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To: varmintman

Actually, John the Baptist, whom we Orthodox title “the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John” was most assuredly a prophet according to any honest definition. I realize there is some bizarre definition used by dispensationalists who want to herd the gifts of the Spirit into various historical eras, but the key qualities — foretelling the future and calling to repentance, of which the latter is more important, though we don’t use the title prophet without the first — were both there in St. John.

And, there have been plenty of examples of prophets fitting both characteristics among Orthodox monastic elders since, or even among the married clergy (St. John of Kronstadt, being the key example of the latter that comes to mind). For instance both the fall of Russia under atheist domination and its restoration were foretold decades in advance by monastic elders both Russian and Greek, often in terms calling on Russians to repent — St. Seraphim of Sarov and The Elder Heliodorus of Glinsk Hermitage both foresaw the horrors which would come on Russia from a distance of a century, or almost so, the Elder Porphyry also of Glinsk foretold both the fall and restoration in 1868. Even when the prophecy itself lacked the call to repentance as an integral part, the one foretelling was engaged in calling those around him to repentance, that being the chief office of a monastic elder, or in the case of St. John of Kronstadt a major part the ministry of a priest serving in a rough navy town.


8 posted on 12/12/2011 8:03:39 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: The_Reader_David
False vs True Prophets
 

Deuteronomy 13
 
 1.  If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and
 2.  And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
 3.  Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4.  Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
 

 
And, if ALL prophecies have NOT come to pass..................
 
KJV Deuteronomy 18:17-22
 17.  And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken.
 18.  I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
 19.  And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.
 20.  But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
 21.  And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?
 22.  When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

18 posted on 12/12/2011 9:26:22 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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