“Doom & Gloom” or “Blue Sky”?

“Put your trust in the Lord your God and you will be established. Put your trust in His prophets and succeed.” – II Chronicles 20:20 

Scripture tells us that voices of authentic prophets are essential for God’s people to have wisdom and success. I personally learned this many years ago when the Lord sent us prophets to confirm seceding from a movement that was turning cultish. God used that revelation they brought from heaven to give us the courage to do God’s will. So from now on we have greatly embraced the need for prophets. In fact recently we got a call from a friend with a significant international ministry. He had a prophetic experience with us in it that brought confirmation and clarity to a direction the Lord had been directing us in!

But many churches and believers have an unclear understanding of the indispensability of the prophetic. In the Old and New Testament we see prophets trained, worked and hung out as a group. In fact we rarely ever see a “lone ranger” prophet in the bible. Yes we see them mentioned but it was understood they were plural. (Acts 13) However, today when a church hosts someone with prophetic ministry it is usually of that “one-man-show” variety. And because of the inability today’s prophets have to work in concert with other prophets, there is a great disparity between what believers are hearing and it can seem to be even opposing messages.

Today we see two increasingly polarized camps: the “Blue Sky” & “Gloom and Doom”.

“Blue Sky” folks talk about positive things and accentuate grace and mercy and are of the “glass is not just ½ full, it’s overflowing!” camp but they also rightly point people to their destiny. Their motto is “It’s all good”… even if it isn’t. Some even teach God’s judgments on the world are over because of Christ’s sacrifice and somehow discount most of the book of Revelation, which is obviously wrong.
Then we also have the “Gloom and Doom” camp, called that because they adhere to what we see occurring on the earth in the book of Revelation. While they are from the “glass is either half-full or empty” camp, they do confront the lack of holiness, accountability, moral ambiguity, false teaching and backsliding in church. While they may have varied points of view as to the timetable of their eschatology, they still see a lot bad things coming on the earth.

So, “gloom and doom” or “blue sky”? Which is right?

The truth is both groups are seeing an aspect of truth yet because they huddle only with prophets who have their same point of view, they end up missing the “whole truth”. God’s Word is a two-edged sword. (Hebrews 4:12) If these different groups walked in greater humility and had more interaction and cross pollination, while there might be a higher degree of tension, there also would be much more clarity of the truth coming to the Body.

New Covenant prophets are actually called to stir up, pull up and build up! Yes they console and comfort but they also are called to admonish laziness, heresy and lukewarmness and to remind people of their destinies and callings! They also are to motivate them to finish the race (1 Corinthians 9:24-25) and the rewards coming to them if they do!
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We need all the prophets, and we need to pray they as well as teachers can work together because then the apostolic springs up as well. (Acts 13:1-4) Don’t pick a camp. Pick a love for the truth however it comes through the prophets. It is essential!