Going with What God Gave Me
I went back to the Buckman’s church the next week, and I looked, well … normal! ‘Going with what God gave me.’ They said I looked good. Handsome! That was so nice!
Later during the week I was visiting again to ask for help to make a decision. Should I continue with college to get a degree, or just take a few classes here and there and skip the whole degree program, since the main learning I felt I needed was to simply learn the Bible and one day become a minister. Time may be too short anyway to need a degree, right? And it was expensive. I really didn’t know what to do!
They prayed and didn’t tell me what God wanted me to do at all, but instead asked me what I wanted to do! I dunno. I just want to do what God wants.
But what do you want if you had your own choice? they asked me.
Well, I would go to school. If I had the money. They said that was what God was telling them He would do, let me do what I wanted to do. OK, I guess I’ll go back to college. Later on I would not only finish my college degree but would go on to earn a Juris Doctorate and be the first Ph.D. in my family! But at that time I was ready to quit school and serve the Lord just as I was. God can take us and use us either way, but He has a plan already laid out for each of us. For me it was earning a college and then a doctorate degree. But we still get there one step at a time! Don’t despise the day of small beginnings! I keep saying that! But it’s true!
The pastor and his family lived only 15 minutes from the main campus of our state university and soon they offered to let me board with them, which would help my spiritual growth I was certain. The pastor said he would teach me and impart to me what he knew and so it would be like a kind of seminary for me; I also soon became the ‘youth pastor’ in that church of maybe 30 people and soon two more young men my age joined, Dan and Will, and so I soon had friends as well.
But before I go on let me explain a little more about the Buckman’s and their small church so you can understand how special it really was.
There were three main prophetic people in their church: Patrick, his wife, Sarah, and her sister, Elizabeth (not their real names!). There were also a few of the “flower sisters,” and the Deacon and others, but let me focus on the pastor first.
Pastor Patrick Buckman was originally from Newfoundland—Labrador and St. John’s and all that. A construction contractor and Vietnam War veteran, but he was gifted in prophecy in a way that was then and still is now slightly unusual.
He grew up Irish Catholic and after the war got Born Again and Spirit-filled in an Eskimo church up in Alaska. A few weeks after getting saved and speaking in tongues he was invited to do some repair work on a street drain. But then he had a vision.
The Future Has Come Today
Well, it was more than a vision: he watched a future event play out in live detail as he witnessed it in his spirit body accompanied by an angel of the Lord. That’s what he called a vision. He went ahead in time in his spiritual body and watched as he was helping to repair a road drain, standing above the manhole by the side of the road, rocking on his feet back and forth and just when his heel caught the edge of the curb suddenly there was the loud S-C-R-E-E-C-H of tires locking up and looking to the nearby intersection he saw a small sub-compact car with an elderly driver who was still in the intersection when a brand new 18-wheeler truck cab—just the front truck, no trailer—it had never even been used before, it was still perfectly clean, no grease on the trailer hitch, three-leaf-clover symbol on the door—and it came barreling into the intersection and S-M-A-S-H!—ran right into the small car, destroying the back end, spilling fuel everywhere—but the engine of the small car was still running and with the driver in shock unless someone did something it could all catch fire, explode and kill him and his wife. Patrick RAN to the help of the old man, telling him to ‘Hit the gas, hit the gas,’ to get out of the intersection before the spilled fuel caught fire! The elderly man did it, the car sputtered a few feet clear of the spilled gas and finally stalled but out of danger of catching fire … and the vision ended—well, again it was not really a ‘vision’ … it wasn’t what you really would call a ‘visitation’ either; it was not really a trance, not a dream, well whatever you call it, it was now over.
Well that’s a wild imagination, you say!
Bit of a fantasy, that is!
You’d think so too!
