David: Karen, let’s begin with a word association. Okay?

Karen: Okay.

David: I’ll say a word. Spell it first. Okay. And then you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. Ready?

Karen: Okay. Spell away.

David: If I can spell it. P-R-O-P-H-E-T.

Karen: Prophet.

David: Prophet. What comes to your mind?

Karen: Okay. Well, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is foretelling. Seeing into the future and speaking as far as what might happen in the future is going to happen in the future. Be more definite that way.

David: Okay. We’ll see what we come up with. Stay tuned.

Karen: Welcome to the Before We Go podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David at Karen Mains.

David: Karen, prophets play a major role in scripture. I’m going to name some names and then you tell me thoughts that come to your mind once again.

Karen: Is this a basic Bible quiz?

David: Not anything like that at all. Here’s a name. You tell me the response that you have to it. They’ll all be prophets, okay? The first one is Daniel.

Karen: Daniel. Okay. We always think of Daniel and the lion’s den, the children’s story. The children of Israel or the people of Israel had been taken into exile as far as I remember to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar was the leader there. So, Daniel became an advisor actually to Nebuchadnezzar. So he was a wise, very smart, probably very politically astute man.

David: The word that comes to my mind is distinguished.

Karen: Distinguished. Oh, that’s lovely.

David: I’m trying to get different feel that we have because these are very, very different people. I’m going to name a New Testament prophet. Tell me what you feel when you hear this name. Okay. John the Baptist.

Karen: Oh, I love John the Baptist. I love that figure in scripture. Yeah, he was actually a cousin of Jesus Christ. The hand of the Lord was upon him to prophesy that Christ the Messiah was at hand.

David: Prepare the way of the Lord.

Karen: That wonderful line in the musical God’s Bell.

David: Of course it comes out of scripture.

Karen: It comes right out of scripture. There’s no doubt in my mind that John the Baptist was a prophet.

David: I don’t think you’d say distinguished though when you think John the Baptist like Daniel.

Karen: He was an odd figure, but people went to him. They trusted him, his word and so when he said this is the one whose shoelaces or sandals I’m not even worthy of time.

David: That’s a great secret. Yeah.

Karen: They understood that he was telling the truth.

David: Yeah, here’s another one, okay? Elijah.

Karen: Elijah. Well, when I think of Elijah, I think of fiery chariots. He goes to heaven and a fiery chariot. What a way to end your life.

David: I also think of fire during his ministry.

Karen: Oh, fire from heaven. Right. The incident with the prophets of Baal. Right. That was an extraordinary story.

David: Again, a totally different figure. I have one and I gave you a scripture to read. Okay, this is again Old Testament. Not as well known as the others, but people will recognize the name immediately of this prophet. Amos.

Karen: Okay, well, let’s give a little bit of historical background here because you’re a Bible scholar and you’re just assuming that everyone’s on top of all of this stuff. So explain what’s happening with the nation of Israel now.

David: The Jewish nation has split in half. Now they’re actually at war with each other. The southern kingdom with the capital of Jerusalem and the northern kingdom with the capital at Samaria.

Karen: And one has 10 tribes and the other has two tribes.

David: The northern have 10.

Karen: The northern have 10. Okay.

David: And from the south, God puts his hand on someone and says, “I want you to go to the north and prophesy. Give them a word.”

Karen: Thanks a lot, God.

David: And that man’s name is Amos. And basically the priest up the north says, get out of here, you country bumpkin. Go ahead and read.

Karen: Oh, so the priest from the north is, his name is Amaziah. There might be a name people wouldn’t know. And so, Amos has been given this assignment to deliver a prophetic word. So, Amos answers Amaziah who told him, as you said, get out of here. He says, I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd.

David: It’s not a high level position.

Karen: And I also took care of sycamore fig trees.

David: Let’s kind of add a little to my resume. I took care of sycamore fig trees.

Karen: Right. But the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, go prophesy to my people Israel. Now then, hear the word of the Lord. This is extraordinary. To be obedient to that. How do you sit around and say, you know, is this of God or is this just a figment of my own imagination? But to be obedient to it. I think one of the signs of being a prophet is doing what the Lord says.

