A Prophet among Us

Manuscript for Sermon at North Hill, August 28, 2010. Who knows how closely the actual "preached sermon" will be to this manuscript.


Sometimes a prophet's messages can make a real difference. Other times, the prophet must wonder why he or she bothered.

About 2000 years ago, a prophet named Agabus, visited the church in Antioch. While there he had a vision that there was going to be a severe recession and called on the church to get ready. The Christians in Antioch believed him and not only prepared themselves, they also took up a collection to help the believers in Jerusalem.

Agabus must have been pretty pleased with this response of the Antiochan, especially since Jerusalem was his home town. It appears that without the message of Agabus, there would have been no collection for Jerusalem. People there would have suffered severe hardship. Some may have actually starved to death. So Agabus' message was pretty important.

Several years later we meet Agabus again. He was still a citizen of Jerusalem, but this time he was visiting a town named Caesarea, about fifty miles northwest of Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul was also in Caesarea on his way to Jerusalem. Agabus gave Paul a message from God: “If you go to Jerusalem, you will be arrested and end up in the hands of the Romans.”

Paul decided to go to Jerusalem any way. Sure enough, while there, he was arrested. Paul spent the next couple of years in prison in Palestine. Then he was shipped off to Rome where he spent another couple of years under house arrest.

It is interesting to note that when the believers in Antioch responded to Agabus' first prediction and took up a collection for the Christians in Jerusalem, Paul was the head of the delegation that carried the money to Jerusalem. Paul had experience with the ministry of Agabus! He knew Agabus was a genuine prophet. But when Agabus gave Paul a personal message that contradicted Paul's own plans, Paul felt free to ignore Agabus' counsel.

In hindsight, we can say, “Oops!”

God did not abandon Paul because of his refusal to pay attention to Agabus' warning. Even in captivity, Paul was still able to share his faith and preach the gospel, though in a far more limited way than if he had not been a prisoner. Through the message of the prophet Agabus, God offered Paul an alternative to prison. Paul ignored Agabus to his own detriment.

Which reminds us of the words of 2 Chronicles 20:20. “Believe in the Lord your God, so shall you be established. Believe his prophets so shall you be established.”

The reason God sends message through prophets is he wants the best for us.

Today, I'm going to talk about the work of Ellen White, a woman Seventh-day Adventists believe was called by God to act as a prophet among us.

Over the course of her life time Mrs. White, as we often refer to her, had something like 2000 visions. She produced 100,000 pages of sermons, articles, letters and books. No other person has come anywhere close to having the impact on the Adventist Church she has.

The church did not start with Ellen White. She was not the founder of the church in the sense that Luther founded the Lutheran Church or Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Church or Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church. In those cases the formal doctrines of the church were first articulated by the founders. In the Adventist church, the formal doctrines were developed in small group sessions and conferences. Ellen White was part of these early gatherings, but she was not the leader, either in a social or theological sense.

But she remained active in the leadership of the church for 70 years. Long after all the other early leaders had died, she remained active and engaged. And the belief of the church that she had the gift of prophecy made her writings, her ideas more and more influential over time. She is now the most famous of all Adventists, having eclipsed all the other leaders she worked with during her life time.

What does it mean to be a prophet? What is the job of a prophet? Idoes a prophet do?

1. Call people to repentance
The first words of the Gospel of Mark are, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God: It is written in Isaiah the prophet, “I will send my messenger before you to prepare the way . . . And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Mark 1:1-3.

Repent! This was the central theme of John's prophetic message. Which is hardly surprising. It is the dominant theme of all prophets.

Repent! Alter the status quo. Change. Do something different. Quit doing the same thing.

A growing field of business is the professing of coaching. What is the essence of coaching? Helping people change. You want to write a book? There are people who specialize as writing coaches. The purpose of the coach is to help you change. Move from thinking about writing a book to actually writing a book. One of my sisters has signed up with a personal trainer. Why? To help her improve her physical condition. Business owner hire business coaches. Why? To help them improve—that is CHANGE—the way they engage in business.

