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

Makeup: Traits That Characterized a Prophet

Grandfather began to shake. How could the man have known! No one had seen him. The Russians had not even reached the village when he had hidden that head. Now the patriarch placed the telltale sack before Grand father and let it fall open, revealing to everyone the head with the milk white eye. "Have you anything to confess, Brother Demos?" the Russian asked. "Yes, I have," said Grandfather, still shaking. "But how did you know?" "God told me," the old man said simply. "You still do not believe that He speaks to His people today as in the past. The Spirit gave me this word of knowledge for a special reason: that you and your family might believe. You have been resisting the power of the Spirit. Today is the day you will resist no longer." Before his neighbors and guests that evening Grandfather confessed the deception he had attempted. With tears rolling down his face into his bristly beard, he asked their forgiveness. "Show me," he said to the prophet, "how I, too, can receive the Spirit of God." Grandfather knelt and the old Russian laid his work-gnarled hands on his head. Immediately Grandfather burst into joyous prayer in a language neither he nor anyone present could understand. The Russians called this kind of ecstatic utterance "tongues" and regarded it as a sign that the Holy Spirit was present with the speaker. That night Grandmother, too, received this "Baptism in the Spirit." 26 What a story! This is just one of many accounts from around the world that illustrate the possibility of prophecy today with the same beneficial effects as recorded in the Bible. 27 Although this chapter has concentrated on the Old Testament prophets, I include this episode about the old Rus sian to keep before us the concept of prophecy today as in continuity with that of Bible times.

REFLECTIONS

Prophets had to be people of outstanding character, great minds, and courageous souls. They had to be this by nature and then, being dedicated to God, they became still greater because of the tasks and special provisions assigned them. Thus they became the towering giants of Israel, the form ers of public opinion, the leaders through days of darkness, people distin guished from all those about them either in Israel or other nations of the day.is Leon Wood

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