David: Well, you’re in that terrible bind. The Lord told me to do this. It’s a terrible assignment.

Karen: And I haven’t anything good to say here. Most of these are warnings of doom and destruction.

David: Here’s another name. We’re just seeing the magnitude of people with this calling in the scriptures. And yet how different they are as individuals. Jeremiah.

Karen: Well, I think of him as the weeping prophet. In his book that he’s written or the collection of all of his sayings is in the book of Lamentations.

David: Well, that’s there’s the book of Jeremiah. Okay. The Lamentations are his lament over the fall of the city of Jerusalem. Okay. But the people’s response to Jeremiah. Was it positive?

Karen: No, they were awful to him. One thing. Is this the one that they put in a pit?

David: Yes. Okay. In a big well.

Karen: A big well? Oh my gosh. Yeah. Did they ever come around to, I mean, what he prophesied actually happened.

David: Well, he prophesied the fall of Jerusalem. And then they recognized him. You, you’re the man who gives the word from God and so on. This is the remnant that is left after the deportation of most of the people to a faraway country. Some were still left.  And they say to Jeremiah, we need a word from the Lord again. You go find out what God’s wants to say to us in this given situation and then we will obey you because you know the word of the Lord. So Jeremiah goes away, comes back, says this is what the Lord says and how do the people respond? No way. You know, that’s not correct.

Karen: Well, they wanted him to a word of comfort and encouragement and he was still saying to them, if you do not obey God’s commandments, you will bring upon yourself destruction.

David: How would you like to be that kind of a prophet? No matter what you say, they’re not going to respond well to you.

Karen: Yeah. Wow.

David: Okay. We’ll continue with our list. Another one is a very, very interesting individual Jonah, the prophet Jonah.

Karen: Very definitely. I mean, he was given a word of the Lord of warning and again, doom and destruction.

David: But not to Jerusalem.

Karen: To give to Nineveh, the people of Nineveh. And he did not want to do that. No way Jose. And so we have this Bible story, the Old Testament Bible story that most children who raised in the church know. He runs away in another direction and is on a boat and it’s a big storm. And he says, throw me out over him the problem and a big fish were told, swallows him and then vomits him up and try to land. He thinks I better do what I was told to do. And then he preaches to Nineveh and they repent, which makes them all the angrier.

David: Yeah. He just, yeah, I knew you weren’t going to destroy the city. I know that you’re merciful. This side and no, it wasn’t going to happen.

Karen: Very human, very human prophet.

David: Let’s just get a couple more here to give you the incredible variance in terms of who these individuals are. I didn’t say Isaiah yet, did I?

Karen: No, I love the book of Isaiah. It’s so literate and so beautifully written. And I often read those last chapters. I think it’s around Chapter 40 at Christmas time because it’s the prophecy of the Messiah.

David: Time to read it again.

Karen: Time to read it again. And it’s beautifully written. The Messiah, you know, describes him.

David: Isaiah is cultured.

Karen: Yeah. I think that’s a way to state his writings. He’s very cultured, right?

David: Yeah. This one’s going back pretty far, but he’s a major figure in scripture once again, Samuel.

Karen: Samuel. You think of him as a prophet? Well, that’s interesting.

David: Well, he’s a judge. He is a judge in a lot of the people carry dual roles. In fact, you know, you get prophet, priest, king. No one had all three of those until you come to the New Testament with Jesus, the Son of God. Samuel, he is a priest and he is also a prophet.

Karen: But there’s a wonderful story of him being a child and hearing this voice calling this name.

David: He thinks it’s Eli.

Karen: He thinks it’s Eli, the priest, and the priest understands that. Finally, he does understand that this is a word from God coming to him. And so we have these wonderful words that ring out through history from this child who becomes this prophet.

David: Okay. Eli tells him, “Say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant heareth’.”

Karen: Yeah, that’s beautiful.