The only reason to hire a coach is because you want to change because the job of a coach is helping people change.

This is primary job of a prophet.

When Elijah summoned the nation of Israel to Mt. Carmel he wanted them to change. Quit messing around with Baal the god of the Philistines and give yourselves unreservedly to the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel.

When God sent Jonah to Nineveh, he wanted the residents there to give up their evil habits and devote themselves to goodness. (As you will remember, Jonah wasn't all that in synch with God's purposes. Still through Jonah's prophetic work, God got the people of Nineveh to change.)

The prophet Jeremiah is famous for his stern messages of warning. Repent! Change! Quit doing what you're doing! Do something different. If you don't, disaster looms over you.

The central work of a prophet is to call people to change. To repent. To do differently. To do better.

When Agabus gave Paul a prophecy, it was not “Great job you're doing there.” Agabus did not say, “You're on your way to Jerusalem. Way to go. Keep up your courage.” No, Agabus cautioned about impending calamity. The prophet was urging the apostle to change his plans. Repent. Change direction. Do something different. This is the central work of a prophet.

When you read the writings of Ellen White, this is one of the most obvious characteristics of her content. She is constantly urging her readers to repent. To move their lives in greater harmony with the will of God and the teachings of the Bible. She paints a vivid picture of a dauntingly high ideal:

Like our Savior, we are in this world to do service for God. In order to be co-workers with God, we must know Him as He reveals Himself. This is the knowledge needed by all who are working for the uplifting of their fellow men. Transformation of character, purity of life, efficiency in service, adherence to correct principles, all depend upon a right knowledge of God. This knowledge is the essential preparation both for this life and for the life to come.
Ministry of Healing, p. 409 (with ellipses).

We are to act like God, to be like God. Our habits are to flow out of a deep, genuine knowledge of God. (I'll come back to this later.) But for those who like to “do theology” in the sense of playing with ideas about God's activity and character, Ellen White offers a very direct challenge: make sure all that “knowledge” is actually shaping our lives. Just as Jesus came to serve, so we, if we are going to call ourselves Christians, are also here to serve, to be co-workers with God. Not merely co-thinkers or co-theologians with God. Ellen White was constantly prodding people to actually live their Christianity. She pushed so hard for obedience that people with sensitive consciences who relied on her as their primary spiritual guide could become overcome with the weight of duty.

2. Organize God's People

The prophet Elisha helped the people of Israel in all sorts of ways. He helped the city of Jericho fix their water supply. He set up schools for young men. He traveled from place to place advising, preaching and healing. Near the end of Elisha's life, the king, who was not a very devout man, came to visit him. When he saw the old prophet lying sick in bed, he exclaimed, “My father! My Father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!”

That's how influential Elisha was. That's how indispensable he had become in the nation. Elisha was like an entire army all by himself. His action, however, was not defeating enemies, it was organizing the domestic affairs of Israel. His primary foreign policy work was the reduction of military conflict.

In the years after the Jewish people returned from captivity in Babylon, the prophet Haggai called for a new, vigorous movement to finish reconstruction of the temple which had been demolished by the Babylonians. He told them their own current economic difficulties were the result of neglecting the temple. If they would make the reconstruction of God's house top priority, God would bless them in their own personal lives.

(It is important to note that in the Bible, the prophets did not possess political or religious authority. They gave advice to kings and high priests. They thundered warnings and urged courses of action. But the final decision did not lie in the hands of the prophets. The authority for making decisions remained in the hands of the properly constituted authority of the monarchy and priesthood. To the extent we Christians think of ourselves as a “prophetic voice,” it is proper for us to speak up and voice our opinions about how the nation ought to be run. We must also respect the proper authority of government and we can confidently leave the decision making in the hands of secular authorities.)

