When Good News Prophets Face Bad News

Somewhere along the way the idea that all new testament prophets were supposed to only be:

• Encouraging
• Hopeful
• Consistently Positive
• Bearers of Good News
• Affirming
• Only Building Up... (guess they missed that part in Jeremiah Chapter 1)

This came because modern prophets sometimes had to tell the truth about a situation and warn or prepare people for events that were about to take place.  God gave these prophets the ability to see things coming, to know, to understand.  The church world didn't want to hear it.  They wanted good news.  When David Wilkerson wrote "The VISION" back in the 70s it was so painful no one wanted to hear it.  He saw and warned, but people ignored to their peril.

The churchianity world wants to keep God's mouthpiece in a box and unpack only those things that are positive.

So what is a prophet who is supposed to only bring good news according to them supposed to do when he or she clearly sees bad news coming?  Bad news that could be made better if people turned from the direction they are going.  Stay silent and later say, "I knew that"?  Should the prophet simply smile and say everything is going to be fine.. when it's not?

The real problem is the smoke, mirrors and clutter of false prophesy.  It's everywhere.  Books about moons, shemitah, end times, signs and proclamations of apocalypse taints the reality of the prophetic.  Interpretation of scraps of scripture creates crowds and love offerings.  It's fun stuff to the phony prophetic.  It causes people to close their ears to genuine prophetic utterance.

As a prophet when I see bad news coming, I will try to couch what I see in terms people will be able to accept.  I warn of the times to come.  I offer hope for the days after the tragedy.  I help people prepare for a change coming they may not want to see or experience.  Preparation is prophetic responsibility.  Watchmen warning from the wall.

I do this because my hope is people will heed the warnings and turn from the direction they are going.  That they might step back from the brink of disaster on the horizon.  Many prophetic visions are "This will happen unless you turn away from that".  "If My people will humble themselves....etc"

On a personal level it's easier.  People are willing to hear. There's no need to be harsh to slap people around with words.  It's best to gently help them into seeing what is coming.  Those are the best.  It's a matter of accountability.

On a corporate level, it's not so hard.  When I bring prophecy to a church, it's always a two edged sword of truth.  Here's the promise, here's the price, you must choose.  Hold the Promise of God before them and ask for action to relieve the potential promise.

On a national level, dealing with large numbers of people, not in a church setting, a large audience, on line many times it's more difficult to be discrete.. that takes clarity where nuance must be set aside.  The true prophets of God I know and respect are pretty direct.  They say it as they know it. They speak to leaders who have the capacity to do something about all this.  Gatekeepers must be warned of the coming warfare.

That is the call of a prophet when it is a national concern, prepare the leaders.  Help them see what role they have in helping the people of God under the sound of their voice get thru what is coming.

In the last election cycle of 2012 as President Obama was re-elected I warned many before the election that there would be radical negative results when he won re-election.  It wasn't about politics. It was seeing the demonic forces behind his re-election that we now see manifest in the last 3 1/2 years. The demons of racism, homosexuality as a norm, freedom of speech and religion openly challenge, rise of Islam globally and in our country, Invasion over our borders, the economic disasters, abortion as almost a sacrament, the whole LBGT bathroom thing, global discredit of the USA. How fast and furious have all these things been.  The demons released have run wild.  People that have experienced this are in a shock of denial.  That is has always been this way.  It hasn't.  Memories are too painful to reflect.

Before the votes were cast, even when all the polls were saying Romney would win, even when Obama was saying goodbye to people he worked with expecting to lose, I told many national leaders privately to prepare for the tragedy that would be his second term.  That he would be re-elected.  People think this is political.  It's not.  It's the ability to see what was coming.  It is warning of our coming exile.  Dutch Sheets prophesied at that time said he saw several demonic releases as the votes were taken and the manifestations we see now were released.  Let me be clear, it is not that Obama is himself an evil man, he is a slave to the demonic influences that surround him.  He has been led to slaughter and disgrace.  We are all poorer for it.

Now I have been shown what is about to happen in the months to come as the most important election of this generation is about to take place.  A watershed. I won't reveal it here, I will once again warn leaders.  It isn't what I hoped for. It isn't what I desired on a personal level. It is what will take place.  We are about to go into a new cycle of change without hope.  I don't know why we place faith in people without vision or shared values.  I don't understand what causes good people to embrace vessels who have no capacity for effectiveness. 

I want to be a good news prophet.. but when I see bad news coming.. I must tell it... or what's a prophet for.  Sorry churchianity, you can't embrace good news alone.. sometimes you need truth, even if you don't want it.