But then Patrick soon got a call, did he need some work? Someone needed an assistant to fix the drain under a street. OK, he went along and oh no! It was the intersection from the vision! He had seen it all before!! Patrick helped the brick layer repair the broken pipe and all the time kept as far away as he could from the curb!! In his vision it was only when his heel hit the curb as he was rocking back and forth that the accident happened. He figured if he could stop the trigger of the accident he could stop the wreck from happening. That’s not true but that’s what he was thinking. Anyway they fixed the leak, Patrick didn’t touch the curb and they went home happily. Case closed.
He really felt that he cheated fate. Somehow he figured his touching the curb was a part of the causation of the accident, in his mind anyway! And because he didn’t touch the curb, the accident didn’t happen. So his analysis was correct! If it weren’t for the call he got a few weeks later, “Hey Patrick, can you go back with me to that pipe?” There was a question of it being done right. “I need to inspect the repair.” …
So back they went, only this time Patrick was not thinking to try to stop the vision, he was just waiting around; it’s a little boring to be honest to stand up there all day waiting for the other guy to do a full inspection and so well, he started rocking back and forth on his feet when his heel caught the side of the curb and …. S-C-R-E-E-C-H!—it was the sound of brakes being locked-up and then the awful S-M-A-S-H! of cars crashing and he looked over to the nearby intersection to behold … a small sub-compact car in the intersection with an elderly driver in shock because—BOOM!—he had just been hit by a brand new 18-wheeler truck cab, just the front truck, never been used before, still perfectly clean, no grease on the trailer hitch, three-leaf-clover symbol on the door! Patrick knew the small car was spilling gas but the engine was still running so ready for action he RAN to the driver, who like I said was in shock: “Hit the gas! Hit the gas!” he yelled! The elderly man did that and the car sputtered a few feet clear of the spilled gas and stalled out of danger of catching fire, saving the lives of both the man and his wife.
The Caribou Hunter
Then there was the caribou hunting trip.
Patrick was still only saved a few months when he took a nap and woke up in the spiritual realm. I don’t know if it happened the same way or was something different this time but the way he used to tell the story he was clearly present at the future scene but in a spiritual body, hovering a few inches above the ground. There was a large angel with him and he was looking at the scene of a car accident like it was frozen in time, or like he was a movie director planning a dramatic scene in rehearsal.
He said the spiritual body he was in was transparent but it also functioned with supernatural efficiency. When he THOUGHT, ‘I wonder what things would look like from up in the air facing the other direction?” then suddenly HE WAS THERE. There was no difference between THINKING about something and DOING IT in the spiritual body he said. I’ve heard other people now say the same thing. The thought led immediately to the action. Forget ‘faster than light’ travel—in the Spirit we can move at the Speed of Thought! When he wondered how far the tree was from the road, he suddenly knew exactly how many feet and inches away it was. He experienced instant knowledge of things like measurements and distance and time and also the ability to think as fast as lightning!
He also witnessed this scene more than one time. He didn’t recognize the place or know how he got there, but was able to trace his movements in future time a little before the accident to see how it would play out from his own point of view. He was in the passenger’s seat and so someone else was driving and they were traveling on a road high up in remote Alaska further than he had ever gone before. The Northern Lights were so bright and they passed by some unique looking tree stumps, trees on a ridge silhouetted in the Northern Lights, and suddenly they were passed by a Winnebago camper-van, which if you don’t know is a kind of van built with a camping apartment in the back with a kitchen, toilet, beds, etc., and an LPG/propane tank to provide fuel for the cooking, so you can live in it as you travel around the country. People call it a caravan sometimes. Well anyway, it zoomed past them driving way too fast on that country road, then a bend in the road and another and then CRASH! As they turned the next corner they saw the Winnebago had crashed off the road into a pond! A lady jumped out wearing black Asian-style silk pants of half length who was in shock and screaming about the LPG/propane tank blowing up while the driver, her husband, was unconscious in the front seat … Patrick sprang into action, jumped out of his car and rescued the driver, secured the propane tank and saved the day. End of vision. Like I said, he said he visited this scene more than once and was able to go back to the same event frozen in spiritual time to analyze, look things over and prepare himself for future action.
