The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)
Who are the prophets? Are they really those men and women whose words are written on the subway walls: overlooked, ignored, disdained, excluded, and ostracized by the prevailing institutional religious community?1
I’m certain that they are. The testimony of Scripture confirms it.
One of the most powerful and overlooked words in the New Testament is the word “repent.” It’s the Greek word “metanoia,” and it literally means “change the way you think.”
Sadly, the average Christian who hears the word “repent” immediately thinks it means “change your behavior.” They’re not wrong. But they’ve placed the cart before the horse and in doing so, have weakened the impact of a word meant to be foundational to Christian growth and maturity.
We are called, as followers of Jesus to lifelong repentance. Consider the gospel according to Jesus -
Repent for the kingdom of Heaven has come near.2
After emerging from the wilderness, overcoming the temptations of the devil to base his ministry success on worldly principles and ways, these were Jesus’s first words. They sum up his entire ministry. They are, in fact, the gospel.
Consider these words, only six verses after the inaugural announcement of his ministry -
Jesus went through Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news (literally, gospel) of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.3
The gospel is the good news that God’s kingdom is breaking into our warped and wicked world, and as disciples of Jesus, we are called to a lifetime of learning to see the difference between that kingdom and the fallen, broken kingdom of this world.
But the story of Israel as found in Scripture, and the story of the church as witnessed through these last two thousand years, is that God’s people think like and thus act like the world.
Jesus’s words to Peter sum it up best -
You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.4
Enter the prophets.
Always a minority. Outside the camp. Rejected by the religious right - those who are NEVER wrong.
And yet, those same prophets, found throughout the Bible, are revered, placed on pedestals, and almost worshiped by the institutionalized religious leaders whose message, lifestyles, and leadership only go to show how unlike God’s prophets they truly are.
Isn’t that what Jesus said?
Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.5
The more things change . . .
This begs the question: who are the prophets in our day? What do they look like? Where are they found? What do they believe?
This is where the practice of repentance, or learning to think differently, to think like kingdom people rather than worldly people, is essential. Jesus, the premier prophet of time and eternity, went unrecognized among those who considered themselves “guides for the blind, lights for those in the dark, and instructors of the foolish” but were steeped in worldly ways and thinking.6
As the prophet foresaw, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”7
Living in a part of Israel known as “Galilee of the Gentiles,” where Gentiles outnumbered Jews and where Jews were described as the “people living in darkness,”8 he hailed from Nazareth. And everybody knew that nothing good could come from Nazareth.9
His theological training paled in comparison to the institutional religious leaders of his day. His friends were notoriously not members of the religious elite.
In fact, it was these preeminent celebrity “guides for the blind” that he rebuked constantly. Until finally, they set aside their theological differences and disdain for one another to come together and rid themselves of this heretical troublemaker.10
But his call to “Follow Me!”11 continues to echo down the halls of history. And his followers, like him, refuse to conform to the rules, both written and unwritten, of the religious movers and shakers.
But like their Lord, their words are written on the subway walls for all who have eyes to see.
And that’s the topic of my next post.
In Christ,
Dan
Coming soon - Where is the God of Elijah: Overcoming Spiritual Drought in Our Lives and Churches.
You can read the first post in this series here: The Prophets Before You
Matthew 4:17.
Matthew 4:23.
Matthew 16:23.
Matthew 23:29-31.
Romans 2:19-21.
Isaiah 53:2.
Matthew 4:13-16.
John 1:46.
Mark 3:6.
Matthew 4:19, 8:22, 9:9, 10:38, 16:24, 19:21, 19:28, Mark 1:17, 2:14, 8:34, 10:21, Luke 5:27, 9:23, 9:59, 14:27, 18:22, John 1:43, 8:12, 10:27, 12:26, 21:19, 21:22.