On Prophecy and Justice

Several years ago, on a first go-around of making this website and blog, I posted a “prophetic prediction” with a click-bait title around the time one of those end-of-the-world predictions was floating about. While the title would have the reader believe that the piece was one of those blogs dispensing prophecy like Spirit-inspired Pez, in the end it was actually about describing what prophecy was (and, of course, talking about how the doomsday predictions that seemed all too common during the 2010s, were a bunch of hogwash). The piece lit up the internet like wildfire, drawing over 10,000 views in just a couple days. Ultimately, I felt convicted for my rope-a-dope tactics and deleted, not only the piece, but the whole website.

This isn’t one of those pieces, as I have (hopefully) matured a bit past that. But the underlying message is important nevertheless. If you run in Pentecostal-Charismatic circles, as my family has for four generations, the word “prophetic” is thrown about all of the time. Every body, it would seem, either is a prophet or knows someone who is. And many of today’s modern prophets readily distribute nuggets of prophetic content in response to the headlines of the day.

But the function of the prophetic office, in Scripture and throughout the history of the Church, is an important one that extends beyond a mere Christian variety of fortune telling. It is a very legitimate and necessary function of the Christian body and the Spirit has distributed the prophetic gifting throughout his people (Eph. 5).

Ok, So What is the “Prophetic?”

Well, I’m glad you asked! When we think of prophets and prophecy. The biblical function of the prophet has two necessary, indispensable functions to it: a foretelling function and a forthtelling function. We Pentecostals and Charismatics often are guilty of overemphasizing the foretelling function at the expense of the other. Mainline Christians and justice-oriented Millennials (of which I am an elder member) and Gen Zers often overemphasize the forthtelling and all but ignore the foretelling function. Here is a short breakdown of each.

Prophetic Foretelling

Foretelling is, well, just that, telling something before it happens. In the function of the prophetic office, foretelling is when a person, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit predicts that something is going to pass before it does. Sometimes it is a short-term prediction, as when Ezekiel prophesied the fall of Egypt to the Babylonians (Ezek. 29:17-30:19) or that Nebuchadnezzar would function as God’s sword to bring judgment upon Judah for its sinfulness (Ezek. 21). Other times, prophecies are cemented in the annals of history and do not come to pass for generations, or even centuries later, such as the royal birth announcement of the Messiah made by Isaiah in Isa. 9.

The foretelling function of prophetic ministry necessitates a fine-tuned sensitivity to the voice of the Holy Spirit and a life devoted to prayer—prayer, as it would seem from looking at the Scriptures, that is equally contemplative (meaning, God does the talking) as it is monological (meaning, you do the talking). Such prophetic declarations demonstrate God’s sovereignty over the unfolding of history and give glory to him as well as a necessary heads up for his people to prepare (e.g., Gen. 41) or to repent (2 Chron. 7).

Prophetic Forthtelling

Forthtelling, by contrast to foretelling, is not speaking about events that will happen in the future but instead speaking about events or realities in the present as God sees them and desires for them to be. It is speaking forth God’s intention. In those involved in activism and justice work, this can be reasonably equated to the phrase “speaking truth to power.” The Christian tradition has a long history of this sort of prophetic activity, even at times when the foretelling function seemed to be relegated to monks and mystics. It has been the hallmark of true Christian forthtelling prophetic ministry that it amplifies the voice of the marginalized, the oppressed, and the voiceless. It speaks to what God sees as his intended design for human flourishing and justice. The forthtelling function has historically operated in both calling the church to account for when it has strayed from God’s best and for holding rulers accountable for abusing those over whom they rule.

When We Get it Twisted

You may be already tracking with where I’m going with this, but a Spirit-led, well-rounded prophetic ministry (I’m talking about organic, localized ministry, not a branded, consumer driven operation) necessitates the function of both a foretelling function and a forthtelling function in the church, preferrably within the same individual.

When a prophet is all forthtelling with little to no foretelling, you have the result of much of the conciliar Protestant missions movement of the 1960s where well-indented social justice causes become so absence of the Spirit’s leading that they cease to be characteristically Christian at all. That is not to say that Christians cannot partner with non-Christian movements—we should—we must, but there is a sense in which when we are yielded to the voice of the Spirit, guided by the Spirit, and hearing where the Spirit desires to take us, that we are better attuned to doing his bidding an avoid simply expecting him to do ours. Forthtelling without foretelling is like wanting the kingdom of God without its King (shoutout to Mark Sayers for that brilliant phrasing).

By contrast, when the prophetic office is all foretelling and little to no forthtelling, it is not really prophetic at all in the biblical sense of the term. It becomes so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good. It is a Neo-Platonic, anemic version of biblical prophecy that pushes us dangerously close to a Christian version of divination—only today we examine the entrails of our favorite media outlet rather than that of an animal in order to get our predictions. The forthtelling component of the prophetic is necessary to keep us grounded in the real world goings on of the plight of those around us. With foretelling alone, we can wander from the millennia long tradition of amplifying the voice of the marginalized and poor and instead find ourselves lumped in with the group of prophets who resisted Ezekiel, defending the unrighteous and the status quo.

Conclusion

When we combine foretelling function and a forthtelling we find a Spirit-led, biblical prophetic office that is both finely attuned to the “vertical” promptings from the Lord as well as the “horizontal” realities to which God desires to speak. The prophetic function, whether as a ministry gifting, or as a ministry in itself, is not to be taken up lightly or for personal grandstanding. Prophets are almost always vilified in their own generation and venerated in the next. We tend to prefer our prophets dead and silent, having spoken to the sins of our ancestors rather than alive and well, getting all up in our own muddy business. I have no great application to give you other than some question: Who are the prophets in our time? Men and women, who are earnestly seeking the voice of the Spirit and where he is taking the Church while also vividly aware of the need to speak truth to power? Will we listen to them or crucify them? How do you see the prophetic in action in the Church today to speak into mattes of social justice? Are we overbalanced in foretelling or forthtelling? What must we do to come to a Spirit-led center?