Robert Vannoy,
Foundation Biblical Prophecy, Lecture 1B

Let’s start then with Roman numeral I in your outline. “Prophetism in Ancient Israel: Some General Remarks.” A.
under that is “Prophetism in Israel is a Unique Phenomenon.”
I think we can say that the prophetic movement of ancient Israel constitutes a
unique phenomenon, not only in the history of Israel itself, but also in all
human history, even though attempts are frequently made to find parallels to
the prophetic movement in Israel. Here you have a stream of 400 years of
prophets arising, and speaking God’s word to this small group of people, Israel
located in the land of Canaan. Beginning with Obadiah, which I think is probably
dated around 835 B.C., that’s the earliest of the prophets. Malachi is about
435, so you see that it is stretched over 400 years. Think of the history of this
country which is a little over 400 years, so we’re talking about an enormous
span of time. Through that long span of time, one after the other, God raised
up these individuals and gave them a word from himself, the message to his
people. Sometimes it is argued that various peoples or nations have a
particular ability, a particular aptitude, or expertise or proficiency in some
area of intellectual thought, endeavor, or artistic, creative ability or
whatever that is recognized by other people and held in high esteem.  Think of ancient Greece: they had their
sculptors.  You see that the results of
their work are in some of the great museums of the world, and you can be amazed
at their ability. They also had great philosophers who thought great thoughts,
so Greece had a particular gift for producing philosophers like Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle. You think of Rome, they’ve had military commanders and jurists;
the Roman legal system certainly had a lot of influence. You think of England
as the colonizers; they sent their administrators out all over the world and
created the British Empire. You think of the United States with economists,
business management principles and high-tech kind of research and development.
Germany has composers Bach, Brahms,  and Beethoven
as well as many prominent philosophers and theologians. Germany seems to have
had a particular bent or gift or frame of mind for producing people of that
type. So you can look at peoples and see that certain nations seem to have
particular abilities in certain endeavors.

But
you see what some do is look at something like that and say, in the same way that
Germany produced these great composers, Israel showed genius at producing
prophets. Then that phenomenon of prophetism you see
is put on the same level as these products of human ability and genius that are
found among other peoples. I think what that kind of approach loses sight of is
the principal difference that exists between Israel’s prophets and these works
of genius of other peoples and other times and places. In other words, I think prophetism, by very definition of what it is, is a
phenomenon that is principally distinctive and different from any other
achievement of the human spirit in all of human history. It seems to me by
virtue of its character as divine revelation, prophecy in ancient Israel must
be defined as a unique phenomenon. In other words, God says, and we’ll look at
a lot of these texts probably later this morning, “I will put my words in your
mouth.” He says that to Jeremiah. It wasn’t Jeremiah so much that was speaking.
It was God that was speaking through Jeremiah.

Even
someone like Ronald Clements, who wrote a book called Old Testament Prophecy in 1996 and is not an evangelical, makes
this statement, “Nowhere else from antiquity has there been preserved such a
literary collection; prophetic literature, on the scale of the Old Testament,
remains a wholly unique product of ancient Israel.” In other words, there
weren’t just have a few isolated individuals who lived and spoke, who claimed
they were speaking for God; this movement spanned a period of 400 years.

Now
it’s a very unique thing.  I think that
when you look at the Bible, what you’ll see is that the prophets are presented
to us as individuals endowed by God with the prophetic function. They were
endowed by God with the prophetic function so that God’s word might be given to
Israel, and through Israel given to the rest of the world. The Bible clearly
presents the words of the prophets as God’s words rather than the prophets’ own
words. For that reason I think we can say that the prophetic message as it is
presented in Scripture is not presented as the product of human creativity or
human ingenuity. That’s not what’s going on. It’s rather the product of divine
disclosure. It’s divine disclosure in a very special, direct sense. Now I don’t
think the importance of that distinction can be overemphasized. Right at the
outset you have to be clear about what’s going on with the prophets. Now we’ll
get back into the discussion of how the human element works with the divine,
because these men, as human beings, also had a role in the formulation of these
things. How do you unpack that? How do you describe that combination of the
human spokesperson on the one hand and the divine revelation on the other.
We’ll get to that eventually. So that’s A. “Prophetism
in Israel is a Unique Phenomenon.”

