David Stroud – 1 Samuel 14
Jul 09
Day 2. After the seminar stream (I’ll report about that at the end of the week) was the first main session with David Stroud. David is the leader of Christ Church London and head of New Froniters UK. He spoke from 1 Samuel 14:1-23.
His main point was to use Jonathan as an example of a man who had hope in God. He took us to our situation, this side of the cross and gave us 3 reasons to have Hope:
- The Resurrection – confirming the testimony of Jesus
- Jesus is Alive – He works in the world today
- Jesus Reigns – he is in control
David went on to speak about the hope characterised in Jonathan:
- He gathered people to him (his armour bearer)
- He had the basics sorted
- He moved forward, didn’t just do maintenance, ignored the obstacles
The phrase “perhaps the Lord” was used frequently to say that we should take risks, be daring, in hope and faith that God will work.
There are not many notes here, that’s not because it was a short talk, or a boring talk, but because I felt it lacked substance which constitutes good note-taking material. Although David had briefly outlined our reasons for hope at the start (the work of Jesus) it became very man-centred – my hope, my faith, my courage, my work. It was one of those talks where what was said was not unbiblical or wrong, but there was insufficient (not really any) work done on the text to justify what was said. The problem was that the narrative (Jonathan scaling a cliff to attack the Philistines) was used as a principle for us to follow – the classic, ‘What’s your cliff to scale?’ application… to be honest it felt as though David had a message to give about hope and faith, then arrived at 1 Samuel 14 as a related passage.
The second area of concern I had was with the meeting as a whole (going back to my sceptism of New Frontiers). This concern is to do with the use of ‘Prophecy’ – I do not think New Frontiers have fallen into a Charismatic pitfall of elevating prophecy to be equal or near to Scripture, but I fear there are still issues. So a guy from Canada gives a word to say in effect, a time of blessing is coming to the UK, favour in mission, and specifically favour from government. There are five questions I have:
- Haven’t prophecies like this been many times before and not come to pass – does that make the givers false prophets?
- If prophecies are from God, why are they always so vague?
- How often do you hear someone give a prophecy that thing are going to be bad, that God s judging or withdrawing favour?
- Does this particular prophecy fit with reality? – I realise that God is sovereign and can change anything, but the reality is that Christians are having less and less favour with the Government.
- Does this particular prophecy fit with Scripture? – we are not promised favour from government, in fact surely if anything the opposite is true…
I echo those concerns about prophecy and that “prophecy” in particular, another concern I had was that there was no testing as Scripture appears to command, too often I think people get all excited about anything that is seemingly spiritual or super-natural cos it must be from God but there is a whole spirit-world opposed to God, which is not a condemnation but a call to be careful.
God communicates clearly through the Scriptures and has told us that He does so, He can speak through prophecy but surely we must exercise godly discernment.
Another thing that has just occurred to me, the purpose of prophecy in the Scriptures was not so much predicting the future (though that obviously happens) but about revelation of God, covenant enforcement and picking up on your point about “prophecies” always being positive, many prophecies in the OT were rebukes of God’s people calling for repentance.
Who says the prophecy given in the meeting won’t be weighed? You can’t necessarily stop proceedings and have a ‘prophecy weighing’ session on the spot — but it can and should happen as part of the fabric of charismatic life.
Here’s a relevant Terry Virgo quote (from his blog):
“The Scriptures tell us to test all things and we need to bring them to the plumbline of the Bible rather than abandon all previous knowledge accumulated by submission to the Scripture’s revelation”
He also reported a negative prophecy a while back (about a coming economic downturn). This was last year, before the credit crunch or oil price problems.
Hey Bloke, thanks for your response, but if a prophetic word is from God then surely it is worth taking the time in the meeting to work out whether it is or isn’t. At TOAM8 there were apparently about 5000 people in the main sessions would they be told the result of the weighing of the prophetic word lest they take it to heart and find later that it was false which could be damaging to someone’s faith (depending on the content of the prophetic word).
About the negative prophecy you mention, the sceptic in me would want to ask could that same prophecy have been made by a non-Christian economist? My guess is probably. And I would mention again what I said earlier I believe that the nature of Biblical prophecy is more about being a channel of revelation about God than about predicting the future.
A quote from Mark Driscoll on his blog “Yesterday, for example, a pastor from Africa shared a prophetic word about the Father’s love for Jesus his Son and it was incredibly biblically rooted and emotionally moving”.
I didn’t hear this particular prophecy but from Driscoll’s description it sounds far more genuine compared to the ones I heard given, rather than being a vague future prediction it is an explanation of something of the character of God and was “Biblically rooted” which couldn’t really be said of the other two “prophetic words”
It is always very easy to comment on what is going on and to pick holes in things, perhaps we should be careful with our words and of being critical of a brother. Who knows who will read what we say, and maybe our words might cause someone to stumble in their faith…
Just my 2 cents worth!
I’m not going to get in to the Prophecy debate – my questions are genuine, and I think there are big issues about what prophecy is and how it is used.
I think it was PJ Smyth who gave a prophetic word about the Father’s love for the Son – yes it was great, a scripture drenched monologue.
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Hi Hilton,
I understand your concerns over being critical and potentially unhelpful. But I was genuinely disappointed that the leader of New Frontiers UK could give such an un-grounded address. I’m here to give an outsiders opinion, and I was disappointed. All my other posts, from Stephen Van Rhyn, Mark Driscoll and PJ Smyth will be entirely positive!!
I don’t think the NT necessarily implies that you should announce that a prophecy is good or bad within five minutes of it being given — unless it’s promoting something obviously unbiblical. All of us should try to weigh any prophecies that we hear, as well as being in a church where responsible leadership is doing the same.
The type of prophecy described in the blog post above is quite unusual and falls less into the 1 Corinthians 14 category, being more of an Acts 11:28 (or 21:10) style event. In either case, 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 applies. Of course, it is easy to feel cynical about some prophecy. I do, at times, which is why knowing that the Bible takes precedence, and that the same
Bible seems to anticipate our skepticism and reminds us that “we know in part and we prophesy in part” is so helpful.