Intro:
As the apostolic / prophetic movement has become increasingly bizarre, many who were told to simply bless everything are now deeply disillusioned. In these days when renewal meetings, alleged outpourings and flamboyant leaders have reached a point of crisis, it is tempting to throw up our hands, become cynical and opt to retreat to a safer, saner spirituality. And yet we know in our hearts that we can't go back to a Christian faith without the presence, power and voice of God. Neither dead orthodoxy nor practical deism can provide a harbour for us. Some are simply walking away from the faith altogether. Is that really our only option? How do we stay open to the Spirit? How do we restore prophetic purity? How can we continue to engage in authentic experiences with God without becoming wacky? What if we were to recalibrate our faith practice and renew prophetic purity?
The apostle Paul foresaw our dilemma when he
said, "Do not put out the Spirit's fire. Do not despise prophetic
utterance. But test everything and hold on to the good stuff." (1 Thess.
5)
The following represents a discussion
between Peter Helms and Brad Jersak which was presented at Appleseed Lodge in
Westbank in early October. That evening, they pushed these buttons, made their
confessions and fervently sought God for a fresh, pure prophetic encounter in
community.
Our Goal
Our goal of is not to vent our frustrations
or point fingers at ministers or ministries involved in the prophetic renewal.
Such scapegoating serves only to let ourselves off the hook too easily and just
as importantly, distracts us into missing the deeper dysfunctions of a system
that needs deconstructing.
Our goal is two-fold. First we would seek God
in helping us locate some of the defects and dysfunctions in the prophetic
renewal streams at large. Second, we would open ourselves afresh to an
authentic ministry of the Holy Spirit. I.e. We would invite the Holy Spirit to
help us discern a way back to the living heart of the prophetic, rather than
simply discarding everything indiscriminately.
I. Deconstructing the dysfunctions
Recently, one of our own mature prophetic
ministers came trembling with this message from Jeremiah (in early August). She
said, “Something has happened; I don’t know what it is … but I feel sick. We
need to seek the Lord and examine ourselves because Jeremiah 5 is the word He’s
giving right now.” After I read the chapter, I felt sick too—we entered a time
of examining ourselves in light of the following verses:
Jeremiah 5:11-13; 5:30-31
The house of Israel and the house of
Judah
have been utterly unfaithful to me,"
declares the LORD.They have lied about the LORD;
they said, "He will do nothing!
No harm will come to us;
we will never see sword or famine. The prophets are but wind
and the word is not in them;
so let what they say be done to them." "A horrible and shocking thing
has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies,
the priests rule by their own authority,
and my people love it this way.
But what will you do in the end?
It soon became
clear that whatever was up was bigger than our fellowship or our city. The Lord
was pointing to a broader infection across the continent, cracks in the
foundation of the whole apostolic / prophetic stream. It’s a time for
deconstructing and rebuilding according to God’s plumbline. We’re reminded of
Jeremiah’s call.
Jeremiah 1:9-10
Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me,
"Now, I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over
nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to
build and to plant."
So the Lord has
been identifying specific structural defects across the board. While some have
tried to warn us and to weed through the problems as they saw them (in the face
of great resistance), only now has a broader openness to testing and correction
emerged. Many in the Body of Christ are saying, “It’s about time.” What are the
underlying issues that made us vulnerable to deception, delusion and abuse. How
did we get so far astray? The following represents only a partial diagnosis of
some of our flaws (both leaders and followers seem equally complicit).
1. The abandonment of Jesus of Nazareth (the Jesus of the Gospels in his life, character and teaching) as our anchor for truth.
In the context of increasingly bizarre manifestations and obvious mixture, too often an attitude of "WHATEVER" is communicated, such that the truth doesn't seem to matter. Doctrinal purity is often set aside as secondary to manifestation ... or even mocked. But let's remember what doctrine is: the Spirit-revealed truth about Jesus Christ and the Gospel of Salvation. These are not trivialities to be laid aside while the party goes ‘off the hook.’
