The key to the source of prophetic understanding is revelation, which is to say, God's viewpoint or the direct impartation of God's reality, which is always at variance with man's. That is why it needs to be revealed and the Spirit of God is the medium of revelation. If we are averse to the Spirit, closed to the Spirit, fearful of the Spirit, unfamiliar with the Spirit, then we forfeit by necessity the revelation. There is a world of difference in knowing something that is true by creedal and intellectual assent, as opposed to knowing it by revelation. If it comes mentally, however correct it is, it has no capacity to bring a corresponding life change.
Revelation has the power to change .
I am a man of unclean lips. This is the prince of prophets speaking, and he did not see it before because every in God waits upon revelation, that which is given from God and must come down from above. Revelation is dependent upon humility, for God gives grace to the humble, and what a grace revelation is. It is the source of truth and of the deepest understanding of the reality of God that cannot be obtained in any other way. It is not just an alternative way, but rather it is a singular way.