Don’t count on notes from every chapter of Ezekiel (I know – you are disappointed aren’t you) but Ezekiel 13 had some nice interesting verses that caught my eye. We read in Ezekiel 13:2-4 the following:
"Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! Your prophets, Israel are like jackals among ruins.’"
The whole idea of prophets and prophecy interests me because it seems we have an abundance of prophets, prophetic movements and prophecy in general throughout portions of the body of Christ these days. First it seems fairly evident that Israel was loaded with false prophets (and I have no doubt little has changed).
Many people spend a lot of time flocking from one prophetic movement to another and I confess I would usually get fairly bent out of shape because to be honest it’s fairly tough to figure out who is genuine. Christ suggests one method – find the people we are stoning and killing and you will likely find the true prophets…translation – you don’t often have a clue who a prophet is because you prefer those who say what you want to hear and you kill the ones who tell you the truth.
At any rate Chapter 13 as a whole as well as Ezekiel’s experience hearing the Lord and every other prophet in the Old Testament suggests something interesting; something that has helped me with my concern over whether we can identify the real prophets or not. God is not focused on punishing Israel for misidentifying prophets in Ezekiel…He’s actually fairly angry with the false prophets themselves for deceiving Israel.
The real clincher in Ezekiel 13 for me, the revelation if you will, is that the real prophets know for themselves that they are real. They have no doubt. Whether we can tell or not is not of primary importance to the fact that genuine prophets know who they are – every time. They may not want to be a prophet (see Jonah), they may end up hated (see Jeremiah), they may end of dead (see John the Baptist), but every one of them knew without a doubt that they were called as prophets of God.
So frankly I am a little less concerned about the abundance of prophets in our time because those who are true know without a doubt…and those who are not…well…God knows (and they suspect) and will He will deal accordingly.
I am liking Ezekiel. It’s amazing what you get out of a book sometimes…
Harnessing Chaos 