How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand….”
Psalm 139 : 17-18a
The Living Word of God
People know Jesus as the Savior, which is what the name ‘Jesus’ means: “Jehovah Saves” … but angels are not ‘saved.’ When they sinned he never sent himself in the form of fallen angels to redeem them but cast them out and never looked back. Ouch! So Angels don’t think of the Son of God as Jesus, which they know he is to us. Instead they seem to often refer to him as ‘the Word,’ or more correctly as ‘the Word of God’—but which is also strange because we also call the Bible the word of God but that’s not written for angels!
The Bible is clearly written for Mankind on Earth during this Age, so we may need to distinguish the ‘Word of God’ as it refers to Jesus and when it refers to the Bible text, our Scriptures, which is also the ‘word of God’ but in a different sense.
Jesus is the Word of God
So first like I already said, on one hand the ‘Word of God’ is a person, but there is also the Bible, our wonderful and Divinely Inspired Scriptures, a written testimony of God’s dealings with Mankind on Earth in this Age, which is also called the Word of God. But what’s the difference?
First, the Bible is a record of God’s dealings with us showing us our sins and the consequences of them, and showing us His reality and character in contrast to them: his Love, Mercy, Patience, Wisdom, yes, also his Judgment and Sovereignty, and his Prophecies and Promises and this testimony is so very special—unparalleled in the Earth. But it is itself not God. God wrote it and it is beyond human comprehension in its heavenly genius, but it is a work of God; it is itself not God.
The Bible talks about the heinous sins people do. Does God sin? Is there any sin IN Jesus? How can there be no sin IN Jesus yet there is mention of gross sin in the Bible? Peter quit being an apostle and went back to being a fisherman. This apostasy is in the Bible. Is there any apostasy IN Jesus? What about Satan? Sickness? Death? These things are all in the Bible in abundance yet none of these things are IN Jesus. Maybe that doesn’t yet make sense to you, but it’s true. The Bible is not the same thing as Jesus. The Bible is not the 4th part of the Trinity.
So Jesus is the ‘Word of God’ and the Bible is God’s word as well, but clearly in a different sense. At an obvious level the Bible and Jesus must agree, and they do, as much as a text written for humans could be in agreement with the Living Spirit of God I suppose. But there are differences as well. To begin with the written text is always referred to as the logos, while the revealed, living word people get from God personally in Spirit is called the rhema. There are different words for the word ‘word’! And for example in the Bible Paul said the Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk or word, where he used the term logos—the Kingdom is not a matter of logos, but instead is a matter of power, or dunamis. So Paul means people can have the logos but not have the Kingdom. People can quote the logos but be without the dumanis. Cults often use the logos, but twisted, and even Satan did.
Nevertheless you next need to consider this Holy Spirit, who is called the Living Word, which is both living and active, and is above the written text and who itself is where the power, the grace, the glory and the presence of God is and comes from. When people say the Bible spoke to them, that they opened it up and a verse leapt off the page, and they attribute this to the Bible itself, but in fact it is the Holy Spirit who is doing that. So no, the logos is not the same thing as the Living Word, but yes, they are in harmony, one is maybe like a reflection of the other.
I get confused trying to distinguish the logos from the rhema, as the rhema always goes back to the logos in some way, but the logos itself is not the rhema, see what I mean?
And I just think of how many times the Lord has taught me things I didn’t even know were in the Bible until the Holy Spirit showed me by direct revelation. More so, how many things in the Bible did I only have a carnal, childish and wrong grasp of until the Holy Spirit opened up my mind and heart to grasp a higher meaning, a more spiritual meaning, a more correct revelation meaning of from what is written in the text of the Bible? Many times for sure! The logos is like a reflection of the rhema and they are linked but somehow they are not the same as well.
Being Taught by God
Or how do you suppose a 12-year-old Jesus knew so much about God and the Scriptures that he astounded the top scholars in Jerusalem when he never even had his own copy of them to study and in fact spent all his time as an apprentice to a wood worker in the sleepy little town of Nazareth—certainly not spending time reading scrolls in the synagogue? It was by revelation given to him from the Holy Spirit directly of course!
Or consider this, when I was trying to explain what it is like to fellowship with the Lord in Spirit the Lord told me I can say that for purposes of hearing his voice in our hearts that the Holy Spirit is the Mind, Will and Emotions of the Father—he said it is God’s soul. And I said, ‘No, you can’t say that. You don’t have a soul! That’s the part of mankind that is malfunctioning!’ I bet he loves it when we correct him! But He didn’t reply. ‘But I’m right, right?’ Again … silence. So I figured I’d better look it up and you tell me, does the Bible say God has a soul? Even in the generalizing NIV version the Bible says God has a soul over ten times. I never heard THAT preached in church before! The Holy Spirit that has been given to us is the Spirit of Jesus the Bible says and this is what dwells within us, which he told me for purposes of fellowshipping with him in Spirit we can think of as God’s soul. It is his Mind, Will and Emotions and this is what came to Jesus when he was a child and taught him about the Father, about his purpose, and about all the scriptures he needed to know—especially the parts that spoke about him personally—all while his own earthly dad, Jospeh, was none the wiser to it! So this is what is dwelling within us too, who are ourselves now his very temple, and where his ‘Soul’ now finds a place to lay his head.
What God has Said
Another point of distinction is that the Bible is certainly a Divinely Inspired record of God speaking to us but it is not everything God has said, can say, or wants to say now or in the future. It is however enough to give even a simple-minded person sufficient understanding and insight of God’s Ways, Man’s Ways and Satan’s Ways to follow God and be saved, set free, and seek to have personal fellowship with God—if everything God says were written down the Earth could not contain what would be written—but again what is in the Bible is enough that we would understand, respond, believe and be saved.
Oh, you don’t agree with me? I’ll prove it to you.
Do you speak-a my Language?
First it’s clear that the Bible is written in human language and tells things we as humans can understand but so therefore is limited to what can be expressed in human languages and that can be understood by human minds. Is everything Jesus thinks and does so simplistic that we could simply understand all of it, or write it all down? Of course not! In fact so many of God’s thoughts are so deep we don’t even have words for them yet. They could not even be put into human language, not even at a rudimentary level—this may be why Romans 8 says the Spirit within us intercedes with groans that cannot be put into words. What God has decided to communicate to us in writing is what humans can grasp, and even this is at times difficult to do so because it must be spiritually understood. Carnal hearts and minds simply cannot grasp spiritual truths. In a way of thinking God hides himself from the carnal mind, but I think it is partly unintentional, it’s just impossible for the carnal mind to understand spiritual ideas he told me.
And Jesus once showed me a vision of a huge diamond and it was slowly rotating and he said that while he has many attributes or character traits in which he exists in perfection which have been revealed to Man (the diamond was slowly turning) he said there are still other areas of his character and attributes that Mankind has not yet even discovered and has no words for—and yet he exists in those areas, and he exists in those areas in perfection. I think we can agree that we will live for eternity AND ALWAYS BE LEARNING MORE about the Infinite God the Bible has only begun to reveal to us now while still on the Earth.
As Deep Calls to Deep
Second, I’ll say this: the Bible says there are things God says in heaven that are not lawful for man to even repeat on the Earth! Both Paul and John experienced this.
In Revelations 10:4 when John heard the ‘seven thunders’ speak he heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Stop! Don’t write that down!’ God speaks things that it is not lawful for man to even repeat on Earth, let alone write down and share! Wow! So these Holy Words are not in the Bible, yet God still speaks them. So yes, there are MANY things God is speaking that are not written in the Bible, which again is meant for humans on Earth in this season.
So we can also see that most personal direction comes from the Holy Spirit speaking to us about our lives. God may say to buy a car. Is that in the Bible? God may say to marry George. Is that in the Bible? God can tell you that the compression of the third cylinder in your engine is low because you have a bad piston ring. Is that in the Bible? So it is not always possible to open the Bible and find a verse to explain to us what God wants us to do personally, who to marry, what to say or what we need to know about our daily lives. But the Holy Spirit will tell us of ALL THINGS, as the Bible also says he will.
Or fourth, consider that Solomon said there is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to hug and a time to refrain from hugging, a time for war and a time for peace. OK, but what time is it right now?—Only the Holy Spirit can tell you that! You may feel it’s time to just give up and die, but he says, “No! It is time to live and not die!” You may be certain it’s time to stop hugging and never hug again, but he says, “Yes! Hug! Do it now!” It’s the Holy Spirit we need to make the Bible come alive in our lives actually, the written word cannot do that on its own accord.
