A Trio of Gifts from the Trinity
In the Kingdom of the Triune-God good things come in THREES. Trinitarians espouse and expound the Truth that the God-Head consists of THREE Persons. All verily God, perfectly united in essence and purpose, yet simultaneously separate and distinct. Three in One. The overwhelming preponderance of Scripture proves Trinitarian Truth. All other teachings and theological propositions are heretical “doctrines of demons” posited and propagated by “deceitful spirits” (1 Tim. 4:1). (I believe it is high time for straight talk about this long-ago settled non-issue among Last Day believers, and that all other nonsensical notions of Modalism and Unitarianism still extant in the Neo-Pentecostal branch of the Church, be put soundly and finally to rest!) Read the rest of this entry »

Cameras are ubiquitous in this techno-crazed world we live in today! They are absolutely EVERYWHERE! Seems as though 50% or more of people living on the planet have either a digital camera or the camera on their cell phone or other mobile device. Cameras silently monitor our streets and just about every public square. It’s truly George Orwell’s 1984 in 2009! There’s zillions of photos circulated around the globe every day in this techno-age, capturing just about every kind of action, behavior, subject, and event in existence. But, oh! how desperate is our need for a SPIRITUAL camera! If only one could be invented!

We know the world has only one set of eyes, one set of five senses to experience their own personal panorama of life, moment by moment, day by day, and one brain or mind to process all their senses take in. We know they are limited entirely to a carnal mind…the Bible tells us so…a mind corrupted by the flesh to process the trillions of electronic pulses sent to their brains for processing every hour of every day. But the conclusions the brain generates is based on the software with which it is programmed, which, unfortunately, is the carnal mind, the mind filled with, set on the flesh, the Bible explains.

But, the true believer, the one who has genuinely been BORN AGAIN, experiencing an authentic regeneration of their human spirit, by means of an infusion with the very Holy Spirit of God…ahhhh…now it’s an entirely different story for THAT person, the CHILD OF GOD! They have become a NEW CREATURE in whom NEW THINGS have come! One of those new things that have come to the new creature in Christ, lo and behold, is “THE MIND OF CHRIST!” The “mind of the Spirit” it is also termed in God’s Word!

The natural man — the person who lives life based entirely based on the conclusions his carnal mind engenders and tells him — “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But the SUPERnatural man, the person who has been born again and who lives their life not based solely on what their natural mind tells them, but tunes into the mind of the Spirit to apprehend the “mind of Christ” or what the Spirit is saying, discerning, and informing within the human spirit, sees, hears, senses, and processes things differently, often entirely antithetically.

True, genuine, authentic prophets are like that…they see, hear, discern, and process things differently, and volumes could be and have been and will yet be written about that. What prophets “bring to the (spiritual) table” to use a common phrase, is so thoroughly undervalued, primarily because it is so unknown by most believers, including most leaders, unfortunately. So few have any clue what a genuine prophet is or does or brings to the church. Perhaps there is a clue in the fact that the only Fivefold Ministry function Jesus Himself said carried with it a special “reward” for merely “receiving” it in the form of what it is and is intended by God to be is that of the prophet. Though just about every time I have invoked the concept among ministers over nearly three and a half decades of ministry it was met with the icy silence of suppressed contempt, I will not shrink back from saying what the Lord has whispered in my ear so very many times, which is that prophets have a special place in the heart of God and a special function in the Church that He is building and is the Head of.

For decades God has been rearing and raising up a company of prophets, many of whom, despite the purported “prophetic movements” promoted by “prophetic organizations” over the past couple decades, are just now emerging from the wilderness and being released and sent forth by Lord as His surrogate spokesmen. My humble belief is that only a precious few claiming to be “prophets,” who walk in and operate out of the OFFICE of the prophet, in the last quarter of the 20th Century, actually were/are. There are a few…and God is releasing a lot more in the 21st Century. Some of them are spiritual fathers or mentors, advisers to all of the Fivefold Ministry, but they will especially be spiritual fathers to younger and developing prophets.

Oh how the Church NEEDS PROPHETS! And, God is SENDING them! But, too often the Body of Christ, reject them still, even sincere and obedient-minded believers, mostly I believe because they really don’t know what a genuine prophet looks like. The late Leonard Ravenhill was a genuine prophet to the Church, like most so far, undervalued, under-appreciated. But, thank God, before He left us and graduated to Glory, he took out his prophetic spiritual camera, using technology of the Spirit, and snapped this photograph with the lens of the Spirit to give us this awesome and glorious “picture of a prophet!”

