In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the role of prophets in the Bible and their connection to modern seers like those at Fatima and Medjugorje. Jimmy explains how the office of a prophet has evolved over time and addresses the intriguing figure of Balaam from the Book of Numbers.
Transcript:
Caller: Andrew, welcome.
Caller: Got a Bible question?
Caller: Yes, I do.
Caller: Okay.
Caller: Jimmy, I was just wondering if you could give a general description on the office of a prophet in the Bible, because I know that was, that was basically like a particular office that mainly existed in the Old Testament times that we don’t really have a modern equivalent to. But I was wondering if there’s any connection between the prophets in the Bible to the modern day seers like at Fatima and Medjugorje. And one more thing related to prophets. How does the figure of Balaam from the Book of Numbers tie into that?
Jimmy Akin: Okay, well, so, so I guess let me, let me start by talking about the office of prophet in general. And then I’ll come back to the other aspects of question. I would say that the office of prophet is something that developed over time. It wasn’t the same in every age originally it would ref. And this is not unique to ancient Israel. There were prophets in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, but it originally referred to people who got revelation from God on a regular basis. So like if Sykelit had a vision from God one night, you know, let’s say he’s dreaming and God gives him a vision in the dream, which is what various biblical passages call a night vision, that wouldn’t make Psychelit a prophet. One revelation does not make a prophet. But if he were to get revelation on a recurring basis on the regular, then he would be a prophet if he was living in ancient Israel. And there were a variety of terms connected with this office in Hebrew and they shifted over time. In fact, we know at one point they weren’t called prophets, at least not regularly. They were actually called seers. We know that because there’s actually a Bible verse that refers to a person as a seer and then explains at this time prophets were called seers. So we know the vocabulary shifted over time. But it was the same basic office. And eventually. But originally it would be someone who is conscious of receiving divine revelation regularly. That would have been what a prophet is. Now it shifted over time though, to refer more broadly than that, the term prophet did. So the person didn’t even have to realize they were receiving revelation. And so you have examples like David being talked about as a prophet because he wrote the Psalms and the Psalms are divinely inspired, so they’re revelation. But when he was writing his songs, David presumably was not aware that, you know, that God was speaking through him in this way. At least we don’t have evidence of that the way we do for other prophets like Isaiah, you know, or Jeremiah or Ezekiel, who will say things like, I saw a vision, or the word of the Lord came to me. And the psalms don’t contain those kinds of statements. They just read like psalms. Some of them even had musical directions at the beginning. Like, there’s one of them that says, in the musical direction at the beginning of the psalm, it says, to the doe of the morning. So we know there was some tune in ancient Israel called the doe of the morning, and you could sing this song to it. But the way they’re set up and the way they read, they read just like regular songs. In hindsight, we recognize them as divine revelation, as divinely inspired. But it doesn’t seem, or at least we don’t have any evidence, that David was aware of that when he was writing them. So it looks like the term prophet expanded to cover not just people who were conscious of receiving divine revelation regularly, but also people who. Who were not conscious of receiving it regularly. As long as they did receive it regularly, they would qualify as a prophet. It also looks like the term may have expanded to include people who were prestigious and did not receive it that often, like Abraham. Now, there are some passages where Abraham receives divine revelation, like in the vision he has in Genesis 15, and there are others, too, but he doesn’t announce it publicly to other people. And that’s kind of part of the classic job of a prophet, which is to announce the revelation to other people. For example, in Greek, the word for prophet, prophetess, it basically means spokesman, someone who announces a message for somebody else. And so prophets are like God’s spokesman, but Abraham’s job, he didn’t. We don’t have records of him receiving revelation that often. And he wasn’t announcing it. I mean, there was no Israel yet, so he wasn’t announcing it to people generally. But he does get called a prophet. And so the term went through a variety of meanings with slightly different definitions, or at least slightly different connotations. And that, I think, is the answer to the first part of your question. The second part, Andrew, was about how does that relate to seers at places like Fatima or Medjugorje, Is that correct?
Caller: Yes, that was the second part of the question.
Jimmy Akin: Okay, so in regards to that, the people who report receiving visions and locutions, which are things that they hear rather than see, but we can call them all generally seers, even if they’re using a different sense than sight to receive their revelation, they’re basically doing the same kind of thing, especially if they have a message they’re supposed to announce. Like if Fatima, the Virgin Mary showed up and wanted the kids to announce certain things to other people. Well, they’re doing the same basic thing as a prophet. What’s different is that they’re not receiving public revelation. But public revelation is revelation that God has sent to be binding on the entire Christian community. And it includes things like everything that’s in the Bible is an item of public revelation. But the revelation that people receive today is not public revelation. It’s sometimes called private revelation, it’s sometimes called special revelations or particular revelations. But it’s not binding on the whole Christian community. It’s only binding at most on the individuals who receive it and maybe a select few other people. It also is not because it’s not inspired in the same way. Even though God’s grace is working through it, it’s not protected from error the same way public revelation is. So if you look, for example, at the norms that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has published for evaluating private revelations, it will note that the seer’s own consciousness may add elements that are even mistaken to the revelation. So it’s similar to the biblical prophets, but it’s not on the same level as what they’re doing. Having said that, we could today refer to these people as prophets. We don’t. There’s not a special reason for that other than this is just the way the modern languages have developed. We’ve tended to reserve the word prophet for the biblical prophets, and we’ve tended not to apply it to people who lived later than the biblical period. We could, we just haven’t. If we did apply it to later people who receive revelation, then it could cause some confusion, like people thinking, oh, I’ve got to believe what the Fatima seers said, or it’s like disbelieving what Isaiah said. And that’s not true. In fact, the church already. People already make assumptions like that, and the church has to constantly be saying, look, private revelation is not binding the way the Bible is. So people are already doing that. That would be a downside to using the term prophet for people today. But there’s no reason in principle it couldn’t be done. So that’s the answer to the second part of your question, Andrew. The third part was about Balaam, right?
Caller: Because I’m pretty. Yes, it was about Balaam because the Book of Numbers, it kind of seems to say he was a genuine prophet, but he was also a bad dude and he misused his authority, basically. Yeah.
Jimmy Akin: So Balaam is an interesting figure. He was not an Israelite and this is an example. He was, he was a Near Eastern, ancient Near Eastern prophet though. So he would be another ancient Near Eastern prophet that was not an Israelite in this case. And the Bible does acknowledge, by the way, we also have extra biblical records of him. He was famous enough that he gets mentioned outside of the Bible, but he was acknowledged in the Bible as a genuine prophet. So all that’s okay. He wasn’t a false prophet, but he was also a morally ambiguous figure and there are different passages that speak either positively or negatively of him. And exactly how to understand the figure of Balaam is something that people can debate over. He clearly was a genuine prophet, but he also clearly wasn’t perfect. So there’s a kind of mixture of different things the Bible reports about him and how to form a single concrete opinion about him is something that people can disagree on. So that’s what I’d say to the third part of the question and that is where I will leave it.