• Introduction
Heaven has one Broadcasting Station but numerous channels on earth through which its messages are conveyed to us. The following passage puts the many earthly channels of divine communication into their three broad categories: signs, prophets, and sourced information (or knowledge).
We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long (Psalm 74:9).
God could use any of the three channels or a combination of them for giving us reliable directions in life. Unfortunately, we have generally become so accustomed to the often dramatic and spectacular second option of prophets, that we are prone to missing it when God tries to reach us by any of the other means, or we ignore those other means to the point of not developing our receptivity thereof. It is the tragedy of precious antennas through ignorance neglected to ruin, and valuable signals thereby missed.
All three channels are as credible as they are prone to abuse or error or exploitation or invasion by extraneous hostile agencies. That is why God who gave them also tells us to “try the spirits,” and He was not excluding Himself (1 John 4:1; Genesis 24:21). I shall proceed to explain each of the three channels.
• Signs
Reading the Clock
Just as we are able by the coordinates of the long and short hands of a clock to tell time, God has put bodies in space (the sun, the moon, the stars) by whose ‘coordinates’ we can tell times and seasons (Genesis 1:14-17). The wall clock hangs up for everyone to see, but not everyone who sees it ‘hears’ what it says about time, unless they have learned to read it, as we were taught to do early in school. Unfortunately, for those who cannot read the clock, it is merely another piece of furniture.
Ability to see the clock is not the same as reading it and being guided by it to plan one’s day properly. The sun, the moon, and the stars all decorate space as well as give light in their seasons, but they do much more as markers of times and seasons – to those who are able to read those long and short hands of a different kind on the face of nature’s clock.
Times and Signs
In Matthew 16:3, Jesus tells us that God has put signs in place for telling times. In other words, times have signs, or times come with their signs. He called them “the signs of the times.” So, we can tell what time it is if we understand the signs.
What are signs? Signs are observable events or situations or objects conveying a meaning beyond themselves; they are things that can be seen or felt, things that may be concrete or abstract. They are natural situations with a supernatural voice. Often, they are processed (or discerned or interpreted) to arrive at their meaning.
There are signs that tell you it is summer or winter or autumn or spring. Even if you were blind, you could feel them or hear them. In tropical Africa, we can tell dry and rainy seasons and even the onset of harmattan by the withering of trees, by the dryness or abundance of rainfall, by the general fall or rise in atmospheric temperature, by certain animals or birds or fishes migrating or behaving in certain ways or making particular sounds. Those situations are markers (or signs) of a given time – to those who have been skilled to ‘read’ them. Anyone who can ‘see’ those ‘signs’ of the season does not need prayer and fasting to be able to generally tell where they are in the calendar of the year.
Times have their signs.
Apart from signs in the sky or in outdoor nature, there are other seasons of life that also come with their signs; for instance, the signs that come to a pregnant woman when the time comes to deliver. To not know those signs can be a disaster to the woman. There are signs in the body that tell that one is sick, and what sickness it could be. It is by reading signs that medical doctors are able to diagnose a sickness and prescribe medications. It is possible to misread a sign – in nature, in medicine, in spiritual matters, true; but it is still a sign despite being misread. Through experience, some are better able than others to read signs; all the same, the inability of others to read them does not discredit the signs.
Signs and Context
Signs are also contextual. For example, a red dress on a young girl would mean “beautiful,” but if I should wave that same dress along a lonely road or a train track, it would mean something different; it would be saying, “Danger!” “Stop!” “Do not proceed!” “Caution!”
Properly interpreting signs, then, takes context into consideration. For example, Jesus gave wine at a wedding – that was recreation. Times later, He held up wine at the Last Supper, and said, “This is my blood” (John 2:1-11; Mark 14:24; 2 Corinthians 2:15-16). All wine does not mean “party.” All wine does not mean “blood.” A smile can mean opposite things depending on who is smiling to whom, when, and how.
Discerning Signs
Until I went fishing with my grandfather, I did not know that in the open sea with no coasts in sight to the left and the right, it is still possible to tell the tide and the direction of water flow and the way back home merely by ‘reading’ the clouds or looking at the sun or the stars. I had always seen clouds in the sky, but they never meant that much to me. They had been merely mobile aerial decorations, and at sometimes, tellers of a coming rainstorm.
We all have eyes, and we all see signs, but not all seers understand what they see. Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in the Bible tells us not to assume that because someone has seen (or read) something, they understand it (Acts 8:30-31). That is where discernment (or interpretation) also becomes important. Pharaoh had a dream, but thank God there was Joseph, for interpretation and counsel or application (Genesis 41:1-38). Nebuchadnezzar saw clearly into the future, but he lacked interpretation. Thank God there was Daniel (Daniel 2:1-45; 4:1-33). Peter had a trance. He sought to know what it meant. The interpretation came later, at a more proper time than he had asked for it (Acts 10:9-21; 11:1-18).
Patterns as Signs
Like the signs in outdoor nature and the signs in the body, there are patterns in life that announce a spiritual state. For instance, if the men in a lineage often die at a certain age, if a woman repeatedly suffers an abortion at particular times in the pregnancy, if war often breaks out between certain communities after every ten years, if a child suffers from a condition that affected a parent and a grandparent and a great-grandparent, the pattern could be a sign of something to look into. Even when it is not the sign of a season, it is a voice saying something, as much as a prophet might have done.
Relational Signs
While Jacob served Laban his maternal uncle, there were signs he saw, which told him that his time with that man was up. God was later to speak to him in more dramatic ways to confirm that he had properly read his signs. The relational sign he had seen with his eyes and processed by wisdom was Heaven speaking to him by other means. He did not wait for a ‘vision’ or further ‘revelations.’ He prepared at once to leave. Had he missed those initial ‘signs’ of his season, he might have overstayed that location. From that point, then, what used to be a right location would have begun to turn wrong for him. In other words, the first voice he received was the voice of a sign, or the voice of God through a sign, before the other voices followed (Genesis 31:1-16).Let us assume that a girl was going to get married to a nice-looking church guy, and has been praying to know the will of God on the matter. The boy is very charming but often volatile in temperament, to her great dismay. Also, he usually has fine excuses for how he crosses the lines of decency with other females, resulting in great conflicts in their fragile relationship. By some strange luck, she comes upon very credible information that he has strong links with people of questionable financial disposition. Should she await a vision from heaven and ‘prophetic declarations’ to know what to do, or could all those observable details of concern be ‘signs’ to advise her next step? The answer should be obvious, unless to a deluded lovebird blinded by infatuation and other vanities.
In politics, in spiritual operations, in ministry, there are signs that also tell times. For example, about certain prophetic global end-time events, Jesus said that if we are able to “see all these things” we would know, from those “things” seen, that we have entered into a given prophetic season. Those “things” or signs are meant to make us to “know” that the time is “near.” In other words, those “things” (or signs) are like the long and short hands on the face of a clock – for those who can read signs (Matthew 24:32-33).
● By thepreacherdiary.com