The Picture Of A Prophet
By Leonard Ravenhill

The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.

Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, “No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected.” The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his “brand name.”

The group, challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him “Man of the year” when he refers to them as habituates of the synagogue of Satan!

The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work is to call into line those who are out of line! He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality and spirituality.

In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers, there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God for a prophet!

The function of the prophet, as Austin-Sparks once said, “has almost always been that of recovery.”

The prophet is God’s detective seeking for a lost treasure. The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his measure of unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him.

He has no price tags.
He is totally “otherworldly.”
He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile.
He marches to another drummer!
He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration.
He is a “seer” who comes to lead the blind.
He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a “thus
saith the Lord.”
He shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of impending judgment.
He lives in “splendid isolation.”
He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright.
His message is “repent, be reconciled to God or else…!”
His prophecies are parried.
His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void.
He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.
He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and honored with epitaphs when dead.
He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few “make the grade” in his class.
He is friendless while living and famous when dead.
He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint by posterity.
He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of Life to those who listen.
He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years.
He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation.
He announces, pronounces, and denounces!
He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire.
He talks to men about God.
He carries the lamp of truth amongst heretics while he is lampooned by men.
He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing.
He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in the marketplace.
He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual.
He has passion, purpose and pugnacity.
He is ordained of God but disdained by men.

Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet!

I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming shortages in our national life: bread, fuel, energy. I read between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel that the “seven years of plenty” are over for us. The “seven years of famine” are ahead. But the greatest famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11).

Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. “Come-outers” have “come out” and settled, too, without a nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour and sick spirituality?

GOD’S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.

There is a terrible vacuum in evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man totally otherworldly. The man rejected by other men, even other good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely committed, too negative and unsociable.

Let him be as plain as John the Baptist.
Let him for a season be a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and stagnant “churchianity.”
Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.
Let him, too, say and live, “This ONE thing I do.”
Let him reject ecclesiastical favors.
Let him be self-abasing, nonself-seeking, nonself-projecting, nonself-righteous, nonself-glorying, nonself-promoting.
Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself but only that which will move men to God.
Let him come daily from the throne room of a holy God, the place where he has received the order of the day.
Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions who are deaf through the clatter of shekels milked from this hour of material mesmerism.
Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he has seen a vision no man in this century has seen.

God send us this Moses to lead us from the wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon. God have mercy! Send us PROPHETS!

Copyright © 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale Texas – http://www.ravenhill.org/

In an earlier post in which I was commenting on matters inherent in the Grassley Investigation, I wrote: “A ‘Day of Reckoning’ is surely coming to many irresponsible and unscrupulous ministries.” I prophesied that we are about see a fulfillment of the Prophet Malachi’s prophecy (Mal. 3) in the Church that will begin with the leaders.” I also wrote:

“…it is a shameful indictment on the modern church, as well as on purporting neo-prophets that a Senator’s spokesman has to be the spokesman God uses to issue the prophetic rebuke concerning the excesses found in some portions of the Neo-Pentecostal Church, ‘The Christian public should have demanded a higher level of accountability a long time ago.’”

I further prophesied a release and sending forth of true prophets God would be initiating this year of 2008, who will come “proclaiming piercing prophetic messages that will penetrate the lukewarmness and complacency, and in some cases the apostasy, presently pervading the Church at-large, and whose central theme will be the first word of the Gospel — ‘Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’”

I then proffered a spirit-inspired prayer on behalf of the corporate Body of Christ:

Send us, O God, those true prophets Leonard Ravenhill envisioned who know no compromise, have no price tag, cannot be bought out or bought off; who daily breathe the rarified air of divine inspiration; who march to a different drumbeat; seers sent to lead the blind; Noah-like “preachers of righteousness” who are unabashedly forthright, unashamedly outright, having lives that are upright, but who claim no birthright; dwellers in splendid isolation in the natural realm, yet in the heights of God in the spirit realm; firebrands possessed with passion, purpose, and pugnacity of the Spirit; sent-ones sent into the valleys of spiritual malaise and waywardness with a heart-piercing, conscience-pricking, “Thus saith the Lord!” God, send us, true prophets!

[If you did not receive or read that post, click here.]

