One of the things I’ve observed is that some of the key people and churches in the Christian Nationalist Movement tend to lean heavily on prophetic words and this feeds into the approach to preaching. Here is an example from Chrisopher Wickland.
In fact, this was the first part on the subject I’ve just looked at in some previous posts. The style is to lean heavily onto a prophetic utterance, shaping the preaching and then use some Scripture quotes to support this. It’s worth saying up front that I am pro the inclusion of prophetic words in preaching and indeed there may be times when a prophetic word shapes the whole sermon.
I also, as one of those Reformed people who Wickland says would be down on him for not preaching through books don’t have a problem with occasional sermons that are more topical focused or stand alone. However, it is worth observing two things. First that systematic, expository preaching through books is wise because it guards us from just self -selecting what we want to say and it helps preacher and congregation to get a good sense of context which is a good guard against error.
Further, I would gently suggest that there is more support for this approach in Scripture than Wickland thinks. We might include the way that whole Gospels and epistles were delivered to be read to congregations. They weren’t meant to pick out their preferred bits. They were meant to listen to the whole thing. Then, there’s the examples we have of preaching in the OT which often seemed to focus on expounding the Law, statement by statement.
What I wanted to particularly pick up on here was how “prophecy” is handled and where Wickland goes wrong on, not just here but on other occasions. Wickland argues that we go wrong because we presume that prophecies must be fulfilled immediately. He uses the example of Agabus prophesying a famine that would be fulfilled two years later. There is no problem with the idea that we need to be patient in order to see predictive prophecy fulfilled.
However, there is a difference between saying that a prophecy was mean to be long term in the future but where it is clearly specific and where there are things to frame it to help us determine if certain things should be happening to coincide with other things, and offering something that is so vague that it could be fulfilled and probably will be fulfilled at some point. We become like the broken clock that will always be true, twice a day. In this specific case, to suggest that there is going to be a major, economic crisis on a catastrophic level at some point falls down at that hurdle. Of course there will be an economic crash at some point. Economies seem to follow cycles. Fascinatingly they seem to follow 7-10 year minor cycles and 50 year major cycles fitting the Scripture pattern of sabbath and jubilee. Saying that at some point we are due a massive economic crisis is about as prophetic as saying that there is going to be a major earthquake in California at some point. Indeed, it is arguable that we are still in the middle of a major crisis begun in 2008 but mitigated by governments in different ways.
Additionally, it isn’t really prophetic to make claims that don’t depend on specific revelatory impact. Again, it is no shock to hear the suggestion that economic downturn is coming. That’s something economists talk about all the time. It would be more prophetic for the person to say that this specific crisis can be averted and to offer a sign for that.
There are two dangers with the approach that I see here. First, it precludes proper discernment and assessment. Second that puts people in a position to claim authority and so be listened to on the basis of untestable prophecy. The result is that people then give them spiritual authority and begin to listen to their counsel. I don’t think there is any basis from Christian Nationalist prophecy to suggest that we should give them that kind of authority in our lives, churches or nation.
Faithroots 