According to Webster’s Dictionary being “incompetent” is defined as such:
1a: lacking the qualities needed for effective action
1b: unable to function properly (i.e. incompetent heart valves)
2: not legally qualified
3: inadequate to or unsuitable for a particular purpose
I think the statement which I’ve made here today, for any decent rational person, is beyond dispute. The charge of “incompetence” is actually understating the issue. Negligent incompetence would get us a little closer to the truth, yet even still I think that I’m letting this movement off too easy. What has happened with this movement, I believe, to be a spiritual crime. It has gone off the reservation in such a way that people from the outside looking in speculate as to how many drugs our leaders use. How else could intelligent people be so delusional? Pink unicorns, jelly factories in heaven, angels riding dolphins; what’s the difference between fantasy and reality at this point? How does one draw the line between reality and delusion any more among such people when delusion has replaced reality for so many years? What has led us to this place? We are a people that has been charged by the Lord with a most sacred responsibility: carrying forward the prophetic flame of God’s Word into the new day. How has it come to this?
WHEN SUBJECTIVE SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES TAKE THE PLACE OF GOD’S WORD
(Ex.20:3)
“You shall have no other gods before Me.”
The Prophetic Ministry and many of the people that have taken up the mantle of prophet (whether they have the sovereign call or not) have become gods of sorts. A false god is an entity that takes a position of authority and reverence that belongs exclusively to Jehovah. False prophets and false prophetic ministry today have become false gods in the hearts of many people in the church. These people look to these false gods to be the voice of God in their lives. They look to them exclusively to guide them in times of growing uncertainty. They expect them to predict and plot their courses individually and nationally, much like a person of the world would expect from the service of a fortune teller or psychic. In many cases these ministries and the voices that embody them have become people’s bibles. The prophet’s facebook feed or youtube channel has become many people’s go-to source for all things spiritual. We give prophetic ministry a special place in our hearts and lives that should only belong to the bible, the absolute inspired Word of God.
God made it clear that He would tolerate any other gods before him, and that we were to put no other gods before him. As it was with ancient Israel, so it is with the modern Church today. When false idols arise, God in his mercy will look to tear them down in the sight of all the world in order to break the sin of idolatry that has taken root in our hearts. Like Dagon who kept falling until eventually his head came off (1 Sam.5:1-7), God has allowed our prophetic idols to keep stumbling and falling in the presence of all, until now many of them have lost their heads. Eventually, as a result of the commerce and power created through the spiritual exchange in idol worship, they begin to lose their minds (quite literally) and can no longer tell the difference between their reality and their delusions. The “pink unicorn” and the “gumball factory in heaven” revelations are now just as valid as the Scripture they hold in their hand in their minds, and they can’t understand why others who are not operating under their delusion would have a problem with that. Deception is now the air they breath, the substance they run on, the fuel that has steamed their engine of false prophecy and commerce ahead, and there’s no stopping that engine now. To abandon it at this point would mean to lose everything. But the Lord would say to such, “What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?†(Matt.16:26).
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WORD & THE GIFT OF PROPHECY TODAY IN THE CHURCH
The prophetic is a gift and function of the Spirit which God has poured out on the church through grace, but it’s place is to aid us in the handling of truth as we endeavor to walk in the light of God’s word (Ps.119:105). God’s word is absolute truth, but our prophetic experiences and words are subjective, running through the filter of our human souls, emotions, and agendas. Prophetic ministry today lacks the same authority which biblical prophets and apostles possessed to establish the foundation of our faith through Scripture (Eph.2:20). This is why we should never revere or cling to the words of a modern-day prophet as we would to Isaiah or Paul’s words, which is what many people in the Spirit-filled church are doing today. We should hold onto the scripture firmly while we hold onto contemporary prophecy loosely. Believers of the Mormon faith started to elevate their prophet, Joseph Smith, to the level of authority which the apostles and prophets who wrote the scripture had, and look where that got them. I fear we may be seeing another mass Mormon exodus of sorts from scriptural orthodoxy in the prophetic movement today if we don’t address these issues head on.
“But Stephen”, you might say,... “Do you place any importance on prophetic ministry in addition to the handling of Scripture?”. I would say, “absolutely”. I would say that the interpretation of the Scripture takes a prophetic revelatory anointing from God, for it is by the Spirit of Wisdom & Revelation that we are made to know the truth of God’s Word (Eph.1:17). But ultimately it is that Spirit-breathed Word and Truth that is our guide, not the exclusivity of prophetic ministry operating in the church currently. When you constantly hear things like national prophecy, words of endless wealth, blessing, & breakthrough, without pointing people back to the Word, there’s an issue that needs to be addressed.
Tomorrow we will continue this series.
In His Service,
Stephen Powell
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