Bruce Yocum: Prophecy

Bruce Yocum, Prophecy: Exercising the Prophetic Gifts of the Spirit in the Church Today (Word of Life, 1976), 150 pages, ISBN 9780892830299.

I cannot recall exactly how I learned of this book that was published almost fifty years ago. The book is out of print and only available from used book dealers [Editor’s note: The same is true for the 1993 edition from Servant Books]. I may have discovered it via a footnote in a more recent book or academic paper, or a mention in a social media post. However I learned about it, I’m glad I did.

Bruce Yocum, the author, was one of the founding members of an ecumenical Charismatic Renewal community called “The Word of God” in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967, which places him in the rise of the Charismatic movement in the mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Yocum was also a leader in “Servants of the Word,” an international brotherhood of celibate laymen.

The book has two major sections, consisting of four chapters each. The first section discusses the role of the prophet in the church, and the second examines how to grow in the prophetic gifts.

In a statement that seems to prefigure Roger Stronstad’s The Prophethood of All Believers, Yocum writes in the introduction, “It is not only very special people who get to hear God speak. Every Christian can know God in a direct and personal way and can hear the Lord speaking to him.”

Chapter one gives a brief history of Christian prophecy, starting with the prophets mentioned in Acts and other books of the New Testament. Contrary to cessationist claims that the gift of prophecy died out somewhere between the death of the last Apostle and the recognition of the New Testament canon, Yocum writes, “There have been, however, regular recurrences of prophetic activity in the history of the church, most commonly in certain movements of renewal.” Prophecy and other charisms tend to occur when and where God’s people are expecting them, and that tends to coincide with times of renewal when Christians are asking God to move afresh in their midst. Addressing the proclivity of some to suppress the use of the gifts out of fear they may be abused, the author states, “The early church had faith that if God gave gifts to his people, he would also provide them the means to safeguard the exercise of those gifts.”

The second chapter addresses the question, “What is a prophet?” The role of the Old Testament prophet is examined first. While prediction of future events is certainly a component of true prophecy, it is not the totality of the gift. Prophets, beyond being predictors of things to come, are first and foremost spokespersons for God. “A prophet is not a prophet because of what he says, but because of his relationship to God.” The content of a prophet’s speech may vary (prediction, warning, calling to repentance and return to the covenant, etc.), but the thing that marks a prophet is that he or she has heard from God, and delivers that message to the person for whom God intends it, whether that be a member of the covenant community or a foreign ruler. When moving to prophecy in the New Testament, the difference is not in the relationship between God and the prophet, but between God and His people as a whole. The Spirit is no longer selectively placed only upon certain designated leaders with higher levels of authority, but is poured out on all believers. However, while all believers may hear directly from God, not all are commissioned to take what they hear from God and declare it publicly as a proclamation from the Lord. Yocum sets forth a variety of purposes that Christian prophecy can fulfill, such as awakening the people to hear God’s word, encouraging the believer, bringing conviction or correction, and providing guidance. When it comes to receiving guidance through prophecy, he warns that “relying on prophecy for guidance can create problems if we expect that every decision we face will be made for us in a prophecy. We could adopt the attitude that we do not have to think about things ourselves, because if we wait long enough the answer will be given prophetically.” While we should not discount God leading us in decision-making by a prophetic word, neither should we be paralyzed in our decision-making until we have some “supernatural” experience. God gave us minds, and he expects us to those minds, renewed by His word revealed in Scripture, to make reasoned judgments and take action.

Chapter three, “The Prophet’s Role,” investigates what part the person with a prophetic gift plays in the church today. “A true Christian prophet has a role demanding the same vigilance and the same sustained exercise of responsibility. His role can be described under five headings: to receive and proclaim the word; to actively seek out God’s will and God’s word; to ‘stir up’ his gift; to ‘watch over’ the word given and see it acted upon and fulfilled; and to intercede before God on behalf of the church.” While a prophet can “stir up” the gift within, this “does not mean that a prophet can prophesy whatever he wishes and whenever he wishes. Prophecy will always depend upon the action of the Holy Spirit.” Yocum’s teaching here is in stark contrast to much of what we see in purported prophetic ministries today, especially those whose primary arena of influence is not in service to the local church, but on YouTube and other media platforms, where the constant expectation to have a “fresh word” for every new year or every new event in the news cycle drives people to speak out of their own imaginations, rather than from the Spirit.

