November 4, 2001

Prophets are sometimes thought of as fortune-tellers. Fortune-telling is a serious sin, if it is taken seriously, because it denies the freedom to choose what will become of us. To "choose your fate" is a contradiction in terms, because fate rules out free choice. Human beings are not victims of fate. They are children of providence. Prophets only got the reputation of foretelling events because they declared the will of God, and by so doing they were able to lay before human logic the consequences of rejecting that divine will. The belief in providence is one of the radical differences between Judaeo-Christianity and Islam which believes in fated destiny, or "kismet."

St. John the Baptist was the last and greatest of the old style prophets. There has been no need for prophecy since God revealed himself in Christ. "The Word was made flesh " However, the "prophetic office" of the Church continues, as the job of explaining what has already been revealed. No longer is it necessary to foretell the Messiah. So the prophet is now the reflective teacher, and any thoughtful Christian can anticipate at least in general terms what will happen when the truth of Christ is accepted or rejected. In that sense, two of the most prophetic voices in the twentieth century were the English journalist G.K.Chesterton and his friend the popular historian Hilaire Belloc. For starters, consider these comments:

In his newspaper column for the "Illustrated London News" exactly ninety years ago today (November 4, 1911), Chesterton wrote: "A good Moslem king was one who was strict in religion, valiant in battle, just in giving judgment among his people, but not one who had the slightest objection in international matters to removing his neighbour's landmark."

Then there is this a few years later in Belloc's book The Great Heresies: "Today we are accustomed to think of the Mohammedan world as something backward and stagnant, in all material affairs at least but not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, Mohammedan government centered at Constantinople had better artillery than had we Christians in the West. The last effort they made to destroy Christendom failed during the last years of the seventeenth century, only just over two hundred years ago. Vienna was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history: September 11, 1683."

Fr. George W. Rutler