Chapter 6 - What is Prophetic Offense?

There is a prophetic 'offense' that God allows, or even builds in, either
something in the man that men can reject or find offense in, or in the
message itself. Why would that be, that there is some defect, some
weakness or some imperfection in the man or in the message that seems to
be invariably part of the prophetic manner? The Scriptures speak of 'the
holy prophets of old', that though they were holy and need now also to be, it
would seem that they carry some kind of defect, some kind of flaw, either in
their own person, their own history or even in their own speaking. If that is
so, and that constitutes the prophetic offense, then why does God allow that
and even require that?

I can think that everything about John the Baptist was an offense, namely,
the way he dressed, the way he was outside of Jerusalem, his diet, his
celibacy. If you heard him, you had to leave Jerusalem and come to some
waste place, to some slimy bank of a river, where this untoward looking
character was carrying on. I mean, if you ever want to find offense, you can
go down a whole list of things that would rub people the wrong way. It is
interesting that I should seize him as an example of a man laden with
offense by the very nature of what he is in himself. Elijah is in the spirit of
John the Baptist, and John the Baptist in Elijah, and the prophet 'Elijah' is
yet to come as the forerunner of the Lord in the last days also.

We need, therefore, of all the prophetic models, to examine more the Elijah
model and the wilderness prophet than any other as being the clear form
that God will employ that precedes His coming. The very fact of being in
the wilderness means outside the establishment. To the Scribes and
Pharisees, who were being sent from Jerusalem to see what was taking
place at the banks of the Jordan, the offense would be that how could
anything of significance be happening outside of Jerusalem, outside of their
establishment and outside of their priestly class. I cannot say that I can find
a verse where it says that there is an inherent flaw or a structured offense
that God installs in His prophets, but it seems that they have almost
invariably been offensive to men. It is interesting that Jesus was accused of
being a wine bibber and a glutton, so here would be an assault on His
character. Whether imagined or real, the opponents of the prophetic man
will find it, and God allows it to be found.

The prophetic word is different from the words that are spoken by other
ministers of God. There is also a greater propensity for the hearer to be
resistant to the prophetic word, where he might be more readily yielded to a
word of teaching. A prophet's speaking will bring him into a disjuncture
with things as they are, especially religious things, because the prophet is
vehemently anti-religious and because he knows better than anyone that it
was the religious world that crucified the Lord of glory. There is something
in his make-up and his jealously for God and God's glory, that allows him to
perceive things as they really are, even something which seems ostensibly
to be from God, and is called God, and is employed in the realm of things
about God, but it is yet inimical and opposed to God. It is the religious
thing that is always the greatest obstruction and the greatest obstacle to the
prophetic witness.

He speaks a radical word that always calls you to a disjuncture and to a

degree of obedience that will be sacrificial and painful, and that will bring
the prophet into some degree of reproach and misunderstanding, even by
those who are ostensibly good Christians. It is a word that is painful both to
hear, to consider and to receive. Men absolve themselves from such a word
and avoid its implications by finding a way to discredit the word through
finding a defect in the man. I would suspect that there is not a prophet that
has ever been sent of God who does not provide that opportunity to his
hearers.

Why would God allow an offense? Why should the prophet not be
impeccable and above any criticism so that people would of necessity have
to receive his word? Why would God allow either the manner of the man,
his mode of being, his life, his character, imagined or real, to be something
that people could seize upon, if they want to find offense and a point of
rejection? I believe that it is in order to recognize the word of God as the
word of God, despite the vehicle. I see it in my own experience. Sometimes
I am embarrassed when something comes out of me that slips into the
message that I myself would not have chosen, and if I could have edited it
out, then I would have. I say to myself, "How did that happen?" I then find
later that people fasten onto that thing so as to reject not only that error, but
the entire word that went with it. I pondered that because it is painful to
embarrassingly bring a defect, but what I am sensing is, that God gives men
opportunity, if they want to seize upon it, to reject both the man and the
message, and they can justify it by saying, "Look, he said this," or "He did
this," or "He is this." It is part of the humiliation of being prophetic and that
the flaw or defect has got to issue through you. At the same time, however, I
want to say that it is not to be used to absolve the prophetic man from
responsibility; that he must strive for impeccability, purity, holiness and not
justify himself in places where he is responsible and say, "Well, that's the
prophetic flaw." It works to give people a way to avoid the implications, but
it does not absolve the prophet from his own responsibility before God for
it. The prophet cannot throw it off, and yet he is responsible for it. It might
even be in a certain sense sinful, or humiliating or embarrassing, and you
are crying out for the deliverance from it, and yet you have got to bear it
because it serves that function. Both things are true at the same time. We are
still responsible and yet at the same time it is something that God can and
will employ to give men an escape if they want to seize it—and they will.

Even within the fivefold ministries, there is built-in antagonism and offense.
A prophet operates often from an intuitive place, rather than the kind of
emphasis a teacher would give to the Word. That is not to say that he is
indifferent to the Word, because he is eminently the bearer of the Word of
God, but in his calling more than any other there is a place for intuition and
apprehension of something by the Spirit that does not necessarily first come
to him by Scripture. That one thing is very offensive to teachers. We have to
understand that, and not condemn, as if somehow the intuitive man is Word-
rejecting, and is a freelancer, and will just take anything off-the-wall. He
needs to be under the observation of men who are careful in the Word, but
the men who are careful in the Word need to make some latitude for the
intuitive faculty that God Himself has given.

We need not think that because there is an intrinsic offense to prophetic

obedience and faithfulness that we are under obligation to be offensive.
There are a lot of amateurs who are acting like prophets; that is to say,
creating offense and who are loudmouthed, insensitive and acting like 'bulls
in a china shop'. That is an insult to the true thing. We are not to think that
we have to create offense and that that authenticates our prophetic
credentials. The offense will come in and of itself without even our
consciousness, but if we think that this is a form, "I am a prophetic person
and I am going to shake these people up", then we are amateurs and doing
God a disfavor. We would do well to keep our mouth shut, and be silent,
and come under the disciplines of God before there will ever be a release.
We may well have a legitimate calling, but we are going out into it
prematurely. We have not been in the wilderness of God. We have not been
dealt with in the deepest entrails of our heart and life, and we are just
prematurely ejaculating a lot of nonsense and a lot of unnecessary
controversy, that does not serve the redemptive purposes of God.

Jesus Himself said, "Blessed is he who is not offended in Me." There is

something intrinsic in His being offensive, something built in by being what
He is. God is something 'other', and the world is offended by that
'otherness'. They cannot define it, but they resist it and are irritated by it.
But "Blessed is he who is not offended in Me" implies that there will be
offense, and necessary offense, but if you can rise above the offense or see
through the offense, then you are blessed.