Role of Prophets in New Zealand

In an article called Prophets and Rulers, I explained that prophets have quite a limited role in speaking to political leaders who have chosen not to follow Jesus. This is the situation in New Zealand.

There are almost no Christians in our government, so they are not really interested in God’s wisdom, so prophesying to political leaders will mostly be a waste of time. Key political leaders believe that they were persecuted by the church in the past, so they are angry with Christians and do not want to hear from them.

Prophets should mostly be speaking to church leaders to explain what is happening in the spiritual realms and what they should do to prepare for the inevitable future.

New Zealand has a mixed history, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, and sometimes really bad. However, for most of our 170-year history, a sufficient number of people have trusted in God and served him. This has released tremendous blessing in the land.

Unfortunately, in recent years the faith that sustained the nation has declined. In the past, a significant portion of the people trusted God, and those who didn’t trust him still honoured Jesus. Now there are far fewer people who trust him, but far worse, most of those who don’t trust him do not honour him either. A significant number now hate Jesus and those who follow him.

This change has given the spiritual powers of evil a stronghold in the nation. Because the people of the nation have not been taught about spiritual things, they do not even know what that means.

We live in a multi-dimensional universe in which the spiritual dimensions exist in parallel to our three-dimensional physical world. The spiritual realms operate in continuity with the physical/natural world that we observe. Most humans cannot see into the spiritual dimensions, so we can only observe the physical side of existence. However, events in our physical world are shaped by activities in the spiritual realm. When we look at the physical world in isolation, we miss much of what is happening in the universe (Kingdom Authority p.28).

A war is going on in the spiritual realms that most people in New Zealand are not even aware of, and many do not even know which side they are on. Much of what happens here on earth is the consequence of events in the spiritual realms, and what happens here, has a significant effect on the relative strength of the two sides in the spiritual struggle.

Over the last few decades, the people have squeezed God out of New Zealand because they thought that we did not need him, and they did not want him messing with our lives, but without realising it, they have given his place to the spiritual powers of evil. These forces are full of hatred, anger and violence. They love to kill, destroy and steal. By shutting out the God who was restraining them, we have strengthened their position here on earth. They held back for a while to give us a false sense of security, but now they are flexing their muscles and having a go to see what they can do with their power.

The situation in New Zealand is not as good as it once was because we have chosen the wrong side in a serious spiritual battle, and the good side is losing, while the bad side is winning. Therefore, we should not be surprised that anxiety, distress and fear are becoming more common. The reason that both personal pain and economic troubles are getting worse is that we have unwittingly placed ourselves under the authority of the spiritual powers of evil. Not surprisingly, they are doing what they always do when they get an opportunity. Until they are put back in the box, we can expect that they will continue to surprise us with more and more of their evil tricks. Things are likely to get worse before they get better.

The people of the nation have put their faith in political power to solve social and economic problems, but unless the spiritual problem is solved, the efforts of political leaders will fail. People who have trusted them will eventually become disillusioned.

The role of prophets in this context is to explain to church leaders what is happening and how to prepare their people for what lies ahead.