Again, when Paul went to heaven he also heard things not lawful for humans to repeat on the Earth. These are also parts of God’s ‘word’ but not written in the Bible. I think it was John who also even said not everything Jesus said and did on Earth is in the Bible, there was just too much to talk about, but what is recorded in the Bible is enough so that you may believe.
His Thoughts are like the Sand on the Shore
Fifth, if you still don’t believe me, God’s thoughts about his people are just TOO BIG and TOO NUMEROUS, numbering in the billions of billions of words for each person to write them all down—yet this is also part of God’s spoken word. The Bible says God’s thoughts about you are like the sand on the shore if you could count them.
Psalm 139:17-18a—17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand …
This volume of thoughts and words is so high it is impossible for any of us to grasp, write down, understand or communicate all of it, even to or about even just one person. But this vast volume of thoughts and words God has for each person is much of the basis for his personal prophecy to us. So it is NEVER going to be the case that God has nothing to say to you, about you, about himself or about other people, much of which will be from the Bible directly but some things just won’t.
So Jesus is the WORD of GOD and this means far more than a summary of the written testimony of God in our Scriptures in the Bible. Again, the Bible is not the 4th part of the Trinity. So there is a written word but there is also a Living Word. There is a text, the logos, a book—but there is also a Living Word, the Spirit, which is Truth itself, as the Bible also says.
So Jesus is not the Bible. The Bible is not Jesus in paper form … The Bible is a true testimony, absolutely invaluable to Mankind on Earth, but Jesus transcends ALL that can be written about Him or about God or God’s deep actions, especially in human language and during this season of Mankind’s testing on the Earth. The Bible as a record and testimony is simply enough that we should believe—but there is infinitely more God is saying now, has said before and will say quite soon ….
But yes, there are rare cases when God is silent; there are cases when the righteous are silent because the times are evil, but even this silence is not because they have nothing to say—but more because people just won’t listen! But I personally think I have never encountered this, not in person, but it is at the extreme end of things and so it’s still true and bears some brief mention.
But what I HAVE experienced on the other hand is this …
Three Visitors at Christmas
One Christmas many years ago I found myself totally alone.
God had been using me as a prophet in a large trendy church in Hong Kong who refused to listen to any correction he gave them—no matter who gave it to them, how or how often! I will share a little about that in Chapter 7, but I also talk more about it in my other book, 8+Splash. Anyway, when my task was over the Lord let me leave, to everyone’s relief probably. Very soon my wife also left our family and stopped following the Lord as well. So it was Christmas and I sent my daughter to please stay with her mother for the holiday because I knew she needed company. So I really was alone. My family back in the US would never call me; I had no American friends, and no money for even one gift, one decoration or one holiday food item. But I was OK. I knew most everything we celebrated was tainted with pagan pollution and worldly commerce anyway. I was fine. It’s just another day.
But then on the 24th I heard the Lord say that he would visit me on Christmas Day. I didn’t know what that meant but then on the 25th he asked if I would rearrange the furniture for visitors. So I moved the chairs around facing the small sofa, not knowing who would show up—you never know!—when he just asked me to sit down and suddenly the presence of God in Three Persons came and sat next to me on the sofa!!!
First across from me sat the Father and I say he was quiet, a little serious. He didn’t talk much; he wasn’t upset, just … serious. He just appeared there on the sofa across from me. To my left side (on the right side of the Father) the presence of Jesus came and he just started talking, talking, talking—seemingly non-stop. And then I looked to my right and the presence of the Holy Spirit was suddenly there but when I looked at him he just cracked up in deep laughter like he had just heard the funniest joke ever! He never spoke a word, he just laughed and laughed—a deep, hilarious laugh from his belly!
And I looked back to the Father: silent, serious—Jesus: talk, talk, talk—and Holy Spirit: cracking up in laughter!
Wahhh!!!
So I got my notebook to write it down because I write everything down, and he said, “No, it’s not like that. Just sit with us.” So I just sat in their company, looking around at my house guests!!! Who would believe me!!!??? I didn’t even care! It was just so wonderful!!
But when I turned to the Father I began to think that since Jesus was the Way, so the Father must therefore be the Destination, or that’s what I was thinking about at that time. Jesus called the Father his GOD in the Bible, so I said I wanted to get to know him better. You know, go right to the source!
But the Father said, gesturing to Jesus on his right (my left), something like, “Everything you can know about me you can learn about through my son, Jesus; get to know him better.”
I looked at Jesus, he was talking so much: talk, talk, talk, talk, talk—I turned to my right and the Holy Spirit was cracking up again—or maybe still. He’s just so happy, that guy!!
But after a very short time I just began to fade—I was losing the strength to sit up in a sofa chair! I think I was something like slowly being slain in the spirit! I began to slide down and had to put my legs over the armrest to try to prop myself up to stay awake and I think it was the Father who said, “You want to rest?”
And I said, “Yeh, I’m falling asleep!”
And he said, “OK, you can sleep,” and then almost instantly … ZZZZzzzzzz … I was out!
I woke up later and they were all gone and I was again alone in my house on Christmas Day.
Jesus on the Flyover
I also think people really fear that Jesus does not really know them very well, since they themselves don’t know God very well, and so how could he have very much he wants to say to them? Does God really have so much he wants to say? Let me also share this.
One Sunday I was walking to church and had to get from the ferry pier into town. The pier was connected to the mall by a very busy elevated walkway, which we call a flyover, and I was about to enter the mall and even on Sunday morning it was so busy with so many people walking in both directions when I suddenly ‘tuned-in’ to the voice of Jesus like turning a radio dial and finding a radio station. I wasn’t praying or thinking about anything other than getting to church on time when Jesus started talking NON-STOP about EVERYONE around me.
It was like, Oh see her, she has this and this problem right now. Oh that guy over there! He wants to do this someday. And her, she’s an architect and wants to do that. Oh this guy here just got married and he has a child on the way and I’ll bless her with great music skills … I mean Jesus just started talking non-stop about everyone walking all around me and he knew everyone and every detail about all of their lives and had plans and blessings and wisdom and just so much to say about EVERYONE!
Then as suddenly as it started I ‘tuned-out’ and could no longer hear his voice. It was overwhelming just for those few seconds but now I knew him in a different sense. He knows EVERYONE and EVERYTHING about them, and really has so much he wants to do for them and say to them!
Jesus really is the Word of God!
God’s Design is for Teamwork
So with so much to say how could anyone hear it all for themselves, let alone hear it all as a prophetic minister for someone else? There is just too much God wants to say! His thoughts about EACH us are really as numerous as the sand on the shore!
So this is one reason why he made the Body with such a diversity of functions, gifts, ministries and callings.
What people often call this is the ‘Five-Fold’ ministry but the diversity of callings and ministries in the Body is explained in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12 as well as Ephesians 4:11-16. But the Five-Fold as we call it is not only about diversity in the Body as a whole but more specifically about the callings needed to equip the saints to function in a diversity of Kingdom Ministries within the Body.
Anyway, I was taking a break one day recently and we went swimming and since I now live in the Philippines on a tropical island there are a lot of white sand beaches nearby. This day the ocean was very turbulent and choppy and the water was unclear but the Lord told me he wanted to show me something. I thought it would be a special tropical fish or a sea turtle or beautiful coral or something so I got my mask and snorkel and fins and began exploring. And I did see a small coral by itself in the shallow water, and he said, “Go look!” So I got close and yes, saw some fish: I recognized a damsel fish, a clown fish, a wrasse I think, there a few different kinds and I wanted to get closer to count them when He said, “Oh, there are five different kinds,” adding, “And notice how they all get along.” I looked closer and of course they all live on the same small coral, no one was trying eat each other or fight. So yes, and it is odd that five different kinds of fish would all live together in such a small space and cooperate so well. But is that all God wanted to show me? Was it supposed to mean something and then it clicked—Oh, it’s the Five-Fold ministry! He soon explained the different types of ministers in the ‘Five-fold’ all actually do the same thing only they each do it in different ways. What are they doing? They are building up the Body of Christ. They are bringing the saints to maturity. It’s actually the same goal they all have, only they each go about it using very different methods, different gifts, different ministries. I never thought of that before!
This means teamwork will be essential: ‘one plants, another waters’ kind of thing. And while pastors and teachers are by nature quite gregarious and maybe always prefer to be surrounded by lots of people, on the other hand prophets and sometimes apostles are often more on the quiet end of the social spectrum. Nevertheless, we each must do our part, whatever it is, for the Body to come to maturity.