Now
let’s move on to B. “Prophets were Servants of God Invested with the Prophetic Function.”
I have three sub-points under that.  First “The Prophets were Servants of God.”  E. J. Young wrote a book on the prophets
called My Servants the Prophets.  The reason he used that as a title is that this
is a label you will find attached to the prophets in numerous references in the
Old Testament, they are God’s servants.  I
want to run through just a few of these references with you. In 2 Kings 9:7 a
prophet says to Jehu, “I anoint you king over the Lord’s people of Israel. You
are to destroy the house of Ahab your master. I will avenge the blood of, (notice),
my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the Lord’s servants shed by Jezebel.”
In 2 Kings 17:13, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and
seers, “Turn from your evil ways, observe my commands and decrees in accordance
with the entire law that I commanded your fathers to obey and that I delivered
to you through my servants the prophets.” Jeremiah 7:25: “From the time your
forefathers left Egypt until now, (and that’s the end of the Old Testament
period), day after day, again and again, I sent you my servants the prophets,
but they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked, did
more evil than their forefathers.” Jeremiah 25:4: “And though the Lord has sent
all his servants the prophets to you again and again, you have not listened or
paid any attention.” I could go on with numerous other references of this sort,
describing the prophets as servants of God.  God himself calls them “my servants.”

Now
1. under B. is “Some of the Prophets Received a Special Call to the Prophetic Task.”
I
want to mention four of them where that is described, and the first and
probably the most impressive is Isaiah 6:1-13. You read in the first verse of
that chapter,“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord seated on the throne, high and
exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.”  Then there’s a description of these seraphs
saying, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty.”  Isaiah has this vision of the Lord the same
time he gets a vision of his own sinful condition before the Lord; so he says
in verse three “Woe is me, I am ruined for I’m a man of unclean lips; I live
among a people of unclean lips; my eyes have seen the King; the Lord Almighty.”
This is a visionary experience for Isaiah. He sees this, he sees himself, and
his sinful condition, and says, “Woe is me.” Then one of those seraphs takes
this coal from the altar and touches his mouth with it, and says, “Your guilt
is taken away; your sin is atoned for.  And
I heard the voice of the Lord say, ‘Whom shall I send, who shall go for us?’ I
said, ‘Here am I, send me.’” So the Lord commissions Isaiah, Isaiah responds,
and the Lord says in verse nine, “Go and tell this people.” The message he has
is not one that is very pleasant, his message is largely a message of coming judgment
and punishment. But it is going to fall on deaf ears. And that’s basically what
happened with Isaiah’s ministry.
Although the judgment will come, at the end of that chapter, you find a
brief note of hope; a remnant would remain faithful to the Lord. But clearly
here is Isaiah’s call and commission to be a prophet, to be this person who
proclaims God’s message to a people who were unwilling to listen and obey.

Secondly,
Jeremiah, if you look at the first chapter of Jeremiah, verses four and
following, you read: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘before I formed
you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed
you as a prophet to the nations.’ ‘Ah, sovereign, Lord,’ I said, ‘I do not know
how to speak, I’m only a child.’ But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not say I am only
a child, you must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you,
do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,’ declares the
Lord. Then the Lord reached out his hand, touched my mouth, and said to me (and
this becomes an important text as far as the prophetic phenomenon is concerned).
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See today I appoint you to the nations,
appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot, to tear down, to rebuild and
plant.’” Here the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah; he tries to avoid the
responsibility and the difficulty attached to the prophetic task, saying he
feels too weak, too young, unable to do the job. But the Lord says, “Don’t say
that. You go to all whom I send you, and do whatever I command you, and I will
put my words in your mouth.”

