Another Lesson in Prophecy

It seems a good time to offer another lesson in prophetic ministry. Here the main point is time, in that our fallen nature handles it very poorly. One major element in the Curse of the Fall is a high sensitivity to time-space limitations. We are so deeply tied to this that we simply cannot step out of it, even in theory, to get a look at how the rest of Creation experiences it. Time passes for the unfallen world around us, but it’s not at all the same as it is for you and I.

So when God begins to speak to your heart in prophetic terms, it requires a bit of unlearning for us to make sense of it. One of the biggest things to unlearn is timing. At a minimum you should understand that our fallen nature makes us very impatient. The Hebrew culture of the Bible presses upon us the necessity of patience using the parable of ripening fruit or other natural associations. We are often given prophetic signs, but some of them are entirely non-literal.

We are taught to live faithfully and mind our own individual calling until the Lord tells us to move on. Jesus wanted His disciples to remain active on the scene in Jerusalem until the last minute, so in Matthew 24-25 He first corrects their misunderstandings about what would happen and in what order. The main point is that they were not going to see His Second Coming any time soon — stop worrying about that. Instead, they were told to keep an eye on the political scene involving Rome so they could leave before the coming siege traps them in the city. Instead of telling them the number of years, He painted an image of the signs when the fruit was ripe for destruction of the City.

Thus, God wants at least some of us to pay attention to secular politics, so we can gain some prophetic insight into protecting His servants from needless sorrow. Somebody has to notice when the Pillar of Cloud lifts and start packing up the camp. And when we pay that attention, there has to be a prophetic element. We have to see these things not in common human terms of those around us in the world, but in terms of when moral fruit ripens.

This is part of my effort to raise up the image of a moral sphere of awareness, a vision for things invisible to the naked eye. Your heart can see angels and demons; individual sensitivities vary, but it’s part of our wiring from Creation. It’s the Fall the blinds us to moral reality so that we see less than we should. A prophetic eye sees the trend of things within the moral sphere based on an awareness of God’s moral character. It’s a case of “this is how God does things.” The Bible offers plenty of examples, so we aren’t left to guess about it. It starts with knowing the Law Covenants, but then it extends through that knowledge to a moral vision of how reality is wired with God’s personality.

For someone whose divine calling includes a prophetic service to others, there are times when God will move in your heart in such a way as to provoke a strong reaction. It’s likely to reverberate in your emotions, but it will not come from there. It will be rooted in your convictions, something that overwhelms your human nature with far more power than mere thought and emotions. From there, you must learn to analyze in your heart and let your mind learn from it. Sometimes it will be painfully obvious, because that overwhelming sense will be connected to something that gets your attention in the flesh.

In that case, what’s happening is that your sensory awareness has bumped up against a moral conviction that was already there. It’s a triggering recognition that gives moral significance to something your mind receives through the senses. This is related to what I call “bouncing things off your conscience.” The heart responds to a query about something practical. The important thing is not the specifics, but to absorb the moral pattern into your intuition. The idea is to change your instincts about things. The more you do this, the greater your moral wisdom about the world around you.

So the prophetic gift does call for some study, contemplation and prayer. We go through life expecting those moments with the Burning Bush. Those moments are likely to be far more subtle than such a blazing vision, but we strive to become sensitive so we don’t need to be slapped upside the head. We are seeking the expertise to slice sharply in dividing joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12-13). We are told to seek that kind of discernment because that’s how God works.

I’m learning how to discern when something in my experience is just a human emotion, and when it is sourced in a move in my heart. It’s not always obvious. My most recent prophetic message about a war coming seemed at that moment very urgent. However, the urgency was in the power of the message, not in the timing of events as our fallen nature measures such things. The move in my spirit hit me first and established itself as a major issue. Afterward I ran across the news about the political spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and recognized that as a manifestation of my prophetic burden. Nothing in this suggests a time period, nor even a pattern of events. However, I note that the news of the political ruckus is a sign of what I’m sensing. I am utterly convinced this will entangle the US government so that we eventually get involved in a war with someone who will hurt us militarily.

The experience itself was a little slow for me. I woke up feeling alienated from everything around me. My first instinct was to step outside in the dawning light and pray for insight. As the day wore on, the image took shape. It developed into a vision of doom that didn’t affect me directly, in the sense that it wasn’t my personal doom. Rather, it was a matter of bloodshed and destruction on a wider scale. By late afternoon, I knew it meant going to war, and that whoever was on the other side would have the means to hurt us militarily. That was my conviction, not simply a matter of wild imagination.

This was what lay upon my mind when I encountered the news that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were in a dispute. My heart seized upon that story as a sign of the prophetic warning I wrote about the previous day. At this point I have no worldly wisdom about how it will lead to that sorrowful vision; that’s not part of the prophetic warning. Rather, it’s a matter of conviction that they are connected. I believe this will hurt America whatever is going on, with all the background that I could not possibly know, and all the secret maneuvering behind the scenes among the various governments, and without knowing who feels they might have a vested interest in this thing. I’m convinced it will bring Americans a lot of suffering.

So my mission here is a warning to you, dear Readers, that these events are a sign to us. They will have an effect on what we do in service to God’s glory, particularly if you live in the US. Consider what kinds of political fallout come with a military loss of any significance. I don’t have any specific warnings, but I can imagine a tsunami of political repercussions arising from such a fiasco. Especially in the context of the growing political unrest we already have, this could be the final provocation to a civil war that forever ends the republic as we know it.

I can’t tie this all up in a neat bundle for you. I’ve been held by a conviction that the republic was doomed for at least the last 20 years. That naturally includes a vision of civil war. I’ve been expecting for a few years that America would attack Iran and get whipped badly. For at least a year I’ve had convictions that Trump’s election was a sign that these things were near. It’s not all clear-cut in prophetic terms; some of it I surmise from a more subtle awareness of things in general. This is why I keep injecting verbal warnings that I could be wrong about some of this. The gift of prophesy is much more than messages dropped into my heart from Heaven; it includes a general insight into the moral character of things to go with it.

So I don’t know when exactly, but it seems to me a lot of this stuff could easily be this year, maybe mostly during these summer months. Because God is a Person who responds to devotion and rejection, some of what He plans is conditional. Some of it is surely carved in stone. I’ve already tried to convince you folks that He does change His mind about things, and that we have already seen that once last year, with that shift in reality we experienced.

I’m not presenting myself as some all-knowing guru of God’s truth. Don’t follow me; pay attention to where I go and learn how I decide to take that path. You need to discover your own path. The core issue here is your peace with God, regardless of what happens in this crazy world.