Job CCCV

Job 33:19-22, “Man is also chastened with pain on his bed, and with strong pain in many of his bones, so that his life abhors bread, and his soul succulent food. His flesh wastes away from sight, and his bones stick out which once were not seen. Yet his soul draws near the Pit, and his life to the executioners.”

If Elihu ever failed at being Job’s self-appointed spokesman before God, he could readily try his hand at being an utterer of personal prophecy in our modern era. He would likely get more traction than some of the new brood of internet prophets, who have measurably less insight and awareness than Elihu. What Elihu was saying wasn’t revelatory by any means; it was the conclusion to which he’d come based on Job’s suffering, because if a man suffers from pain in his bones to the point of abhorring bread, surely he must be under God’s chastening.

It’s funny how the faces change, but the means by which those who claim revelatory insight use the same deductive reasoning to reach their conclusions. It’s also the reason that focusing on the mechanisms and contrivances that such individuals use, rather than on the individuals themselves, is a better use of one’s time.

The false prophets, teachers, evangelists, and those pretending to be sheep but are inwardly ravenous wolves are like the hydra of legend, wherein if one head is lopped off, two others grow in their place. Different face, same scheme, time and again, but if you are able to articulate and properly define the scheme, the face won’t matter because you will know them by their fruit.

Matthew 7:15-20, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

One of the biggest scandals within the prophetic movement in recent years was self-titled prophets using Facebook to mine data about individuals, then passing it off as authentic prophetic utterance. People were wowed and impressed as though they were there for a magic show rather than a church service, smiling and clapping like trained seals when they were told the street they lived on, or the name of their pet poodle, not bothering to think it through and conclude everything they’d heard was public knowledge, but receiving it as words from on high.

Those who understand how such individuals operate and can identify the mechanisms they employ know that the street number or the name of their recently deceased grandmother is just a springboard to what they’re really after. It never ends with “Your cat’s name is Mr. Whiskers, very original”; it begins with it. Sooner rather than later, also under the guise of prophetic utterance, the manipulation will begin in earnest, and whether it’s sowing a faith seed for the new parsonage that will allow for greater spiritual interactions with the Almighty, or coming under their mentorship which they then use to exploit toward nefarious ends, the victims go along with it because he knew my pet hamster’s name offhand, so he must be what he claims to be.

As an aside, when did the purpose of prophecy become to confirm to you something banal and spiritually irrelevant that you already knew, or could readily discover by looking at your driver’s license? When did we lower the bar to the point that we equate prophecy with a variety show put on by the local high school to raise money for its summer camp outing? What we are seeing today is what happens when desire to witness the supernatural meets unwillingness to live lives worthy of the name Jesus. We want the experience without the repentance; we want the words of knowledge without sanctification; we want the power without the indwelling presence because the indwelling presence demands a clean vessel, and that, in turn, demands that we mortify the flesh and deny ourselves daily.

You can’t have one without the other, but you can pretend to. It may work for a while; the crowds may be wowed, and the gullible may swoon, but the end will be worse than the beginning, and eventually the truth will out.  

If by some miracle we run across someone with true prophetic gifting and they speak a word that challenges us, calls us to repentance, chastens us, or isn’t what we expected to hear, we brush it off and go prophecy hunting until we hear the one we want to hear, because it was never about what the Lord would say but about confirming our biases and hearing a word that is little more than an echo of our own machinations.

I really didn’t like the word about humbling myself and striving for righteousness because it challenged me and made me feel some kind of way, but that one about being highly favored and God having a plan for my life where I would reach millions with my gift - that one hit home. It bore witness, don’t you know, so it must be God’s honest truth. Never mind that I know I’m not where I’m supposed to be in my walk with God. Never mind that although by now I should be on a steady diet of meat, I’m still on milk, and even that only enough to subsist; the man on stage said that I too would be a prophet to the nations.

Elihu didn’t go so far as to prophesy or claim he was prophesying, but he allowed his worldview to determine Job’s guilt and then created a narrative to support his conclusion. It’s like insisting you know the answer to a math equation before you’ve heard the equation itself. It’s four; I know it’s four; I don’t care if the equation is seventy divided by two; the answer is still four.

Such people are impossible to reason with because they will not allow for a different answer, no matter how much evidence exists that they were wrong.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.