We
also have a call for Ezekiel that’s described in the first three chapters of
the book. I’m not going to take time to read through all of that, but if you’ve
read that, remember in the first chapter, Ezekiel sees this throne carriage of
God, which is this wheeled carriage pulled by four creatures and on that throne
chariot, above it, you read in verse 26 of the first chapter, “Above the
expanse over their heads is what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high
above on the throne was a figure like that of a man.  I saw that from what appeared to be his waist
up he looked like glowing metal as if full of fire. And that from there down he
looked like fire and brilliant lights surrounded him like the appearance of a
rainbow and the clouds on a radiant day so were the clouds around him.” What
was it? This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord, so he
has this vision of God, much like Isaiah did.  “When I saw it I fell face down, and I heard
the voice of one speaking, he said to me, ‘Son of man, stand on your feet, I
will speak to you.’” And what’s the message? Verse three, “Son of man, I’m
sending you to the Israelites, the rebellious nation that has been revolting
against me.” Verse four, “The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and
stubborn. Say to them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says,’” and whether
they listen or fail to listen, and many times they will fail to listen, but that’s
not your responsibility. Whether they listen or fail to listen for they are a rebellious
house, they will know that a prophet has been in among them “I’m going to give
my word to those people, through you, and you, son of man, do not be afraid of
them or their words.”  Verse seven, “you
must speak (what?) my words to them.” (Whose words?) “My words, whether they
listen or fail to listen for they are rebellious, but you, son of man listen to
what I say to you, do not rebel like that rebellious house. Open your mouth, (and
here’s the remarkable thing,) and eat what I give you.” And what’s he giving
him? He gives him a scroll. On both sides of it were written words of lament
and mourning. “He said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this
scroll. (Now remember this is a visionary situation.) Then go and speak to the
house of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. Now he
said to me, ‘Son of man eat the scroll I am giving you, fill your stomach with
it.’ So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” I think what’s
going on there with this scroll that’s to be eaten is that symbolically that
scroll is the message that Ezekiel is to make his own by eating it.  As he does that, even though it’s a message of
judgment, the message he says, “tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.”  This was God’s word.

Those
are three prophets with a pretty clear call; Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In Amos
there’s something similar to this, and there are a number of issues here and
we’ll come back and discuss them later in another context. But notice in Amos
7:15, Amos has gone to the northern kingdom. Amos comes out of Judah, and he
goes up to Bethel in the Northern Kingdom, in the time of Jeroboam II and
prophesies against Jeroboam, king in the Northern Kingdom.  In verse 12, Amaziah,
a priest of Bethel, says to Amos, “Get out you seer,
go back to the land of Judah.” I don’t want you up here. Then he says, “Earn
your bread there, and do your prophesying there. Don’t prophesy anymore at
Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary in the temple of the kingdom.” Amos
responds to that priest Amaziah of the Northern Kingdom
and says, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd,
and I took care of sycamore fig trees. But the Lord took me from tending the
flock and said to me: ‘Go prophesy to my people Israel.’” Now then here is the
word of the Lord. So what Amos is saying was, “I wasn’t originally a prophet,
but the Lord called me and told me to go and give this message, and that is
what I’m doing.” Alright, so those are four examples of prophets who received a
special call for a prophetic task.

Number
2. For some prophets, no special calling is recorded, but all the prophets
demonstrate an awareness that they are endowed with the prophetic function. So,
I don’t think there’s sufficient biblical information to conclude that every
prophet received some sort of special call to the prophetic task, like Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Amos did. They may have, but there’s no record of it. When
you think about that whole question of call, I think there are some other
things to be aware of; I think there are some examples of individuals who
performed a prophetic function very clearly, who quite clearly did not receive
a call.  I think a primary example of that
is the heathen soothsayer Balaam, in Numbers 22-25, who had been hired by Balak king of Moab, to curse Israel. Balaam tried to do
that, but he couldn’t.  The Lord put
other words in his mouth, and instead of cursing Israel, he blessed Israel, and
said all these great things are going to happen to Israel, much to the chagrin
of the king of Moab who had hoped for something else. Now Balaam was a heathen
soothsayer, but I think you can say at the same time he was a true prophet. God
put his words in his mouth.  There are
some remarkable prophecies in Balaam’s oracles. So he was a true prophet; he
performed a prophetic function. I don’t think you can say he received a call in
any sense like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel did.

There
are other individuals who are clearly prophets, but who perform some other
function in the theocracy as well; think of David. David was anointed to be
king, and the Holy Spirit came upon him to equip him for that task. But he’s
also referred to as a prophet.  Of course,
there are many Psalms that are written by David, and any piece of Scripture is
certainly the work of a prophet—God’s word through that human individual. In 2
Samuel 23:2, David even speaks of the Holy Spirit coming upon him. In 2 Samuel
23:2, often called the last words of David, he says, “The Spirit of the Lord
spoke through me. His word was on my tongue.” That very much seems like what
you have with Isaiah “I put my words in your mouth.” The Lord put his words in
David’s mouth, but David was not, “a prophet” in the sense that he received a
call in this kind of prophetic manner, and he was a king. Ezekiel was a priest.
Now, Ezekiel did receive the call to be a prophet but if you look at Ezekiel
1:3, he was a priest, and he performed a dual function of both prophet and
priest.