That prayer, which has been prayed in essence by many other agonizing intercessors over the years, and more and more as we’ve seen the day drawing nearer, doubtless has been heard in Heaven and is being answered as I write. But, Friends, I come to tell you that the prophets God sends as His Spirit-Spokesmen assuredly will be nothing like the limp-wristed, mamby-pamby, compromised, Casper-Milquetoast, worldly-minded, smooth-talking orators spewing out a perfectly scripted and memorized easy-listening, all-positive, “it’s-all-good,” no-pain, self-improvement, 3-step message, who the churches welcome today with open arms, as they make their showy appearance dressed down or blinged up in the latest worldly fashion vogue, sporting the latest hip, weirdo, hair-do and facial-hair-do, along with the obligatory outrageous and mutilating body-tatoos and piercings, emulating the latest rising Hollywood or entertainment star. NO WAY!

You can know with certainty that these fearless prophets God sends will come preaching a polemic message that will sear your ear-hairs, make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, and cause a full-body outbreak of goose-bumps on top of your goose-bumps! More importantly, their polemic prophetic preaching will penetrate the most apathetic soul and pierce the most resistent conscience! It can scarely be said any better than what John Eckhardt wrote in his masterful treatise on the apostolic office, Moving In The Apostolic, which I highly recommend you read to gain an understanding of the apostolic office. The following is an excerpt from that book.

Polemic Preaching
During the reformation of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other reformers were known for their polemic preaching and writing. Polemic means an aggressive attack on, or refutation of the opinions or principles of another. It is the art or practice of disputation or controversy.

The word is derived from the Greek word “polemikos,” meaning warlike or hostile. The reformers aggressively attacked the error and hypocrisy of the established Church, and defended the truth of the gospel against those who attacked their teachings. Their major concern was that the truth be preached and taught at any cost. They would die for the truth; truth was the only thing that mattered.

Today’s Church knows little about polemic preaching and writing. If one stands up for the truth of what he or she believes, that person is labeled dogmatic and non-ecumenical. The spirit of compromise has entered many churches, and they are not as concerned about the truth. But the Lord has always raised up defenders of the faith, people who are not afraid to preach and defend the truth. They recognize that the truth must not only be preached, but defended. If men do not defend the truth, lies will prevail. If lies prevail, people walk in bondage and deception. This is another reason why the church needs the ministry of the apostle.

Apostles have an anointing to defend and confirm the truth. They walk in boldness and proclaim the truth in spite of persecution and opposition. The Lord puts a word in their mouths to confound adversaries or opponents, or as the King James Version calls them, the “gainsayers.” To gainsay means to deny, dispute, contradict and oppose.

For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist (Luke 21:15, KJV).

The Williams translation says, “All your opponents combined will not be able to resist and refute.”

According to Titus 1:9, a bishop—overseer, pastor—should “by sound doctrine” both “exhort” and “convince” the gainsayers (KJV). This Scripture goes on to say:

For there are many insubordinate, both the idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not, for the sake of dishonest gain (Titus 1:10,11, NKJV, italics added).

The Word of God says that there are mouths that must be stopped. The only way to stop some mouths is through polemic preaching, “sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you” (Titus 2:8).

The Beck translation says, “so that anyone who opposes us will feel foolish.” The Norlie translation says, “Your message should be true, your language correct and not open to criticism. In that way, your opponent may be put to shame.”

The art of the polemic is speaking the right words with apostolic wisdom to put to shame those that oppose the truth. “How forceful are right words” (Job 6:25). The correct argument, using the right words, carries tremendous force. This is not the wishy-washy Christianity that we see so much of today. This is a return to apostolic Christianity.

And this is what the Lord is restoring to the Church. Don’t let it surprise or confuse you. It is necessary for the Church to continue to walk in the truth. The Lord is raising up apostles whose words will shake the Church. Their words will be as a bulldozer in the spirit plowing through the lies the enemy has sown in the church. As a result, the truth will prevail, and multitudes will be set free. [end]

[Quote from: MOVING IN THE APOSTOLIC – God’s Plan To Lead His Church to the Final Victory, By John Eckhardt]

“The Glory of the Latter House shall be greater than the Former!” (Hag. 2:9)

The hour we live in without equivocation is the most spiritually profound of all of history, and certainly of all “His-story.” Indeed, it can be no less when we are told that all of the historical Biblical events comprising His-story—i.e., the history of Israel—“happened to them as an example (illustration) and they were written for OUR instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11; cf., Rom. 15:4). God is therein declaring that the entire content of the Old Testament—the events it chronicles and the wisdom and instruction those events illustrate—are and always were intended for the true end-time believers comprising the end-times Church that Jesus is building!

