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

A Profile of the Ancient Hebrew Prophet

When "the word of the LORD came," the prophet certainly knew it. The people of that time were not continuously filled with the Spirit, as in New Testament times, so the sudden voice was unexpected, startling, incontestable and undeniable.The message was crystal clear and absolute in authority, and it demanded a response. 4 Sometimes the Bible records that the word came to a certain individual at a specific time and place, such as, "On the fifth of the month in the fifth year of King Jehoiachin's exile, the word of the LORD came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar" (Ezekiel 1:2-3). Or, "It came about in the same night that the word of the LORD came to Nathan, saying ..." (2 Samuel 7:4).The word was obviously not pre meditated or researched, but came as an immediate, profound, inspired, specific communication received clearly in the mind of the prophet with no doubt of what had been said. A careful reading of all the references will demonstrate that the voice of God was sometimes external, in the sense that the prophet heard phys ically audible words, as the lad Samuel heard God calling him in 1 Samuel 3:2-8; and sometimes internal, in the sense that the prophet heard God's word spoken into his mind, yet it did not arrive on literal sound waves. 5 The astounding story of the prophet Elijah hearing God's voice on Mount Horeb may be an example of this internal word. His experience in sequence of the highest and lowest spiritual points of his illustrious career is strikingly illustrated in my home state of Cali fornia, which has the highest and lowest geographical points in the lower 48 states.Mount Whitney, at 14,494 feet, reaches higher than any other mountain, and within fifty miles lies Death Valley at 282 feet below sea level.Within a short time the prophet Elijah plummeted from the pinna cle of ministerial success to the doldrums of rejection and despair. Elijah had defied the prophets of Baal, called fire down from heaven, recalled rain to the drought-stricken land and outrun Ahab's chariot to Jezreel.A high peak indeed! Then, hearing that Queen Jezebel had sworn to take his life, he fled to Beersheba, the farthest southern boundary of the neighboring kingdom of Judah.In terrible depression, he slept under a juniper tree, then was awakened and fed by an angel.He pushed on another two hundred miles south to the mountain of God where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. There, in the mouth of a cave,6 God gave the prophet a spectacular dis play of tempest, earthquake and fire-but somehow Elijah knew that God was not in any of these things.Then came a voice, still and small, like a gen tle rustling-a delicate, whispering voice that spoke to the depths of his soul.That undeniable voice, whether external or internal, grabbed Elijah's

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