Nearly two decades ago Os Guinness released a brief but powerful volume entitled Prophetic Untimeliness (Baker, 2003). It is well worth revisiting – or for many of you, being introduced to for the first time. In his Introduction he explains the book’s title: “Prophetic Untimeliness is a term adapted from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche but shaped by the precedent of the Hebrew prophets rather than the German iconoclast. Nietzsche saw that independent thinkers would always be out of step with the conventional wisdom of their generation.”

What follows might sound quite strange to many Christians, but ALL God’s people today ARE called to have a prophetic ministry, and ALL God’s people today ARE called to be engaged in resistance thinking – and action. The only reason this sounds alarming and foreign is because we have moved so far away from New Testament Christianity.

The idea that we should have a prophetic voice and lifestyle, and that we should be actively resisting the ungodly culture all around us is really just basic Christianity 101. But it is a sign of the times that such basics sound radical and even revolutionary to most Christians – at least in the West.

I could cite countless believers from over the past two millennia who have spoken about such matters, but let me refer to just one: an 80-year-old Christian that I just highlighted in an article yesterday: billmuehlenberg.com/2022/06/14/notable-christians-os-guinness/

Nearly two decades ago Os Guinness released a brief but powerful volume entitled Prophetic Untimeliness (Baker, 2003). It is well worth revisiting – or for many of you, being introduced to for the first time. In his Introduction he explains the book’s title:

“Prophetic Untimeliness is a term adapted from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche but shaped by the precedent of the Hebrew prophets rather than the German iconoclast. Nietzsche saw that independent thinkers would always be out of step with the conventional wisdom of their generation.”

As to prophets, he says this: “We might distinguish capital-P ‘Prophets’ from small-p ‘prophets.’ The former are those, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, who have heard a direct, explicit, supernatural word from God and can legitimately say, ‘This is the word of the Lord.’ The latter are those who interpret their life and times from a biblical perspective and therefore ‘read the signs of the times’ with greater or lesser skill, but never presume the authority and infallibility of ‘This is the word of the Lord’.”

He also explains that the notion of “resistance thinking” is adapted from a 1945 essay by C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics”. I dug it out from his God in the Dock, where Lewis said this:

“Science progresses because scientists, instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellent doctrines. A ‘liberal’ Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent must be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.”

So the Christian is to be a prophetic voice and resist the world and its wayward direction. But Christians resist the world and its wrong paths because we want something better of the world:

“A vital secret of the church’s power and glory in history lies in its calling to be ‘against the world, for the world.’ C. S. Lewis calls this the ‘two-edged character’ of the Christian faith.

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