¨
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.
