If a man reserves his strongest words only for outsiders, it is not courage at all. Prophets did speak to the nations, but they saved their heaviest blows for the idols closest to home, and they bore the cost. When the fiercest edge cuts elsewhere, it is not prophetic steadfastness but crowd-pleasing performance. Catering to the crowd is never prophetic.

But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears.

— Jeremiah 13:17

… in danger from my own people …. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

— 2 Corinthians 11:26, 28

God’s people have always needed discernment to distinguish the voices that edify from those that merely impress (Jer. 23:16; 2 Cor. 11:5, 13). Throughout history, the Lord has raised up prophets who proclaimed his word with courage and tears. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, the apostle Paul, and others show that the hallmark of a true prophet is not popularity or rhetorical skill but the burden of declaring God’s hard truth to those most able to hurt them—whatever the cost.

Admirers of Doug Wilson hail him as a modern-day prophet, the voice we need in our cultural moment. Wilson himself has embraced the mantle. In a 2019 post titled “On the Nature of Prophetic Language,” written to defend his use of a vulgar epithet for women, he described his offensive language as “part of a prophetic ministry” and identified it with “the prophetic office.” More recently, when Kevin DeYoung cautioned pastors against choosing prophetic punditry over faithful shepherding (“Brothers, We Are Not Political Pundits”), Wilson reframed the alternative as “a carefully calibrated and calculated irrelevance.” His pretensions are reinforced by associates such as Toby Sumpter, who contends that Wilson and Moscow “mock the prophets of Baal and the schoolmarm Pharisees of our day, just like Jesus did and all of the faithful prophets,” and Joe Rigney, who insists that apart from The Babylon Bee, only Wilson and his circle embody the satirical “prophetic mode of speech.”

Confusing Doug Wilson with a prophetic voice distorts the prophetic office and damages the church. I write with this concern not as an outsider but as one who pastored in the CREC for more than a decade. From that vantage I saw both the appeal of Wilson’s persona and the theological and moral toll it exacts, though one need not be in the CREC to recognize the pattern. My concern now, as it was then, is to guard Christ’s flock from mistaking brand-building provocation for authentic prophetic ministry.

Provocateur Out of Step with His Pastoral Office

Doug Wilson is not a prophet. He is a gifted writer, a trenchant cultural analyst, and a deliberate provocateur. As one observer memorably put it, “Doug is a Christian shock jock, a cable news host, a Daily Wire program (and I like a lot of what Ben Shapiro says).” Wilson’s approach reflects a right-wing attractional model characteristic of partisan punditry and movements, where the foil of political opponents seldom fades from view. The result is a message that tickles ears, entrenches self-righteousness, and bolsters partisan pride rather than cultivating prophetic witness.

If Wilson positioned himself simply as a cultural commentator, the problems would persist, and whatever good he offers could be found elsewhere without the accompanying liabilities, but at least the genre would be clear. The difficulty is that he holds the office of pastor in a church and denomination unwilling to discipline him for his excesses, however outrageous they become, leaving his rhetorical showmanship to be mistaken for faithful ministry. Worse still, he claims biblical warrant for language that Scripture itself calls ungodly.

Others have raised similar concerns, including Gavin Ortlund (“Should Pastors Use Profanity?”), Kevin DeYoung (“On Culture War, Doug Wilson, and the Moscow Mood”), and Denny Burk (“The Serrated Edge of Doug Wilson”). Burk highlights how Wilson tries to justify shameful talk by appealing to supposed precedent in the prophets, apostles, and Jesus.

Wilson casts himself in a prophetic mold, but his conduct bears little resemblance to the biblical pattern.

Prophets Lament, Wilson Lampoons

Wilson is, by God’s design, not a heavy-hearted man, and that is no inherent flaw. His irrepressible buoyancy is admirable, his quick humor often dazzling. Yet prophets are remembered not for their lighthearted wit but for their weighty burden.

When Wilson attempts to adopt the prophetic posture, wielding his trademark “serrated edge,” the difference from what we see in the prophets is striking. The prophets proclaimed with anguish, sorrow, and a heavy heart; Wilson lampoons with flippancy and glee—never with tears (Phil. 3:18). His disciples mimic the same style, but with more bluster and bravado, and with less brilliance.