At some point in the renewal, we opened a door to 'anything goes' and so it has. We've tolerated serious excess just because “the worship was good” and allowed our discernment to go out the window. One renewal leader suggests that some of our worship songs subtly shifted from who Christ is and what He has done to a focus on our own passion for him, our own claims of piety and spiritual grandiosity. This introduced a seductive element in which we allowed ourselves to dismiss the most basic discernment of obvious excesses. We became distracted and deluded by an ever-increasing need for the bizarre.
In addition, there has been a greater impatience with those who insist on
aligning our teachings and practices with Christ of the Gospels, esp. when he doesn't
seem to endorse our agendas. Just one example: the imperial principalities of
nationalism, patriotism and militarism have been major themes that have
co-opted and saturated the prophetic more and more in recent years. When
prophetic conferences become political rallies, we have lost our focus on Jesus
of the Bible, whose testimony is supposed to be the spirit of prophecy.
2. The abandonment of authentic relationships with one another as a core value. We fail to live in true community when we make pacts not to critique one another for fear of being seen as negative. Our “bless everything” mentality is a misrepresentation of true covenant. Where ‘covering’ and accountability was required and requested, photo-op coronations based in very little real relationship won the day. Some have confessed in retrospect that they needed to be on board and on stage because of they needed to advance our own ministry.
Authentic relationship requires that we love one another to call each other on
our stuff and truly listen when so confronted, rather than leaving it to the
websites of anonymous witch-hunters. But when this was attempted, some in our
midst were accused of being demonized and even threatened with death at the
hand of God. Discernment of this sort was forbidden and explicitly cursed.
3. A tendency by some of the prophets to reject being tested. Such testing and weighing was seen as being reserved for Bible times and no longer appropriate or welcome. This is in obvious contradiction to 1 John 4, 1 Thess. 5 and Rev. 2. But these texts are written off -- insistence on testing was seen as having an authority-issue or even quenching the Spirit. “Touch not the Lord’s anointed” became a slogan imported to tell the sheep to shut up about the abuses they saw and experienced. Contrast this to the words of Christ in to the church in Ephesus:
Revelation 2:1-3
To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are
the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the
seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your
perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested
those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have
persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
4. A mis-identification of the glory of
God as an
ethereal disembodied presence to be chased and felt with no reference to
personal Christian love… This error seems to be a soft form of the ancient and
now revived heresy called gnosticism. Gnosticism downplays and degrades life in
our bodies in the earthly realm as subspiritual. Gnostic forms of Christianity
becomes enamoured with claims of special heavenly experiences where the
prophetic elite access secret knowledge of God and bring down the illusive but
inebriating glory. We’ve seen this resurface with a vengeance in our meetings
where folks are more inclined to look for smoke in the rafters than the
presence of Jesus in those sitting next to us.
This is in
contrast to Jesus prayer where the chief issue of glory is that Christ himself
is glorified. Glory is not a commodity to be sought from men but an honour that
the Father has given his Son. As Christ is glorified, his promise is to infuse
and fill believers themselves with the glory of God, with His Spirit, with his
own character, and especially with the love of God.
John 17:20-24
I
pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of
them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also
be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them
the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and
you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you
sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you
have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have
given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
The apostle John
confronted proto-gnosticism with these words of Jesus, who said that the Father
had specifically glorified him and that through the Holy Spirit, this glory
would fill the church with love and bring about love-union between believers
and with God. The glory of God would be in us, manifest as Christian love for
each other, for neighbours and for our enemies. Rather than trying to escape
the flesh and exit to another spiritual plane. Christianity is about the Word
made Flesh, first in Christ, then in us. The kingdom life is found on earth as
in heaven... as widows and orphans receiving care, the sorrowing comforted,
those with addictions set free, the sick cared and prayed for, and so on.
Rather than divorcing heavenly life from earthly life, Jesus brings them
together in the Incarnation.
5. The slippery language of anointing and
impartation. The anointing is treated as a commodity of spiritual power that
specially empowered leaders carry and use to minister. This spiritual power can
somehow be imparted to those who are anxious to come get the anointing and
bring it home with them. Contrast this to the apostle John’s identification of
the anointing as a living person, the Holy Spirit who lives within ALL of us and
whose primary ministry is to teach us / guide us into the truth of Jesus (John
16).
