Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion

One of the most influential writers in Christianity, the Apostle Paul, penned a letter to believers in Corinth to alert them to the danger of the immature and improper use of spiritual gifts. In one of his letters, in reference to the apparent tendency of people to jump up in assemblies and make utterances which were generally meaningless to the persons hearing them, he asked: "For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

In the January 1, edition of The Gleaner a list of 'Prophecies for 2007' was published by a group of persons labelled as prophets and prophetesses. These persons may well be the real deal or they may be immature believers and any among them may be charlatans. I do not know. Their list is specific in some instances and clearly time will prove them right or wrong, but can someone tell me how do some of these particular prophecies help anybody?

"Bloodshed will be hitting the north; pray for the north." Is this the northern part of the Corporate Area, northern part of Jamaica? Northern Europe, Northern America, Northern Iraq?

"A massive explosion shall come from the East" - eastern Kingston; Eastern Jamaica; China; Japan?

"There will be a massive fire". That one is a certainty.

"There is too much competition in the body of Christ" - a prophecy?

'Itching ears'

I have no doubt that throughout the assembly of Christian believers there are gifted persons specially equipped to offer guidance and direction to individual lives and nations. But there is a great danger running amok in the church community as well. In several places, people are lining up with regularity to have their "future" told, with the same spirit and attitude as those who consult horoscopes. They seem less interested in having their lives anchored in a sensible grasp of a holistic reading of the Bible but rather having "itching ears", they run after people who tell them something exciting or what they want to hear.

Then there is of course the cultural baggage that comes with our reading of the Bible. As a youngster, I was exposed to many "prophetic teachings" on how to interpret social and political events especially on the international stage - mostly, of course, from an American-influenced perspective. At a time when "Godless communism" was rampant, the Soviet Union was seen in the eyes of many Christians, as the de facto "beast" spoken of in the Revelation. Perhaps there were some who "saw" and predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, but by and large the evangelical community seemed to have been taken by surprise as much as those who made no claims to Christian beliefs. Many seminars had been and were still being organised on how to smuggle Bibles across the Iron Curtain into eastern Europe. Of course, in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new interpretation was that this "victory" emanated from the prayer of the saints.

Taken by surprise

I may be wrong, but I have the impression that the evangelical world and the prophets were as much taken by surprise by the scale of death and destruction of the Asian tsunami of a few years ago and Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans, as was the rest of the world.

The world we live in is mired in deep social and economic schisms. Is there a prophetic word for such issues or do we accept that this is inevitable? The will and determination to address some of these issues require focused and committed leadership at all levels. The Christian community with its ethos of integrity and "right living" can help enormously. But the Christian community also needs to be rescued from a prevailing spirit of shallowness.