Ellen White gave the Adventist Church pointed counsel regarding colleges, a medical school, publishing houses and missions. She supported a massive restructuring of the entire administrative structure of the denomination in 1902. Most observers agree that it was largely her counsel that set in motion the trends that led to the incredible world-wide growth of the church.

Today there are somewhere between 15 and 20 million Adventists world-wide. There are over a hundred colleges and universities, including three medical schools. More than 170 hospitals. All of this is largely the consequence of the advice and counsel of Mrs. White.

So Ellen White demonstrated the work of a prophet in her constant calls for repentance, her constant urging for us to do better, do differently. She acted in harmony with the Bible prophets in giving guidance to the church regarding how our life together should be organized.

Then there is theology.

3. Prophets Teach Theology.

The Gospel of Mark describes the work of John the Baptist as a message of repentance. Mark also uses another phrase. The work of John the Baptist was to prepare the way for the Messiah, to smooth the road for Jesus. In the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus came to make his Father known. Jesus reveals God more clearly than any other prophet or priest. He is the supreme teacher and model of God. All prophets participate in this work to a lesser degree. The job of prophet is to make God known.

Ellen White has been dead for almost a hundred years. The passage of time has made some of the details of her messages less and less relevant. A favorite illustration of this is her counsel regarding education of girls. She wrote that every girl should learn to harness a horse. The context of the statement is equipping girls for practical living. In her day, transportation was by horse. If a girl did not learn to harness a horse, it made her less independent, less capable of functioning apart from a man in her life.

Harnessing a horse is obviously not an important skill in today's world. The equivalent in our world would be that every girl should know how to change a tire or use jumper cables.

However, the spiritual theological heart of Ellen White's writings is as relevant as ever.

Of the scores of books that have her name on them, by far the most famous are the five volumes of a narrative commentary on the Bible called "The Conflict of the Ages Series" --Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, and the Great Controversy. In these books Ellen White reviews the entire history of God as we know it in the Bible and church history. She works to explain how every action God has ever taken is an expression of amazing love. Even the bad news stories—Noah's Flood, the destruction of the Philistines, the terrors of the last days—all of these calamities and disasters are actually the outgrowth of God's commitment to love, to freedom and the eternal blessedness of not only human beings but every living creature in the universe.

The first sentence of the first book, Patriarchs and Prophets, is God is love.
“God is love.” 1 John 4:16. His nature, his law, is love. Every manifestation of creative power is an expression of infinite love. The history of the great conflict between good and evil, from the time it first began in heaven to the final overthrow of rebellion and the total eradication of sin, is also a demonstration of God’s unchanging love.

Patriarchs and Prophets, Chapter One, page one. (with ellipses)

Mrs. White's phrase “the history of the great conflict” is really a reference to the Bible. Patriarchs and Prophets is the first book in a five-volume narrative commentary on the Bible. The over-arching organizing theme of this series is her attempt to show that every action of God, from his miracles of creation, healing and deliverance to his sternest judgments and curses, can be best explained as expressions of deep, genuine love for humanity.

Ellen White grew up believing in eternal hellfire. She was driven away from that belief by its incompatibility with the truth of God's love.

The conviction that God is love is one of the few things all Adventist theologians agree on—conservative and liberal. All agree that ultimately whatever theories they advance must be squared with this bedrock conviction.

The last sentence of the last book in Mrs. White's commentary series, repeats the opening sentence of the first book: God is love.

And the years of eternity, as they roll, will bring richer and still more glorious revelations of God and of Christ. As knowledge is progressive, so will love, reverence, and happiness increase. The more men learn of God, the greater will be their admiration of His character.

The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.
Great Controversy, Last Paragraph. (p. 678) (with ellipses)

Persuading us of this truth and helping us understand and apply its implications in our lives is the central task of all prophecy and all prophets. Because Ellen White has given us so much help, we are confident that her visions did indeed come from God.

It remains for us, now, to carry forward in our world the work she did so admirably in hers. We are called to know God ever more fully and to make him known.