1 John 2:18-19; 2:26-27
Dear children,
this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming,
even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.
They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had
belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that
none of them belonged to us.
I am writing
these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you,
the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone
to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that
anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.
The anointing then is not found through the impartation of special prophets and
apostles. Rather, it comes from the Holy Spirit as we abide in intimate
fellowship with Jesus.
6. Exalting a man or woman and creating a
‘party spirit’ (factions)
1 Cor. 3:21-23
So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or
Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the
future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.
The party spirit
groups into factions around our favourite teachers and prophets, whose ‘round
tables’ are reminiscent of those self-congratulating super-apostles that
opposed Paul’s ministry among the Corinthians. We see and covet their anointed
ministries and seek to be identified with them. We are often motivated by a
fear of ‘missing it,’ whatever 'it' is. Paul says this is futile. You already
'have it' ... all that God is, has been given to Christ. And all that Christ
has, is available through abiding in Him, being grafted as branches into the
Vine. The anointing of the Spirit flows from His spiritual veins into our
hearts through intimacy with Jesus.
If we are
truthful, many of the self-proclaimed apostles and prophets are found to be
taking the Lord’s name in vain (ascribing to God that which is not of God).
Many of our prophetic words have fallen to the ground, but this is generally
ignored or spun into a different message so that we won’t look wrong.
It really is okay to enjoy the ministries of specific leaders, but when we put
them on any kind of pedestal, we are setting them up for a fall and then we
resent them for disillusioning us and falling short of our expectations. That’s
not fair to them. On the one hand, the entourage of the prophets and apostles
need to beware of how they are creating these pedestals and then scapegoating
the leaders who fall from them. On the other hand, from the leadership side, we
need to be aware of how we subtly train the flock of God to do this very thing.
Wherever we model a style of ministry that encourages the masses to look to the
‘anointed leader’ (the OT word for the Messiah!) to impart an anointing that is
not already resident in the believer, we diminish the work of Jesus and the
gift of the Holy Spirit.
7. The practice of seeking an anointing
and impartation through special leaders, we often seek to bypass the journey of
discipleship with a quick fix. In fact, we tend to hope that discipleship can
be short-cutted through good things -- deliverance, inner-healing, laying on of
hands, speaking in tongues, slaying in the Spirit -- or any kind of “getting
zapped” that we think might rescue us from the path of Christian growth known
as ‘the way of the Cross.’ This is as much a cultural malady rooted in drive-thru’s
as it is a spiritual quick-fix. But some of our best prophetic voices are going
so far as to call this 'witch-craft'. We ought to check that we're not engaging
in practices that seek a miracle drug for our humanity or some magical
exemption for having to actually following Jesus!
A lot of good attended the pilgrimages we took to renewal hotspots … many of us
were refreshed and refuelled for the journey, not to mention experiencing
wonderful people, teachings and worship times. We often met God in profound
ways as we ‘soaked’ or did ‘floor time.’ We dare not throw out the baby with
the bathwater. At the same time, these are the days to check our hearts when we
run all over the world looking for a kingdom that is already promised to be
among and within us wherever two or three are gathered. Remember Jesus words:
Luke 17:20-23
One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?"
Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected
by visible signs. You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’
For the Kingdom of God is already among
you.” Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to
see the day when the Son of Man returns, but you won’t see it. People will tell
you, ‘Look, there is the Son of Man,’ or ‘Here he is,’ but don’t go out and
follow them."
II. Beyond Cynicism
For some, these
dysfunctions lead to cynicism – but surely this is just another
pseudo-prophetic response. Taking the pendulum from one extreme to the other
only flips the prophetic dysfunction on its head… but it’s the same spirit, the
same hubris and contempt that we think we’re renouncing. A true prophet can
diagnose disease and then offer a word of hope. The cynic sees the same
problems but then both surrenders hope and steals the hope of others. The
former prophesies correction by the Holy Spirit. The latter prophesies despair
by a critical spirit.