David: Yeah, it’s beautiful. I probably skip one. That’s a major, major personality in scripture, and that’s Moses. And also when I say Moses, that means we pick up that not all of the prophets were males because…

Karen: His sister Miriam was a prophetess. Well, Moses, what an intriguing thought to think of him as a prophet because he does give the 10 commandments to the people of Israel who are wandering in the wilderness at this time. You have a 40 year trek through the wilderness. And so he lays out the Judeo-Christian heritage. I mean, when it’s not Christian at that time, but the 10 commandments. So yes, he’s laying out all of the laws of God in those 10 commandments.

David: Well, this is from the book of Deuteronomy. The Lord said to me, and this is Moses, I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words, that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name, anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods must be put to death. But again, that’s just, we’re doing this flyover review.

Karen: But it does say that this was in God’s mind serious business. You didn’t fool around with that word of the Lord. You presented it as you heard it. Whether you liked the message or not, that was the hand of the Lord upon you.

David: So we have some educated, some not educated, some perform miracles. That reminds me, in fact, one I haven’t mentioned, Elisha. He performed all kinds of miracles. Some didn’t. Some were men, some were women. In fact, in the New Testament, we get to that passage about the evangelist Philip and he had, I think it’s five.

Karen: Four unmarried daughters.

David: Yeah, I don’t remember what it was, how many, but who prophesied. So we get some women, some interpreted dreams, others didn’t. Some were quite respected. Others were almost always rejected. This would be a major thing. Some were true prophets and there are an awful lot.

Karen: False prophets.

David: Yeah. And you had to be able to distinguish between the two. This is my little helpful way. I like to think of it when we go back to individuals like Samuel. The priests represented the people before God. So you had that same division with Moses and his brother, Aaron. Aaron was the priest. Moses was more the prophet. The priests represented the people before God and the prophets represented God to the people.

Karen: Okay, that’s helpful. Yeah, that’s extremely helpful.

David: That’s pretty good. Jesus again was the only one who represented all three of these offices in one individual. We’ll come back to Jesus in just a little while. Are there a prophets today?

Karen: That’s an interesting question. I would like to take it out of the well-known voices and just apply it to the fact that I think there are a lot of people who have prophetic gifts in foretelling, seeing into the future and saying, if we continue along the way that we are now, this is likely to happen. But mostly in that forthtelling area, this is what the word of the Lord is saying to me at this point in time about the way we should be living now because we’ve associated the foretelling quality with the prophetic gift. We sometimes miss, I think, maybe more important one of the person who is common, ordinary, a friend, but who knows God, who spends time in God’s word and who listens to that inner voice coming to him or to her and then speaks it out in a way that we notice.

It may be just casual conversation, but they’ll say something like, this has just been weighing my heart and I feel like I need to share it. Then all of a sudden we think, oh my gosh, that really was a word from God. So I think those people are prophetic too and we need not to overlook their giftedness or how important those gifts are in our environments, our Christian environments.

David: I’m going back and just emphasizing again what you’re saying. There’s a forthtelling and there’s a foretelling. Right. Foretelling, again, is naming individuals John the Apostle when you get to the book of Revelation. He is predicting the future if you put it that way. But at the same time, there is that sense where in many of the writings of John apart from Revelation, you get this sense of the great weight of what he says. This is incredibly important, even though it’s not a prophecy as such.

Karen: Yeah, all of his writings are from the Gospel of John to the first, second and third book of John. The writing of those epistles are very strongly weighted with that sense of knowing God and speaking for him.

David: Do you ever have that sense when you listen to someone, whether it’s through the media or actually in person listening to someone say he’s speaking or she is speaking a word from the Lord.

Karen: We’re having lunch with a friend who will remain nameless and this is a woman I respect in her knowledge of the word. And she said something and didn’t address it to me, but we came home and I said that was a word for me from God through that woman. And so yeah, I do think this happens. I think it happens frequently.

