Authority comes from having fruit, not theories.
There are also books written seeking to bring correction to prophetic ministry by those who are not prophets, and admit to not being overseers of prophets. One well-known teacher recounted in a book many horror stories of the way supposed prophetic people wounded others or damaged churches. I have been around prophetic people for nearly 50 years now, and I have not heard anything as extreme as some of these stories, so I called the author to check some of these out. He asserted that every story was related to him by a pastor. I then asked if he went to the so-called prophetic people in any of these cases to hear their side of it, as there is almost always another side to every account. He had not done this. When I asked for the sources so I could check them out he would not provide them. As I continued to press this I became convinced that these stories were either made up or greatly embellished, and the book did great damage to the Church as we would expect.
The Pharisees had a legitimate question when they asked Jesus by what authority He did His works. Jesus commended the Ephesian church in Revelation 3 for having put to the test those who call themselves apostles and were not. We can expect that He would give the same commendation for those who put to the test any authority to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate. Whenever we tolerate the illegitimate we are allowing a terrible devaluation of our spiritual currency, not to mention allowing a wide-open gate of hell through which the Church will certainly be assaulted.
Even if someone has built a large work, if they want to bring correction on the prophetic I would first like to see what they have done to raise up prophets. There is a saying that “Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a skillful carpenter to build one.” The apostle corrected the Corinthians for honoring authorities who “slapped them in the face,” and abused them but for not recognizing Paul’s authority even though he was the one who had been used to build them into the church that they were. Immature or carnal people will respond to carnal or even abusive authority faster than they tend to recognize true builders.
Whenever we tolerate the illegitimate we are allowing a terrible devaluation of our spiritual currency.
We must not continue to pay attention to people unless they have fruit of their own to verify their wisdom. That is basically what Jesus said when He told us that we would know them by their fruit. It is not just what people say but what they have done that establishes true spiritual authority.
Jeremiah Johnson has written a new book called Cleansing and Igniting the Prophetic. What gives him the authority to say the things he has written in this book? First, maturity is not just the result of age or time served. I have met many Christians who have been so for decades and are still spiritually immature. Maturity requires experience, but experience alone does not result in maturity. Maturing comes from having the wisdom to learn from experience. Just as there are some who may have been Christians for a long time but remain immature, some mature far beyond their years by their wisdom and how they handle experience.