To repent and to call the world to repentance. (Remember, repentance is not some mysterious, complicated theological process. To repent means to make positive change. One step in the right direction.)

To organize ourselves for carrying forward Jesus' ministry of hope, help and healing.

If we do these things we will have properly honored the legacy of the prophet among us.

Downstream from Revival

Last week I talked about the Mt Carmel showdown. Elijah on one side. Ahab, the prophets of Baal and Jezebel (in absentia, but represented by the prophets) on the other. The people are pictured as lying between these competing claims to loyalty.

Elijah wins. The people shout, "The Lord, he is God."

After the sermon, I got a text: Is there any evidence that Elijah's sermon and demonstration on Mt Carmel had any lasting effect?

Intriguing question. My first response was, No. The fire fell. The rain came. Elijah ran off into the wilderness whining he was the only Israelite left who was loyal to God.

God's response to Elijah's whining was to have him anoint Elisha as his successor. Elisha's story is full of evidence that there was a pervasive change in the nation. Ahab and Jezebel did not convert. Baal worship did not disappear. ON THE OTHER HAND. People in Jericho turned to Elisha for help when they had a problem with water quality. A prophet's widow found miraculous support when she went to Elisha. Wealthy people provided hospitality for Elisha out of deep regard for his ministry. People sent their sons to schools allied with Elisha. A foreign general came to Israel to be healed, Elisha's reputation for healing had become so widespread.

While the nation did not "officially" reject the gods of the Philistines and Jeroboam. A substantial population obviously did. This is a dramatic downstream effect of Elijah's revival.

Elijah, on Mt Carmel asked God to send fire as evidence that he really was God, and that he was turning the people's hearts back to himself. From what we see in the stories of Elisha it is clear that many people did turn to God.

There is a place for "event," for special occasions, for revivals, and congresses. For excitement and times of enthusiasm. These special times help us set a new direction. They help us get up and move in the direction we have known we should be moving. Revivals or events are valuable because they are beginnings. Obviously, beginnings are not worth much if there is no continued movement. On the other hand, there can be no "continued movement" if there is not a start. There can be no maturation if there is no birth.

So take a step. Any step. Just one step. In the right direction. That is the essence of revival. And if you'll take a second step in the same direction, you're well on your way to maturity and holiness.

The World according to Ahab

Actually, the title should be something like the world according to God in the light of how he interacted with Ahab.
Preached at North Hill, July 31, 2010
1 Kings 16-22

Has something you posted on the internet ever come back to bite you? Some flaming rhetoric, a picture? Or perhaps something someone else posted, a scathing review of your work as a teacher or your practice as a physician?

Last week, I heard an interview with a law professor who was discussing the “new world” the internet has brought into existence—a world of total, eternal recall. Once something shows up on the web, it's there forever. And a determined searcher can find it. The professor raised the question of how we relate to this world of total, eternal recall. How, in the future, will anyone be qualified for public service if we hold them accountable for every infelicitous remark, every youthful indiscretion, every sexual peccadillo? Some people have suggested there should be some kind of expiration date on information on the internet. But that's not likely.

Just how do we live in a world of total, eternal recall?

Actually, this is not such a genuinely new reality. Rather it is best seen as a technologically empowered expression of the world most humans have always lived in. Namely, the world of small, stable communities where the librarian and the mayor remember the stupid things you did during middle school and high school.

Memory is the primary accellerant of the endless conflicts in places like the Middle East and the Balkans. I remember not only your offenses against me. I remember the offenses of your great, great, great grandfather against my great, great, great grandfather. I remember and nurse my hunger for justice (which, experientially, is inseparable from a desire for revenge.) Even in small town Mississippi, memory fuels eternal fear and antipathy. (Those @*#& Yankees! The South shall rise again!)

American culture has been built on the possibility of starting a new story. I can move away from the memories—others memories of my past, my memories of their past. We can start over. A new place. A new identity.