I’m sure people would have told him it was all a fantasy. It’s all just a dream. Well, wouldn’t they be surprised that shortly after a friend called to invite him, an avid hunter, to do what? Go caribou hunting way up in the north of Alaska, further north than he’d ever gone before!
Days into the trip in very remote territory Patrick had never even seen before … and they passed by a tree stump he recognized … then another tree, then the Northern Lights and the ridge silhouetted in the sky, then he prepared himself and suddenly … zooming past them went a Winnebago going way too fast … around one bend, then another and he tensed up to get ready for action because as soon as they turned the next corner the Winnebago was going to be crashed into the pond … and there it was!
He jumped from his car, the lady in the Asian-style half-length silk pants was screaming—what about the propane? He ran to the driver to get him out and made sure the propane was not leaking … and all was well.
Prophesying to the Prophets
And I’ll even tell you a third story that comes to mind.
It was a few years later and Patrick was in New Hampshire and was part of a small group of progressive churches that embraced the ‘Five-fold’ doctrine of church structure based in Ephesians 4:11 from Rick Joyner, and so they embraced modern day prophecy and even called their leader an Apostle. That all sounds quite biblical, only Patrick had a vision that the Apostle was also affectionately embracing his young live-in housekeeper while his wife was asleep upstairs.
Patrick shared his concerns with the elders but instead of taking action they closed ranks around their leader in no uncertain terms defending him and began attacking Patrick! Those were all rumors, the accusations were untrue, who told you that anyway? Patrick just said he saw it in a vision. That did not go over very well, even though their churches taught about prophecy and the Five-fold Ministry—this was back in the 80’s!—but having public doctrines of prophecy is one thing—but openly revealing what they were doing in private was something else altogether!
There may have been a power struggle going on and anyway the established leaders finally called Patrick to a disciplinary meeting to be officially rebuked for rebellion and disloyalty and I think Patrick was already an elder at that time and already had started his own house church as a part of their network, so they were probably going to kick him out of their fellowship and close down his work.
So Patrick prayed.
All night long.
He would not sleep until God told him what to do about the meeting the next morning.
Sure enough as dawn approached finally God spoke. He had a vision and witnessed the entire disciplinary meeting in advance. He took notes of the vision and wrote down everything spoken, word for word, during the whole meeting before it ever happened. And when it was done the Lord commented that he was observing the whole meeting, what they were doing, all that had been said—and all of it was from the Pit of Hell.
Patrick quickly cleaned up and went to the disciplinary meeting with his yellow notepad in hand and sat quietly as they berated him, insulted him, accused him of insubordination for what I think was the better part of an hour. Patrick just flipped through his notes, nodding his head, “Umm-hmm, umm-hmm, yup, yup,” … Finally, they must have seen they were not making him squirm and asked, “What are you doing with that note pad? What is that?” To which Patrick replied, “You notice I have not written anything down this whole time, right? Well, I am going to read back to you everything you have just said, word for word,”… and he read the transcript God gave him that morning beforehand.
“Where did you get that?”
“God told me last night everything you were going to say today before it happened,” and showed them the prophetic notes, “This is so you will know that God is watching everything you are doing, listening to everything you are saying—and He said everything you are saying is from the Pit of Hell.”
So sure he was kicked out, and set up his own church independently from that network of some of the only churches in our small state that embraced prophecy at all, and that helps to explain why when I arrived a few years later they were so isolated from any other church anywhere. There were so few Spirit-filled Christian churches in New Hampshire at the time to begin with, and to have such a huge falling-out with three of them in one dispute put Patrick’s small family group out in a corn field, literally, with no one else to fellowship with.