I
think what’s clear is when prophets speak for God, they do so in a way that
indicates that they know that they have been endowed by God with that prophetic
function. In other words, they know when they are speaking their own word or God’s
words. They’re conscious of it.  That’s
true whether they receive some sort of special call to perform that prophetic
function, or whether the Lord just comes upon them. They are aware that they
are endowed by that prophetic function and by the Lord himself. So, for some
prophets no special calling is recorded, but all the prophets demonstrate
awareness that they’re endowed with the prophetic function.

Thirdly,
just a brief comment on the following point: “The Endowment of the Prophetic Function
was a Power no Prophet Could Resist.” In Amos chapter three there’s an
interesting passage, beginning in verse four you read, “Does a lion roar in the
thicket when he has no prey?” This is a series of cause and effect relationships:
if you hear a lion roaring there’s probably reason for it. “Does he growl in
his den when he has caught nothing? Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground
where no snare has been set? Does a trap spring up in the earth when there is
nothing to catch? When a trumpet sounds in the city do not the people tremble?
When disaster comes to the city has not the Lord caused it? Surely the
Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plans to his servants the
prophets.” There’s that phrase again “my servants the prophets.”  But then notice verse eight: “the lion has
roared, who will not fear?” When a lion roared it’s going to cause fear.  “The Sovereign Lord has spoken, who can but
prophecy? The Lord speaks, who can but prophesy?” That was a power a man could
not resist.  I think what Amos is saying
here is just as a man must be fearful when a lion begins to roar close by him
and he can’t do anything else but be fearful, so a man must prophesy when God tells
him to. You can’t withdraw from it.

Jeremiah
says he tried to withdraw from it. That’s in Jeremiah 20 verse nine. Jeremiah
says, “If I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, his word
is in my heart like a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in,
indeed I cannot.” He must speak. So the endowment by the prophetic function was
a power that man could not resist. Balaam couldn’t resist that; he did what he
didn’t want to do. He blessed Israel instead of cursing it.

Alright,
let’s go to C. “The Function of the Prophet is the Proclamation of the Word of
God.”  It’s already been emphasized and I
will continue to do this for a time as we’re discussing this. The true prophet
does not bring his own words; he does not bring his own thoughts, his own ideas.
When he speaks, he brings God’s words
and God’s thoughts.  If you’re going to
ask what is the difference between the true prophets and the false prophets the
fundamental difference between the true and the false prophets is that the true
prophets, proclaim God’s words and the false prophets proclaim their own
words.

Let
me point you just to three texts: one of them we’ve already looked at; but if
you go back to Deuteronomy 18, you have a description by Moses about how Israel
will receive revelation after Moses is gone. Moses has been a mediator from God
to his people, he’s been the spokesperson for God, and he’s about to die at the
end of the book.  In Deuteronomy 18 there’s
a description of the rise of the prophetic movement.  The Lord says, “I will raise up a prophet like
unto you, and to him, you shall listen.” In Deuteronomy 18:18, the Lord says, “I
will raise up from them a prophet like you from among your brothers.” Then
notice the next few words, “I will put my words in his mouth.  He will tell them everything I command him,”
and then it goes on to say that the people were accountable to listen, because
when that prophet speaks, those are God’s words. That is the same thing that we
already read in Jeremiah 1:9, where the Lord said to Jeremiah, “I will put my
words in your mouth.”  So you see the
prophets speak God’s words.

Next
look at Jeremiah 23:16: “This is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘Do not listen to
what the prophets are prophesying to you (these are false prophets).  They will fill you with false hopes, they
speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.”  You see the false prophets give their own
ideas. These are visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.  So what’s the fundamental difference between
the true and the false prophets?  The
true prophet speaks the word of the Lord; the false prophet speaks his own
words and his own thoughts.