Moreover, our spiritual assimilation of the morals illustrated and reflected in those Old Testament events and examples coupled with those given us in the New Testament will play a major role in producing the outcome that the Glory (tangible manifested presence of God) that abides upon those comprising the “Latter House”—the house of the faithful High Priest, who was faithful over His house as a SON (Heb. 3:1-6), that is, the Church Jesus is building—will far exceed any Glory that was ever upon the Former House—the house of Moses, who was faithful over his house as a SERVANT.

While the faithfulness of God’s SERVANT Moses produced per the Law of Reproduction a succession, intermittent as it was, of SERVANTS, the faithfulness of the SON over His House produces the surpassing results of “bringing many SONS unto Glory” (Heb. 2:10). By virtue of the fact that the House Jesus is building is a House of SONS, versus SERVANTS, the Glory of the Latter House MUST indeed be GREATER than the Former, for the Glory of SONS of God versus SERVANTS of God is like unto the glory of the sun compared to the glory of the moon (a non-illuminary planet).

God’s ultimate intent in the Creation of the Cosmos has always been to produce a burgeoning House or Family of SONS—SONS OF GOD! The choice and perfect Seed He sowed—His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON (itself one of the inscrutable mysteries of God, in that He was “begotten” and not “made”)—spiritually germinated and ever since has been producing like unto its Kind, that is, SONS! Abraham and his lineage, the Patriarchs, were SERVANTS. Moses was a SERVANT. David was a SERVANT. Though the magnitude of their servitude and faithfulness was incomparable, their highest expectation could only ever be to produce a legacy of SERVANTS, reflecting the Glory of SERVITUDE.

But, the SON, His legacy shall be an innumerable company of SONS, who “shall be like Him,” reflecting His Image—the Glory of SONSHIP! And, now, in these days, more than ever before in the history of the Creation, the Creation groans and writhes in the excruciating pangs of childbirth as it with rapt expectation awaits the revelation of the SONS of God.

Reader, I implore you to keep listening to this word. Stay attuned to the Spirit to hear this! Your life and the life of those you love depends on it!

Absolutely every segment and aspect of the foundations of all the systems of this world are unraveling and disassembling as God’s Spirit is shaking every thing that can be shaken to orchestrate a massive removal of all those things that can be shaken (earthly, humanly-made things) in order that only those things that cannot be shaken (Kingdom things, things of God) shall remain. So corrupted have the very foundations, fabric, and functions of the world’s systems become as the consequence of the utter corruption of its delegated stewards, the “sons of men” (Ps. 115:16), that the unseen elements that have been providing it stability, order, and cohesion, are being systematically removed at breakneck speed. While people go obliviously about the business of their self-consumed lives, the world we live in—that is, the systems that comprise human existence—has deorbited and is hurtling downward in its final spirals unto utter perdition. Do not be deluded, Church: nothing can or will stop its rapid descent! The world is on a collision course with Hell!

The end-times Church, the True Church, the Church Jesus is building, is not OF the world, but it is IN the world, for now. So, in this hour when the world is spiraling out of control in this final irreversible, precipitous decline, what is God’s message to the True Church? His message is the same as it has always been:

2 Corinthians 6:17,18
“Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.

2 Corinthians 6:14,16
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

These are God’s words of advice to His children in these last days. The world is indeed in the process of passing away, along with all its self-indulging and self-consuming lusts, including the most damning lust of all—greed, or covetousness, or the love of money—which is the root of all the evil that pervades this dark and deceitful world. God’s people must be delivered out from under the strong delusion of the world and the spell of its lusts. But, seldom in the annals of history have the captives been liberated through self-deliverance. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to set the captives free. Captives rarely gain freedom through their own efforts. God always sends a DELIVERER! A Deliverer like Moses unto the Israelites and Jesus unto ALL HUMANITY!