It’s ironic also to me that a church network that taught the Five-fold Ministry as early as that, which believed in prophecy, who even called their main leader an apostle … would behave so carnally with regard to genuine prophetic words of exposure. But I see this kind of thing far too often: the spiritual gifts are really functioning but are controlled and manipulated and used to fulfill the desires and agenda of carnal Man. I still see this. I saw it in Hong Kong a decade later. God warned us about this affecting his work here in the Philippines just recently as well. People are truly gifted by the Holy Spirit, but the Flesh—earthly wisdom, Man’s ways—is still making the Church sick!
So anyway that was Patrick (again, not his real name). Not overly educated. An outdoorsman, a hunter, a construction contractor. A little rough in manners, independent and even traditional in many of his views, but gifted by God far beyond normal believers, even beyond what most Spirit-filled believers would easily believe today. He went home to be with the Lord a few years ago.
So do you think their understanding of prophecy would be much different from the views of the traditional New England churches down the road? You bet! But my exposure and my early understanding of prophecy was laid on this foundation.
I took his teaching word-for word, and only much later did I understand that he too was often using the gifts and his position of authority in ways that were a mixture of both flesh and Spirit, if I can say it like that. Also many of his opinions and even the foundation of doctrines we were taught from the main Five-fold community later turned out to be well, slightly un-firm. It was only much later when God began to teach me HIS views on prophecy and doctrines concerning the gifts that I was able to understand and divide many of the ‘Doctrines of Man’ from the ‘Ways of God’ regarding prophecy, including God’s views on leadership, equipping, diversity of roles in the Body, etc. But I will get to that a bit later.
The second personality I want you to meet is Sarah, his wife. (Not her real name either) Sarah did not really like me so much, especially after I developed a fondness for their youngest daughter. I even recall when Sarah said God told her I would write many books one day—“Just don’t write any about me!” she added. Well … OK, I’ll be kind but honest when I need to be—but so did she see me writing this very book right now? I assume she did!
Sarah was from two generations of Quakers, who were a largely Born-Again Spirit-filled denomination common in New England once upon a time, but she also suffered from an alcoholic in the family and she prophesied routinely in meetings and on Sunday especially, but was a little cool towards me finding a permanent place in their community I think.
Third, there was Sarah’s sister, Elizabeth (also not her real name), who was another very gifted prophetess who was very serious. A tax accountant by trade she had horses and lived with an unsaved husband with her daughter and son and I know she suffered a lot because of the family situation. She was very spiritual, very prophetic, didn’t talk to me much—over the three years I lived with Patrick and Sarah I think we had only a handful of conversations that entire time. But when she did speak it was usually to share a deep vision or weighty word God had given her. A few important words for me over this time came from her actually. Her son really rebelled against God, and her daughter would have been killed in a horse riding accident if it was not for divine intervention. It happened like this:
Jumping Horses
One day, Patrick was having a nap in the afternoon on the couch when suddenly he was in the spirit realm in his spirit body, an angel with him and he was witnessing a horse jumping competition—again, not exactly a vision, he was actually there.
He again could move around, measure and study the place and situation with the sensory accuracy only the spirit-body knows, freezing movement and time and he watched as his niece, Elizabeth’s daughter, took her turn to jump. She rode a large black horse, Patrick said that if you saw it you would think it was too big and heavy to jump. And she made it through the course until a high bar made the horse refuse and it skidded to a halt—only carrying so much momentum the rider, his niece, kept moving forward and fell off the horse hitting the ground head first, breaking her neck and killing her instantly.
I want to say he watched in horror as this happened but he was in his spirit body and he just saw it, knew what it meant, but the emotions you’d expect to have were absent. I think he said he had spiritual objectivity and didn’t have a regular ‘human’ emotional reaction to what he was seeing in a strange way.
Anyway he watched the event a few times and took careful note of the place and set up, the horse and the course, the mountain ridges behind the grounds and several other details. I think he actually visited the scene a few times, maybe just twice, before he shared it with Elizabeth, his sister-in-law.
