especially that you may prophesy

But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord, and with justice and might, to declare to Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.

The bulk of the prophet’s work is negative. By God he has been shown a model, and he looks back and forth between the model and the works of Man. And he tells the makers, particularly the political rulers, how they have failed to live up to the perfection of what God has shown us.

The prophet is the hard teacher of God, walking around the sculptors’ studio, pointing out imperfections and laziness, shining fluorescent, unflattering light on aberrations that must be chiseled away, berating the sculptor who has taken off a bit too much.

Since Constantine, the leaders of the Christian Church have been friendly with kings, and they themselves have lived like the World’s princes. Unsurprisingly, the hierarchy has not, since that time, had much interest in calling forth or cultivating prophecy within the Body.

The world has become much richer. Being comfortable has become much easier. Without prophets to warn and to ridicule extravagances, Christians from every corner of the Church have taken advantage of the good times and grown corrupt.

The general decline of our witness is perhaps most visible in communities that claim a special, deeper commitment to imitating the Lord: our institutes of religious life. A few communities can with dignity say that they have maintained a spirit of Christian simplicity, but when it comes to the average house of vowed religious, spend some time there, talk with the inhabitants about how they’ve spent their summer, and I’d wager you’d find their vow of poverty looking remarkably similar their next door neighbors’ run-of-the-mill, upper middle class decadence.

Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians in a time when the Church was still tiny and strange and when no one was tempted to finance a new truck. Now that Christian conformity and 72-month loans and vowed religious jet-setters are the norm, prophecy is far more important, and it is nowhere to be found.

The most important target of prophecy, however, is still the same one as always: our rulers. We have been given one perfect model for a political leader, Christ the King, to whom all authority belongs. His image has, in four different Gospels, been drawn in detail. The Kingdom of God will only come when the subject of those Gospels sits in every political office. But we do not hear any prophetic Christian voices demanding that politicians change to look like their model.

The Spirit is moving, though. Christians will wake up and shout out and commit to Kingdom labor, and a completely new type of politician, given grace to conform completely to the model, will take power. Yet their taking power will only be the beginning. As we’ve seen with dozens of religious orders, groups come together who are serious about imitating the Lord, and then, over time, they decline and grow lax. This cannot be allowed to happen with the Lord’s politicians. There must always be Christians with the gift of prophecy who are vigilant against laxity in the Lord’s political leaders, who pounce on any sign of it and shut it down.

Once the new men and women are in power, there must be others with the prophetic gift whom the Church will choose to enter into the politicians’ communities and observe their way of life. These prophets must be hyper-familiar with Jesus’ image in the Gospels, they must be able to recognize with ease the aspects of His face and, after they have spent time living with and evaluating God’s anointed rulers, they must be willing to point out with complete boldness and clarity, unmotivated by any people-pleasing tendency, the ways in which the leaders clearly do not match up to the Lord’s image. Then all of the people, having heard the prophet’s judgment, should pray on it, should open themselves to the Spirit of Prophecy and, if they feel confirmed in the chosen prophet’s judgment, they should demand that the politicians change their lives in whatever specific ways are necessary to bring them into total conformity with the Lord.

I can imagine a scenario wherein the prophets and the people insistently demand a change, but the politicians genuinely feel that they cannot make that change while keeping a pure conscience before God. I have complete trust in the Spirit to resolve such a scenario. I have complete trust in the Lord that he will bring down His Kingdom. But the Body must prophesy. I have complete trust that it will.