David: The gifts of the Holy Spirit, that’s a category of teachings all in itself. I’d like to refer to just some of those. There are four key passages, the 12th chapter of Romans, 12th chapter of 1 Corinthians, 4th chapter of Ephesians, 4th chapter of 1 Peter. There’s been a big emphasis on what are my gifts or what is my gift. Usually it’s plural gifts that people have. This is from Romans 12. We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. Did you have another one? It looked like you have your scripture.

Karen: Yeah, this is from Ephesians. It’s an interesting verse, Ephesians 4. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ might be built up. These are not gifts that are given to puff our own ego, or to pat ourselves on the back because we have them, but they’re given for the sake of the whole body. To edify as a word that’s often used, to build people up, to prepare God’s people, to do His work in the world. So we have to always remember that’s what these kinds of gifts are given for.

David: Okay, but we are encouraged, and this has been a big part of the church in these last several decades, to discover what your given gift or gifts are. So a person going through these scriptures, one of the questions you ask is, do I have a gift of prophecy? The foretelling and the forthtelling. Now if you’re like I am, you kind of look at those words and you weigh them, you say, is that possibly a gift the Lord has given me? How do you respond to that?

Karen: Well, I wouldn’t have put my giftedness as it relates to writing.

David: You say one of your gifts of the Holy Spirit is writing.

Karen: Yeah, that’s what I would have said that, but I do think now that we’ve had this kind of long discussion here, that I do have a gift of prophecy, of telling forth. I was reading through the Tales of the Kingdom, which is the imaginative literature. We have three books, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. And the purpose of that book was to put into story form what the Kingdom of God was all about.

David: So children could understand and become familiar with those terms.

Karen: And I wrote it deliberately for children of all ages, because good classic children’s literature is for all ages. I don’t read my work much once it’s published, and I’ve gone through it to see if there are any printer’s errors or stuff like that. It was safe to teach on something I’ve written. But I was reading through the Tales and I thought, oh my goodness, these are really good. This is much better than I am equipped to deliver. And I don’t have the gift set to write like this. And I really look at those books as a treasure that God allowed us to be the stewards of. It was a message he wanted given forth at a certain time, and they sell more in the marketplace now than they ever have. They’ve been in the print for 40 years, which is very unusual for any book. So I think the gift of prophetic telling forth God’s Word was manifested in those books. And so I do think I have a prophetic inclination or a prophetic ability in my writing.

David: Okay, I’ve been setting you up, and I’m meaning this as a serious thing. You’ve been struggling with this book on listening. Do you think that part of that is because you didn’t understand the prophetic role that is to play in terms of the reader of the book?

Karen: Well, I haven’t thought of it in that way. I think I’ve struggled with it mostly because my schedule has been so full and to write, you just have to write five hours every day for a big project. So I have a lot of pieces of it written. But I do believe that now that we’ve had this discussion, it’s probably one of the most important things I’ve ever written.

David: Well, you’re writing to a church world that doesn’t listen as much as it talks.

Karen: Doesn’t know the baseline of listening. It tells, it preaches, it lectures, it shares, but it doesn’t listen. And that in all of the studies I’ve done in my co-writer is a brain scientist.

David: Well, he’s a brain surgeon.

Karen: Brain surgeon, but an neuroscientist. He’s bringing to bear all the discoveries that have happened in brain science as far as what happens in the brain when someone feels, now listen to this, when a person feels heard and understood. And when it feels heard and understood, the brain begins to, let me just put it in this terminology, push all the sympathetic buttons. And when we feel heard and understood, it opens up pathways in the brain where real communication, in-depth communication, occur. And it’s healing. And the brain sends out all of these neural impulses to the entire body when someone feels heard and understood. So we’re living in a culture and have a church culture that’s all telling, talking, teaching, lecturing. And what we need to learn to do now is to begin to apply this concept of listening. It will change our church culture in the most extraordinary way.

David: So if I say very succinctly, it’s important for the church world to begin to understand the importance of listening to what people have to say. And listening will open them to whatever precise message is important to hear.

Karen: I think if those of us who have the gift of evangelism would just ask questions and listen, there is such power in that, the power for truth to rise up because that truth begins to work. They hear in different ways. The brain allows them to be open to understand. I mean, it’s extraordinary.

