Who is a Prophet? A Reflection

Reflection.23-6-2009.

Who is a Prophet?

Prophet is a person who walks with God in history and reads the history from justice perspective.
Prophet is a person who discern the signs of the time. Prophets always takes side of life and open their mouth against all kinds of evil which destroys life .
Prophets will speak truth and challenges the falsehood. They never compromise with sin. They always analyse history seriously and directs it towards God.
They are the spokes persons of God. They could be able to differentiate between justice and injustice and God’s words and Words of the Darkness.

Who were the Prophets?

Moses who challenged Pharoah the oppressor.
Nathan Who Challenged David the King.
Elijah who questioned the decision of King Ahab
Isaiah who challenged the false spirituality of the Isrealites.
Amos who questioned the prophets of the exploitative system
They were confronted the powerful people to safeguard the justice and peace of God.

Who are the Prophets of this time?

We the Christian Communicators are the Prophets of this time. People who takes their engagements with God towards the well being of this creation are the prophets of this time.
Church is a prophetic movement which is called to choose life and to take sides of the people with God.
We should see things from the perspective of the ‘no people’. We are anointed to be with powerless and voiceless of this time. We are sent out by Christ to be the channels of justice , peace and reconciliation. We are called to proclaim truth where liars dominates.

What happened to the prophetic nature of the church? Where are the prophets of this time?

The ‘propaganda model’ of media operations laid out and
applied by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media says that Media are forced to tell the lies or they are forced to tell half truths or they are hiding the truth or they decides the news worthiness of the news according to the market value because Media content is filtered by five things – Five Filters .

1.Concentrated Ownership. Profit Motive

2.Advertising is the major source of income-They have to compromise the space or time.- A Kind of buyers and sellers deal. Readers or Viewers are the buyers and Advt as sellers. Compromising with the sellers for more profit.

3.News are given by the agents of power. Govt. or Funding agency and so on. Dissenting views are excluded or Unheard and may be a kind of one sided news.

4.Anti Communism .- A Kind of right wing biased ideas.

5.5th Filter is ‘Flak’ which means powerful people or organisations pressurize the media for their propaganda.

In a way Mass Media are used by elites for their interests and in a way Media shut its voices to the stories of the ‘no people’. There are unheard stories of exploitation, injustices and oppression

Let me take this Five Filters and use how The Voice of the Church has been silenced to tell the stories of the dalits, women, marginalized , poor and excluded.

1.Ownership of the church. Like Media Giants do we have some kind of Giants who hijacks the real goal of the church? What is their motive? Profit?

2.Who gives the major share of Church’s Fund? Do we need widow’s two coins. Major share of church’s ministry (space of the church) separated for what and for whom?

3.Do we allow to raise dissenting voices to be raised in the church. If any one speak against the powerful structures knows how to handle it. Isn’t it?

4.Is it our Church a biased community? Do we have Caste bias, Gender bias? Do we talks and act from the biased perspectives? Capitalistic biases are there?

5.Is there Any group that pressurizes the Church – Tell this ….otherwise ……Powerful, wealthy and so on…So Church hesitates to tell the truth and

We are called, anointed and commissioned to be the prophets of this time. But where are we ?
For whom we are speaking for? For what we are standing for? For whom we are searching for? Our message of the church is filtered by many external forces and we diluted the real message of Prophetic Christ. We became liars instead of truth tellers.