¨
The prophet; a man in whom an inescapable, an overriding word of God has been formed to be delivered – at greatest cost, with the prospect of particular personal loss – to his fellow contemporaries who will ridicule and condemn him according to their own wisdom, in haughty opposition to that which is to be discerned in the prophetic man.
This kind of man will, by the very existence of an inner testimony, stand as an assayer – an examiner among people – that he may know and try their way. His sending has little to do with gifting, not even the gifts of charismata. The sending of the prophetic man is not related to that of a formal office, endorsed by established religious as well as political rulership.
His life and living is a life overtaken by the very nature of existence, by the very nature of a Holy God. His days, and nights, are filled. . . all of them are filled with probing and pondering, with a persistent pursuit for that which holds a minimum of correspondence to that which is holy and heavenly.
His life consists in coming to terms with the inner formation of that antithetical word, to articulate its innate judgment and to live with the hazardous consequences of the reality of the word to be delivered with clarity in words as well as through moral stature.
L. W.