To the Pure ALL THINGS are Pure
Along these lines one evening I heard the Lord say He was going to show me things beyond my wildest dreams: things I never thought of, and beauty I never dreamed about, only because he knows I appreciate it, but which is also how he made me. The next day, I think it was just as I was waking up, I had two sudden revelations in the blink of an eye! First: to the pure all things are pure—and second: the spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet.
To the pure all things are pure’ surely means many things. But one thing this means the Lord showed me that morning has to do with learning.
Regular people learn about the Lord in a very human way by first reading their Bibles—but also by attending church and going to Sunday school and listening to sermons, and videos, and reading other books written by other people as well, etc. These writers, teachers and preachers were themselves also taught by other people, and they also learned by listening to sermons and reading books written by other humans, and so on, and so on. There is a lot of room for personal human input (mixture), but it still mostly all goes back to the Scriptures themselves—which itself was written from personal revelations and testimonies.
Specific words of revelation spoken by God were heard by a prophet such as Moses or Isaiah for example, and these were written down in ancient Hebrew, but then they were translated into some other human language, often a language very different than the original texts. It is often very hard to express the same idea that Moses meant in ancient Hebrew when translating into Modern Chinese, or Portuguese or Hindi. Could Daniel or Amos or David even express what they heard God say accurately in Hebrew or Aramaic back in the day itself? And what are the best words to describe this now in modern and often vastly different languages—but again still needing to use earthly, human words?
So there are words and concepts that are nearly impossible to translate, others that are very easily misunderstood, and then you have all the problems of teaching carnal human people the divine and spiritual thoughts of God, conveying ideas which they never even conceived of before! Then again it all goes through translators and scholars, then teachers, and writers and then into their books and sermons, on and on and on. What people learn goes through many filters, layers of communication and various opinions and mindsets and what someone finally thinks God said may not be exactly what God intended or what Moses heard or what he wanted and tried so hard to say.
However, to the pure all things are pure, and he showed me that morning by direct revelation there are people whose hearts are pure and they can learn from God directly and because he teaches them ‘Spirit to spirit’ they will know with certainty and absolute clarity what God meant and what Moses tried to say, even to being able to explain nuances between different word choices and concepts in modern translations. We actually need the Spirit to teach us accurately, but not everyone has a pure heart to allow Him to do this. So cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded! You will be certainly glad that you did! How to cleanse your hearts, you ask? Just ask him to help you—your willingness, his ability—it’s really quite easy for him to do if you seek it.
So the revelation was far more specific than that and I can explain it in more detail maybe later, but the Lord says not to talk it more than that here now.
But yes, God can and should be our teacher. We can all be taught by God—this is one of the most vital purposes of prophecy in my mind, learning accurately from him directly. But is it the pure in heart who will see God. The pure in heart can be taught by God purely. I saw that in a FLASH of revelation!
Subject to the Prophets
The second idea he showed me also in that blink of an eye that morning was that ‘the spirit of a prophet is subject … to the prophet.’ One thing this means is that when God speaks his prophetic word over the Entire Body each one only ‘hears’ one part of the overall message because each has their own limited ‘zone’ or ‘department’ or ability to handle only one part of the overall delivery. It is the same that in a large grocery store one section has vegetables, but another has fruit … they are very similar but are not the same. That’s actually how he showed this to me. And so when the delivery truck comes with supplies for the entire store some things may go to the vegetable section but others go to the fruit section.
This is like prophets he showed me, who each ‘hear’ a part of the overall word he speaks out over the whole Body—God speaks his Huge Word that blankets the Body and spreads out over the whole community but some of it is heard by the ‘vegetable’ prophets, and other parts by the ‘fruit’ prophets—so I can say with confidence that not all prophets are supposed to be ‘fruity’—some are more like vegetables. I sound like I’m joking, and you never can tell, but that’s exactly what he showed me.
God is such a huge personality no one person can handle all that he is. So he has made diversity in the members of the Body so each can handle a different part of his overall presence. The delivery of the Whole Prophetic Word is much bigger than any one person can hear, receive, handle or steward, and we are all made a little bit different so collectively we can handle his larger message, his immense presence, his overabundant thoughts towards us—we prophesy in part.
Some people like political and governmental issues. Others like deep, heavenly revelations. Still others like warfare insights and others love to talk to people about God’s plans in their personal struggles. We therefore must work together to get the whole, complete message that He is speaking. Did you know that cooperation in the Spirit brings a special kind of blessing. (Just as ‘cooperation’ in the flesh brings a special kind of defeat.)
We’ve seen this on a smaller scale in small meetings when everyone prophesies and one person may get a word that is connected and a part of what another person is hearing, and what they hear may be the exact same thing, the same idea but using a different explanation, a connected idea one or two steps further developed along the line—or possibly something completely different from what others hear. This is by God’s design.
We also see this when four or five people all pray over one person, and each of them gets a different kind of word of encouragement, exhortation and sometimes correction of attitude or habits—all over the same person and it all comes from the same Holy Spirit; it is therefore wisdom that brings a blessing to let everyone share their own part of what they hear God say.
So yes, I saw those two ideas in a flash—like in the blink of any eye! I really do love being taught by God!
Small Groups are an Easy Solution
So think about it, if God really has so much to say you really need to consider how to more effectively manage prophetic ministry in a meeting. God asked me to start a training and equipping group and to name it Prayer Mountain. He said to raise a mountain of prayer and no, it’s not a physical mountain we have to climb before we pray—it’s in the spirit! So we had 30 people one week come and EVERYONE prophesied and I remember being confused. Did everyone who came just happen to have the gift of prophecy? And the Lord said, No, it was because there is a realm beyond the gifts.
The gifts are still very important he said, seek the gifts! But we were operating in a realm of direct communication with the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts and who wants to fellowship with us all, and will if we would just quiet ourselves down and listen!
I had seen prophetic ministers make everyone in a meeting get in one long line to get a prophetic word from the main minister—but I dislike this for several reasons. First, it takes a long time and also we were training and equipping people to prophesy themselves, and so every single person there could already easily give a prophetic word. Think about it, for 30 people to each get a word from one person, which takes three or four minutes each to do, well, that would take an hour and a half to two hours by itself. And if we already had a soaking or worship time and a message it gets late very fast! Not everyone can be out till midnight, especially on a weeknight. But also I realized the effect this was having was not empowering the people but maybe somewhat dis-empowering to their own ability to hear and share themselves.
I soon came to a more clear understanding of what a ‘best practice’ ministry model may look like and so we often move people into Small Groups. We just try to make sure at least one ‘mature’ person is in each cluster to help manage the commotion and keep things focused, but certainly not to do all the prophetic ministry themselves! Small groups should be three or four people, because the more people the less privacy and the longer it takes!
I then ask people to start with one person and put them in the middle and have the others lay on hands to them and pray and prophesy over them. Then take turns and even the ‘mature’ person should be prayed over, yes, even by the novices!
In a small group we can more easily manage if there is a new person who is unreached, unsaved or potentially a problem because of the personal attention each person is getting. We don’t want to lay hands on anyone suddenly and also don’t really want strangers we don’t know and have not yet vetted to lay hands on us either! Most Christians are fine but every once in a while you get a lame duck or bristly porcupine in your midst! It’s good to just keep your eyes open!
Other Benefits of Small Group Prophecy
So why I like ministry in small groups like this is for several reasons. One, everyone gets the chance to prophesy, and you soon find some people have unique gifts and sensitivities and hear God say things you never would or could!
Also in small groups like this everyone gets personal attention and a personal touch from the Holy Spirit. And that’s what people really want, isn’t it!?
Also, in small groups shy people are more likely to share personal prayer requests and when God brings up a sensitive personal issue it is kept relatively private but still prayed for personally.
Also, people are not trained to be dependent on the main speaker, minister or any one very gifted or mature person. This ruins their development making them feel un-spiritual and unable to help or share since that mature person hears God so fast, so deep, and so easily, and so they tend to just sit down and stop participating and let that one person do all the work.
We want to train everyone to do their part and so we often have the very gifted people either take on the hardest cases, or to just observe from a distance. I like to monitor every group and watch for problems such as if the kids are just chatting, or someone is crying deeply or someone starts screaming. I’m looking for anything out of the ordinary that needs my attention. God will speak so much prophecy through the group already the mature people can just hold back and listen and if no one shares what they already heard or if people miss the depth of a word or there needs to be more faith or understanding applied to a situation the mature person can then step in and fill that gap.