He was careful not to tell a lot of people. I certainly didn’t know and I was Patrick’s daily companion. But he drew a diagram of the course to show her including the event space layout, the paddock, the bleachers, the mountain ridges behind the venue, and described the horse, the large black horse, and finally went to see Elizabeth to check her stables to find the horse and share the whole vision.
Yes, they had horses, and yes, they trained horses to jump, and yes, her daughter took part in occasional horse jumping competitions. Only one problem, they didn’t have a large black horse. Strike one! Also, the description of the layout and mountain ridge didn’t match any known event venue in our entire state!! Strike two!
That was certainly confusing. Meanwhile months went by as they watched her jumping carefully. Anything that looked suspicious was cause for alarm, only nothing did look suspicious!
Finally, an invitation came inviting Elizabeth’s daughter to a regional event, invitation only! And not in our state but in nearby Vermont. It would be something of a four- or maybe five-hour drive to get there and I don’t think Elizabeth had a good truck and horse trailer. No problem, her trainer and friend was attending who lived further north and said her daughter could use one of his horses!
They rushed up-state to the friend’s stable and went down the line: this one, that one, third one, all either already selected by another rider or not suitable to jump until the next one, which was still available and sure enough, it was the large, black horse from the vision!
Then they went to the planned event grounds hours away, and yes, it was exactly the layout from the vision as well. The bleachers, the fencing, even the mountain range behind the grounds! So all they did was simply forbid her from jumping in the competition … and all was well.
Is God Over-Complicating Things Here?
And maybe now is a good time to step back and think this over because I think about this a lot when I talk to people about prophecy.
Do you understand what is going on here?
God could have done so many other things to prevent his niece’s death in that accident if God wanted to simply save her life. For instance, God could have had her land in a way that would not have broken her neck; she could have stayed on the horse when it stopped and not fallen off; God could have made the horse just jump the rail; God could have had her use a different horse, had her not get selected for the invitational meet, just let her get sick for that week, or tell her not to go, make her not want to go, make her too busy with some scheduling conflict, cause her to get bored with horse jumping, etc., etc., etc.
Why save her life in this highly unusual way? Why show Patrick the event in the spiritual realm, twice at least, make them go on this long investigation, like gathering pieces to a puzzle over several months, and finally figure it all out just to tell the young girl she was not allowed to go to the meet? I think it’s the same with Jesus walking on water: why do that? There were so many other options: just walk on land, hire a donkey, wait for a boat, fly (or I mean be transported like Phillip with the Egyptian)—why walk on water?
So why save her life by showing Patrick this vision or visitation or whatever you call it?—spiritual time travel—why make such an open display of the supernatural realm under God’s command?
Maybe simply because it makes such a good story—everybody likes a good story!
And maybe to God it’s all the same anyway. Is one miracle any harder than another one for God to do? I think to him it’s all the same.
Anyway it does make for a fantastic story and this is now etched in my memory when I think of Elizabeth, her daughter or horses for that matter—or also thinking of Patrick who for all his rough manners and simple world view was so favored by God and shown such divine mysteries when so many of us struggle to see a vision or get a word at all!
So Patrick, Sarah and Elizabeth were the core people in that small church but there were several others that functioned in prophecy and even healing to a lesser degree, such as the “flower sisters.” They were called that because their family had I think seven girls, but it may have been nine, and they each had the name of a flower or at least a plant! I never met them all, but there was Lily, Fern, Rose I think … in our group we had Holly and Ivy. Holly was the most gentle and lovable woman. She learned to play guitar simply by watching people and would play at first without ever touching the strings so she wouldn’t make any sound! Patrick was still primarily the ‘fast song’ praise music leader, but soon enough Holly was leading worship and when she played the Holy Spirit ALWAYS showed up and always VERY tangibly. Wow! God’s presence was so strong in their meetings that you could FEEL it every time. Ivy, her sister had just been widowed when I joined their fellowship. She was quite short, wealthy and she also had a funny rural accent and would pronounce ‘wolf’ with no ‘l’ and things like that. Normally in worship Ivy would dance and prophesy, Holly not so much, but yes sometimes she did both as well.