David: The Lord has allowed us to live a long time on changing course in terms of where we’re going. As you look back on all the individuals we’ve had the opportunity to know within the church world. Do some of them kind of pop as, “Wow, I think that was a prophetic individual”?

Karen: Yeah. And we’re, you know, in our last years of life. So the decades of leaders that we knew and were familiar with in evangelicalism, let’s say, are most of them no longer with us. So that level of leadership is gone. They’ve passed on and we’re not in a place where we’re familiar with the ones that the Lord is raising up now. But there definitely were people in that group of leaders who have spoken to our lives in ways that was prophetic was a word of the Lord. I think you were really the recipient of that encouraging word from so many of those people.

David: Well, I don’t think those people would necessarily have said they had prophetic gifts. I think of an individual like Francis Schaefer. He had a prophetic voice and a very real sense in my mind. But if you would ask him who he saw himself as, I don’t think he would have said, I am a prophet.

Karen: Educator, maybe. I don’t know what he would have said.

David: Yeah, I do. Leonard Ravenhill comes as close to somebody who might have said, yes, that is a calling to me. But there are those people who will be raised up as the days go on. And we have to be able to say, okay, let’s pay close attention to what they say because they do have a word from the Lord in an unusual way. And they do have that terrible burden of being told by the Lord, say this when they know it’s not a popular message. Anyway, I have a word from the Lord. And I am on very, very safe ground because I’m going to quote Jesus. The interesting thing is the prophetic message that I believe comes from Jesus was not said in a prophetic way when it was stated. Does that make sense?

Karen: It would be in New Testament times when Jesus walked in the face of this earth.

David: Jesus obviously had a message for the future. The very fact that he said, be prepared for my coming back at any time. That’s a prophetic word in every sense of the term. Let me read the context. Okay, this is from the Gospels. Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute. When the demon left, the man who had been mute spoke and the crowd was amazed. But some of them said, by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, he is driving out demons. Others tested him by asking for a sign from heaven. I mean, how dumb can you be? He’s just performed a miracle.

Karen: It was an unbelievable generation, even Jesus said that. Yeah, really interesting.

David: Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined and a house divided against itself will fall. Then he amplifies what he’s saying. Saying in the obvious, if Satan is divided against himself, how could his kingdom stand? If I’m doing this by Satan, he’s ruining his own kingdom. Because when you’re healing people, when you’re doing positive miracles, that’s not to Satan’s benefit. I mean, that’s to his downfall. So that’s a stupid thing you’re accusing me of. Okay, I want to take those same words of Jesus, words were said almost in an argumentative or a response way to what was going on, to the unbelief of people. And I would like to put them in today’s world.

Karen, I think this word that a house divided against itself can’t stand. I’ve seen that true in regard to marriages. In fact, I remember using those exact words and saying, when you married, you became a couple and you have to think of yourselves as a unit, a we, not just as individuals. I want this, he wants that, we can’t seem to get along. Over time, the problem will get worse and it will destroy what you have now and it will be much more painful even than what you’re going through now. I remember saying that to people and I remember some marriages where they seem to be able to step up and turn a corner and I know other marriages where it fell apart and I was right. The pain was even more so. Sometimes people even said to me, you told us this was going to happen and I didn’t believe it could get worse and it did. So on a marriage, you can’t be divided. You have to learn to pull together.

The same thing is true of churches, that same message, a kingdom divided is not going to stand. In our long years, before we go, we could say, unfortunately we’ve seen a lot of churches pull apart. When a church splits, when you had one church with a building, maybe half the church or part of the church still has the building, you got another element over here that’s begun a new work. You can say, well, we multiplied, but you didn’t really. Those are wounded congregations.

Karen: Well, and the fallout from that is often in the younger generation.

David: Exactly.

Karen: I would just run into this when they’re in church splits and they’ll say, if that’s what Christianity is about, I don’t want anything to do with it and they leave the faith. So that fallout is just, it’s damaging beyond belief.