Our “most critical need” in this hour, as A.W. Tozer wrote more than four decades ago in the following article, is “men—the right kind of men, bold men.” Bold men who will come marching out of the desert, like John The Baptist, to a different drumbeat, confronting the systems of this world and the religious orders that are keeping the people of God bound in invisible chains of deception and delusion, whose pied-pipers continue to fiddle while the ship is sinking and Rome burns down all around them! We need MEN OF GOD who will rise up as DELIVERERS to set the captives free! GOD, SEND THE DELIVERERS, who will speak the truth in love to your people and thereby snatch some out of the fire!
————–

“OUR MOST CRITICAL NEED”- by A.W. Tozer*

THE MOST CRITICAL NEED of the Church at this moment is men—the right kind of men, bold men. The talk is that we need revival, that we need a new baptism of the Holy Spirit—and God knows we must have both—but God will not revive mice. He will not fill rabbits with the Holy Spirit.

We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul because they have already died to the allurements of this world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances. Their only compulsion will come from within—or from above.

This kind of freedom is necessary if we are to have prophets in our pulpits again instead of mascots. These free men will serve God and mankind from motives too high to be understood by the rank and file of religious retainers who today shuttle in and out of the sanctuary. They will make no decisions out of fear, take no course out of a desire to please, accept no service for financial considerations, perform no religious acts out of mere custom, nor allow themselves to be influenced by the love of publicity or the desire for reputation.

Much that the church—even the evangelical church—is doing today, it is doing because it is afraid not to do it. Ministerial associations take up projects for no higher reasons than that they are scared into it. Whatever their ear-to-the-ground, fear-inspired reconnoitering leads them to believe—or fear—the world expects them to do, they will be doing come next Monday morning with all kinds of trumped-up zeal and show of godliness. The pressure of public opinion calls these prophets, not the voice of Jehovah.

The true church has never sounded out public expectations before launching its crusades. Its leaders heard from God and went ahead wholly independent of popular support or the lack of it. They knew their Lord’s will and did it, and their people followed them—sometimes to triumph, but more often to insults and public persecution—and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world.

Another characteristic of the true prophet has been love. The free man who has learned to hear God’s voice and dared to obey it has felt the moral burden that broke the hearts of the Old Testament prophets, crushed the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wrung streams of tears from the eyes of the apostles.

The free man has never been a religious tyrant, nor has he sought to lord it over God’s heritage. It is fear and lack of self-assurance that has led men to try to bring others under their feet. They have had some interest to protect, some position to secure, so they have demanded subjection from their followers as a guarantee of their own safety. But the free man—never. He has nothing to protect, no ambition to pursue and no enemy to fear. For that reason he is completely careless of his standing among men. If they follow him—well and good. If not, he loses nothing that he holds dear. But whether he is accepted or rejected, he will go on loving his people with sincere devotion, and only death can silence his tender intercession for them.

Yes, if evangelical Christianity is to stay alive, it must have men again—the right kind of men. It must repudiate the weaklings who dare not speak out, and it must seek in prayer and much humility the coming again of men of the stuff of which prophets and martyrs are made. God will hear the cries of His people as He heard the cries of Israel in Egypt, and He will send deliverance by sending deliverers. It is His way.

And when the deliverers come—reformers, revivalists, prophets—they will be men of God and men of courage. They will have God on their side because they are careful to stay on God’s side. They will be co-workers with Christ and instruments in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Such men will be baptized with the Spirit indeed and through their labors He will baptize others and send the long-delayed revival.###

SOURCE: This World: Playground or Battleground?, [Chapter 7]

* NOTE: A.W. Tozier (1897-1963) for many years was the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Toronto and Chicago, the editor-in-chief of the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s official organ, Alliance Weekly, as well as a prolific author. Many revered him as a twentieth century prophet. Of his many books, The Knowledge of the Holy (Harper & Row), was perhaps the one for which he was best known.

Editorial Foreword [By Dr. Steven Lambert]: Prophetic Publishing Responsibility. While browsing through some articles published on a partnering ministry’s email messaging group site, I stumbled upon the following article, with which I wholeheartedly agree, and felt an urgency and unction of the Spirit to transmit it also to those of you on our email list. I am republishing it by permission of the author. Please read and absorb it…the points Bryan makes are poignant and apropos. I urge those of you who maintain email lists or websites to obtain permission from the author to republish the article as well, and to do so through your various means of distribution. I feel that strongly about the importance of the issue he raises in the article. As those who follow this ministry know, I am a lover of the prophetic ministry, which I myself have been operating in for more than three decades. Moreover, some twenty years ago, I authored a prophetic manual and course that has been used by Bible colleges and church leaders, which is a product of my personal study, research, and ministering in prophetic seminars, conferences, and other prophetic gatherings since the early 1980s, before “the prophetic movement” began. I have ministered prophetically to literally thousands in hundreds of venues.