Also I found more mature people will often already be directed by God to step in where they are needed and maybe even give a word to a specific person off in the corner that no one was ministering to anyway. I ask the older, more gifted people often to monitor the whole room like I do and since they already know how to recognize God’s voice they can handle the harder words and God will direct them to do what no one else is doing already, at least that’s what I believe.
Finally, I like this method of ministry because of time. If we have a small group of four people, or even five, and each person gets seven to nine minutes of personal attention, we can wrap it up in 30 to 45 minutes. If you were to have ONE PERSON give five minutes of prophecy to each of 30 people for ministry … it will take you over two hours, maybe closer to three! And think of the poor person who is standing up all that time ministering!
And I want to say one more thing. It’s about pride. People get to feeling so important when they have a strong gift, but in fact we get no reward for having a gift. We only get a reward for how we use that gift, how we serve people, how we treat other people and how we let them experience God’s love.
The ministry is like delivering the water of the Holy Spirit to the people to satisfy their thirst, to feed their hunger, to meet their needs. If we take so much pride in being a water deliveryman, or take pride in the kind of water we are able to deliver, or exalt ourselves above others because of the kind of delivery vehicle we drive—and look down on that guy who only has a bicycle and who can’t deliver the kind of refreshing liquid that we can—well, we are probably more in sin than in true service.
I used to be a Ph.D., I actually still am one, but I mean I used to write that on my name card, ‘Edward Johnson, Juris Doctorate.’ And one day God said, if I do that, people will treat me like a doctor. I said, Well, I am one. That’s what I am! … He didn’t argue. I went to church the next week where my main ministry was to war refugees from Africa, Nepal and Sri Lanka and also live-in domestic helpers, maids, who were mostly from the Philippines but also Sri Lanka and a few from Indonesia. These very hardworking ladies sacrifice so much in their personal lives to work and earn abroad and I can’t tell you the risks, family drama and hardships they have to endure on a routine basis. To serve them I had to sit with them on their level and quickly refused to even call myself a pastor as they were constantly arguing over who was the boss, who was better, who was more educated, who spoke better English. When I want to learn something from the Lord I often see Jesus and he’s sitting on the floor, cross legged. To sit at the feet of someone as humble as Jesus to learn from him, I have to get as low as him—lower even. How to get lower than a man who is already sitting on the floor?
You see, I stopped calling myself a doctor, and even although it was a struggle, I stopped always calling myself ‘Edward’ especially in ministry times and try to use the name Jesus so often calls me, ‘Eddie.’ Not always but He began calling me this and I told him one time, ‘Jesus, I don’t like being called ‘Eddie.’’ It reminds me of being a weak, unhappy child. And he said, “I know you don’t but you will. OK, Eddie, so what I want to tell you is this ….”
Now I understand it better because ‘Eddie’ was maybe 10 or 12-years-old and carefree, playful, and yes, actually a happy kid. He was nerdy and inquisitive, friendly and even a little goofy. Jesus has been reflecting his identity to me and causing me to be transformed into the image of him that I am seeing, and while I know he invented space and time and atoms and molecules and all life on the planet and all that, you would never know it by hanging out with him. He’s … it’s strange what I’m gong to say … but he’s actually very down-to-Earth. That’s the guy we are working for as ministers in whatever capacity, to whatever degree—and especially in prophetic ministry where we seem to represent him personally the most. The Creator God … is humble.
But functioning in prophecy makes people prideful. Jesus has SO MUCH he wants to say to his people but there are so many things getting in the way that I have no control over. But if my own pride and self-image is one of them—well, I do have control over that!
So Jesus wants to talk to his people. He has so much he wants to say. If we insist on putting people in line to let ‘the Prophet’ bestow a blessed word from above upon their lowly, insignificant lives—and if this is one of the things that hinders them in any way from getting to know him better, then no, I won’t stand up and make them get in line, I won’t call myself a lofty title and sometimes I won’t even minister at all—I mean if other people can do as good a job as I can and without all the focus being on me. That is what I think Jesus would prefer I do, and it may just be my personal opinion, but I think I also have the Spirit of God.
There are so many ways God Speaks!!!
Anyway, anyway, anyway, let’s get to the real fun stuff, shall we? People want to know how God speaks. The Bible makes some mention of various ways God communicates but these lists are only the start and they barely scratch the surface of how many ways God communicates.
But people like lists. People like boxes they can check off, and lines they can memorize. But Job 33:14-16 also says:
14 For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it. 15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, 16 Then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction.
So let’s talk for a few pages about how God speaks, at least some the ways we recognize. But also have an open mind to consider other ways he speaks that people are not so familiar with.
When He Speaks without using any Words at all!
This is because first of all we have to use the terms ‘speak’ and ‘speech’ in a very broad sense. We often use terms like ‘hearing God’s voice’ but he often ‘speaks’ and won’t even use words at all! Sometimes he ‘speaks’ in images, or in vague impressions, or by only conveying feelings—but he also can communicate by giving you so much direct knowledge in the blink of an eye that you can write two or three books from the revelation imparted to you in one split-second.
For example, I know a personal testimony of my former pastor who woke up one night and was in his spirit body floating a few feet above his natural body still asleep on the bed under him. He could see in 360 degrees in every direction and said it was like his spirit body was itself one big eye.
But Jesus was in the room. And when they began ‘talking’ Jesus spoke what my pastor said was about a novel-length conversation in one huge burst of ideas that went right into his spirit, bypassing his ears and mind, and it was conveyed to him in less than one second—Spirit to spirit—woosh! More than that, when my pastor spoke back to Jesus out of his own spirit (like from his heart area) went a similar-size reply of thoughts he said that was also about as long as a novel of information and again it went in one huge bust of thoughts, bypassing his mind and mouth, and it went right into Jesus also in less than a second—vooom! This went back and forth, back and forth, Spirit to spirit communication of direct impartation of a vast volume of understanding, all in a few fleeting moments—and then Jesus went to leave.
But when Jesus did he first drew very close and my pastor said his spirit man began to get … excited. Have you ever been a young boy with a crush on a pretty girl and suddenly she walks by you and brushes your cheek with her hair? Did that excite you? You bet it did! Well, this was about a thousand times more intense.
He said as Jesus began to get close he began to tremble in excitement and anticipation and when he came close enough to almost touch him he was ready to DIE NOW—just leave it all behind only to be with Jesus, he was THAT attractive. He said if Jesus would have actually even just touched him once—Done! Gone! He’d be dead—powerless to resist the presence of such Love Divine. His wife asleep, his kids down the hall, his church plant, his ministry, his whole life was NOTHING to him in the surpassing glory of Jesus’ actual presence. He was ready he said to just die now and never look back, Jesus was so lovely. He kept saying it, if Jesus so much as even barely touched him—he’d be gone!
Enjoy Getting Lost
That was surely one of the best moments of his life! It excites me to my core to even talk about it. Do we need to dissect it, categorize it, force it to fit into our mold of understanding? Can’t we just get lost in the wonder of it all?
You see, if you give this experience to some mediocre Bible teachers they will try to explain the gifts of the spirit academically and make a long list of various ways God speaks and they will absolutely ruin this experience trying to analyze and understand and measure out and trample down and force it to conform to a regiment of ‘how God speaks’ based on a list they read about. These types of people are always trying to bring God down into a human framework, to box him in, to define him like I said, scientifically. Maybe it’s time we stop trying to do this!
This attempt to constantly make God more human and make him fit into human categories needs to take a rest. I know it’s ideas based on the Bible you say, but it’s still processed by your flesh’s understanding, used according to your human motives, and it’s real purpose gets mixed up with our carnal thinking and that’s just not very helpful sometimes.
On the contrary I believe it’s high time we decide that we ought to rise up, to go up into his world and become more godly like him, and be translated into his heavenly world instead! We once needed to make lists and draw maps and categorize and measure our understanding of God, but I think we’ve reached a tipping point. We are no longer infants or babes in Christ. It’s time we learn to throw out the itinerary and fold-out map and let God be our travel guide. He knows where he wants to take us and instead of trying to always be in control of our journey, let’s just GET LOST AGAIN in the wonder of God!
What can still be gained by constantly humanizing God? Bringing him down? Don’t we already know where we live? Isn’t it time we answer the upward calling and rise up into heavenly realms instead? Why do these Bible teachers not have a stronger instinct to do this themselves? I suppose it is not their ‘fault’ because to do these ‘carnal’ things is just in their nature. But I mean, come on, man. Let’s stop forcing God to be so … human.