How do we live when erasing inconvenient parts of our histories is no longer an option? How do we live hopefully and joyously in a world of eternal, total recall.

The story of Ahab offers some help.

Ahab, Son of Omri. 1 Kings 16-22.

Ahab's father, Omri, “did evil in the eyes of the Lord and sinned more than all those before him. Omri walked in all the ways of Jeroboam son of Nebat and in his sin, which he had caused Israel to commit, so that they provoked the Lord, . . . to anger by their worthless idols.

That sounds pretty bad. You would hope that Ahab would learn something from his dad's mistakes and do better. Alas.

Instead, Ahab “did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him. [Like father like son.] Ahab not only mimicked the sins of Jeroboam, he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. Ahab built a temple for Baal and set up an altar in the temple. He made an Asherah pole and “did more to provoke the Lord, to anger than did all the kings of Israel before him.” 1 Kings 16:30-33.

And God was watching. God was writing it all down. The heavenly digital recorders were running. And the ancient scribes were writing it down in the annals of the kings of Israel. We, too, that is the Christian church and preachers, we, too, remember. Ahab was a bad man. Wicked. Evil. In our eyes, hopeless. Worthless.

God sent a message to Ahab through Elijah. “This is what God, the one I serve, says, 'For the next several years it will not rain unless I say so.'”

This is not good news! Not on its face anyway. But hidden in this dire prediction is a message of hope. God scolds and warns because he is interested in turning us toward life and righteousness.

Ahab did not warm to Elijah's message. He did allow the prophet to walk out of the palace unscathed. But as the drought increasingly affected agriculture and people and animals began starving to death Ahab got angry. He launched a search for the prophet . . . to kill him. No luck. Ahab sent ambassadors to neighboring kingdoms demanding they certify they were not harboring the prophet.

Curiously, during this time, Ahab's leading domestic official was a devout believer, a man named Obadiah. Obadiah dared to defy Ahab's wife, Jezebel. She began a campaign to kill off all of the prophets with any connection with Yahweh. Obadiah hid a hundred prophets and supplied them with food.

It is the second example of Ahab's curious inconsistency. He is a wicked man complicit in the worst forms of idolatry, but he allowed Elijah to walk out of the palace after announcing the drought. And now this: His chief of staff is a devout believer who has the conviction and the guts to defy Jezebel!

One of the most important characteristics of the way the Bible pictures people is its clear-eyed view of people's goodness and badness. Ahab was a “bad guy.” But the Bible does not reduce him to “only bad.” Abraham is the Father of the Faithful. But the Bible does not gloss over his moral and personal failings.

At the end of three years, God gives Elijah another message for Ahab. To deliver the message Elijah finds Obadiah. He tells Obadiah, “Go tell Ahab, I'm here waiting to see him.”

Obadiah protests. “You're trying to get me killed. King Ahab has scoured the nation looking for you. He has sent ambassadors to every nation in the region requiring them to swear an oath that they are not harboring you. Now you show up and tell me to go tell the king that you want to talk to him. And while I'm gone to fetch the king, who knows where the Spirit of God will take you. I'll show back up here with the king and you'll be gone. And he will kill me for not arresting you. Why are you trying to get me killed?”

“No,” Elijah says, “I'll be here. You go get Ahab.”

Ahab comes. When he sees Elijah he exclaims, “Ah, there you, you troubler of Israel.”

“No way.” Elijah rebuts. “I am not the one causing trouble. It is you and your idolatry and wickedness that have brought on this trouble. Now summon the nation—all of the people and all of the prophets of Baal—to Mt. Carmel. We are going to have a show down.”

Amazingly Ahab complies.

Take notice. Ahab is God's agent for calling the nation together to witness God's dramatic call to revival. Elijah is going to preach the sermon prior to the fiery miracle. But it is Ahab who gives the invitation. Ahab, the wicked king, Ahab, the son of Omri is God's agent for calling the people together for a dramatic demonstration of God's power and his continued interest in Israel.

