why we find so many people in a hardened condition, and then God’s last appeals would be a prophetic cry, but it has got to be like a hammer upon a rock that breaks through until the necessary repentance and release.

”Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the LORD, ”who steal My words from each other. Behold, I am against the prophets,” declares the LORD, ”who use their tongues and declare, ‘The LORD declares.’ Behold, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams,” declares the LORD, ”and related them, and led My people astray by their falsehoods and their reckless boasting (‘and by their lightness’- King James Version); yet I did not send them or command them, nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit,” declares the LORD (vs. 30-32).

There is a certain levity, a certain kind of air of casualness that seems to prevail in conferences and sessions where men who have not been sent of God have had opportunity to speak as if they had been sent of God. The unhappy thing is that great numbers of Christians in the world have never heard a true prophetic word spoken in the authority of God, and all they hear they assume to be normative. They have no basis for comparison. But to hear such a true word once is to be ruined forever for anything less. There is, therefore, a great cry and need for that word and that authority to come into the earth, that the church might be rightly ‘ruined’ and made candidates for the truth. It is the word that has become ‘event.’

False prophets steal God’s words from each other and often speak the identical kind of word. If we were to survey the last thirty-five years, has there not been a succession of fads, panaceas, gimmicks and things that we latch onto? There is a way in which one can test by a raised finger: “Which way is the wind blowing? What is current? What is now popular? I know that if I speak on ‘prosperity and faith,’ the people will love it; or prayer, or worship, or church growth, or power evangelism.” We seem to go through periods where certain themes have found a place of popularity and then you just move in that; and you pick up what others are saying, and then you begin to say it. It is easier to hear the word from other men and to imitate and repeat that, knowing that it has already found approval and acceptance. We desperately need to hear all the more, therefore, what is on God’s heart; and the only one who can communicate that is that one who is close to His heart through a consistent communing. There is a door of dying to reputation, name and acceptance to find your way into the place of the secret council of God; but it is in that place alone that the word of the Lord will be given.