Talking with the Master Communicator
You must have begun to understand by now that God is a MASTER communicator. He INVENTED communication, don’t forget! To somehow think the God who created speech itself cannot himself speak is just plain dumb. To make a list of rules that you want to impose on the Master of how he can and cannot communicate with his own creation is doubly daft.
And it does not help anyone to just make a long list of ways people have heard God speak, or types of dreams people have, or list the biblical gifts or manifestations of ways God communicates to his people and end it with a full-stop like you’ve finally figured it all out! You can read the Bible yourself, you have already read that list. Are you satisfied? You’ve watched videos and heard people confidently or should I say pridefully defining that list. How are you now better off for it?
Do you think you have Jesus all figured out now, do you, because you now have that list? Do you have all your questions already answered? If so, then why do you keep reading about prophecy? Paul said he did not want us to be ignorant and listed diverse ways the One Holy Spirit manifested. He speaks in so many different ways, he does so many different things, but to remember that it is all coming from the same Spirit—but God cannot be reduced to an itemized checklist or schedule of rules.
Making and reading lists and itemized bullet points, line by line gives comfort to people who only want to have boxes on a checklist that they can tick off. It helps no one hear God better. God never gave me a list like that, or ran through his gifts item by item. We increase our hearing by increasing our faith, by increasing our hunger, by asking to talk with him—we choose to draw near to him and he will then draw near to us. And God even told me it helps our hearing by experiencing what we call inner healing. Laying on hands to heal a broken heart makes people able to hear God better and he even said that to me, that “Healing ALWAYS brings Hearing.” People are scared of God and you can help them hear him better by simply casting out their fear and healing their broken hearts.
Out of the Box? What Box?
What I mean is God does not operate by lists. The list is for us, and as Paul said it is to cure our basic ignorance of God’s ways. But reading a list does not help us mature or hear God better, or draw near to him, or open our hearts to him. So surely, do read that list. But some of the ways God has spoken to me, and spoken to me often, I STILL can’t understand what item on that list it even was! Was it Discernment? Prophecy? Word of Knowledge or the omniscience of the Mind of Christ? I still have no idea, but I know it was Him speaking, and know exactly what he said!
Read Samuel giving prophecy to King Saul. What is that? Moses saw architectural plans. Ezekiel saw visions he said and was so angry afterwards that he was too angry to even speak for a whole week! In Habakkuk he said he saw God and he looked like a sunrise, not like a person but like a great light, and he saw rays flashing from His hands where his power was hidden—He was a light that also had hands! His voice is like thunder and water, and one time I heard him talking to me but a few words came out with just a rumble, yes, just like thunder. It was because what he wanted to say was just a little beyond my ability to hear. I heard the rest of the message but a few words were just loud, deep rumblings where I could not comprehend his words but still had some faint sense of his meaning. This is what David said in Psalm 18, and 2 Samuel 22:14 that “the Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered His voice.”
So do we really need to stuff the God who can’t be contained in the highest heavens and shove him into a small box that would fit into the palm of our hand so we can understand and control him and somehow quantify him? I mean this is just not going to happen. The only ‘box‘ you create for HIM will be a prison of ignorance for YOU and your feeble-minded attempts to humanize and categorize and scientifically analyze the GOD who the angels are still learning new things about every day.
Fluid Manifestations in the Book of Acts
Yes, God is reaching out to us, revealing himself to us by the Spirit, and teaching us his ways and the Bible records so many revelations of how he communicates and deals with Mankind, and yes, people do need to read and study the Bible much more than they do now. But for one thing modern Christians seem to be very down on learning from the Old Testament and often disparage it. People such as these won’t easily grasp some of the abundant revelations of how God communicates which he has already shown us in that part of the Bible.
So for people who can’t so easily learn from the Old Testament anymore because of their blindness or bias, tell them to look at prophecy in the book of Acts. Just in one section we have a gentile, Cornelius, who has a ‘vision, openly’ and an ‘angel’ speaks to him and gives him clear instructions to find Simon surnamed Peter who is lodging with another Simon, a tanner, down by the sea in Joppa. He sends messengers and a believing solider to find him, not knowing what Peter even has to tell them, which the angel could very well have told him himself!!
Anyway then next day we find a hungry Peter praying—I can relate—and he falls into a ‘trance,’ then has a ‘vision’ of animals in a sheet and has a conscious argument with God, or whomever ‘the voice’ was who spoke to him, which may have been an angel. He comes out of the trance / vision and thinking about it, the soldier and messengers sent from Cornelius arrive and the Spirit just simply ‘speaks to him openly’ and says, “Go with them, nothing doubting, because I sent them.” They said a holy angel has summoned you to our house! Come with us!
The next day again they leave with some companions and arrive and there are even more people waiting! Peter still has no idea why he’s there, but shares his vision of the animals, but briefly, and still has to ask, ‘OK, why am I here?’
Cornelius shares his vision and conversation with the angel who told him his name and address, and asks what is it that Peter has to tell them that is so important. Peter shares the gospel and the Holy Spirit falls on them and they all start speaking in tongues! Next they get water baptized and everyone praises God.
Woosh!—What Just Happened?
Now, can you really tell how God ‘spoke’ to each person in this story at each moment? Was it a gift, was it a prophecy, was it a word of knowledge? Was it an impression or discernment? An angel appearing, or the Spirit of God himself just speaking to someone’s deep heart? What gift is a trance? What gift is having an angelic encounter? … and why does any of that matter?
So yes, I like to discuss how the various gifts and manifestations work, but if it’s just an academic exercise it’s just not as useful as you might think it is. Without a personal experience such knowledge tends to just ‘puff’ people up with a false sense of knowing how God moves—it’s just ticking off boxes in a bullet-point list and how is that helpful to anyone at all? God is drawing us to know him and his love BEYOND knowledge—how can he if we won’t let go of our pride in our knowledge and be children again and just experience him directly?
And when you do have personal experiences it’s often so hard or close to impossible to pin things down and say, ‘OK, this here was a word of knowledge but that was discerning of spirits and now over here was an angelic visitation but in a dream but this here now was a prophetic dream only he was awake at the time, so it was a trance-like visionary experience, only he actually went to heaven in person—but was it in the body, or out of the body? I still don’t even know ….
I tell the story of my pastor traveling in the Spirit in his spirit body to witness several accidents before they happened where the scene was frozen in time like a movie set. When the actual events unfolded he had been there several times already and was ready for action. What gift or item on the list is that? Time travel? But that’s not in the list of gifts or common manifestations! But it is still mentioned in the Bible! Another guy we heard about went to Poland in the spirit when he was taking a nap and was there dressed and able to talk to people in Polish (which he didn’t speak) and was thinking, ‘This is so crazy! No one is going to believe me!’ He looked at a kielbasa stall, a polish sausage hawker, and grabbed a long kielbasa and stuck it in his jacket. Then he woke up! No one is going to believe me that I had a vision of being in Poland and he rolled over and AHHHHH!!!! The kielbasa was sticking out of his jacket!!! So you tell me, what item on the list is that? Round-trip angelic airplane transportation with a brief stop at the Duty Free kiosk all in the Spirit—I just hope he gets frequent flier miles.
A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. So it does not really matter what we call this or that. God is bigger than his list. And sometimes we really have no idea what just happened so we just say it’s a miracle. It’s a sign and a wonder. Or as Bill Johnson, my brother from another mother often says, ‘It’s a sign that makes you wonder.’
What I mean is while God gave us these lists of gifts and manifestations God is still bigger than his lists. God speaks this way and that and in fact since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, and this is expressed in inexpressible ways, indescribable thoughts, and uncommunicable ideas. Truth be told, God ‘speaks’ in more ways than can be listed!
The Message is more Important than the Means
God told me he is a MASTER COMMUNICATOR and defining a neat list of six or seven ways he speaks to people satisfies a childish curiosity, curing basic ignorance Paul said, but it does not really help you hear him better, understand him better or draw near to him better. Faith, hunger, inner healing—these things work, having more prideful assumptions does not.
And when a prophet has a message to share, does it matter how he heard it? Does that matter at all? Was it a vision or a dream? Was it an angelic visitation or did he just find a verse in the Bible on someone’s T-shirt and feel an impression he needs to tell it to you? The Bible says God speaks through all creation. What difference does it make HOW we hear God’s instructions? And trying to explain that often detracts from the message itself! To me it does not matter how God speaks, as long as I know what he said and I can be clear to share and explain what he meant.
