Prophetic Witness Quotes

There is no doubt that the biblical concept of the Kingdom calls for a ministry to the suffering, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the hungry and whomever is dehumanized by an unjust society. In abstract, almost all of us can affirm this with enthusiasm. When it is the vocation, however, of one of our number to make this Gospel imperative, a matter demanding and requiring us to change our comfortable ways, then many of us fall away. The prophet has never been popular among his other contemporaries. He has been stoned, beheaded, crucified and shot. If not killed, we have been all too ready to vilify him or her in the name of God, little realizing that it may well be God who sent the prophet to challenge our complacency. ~ Urban T. Holmes III

Denial - usually in some form of rationalization - is the primary device that humans use to deal with their own wrongness. It was the first thing out of the mouths of Adam and Eve after they sinned, and it continues up to the latest edition of the newspaper. The prophetic witness from God must throw itself against the massive weight of group and individual denial, often institutionalized and subtly built into our customary ways of speaking and interacting. ~ Dallas Willard

Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, "God told me ... " As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness. ~ Brennan Manning

The Gospel calls individual Christians to live lives of honesty, integrity and concern for the common good.. to create circles of integrity.., networks of solidarity which can expand to embrace and transform society by their prophetic witness. ~ Pope Francis

Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone or simply to walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the whole community.
This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind where each dialect is not only heard but understood. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

I worked for 20 directors as a production designer, most male. I was on the set to witness firsthand a range of sometimes atrocious emotions - well-documented firings, yellings, fights between directors and actors, hookers, abusive things, budget overages, lack of preparation. A man gets a standing ovation for crying because he's so sensitive, but a woman is shamed. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

We can get so wrapped up in looking for the next big move or change of season the Lord might bring us into that we miss His will for us in daily walking out the calling of being a prophetic singer. ~ Anna Blanc

Every believer is a witness whether he wants to be or not. ~ Donald Barnhouse

The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Let the one before you not witness your inner fight;
Keep your chaotic thoughts and emotions tight.
For now, it is your soul that I test,
Which is where yourself you manifest.
It's high time you become truly wise;
Learn not to fall to evil in disguise.
Confuse the one before you, as you are confused;
Never let your feelings be used or abused. ~ Melita Tessy

I think hip-hop can be prophetic and progressive, and at the same time, the dominant forms tend to be homophobic, misogynistic and something that we need to critically call into question. ~ Cornel West

A witness. An impartial account. The fever of self doubt had broken long ago. That's not to say I trusted my memory absolutely, but I trusted it as much as I trusted anybody else's, and more than some people's. ~ Tara Westover

If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Although I know of no reference to Christ ever commenting on scientific work, I do know that He said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Thus I am certain that, were He among us today, Christ would encourage scientific research as modern man's most noble striving to comprehend and admire His Father's handiwork. The universe as revealed through scientific inquiry is the living witness that God has indeed been at work. ~ Wernher Von Braun

When we speak of God's will, we are usually speaking only of some recognizable sign of His will. The signpost that points to a distant city is not the city itself, and sometimes the signs that point to a great place are in themselves insignificant and contemptible. But we must follow the direction of the signpost if we are to get to the end of our journey.

Everything that exists and everything that happens bears witness to the will of God. It is one thing to see a sign and another thing to interpret that sign correctly. However, our first duty is to recognize signs for what they are. If we do not even regard them as indications of anything beyond themselves, we will not try to interpret them.

Of all the things and all the happenings that proclaim God's will to the world, only very few are capable of being interpreted by men. And of these few, fewer still find a capable interpreter. So that the mystery of God's will is made doubly mysterious by the signs that veil it from our eyes. To know anything at all of God's will we have to participate, in some manner, in the vision of the prophets: men who were always alive to the divine light concealed in the opacity of things and events, and who sometimes saw glimpses of that light where other men saw nothing but ordinary happenings.

And yet if we are too anxious to pry into the mystery that surrounds us we will lose the prophet's reverence and exchange it for the impertinence of soothsayers. We must b ~ Thomas Merton

We can accept death. It is the dying that is not and never will be acceptable. For us who have to witness dying, it must always feel as if the very fabric of life were being torn apart. ~ May Sarton

For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. ~ Michael Hayden

9/11 allowed us to witness the ordinary face of goodness in the love that those about to die brought with them to work that day. It is fitting that we refer to a large segment of the church year as Ordinary Time because it describes the look of the true faith that, as we read of the Kingdom, is spread about us. ~ Eugene Kennedy

The purpose of God's calling ... is not to give His people a little enjoyment of the animal life and the vegetable life in Egypt; it is to bring them into a spacious land flowing with milk and honey. ~ Witness Lee

To love someone is to love the process of them, not just the way they are but the way they grow. To witness a human's personal evolution is to worship at the altar of their true selfhood. And all you have to do is listen well. Listen to what they say, what they don't say, and the context in which they're saying it. Keep listening. And then listen some more. ~ Emily Foster

Evolutionary psychology has often been a field whose most prominent practitioners get embroiled in controversy - witness the 2010 case of Harvard professor Marc Hauser, whose graduate students came forward to say he'd been faking evidence for years. ~ Annalee Newitz

