FOUR FATAL FLAWS OF PERSONAL PROPHECY

CES’s book Prophecy: Understanding and Utilizing the Manifestation of Prophecy is a tidy study of prophecy in the Bible. But it is the application of four unproven assumptions which prompted the CES crisis. The CES concept of personal prophecy does not take into account the weaknesses of human nature.  John Lynn was quick to defend CES’s practice of personal prophecy and referred to the CES book, though it would have been wiser to instead re-evaluate it because it not only failed, but also prompted this crisis. The book gives the convenient out, asserting that almost all personal prophecy is conditional, making it very hard to demonstrate that any prophecies were actually wrong.

The first weakness of human nature is that we want to hear the supernatural voice of God. People hunger for the supernatural, which leads to frantic search for it wherever it may be found– in occultic practices – or in Christian ones. Like Herod who wanted to see Jesus do a miracle, and rejected Jesus when he did not (Luke 23:8-9), we want to see miracles too. The CES book admits that humans have this hunger, but rather than reveal this motive as a weakness, they try to satiate it through personal prophecy.

We want God to tell us what to do because we want to please him– but also for less godly reasons. It is easier to get a quick prophecy than to depend on God through the foggy parts of life which test our faith and keep us dependent on Him. While CES mentions that sometimes revelation is purposely unclear so that we can deepen our relationship with God, it never occurs to them that this is one reason God doesn’t follow us around ready to give us a personal prophecy whenever we seek one (chapter “The Gift Ministry of a Prophet”).

A quick personal prophecy also hinders us from developing judgement and the discernment needed to apply God’s Word to trying situations. It’s easier to function like a six year old, saying “Daddy, what should I do,” than like a mature adult who applies God’s principles wisely. In fact, many who obeyed personal prophecies have sidestepped taking responsibility for their lives. When God delegated the care of the earth to Adam and Eve, presumably he didn’t follow them around, giving them specific instruction through personal prophecy for every situation that arose. Free will is not just the ability to obey or disobey God’s revelations, but also developing the process of applying this will.

Perhaps some in CES are also unconsciously trying to replicate the alleged experience of The Way’s founder V. P. Wierwille who said his ministry was launched when he heard God’s audible voice. With personal prophecy, everyone in CES can hear God’s audible voice through their personal prophets.

The second human weakness, or should we say sin, is that we do not just want to hear the voice of God, but we want to be the voice of God. Like “Simon the Great Power” who asked the apostle Peter, “Give me also this power” (Acts 8:19), we also hunger to exercise supernatural power. This is the drive behind the popularity of occult practices. People want the feeling of power, of inside knowledge, of revelation. We see this as a sin in non-Christian circles, but is CES indirectly fostering this in their own? “Every Christian can hear from the Lord, and should push himself to do so,” they write in the chapter “The Gift Ministry of a Prophet,” but pushing people out of a reluctance to speak for God also fosters a sinful hunger for power. Better the reluctant prophet like Moses and Jeremiah than the anxious “prophets” of our day.

There are also two fatal theological flaws in personal prophecy. The first is that everyone can be trained to give personal prophecy (not just ordinary prophecy, which CES claims is different). This continues The Way International’s teaching “all nine all the time,” which asserts that every Christian can be trained to practice every “manifestation of holy spirit,” including prophecy. This contradicts the foundational New Testament teaching that Christians have different gifts (Greek- charismata) or manifestations (Greek- phaneros). The apostle could have illustrated his teaching as The Way did, with a workman who uses different tools, but that would have been in error. Instead he uses the illustration of the body, in which each member has a different function. If everyone did all nine all the time, all the members would be the same rather than different.

The TWI and CES emphasis on training prophets also fosters error. As the chapter “The Christian and the Manifestation of Prophecy” says, “the whole Church can prophesy if they want to and are taught how to bring it forth (emphasis mine).” Prophecy without training is rare, they say. While they note an Old Testament incidence of a company of prophets, they assume this includes a CES-style training, something the Bible never describes or asserts. The chapter also subtly changes the meaning of Paul’s statement “I  would rather have you prophesy...” (1 Cor. 14:5) to “God wants every believer to prophesy.” This changes the subject from Paul to God, and the context from desiring greater gifts to demanding that everyone learns to do all the gifts.

It’s a lot easier to teach people to “prophesy” than to do miracles or healings, because it’s easier to show that a healing did not take place than to prove that an alleged revelation from God is just a human production. The open secret among ex-members (who are more open about talking about their practice of the manifestations than current members) is that they recognize that they often “manufactured” prophecies according to the standard Way model, and that other people’s prophecies sounded manufactured as well. This is what training does– it teaches people to duplicate an acceptable pattern.

A fourth fatal error of CES’s version of personal prophecy is the assumption that everyone should seek – not just be willing to receive– personal prophecy. The chapter  “The Gift Ministry of a Prophet” states “we in the church should be encouraging the prophets and looking to them to help us get direction from the Lord in our lives.” Seeking prophecy puts pressure on other Christians to produce the prophecies, which leads to many prophecies in the “flesh” (of human manufacture) or from a demon. (The CES book asserts that even godly, well-meaning Christians may give revelation that is given to them by demons, not God. But this doesn’t seem to have produced the wariness toward personal prophecy that it should have; chapter “Some Basics About Prophecy.”)  Although CES emphasizes that the current “Grace Administration” (an ultradispensationalism teaching also acquired from TWI) is radically different from the Old Testament, the CES chart of Biblical people who sought personal prophecies very conspicuously includes no New Testament examples (chapter  “The Gift Ministry of a Prophet”). The insistence that everyone seek personal prophecy has predictable results–  believers gather around one who seeks prophecy, and on command they say anything they want off the top of their head, claiming it is revelation from God.

These four fatal flaws of CES/STF’s teaching on personal prophecy are the roots of this crisis, which is bound to repeat itself if the teaching is not changed. The crisis is the result of CES teaching on personal prophecy, not an anomaly.