I used to think that prophets were this special breed of a
person who had this higher level of spirituality than anybody else. You may
have guessed already that in the Bible school we are already in the prophets.
This week we have started on the books of Amos and Jonah. Prophets are
important both to those who were in the days of the Old Testament and today as
well. I’ve learned that the role of the prophet though is to realign people on
the path that God has for them. I used to think that being a prophet was solely
predicting the future but it is so much more. I think that more importantly
than telling the future is the role that the prophet has in the moment to point
out wrong and call people to repentance and seek God so that they can live. When
the Kings of Israel or Judah were falling away from the Lord and the priests
were no longer teaching the people the ways of the Lord then that’s when the
prophets would step in and remind the people of their calling to be God’s
people. The prophets would call the people to repentance so that they would
come back to the Lord instead of going down the road to their destruction which
ended up happening anyway. I think the role is still the same today, to call
people back to the Lord. There is obviously more to it but I believe that this
is a major part of a prophet, to correct wrong, call people to repent and to
point people to seek the Lord. If this is the case then being a prophet isn’t
so impossible.