As much as we need to repent for the above character defects in the prophetic foundation, even more, we want to keep our hearts open to the authentic ministry of the Holy Spirit. We want Christ-centered, Spirit-communities of love that flow freely in the genuine prophetic. Instead of throwing up our hands or receding in resentment, we would exhort the Body of Christ to pursue Christ for the sake of Christ, not for the sake of experience. Christian relationship will be experiential, but it always needs to orbit and fixate on Jesus himself. The experience is not the point. Jesus Christ is the point. Signs and wonders will follow us when we follow Him. But chase the signs and wonders and we’ll find we’ve left and lost the path of Jesus somewhere along the way. We believe this has what has happened in our day. It’s time to find the compass of truth and return to Jesus.
Where shall we start? What can we do about that immediately? This is just a
beginning:
1. Let's pray and ask Jesus to give us a fresh love for the truth.
These are the days
for a clear-minded focus on the essential truths of the Gospel.
1 Thessalonians
5:6-8
So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and
self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk,
get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled,
putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a
helmet.
2 Thessalonians
2:9-12
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan
displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every
sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they
refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a
powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be
condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.
We need a much
higher regard for truth - truth in our relationships to God, to one another and
to life itself. The truth matters ... more than a concept, an idea or a code,
the truth is found in honest relationships. Further, Jesus said, I am the
truth.
So now, we
reaffirm that the content of our faith does matter and needs to be aligned with
the teaching of Jesus and the apostles. Let's pray for a fresh love for this
truth. But this won’t be a quick fix. It requires a commitment to a lifestyle
in which we saturate ourselves with the very words of Jesus, submitting
ourselves to those texts with which we find ourselves under His gaze. Will we
allow the truth to evaluate us? Will we let Him salt our hearts with the fire
of truth, sobering us up with a cleansing word? Yes! Let’s invite that truth to
come with all our hearts.
2. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit
of prophecy. We need to recall that the prophetic is primarily meant to testify to the
person of Jesus and exalt Him. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
prophecy.” We choose today to commit to a discipline of boldly modeling two
practices in this regard:
a. That we will
equip and encourage the whole church with a reminder that they ALL have the
Anointing and the Anointed One (He is them, they in Him) to hear and see the
glory of God in the face of Jesus for themselves. We will resist modeling
the use of prophetic personalities as mediums in any sense, reminding the sheep
that the Good Shepherd is calling them by name. He must increase, we must
decrease. (In that order)
b. That our
prophesying will first and foremost be with reference to Jesus. The point of
prophecy is Jesus. To begin with, let's ask for a word from heaven about who Jesus is, as we
see in Rev. 1 and at the beginning of each of Jesus’ messages to the seven
churches. Second, we resolve to make every personal or corporate prophetic word
ultimately about who Christ is and what He is doing in individuals and groups.
For us, this has been a message through which we hope Christ will wash out blots and iron out wrinkles in the Bride’s wedding gown. We hope it will bring new freedom to both leaders and laity from that which would hinder us from a greater openness and awakening to God’s kingdom work. We sense that if we can receive Christ’s correction and avoid cynical reactions, we’ll know a deeper intimacy with Him and a greater advance of His kingdom in the coming days.
I felt your grief. I came across this teaching by Derek Prince which I found very clear and helpful and without being hopeless:
http://www.dpmuk.org/Groups/75180/DPM/Keys/Protection_from_Deception/Protection_from_Deception.aspx
Yet despite all this advice on how to test, I think Jesus want's us to KNOW Him, not just to apply our brains to work out what is Him, but to know instantly that this is our delightful Lover, and that this other was our Lover frightfully abused and misused regardless of whether by human or demon.
Posted by: Peter | November 06, 2009 at 02:42 AM
So glad to read your article, reminded me of the scripture written in Revalation 19 v 10. from the New Living translation.
Posted by: June Jenkins | January 01, 2009 at 10:32 AM
Thank you for this. I recently went to see a famous prophet and was thoroughly disgusted. He had a band open up for him which was fine, but before he came out they started getting the crowd excited about the "prophet" coming out. It was like being at a rock concert waiting for the main show. Jesus was not being lifted up, the prophet was.
