Protocol for Conditional Prohecy
If You Want to Be Able to Claim in Retrospect that Your Prophecy Was Conditional - Do These Things
John Edwards
In the Bible, whenever a prophecy was conditional - it was usually: known to the prophet, stated in the prophecy and understood by the people - and all of that before the event, not after.
Being conditional was not a status that was assigned to a prophecy only in retrospect, in hind-site, after the event.
It is claimed that God changed His plan, as a result of man's response - after it had already been prophesied.
The background is that God had sent Isaiah to tell King Hezekiah that he would die. The king turned his face toward the wall and wept. Then the Lord sent Isaiah back to King Hezekiah a second time with the message, "I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years." And then God used the prophet to minister physical healing to the king.
So yes there was a change of plans due to man's response - but notice that God sent the prophet back to the king to announce the change and the reason for it - before the event, not after.
So the final outcome neither embarrassed the prophet, nor surprised the king nor anyone else who may have heard about it.
"Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets".
There is no precedent that a prophecy ever failed due to a third party's failure to comply with some condition.
For example, there is no precedent of a prophet being sent on an errand to anoint a person with oil and proclaim him future king, and it not happen.
"God is not a man, that he should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?"
It is claimed that God gave promises to Israel but the nation failed to receive them.
But in those cases the terms of the prophecies against Israel were always framed using unmistakably conditional terminology from start to finish. The prophets gave careful attention to wording, like a law suit. There was never any ambiguity as to the conditional status of the prophecies.
Therefore these were not examples of purely predictive pronouncements per se.
It is claimed that the destruction of Nineveh did not eventuate - although it had been prophesied.
But a closer reading of the case reveals that this was not a case of a change of plans which came only as an after-thought - because Jonah knew right from the start that God was likely to show mercy on Nineveh. If that was not the case, what use would it serve to go there and preach repentance?
When God told Jonah that Nineveh's judgment would fall due within 40 days except they repent, Jonah's comment about it was, "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."
Evidently then Jonah didn't flee because he was afraid of the Ninevites, but because he didn't want one of Israel's traditional enemies to be spared.
Prior to Nineveh, Jonah's prophesying had inspired many military victories in Israel. But never before had he been told to go and preach repentance to a Gentile city. Jonah therefore understood right from the start that the intended purpose for his mission to Nineveh was in order to procure a change of outcome.
Right from the start then, Jonah, Nineveh, everyone, got the clear message that it was conditional. Being conditional was not a status that somebody only assigned to the prophecy afterwards.
Therefore this case does not constitute a precedent for what's being bandied around today as an explanation for apparently failed predictive prophecy.
Two important aspects to a prophecy are its intention and its wording.
The intention is usually expressed by the wording.
So if a prophecy was intended to have been conditional - that status ought to have been reflected by the wording.
Prophecy is always legal in nature.
That's because whenever God spoke to an individual or a nation, He always spoke in reference to covenant. Therefore all prophecy is intrinsically covenantal in nature. It's as good as a legal document. What document would be admisable in a court of law if its terms of reference was ambiguous?
Similarly, if we don't uphold the integrity of the meaning of the very words of a prophecy - and instead claim the right to change the prophecy's meaning after the event - then not even the prophet himself can ever really be certain of the true meaning of his own prophecy, let alone the people being sure of what he means - in which case prophecy loses its usefulness.
Further Evidence
Further evidence that prophecy is intrinsically covenantal and legal in nature, and that the wording of a prophecy is important - is the following verse:
"the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Testimony is a legal term.
Jesus called His disciples, "my witnesses" - another legal term.
He told them, "This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached unto all nations for a testimony".
In another place He said, "...for a testimony against them."
Our evangelistic witness is therefore a legal testimony towards the world as if in God's court case.
"Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose so ever sins ye retain, they are retained."
The verse, "Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven; and whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven," is also legal terminology.
The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of [the legal, covenantal case stated by] Jesus.
Therefore there is a protocol that ought to be followed from the outset if we want to be able to claim in retrospect, with integrity, that a prophecy was conditional. The protocol is that the conditional nature of the prophecy ought to have been intentionally expressed by the wording of the prophecy, before the event.
There is a difference between a pure predictive prophetic proclamation and a conditional prophetic suit. The difference is in the intention - and the intention ought to be reflected by the wording.
Two types of prophecy include:
A pure predictive proclamation and
A conditional prophecy, similar to a law suit
The wording and intention of the two types of prophecy are not the same. And if the integrity of words is to mean anything, the two are not interchangeable - especially not after the event.
Therefore the due process we must follow, if we want to be able to claim in retrospect that a prophecy was conditional, is that the intention that the prophecy be understood as being conditional must have been clearly substantiated by the wording of the prophecy - and all of that before the event, not after.
Even though words express the intent and the intent is expressed by the words - sometimes the real heart of the prophecy - its intent - goes even deeper than its words.
Therefore our primary focus ought always be to ask ourselves: What is the response from me that this prophecy is drawing? rather than to debate over words and their possible predictive implications alone - even though the prophecy's wording and its predictive implications are also an intrinsic and inseparable part of the prophecy's meaning and application.
The role of a prophet is broader than prediction.
Other words that are used in connection with the prophet's ministry include: edify, exhort, comfort, admonish, warn, teach, preach, oracle, vision, to see, prophesy, write, act, go, the song of the Lord, heal, and work miracles.
Moses didn't do much predicting. 95% of his ministry consisted in issuing commandments and sometimes warnings - and yet he was known as a prophet.
Therefore it is possible for a prophet to prophesy without necessarily including the element of prediction in his prophecies all of the time. Prophecy means to forth-tell, not only to foretell.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit may will that we prophetically proclaim an outcome ahead of time - but most of the time a prophet's function will not include the element of prediction.
Therefore when God gives us a revelation, it is up to us to know in our spirit what to do with it. Is God inspiring us to boldly proclaim a certain outcome? or is God showing us something but stopping short of declaring a certain outcome? It's up to us to ensure we don't go beyond what God has given us in our spirit by what we say.
When God shows you something for someone, sometimes God may simply want you to:
pray about it privately
or He may want you to share it with the concerned party without actually going so far as to pronounce a certain outcome
He may have shown you the vision so He can use you simply to exhort the person to aspire to God's call
or you may channel your prophetic intuition into a relevant teaching ministry
or you may even be used to issue warnings including consequences
and usually only on rare occasions He may inspire you to proclaim an actual outcome
These functions may not seem as spectacular or as supernatural as prediction, but they are none-the-less prophetic.