Message: Understanding The Office Of A Prophet -By Isaiah Ogedegbe

God is the first person to prophesy according to Genesis 1:3, And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. Prophecy is calling into existence the non-existent and declaring that what has never been will be. Like God and as God’s representatives on earth, prophets call things into existence and declare that what has never been will be. Just as God commanded light and it came, that is how God has empowered His prophets to command His light to come into people’s lives who have been in darkness. They are God’s agents of divine change. They are God’s “let” men. They say, Let this happen and it happens. They are destroyers and God’s agents of alteration. They alter and destroy the works of the devil. They are carriers of divine light and the darkness cannot help but flee before them. They bring prophetic restoration, deliverance from satanic wickedness and demonic possession, break evil yokes and ancestral curses and deal with the power of the foundation. They are aggressive and violent and they take everything by force. They are God’s military men on earth to execute judgement and justice, to liberate people from all oppressions of the devil, “to judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress” (Psalm 10:18).

Adam was the first among men to prophesy. In Genesis 2:7, the Bible tells us that God formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living being. When God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, some things were impacted to him which include God’s prophetic spirit. Let’s go down. From verses twenty-one to twenty-three, there we are told how God caused him to fall into a deep sleep and how God took one of his ribs and made a woman from it. Then God brought her to the man who said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Adam was in a deep sleep when God was performing His first surgical operation on him. He never saw when God took one of his ribs and made a woman from it. He was unconscious and so he was unaware of what was happening to him, but when God brought the woman he knew that she was taken out of him.

That is divine awareness. Nobody ever told him anything, but he divinely knew everything. In the beginning God empowered man with His prophetic spirit to naturally know things around him without being told.

In Genesis 3, the Bible narrates the infamous story of the fall of man. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened physically in verse seven but closed spiritually. From that very moment, man lost God’s prophetic spirit which was impacted to him because of sin. What is sin? Sin is simply an act against God’s known will as expressed in His Word.

The Bible tells us in 1 John 5:18, We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. Prophets are meant to be untouchable if and only when they keep themselves from sin. That is exactly what God told me on July 2, 2013. He said that as His prophet I must live in holiness all the time and never lack the anointing (Ecclesiastes 9:8).

This thing is for all prophets to do. If they keep their garments from being stained with sin which is a reproach to any people, that wicked one will never be able to touch them. They become deadly and dangerous, fearful and terrible to Satan and to the enemies. They rebuke the devil and openly disgrace him.

As a breastplate, righteousness shields and protects the hearts of prophets from being wounded by the flaming arrows of the evil one. Holiness puts them in charge and with it they gain control over the powers that be. To be able to cast out demons and devils, they must be holy like God who says, Be ye holy; for I am holy (1 Peter 1:16).

Prophets operate like God Himself when they are holy like Him. They command and are obeyed because of their divine nature―God’s holiness in them. They are the touch-them-not treasures of the living God. God keeps them as the apple of His eye and no wizards and witches try to touch them, because God is ready to kill for their sakes as it says in 1 Chronicles 16:21-22 and also in Psalm 105:14-15, He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. So if you are a sinning prophet, you are subject to the powers of darkness and cannot rule over them; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage (2 Peter 2:19).

In Genesis 4, the Bible tells us how sin continued to prevail in the hearts of men as Cain killed Abel his brother. In the last verse of this chapter lies the dawn of a new hope for mankind: Then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. One of such men was Enoch who walked with God. Then he was no more, because God took him away. I personally believe that Enoch was a prophet of God in his generation, because it would take more than a man to walk with God and to be taken away by Him. Enoch was holy to the extent that he would walk with God and the two of them would be discussing. Then one day in the course of their discussion, God said, “Enoch, you are going home no more but with Me to heaven to continue this discussion.” And that was how he went alive to heaven and never came back to earth again.

After Enoch, Prophet Noah arrived. He lived in a wicked generation but was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Like Enoch, he also walked with God. In his generation, the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. The people of his time were always fighting and killing themselves. They were committing all manner of crimes and corrupting their ways. So God said to Noah that He would annihilate mankind with a great flood, but he should build an ark to be saved from it. What God said in His heart in Genesis 6:7 He revealed to Noah in verse thirteen, because he was a righteous man. It takes righteousness for God to reveal His mind to us.

A prophet is a man to whom the mind of the Lord is daily being revealed. If God wants to do anything, He tells His prophets first before going into action. Only the righteous ones hear what God is saying. God is still saying something. If you think that He is not, it is because you are not listening to Him.

Noah heard from God and was told to do something that might make the people of his time to think that he was mad: to build a very big ark when there was no sign of a flood. What says the Scripture? By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith (Hebrews 11:7).

Never joke with the words of a prophet no matter how foolish they sound in your hearing, because the words of a prophet are the words of God. To mock a prophet is to mock God. Be not deceived; God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7). Noah must have been mocked at in the course of building the ark, but it did not stop him from finishing the work. Those who were laughing at him for obeying God were the ones to be laughed at when the flood came. This is what happens to anybody who doubts the prophecy of a prophet of God.

If today somebody comes to you and says that he is seeing disaster or death or something you do not like around you and you do not have the knowledge of what I am saying, you may want to give the person a slap and walk away from him.

Doing that to him cannot change anything. In fact, you will surely die if you do. You permit the fulfilment of a negative prophecy if you do two things: one, if you doubt the prophet who says it; and two, if you hear it and believe it but refuse to pray. Take a prophet’s words as the words of God. Take them seriously and pray, and it shall be averted.

A prophet is a man who cannot compromise with sin. Noah made a difference in his wicked generation and today we are to do the same in ours. We live in a world where sin is seen as a normal thing, where the principles of the kingdom are daily being trampled upon in the name of “it does not matter.” Civilization has made many of us fashion-crazy to the extent that we go to church half-naked as if we are going to a clubhouse. You see young girls and married women wearing trousers in church. This is madness!

I am not condemning any pastor or any church. It is not my duty to judge anybody. What I am saying is that it takes a prophet to stand against these things in our generation which we consider as normal but abnormal in God’s sight.