Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

A Profile of the Ancient Hebrew Prophet

until the city fell. Another example was Hosea, who was to love a way ward wife regardless of her unfaithfulness and disloyalty (Hosea 1:2). These dramatized prophecies were not just an alternate way of putting across a particular message more effectively. They were certainly that. But more, they showed the true heart of God in and through the very emo tions and lives of His servants. The prophet, like a stage actor caught up in the part being played, experienced and identified with the intensity and reality of God's love in a way not otherwise possible. H. McKeating has a good insight on this: "Thus almost everything a prophet like Jeremiah does can become a prophecy. He lives his prophecies. His witness is not simply what he says but what he does. A prophet can be described, then, not only as a proclaimer of truth but as a demonstrator of truth, and he demonstrates truth both in actions that we can define quite narrowly as enacted prophecies and also in wider ways, in his own attitudes and behav iour towards the events of his time." 22 McKeating also says, "Enacted prophecy has an objective potency which our word 'symbolism' does not convey." In other words, when Jere miah buried those stones under the pavement in front of Pharaoh's palace, he was not only predicting that Nebuchadnezzar would actually set up his temporary throne on that exact spot, but believing that in some sense it would bring what he prophesied to pass (as it did!). He acted out what God was decreeing would be done. In a sense the authority of God so infused the action that we might say the "acted word" was "more than a symbol; it was a sign, a soul-filled, power-filled reality"; it was more than the word borne by a prophet, for in that moment the prophet him self was an extension of Jehovah's personality, thereby becoming himself the word. 23 Another example is Ahijah meeting Jeroboam on a country road (1 Kings 11:29-39). Taking his new robe, the prophet tore it into twelve pieces, which symbolized the tribes of Israel, then commanded the king to pick up ten of the pieces. Ahijah did not just symbolize the dividing of the kingdom; he was dividing the kingdom. The prophet not only lived out the prophecy but was enacting history. Once in Chesterfield, Virginia, in the House of Prayer Church, some ministers and I were praying over a native pastor from Nigeria. The unc tion of the Spirit came on me to prophesy over him. As I began I felt impressed to ask one of the ministers to bring the flag of Nigeria, one of many flags on display for a missionary emphasis, and hold it by him. It was an enacted prophecy, in simple form, to reinforce and bring to pass God's intention for Nigeria. The miracles of Moses, Elijah, Elisha and Jesus were usually more than just supernatural manifestations. A spiritual message was an integral part ■ 106