I recite this information not to boast, but to affirm I am no novice to the prophetic. Many ministers who have attended my meetings can attest to that fact.

I believe in the prophetic, but I personally feel that despite the expansive surge of interest in and awareness about the prophetic that has thus far transpired, in many ways, the prophetic “movement” is still an immature movement. Perhaps, it could be equated to being in its adolescence at this point, having advanced past childhood, but it still is not matured. I still see a lot of “prophetic playing,” wherein people are more or less playing with the prophetic gifts, rather than using them for God’s intended purposes for them. Moreover, there still are a lot of people making usury of the prophetic gifts for self-aggrandizing or self-promoting purposes, rather than for bringing glory to and exalting Jesus. A few of the “pappa prophets,” as some have so distastefully elected to promote themselves, have even become quite wealthy or at least well-off through the ill-motivated usury they’ve made of the prophetic emphasis since the mid-1980’s.

Indeed, much of the responsibility for the immaturity of the prophetic movement, in my view, is directly attributable to the “organizationalism” that has so pervaded the movement. By that I mean the fact that so many who have become prominent figures in the prophetic awareness have been more concerned with using the prophetic as a means to “build” — promote, develop, increase — their own ministries (in many cases, kingdoms), than they have been concerned with the “building up the Body of Christ,” which is the God-intended purpose of the prophetic giftings and office.

Many years ago, the Lord specifically told me that one of the “downsides” of the prophetic movement that was coming would be a “flooding of the market,” to borrow a phrase, or a saturation of prophetic utterances. At the time, I had no way of envisioning the advent of the Internet, which has certainly been the greatest contributing factor to the superfluity of prophetic messages being published worldwide. This super-saturation of largely untested prophetic words by everyone and his brother claiming to be operating in the prophetic is now causing a set of problems that never existed a few years ago.

My how the pendulum swings! and how quickly! In just a few years, we’ve gone from a virtual prophetic drought to flash flooding, from being a non-prophet, non-prophetic church to a place now where “prophetic problems” are pandemic in the Neo-Pentecostal church. At the top of the list, and this is what the Lord warned me about way back there, was that true prophecy and prophetic operations would be devalued by the superabundance of unproven purported prophecy that we are now seeing.

As this article indicates, our need for greater accountability grows exponentially by the day, with the plethora of messages being published on the Internet claiming to be prophetic, and the ever-increasing number of purported “prophetic” organizations that are publishing those messages,
unfiltered, untested, untried, unproven. My sense is that very few of these prophetic organizations would know what a true prophesy was if it was hand-delivered by Jesus Christ Himself in a cloud of glory. The principals of these organizations are no more prophetically anointed themselves than the proverbial “man in the moon,” and the Word of God straightforwardly commands, “the spirit of prophets (meaning also prophesiers) are subject to prophets; for God is not a God of CONFUSION” (1 Cor. 14:32,33).

Moreover, the beginning verse of that immediate context declares that it is the PROPHETS — those who have been anointed and appointed by God to the OFFICE of the PROPHET — who are to “pass judgment” on prophetic utterances.

The Body of Christ needs a whole lot of education from God’s Word on the difference between “one who prophesies,” those operating the MANIFESTATION gift of the Spirit, and those who are set into the OFFICE of the PROPHET, who operate a MINISTRY Gift which emanates from the Lord Jesus as the Head of the Church. (For more information on this matter of Gifts Vs. Offices, see my Prophetic Manual).

I agree wholeheartedly with Brother Huppert’s remarks on this vital issue set before the Church in this hour and I call upon every leader in the Church that Jesus is building, and especially the prophetically oriented leaders, to begin to seek God about what He would have us to do to bring forth some effectual safeguards and some means of greater prepublication scrutiny of purported prophetic messages. I also invite dialogue with other leaders and lovers of the prophetic in this regard as we heed our collective responsibility to protect the precious prophetic gift which Christ bestowed when He ascended on high for the primary purpose of edifying the Church. [end Editorial Foreword]

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“Prophetic Irresponsibility”
Bryan Hupperts
“SheepTrax Media”

Call this an open letter of concern to the global prophetic community. Several years ago the Lord showed me a vision of prophetic ministers urinating and defecating into a beautiful, flowing stream. Downstream, people were dipping silver cups into the flowing waters and were gagging on the human impurities and waste! Because of the prophetic pollution problem upstream, there was precious little ‘clean water’ to drink.