A Prophet Misses It and Doesn't - Confessions of a Prophet

As a called one of God as a prophet it's possible to get a spirit of expectancy that every word God give me to speak carries weight and truth. That would be more true if I were not human also.  Every word Father speaks to me and when he speaks thru me is true and weighty. Yet some are filtered by flawed humanity. Mine. 

Any prophet that has been walking in it this long and has experienced so much, there is a soft arrogance that begins to develop. I certainly have had that happen.  When the Lord gives me a word and I speak it out, I have high confidence in that word even above what seems to be every evidence to the contrary.  The tension between physical evidence and the word spoken sometimes is fraught with such a great disparity that it can shake things.  I have learned not to try to TWIST the words spoken to fit into the present reality. That the word spoken will mature into what it will and often months or a year later will become the new reality.

That is why I don't try to "explain" a word to someone. I don't even know what the word means.  I often can't remember it.  But sometimes I am blind and deaf to what is taking place.

A couple years ago an old college friend came to visit me with his wife. They were on a journey around the USA seeing the sights.  We weren't close but we did spend time together in college and as adults.  Hunting and fishing pals.  In recent years he began to read what I wrote, he knew what was happening in ministry prophetically.   He however came to see me as my friend, nothing more.  Not seeking anything.  We spent time talking.  During that time he told me he had a serious blood disorder.  My first college friend style impulse was to ask what the doctors were saying.  He said they didn't know much and were medicating for what they thought it might be. He wondered what the future would hold.

I didn't do what I would normally do if this were not an old pal, if this were someone I had met and heard this diagnosis, I would seek God on the spot for a word of preparation or a word of hope and I would have laid hands on him at once for healing.

I did neither.  I missed God.  I didn't get the message.  He left my house that day without what in retrospect was an unspoken cry for a word from God and or a word of healing.  I let my flesh get in the way.  Six months later he died.

What is strange is he died about the same time I DID lay hands on and prophesy to another person I had just met to say to him (a Pastor), "Get your house in order for you will not be here in a year".  I did lay hands on him for healing and he was relieved of pain for a time.  But he died as God said.  I didn't miss God on that, it was important for this precious man to know that his time was short and that he was going to have to move to firm up his ministry and church for what was about to come.  No flesh got in the way.

A couple months ago a precious woman of faith (Pastor's wife) was speaking to the church and the Lord told me that she was about to become pregnant.  They have other children and are wonderful parents so this is a good thing.  I spoke a word over her husband and told him that new fruitfulness in his family was about to take place.  That this new gift would be a sign of fruitfulness in his ministry.  It is and it will be.  That was not a miss.. and I'm glad to be the bearer of good news.  They announced this yesterday.

The other night a woman presented herself to me for a word.  She was really burdened. Tired.  Worn.  I laid hands on her and said that she was a builder, that she had the hands of a person who makes and builds.  One who might be in a construction trade and that God has that kind of call on her life.  It seemed to be a sure word.  After what was spoken over her, I asked her what she did for a living and she told me she is a Chicago Policewoman.  She also said she hardly knows how to use a hammer.  Never having done any construction in her life.  I was shaken.. yet there is something to this and maybe in a year we will know more. I have learned to stop over-analyzing what God is saying.  Let God be true.

I have not written much lately.  It's not that I haven't wanted to, it's because I believe God takes his prophets to desert places to rest and reset.  To prune and feed.  To reshape.  That is OK with me.  I didn't beg for this. I simply am. God knows what He is doing.

Someone asked me once, "How do you know you are a prophet".  I answered simply, "how do I know I am a man?  I just am.. " That doesn't mean that the two don't get in the way of one another sometimes.

A Month Long Silence, and yet---

I don't know if anyone even noticed, but for a month I have published nothing on this blog. 

WHY?

I have not been hearing anything.  YES, I know Father is talking all the time, but He seems to have me in a dry place for a purpose.  I have a sense sharpening is taking place.  A drought of empty words to increase the gravity of what HE gives me in the future. 

Bluntly, at first I thought it was me, it was sin, disobedience, distraction.

Even when prophesying to people on a personal basis from time to time it wasn't the flow I was used to. More difficult. More stilted.  And sometimes wrong.

Now, I am beginning to see.  Maybe this is a 40 day thing.  I'm not going to say anything God didn't say.

I just want to encourage others who go thru a dry spell, that it's not the end.. in fact it may be a brand new entry into a greater anointing and gift manifestation.

So... until you hear again, here I stand, I can do no other.