Posted by: Paul Rivas | November 04, 2008 at 09:45 AM
Good writing, I think this is valid correction and hopefully received as an encouragement by all who are seeking Christ first (whoever we are and whatever mistakes we've made along the way).
One thing that my heart wanted to elaborate on in a way which I think you'd agree with but could be misunderstood:
"The anointing then is not found through the impartation of special prophets and apostles. Rather, it comes from the Holy Spirit as we abide in intimate fellowship with Jesus."
And the solution:
"That we will equip and encourage the whole church with a reminder that they ALL have the Anointing and the Anointed One (He is them, they in Him) to hear and see the glory of God in the face of Jesus for themselves."
I don't believe the root problem with seeking after those with "Special Anointings" is the concept itself of people having unique anointings. It's the sense of hierarchy that comes from only expecting those anointings to come from a Special (read as: popular) Leader.
In the prophetic community I've been learning from lately, I've seen many people bring their own unique anointings into the mix. They neither had to be leaders in an organizational sense, nor were they expected to be. This happened all across the spectrum, from those who were specifically invited to speak to friends within the community who were blessing each other, to even myself and my wife discovering that God has given us authority in unique areas which we can share with others.
I think this often acts as an extension of the faith-building power of sharing testimony. For example, my wife has a specific testimony of something she lived in fear of, and then was healed of it. She has since felt God's okay to pray for and speak blessing over others who are struggling with the same problem. But it would be kind of weird for people to start coming to her from all over the world to receive blessing, because I can guarantee she's not the first one to receive a healing or blessing from God. The more we accept that all of us in the body of Christ have authority (over specific evils) and blessings that we're meant to actively share, the more we can receive all of the crazy flavours of God's love for us via community, and the less demand there is for someone to hunt down someone they saw on TV somewhere for a blessing.
Maybe the listening prayer question version of this is, "Jesus, what do you look like inside this friend or person in my community? What aspect of you shines through the strongest? What is it that you've given them which they can pass onto me (or already have)?" Asking this has helped me keep in touch while receiving from some big-name dudes, and helped me appreciate the variety of how God works when receiving from a whole lineup of wacky prophetic people doing a "fire tunnel".
Posted by: josh g. | October 14, 2008 at 09:25 AM
Just wondering about mistaken prophetic words, is it possible that in giving a word of knowledge to a person, that my role is not yet completed because God is asking me to partner with him in bringing the word to him in intercession?
Posted by: Mary | October 12, 2008 at 01:25 PM
a sincere thank you for the well articulated dialogue on a subject in serious need of some illumination and adjustment.
i very much appreciated the information and the tone.
blessings!
Posted by: adit | October 10, 2008 at 07:10 PM
Excellent stuff and good for my prophetic heart Brad and Peter. It has been incredibly liberating for me in the recent past to be taught by dear friends and Jesus that I am legitimately prophetic even though I do not head up a ministry of some kind. I would like to extra high light (if that is even a real term!) the point you make that Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The prophetic is about Jesus and his kingdom. We know that Holy Spirit primarily loves pointing us towards Jesus, and thus the prophetic should be marked by this central focus on Christ and his Kingdom. I don't want to point fingers either so I won't, but we have seen prophecy used in North America to sway people's political biases and to advance political agendas....The politics of earth generally have very little to do with the Kingdom of God (is that the cynic in me?).
Another point I would like to briefly mention is the tension we are now working through in understanding the prophetic as a community event vs. a gift for the elite. I have learned over the past few years that when we take time to listen to the voices of the community and what they are hearing we get far clearer prophetic messages. Let me put it this way: God speaks in puzzle pieces; I receive a piece of the puzzle and it may be a big piece, but the message is bigger than me. When I share my piece with the community it almost always prompts others to share what they have been hearing and we begin to see the puzzle more clearly as the pieces come together. God views the Community as a whole and speaks to us as though we are One. This contrasts strikingly with the belief that there are a few Prophets who get the message and then spread it. I think the idea of the Prophetic Community is more in line with what we see in the NT and I have found incredible fruit in watching it unfold at my church.
cheers,
eric h janzen
Posted by: Eric H Janzen | October 10, 2008 at 02:21 PM