From the beginning of the Christian era. Since the first people were cast out of Eden, God needed to speak to His people and He did so through other people, these people were called prophets. Therefore, we will talk a little about what it means to be a Christian prophet (see also: Protestant Christianity).
What is a Christian prophet?
Many religions in the world have their own prophets, although they may call them by other names. The Christian Church, or Christian religion, also has its own prophets, and there have been many throughout history.
In the old world, when Adam and Eve were the only two beings on the face of the earth whom God trusted, He spoke directly to them without the need for a third person, i.e. God came and spoke to Adam and Eve as if nothing had happened.
God did not need a third party to do this because at that time mankind was pure, i.e. Adam and Eve were immaculate, they did not know what sin was or the corruption of sin; they were perfectly pure beings worthy of God’s presence.
This was not to be for long, for when Lucifer learned that there were two human beings in the Garden of Eden, and that they were God’s creation, God’s favourite, he immediately set out to ruin God’s day. Eve seemed the easiest prey, so he went after her first.
In the garden there were two trees whose fruit was forbidden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of the fruit of eternal life. It was not in Lucifer’s interest for the new ones to live forever, to be eternal like them.
He needed to make them sin and destroy the strong bond between God and them, so he thought the best way to do that was to make them eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so it happened. Lucifer persuaded Eve to eat, which she did, and promptly made her husband eat as well.
They both realised that they were naked and were ashamed, but they were afraid when God called them and they hid, for they already had the knowledge of evil and knew that disobedience was wrong, especially when God had told them not to eat from the tree.
In the end, they tell God that they hid because they were ashamed of their nakedness and because they had disobeyed God’s command and eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam blamed Eve for eating, and Eve blamed the serpent for making her eat.
God punished each of them, and although he cursed the serpent, Lucifer didn’t care about his curses, he had finally achieved his goal: to break the bond between man and God. On the other hand, in order to prevent these people from dying, God had to sacrifice a lamb (this is a prophecy) and from it he made clothes for these two naked people.
He told the woman that she would give birth with great pain and that the man would dominate her because of his desires, while he told the man that by the sweat of his brow he would get bread for himself to eat and take home to feed his family. He also told them that they were both expelled from the Garden of Eden because they had corrupted themselves.
Mankind was no longer pure, their offspring was already tainted with sin, their flesh was already destined to die. And so it was said to them: “From dust you are, and to dust you shall return”, meaning that they would die in the course of time.
Adam and Eve were no longer worthy to stand in the presence of God, not even to speak to Him in such an intimate way as they had done in the Garden of Eden. Despite all this, God never turned his back on them, but watched over them day and night.
As the earth became more and more human, original sin took hold and drove people away from God’s presence, making them sin more grotesquely, to such an extent that God himself was repulsed by their atrocities.
God needed to speak to them, but not like before, when he appeared and spoke as if nothing had happened, he needed a mediator, an intermediary between God and man, a messenger, someone who would convey the words that God had to say to the rest of mankind, a prophet.
In the Bible we find a long list of prophets of all times, from the ancient prophets to after the ascension of Jesus Christ. The list is long, and some prophets were more prominent than others, but the fact is that each one did what he had to do: communicate God’s words to the people, carry the message.
The Bible mentions in Genesis 20:7 that Abraham may have been the first prophet, according to the words of God Himself, because when Abraham and his wife Sarah went to live in the land of King Abimelech, he took Abraham’s wife for himself, believing her to be an unmarried woman.
Innocently, he took Sarah for himself and Abraham had to speak to get his wife back, he was afraid of what the king might do. So, in these circumstances, God Himself went to speak to King Abimelech, although He did not appear to him and say no. God appeared in a dream to King Abimelech.
God appeared to the king in a dream and told him to give Abraham’s wife back to him because he was a prophet, that Abraham would intercede for him so that he could live. But if he didn’t, he would die, and not only he, but all his people would die.
So we can see that God considered Abraham to be an upright, just and righteous man before Him, worthy to be God’s spokesman. We can also see that at that time Abraham had not predicted anything, nor had he made any prophecies or anything like that, but God himself said that he was a prophet, and he is the first one to be given that title in the Bible.
At that time we could not understand what it meant to be a prophet of God, but in chapter 18 of Genesis we see Abraham interceding with God for Sodom and Gomorrah to prevent the destruction of all the people who lived there.
Let us remember that one of the functions of a prophet is to intercede for the people before God, or at least that was one of the functions of the prophets of the ancient world. It was not only to interpret the future and the words of God, but also to intercede, to act as a mediator between sinful human beings and God himself.
