The prophetic is the gift of God’s voice to us, but in this pandemic there is much confusion given the avalanche of self-described ‘prophetic’ communications that presume to speak authoritatively for God and to the crisis, but are often sadly infected with personal conjecture and public theories of conspiracy. They end up more problematic that prophetic. To mean well is not necessarily to minister well. Of course, many questions are raised. Is this pandemic a “birth pain”? Is it one of the apocalyptic plagues? It is retributive judgment? Is it punitive judgment or formative discipline? Is there a difference between being shaken and being judged? Is this natural or supernatural? Amidst all these different voices demanding attention, competing for our acknowledgement and agreement, it would be wise to attune our hearing to the commanding prophetic voice of Jesus Himself and to respond to His six-times repeated instruction at the Last Supper, to “ASK!”
We need the prophecy of “the one who sees clearly … who hears the words of God … who sees a vision from the Almighty … whose eyes are opened” (Numbers 24:16). Jesus prophesied “famines and pestilences … fearful events … the time of punishment … nations in anguish and perplexity … terror.” However, He gave us clear instructions in these circumstances: “Do not worry … do not fear.” When what we are seeing seems grounds enough for anxiety and fear, He tells us what our eyes need to be focused on.
· Watch out for deceivers (Matthew 24:4)
· Watch your life and holiness (Luke 21:34)
· Watch the signs (Matthew 28:30)
· Watch and pray (Matthew 28:36)
Our posture in the face of all these “fearful events” (Luke 21:11) is not to cower, hide or withdraw with lowered heads and covered eyes, but to “stand up and lift up our heads” (Luke 21:28). Where the head goes the eyes tend to follow! We are called to maintain this position so that we “may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). If we are watching, Jesus says “you can see these things for yourselves” (Luke 21:29) and when we do “see these things” (Matthew 24:33; Luke 21:31) our heavenly hope will irradiate the darkness of earthly hopelessness, because we will know that our “redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28) and that the “sign of the Son of Man in heaven … is near, right at the door” (Matthew 24:33). Are we ready? Are we right with God and all others? Are we “learning the lesson” (Matthew 24:32) in this present eschatological curriculum?
In the meantime, we are ASKing for other doors to open here on earth. Some of us have found ourselves praying Isaiah 26 in present circumstances: “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you. When your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness” (v9). Our ASKing for the “people of the world” comes out of a place of intimacy. Did not Jesus say that if we abide in Him we could ASK of Him (John 15:7)? Again, intimacy is the environment of intercession (John 15:7). But interestingly, the prophetic chapter ends like this: “Go my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you: hide yourselves for a little while until His wrath has passed by” (Isaiah 26:20). This sounds awfully like a shut-down, doesn’t it? The vocabulary of our day amidst global pandemic is a litany of limitation and restriction: do-not-enter police tapes, barriers and diversions, lock-downs, quarantine mandates, social distance, shelter-in-place, services suspended, planes grounded, shut for business, cancelled, sealed customs posts, secured borders. In a word – CLOSED.
However, that same chapter in Isaiah begins: “OPEN the gates” (v2), the same ASKing request of the psalmist (118:19). We are encouraging you all, as behind-closed-doors, Jesus-style ASKers, to be in no doubt that we ASK under an open heaven (Deuteronomy 28:12) for the doors of heaven to be always opened (Psalm 78:23). Though our physical doors are shut, our “longings lie open” before the Lord (Psalm 38:9). In order to watch and pray we are ASKing for open eyes (Psalm 119:18; Luke 24:31) but also for the opening of presently darkened and blind eyes (Acts 26:18). We are ASKing for open lips and mouths (Psalm 51:15; 81:10); open ears (Psalm 40:6); open hearts (Acts 16:14); open arms for those both poor in possessions and poor in spirit (Proverbs 31:20). We are ASKing for God’s opening power: for His open hand that creates (Psalm 104:28); for His opening of what to us is impenetrable rock that the waters may flow (Psalm 105:41); for His resurrection power to open what the minister of death has boxed and buried; for His exposing light that will “bring into the open” that which is being sinfully hidden and concealed (Luke 8:17).
Above all, we cannot cease to ASK for “the door of faith to be opened” to the nations (Acts 14:27). We want to say with Paul at this season: “a great door of effective work has been opened to me” (1 Corinthians 16:9) and ASK that God will “open a door for our message” (Colossians 4:3) in a manner unprecedented in history.
We finish where we began, declaring God’s power to open doors, make iron gates yield, their hinges lubricated by the oil of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the One foreseen by Isaiah who would hold the key of David, and open what no man would be able to shut. With man shutting doors, we will ASK Jesus to do His own shutting of that which needs to be sealed up, and shut down for demonic business and unclean trade, and unrighteous exchange. However, Isaiah talks about His opening power in chapter 22:22. I think most of us have heard the phrase ‘catch-22’. I like to call this verse ‘latch-22’ because this is our encouragement, when doors are barred, that a door has been opened. It is a “new and living way opened up for us through the curtain” so that we can “approach God’s throne of grace” and ASK of the Father because we have “access by one Spirit”, an “access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Hebrews 10:2, 4:16; Ephesians 2:18; Romans 5:2). ASKers, watching and waiting; we are standing up and we are looking up in these times, and like John on Patmos, in a context of enforced constriction and restriction, we are seeing an open door in Heaven, and anticipating as never before, the open scroll and the open Temple (Revelation 4:1, 5:5, 11:19). Meanwhile, let us ask for the opening of millions of Laodicean doors on earth, that the King of glory may come in! Amen.