The nation gathers. The prophets of Baal spend the day dancing before a sacrifice they have laid out on an altar. Nothing happens. At the time of the evening sacrifice, Elijah announces it is his turn. He invites the people to come close. He buillds an altar and prepares his sacrifice. He has it doused with twelve large jars of water. Then he kneels and prays.

God responds with fire from heaven. It is so intense it burns not only the sacrifice, but the altar itself and the water in the surrounding trench. The people fall on their faces shouting, “Yahweh, he is God.”

Elijah then give orders for the prophets of Baal to be killed. And Ahab's officers obey!

Again this curious inconsistency. Elijah had no army. It was Ahab's officers who performed these executions. Obviously, Ahab consented to Elijah's order.

My impression is that Ahab was weak rather than massively evil. He was influenced by his father. No help there. Then by his wife Jezebel, a formidable woman if there ever was one. She even intimidated Elijah, who is presented as one of the boldest, most iron-willed prophets. Ahab went along with Jezebel in the fostering of Baal worship. When confronted by Elijah, Ahab bends toward righteousness. Then when back in Jezebel's company he reverts to pleasing her.

God does not write Ahab off as worthless or hopeless. God sets up the call to revival at Carmel and has Ahab play an active part. A little later in Ahab's reign, when the king of Damascus invades, God works a dramatic series of miracles to protect Israel. A message of grace ot Ahab.

It doesn't work.

Later still, Ahab tries to buy a piece of property next door to his palace. When the owner, Naboth, refuses to sell, Jezebel has Naboth framed and killed. Ahab goes along with the scheme. God then sends Elijah to confront Ahab yet again. Elijah announces total destruction of Ahab's royal house and lineage.

In response, Ahab puts on sackcloth and goes about in mourning.

God visits Elijah again and asks, “Have you noticed how Ahas has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day, but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son.”

This does not sound like a great reprieve. It is a dramatic picture of God's willingness to take notice of the slightest evidence of repentance. Most commentators consider Ahab's “humbling himself” as mere regret over consequences. It is the lament of someone who has been caught not the genuine repentance of someone who has had a change of heart. Still, God asks Elijah, “Have you noticed?”

The story of Ahab offers several points of wisdom for living in a world of total recall.

1. Don't wait for perfect people. Don't even look for perfect people. Not in politics, not at church, not at school, not at home. If God used Ahab to summon Israel to the revival at Mt. Carmel, why would we demand perfection of our political leaders? Why would we demand perfection of ourselves? Just do what it is you're called to do today. See what you can get the people around to do then let it go. Why would we hold our children hostage to their histories. God will use our children to do wonderful, significant work. Fully aware of their history but not imprisoned by it.

2. Honor any evidence of openness to God. Ahab's repentance was not highly believable. God believed it. Let's put the very best imaginable spin on other people's actions. Our own efforts are often mixtures of noble and ignoble intentions, godly and base motivations. So are the efforts of others. Practice overlooking the ignoble and base motivations. What does it matter whether others or even we ourselves have pure motives? Do the best you can and imagine that others are doing the same.

3. Acknowledge there are limits to deferred justice. There are real consequences of evil. Judgment on Ahab was postponed, not annulled. Even God's patience has its limits when he is confronting injustice. Sometimes, we, too, must say, Enough! To protect others, sometimes to protect ourselves, we appropriately say, “Enough!” “No more.” “Done.”


Ahab was an evil man. Weak. Manipulated by the wicked witch he married. Still God sought his repentance. God worked through him to summon the nation to a major spiritual event. God took notice of his slightest tipping of the hat to goodness.

How do we live in a world of total, eternal recall? We honor every hint of goodness and deal graciously and gently with the inevitable evidences of frailty that show up in every complete telling of anyone's story. Even if someone passes a limit of forebearance, don't forget the good things they did, the good people they associated with. Don't "remember" that they did only evil.