Then you will always get the Bible police who say—“That story is not on the list in Corinthians, so I judge it is not from God, and you are a false prophet.” These are the same police who judge every single person who shares a revelation to be a false prophet by the way. But sure enough just as he’s condemning you—Oh no! Jesus just walked in! That’s not even on the list either! And he’s wearing a Hawaiian t-shirt! I think maybe someone I know just likes to bend the rules men are so keen on enforcing!
So likewise, I’m not satisfied with a description of a list of items because especially when you start to really flow in the Spirit God begins speaking so often and in so many ways—for me I reached a time when I was not even able to write it all down, or draw the images or visions or movies or impressions or deep moanings that are even beyond human words … When you can sit at his feet for an hour and he can just pour out his heart to you, you can watch him cry, you can feel his sadness, who cares about anything else as trite as what category of manifestation was this tear or that moan of his grief? Imagine being so callous to his emotions that what you walk away with is a checklist of the ways he showed you his grief. Isn’t his grief the message, isn’t his pain at losing his beloved people far more important than your silly checklist?
Anyway … Dreams, Visions and Various Words
Anyway … I will still paint with a broad stroke some common ways he speaks to help clear up any confusion which seems to be so prevalent.
Dreams are the easiest to hear and most difficult to understand. You hear well because you are asleep and can’t be distracted. Your carnal mind is quiet and cannot easily interfere although it sometimes still does! Especially once you wake up!
For us, we realized we should be asking God to speak to us in our dreams more, and began to ask him for more dreams, and he began to give us more dreams in a week than we could even share in our Sunday meetings, let alone discuss and understand.
That’s when the next problem quickly emerged—interpretation! This was a problem because we had dozens of dreams a week in our small group, I had over five dreams in one night more than once! Some dreams were very long and very complex and I had no way to even guess at their meaning.
Dreams tend to often be very symbolic, but not always and not completely. I say write it all down and ask God later for an interpretation and it helps to re-tell your dream to yourself out-loud and think of metaphoric, even poetic language and just doing this many symbols become clear.
There is something almost like a language of dream symbolism interpretation HOWEVER you cannot reduce God to such a simplistic code that can be easily broken or understood by his enemies. If that were easy to do Satan would never have allowed Jesus to be crucified! God’s secrets are reserved for those who fear him, not for those who devise a better system of interpretation—he told me that!
So no, you cannot actually ‘hack’ God’s prophetic symbolism. One reason is that there are many personal variations and regional and cultural variations as well. If you see an OWL in a dream, does that mean it is a symbol of wisdom and being wise? In Asia an owl is often regarded as the stupidest of all animals, so for that person it’s not wisdom but stupidity! What is it for you? You had the vision!
The Bible compares Jesus to a lion, but Satan too. If you see a lion what is it? If you look up ‘lion’ in the Bible you’ll find it sometimes means evil people, sometimes means God’s people, sometimes it is a metaphor for strength, it can mean demons, Satan, Jesus or literal lions. No one can tell you what God meant in your vision, I mean no one but the Holy Spirit!
Then you have colors and at best people write a list of 20 common colors in visions and dreams and 20 things, both positive and negative, each of these colors could mean. So I saw a pink computer printer and by this chart it could mean one of so many things: being girly, carnal, chaste, innocent, immoral, sensual, lacking passion, or full of faith. I had to ask God and he said it was for evangelism; it was pink because it was about babies, people getting saved.
People publish lists of dream symbols, what different kinds of people in dreams represent (policeman or a chef, etc.) or family members (even ones who have died, but which can still mean a family heritage or generational blessings (or curse)), various animals and seasons and oh, the list goes on and on and on!
I am grateful for these compilations in fact, but if you look on-line you find New Age pollution mixing into everyone’s lists of what this means and that. It ends up taking more time and effort googling and reading strange mystical sites and taking notes and in the end all you have is a lot of guesswork … and much of it is tainted by demonic counter-wisdom, deception and pollution and is not only just plain wrong but can lead you astray into witchcraft or worse.
So I prefer to sit in God’s presence and ask him symbol by symbol and listen carefully in case he starts to explain things in prose. I publish several long interpretations of dreams God gave me and you can see how his explanation is so far from any guesses I could make or conclusions I would ever come to based on published lists of dream symbol meanings.
The best at dream interpretation was maybe John Paul Jackson and he could give you a fairly accurate overview of even the most bizarre symbols even in an over-complicated dream and do it on the spot, off the cuff. He however said even with his experience interpreting thousands and thousands of dreams, he could never know more than he said about 85% of a dream that way and the rest always has to be revealed by the Holy Spirit. So 85% of a message is a good start, and it took him discerning tens of thousands of dreams to get there, but wow, how much can change in that other 15%!—15% of a message can change everything!
The Mountain Valley Vision
I had a dream God explained to me that I publish as the Mountain Valley Vision, in which I was up in a mountain valley and I saw a Whale that blew me a Bubble, which he said was his plans for me. He said this:
The Lord: “The Whale is my calling of you, my destiny, my purposes, my plan, my endurance, my word of deep things too big and grand for your easy comprehension—you can’t swallow them. In fact, they have to swallow you. Being in the belly of the whale takes on a whole new significance now doesn’t it? It’s the place when you are arrested by my plans and purposes for you—you’ll be digested, transformed, changed—renewed by my word spoken over and about and spoken concerning you.”
Me: “That’s what I used to call an elephant symbolically.”
The Lord: “Yes, but you got caught up looking for a system of interpretation—but I will not give my keys to strangers. You can’t CRACK my Code, Edward—don’t even try—Men cannot figure me out—I resist their efforts to reduce me to a puzzle or a board game—my secrets are reserved for those who fear me, not those who devise a better system of interpretation.”
So I think you cannot avoid it, nor should you want to, but you will have to admit that dreams are a mystery and have to take them back to the Lord to ask him to give you his own interpretation because what it really means just makes no sense, but, “Lord, you know.” And yes, this time he called Edward!
Visions
As I matured and my broken heart healed I began to be able to face God directly and hear him talk to me more directly as well. As a result I had much fewer dreams and many more direct words and visions, often every day and sometimes many times a day.
Visions are often more literal, so they need less ‘interpretation’ sometimes, but certainly not always. I saw a vision when I was awake and it was shockingly clear like I was seeing into the spiritual realm directly. When you see a vision it is like a dream or your imagination usually. But when you see into the spiritual reality of heaven directly the clarity shocks you. The colors are more vibrant than you have ever seen in earthly reality! You may even see colors we don’t even have on Earth and have no words for yet! But you may see with a clarity that is what I like to say is like wearing dirty glasses of the wrong prescription, and looking out of a dirty window with dirt on both sides, and the day is foggy, and it’s twilight, and someone is burning leaves nearby … but suddenly you wipe away the dirt, the smoke, the fog, turn the bright lights on and oh, your eyesight is heightened and you can now see in a vibrancy and clarity that is more real than you have ever seen with normal human eyesight. That is what it is often like seeing into the spirit or into heaven directly. You are seeing with supernatural, spiritual eyes, not seeing a dirty hazy reality with your human, biological peepers.
So once I saw this kind of vision and it was in hyper detail. I saw a forest, and I saw the leaves on the forest floor and it was like I could reach out and touch them. But then I saw a wheel of sparks on fire, which I now can compare to a visual effect in a Marvel movie but for them it’s about sorcery which I detest so I won’t mention it by name, but they made a portal with a fiery edge of sparks, and well, this was before that movie came out and I saw it first. So I saw a spinning wheel of sparks and it was 100% real but it was pouring sparks onto the dry leaves of the forest floor and nothing was catching fire. I was confused, which is often a mark of true prophecy, but I was confused because what I was seeing was 100% real but the sparks were flying in a giant wheel which was clearly not a real thing, and the leaves were not catching fire which was also impossible. Then I realized it was not ‘real’ but still a prophetic vision but it was not cartoon-like or dream-like but in more hyper detail than Super 4k HD—I mean it, it was absolutely 100% reach-out-and-touch-it real.
But still visions are often more literal, and dreams often more symbolic. Usually. Sometimes.
