Prophetic experience was well known to Yahwism, and later to Judaism. It was no less known to early Christianity. In every age Yahwists, Jews, and Christians knew that people become prophets not because they want to, but because God calls them to this ministry...
Prophetic experience was well known to Yahwism, and later to Judaism. It was no less known to early Christianity. In every age Yahwists, Jews, and Christians knew that people become prophets not because they want to, but because God calls them to this ministry.
Of course, one could argue about "wanting to." Practically all the prophetic books speak of false prophets, who become especially numerous in troubled and unsettled times. Almost always the crowd takes these false prophets for true prophets and listens to them more willingly than to the true ones. Why is that? And who are these people who pass themselves off as prophets?
As can be seen, the issue is not prophets as such, but a kind of prophesying ecstatic. Such people have existed in every age and every society, and they usually become active in periods of special social unrest. There is nothing surprising here: ecstasy in itself is a purely psychological phenomenon. It is connected with a spontaneous expansion of the boundaries of perception, usually accompanied by a rapid and sharp restructuring of the perceiver's consciousness, usually temporary, though sometimes quite prolonged and in some cases even irreversible. Such expansion can be caused by many different things, from drugs to direct spiritual influence.
For genuine, true prophets, ecstasy was connected precisely with such spiritual influence. It is no accident that they themselves spoke of that breath, or "spirit," of God which they felt as completely real. And they testified to what they had heard during communion with God. But what did false prophets hear? As can be seen, what was, as people say, in the air. And they said, accordingly, what those who breathed that air wanted to hear from them. Unlike true prophets, who could speak only about what they had heard from God. And God, as everyone knows, does not always say what we would like to hear from Him. Then the listeners have to choose whose words to heed. Reason calls us to heed what is unpleasant to hear, since no one would willingly say unpleasant things to an overheated crowd. Emotions call us to incline toward those who say something pleasing to the ear. And the choice, as always, belongs to those who listen.
1
1:21 For prophecy came not of old by the will of man - Of any mere man whatever. But the holy men of God - Devoted to him, and set apart by him for that purpose, spake and wrote. Being moved - Literally, carried. They were purely passive therein.