David: It affects those children for lifetime.

Karen: It does.

David: So the whole generation of passing on the faith is disrupted. And this is very, very sad. If I talk about it as a marriage, we can talk about it as church, you see the truth of these words of Jesus. I would like to apply it to America, to the country. We’re at a place where people have different understanding of what the truth is. And I’m not coming down on either side. I’m just saying a kingdom like the United States of America, which I know is not a kingdom or a kingship, but it is a nation.

Karen: Well, it’s an entity.

David: It’s an entity and it can’t handle it if people go two different directions and don’t understand, don’t talk to each other, don’t, if I use what you were talking about before, listen carefully to one another.

Karen: Learn from one another.

David: Yeah. That kingdom or that country can fall. The United States of America is in a position where it could no longer be over a period of time. And somehow, we have to come to the place where we say we’re not just going to talk at each other or refuse to listen to people who differ from where we are in our understanding. This is a huge truth we need to deal with, or there is the worst pain ever imaginable in the future for this land. And I believe that is a word from the Lord. And I base it on what Jesus said, a simple thing, a kingdom divided amongst itself cannot stand.

Karen: So, what’s the role of the Christian in this? And I think we’ve talked about this before on the podcast because it’s such an issue.

David: It’s a hard role. It’s a very hard role because we are all built to the place where we want to say what we understand, what my opinion is and all that. We have to stop doing that and say, tell me your opinion and how you came to that. And I’m going to do my very best to hear you and then try to, in a sense, incorporate what you’re saying into my understanding so that somehow we can unite once again. We can be like the husband who said I wasn’t as wise as I could have been. I need to be more listening and more loving and so on.

Karen: I think we have to set ourselves on a path of intentional exposure, intentional learning.

David: Okay, give an example.

Karen: Well, instead of in contrast to habitual exposure or habitual learning, generally, you know, the studies have shown that we come down in the side that we prefer personally. We have to say, okay, where are the outlets and there are plenty of media outlets which are landing on one side or the other. Very few, and we’ve said this before on the podcast, very few that attempt objectivity. And so what we have to do then is people with this intent to understand, to hear and to learn is to be intentional about that and to put aside our habitual preferences. So it means we begin to look at the news outlets, for instance, that represent the side that we are not particularly favorable to. Or we have to find the literature, the periodicals.

David: If you always watch MSNBC.

Karen: Then you need to watch Fox News.

David: Yes, so you need to understand where people are coming from.

Karen: And the same with Fox News, you need to go with MSNBC or CNN. I mean, we don’t need to. ..

David: Advocating one of the other. For any of them. We’re just saying you have to somehow say, how do I understand this divide and try to be a healer in the midst of what is going on?

Karen: And that means periodicals to our print news outlets. To be intentional, you have to really seek out the other side that articulates it in the best way possible. Not out of just a reactionary sort of function, but is intelligent, is researched, has data to prove your point.

David: And you have to keep those friendships.

Karen: And you have to keep the friendships with people who represent each of those areas. So this is work. This is why we don’t do this, actually, because it’s just easier to slip into the thing we feel good about instead of trying to really understand. And as I do this, I am informed. I can say, okay, well, I get it. I had never considered that. Wow, I didn’t even know that. Is this true? And then I checked the other side and, you know, it’s work, but it’s necessary work in a country that is being threatened with this kind of divide that you have just brought up. And I will emphasize what you’re saying. Unless we do this kind of work as a people, as Americans, we will have a divided country. And a house that is divided against itself cannot stand.

David: It can instead. It collapses. Yeah. These things happen. And when they happen, then people say, oh, if I could go back. Yeah, only. If I could go back. Yeah. Well, anyway, here’s what we’re saying just to summarize it. God’s people do well to take seriously the words of those they perceive as true prophets.

Say it one more time. God’s people do well to take seriously the words of those they perceive as true prophets. Is that a word from the Lord?

Karen: I think so.

David: I think so. But people listening to us, they will have to be the ones who decide whether or not God has spoken.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois, 60187.