Every subculture operates with its own nomenclature.
Nomenclature is a system or set of terms or symbols special to a particular discipline or art, but subcultures produce their own collection.
Listen to prophets who bring their own nomenclature into their communication. I do, but I avoid the creation of a subculture like a plague. I produce a prophetic culture, for sure, but avoid a prophetic subculture.
We see the various subcultures operating at odds with kingdom culture, doing so at the kingdom’s expense. The motivation to produce a subset becomes evident in the missing vocabulary available in other kingdom subcultures.
We do this to our hurt. We do this at the expense of maturing the prophetic. We do this fully aware that we are creating distinctions where they do not belong.
We justify it by saying our assignment should have its own identity–and it should–but the kingdom culture does not play well with others because it is the King’s culture.
Regions of man carry different languages because God wants diversity to counter globalism.
At no point has the King decided to combat the oneness of kingdom culture by separating us with subcultural nomenclature. The language of the kingdom is the Bible, and our efforts to create emphases to sell the superiority of one aspect of the kingdom at the expense of others is dysfunctional malpractice.
It assumes consumerism and marketing are appropriate because the King does not care where citizens individually fit in His kingdom. Oh, to the contrary! He most certainly does determine where each citizen connects so kingdom leaders can prepare and position each member of the constructed building, functioning body, and furnished bride.
We need not produce a subset to protect and illuminate our turf war advantages. Recruiting kingdom citizens is forbidden. Recognizing the King’s intentions is kingdom culture normal.
Prophetic Nomenclature
Prophet should communicate revelation with clarity of message and intention to God’s targeted audience. Those who hear or read it should understand it. Leaders who receive it should apply and implement it once they reach a proper interpretation of the communication.
To what end would God reveal something He has no intended application? When God is talking to a target audience, who can implement the revelation.
Jesus says, “This revelation is for you, not them. Therefore, they are not going even to hear it, let alone apply and implement it.”
The apostles complained that they couldn’t understand it either. Jesus explained both a primary interpretation and promised they would one day recognize a prophetic revelation for practical implementation.
“In This Hour”
This phrase gets into the mix because of the odd assumption that the revelation should be seen as a new starting point, a novel idea, or something so special that people should value the prophet a bit more than they are. Usually, the revelation has no need or logical place for the phrase. God didn’t provide the phrase in the revelation, and the prophet’s communication has already filtered the perfect revelation with unconscious assumptions.
“God is doing this in this hour.” Yes, but He has already been doing this for millennia, will do it tomorrow as well, and the revelation isn’t a “now, not then” message. So often, the message presented is so general, non-specific, and general that it fits a website blurb and becomes a website blur.
These words are not for the general audience. There is no “if you would like to receive this word that has no targeted audience because you subscribe to this website” isn’t a very good prophetic protocol. In general, intercessors love these things because they hear something in them that confirms what they have heard or prayed.
The reality that whatever God does next as an outcome will fit these words like prophesying “the sun is coming up in the morning” robs these messages of significance.
They create confusion because they are far too general to provide for an application or implementation. Often, these prophetic offerings are simply exhortations to keep praying because God indeed will act at some point. Until then, know that He hears your prayers.
But with the penchant of prophets to work too hard at being heard and accepted, these kinds of words take on some marketable exaggerations with implicit guarantees of how and when God will start doing a better job of being God and do what we asked.
This kind of thing reached a boiling-over-pot of confusion that put out the fire underneath the pot during the 2020 election cycle, for one example.
People took the general words spiced with exaggerations and mystical contextualization–“I was taken up to sit on Father’s lap while He whispered in my ear like Moses in the Tent of Meeting, so you know THIS is God speaking, so buy my book and move to my city to be fathered by the one and only, your friend and mine, the greatest thing since sliced bread prophet for this hour…”
Following up narcissism with increased narcissism, some of them apologized: “Oops, sorry about that.” Like saying, “We went through a rough place in our marriage, but God healed us,” when you abandoned your husband and children for six months before coming back home and stepped right back into ministry leadership.
Overkill revelation messaging followed up with understated humility equals “I am a narcissistic fraud but hope you will ignore the obvious.” So you see how our nomenclature leads us to blindness to malpractice and malfunction because the frauds speak our language and must surely be one of us.
“We stand by our own.” Instead of correcting them, you mean? “We criticize the others.” Because they sound different and don’t honor our subculture correctly, you mean?
The problem with “in this hour” phrasing is that it assumes God has changed His ways. He hasn’t. What I mean by this examination of the presuppositions of prophetic nomenclature cannot be ignored except at great peril to the entire prophetic aspect of the kingdom.
We communicate false presuppositions about how things really work in the spirit and the prophetic process with our nomenclature. Even if we were to dismiss my point with a shrug and say, “People have communication habits and learned behaviors,” and they do, we have to confront this if we intend to mature.
I would suggest that we dismiss as much as 70%, or even more, of most prophetic messaging because it contains a heavy bulk weight of nomenclature provided to the constituent base to make them comfortable with the 10-20% of actual revelation. But, unfortunately, doing so corrupts the entire message enough that we scrapbook most revelations because they offer nothing implementable.
Now, I find that including details of how I receive a revelation is helpful, Biblical, and often vital to the interpretation, application, and implementation. Of course, when, where, how, and who are essential to “why” and “what to do now.”
I understand why leaders say they are a voice, but it should be immediately apparent that a leader is more than a voice.
God could send angels to drop off thumb drives for us to play if leaders had nothing to do but communicate. A leader is more than a voice, and leaders operate together to interpret, apply, and implement.
To see prophets in maturity, you need to see them operating in a company. Prophets who cannot function together reveal weaknesses that require correction.
Recall how prophets said they were sorry for getting caught up in the prophetic chorus? Well, that was not the problem then and won’t be the problem tomorrow. The actual problem is that prophets exclusively interacted with prophets residing within their zoned, regionalized, or subcultural nomenclature. As a result, these leaders shunned voices that offer correction during this season.
Afterward, they found justification that reveals something other than humility in the apologies. And most of the international leaders worked to keep from losing these prophets more than doing something about maturing the prophetic. They would set us back twenty years if we allowed it.
Suddenly, non-prophet and non-apostolic leaders offered a theological system’s point of view to correct us all instead of the frauds. (Not that the scams are without redemption here.) But, unfortunately, these leaders said something no apostle or prophet would say. They mostly ignored prophetic process issues, and some experts attempted to use humanistic psychology to fix things!
In conclusion, we should return to Biblical language, and by that, I certainly do not mean King James Version English! Instead, I mean that the revelation that God gives does present itself through the communication and language of the prophet but, in doing so, does no damage to the message.
I presented one phrase that serves as an example of subcultural nomenclature, but I do so to begin a trend toward eliminating phrases that reveal a presuppositional error or exaggeration. I would contend that this is a step toward maturing the prophetic.
