God’s Not Dumb!!!

Is it surprising that the prophetic ministry stands to be the most vilified among the five-fold ministries? Certainly not! The object that is popularly used to illustrate the five-fold ministry is the hand known as the “Gospel Hands”. Immediately after the thumb which represents the apostle who plants churches comes the pointing finger representing the prophet who gives direction to God's children.

The prophetic ministry, by function is arguably the only one among the five that is solely dedicated to the children of God. It serves as His mouthpiece that brings forth His oracle. This is largely true because very rarely do you find God speaking to an unbeliever through the prophet [1 Cor. 14:22]. It is only through the prophetic ministry, girded by 1. Word of Knowledge, 2. Word of Wisdom, 3. Discernment and 4. The Spirit of Counsel - that the children of God receive precise, exact and emphatic direction from Him concerning their peculiar lives' situations. These four gifts provide the basis for us to judge the efficacy of a released prophecy.

Apostle Paul makes a strong case for the gift of prophecy and prophesying. He desired that all Christians prophesy as found in the 14th chapter of his first book to the Corinthian Church. I strongly believe that the reason for his desire is quite fundamental. He wishes all of us could see, hear, and understand as God Himself does i.e. if only we can yield to Him enough. This is because we live in a “crazy world” - as one musician sings. Through the prophetic ministry, the following attributes of our God are expressly and evidently manifested and established: Our God is not dumb, He speaks! Our God is not blind, He sees! Our God is not a lifeless object, He is Omnipresent!

You can bear with me that the gift of prophecy is, and remains perhaps the most dependable Christian heritage in times of distress and desperation. Psalms 46:2 says: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble”. Proverbs 18:10 also says: “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower, the righteous run into it and they are saved.” The first part of Ps. 46:2 is simply a summary of what Prov. 18:10 is saying. But the second part of Ps. 46:2 is mostly manifested through the prophet and the gift of prophecy with its family of Word of Knowledge, Word of Wisdom, Discernment and the Spirit of Counsel.

Dreams, as one of the channels or mediums of God's communication to man has the least respect, unfortunately. It seems to be as a result of the fact that dreams occur among non-Christians too, - to say the least. So, majority of Christians gives less regard to dreams. My view is that God would, in most cases, resort to dreams in the absence of the prophetic gift and also to those who know how to make-do with dreams.

As Christians we know how distressing it can be when God goes silent. A few events in our country Ghana in recent times has sparked a lot of attention to Christianity – all because of the manifestation of the prophetic gift. There are two categories of false prophets: There are those who receives the genuine prophetic gift from God but misuses and abuses the gift to gratify their own fleshly desires. These ones are hardly identifiable. Second are those who resort to consulting mediums for a “third eye” to attract unsuspecting people and Christians with week foundation. Fortunately for us Christians, the Bible teaches us how to identify the differences, and at the same time admonishes us to avoid judging others so we are not judged. What saddens me from all that has happened in Ghana with regards to the prophetic ministry is that 90+% of the lambasting across the media spectrum have come from people who purport to be Christians.

Now, the danger of this phenomenon is that Christians, if care is not taken, will find themselves committing the unforgivable sin of blasphemy. (And am really scared about this). Study the passage of the events leading up to Jesus talking about blasphemy. I find that intercourse between Jesus and the Pharisees as far easier to grasp than many of the things that are difficult for a lot of us in the Bible. In Matthew Chapter 12 from verse 22 to 32, the sin of blasphemy is expressly stated and very self-explanatory! Let's face it: There was no power in existence aside God before He created all that we see. The power in Lucifer before he was defeated and cast down was created by God. There is no record of God's attempt to take that power away from him before he became the Satan we know. Please get this straight: the manifestation of any power aside the Spirit of God is merely a miss-application, misuse, and or abuse of something that's originally God's in the hands of wrong persons and entities given them by Lucifer. You would therefore be found to be a big fool to project any act of the devil over God's. And of course, the worst of it is when you attribute the manifestation of the power of God and the workings of the Holy Spirit to the devil. This is what blasphemy is all about.

Apostle Paul made a very profound statement in Philippians chapter 1 from verse 15 to 18: 15It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Indeed, like Paul, even if we have proof that some of these men of God are truly false, our noise against them in public will not repair anything for God. They could be doing things out of selfish ambitions and envy, but let us see it as Paul does: CHRIST IS PREACHED!

Christians, let us be very circumspect, decorous and sensible in the way we pass comments about events and happenings in our Christian world. The noise rather projects us wrongly to the unbelieving world and empowers the devil. God forbid!

Thank you.