We are postured at yet another major crossroads in the body of Christ, which includes a strategic “Changing of the Guard.” In the last five years, we have had five major seer prophets all ascend to their heavenly reward. On February 14, 2014, the heavenly minded seer prophet Bob Jones passed into Glory. The following year in the exact same timeframe, the seer prophet John Paul Jackson suddenly departed from this world. In the next two years, we had yet two more very anointed seer prophets graduate from this world to their true eternal one: Kim Clement and John Sandford. Just a few days ago on February 12th, 2019, the boy prophet who became an elderly seer, Paul Cain, also shed his earthly tabernacle and ascended on high.
I attended the memorial services for all three of these former Kansas City Prophets: Bob Jones, John Paul Jackson and Paul Cain. As I pondered and reflected upon their home goings, I became aware of some intriguing and profound details. Bob Jones was lowered into the earth on 2/22/2014 in Moravian Falls, the day after his Memorial Service on 2/21. John Paul Jackson was also buried as a seed into the ground on 2/22/2015. John Paul’s burial was exactly one year after our mutual friend, Bob Jones. Paul Cain departed on 2/12/2019, the anniversary date of the Beginning of the Latter Rain Movement. But not only that, Paul Cain was another seer seed lowered into the earth on 2/22/2019. That is exactly five years to the date of the burial of Bob Jones. You cannot make up this timeline!
Does this really mean anything? Is there any major significance we can derive from our loss and heaven’s gain? Is there an inheritance we are to receive? How do we posture ourselves to receive the baton from these and other heroes of the faith?
The Nature of the Prophetic
After being in prophetic ministry 40 years, I have observed some key issues concerning the nature of a prophetic word. Often, a word is bigger than the person who carries it. I have stated for years, that one way you can know if you have heard God, is that what you have heard requires His help to fulfill it. God does not speak into the realms of man’s possibilities, but God speaks into the realm that requires His divine assistance to see the word come to pass.
Another key component I have learned could be expressed as “living in the until clause.” A promise is revealed and then a promise is fulfilled. A revelation is released and then later, a revelation is manifested. In between the two, there is a gap called the “until clause.” What comprises this “until clause?”
Foundational to the prophetic is the three-stage process of: revelation, interpretation and application. If you get the wrong interpretation to the revelation you will surely end up with a misapplication. So properly discerning and interpreting a word is paramount. It is also vital to meet the conditions of a word, whether spoken or unspoken, to help unlock a prophetic promise. We must learn to pray the promise back to God, walk in faith adding corresponding actions, at times wage spiritual warfare, and wait upon God’s strategic timing. All these ingredients are important components of unlocking the prophetic promise of God!
What Promises Are We to Inherit?
Here are some of the prophetic promises the Lord gave these five seer prophets.
Bob Jones released the prophetic promise of a Last Days “Billion Soul Harvest” especially among the youth of the earth. Papa Bob also challenged us with the piercing statement, “Did you learn to love?” In the 1980’s and 1990’s, I spent hundreds of hours at this man’s side. During that time, I was one of the few people he would allow to lay hands on him and pray in the Holy Spirit as he ministered to others into the wee hours of the night.
John Paul Jackson labored for greater purity in the prophetic stream and a depth of accountability for the words spoken by the clay lips of revelatory vessels. John Paul was a true seer of seers and was noted for his precise predictions of the coming “Perfect Storm.” JP and I had a high mutual esteem for each other’s capacity to equip the saints to hear God for themselves. We were very different but cut from the same sensitive cloth.
Kim Clement was a musical seer like King David in the Bible. He contended for new creative inventions to release Kingdom wealth and that Jerusalem would be a united city in the midst of a time of great chaos. Often Kim’s highly potent prophetic nuggets were somewhat veiled and required the skill to dig for the hidden gold of the promise of God.
John Sandford was noted for his expertise in uniting the prophetic with counseling, inner healing and deliverance. He composed the landmark book, The Elijah Task. Uncle John, as I fondly referred to him, contended for wholeness among the prophetic community and modeled honor to the First Nations people as a needed tool to “Heal the Land.” This man truly walked in the character needed to carry the promise.
Paul Cain prophesied the “New Breed of a Nameless and Faceless Generation” who would only lift up the name of the One Man Christ Jesus. Though controversial at times in his life, to my knowledge Paul finished well. He declared with ferocity that the “Stadiums will be filled with a New Move of the Holy Spirit with Signs and Wonders.” I was present multiple times when Paul Cain would step into a zone and declare a new era of Stadium Christianity.
While mentioning these five highly gifted seer prophets, I would be amiss to not mention the man who preached the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ as an evangelist to more people than any other person in all church history. Dr. Billy Graham also departed from this world one year ago.
Are we in a Kairos time where the mantles of the prophetic and evangelism are converging? As this changing of the guard occurs, are we properly postured to inherit the revelatory promises released by these forerunners? I simply say, “Yes and Amen!” to these promises of a great global harvest for Jesus Christ’s sake!
Unless a Seed
Let me close with the words of Jesus, the One we love and the One we serve. John 12:24 states, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” What a profound truth! What a stunning eternal reality!
Yes, these things remain constant in this life, “Seedtime and Harvest.”There is a season for everything. Could we be crossing the Jordan River that separates Promise Revealed from Promise Fulfilled? I for one firmly believe so! I am posturing myself along with thousands of other desperate lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ to see the Greatest Youth Awakening the World Has ever known.
For the Sake of the Lamb
Let us be among those who “give honor to whom honor is due.” Let us consecrate ourselves to be part of a New Breed of Jesus People around the world. Let’s welcome an upgrade in our gifts and callings and to see a grand convergence of the prophetic and evangelism. Let’s echo the vision statement of the Moravian believers of old, “To win for the Lamb the rewards of His sufferings.”
Personally, I do not labor for the mantle of a man. But much more than that, we who remain are here to declare, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” Why? Because God has the Harvest on His Mind!
