Another Prophet Falls

I was planning on writing an article this week on a major moral issue. To expound it from different sources, I copied a television monologue from Tucker Carlson to encourage you to watch because of its brilliance and clarity.

That topic will be postponed for another day. 

Tucker Carlson was released from Fox News on Monday morning, April 24, sending shockwaves through the media world and nation.

Here’s my perspective on the fall of an American prophet.

Another Prophet Falls

Some of you may have never heard of Tucker Carlson (though most have). I don’t usually recommend Wikipedia, but the Carlson bio might be helpful here on the life of this television news commentator.

Tucker Carlson spent the past fourteen years rising in the ranks of Fox News from a contributor (seven years) to the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (seven years) which became the number one news show on cable.

Tucker replaced Bill O’Reilly of “The O’Reilly Factor,” (the number one cable news show for sixteen straight years) when O’Reilly was also forced out by Fox exactly six years ago this month (April 19, 2017)).

Bill O’Reilly then started “The No Spin News,” now the largest independent news agency in the world. It’s my number one source for world and national news. Bill is honest and fact-based.

Tucker Carlson and his famous monologues were my second choice for news clarity. 

In his prime at the age of fifty-four, I considered Tucker Carlson one of the clearest biblical worldview prophets to government of the past decade. Carlson was Episcopalian on a Catholic-dominated network.

The Catholic roots of Fox News didn’t faze me. Catholics led the pro-life fight in American for decades when Protestant-evangelical leadership was MIA. During the past twenty years, Fox was the only major media outlet–and a powerful one–that still championed the biblical view of God-given human rights and responsibilities. 

Fox News (and Rush Limbaugh) were very influential in the election of Donald Trump in 2016 with his pro-biblical worldview values and love of America (despite a pugnacious personality).

I started watching Fox years ago for this reason. It was a lone media prophetic voice of truth in an ocean of growing secular disinformation. 

Bill O’Reilly was Fox’s first  news “prophet.” Tucker Carlson might be its last. 

Prophet? Let me explain.

I use three different words to describe people who “speak God’s truth” into our lives (the basic definition of prophesy). There were “Prophets” with a capital “P” that God inspired to write nearly half of the Old Testament books–from Isaiah to Malachi. They stand in the unique category of “divine inspiration.”

Then there are modern day “prophets” — with a small “p” like Agabus (Acts 21:10,11 who spoke God’s words to Paul) to modern-day heroes like David Wilkerson, Keith Green, and Joy Dawson. 

I prefer to call Church Age “prophets” prophetic voices–a more humble term. There are multitudes of them as Acts 2:17 suggests. Really, anyone who speaks truth to people or power is being used of God as a prophetic voice.

I know from experience.

I never chose to be a prophet with a small “p,” i.e. prophetic voice. But God did. Many times I didn’t want to speak God’s truth to people or groups. But God’s word burned within me (Jeremiah 20:9)  and I had to be obedient.

God took me to 150 cities and towns in America and sixty nations around world over a forty year period as a prophetic voice in the Church. That story will be told in my new book coming out in August called One Small Life. I made mistakes as all small “p” prophets do.

But I spoke for God–as many of you have also done.

God has many prophetic voices in every arena of life from sports, the arts, and entertainment, to business, media, and government.

Tucker Carlson at the Fox News channel was an important prophetic voice. He will be missed. The exodus from Fox has begun. Multitudes are canceling their subscriptions. Tucker Carlson’s Twitter account immediately gained 100,000 followers after the Fox announcement.

He will find another platform for his powerful commentary. But his expulsion from the Fox “pulpit” darkens the American landscape and possibly the 2024 elections.

More on that later.

Tucker Carlson delivered a speech after his last Fox News show on Friday night, April 21, at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala celebration near Washington, D.C. It was an appreciation message to a mixed audience, but showing many traces of his prophetic calling.

Here are a few of his words:

God sends messages. We can’t immediately translate all of them.

There’s a counterbalance to the badness. It’s called goodness. 

For every ten people who are putting “he and him” in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures, there’s one person who says, “No, I’m not doing that. Sorry. I don’t want to fight, but I’m not doing that. It’s a betrayal of what I think is true. It’s a betrayal of my conscience, of my faith, of my sense of myself, of my dignity as a human being, of my autonomy. I am not a slave. I am a free citizen, and I’m not doing that. And there’s nothing you can do to me to make me do it.

He almost sounded like Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms at one point:

And I hope it won’t come to that, but if it does come to that, here I am. Here I am. It’s [the apostle] Paul on trial. Here I am. (Luther famously said, “Here I stand.”)

On his prophetic bent:

I’m really interested in cause and effect. And as I noted at the outset of my remarks and my ability to predict the future, working on that, but because I’m paid to predict things, I try and think a lot about what connects certain outcomes that I should have seen before they occurred.

On speaking the truth to people:

The truth is contagious. Lying is, but the truth is as well. And the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this, I don’t want to get supernatural on you, but you are filled with this power from somewhere else.

Try it. Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become.

On speaking it to power:

When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, “Hey, let’s tear it down,” what you’re watching is not a political movement. It’s evil.

Prophetic voices need to be humble:

I’m saying that to you not as some kind of evangelist, I’m literally saying that to you as an Episcopalian, the Samaritans of our time. I’m coming to you from the most humble and lowly theological position you can. I’m literally an Episcopalian. And even I have concluded it might be worth taking just ten minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will.

And prophetic voices bring hope.

But we can also see rising in the distance, new things, new institutions led by new people who are every bit as brave as the people who came before us. Amen.

Pray for Tucker Carlson’s future. Pray for Fox News.

And commit yourself to speak God’s truth whenever he calls upon you.