by Bill Taber
Excerpted from Pendle Hill Pamphlet #256 The Prophetic Stream. (The full section is on pp.17-27. You can get a hard copy from the PH Bookstore at above link or the Kindle e-book from Amazon.)
Is catching prophecy like catching the measles? Is it a divine contagion which can be caught from an infected group of people? Or is a prophetic career something one can prepare for in a school of the prophets? Or does prophecy occur only at the command of God? The Old Testament prophets, the New Testament prophets, and even the Quaker prophets all tell us that true prophecy is always the gift of God, and that it comes only at the divine initiative. Even so, many of the prophets act as if the willingness and ability to be a prophet can at least be caught, and perhaps even taught, so long as we remember the fact of prophecy remains with God alone….
An early example of catching prophecy, or of a prophet helping to make spirit available, occurs in the eleventh chapter of Numbers, where Moses and the seventy elders conduct what might be called (if we take some liberties in interpretation) “the first Quaker meeting in the Bible.”
Gather for me seventy men of the elders of Israel…and bring them to the tent of meeting and let them stand there with you. And I will come down and talk with you therel, and I will take some of the spirit which is upon you and put it upon them, and they shall bear the urden of the people with you,m that you may not bear it yourself alone. (Numbers 11:16-17)
And so…the spirit of the Lord came down…and put some of the spirit, which Moses had formerly borne alone, into the seventy elders “and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied.” (Numbers 11:25)…
But there were “Quaker mavericks” even then. Eldad and Medad, two men who were apparently elders but who were not for some reason at the meeting of the seventy elders, began to prophesy in the camp, creating a sense of scandal among those who believed holy things can happen only in holy places; and Moses’ minister, Joshua, cried out, “My lord Moses, forbid them!”…. In defense of the Quaker practice of prophetic ministry, Fox sometimes quoted Moses’ answer to Joshua: “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:28-29)
About two centuries later the story of the boy Samuel is another good example of catching prophecy…. Samuel was also fortunate that he had a teacher in old blind Eli, who finally realized what was happening to Samuel and who gave him some instruction about living in the prophetic stream. Would that our Society of Friends and other churches had more teachers to help our tender new prophets as they tremble or teeter at that new place….
I know of one beautiful modern example of a living Friend who came to this new place in a solitary way. This lifelong Quaker…was well past middle age when he felt nudged to begin daily devotional reading and worship in the early morning before he went to work. He had done this for many months with no significant change when, as he put it, he sat down one morning and looked into his heart, and he knew “that Someone had been there” because of the new life and genuine gentleness which he suddenly and unexpectedly found there. I like that story because, for this man there was no need for the laying on of hands to bring the Holy Spirit, nor did this man even need to be in a gathered meeting of Quaker prophets to “catch” the spirit…. In a way he had prepared for this by a lifetime of living out the Quaker rhythms; in a way he prepared for this by doing early morning reading and worship; but only when God was ready did my friend unexpectedly ‘catch’ the spirit, the way one might catch the measles, without warning….
Just as the Biblical prophets often “caught” their prophecy from another prophet, so it has often been with Quaker ministers, or Quaker prophets across three hundred years.… On the other hand, there is also evidence that some of our Quaker leaders discovered or “caught” their Quakerism like the measles, not from one person but…in the power of a gathered meeting….
We generally think of prophets as dramatic and conspicuous people…. However, the Society of Friends would soon die out if we could not depend on the silent and inconspicuous prophets who are necessary for each gathered meeting, for if they do not stay faithfully in that living center, how can others ‘catch’ the spirit which leads us and holds us together?… A truly gathered meeting is a band of prophets – silent prophets resting quietly in the prophetic stream so that others who come can catch the spirit in that gathered meeting.
(c) 1984 by Pendle Hill. Used by permission.
Taber was a recorded minister of Ohio YM and Quakerism teacher at Pendle Hill at the time this pamphlet was written.