When Revelation Becomes Speculation | Bishop Mark J. Chironna

That's a, that's a great question.

Um, the, um, You know, in the beginning of the introduction, I quote the French Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul.

And he says the prophet is not a watchman.

It is a watchman, not a clockmaker.

He doesn't predict the future.

He watches over the present in light of God's demands.

And right now and I would say here's I want to be I want to be as precise as I can be.

There's so much that goes on under the umbrella of the prophetic that in fact has nothing to do scripturally with how the prophetic is defined, how it is understood, how it is expressed, and how it is tested.

And it's almost as if we've now got this grab bag and social media has multiplied its... availability, but there are no constraints, no testing methods, no accountability.

And I've grown deeply and more progressively concerned over the last number of years because of it.

It's as if we've got this smorgasbord of a table that it looks like all these great delicacies, but we're eating things that are not healthy or digestible from a biblical sense of what prophetic legitimacy is all about.

Yeah, that's excellent and profound.

And I think as people read this book, particularly if they're new to your ministry, one thing they will pick up is that you're not writing from a place of anger.

You're not writing from a place of this needs to go away, but you're writing from a place where Something needs to be restored.

Something needs to be recaptured on the gift in the ministry of the prophetic, because it's not that you don't believe in it and we don't believe in it.

But there has been a drift in the prophetic over time.

that this book calls us back to, which I probably should have started with this, with the title.

This is probably one of the most, if I could say this word, provocative titles that I've seen you come up with.

So let's even, as you would say, back into, before we get to the rest of the questions, baptized speculation, drowning in the waters of counterfeit revelation.

I have a sense of what that means, but why this title? Why baptize speculation? What does that mean from from your words?

OK, so what what I am endeavoring to convey is that speculative declarations that have the air of scriptural authority are but challenge the very premise of the testimony of jesus which is the spirit of prophecy are deeply problematic but what we do with those speculations is and i use the word baptized because it's a sacramental word right it's something we understand within the faith once for all delivered to the saints that that baptism is an entryway um a setting apart a setting apart unto and There's come this license that baptizes anything and everything that is preceded by, I've got a word from God, or the more classic, thus saith the Lord.

And just because someone precedes something with thus saith the Lord doesn't mean God's speaking.

And the more we lose the sense of God is speaking because we overuse God has talked to me.

Listen, if I say God spoke to me, it leaves no room for challenge.

It leaves no room for testing.