If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him [or her]. – Deuteronomy 18:22.
TO?PROPHESY, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary says, is “to predict”; “to speak or write by divine inspiration”.
A prophet, it adds, is “an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God”; “a person who predicts the future” – not one who just might; and certainly not a person who merely says he or she can, or gives the impression he or she may.
If you are wondering where I am going with this, let me be upfront, and forgive me if you find me disarmingly forthright. Glyne Murray made me do this.
In his incisive piece How Could The Evangelists! in the last SUNDAY?SUN, he gnawed away at – for me – these self-appointed prophets, apostles, faith healers and/or spokespersons for God, who proclaimed to all and sundry that our dear departed Prime Minister David Thompson “will be healed”, “has been healed”, would be healed, had been healed . . . .
One such allegedly God-powered preacher commanded on TV that “this disease” go from David’s body “today, right now”, and then declared after that he had broken the chains of sickness that had bound our ailing leader.
We are generally a people – as exemplified by David himself – who take things in stride. We suffered gladly the extreme emotions of these attention-grabbers. They weren’t hurting anybody, we convinced ourselves; and, for all their fulsome self-absorption and self-aggrandizement, we secretly did hope they were right.
No decent person wanted David Thompson to die. We would have clung to anything – for his dear life.
Truth be told, I have no doubt whatsoever that there were genuine supplications made – from Glyne’s group with the “more subdued, reasonable and reasoned approach” as from the less soft-spoken – to Almighty Jehovah on David’s behalf. Why these fervent entreaties went unanswered I cannot tell.
Why an entire nation should be made to be disappointed and plunged into profound grief, only God knows. Maybe, as we humbly and respectfully seek the Almighty’s explanation or consolation we, as individual souls and as a people, might be drawn closer to Him.
Perhaps, in David’s passing some of us might take note of redemption.
And why am I carping? It is because of Glyne Murray.
If he hadn’t dared to publicly call to account his fiery evangelists – my alleged prophets and apostles – who misled us, I, like the other 200 000-odd Bajans, would have continued to suffer this indignity to the spirit and profound Christian faith.
For one thing, I thought Mara and Margaret Knight had taken enough of me on David as they could, and I was prepared to keep quiet on the prophet/apostle who boldly stated that God had made it clear our Mr Thompson would not die – “not now” and that the Lord had a purpose for his being here on this Earth. But my friend Glyne forced me.
Forgive me, Mara. Forgive me, Margaret.
I agree wholeheartedly with Comrade Murray. All those pontificators, who behaved as though they could tell God what to do, who seemed to think the Almighty was some chairman of a Constituency Council, and who dared to invoke outrageous commands in His name, and who were wrong, need to apologize to the nation.
Firstly, they should ask Jehovah forgiveness; apologize secondly; and then seek our pardon. I am ready and willing to forgive them, just as my heavenly Father has forgiven me for being their fool.
I don’t know if Glyne is in the same boat; he was kind of cagey about that himself in his piece. But once we get the apologies and requests for pardon from the errant prophets and apostles, we will forgive them.
They need not fear. We have come a long way from stoning prophets who give wrong predictions.