At that time, Abraham pleaded with God not to destroy those cities, because there must be good people who would be involved in things they didn’t do. Then God told him that if he found righteous people, he would not destroy the city.
In the end, God did destroy both cities, but he did not destroy everyone who lived there; Lot and his daughters were the only people who escaped alive from that great catastrophe. Abraham was the reason for Lot’s salvation, because God saw that Lot was good and saved him from destruction.
As we can see, Abraham intercedes for Sodom and Gomorrah, even though he knew that both cities were at the height of corruption and evil, but he thought that there were good people in them who deserved a second chance, and so it was with Lot.
In the Bible we find many more prophets after Abraham. One of the closest, chronologically, was Moses, the great prophet Moses, whom he considered to be one of the most righteous men on the face of the earth.
When the prophets appeared in the land, God spoke to them through dreams, visions or whispers, not face to face. This did not happen to Moses because God considered Moses to be so righteous that he was worthy to speak to God personally.
Anyone who spoke ill of Moses or thought of him with any kind of malice received immediate punishment, as in the case of his sister Mary, who muttered with malice and envy about Moses’ work and automatically got leprosy.
Thanks to Moses’ prayers to God, his sister Mary was cured of leprosy, and we have seen that Moses interceded for another human being before God, which is one of the main tasks of every prophet, not just being God’s spokesman or predicting the future.
Moses was a man who had everything, the family that took him in as a baby was wealthy and had social standing in Egyptian society, but Moses did not like the way the Egyptians treated the Israelites.
So no matter what happened to his wealth, his possessions, his luxury and his life itself, he decided to stand up against those who were oppressing the people of Israel, the people of God. God supported him and it was thanks to him that Moses was able to lead them out of Egypt. He was also the one who prophesied that the Messiah would come about 1500 years later and that they would be with him as they were with Moses. (See also: Christian garments)
Today’s
In the ancient world, being a prophet was a difficult task, because you were God’s messenger, God’s spokesman and the person who acted as an intermediary between God and man. The prophecies of the prophets, it was not that they had some kind of power over people, no. God revealed to the prophet events that were going to happen.
God would reveal future events to the prophet, or tell him, just like that, then the prophet was to announce the vision that God was sharing with the people, so that the people would be aware of what was going to happen in the future, and if it came to pass, then that person was considered a true prophet of God.
Jonah was one of God’s prophets, but in this particular case we see that Jonah was a prophet who sometimes did not like to listen to God, because he knew that if the people prayed to him for mercy, he would forgive them, so it made no sense for Jonah to go on the journey so that they would be forgiven in the end.
God told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh and tell them that their sins had gone up to God and that they had displeased Him in such a way that if they did not repent of what they had done, God would destroy them all.
Jonah refused because he believed that if he told the people of Nineveh and they began to pray, God would forgive them. He tried to flee from God’s presence in a boat, but no one flees from God, who caused a great storm and almost sank the boat.
Jonah had to be thrown out of the ship to calm the waters, and then he was swallowed by a great sea fish. He was there for three and a half nights. Then, at the command of God himself, the fish pulled him out of his belly and Jonah finally obeyed his master’s request.
When he arrived in Nineveh and began to tell of the disasters that were about to befall the city, and how they could avoid them if they repented of all their sins, the people of Nineveh cried out for mercy, and God forgave them. Jonah wondered: What is a prophet if what he says is not fulfilled?
Then, little by little, Jonah understood that God could not ignore the cry of the people, and that if they truly repented of their sins, they deserved a second chance. On the other hand, he understood that he was fulfilling his role as a messenger (another important role of the prophet), communicating God’s intentions to the people of Nineveh.
The apostles warned against the coming of false prophets, and one of the clearest signs that a person is a false prophet is when he himself asks people for money, as if he were charging for his prophecies, whereas in the ancient world it was clear that God’s prophets did not charge.
Another thing that cannot help to identify a false prophet is that in the days before the end of all things many false prophets will arise and perform great signs in heaven and on earth, but Jesus warns not to be deceived because they are false.
On the other hand, according to the Bible and according to the studies of theologians, our age lives in the time of grace, that is, God no longer communicates with man through an intermediary or directly, but man communicates with God through prayer and God answers his prayers.
In view of this, anyone who comes today and says that he is a prophet, that God speaks through him, is technically lying. Even more so if that person asks the faithful for money. In our time, the term prophet is rising from the ashes.
It is about 19 centuries since there was a prophet, that is, a prophet did not come into the world; today it seems that half the world is a prophet, they say that God speaks through them. But the truth is that the prophets are gone, and that those who exist today are doubtful as to whether they are really prophets or not. In any case, many are the people who believe in the prophets of the New World and hear their voice; the Bible says that they will be lost with them, for they lead them to perdition.
