Signal to Noise: The next Prophet.

It’s always the same. I read Isaiah 53 and I can’t get it out of my head.

“…(1) Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

(2) He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

(3) He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

(4) Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

(5) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

(6) We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

(7) He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

(8) By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.

(9) He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

(10) Yet it was the LORD ’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

(11) After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied ; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.

(12) Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors….”

Clarity.

Conciseness.

Lost in the signal to noise ratio of his day, like most of the prophets, ignored.

I’m left wondering, if the Lord sent voices to us now, with a message we don’t want to hear, would be listen?

Would we even recognize the next prophet sent by the Lord? We don’t think like God, He’s not bound to follow what human’s interpret was laid out in the Revelation given on Patmos.

Is it inconceivable that another lone voice calling out from a modern wilderness could be sent, at anytime, to herald anything? Would we hear? Has he already?

All around us is noise. “Influencers” intrude into our lives, hawking a lifestyle, a thematically dazzling but spiritually dead, vapid existence.

Others promote products they (schelp) use, our phones spying and listening to us talk, filling our feeds with targeted inducements while we give mega corporations the right to do this through “Terms of Service” agreements no one reads.

We’re told what beautiful is. (Spoiler alert: it’s seldom beautiful). Reels roll with manufactured moments, where the camera just happens to be on, filming fake emotions, passion, learning. Self Aggrandizement.

Like a cancer, it spread across cultures, countries, politics, demographics. Left and Right, don’t be fooled, the illness and rot has infested it all. Unirot.

Verse 2: “…He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…”

Could our modern society get past the outward physical appearance of the next prophet? If like in Verse 3, he arrives despised and in low esteem, If unwashed, undocumented, if he eschews the trappings of our modern digital cages, would he get even the time of day from us?

The money shot: “…We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way…”

My thesis is simple: Collectively, we would not accept a prophet who came today, we would not recognize him, there would be no consensus, his message would not be amplified by media or people holding the megaphones of our world.

What am I proposing? Live in a theocracy, where false prophets claim to know the path ahead, force us to walk it as they design? No thanks.

If we have all turned our own way, we have to take responsibility therefore for ourselves. We were given free will, we all have ears and eyes. We all have the ability to reason and think critically. Some will hear the message and some will not. Some will comport themselves in alignment with a moral compass and others will be hypocrites.

For me, for what I choose to do, is to consume wisely. The people I read, listen to, watch, they wield far more influence than I am often willing to admit. My follows, my subscriptions, my likes, my smiley emojis, they are my alignment.

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart…”

We’ve been given divine guidance, we’ve been given the gift of Easter, the sacrifice of the Lamb for our sins. We’ve been told how it ends.

In the middle of the book of life is a bunch of blank pages. Take up your pen. Write out how you plan to navigate a course to your own salvation.

For all of us, good luck. I guess we will know on the other side how we did.