Biblical mockery bore a different spirit. Elijah’s sarcasm on Mount Carmel was tempered by a sober-minded awareness of God’s nearness in judgment. Would the Lord have answered Elijah’s prayer for fire if it had been offered with snark and snickering at his own cleverness? John Piper once exhorted Wilson, “You can’t exalt Christ and commend yourself as clever.”

Our Lord’s denunciations in Matthew 23 exemplify the same balance. Jesus calls the Pharisees “blind guides” (v. 16), “whitewashed tombs” (v. 27), and a “brood of vipers” (v. 33). He closes not with a satirist’s smirk but with lamentation: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (v. 37). Christ delivers grief-soaked rebukes, never glib or sardonic wit.

Francis Schaeffer modeled this balance in our own day. In The Church Before the Watching World, he warned that the God who judged Israel will also judge our culture:

Will He not judge our culture? Will He not call it adulterous? I tell you in the name of God He will judge our culture unless there is a return to a Christian base for the culture—and that begins with true repentance and renewal in the church.

And in the very next breath, Schaeffer’s prescribed response was not to jeer at the culture but to weep like Jeremiah:

Now what should be our response? Listen to Jeremiah speak in 13:27—“Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem!” Indeed, as redeemed people we should know the joy of Christ, but as we look around us in much of the church and in our culture, can we fail to cry tears? Must we not also have this message? “Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem!” … “Woe to you, O liberal church! Woe to you, O apostate Christendom!” We must say these words while we cry for the individual and while we never fail to treat him as a human being. We must not speak more lightly than Jeremiah. We must not be any less moved.

Schaeffer showed that prophetic rebuke comes with weeping, not wisecracks.

This is the very distinction Wilson and his defenders miss when they cheapen the rhetoric of the biblical prophets. A telling example comes from Gabriel Rench, a CREC deacon in Moscow and co-host of the CrossPolitic podcast. In an August 30, 2024, Facebook post defending a New Saint Andrews College promotional video that included an image of Johnny Cash giving the middle finger, Rench crudely claimed that Jesus “ripped the Pharisees a new one in Matthew 23.” What Christ spoke as heartfelt lament, with prophetic gravity, is crassly recast in Moscow as vitriol. Tears are traded for taunts.

Prophets Pay, Wilson Profits

Prophets are not brand-builders. They do not churn out clickbait, market novelty flamethrowers, or traffic in gimmicks and stunts. They do not engage in “Christotainment” reaction videos (“watch me watch someone else”), a form that reached peak irony when Wilson found himself watching himself.

True prophets do the very opposite: they destroy their own brand by confronting the idols within their closest circles. Their path is marked not by empire-building but by costly confrontation leading to loss, humiliation, and often death.

Scripture bears witness to both their affliction and their martyrdom. Jeremiah was beaten and put in the stocks (Jer. 20:1–2). Baruch, sharing in Jeremiah’s ministry, endured pain and sorrow, groaning in weariness, and was exhorted by the Lord not to seek great things (Jer. 45:1–5). Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful woman dramatized Israel’s infidelity (Hos. 1:2). Paul and Silas were beaten and jailed in Philippi (Acts 16:19–24). Some paid with their lives: Jezebel slaughtered the prophets (1 Kgs. 18:4, 13); Zechariah was stoned in the temple court (2 Chr. 24:20–22); Uriah was executed by Jehoiakim (Jer. 26:20–23); John the Baptist was killed by Herod (Mark 6:14–29). Others of God’s faithful were mocked, flogged, chained, stoned, sawn in two, and exiled (Heb. 11:36–38). Jesus indicted Jerusalem as the city that kills the prophets (Matt. 23:29–35; Luke 13:33–34). Stephen summed up the pattern: “Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?” (Acts 7:52).

By contrast, Wilson is building an ambitious enterprise. His path is marked by growth in audience, influence, and book sales. He sharpens his acerbic edge against those safely outside his camp, expanding his tribe in the process.

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