But if an angel walks into your home, is that a vision? What if he eats pizza with you? Is that still a gift of prophecy? But it’s happening in reality! And he put one dash of salt and one dash of pepper on every single square inch of his slice of pizza. Why do that? Maybe I’ll try that next time. And what if it’s Jesus himself who walks in? Which tick box do I mark off, which line item does that belong to? What if he lifts you up and places you in a heavenly chariot and you fly around the planet and then go visit heaven for a while, see your house there, visit some old friends you didn’t know who already died, eat some fruit, drink of the water of life and—SNAP—you’re back home but your shirt has fruit juice stains on it?
Really, what about Time Travel?
I mentioned above and maybe better explain in more detail what happened to my pastor when I was young and still living in the US when he fell asleep on the sofa and woke up in his spirit body. One time it was in Alaska and he saw a car accident. Actually this happened twice with two different car accidents in Alaska. He was able in his spirit body with an angel of God present, to witness the accident scene outside of time—I mean time was frozen and he was able to walk around in the scene apart from time, check distances, measure it out, get different views from different positions—he was able to go back a few times before the actual events happened in our real human time frame.
Another time he witnessed his niece getting killed in a horse riding accident where she was riding a large black horse, one that you’d say if you saw it that it was too big and heavy to jump. And it cleared a few obstacles … but refused before a high rail—but his niece had so much momentum that she kept moving and fell off, landing head first, breaking her neck.
God didn’t tell him, or show him a vision or dream, he brought him there in person in spirit to witness the accident a few times in advance. And only when he shared it with her mother, his sister-in-law, who was herself a known prophetess, well, it made no sense. There was no venue like that they had ever seen before. Nor was his description of that large, black horse anything like any of their several jumping horses! So after an elaborate treasure hunt over several months they finally put all the puzzle pieces together and they found the horse, which belonged to a trainer friend up North, and they found the right venue based on his drawing of the layout and mountain range behind the grounds, which was located out of state. Yes, it took many months but all the pieces of the puzzle slowly fell into place and when they knew attending this particular event with that particular horse on that fateful day that she would be killed—they just told her she wasn’t allowed to go. That was it. End of story.
And I know what you are probably thinking, because I’m thinking the same thing: Why didn’t God just let her get a bad head cold and call in sick that day instead? Why not just allow the horse to make the jump, or use a different horse, or fall in a safer way, or hold on and not fall at all? Or get tired of competition and quit or not be selected for the invitational meet? There are so many other ways God could have saved her life besides this long, drawn-out and mysterious prophetic puzzle piece investigative process.
I explain that in more detail in 8+Splash if you want the full story. But what I finally think is that it was just to make a memorable story! Everyone likes a good story!
So really, why do we need to define what kind of experience this was or that was? Why do you need to make a list of gifts and manifestations and cite verse and chapter and check things off like we’re playing personal prophecy and spiritual gifts bingo? Isn’t it enough to let God be God and enjoy the wonder and awe?
Word of Knowledge
Anyway, back to my own ‘list,’ and this is a weird one especially when the ‘word’ is actually a pain you feel.
Word of Knowledge is usually a specific knowledge you get, like a short prophecy, to explain a solution to a problem, a hidden secret no one is telling you, a key to a mystery, and often some very personal detail only they and God would know, etc. When it’s wisdom of how to solve a problem it’s better to say it’s a Word of Wisdom manifesting, but it is so much like a simple short prophetic insight or even discernment or discernment of spirits, it’s hard to know in a specific case which one God manifested through.
But the way it gets really weird is when Word of Knowledge teams up with Healing gifts and this is truly bizarre. I knew a lady who was in a healing ministry prayer team and was standing at the front by the stage, and suddenly she really, really needed to go to the toilet! It was unbearable and she excused herself during the message and got out past the seating area, near the toilets and the urge suddenly stopped! Embarrassed, she went back to the front while the minister was still speaking but everyone was watching her and suddenly she had the same urgent need to go again! She rushed out again and got close to the toilets a second time and the urge stopped again and then she realized! She didn’t have to go, it was a word of knowledge that someone had a bladder infection! God was simply asking her to pray for that person since he was going to heal them right now!
Word of Knowledge can very often manifest not as a spoken word you hear, like “This person has cancer” or like a floating word in the air over someone’s head, “Cancer here” but can be a pain that is the same exact thing they feel, and Ouch! That hurts!! But now you can describe it in intimate detail, “Someone has a pain behind the ribs and it feels like you swallowed something hard, and it affects your breathing and when you lie down especially it really hurts. Who is that here?”
Word of Knowledge in healing is linked to the angels delivering healings since this means the healing has already arrived in the room and all you have to do usually is just call it out and it will manifest. And yes, we still call it a ‘word.’
Discernment, Discerning of Spirits
This is another odd way God communicates but it makes sense that God does not always want to have to use human words to convey an idea. I get this like I’m smelling a fact. I heard of someone who can discern or ‘smell’ your birthday. What aroma does a birthday give? No, it’s not a smell but a ‘smell’—like you can ‘see’ someone’s birthday when you meet them. I can see witchcraft in a place often. My wife can often hear your thoughts. Discernment is a sense but one that is not normal, but often it’s like an awareness of a presence of a certain kind of demon or fact or premonition of a future issue, or well, all kinds of things—the list is nearly endless of what spiritual things you might discern.
For some people discernment is not a sense or smell but just visions of the spiritual world laid bare. Other people have ‘tastes’ in the spirit, and oh, I have one to share, my feet have a Holy Spirit thermometer and I can feel the ground where the Holy Spirit has been, especially where God has been worshiped.
I almost forgot about this. I was purified by Holy Fire one time and it made me sick for a whole week! And all that week I saw visions of God, I saw into the heavenly realm and God taught me several key lessons I often share. But afterwards I was able to feel holy ground with my feet. If I walk into a house or church I can ‘feel’ if they pray there—or not! If they don’t but still call it a church or a house of believers or pastors, I will feel that sometimes as well, and it feels like there is something ‘unclean’ there. I can feel unholy ground by idols or religious demons in churches, and one case God even told me not to even walk on the ground by an old Spanish Colonial church because the land was so unholy and polluted. This is also why usually when ministry starts and the Holy Spirit begins to flow He asks me to take off my shoes. When the Holy Spirit starts to flow I can literally feel it in my feet and must take off my shoes to be comfortable in his presence. He said it’s because I have been sanctified. Yes, I remember when it happened—it was very unpleasant!
The Mind of Christ
And the last one I will mention is not on anyone’s list, as good as they may be, but it is in the Bible just the same. I was seeking the Lord one week for the program of our upcoming training and equipping ministry night, and I heard Him say it was going to be an impartation meeting and He wanted to impart the Mind of Christ. I was unsure what this meant, but to answer my hesitancy He then said, “You have it.” And later, not as a question, He said, “You will impart it.”
So later I was playing a simple on-line game for Australia National Day, so this must have been in late January, and I had to shoot colored targets with matching color fireworks. There were three colors that would come up in a random order, and suddenly something came over me and I immediately knew what the next color was going to be before it came up—but it was not the Holy Spirit prophesying to me, or telling me what was going to happen next—I myself was thinking and knowing the supernatural reality as it was happening in real time in my own thoughts.
I’ll try to explain more. I was not ‘hearing’ this in my spirit, so it did not come as a message to me, “Eddie, the next color will be gold!” Instead I had no separation of the insight and my very own thoughts … I was just aware of this knowledge as intimately as I normally think to myself as I look around the room and see the keyboard on the desk, the pencil stand, the speakers … the next color was going to be gold … there’s some loose papers by the monitor, my pencil is in need of sharpening … the next color will be green … and so on. My mind was transformed into a spiritual mind that was plugged somehow into God’s omniscience—I was actually a little startled at first, even though I had been prophesying for many years by then and it was only revealing the simple facts of a video game, not highly personal or deeply spiritual truths from God’s deep, eternal mind! So I should have been more prepared I suppose, but I had never even heard of God doing this before so it was new and very exciting.
Then a friend called me and I knew he was going to call before the phone rang. It was him of course and we were in Hong Kong and he said he was going to go to the Philippines urgently to pray for a sick relative of his wife. The only problem is, before he got there, the man died. With faith to pray for the sick he said he was unsure about having confidence to pray for a dead man to be raised up. When he said this I suddenly saw an x-ray vision of the people in the Philippines and saw BLUE color highlight over the people on whom God was moving. God was not moving over the dead man but over a cousin, or a neighbor, or just other people in the place instead.