Names
As we have already mentioned, the prophets who appear in the Bible are numerous because they appeared at different times and were used by God as instruments to convey His messages to the people of Israel, the people who worshipped Him.
Among these great prophets are Moses, Abraham, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha, Zechariah, David, Aaron, Obed, Haggai, Azariah, Azur, Asaph, and many others, who for centuries fulfilled their role as God’s spokesmen, as intermediaries between man and God.
Abraham: Abraham was a righteous man in the eyes of God, which is why God chose him to be His spokesman and intermediary between Him and mankind. Abraham’s task was not going to be easy, as he had to intercede for many souls and also fulfil God’s commandments.
Abraham is the first known prophet, in fact God himself called him that when he and his wife Sarah entered the land of King Abimelech, who, not knowing that Sarah was Abraham’s wife, took her for his own.
Abraham did not want to plead for the return of his wife, he was afraid to speak to the king, but God was not afraid of him, so he told Abimelech in a dream that he must return Sarah to her husband Abraham because he was a prophet of God, and that he would plead with him to save his life, and if he did not, he would die along with all his people. Before that we see Abraham begging God to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Moses: Moses was one of the most important biblical prophets of the ancient world, he played a fundamental role in the liberation of the people of Israel from the yoke of the Egyptian empire that had long subjugated them.
Moses was a Hebrew who grew up in a powerful Egyptian family and lived as an Egyptian prince. He was a person who from a young age was surrounded by all the luxuries he wanted, but he was not attached to material things.
As an adult, Moses was called by God to be the leader of his people, to lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. Moses did not mind leaving his luxuries, his possessions, and even risking his own life to do what God wanted him to do.
On one occasion, when Moses was leading his flock to Mount Horeb, he saw a bush burning without being consumed, this caught his attention and he approached it, then God told him to take off his shoes because the place he was entering was a holy place. There God gave him the task of leading the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. Moses was a prophet of God (See also: Orthodox Church).
Elijah: The prophet Elijah was another of the great prophets we find in the Bible. In difficult times, with God’s help, Elijah was able to overcome all his enemies and emerge victorious. God commanded Elijah to prophesy against Ahab and Jezebel.
Jezebel killed almost all the prophets of Israel who worshipped false gods, and God chose Elijah to show them all who the true God was, triggering a brutal war in which Elijah was victorious.
Recognised
Many of the prophets in the Bible are recognised, meaning that there are prophets who are mentioned more than others, or who have a greater significance. However, each one personally fulfilled what God gave them to do, and so they are also recognised as prophets.
Among these great acknowledged prophets is Abraham, considered the first of all prophets. The man who interceded with God for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and because of him, Lot and his daughters survived the disaster. His wife would have lived, but she turned around and became a pillar of salt.
Another of these great prophets was Moses, considered one of the greatest leaders of Israel, because he was given the task by God himself to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. However, we all know that not all the Israelites entered the Promised Land.
Despite all the mishaps he had along the way, remember that he went up Mount Sinai for the tablets of the Law and when he came down he found a people worshipping images and false gods. This made him so angry that he rebuked them.
On the other hand, there are those who say that Moses was one of those who prophesied the coming of God Himself to the earth, this happens in Deuteronomy 18:15 when God tells him that He will raise up a great prophet like him from among his brothers.
This means that God would speak through this person to other people, and would do so from his own mouth, and that they should listen to this person. Moses then understood this to be a prophecy and exhorted those who followed him to obey this great prophet when he came.
For these and many other reasons, Moses became one of the most famous prophets in history. He opened the Red Sea so that the people could cross it on dry land. When the Pharaohs tried to cross, the water closed up and killed them all, but the people were safe.
Elijah was another of the great prophets of the Bible and one of the most famous, especially because, according to the Bible, Elijah ascended to heaven without knowing death, a chariot of fire passed by and took him to heaven, while Elisha saw his Master leave.
On the other hand, the first documented case of resurrection in the Bible happened in the time of the prophet Elijah. When a widow was gathering firewood and he asked her to give him water and food, she replied that she had little for herself and her son, so Elijah told her that if she gave him food, there would be no lack in her house.
The woman did so and there was no lack of flour or oil in her house, but then her son got sick and died and she complained to Elijah, so Elijah took the body of the little boy upstairs and cried out to God for a miracle and the miracle happened, the boy came back to life.
Wrong
Basically, there are no prophets today, because according to the biblical texts, we live in the time of grace, which means that God is absolutely silent and no longer communicates with people through anyone else. He does it through prayer. Anyone who claims to be a prophet according to biblical criteria is lying.
