When God trained me as a prophet he put me in a great training ground. He put me into a church that was so popular and wealthy they were at a crossroads of following God or following their own imaginations. I was not the only person hearing God speak in this place; the church had several leaders who shared visions once in a while and we hosted every famous minister who came to our city to speak. Names you recognize. But having your leaders embrace the gift of prophecy without their hearts and souls being submitted to the Giver of Prophecy is not much help. Mixing the flesh and spirit does not benefit anyone.
After three or more years being trained I had so many profound experiences and encounters, revelations and visitations with Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Father, Heaven and angels that I was bursting at the seams to share and help rescue people who were being led astray by the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, and so on. But the more I encountered God the more the church leadership resisted me. I was watched carefully, hamstrung at every opportunity to share or help. Officially this was not the policy, but God knew what was going on. better than I did. If I was confused he would just tell me. I was very popular with the people, I served in any way I could, but was probably seen as a great threat to the leaders because of the prophecies I sometimes shared. I was certainly no threat! It just makes me wonder what they were really scared of. Who they were so afraid of?
By this time I was very successfully training people to hear God’s voice, something our church openly encouraged. We trained people in prophecy, something our church openly encouraged also. We published a book, 40 Days in Heaven, giving away thousands of free copies at my own expense to members of the church at Christmas. We published a monthly journal of prophecy, and other things as well. I already had the main revelations that are basis for the teaching Foundations of the Kingdom. We already had printed and distributed thousands of books of Communion, how to have spiritual fellowship with the Holy Spirit, as well. We were having weekly ministry meetings to train and equip people to hear God’s voice, to receive and minister inner healing, deliverance and God’s presence and manifestations were getting more and more real.
This is the flesh’s last stand against the Spirit.
Just when I thought the leadership were turning a corner and would stop dragging their feet, saying one thing but doing the other, giving lip service to serving God wholeheartedly but actually resisting the Holy Spirit, they held a very important multi-week sermon series on the Prophetic, called ‘’The Prophetic Church.’ This was exciting to me. I wondered if they would ask me to teach since I’ve spent so many years not just experiencing but studying Prophecy. I had my JD, and had worked taken teaching classes back in Uni and worked as a teacher in several universities and companies, high schools, private classes, etc. for about ten years already in Hong Kong. I was reading 500 pages of new prophecies a month to do our journal, and had been prophesying personally for about 20 years on and off. I was really hoping I could share in some way. Nope.
A normal sermon series was about two weeks long, sometimes four. This one on the Prophetic Church was EIGHT WEEKS LONG, I guess that’s how serious they felt the emerging prophetic voice in the community was. They felt they needed to really take it seriously! And the first sermon was really good, biblical and a repeat of all the verses we commonly teach about the prophetic ministry: Numbers, Amos, Samuel, 1 Corinthians, etc. I wanted to commend them for a great message and maybe I did.
But it quickly went downhill after that. I guess they ran out of things to say biblically after a few messages, and with no real input from any prophetic voices, and not much personal experience it became a lot of reasons why pastors need to be in control of prophets, and that most prophets are false–especially when they have ‘negative’ words to share and don’t support their leaders without question; these people they said are renegades and there were several things that were directed specifically at me and my wife personally. This was necessary to reign us in, they felt, because we had become … well, prophets.
I NEVER asked for a ‘negative’ word! I was usually crying out to God for help with the bills and he would interrupt my whining and tell me a word to share to further warn the unrepentant leaders to save them from impending doom. I was not asking God to criticize them, but I did want to know God’s full truth. I was honest and sincere. And many people were hearing the same words, after all, but I was the ONLY ONE daring to share them! People AFTERWARD admitted as much! So we were ALL hearing God speak, but I was maybe the only one who dared to obey and share.
It finally became unbearable and I wondered why no one would interject and stop this obvious tirade against the prophetic ministry when the Lord spoke, “This is the flesh’s last stand against the Spirit,” he said! The Holy Spirit was taking it personally!!
And later I saw Jesus as big as a tall building walking over to the church, removing the roof like it was a lid of a box, reaching in and puling out handfuls and handfuls of snakes from the church! How it would play out or when it would come to pass I did not know, but I knew Jesus was tired of his people not listening to him.
Then we had a guest speaker give a message on the Church in Pergamum! I was thinking, wow, that’s bold. That’s a hard word. But when he came it it, he skipped the entire rebuke and just talked about getting a white stone and a new name. He had silly props and it was all very gimmickly. He did not take it seriously at all even though he claimed he had a word for the church. It was just a silly entertaining and did he forget that you need to overcome the Sin to get the Reward: every church except Philadelphia was warned but if they overcame they got a blessing. He left this all out. It was just silly. Then leaving I heard God speak and he said, “Oh, my word for the church IS Pergamum, and I’m serious!” I wrote this article on that prophecy. It’s quite a big deal.
But a part of that prophecy is allowing “Balaam” to teach the people. What this caused in Scripture was having the ‘covering’ over the community be broken. Many people died. And what I began to see was that this very dynamic was at work now in our church, and I heard Him say about their covering, “The BARRIER is broken and all manner of filth is attacking my people.”
They then had a major change in eldership and several of the older people left, people who were all known to have visions from the Lord from time to time and who were fairly serious, mature or sincere followers of Christ. They were all replaced with young professionals, people in their early 20’s, who were entrepreneurs, investment bankers, brokers, most of whom were not known to hear God speak. That’s not to say they were or weren’t gifted, but just to say they had other priorities. They then voted with the most “unity” of any elder’s meeting they said ever, to uproot the church and move to an old pornography theater owned by a rich Pagan man, at huge cost of renovation, for a fixed 15 year lease. Unity was also
God has been giving many of us not warnings any more, but judgements about this decision. But the leaders were unmoved by these ‘outsiders’ trying to rain on their parade. I then head God say, “I am not going with them in this direction (to move the Church to the old Wan Chai theater).” Maybe they assumed if it was possible to do, and their young elders were in agreement, then it must be God’s will. ‘Unity’ is always right! If the elected elders are all agreed then it must be God’s will, right? They even began making so many plans to expand their activities, open a school, more concerts, more outreaches … Young Hong Kong investment bankers in charge of the church have such optimism! Hope and Joy are from God! Let’s go!!
Then I saw a mushroom, which signified the true condition of the ‘covering’ of the church and the Lord said, “All that is under the “Church” umbrella will fail” Their ‘umbrella’ covering was a now just a slimy mushroom!
I shared less and less–I wanted fruit of repentance not to just to get to share prophecies. I wanted them to listen to what God was saying. it was not about me! But I had one close friend, an older leader also a neighbor, and I spoke to privately to him and told him some of my visions I was worried about. Ones I didn’t share with anyone else. And he said he knew it already. God told him the same thing! Did you warn them, I asked!? No, he said, I think it’s God’s will to punish them. They won’t listen.
Wow, I do not think that way! But he was an old colleague of our pastor. He was the one who hired him from England to come to Hong Kong so many years ago in the first place. They were old friends and he saw things quite differently than me. We had the same prophecy, the same insight from the Holy Spirit, but I was desperate to save them from shipwreck, but he felt God was in control and if they sinned they should bear it. It’s their fault for not listening to the Holy Spirit in the first place!