The reaction to this vision was mixed. A pastor friend of mine was outraged that I would dare share such a thing and it eventually broke our relationship. Lots of fingers were being pointed at me, baseless accusations made, dark whispers about my motives, I was labeled a ‘troublemaker,’ and on it went.

The prophetic office and gifts were not given to the church so that someone could discern via word of knowledge the first three numbers of your cell phone number and wow the crowds, but for, according to Ephesians 4: 11-14:

“The equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.”

Like all other fivefold functions, the prophetic office has certain functions and should yield very specific kinds of fruits. First, they should be for the work of the ministry bringing about the unity of the faith. Next, they should bring increasingly clearer revelation and knowledge of Jesus. They should also hold up the pattern of Christ as the mark for which to grow and model our lives after. And why? So that we grow up and can stand fast so that we can discern a genuine move of the Spirit of God from often hurricane force winds of doctrine interjected into the body of Christ by tricky, crafty, deceitful men.

Whew!

SheepTrax Media was born on the web, thrives by the web, and has a global reach because of the web. Sometimes when I get letters from countries I cannot pronounce about how God has blessed or challenged people or churches through my work, well, it’s scary stuff to contemplate. It has driven me to be more and more a student of His Word.

Having said all of this, I am perplexed by a dilemma which I believe the global church can help resolve. There are many ministries that take alleged “words from the Lord” and publish them via forums like the wonderful service provided by InJesus without taking any sort of responsibility of godly oversight as to what they are actually publishing.

On several occasions I wrote to the proctor of one such list which numbers in the thousands of subscribers. Sighting a number of glaring examples of prophecies that proved to be demonstratably false; predicted earthquakes, bombs falling in Los Angeles on a certain date, and such, I asked this person if his ministry was providing any sort of corrective feedback to authors of these wildly inaccurate predictions.

His response? That isn’t our place. We just provide the forum (while selling loads of books, video, tapes, and rake in the special conference fees) and what is of God will stand. This individuals’ cavalier reply prompted me to coin the phrase “Prophetic Irresponsibility.”

Much of the church needs to embrace this verse: 1 Corinthians 14:29, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge.” Indeed, let the prophets speak! However, prophetic forums, especially those with global reach, need to obey the second half, the counterweight, of this verse. “Let others judge.” Here judge means to weigh, evaluate, to discern.

I am asking the body of Christ to begin exercising some spiritual discernment and begin holding those responsible who publish and promote alleged words from the Lord that prove false. I’m not suggesting we stand with a stone in each hand waiting for someone to trip over their tongue, but I am strongly advocating that there be accountability.

If the ministries who provide global access for words that prove wrong, please write to the proctors of those lists and ask them to begin exercising some authority. If the word was wrong, publish an account of it and issue a retraction. Be responsible. Hold its author accountable and bring some godly correction into their life. For instance, there is a group on the web run by two brothers who believe they are the two witness of the book of Revelation! I’ve never known them to be right with any of their predictions yet people still circulate their work! Another man believes that God revealed to him that prophets only need to be right about 40% of the time; it keeps the body of Christ humble while we learn to hear the Lord!

Beloved, if the prophets can’t tell which ‘word of the Lord’ is genuine, then how in the name of love can the everyday saint discern such things! How can we even know if this man’s “40%” word was right? Such foolishness is human waste and impurity that is polluting the river of God, and it is the downstream saints who are suffering for it.

If those who proctor such prophetic lists refuse to exercise authority and develop accountability, then quit reading and circulating what they publish. Stop buying their merchandize. When the finances dry, perhaps they will reconsider. These abuses have to stop and the body of Christ brought back into order. I don’t blame hapless pastors who come to despise prophecy! They are being deluged with so many false words, the prophetic gift has come into disrepute.

Well, let the stone throwing begin. Nobody ever promised this would be easy or popular, but it is the Truth.

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Bryan Hupperts © 2002 SheepTrax Media ™
PO Box 270256 St. Louis, MO 63127 USA
SheepTrax is the Christian “wit, wisdom, and deepthinking” of Bryan Hupperts.
Write to SheepTrax Media at: deepsheep@sheeptrax.com
Subscribe at: http://www.sheeptrax.com/

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