Prophetic Ministries Today

It is a lot easier to believe what the devil says than what God says. We do it all the time. If the electrical company says they are going to turn off the electricity because you can’t pay the bill, we believe it right away. Any bad report we believe right away. But let God say something and there is a lot of doubts. It is almost foreign to us. It is something we need to understand and accept as second hand, normal, everyday occurrence. We need to be in a relationship with God so that we do not miss Him. He speaks so gently, so smooth, so light that His voice sometimes is just a whisper. If you are caught up in your own thoughts and emotions, you will miss God. You will go on your own way as if He never existed.

We believe that Jesus still heals today. Do you realize what the church had to go through to come to the place where mainstream Christianity believes that Jesus still heals today? Do you know that in Norway when William Branham visited in 1962, there were 200 pastors waiting at the airport to make him get back on the plane and leave because they did not believe in the healings. They have more blind and lame people than any nation I have ever seen. I am not saying that Branham was It!. I am saying that they did not believe. How are you going to receive healing if you do not believe? But now the church has come to a place where it believes in healings. We believe in miracles and we see miracles. There are those out there who are ministering in miracles crusades because Jesus is alive today. He is same yesterday, today and forever more. But what about prophecy? You see, the church has not yet arrived. Nothing has changed. It is us that changed. It is what we have told one another over and over and over that has caused us to come further away from the relationship. A lot of people will try to get you into the works of the flesh so that the manifestation of the spiritual gifts is not possible. It is not in the works of the flesh but it is in the spiritual relationship with Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you ever thought about this? I have been approached by men of God who said if Jesus prophesied in the Bible and gave personal prophecy then they would believe in personal prophecy. Think about it. There was a time when Jesus was being judged. He had been arrested and taken from his disciples. But before Jesus was taken He said that Peter will denounce Him three times before the crowing of the crow . Peter did not believe it. None of the disciples believed it. They said they would die and serve Him to their death until they came and got Him. But they scattered! Then what happened? Peter ended up cursing Jesus until he heard the crow. Then Peter remembered what Jesus said. Jesus had prophesied to Peter and given him a personal word. That is the word in action. The word superseded what Peter even wanted to believe. Understand that Peter did not want to deny Jesus. He sincerely wanted to die defending Jesus yet he acted cowardly. He could not do it. Do you know why? It is because the word was working in him life. The word superseded his will.

The permissive will of God is different from the ultimate will of God. Ultimate will of God superseded Peter’s will. Jesus was showing his disciples that it was because of God’s will that these things happened. It showed them how much power they did not have and how frail they really were. It showed how much unbelief there still existed. But that is not all. That was also an example of prophecy. It was the foretelling of something to take place and it happen just as Jesus said it would.

Jesus also operated in the word of knowledge. The word of knowledge is the revealing of things that have already happened or things that are happening right now in your life. You know that no one else knows but when the Lord reveals it to another, you know God knows what is going on in your life. When you hear the word of knowledge come forth, you will wonder how they knew that? It does not matter. But what is important is that God knows what you are doing. There is a Proverb that say that the eyes and ears of God is everywhere. I remember the first time I heard that proverb. I was a Baptist then and did not understand spiritual things. I kept looking around thinking maybe God looks through the eyes of the insects on the wall or maybe through the dog that is laying down on the rug next to the fireplace. How does He do that? How can the eyes and ears of God be everywhere? God is omnipresent. God is Spirit and He is at all places at all times. He is talking to each and every one of us if we are listening. He talks to us about all of our different circumstances and different situations. How can He communicate to so many people all at the same time about totally different things? Sometimes He talks to a whole mass of people about the very same thing.

We believe in tongues and interpretation of tongues. But it was a battle for the church to believe in it. Still today there are some that think that it is of the devil. I do not understand how they can believe that! It is clear in the Bible that it is a spiritual gift and it is not from the devil. But what is it there for? Is it there to just ward off evil spirits like garlic hanging around the your neck? Or like a rabbit’s foot in your pocket? What is it there for? God gave men stammering tongues and yet for all that they will not hear me. Do you know that the whole purpose of tongues is to hear God? Paul says that if you pray in tongues then pray that your mind is fruitful of those things. What goods does it do if I speak in tongues and not one word is of your understanding? How will you ever know what God is saying? But if there is an interpretation then you will know what God is saying. When we pray in the spirit we edify ourselves. What does that mean? Did you know prophecy is for edification? That it is for comfort and for building up? It is very edifying when you are hearing God no matter what it is. It can even be bad news. But there is something about it that is edifying. Even if it is something you are going to go through that is difficult. You can go through it if you know God is in it. We start thinking that we are being punished or had done something wrong and we do not understand why we are going through what we are going through. But if we know God is in it, we can go through it with no problem because we trust Him.