Then there was Elder Brown. He was far into his sixties or seventies but was as strong and nimble as a man half his age. He was once a steel worker, and wore a traditional New England farmer’s beard: thick beard no mustache. Every service, practically without fail, during a quiet time in the music Elder Brown would shout out loud in prophetic tongues in a high falsetto voice—high, loud and clear! Usually he would interpret his own tongues—not always, but there was always an interpretation. During the 30 minutes of praise he was usually the first one to start to dance, then me and the other young men would soon follow. He never spoke to me really despite how small our group was, but he was still a very stable element of that fellowship we had in the middle of the cornfield.
Let the Others Judge
A final thing I’ll mention about the church and how prophecy was woven into the fabric of their community was their idea for the need of a ‘prophetic council.’ I’ve never heard of anyone else doing it this way. They got the idea from 1 Corinthians 14, that if someone wants to learn to prophesy to let them prophecy ‘and let the others judge.’ To Patrick this meant gathering the elder prophets together and sharing recent prophetic words to let everyone discuss them and ‘judge’ to discern what the Lord was really saying, to clarify, to get confirmation and so to throw out anything from ‘the flesh’ as they called it, which meant anything not from the Holy Spirit but from a human, carnal imagination or opinion.
They met informally a few times a year to do this, but especially if someone had a serious warning word, and they would also meet over New Year’s. Their custom was to go to dinner together on New Year’s Eve as a small fellowship, and then have a worship and prayer meeting at home at 11 pm or so and ‘pray in’ the New Year. They expected God to give them a prophetic preview of the upcoming year and so God would—God responds to our faith and expectancy. So God would tell Patrick, Elizabeth and sometimes Sarah what things to expect over the next year, both good and bad. My self-appointed job was to record these words on a cassette player, and then to write them down and print out copies for everyone during the council meeting the next week so it all could be understood clearly, openly discussed, properly weighed and judged accurately.
For me that made perfect sense, and since I was already a budding poet, I was used to writing down and keeping a clear record of my own ideas and thoughts word for word. To a poet every single word, every syllable matters, so I had developed a keen focus on being word-perfect. Also I was not normally allowed to attend the council meeting, but since I worked so hard to make the record they let me attend to keep track of things. It’s not like we were discussing national secrets, but they still didn’t want just anyone listening in.
So what started for me with poetry in high school turned quickly, once I got saved and was exposed to prophesy, into being a kind of prophetic scribe, recording and protecting God’s spoken messages word-for-word, a habit that has stayed with me ever since. The words of Jehovah are pure, as silver purified in a furnace seven times! Don’t add to God’s word or he will reprove you and show you are a liar! A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver! I respect his word!
That’s one reason why I can now write this book since I have a detailed written record of everything God told me during those early years right up until much later when the sheer volume of God’s revelations and prophetic words to me were so high that it was impossible to write them all down—which he said would happen, and sure enough it did.
But during those early years it was simple to keep a good record because the volume of prophecy to me was slow and irregular. I kept a very detailed prophecy journal from that time till today which is a habit I strongly advise people to keep up themselves, especially if they are called to walk in the ministries related to prophecy. God told Habbakuk to ‘Write the vision, make it plain!’ That’s my advice!
So I hope you can keep all these things in mind as I go on to share how I tried to fit into this world and the problems I had and then why I finally left.
These were good people, gifted people, but still simple farmers and rural townsfolk, and sometimes our gifting is more powerful than our character maybe. Gifted people can still be very normal, very human. I don’t want you to judge them too harshly for problems that developed, and I probably should have expected that situation to be temporary as the Lord trained me as much as he could under them, or as much as I could stand in that environment, but then sent me out into a much bigger world.