Then I knew the verse this was talking about, in John 15:9, and how people just quote it incorrectly all the time because Jesus said he only did what he “SEES the Father doing”—but people never experienced such a thing as I am describing to you, but do know prophecy and so almost always say Jesus only did what the Father “TOLD HIM TO DO!” You listen the next time someone talks on this verse and see what they say! In fact, Jesus had a divine sense that he calls the Mind of Christ and it includes so much but so much of which we’ve never even imagined! Part of it is a kind of x-ray vision where you can literally see what the Father is up to. God also told me it unravels difficult problems, and by this we often know people’s thoughts around us. Again God does not tell us, we know it ourselves in our own mind.
The Mind of Christ is a mystery. It’s actually a “supernatural organ” as he called it—a spiritual Mind, and it’s linked to a spiritual Heart—the Heart of Christ—so it does not function in us like a gift of prophecy does, or discernment even, it’s more like sharing Jesus’ ‘limited omniscience’ within us—our thoughts and Christ’s thoughts are ONE and we literally THINK his thoughts in our own minds. He does not ‘tell’ us anything (prophecy), we already ‘know’ it (omniscience). And the Heart of Christ is the same thing but for supernatural emotions and we FEEL his divine emotions within us. Jesus told me this is a mandate for the Body but who has even heard of it!? Who can even hear when I share it now?
Unity with the Spirit makes Prophesy Obsolete
So please understand that I was not hearing the Holy Spirit tell me as a prophetic word, nor was I getting a word of knowledge, which comes as a distinct message to me, or as discernment or an impression or hearing a voice saying, “Next she will say this and that.”
No, this is not a separate message of truth given to me as a listener, or even a feeling of discernment, as close to my inner thoughts as that might be … no, these were MY THOUGHTS that are somehow streaming live from God! Wow!
If there were a separation of speaker and hearer there would have to be a message transmitted between them: a word, a prophecy, a vision, a conversation—but when the separation becomes UNITY there is no more need to speak a message, one already knows the message, since speaker and hearer are united as one in mind and in thought.
People do have an internal dialog, but looking around the room you don’t tell yourself what you see—oh, the cat is orange and asleep on the rug, the window light is dim but it’s 2 pm so it’s going to rain, my arm itches—you don’t need to SAY these things to yourself, you just KNOW them and THINK them without the internal dialog. Well, the Mind of Christ is that intimate and God is not telling you things, you just know his divine thoughts about the things that concern you and your area of service to him.
He then told me the Christ, the Son, is in a certain relationship between the Father and Holy Spirit—he said the Son is always focused on doing the Will of the Father THROUGH THE POWER of the Holy Spirit. The Mind of Christ therefore is the ‘supernatural organ’ as he called it that enables us to connect to the Father and know his will—and then to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it. I think people can operate in this without knowing what it is to a degree. I certainly did at first and when I prayed for a famous prophet to impart it to him he even said, “Oh, is that what that is!” He experienced it often but didn’t know what it was called.
When Jesus ‘knew their thoughts’ it is not prophecy but this ‘limited omniscience’ at work. And yes, people do often experience this. My wife Ann often hears the prayers of people, and yes, often even knows their embarrassingly intimate thoughts. God is not speaking to her telling her, he is letting her know his omniscient knowledge of what concerns her, going on around her.
So the Father has unlimited omniscience for every atom in the universe, but the Son does not need to bother with such details right now! He is on assignment in a specific location, for specific individuals, and his range of omniscience is ‘limited’ to the specific tasks at hand. So that’s why I call the Mind of Christ sharing in his “limited omniscience,” and why the verse in 1 Corinthians says there is a difference, saying, ‘Who has known the mind of the LORD [The Father] … but we have the mind of Christ [The Son].”
Positively mind blowing!
So to recap if I may, the Mind of Christ is a spiritual organ that always seeks to reveal the Father, and enable us to work through the Holy Spirit. (This deals with motives and desires.) It sees or reveals what the Father is doing. (This deals with perception.) It is connected to the spiritual Heart of Christ. (This deals with desires, motives and emotions.) It unravels dark or unclear problems, and solves mysteries. (This deals with intelligence, understanding and perception.)
You are thinking, well, these are all ways prophecy already manifests, so whats the big deal? Why do we need it?
And yes, those are all ways God communicates to us already, but certainly in a more limited way. Why this is unlike the gift of prophecy is because the distance or separation between us and God is overcome and I don’t know an easy way of explaining that but when we are thinking the same thoughts as God, where his thoughts are now in place of our own thoughts, it’s a more mature version of the communication gifts: prophecy, word of knowledge and discernment all rolled into one.
I think this may be what the ‘completed form’ of prophecy will look like ‘when the perfect comes’ which makes the ‘imperfect’ obsolete. That seems to be what it is going on here. So this is actually very rich meat! Certainly not milk for the immature.
What I mean is we are still struggling to function at a very low level of spiritual ministry and still often stumble over basic issues with prophecy and supernatural revelation in the Body in general. I don’t like to tell people about this in a way that makes them feel like it’s too far out of touch, or way over their heads—it’s not! It’s just a higher way the Lord manifests and people need to be encouraged to seek it and walk in it, not just hear about it and get discouraged that it’s for some other superstars. It is for them, as the Word also says, “… WE HAVE the Mind of Christ.”
Anyway, for more on this topic, look for my article on-line or in the book Foundations of the Kingdom where the Lord asked me to include that as one of the chapters. Learn about it, ask for it, receive it, and start to walk in it! Amen!
A Caterpillar kept in a Box will Die!
God is a master communicator he told me. He speaks in more ways than you can understand, and if you need to put a label on this or that conversation that’s OK, but it’s still a little childish, a little ‘human’ … I mean I know people like lists, it makes them feel safe, like they are in control, and it is a beginning of understanding, but when you cling to it, it also tends to hinder further maturing.
What gifts were manifesting in the various ways Jesus ministered, or how God moved in Acts or with Elijah? Axe-head floating and all that? What gift is that? Curing the poisoned stew? What about when his bones resurrected someone? Is this a gift of resurrection? You see this is not a very helpful way to think … So yes, we just call it … miracles. It all just falls under the gift of miracles maybe. That’s the easy way out. But also why not just embrace the wonder? Why try to put God into a box?
It’s like when you were a kid and you found a caterpillar or caught some fireflies and you know what always happens! You put them in a shoe-box and fell asleep and forgot to feed them or give them any water and a few days later suddenly remember they’re still in that box and when you finally take a look it!—everything is all shriveled up and dead!
Don’t put God in a box. He can’t die, but your excitement might. Your wonder may just get all shriveled up and blow away. Just make more effort to keep the mystery alive. Keep it fresh. Keep it real!
JESUS Talks … a Lot—so Let Him!
And the last thing I want to say in this chapter and on this topic is to remind you what we are really talking about. Jesus talking to us.
Yes, that’s all I really want to leave you with in this chapter which is this: Jesus talks. He talks a lot! And he talks in so MANY, MANY different kinds of ways. So why don’t we just let him!
Yes, ye all may prophecy, Paul said. And if something is revealed to ‘someone else,’ meaning someone not normally considered one of the ‘tried and proven prophets,’ let them speak too. Let the ‘first people’ or the experienced ones sit down for a while so everyone can share and everyone can be encouraged. These who ‘also prophesy’ may be the ones God uses to bring a life-saving word of correction to the stuffy, self-centered leadership after all. And how valuable such a warning word can really be!
So keep in mind that we want to raise up an ARMY of prophesying people, not a room full of people who feel too shy and insignificant to let God use them as he so eagerly wants to, while the one or two established and experienced and oftentimes self-promoting ‘superstars’ do all the work.
And people do really worry Jesus doesn’t have anything He wants to say to them, so if they quiet themselves down and listen, it will be only be to hear the sound of silence. And while yes, God may be quiet sometimes, it’s not for what you think. If he’s quiet, you get more quiet. If he feels distant, you draw more near. He is NEVER quiet because he has nothing to say. Sometimes people just break his heart.
So tell people just to humble themselves, draw near and he will speak to them. It’s just that easy.
And I like lists as much as the next guy, but God cannot be contained in any list. He talks in ways we don’t even have words for yet. Don’t box him in. No one likes to be put into a box!
So Jesus is called the Word of God for a reason, and yes, he talks A LOT! He has SO MUCH he wants to say to you and his other people, so let’s just do our best to remove any obstacles (ourselves included) and let him talk! Let’s just learn to be more quick to say, “Lord, speak! Your servant is listening!”
Amen!
More Stories
Getting Started
Introduction
Chapter 1: You Don’t Need a Gift to Hear God Speak