Interpretación de la entrevista realizada a los alumnos exitosos

What are the marks of revelation that arise from the state of a prophet’s soul?

Soulish power—that which originates from a person’s state of mind and heart—expresses itself with a variety of mixed markers. Unhealed, unaf-firmed people tend to exercise their soulish power to manipulate people and events to compensate for an overwhelming sense of their own powerlessness.

Because they have no strong sense of identity or core self rooted in a relation-ship with Jesus Christ, they are attempting to acquire an external derivation of significance. As a result, when they express the spiritual gifts, the recipients may feel tainted by the residue of soulish imprints. They may be reading your fears and desires, offering pat prophecies common to your demographics, and

reflect them back to you as if they are “reading your mail.” However, their words will rarely convey the testimony of Jesus to you—who Jesus wants to be for you in this hour, a revelation of His heart toward you, His wisdom, strength, and His counsel.

As Cooke wrote in the Foreword, true prophets live in the light: “When we live in the radiance of God our hearts are captivated by His brilliance. Our focus is sharp, our perceptions in high definition. We are captured by the im-mensity of the Father.”

As for those who are not dwelling in the light, Ezekiel 13:3-6 is careful not to call them false prophets. Instead, he calls them foolish for they prophesy out of their own imaginations or own vanity. “Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!…Their visions are false and their divinations a lie. They say, ‘The Lord declares,’ when the Lord has not sent them;

yet they expect their words to be fulfilled.” In other words, foolish prophets are not necessarily false prophets. One receiving a prophetic word originating in another’s soul power may feel more like the word is mere manipulation or flattery, a put down or a power trip.

As the prophetic movement continues encouraging all believers to become a revelatory people—hearing from God for themselves, many people are moving beyond the foolish stage of spiritual development and into great accuracy.

Discernment, rather than judgment, also needs to increase as we grow into our spiritual inheritance. Many factions in the Charismatic church en-courage seeking revelation in your “sanctified imagination” and entering into

“throne room experiences” at will. This has become a source of irritation for many who can’t seem to access the imaginary realm and confusion for others who just don’t know what to make of this teaching.

Much revelation is to be gained through the imagination. Your imagina-tion, based on Scriptural word pictures, can intuit what is really there in the throne room and other rooms and realms of Heaven. Then again, many re-port actual visions of Heaven’s throne room and there are those who have been caught up into Heaven in bodily form. There is a distinct difference.

Much of what arises in your imagination is for self-revelation—for healing,

encouragement, and creating vision. God is not speaking falsely—just per-sonally. He is drawing out of you what needs to be blessed and affirmed or healed and transformed. If “prophecies” that arise from your imagination are shared as public prophecies, rather than personal insight, they will usually come across as childish attempts to draw attention to self.

The problem with power that originates in the soul—tainted with un-dealt-with emotions, memories, and traumas—is that it gets in the way of hearing the true voice of the Lord. John Sandford speaks about this jamming of our wavelengths in the Elijah Task: “God will never speak falsely but be-cause of who we are we will hear wrongly…both flesh and satan attack one who draws near to God. Few of us enjoy the honeymoon of God’s love long before the flesh and the enemy begin to jam our wavelengths.”⁴

Sandford knows from personal experience that no one will graduate from the Lord’s school of listening with his pride intact. Most budding prophets and revelatory people will end up looking like a fool but it does not make them a false prophet. The pressures on Sandford as a young pastor at the beginning of his prophetic ministry, coupled with exhaustion, resulted in a strong spiritual delusion. During a progressive series of visions he became completely con-vinced that God had revealed the exact time of the rapture. It was to occur the afternoon of the day he was preaching at a ministry school involving Agnes Sandford. Agnes, a true mother in the prophetic, promptly urged him to stop talking and sent him to bed. He woke the next day feeling more refreshed and more than a little bit embarrassed. He explained what happened:

“I became caught up in over-serious mysticism, confusing that with true faith…I became overburdened, overtired, carried away with visions and insights, and finally deluded. Satan’s delight is to come to someone who is enjoying a true spiritual experience and then help him go too far.

“I needed that strong spiritual delusion because my confidence had been in my ability to hear God, not in God’s ability to over-come my sinful heart to speak to me.

“And as I saw my idolatry more clearly, I had to die to all such see-ing, and be careful not to cherish insight more than the Lord.”⁵

The psychological health of the prophet determines the impact of his or her state of mind or soul about the gift. A true prophet will bear the marks of the power of God, the nature of God, and the fruit of the Spirit over time.

They will work collaboratively and in accountability to others, learning from their mistakes and growing in humility. Unhealed prophets will bear the marks of their own brokenness. If the Church fails to reach out to them, leav-ing them to smolder in despair, unrepentant sin, and brokenness, they may succumb to the influence of occult power.