Now,
1 under C: “Expressions with which the Prophets Introduced Their Sermons are Indicative
that the Message is God’s, not Their Own.”
I mentioned earlier E.J. Young’s book, My Servants the Prophets. On pages 171-175 of that book, you can
see a list of references and then short phrases that follow. What he does is
take expressions from Isaiah.  For example:
in 16:13 of Isaiah, “This is the Lord; the Lord hath spoken.” In 18:4: “thus
has the Lord said to me.”  Verse 10 of chapter
21: “That which I have heard from the Lord.” 21:17: “For the Lord has spoken.”
22:14: “The Lord has revealed himself in my ears;” 22:25: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts.” 28:22: “this I have heard from
the Lord.”  It goes on and on. See the
variety of different expression, and Young’s book has four pages of those
expressions taken just out of the book of Isaiah. The prophets make clear, that
when they were speaking, they were conscious that what they were saying was
God’s Word. So the expressions they used to introduce their sermons tell us
quite clearly over and over again that this is God’s word.  It’s not their own word.

Number
2 under C. “The Prophet Must Declare God’s Word Regardless of Whether or Not It
Was Pleasant to Him.”  Very often the
message that the prophets had to declare was not a pleasant message. It was a
message of judgment, woe, doom, and a call to repentance.  Let me give you a few illustrations: go back
to 1 Samuel 15. There’s a long sequence of events there, coming to a climax in
chapter 8 of 1 Samuel where the people come to Samuel and say, “Give us a king.”
Samuel is very displeased at that request
because he says, “Remember the Lord your God is your king.  Why are you asking for a king?”  “Well,” they say, “we want to be like the
nations.”  But Samuel says, “You’re
rejecting the Lord, who is your king.” Then the Lord tells Samuel to give the
people what they want. So we go through that whole sequence of events and God
grants them a king. He defines the role of a king in a way that would be
consistent with the covenant. Then he inaugurates kingship in the context of
renewal of allegiance to the Lord.  Saul
becomes king, but very quickly turns away from his role and twice doesn’t obey
the word of Samuel, in chapter 13 and chapter 15. So the Lord then tells
Samuel, “Go and tell Saul, ‘As you’ve rejected me, so I’ve rejected you. You’re
not going to be king anymore.”  Look at 1
Samuel 15:10 or 11, “The word of the Lord came to Samuel.”  Samuel is the prophet here, and the Lord
says, “I am grieved that I have made Saul king because he’s turned away from me
and has not carried out my instructions.”  What’s Samuel’s response to that? We read that
Samuel was troubled. He cried out to the Lord all that night. It wasn’t a
pleasant task for Samuel to go and confront Saul and tell him that the Lord had
rejected him. That’s not the kind of thing that you enjoy doing. Samuel didn’t
enjoy doing it, but the Lord sent him to confront Saul and announce to him that
the Lord had rejected him as king. If you go over to 16:1, notice what the Lord
says there; “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you mourn for Saul? Since
I have rejected him as king over Israel, fill your horn with oil, I’m sending
you on your way, I’m sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. One of his sons is to
be king.’” So the prophets do declare the message of God regardless of whether
that’s pleasant to them. This was not a pleasant task for Samuel, but he goes
and he does it.  I’m going to come back
to this later in another connection, under the next section.

Think
about Balaam. We’ve already talked about him in Numbers 22-25. The message he
was proclaiming was not the message he wanted to proclaim, but he had to
proclaim it. It was the word of the Lord. Think of Jonah.  He didn’t want to go to Nineveh and proclaim
repentance for the Ninevites. He tried to avoid it,
but he couldn’t, and he had to go and preach that message. Even at the end of
the book, he didn’t like the message and the response of the Ninevites. Ezekiel had to eat that scroll that was
inscribed with judgments from God. They were required to go and proclaim it
even if it’s not something they wanted to do.
So the prophet is to declare the message of God regardless of whether or
not it’s something that is pleasant to him.

Then
thirdly: “There is a distinction between the prophet’s own word and the word of
God that he spoke; and the prophets were aware of that distinction.” In other
words, the prophet would know in his own heart and mind and conscience when he
was speaking God’s Word, and when he was speaking his own words. Next time I’m
going to give you some illustrations of that because I think that’s an
important distinction.  I’m going to look
at some examples. But let’s break for now.

Transcribed by:
Hope Johnson

Edited by Ted Hildebrandt

Re-narrated by