The fourth chapter delves into how prophecy is governed and administered in the Christian community. Both prophets (by their way of life) and prophecies (by their alignment with special revelation recorded in Scripture) are to be discerned by the elders and the broader community, as there is always the possibility that someone could use the claim of having a prophetic gift to invest his or her own ideas with the authority of God. When God wants to speak a word that requires a definite response from His people, He will usually give the message to multiple people in the community, and not just to a single prophet. This helps protect the community from a “rogue prophet” who is using the guise of prophecy to manipulate. In the Christian community, “the elders have the authority to declare on behalf of the community that a particular prophecy is a word from the Lord. In other words, it is the heads who have the responsibility to discern and the authority to govern prophecy. They, and not the prophets, have the final word.” Contrary to some popular teachings today, the prophet is not the supreme authority in church leadership.

In the second section of the book, chapter five gives instructions about beginning to exercise the prophetic gift. Yocum makes it clear that even when someone receives the gift of prophecy, he or she should not expect to have prophetic revelations on a daily basis. Additionally, when one prophecies, the prophet does not need to speak in elevated language for the prophecy to have the effect God intends. “I have not yet heard a prophecy fail to communicate the Lord’s message because it was cast in simple everyday language. I have, however, heard people trying so hard to use beautiful language that they failed to express God’s word.” Even though the charismata are given as gifts by God, we have to learn how to administer them properly on His behalf.

The sixth chapter lays out various forms prophecy can take. Prophetic exhortation or encouragement, inspired prayer (where the Spirit is prompting and guiding the direction of the prayer topics and wording), prophecy in song, revelation (Yocum’s description of this form parallels what some commonly call a “word of knowledge”), personal prophecy, visions, prophetic actions, and tongues accompanied by interpretation are all possibilities.

Chapter seven addresses the discernment of prophecy. Yocum proposes that prophecy can be “bad” without being “false.” A “bad prophecy” would be when someone has a strong feeling about something and speaks it in a prophetic manner, but did not really receive the message from God, nor was directed by God to speak forth. Another example would be when someone does receive a word from God, but when speaking it forth, goes beyond what God gave them, adding in their own thoughts or feelings on what God told them to say. “In one sense, something of our own thought always appears in the prophecies we give, because prophecy operates through us. But when our thoughts add to the word of the Lord, or take something away from it, or distort its meaning, the value of our prophecy is greatly diminished.” Therefore, someone operating in the gift of prophecy must be careful to speak only what God told them to. Yocum also discusses “weak prophecy” which, while not false or diluted with one’s own thoughts, feelings, or opinions, simply lacks the power that accompanies a word from God. It won’t lead anyone astray, but it won’t really help anyone either.

Yocum makes it abundantly clear here that those operating as prophets are not on some other level that makes them unquestionable. Believers should beware of any prophet who will not accept judgment of their words by the Christian community. “Every prophet has to be under the authority of others. In practice, this means that everyone who prophesies should let the group he belongs to weigh and test the word he speaks, to determine whether it truly comes from God.” One can tell if a prophet is acting out of love for the body of Christ by how he or she responds to correction. Ultimately, the marker of whether a person is truly spiritual is not the grandness or eloquence of their prophecy, but the character of their Christian life.

The eighth chapter focuses on growing in prophetic service. The more people seek to serve one another out of holy love, the more their desire to see the Spirit’s gifts in operation will be properly motivated (to serve others and meet needs rather than draw attention to one’s self). If our focus is on being something in the church, rather than serving others in love (even possibly in obscurity), then something has gone wrong. A good test of our motives is how we react when another individual begins to be used more in the gifts than we are. “If we become unhappy or jealous, we show that our true desire is to earn ourselves a reputation or attract other people’s attention.” I once heard it said that if I am not willing to minister hidden behind a curtain, where no one knows who I am or what function I am performing, then I have no business ministering on the platform. “A servant is not supposed to do what he likes to do, but what his master gives him to do. The good servant is one who takes care to do just what his master instructs him—neither more nor less.”

Overall, I found Prophecy to be a very well-written treatment of this spiritual gift’s place in the church, with a healthy balance between being open to hearing God speak today, and weighing everything by the standard of the scriptural witness, while making sure our own motivations stay pure. As Yocum says in the afterword, “Certainly we do not have to have the gift of prophecy operating in the church. But if God offers the gift, if the gift will increase our effectiveness in serving God and our neighbor, then it is wrong to decline it. “

If you can find an affordable used copy of this book, or a library that still has a volume available, I highly encourage reading it.

Reviewed by Brian Roden