In the Peacemaking Remnant, Zdravko Plantak pushes the church to have a more comprehensive view of what it means to be a prophetic people by seeking a clearer picture of the prophetic role in the Bible. In the chapter Plantak identifies four essential elements of the prophetic teachings. First the messages of the prophets “are a matter of life and death.” The second element is God’s care for the weak in the society. The third element is that “God seeks justice and obvedience rather than formal worship or scrifice.” The fourth element is that the message is “of eschatological-apocalyptic character.”
Plantak notes that often our understanding of being a prophetic movement means that we are often either “preoccupied with making predictions” and/or “a movement with a special interest in studying and interpreting predictive prophecy.” In contrast, Plantak agrees with Jack Provonsha in noting that we should “think of ourselves as a people with a [prophetic] mission to the world”
Will we be prophetic in the world is the question. Will we look at the whole prophetic utterance and not just Daniel and Revelation? If we do this then we will have to ask questions about God’s stated care for the poor and the oppressed? What does that mean for a prophetic church? We will have to ask questions of ourself, Do we as a church demonstrate the principles of the prophets in the life of our church? ?Let us move on to being a prophetic movement in the world demosntrating the Kingdom of God within itself.