Unhappiness is a warped and distorted perception of reality. When a man says he is unhappy with his life and gives a written list of why he is dissatisfied, he has given a frank account of the state of his mind. If his mind is neglected and starved from stillness of thought, the nature of his thinking will reflect turbulence, anxiety and a lack of fulfilment.
However, when he is able to transcend thought, by being the observer (the witness) of his thinking and can take control of his mind, tranquility begins to flow through him. He is no longer a slave to his mental concepts, distinctions and limiting beliefs. ~ Christopher Dines

The rule for social witness is that faithfulness is a higher virtue than effectiveness. Some things ought indeed to be done regardless of whether by human calculations they promise to be effective; and other things ought not to be done, no matter how effective they may promise to be. ~ George Hunsinger

I was taken in the Spirit to the burning bush on Mount Horeb, Moses' "first ascension," and allowed to witness the encounter he had with the Lord there. Throughout the visitation, I was enabled to know and feel the thoughts and emotions of Moses' inner being ... There was a Holy Narrator beside me who helped me understand what I saw and heard, and he made references to relevant passages of Scripture. There were other Biblical figures also present - Joshua, Samuel, David, and even the Lord Jesus were there. ~ Bob Hartley

I have long trusted dreams as prophetic visions. I do not mean that they foretell the future, only that they illuminate the present, when my eyes are closed, so that I may see clearly. ~ Sheldon B. Kopp

Three means by which God assures us that we do have eternal life: 1. The promises of His Word, 2. The witness of the Spirit in our hearts, 3. The transforming work of the Spirit in our lives. ~ Jerry Bridges

The kindly search for growth, the gracious desire to exist of the flowers, my near ecstasy at existing ong them
The privilege to witness my existence - you too must seek the sun... ~ Allen Ginsberg

From my own personal experience I have consistently witness self-proclaimed Christians, get angry over insignificant issues, be unforgiving, and judgmental all while never looking in the mirror and proclaiming to the world their love for the lord. If I were not already a Christian I would have questioned the faith due to the representatives. ~ Carl Henegan

And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days. ~ Howard Thurman

The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo

It Rained for Two Days Straight

Yesterday, Ryan told me his grandfather was admitted to the hospital. It was raining the way it rains in the movies, like whoever does the dishes left the faucet running, heavy drops polishing everything in the city dark. We ran from one drooling awning to the next, quicker, then slower, quicker, slower. If one had watched from the sky, our bodies would have looked like two small needles being pulsed forward by some invisible machine, stitching the streets together. Today, Patric was left by a girl he did not love but did not not love. He told me it was impossible to imagine himself both alone and whole. It was still raining--the sky's silly metaphor for sadness, untimely, startling, the way it makes the whole world more honest. Death is like this, too. Heartache, also. The sudden absence of what was there but now not. I touched Patrick's shoulder, attempting to pass my human to his. I sent Ryan a poem. I cannot do more than this art of bearing witness, to be both the bucket and the mirror, to say, yes, you are here but I am here also, to say you won't be here forever, or to say nothing and just walk beside each other in the rain. ~ Sierra DeMulder

I was pursuing medicine to bear witness to the twinned mysteries of death, its experiential and biological manifestations: at once deeply personal and utterly impersonal. ~ Paul Kalanithi

I'm letting ye court my sister. Give me your word that ye will nae tell anyone what ye saw, especially Anna."
Ceana shifted from foot to foot.
"What did ye see anyway?"
His eyes grew amused.l
"I didnae witness ye lock lips with the MacKay man, if that's what ye're asking. ~ Victoria Roberts

There are two other SLA members who have been granted immunity and then also, one of the SLA members had confessed to two other people, and those people, I'm sure, will be called as witnesses, as they were at the grand jury. ~ Patty Hearst

Was it for pleasure that you followed them
Putting off your slippers at the door
To dance barefoot and blood-foot in the snow?
No.

What then? What glamoured you? No glamour at all;
Only that I remembered I was young
And had to put myself into a song.
How could time bear witness that I was tall,
Silken, and made for love, if I did not so?
I do not know.

- Earl Cassilis's Lady ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. ~ Whittaker Chambers

The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit. ~ William Lane Craig

Human marriage has always been intended by God to serve as a prophetic whisper of the eternal marriage. Every real marriage in the world today manages that statement to some degree, however weakly, because that is what marriage is. Very few realities in our lives bear such a sacred meaning and deserve such special consideration. ~ Ray Ortlund

Woodstock happened in August 1969, long before the Internet and mobile phones made it possible to communicate instantly with anyone, anywhere. It was a time when we weren't able to witness world events or the horrors of war live on 24-hour news channels. ~ Richie Havens

And I want to be one of them. I want to be one of them so, so badly - to fit into this balance, their history, the wolf pack way of them. I see it now, why my mom wants that for me. I see how you can't help but want it, if you get close enough to witness a group of friends knitted together like this. ~ Emery Lord

How comforting to witness a fictional person (who is also, miraculously, ourselves as we read) suffering the same agonies of a saccharine dismissal and, importantly, surviving. ~ Alain De Botton

The mere fact of an American being present could help save the lives of innocent people. That's why I believe in the importance of bearing witness, to become a voice for the voiceless. ~ Bianca Jagger

When I am running I inhabit and exit my body in the same moment. I bear witness to the harshest of physical sensations, even while I feel myself flying free and away. I do not want to remember what has happened to me. I do not want to reflect on the past. I can't in a way. I'm not made for regrets. ~ Carrie Snyder