IS SAUL AMONG THE PROPHET?

One of the commonest proverbial sayings during the time of one of the greatest judges of Israel was – Is Saul also among the prophet? 1 Samuel 10:11-12. The issue of prophets and their work has been at forefront discussions in recent times. Religion has received a barrage of criticism from skeptics as religious charlatans roam the religious landscape, profiteering out of the name of God. Jeremiah 5:30, 31 seems to the writer, to be Jeremiah’s writing of both ancient and modern history. – “An astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power; and my people love to have it so. But what will you do in the end?” Sadly, there are millions of sincere souls that are being trapped by these avaricious and evil men. Nothing but the truth promises freedom and liberty else these victims stand as slaves to error eternally.

The first logical move in this study is to ask and answer the question(s): Who is a prophet or what is prophecy? Men have attempted to accommodate their religious errors by inventing nomenclature that is foreign to the Scriptures. For instance, the denominational preacher Wayne Gruden categorized prophesy into three groups viz. Old Testament prophecy, Apostolic prophecy, and Congregation prophesy. He went further to define what he calls congregational prophesy as – “prophesy in ordinary New Testament churches which is not equal to Scripture in authority but was simply a very human and sometimes partially mistaken report of something the Holy Spirit brought to someone’s mind” (Gruden, 2007). Close examination of Scripture reveals no such definition and is a thousand yards away from the truth.

The English word prophet is a transliteration of the word “prophetes” which literally means to stand before and proclaim. Linguistically, a prophet is one who stands up before audiences to proclaim a message. Hence, a prophet then is one who utters the words that another put into his mouth; a spokesperson, or a herald. C Crawford wrote, “In its primary sense, the word ‘prophetes’ invariably means, both in classical and in ecclesiastical Greek – one who speaks forth for another, and especially one who speaks for a god, or one who declares in the name of a god” (Crawford, 1972).

Close examination of the usage of the word in the Bible sheds more light on the question. In Exodus 7:1-2, the LORD said to Moses: “See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land.” Aaron, the spokesman of Moses, a ‘god’. Aaron being the prophet of Moses teaches us that, a prophet is a spokesperson of God. In Haggai 1:13, the Bible says: “Then Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, spoke the LORD’s message to the people, saying, ‘I am with you, says the LORD’”. cf Exodus 4:14-16; Ezekiel 2:1-5; Number 12:5,6; Hebrews 1:1 ; Zechariah 7:7. We conclude from these passages that, a prophet is God’s mouthpiece.
The prophets in the Bible were also seers for God’s people. God’s communication with these men was through dreams and visions. God said, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.” Number 12:6. They were people who saw in dreams and visions the will and the desires of God and were thus called Seers. In 1Samuel 9:9, the Holy Spirit added a parenthetical comment when He said – “Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke thus: Come, let us go to the seer; for he who is now called prophet was formerly called a seer. ”

The Old Testament Hebrew word translated prophet is the word “nabhi” which means to “bubble over”. Just as water gushes out of the fountain, so as the prophets were filled with the word of God that the message comes out of his inward being exactly as it went in. Interestingly, the weeping prophet Jeremiah has spiritual heartburn with the word of God. In Jeremiah 20:9, he said- “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones, I was weary of holding it back, and I could not.” Ezekiel was given the word of God to eat (Ezekiel 3:1-3) and was charged to preach with the authority of God by saying “thus says the Lord GOD”- Ezekiel 2:4-5. These servants of God had the word of God through revelation and were the voices crying in the wilderness and the temples. In Hebrews 1:1, the Holy Spirit says, “God, who are various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets” (emphasis added). God spoke to His people through the prophets in time past. They spoke the word of God even if the wall will crack, they carried the message of God to the people in season and out of season- 2 Timothy 4:2. We seek to explore further the subject in subsequent writings.

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Works Cited

Crawford, C. C. (1972). The Eternal Spirit: His Person and Powers. Vol. I. Jophin: College Press.

Gruden, W. (2007). The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today. Wheaton: Crossway.