The Prophetic Call (9-12)

By: Hendrik Wieland

Sign No 9
If you are called to be a prophet, then your preparation will span many years and will be one of the most difficult and troublesome processes.
The prophet will be battered and broken and brought to nothing in himself before he can be of any use to the Kingdom of God.
He will have to learn not to trust in himself or in his own abilities.
His knowledge and natural strengths will be tried in the fire and brought to naught before God can use him.
If your life has been one of intense problems, failures, oppositions, persecutions and pressure, then this could be a sign of preparation for the prophetic ministry.
I have yet to meet a prophet who has had life of smooth sailing, easy success and personal recognition.
As I said earlier, the prophetic call is a call to death.
Like the apostle, the prophet must have the sentence of death in himself.
He must sacrifice all for the sake of the ministry.
He must die completely to self.
Well these are the main signposts I can offer to help you clarify whether the Lord has called you to be a prophet or not.
Of course the best confirmation will always come through another prophet.
God often calls a prophet to the ministry using a senior prophet, and even his training might come under the direction of one who has been in the prophetic office for a while.
If several of these signs have been manifested in your life and you wish to discuss this further, I would be thrilled if you would write and tell me a bit more about yourself, your experiences, your aspirations and what you feel the Lord is calling you to do.
In that way I will be able to more effectively help you move into this ministry.
And I will also be empowered to speak a word into your life and ministry, to bring about what the Lord is calling you to do.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and may God Himself be gracious unto you

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The Prophet restored.
"Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table." (1King 18:19)
So Ahab sent a message among all the sons of Israel, and brought the prophets together at Mount Carmel.
And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions?
If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people did not answer him a word.
Then Elijah said to the people, "I alone am left a prophet of the LORD, but Baal's prophets are 450 men.
Now let them give us two oxen; and let them choose one ox for themselves and cut it up, and place it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other ox, and lay it on the wood, and I will not put a fire under it.
Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD, and the God who answers, He is God" (1 Kings 18: 19 and 24a).

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"The Prophet restored"
The audacity and boldness of Elijah to say those things!
This is a foretaste of the last day's Elijah ministry and that is what we need to appreciate.
What heightens our appreciation is that it is also a picture of what must yet come: Elijah must first come and restore all things.
The prophetic requirement of the last days is tied up essentially with the restoration of that which was lost, the ancient and the original, the pristine and the first thing.
We are not talking about the restoration of the ministry offices as if that is the thing in itself.
It is a means to a larger and other end, namely, the "restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time"
(Acts 3: 21b Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.).
That is to say, both the restoration of Israel after her yet future calamity, known as 'the time of Jacob's trouble', and the restoration of a church to its pristine and original apostolic glory and power.
Truth itself needs to be restored that has been lying in the streets. Language itself has suffered terrible abuse and defamation.
Bind: Lying spirit
Loose: The Spirit of Thruth
(Joh. 14:17, 15:26, 16:13)
2Thes.2:9-13 Strong Deceptions
Prov. 20:19 Flattery
1Tim.4:7 Superstitions
Rev.12:10 Accusations
Jer.23:15-17 False Prophesy
Gal.5:1 Religious
Prov.10:18 Slander
2Tim.2:16 Gossip
Prov.6:16-19 Lies
2Peter 2:1 False teachers

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There is restoration work at every hand, and it is an enormously exhausting work.
It would be easier to start from scratch than to have to first undo, pluck up, root out and destroy what men have celebrated and want to see continue and to be preserved, that is something other than that which was given at the first.
One can only build and plant after one has rooted up, plucked out and destroyed.
How many of us have the stamina to bear the cries and the shrieks of people who do not want to see things rooted up?
There must first come this 'Elijah company' before the Lord Himself returns.
John the Baptist was equated with Elijah of whom the Lord described as the greatest of all the prophets, and in doing so, was celebrating the intrinsic 'Elijah' content of what John was.
There is a spirit of Elijah, a quintessential, prophetic character that John exhibited that was of spirit and of kind with Elijah and will again picture what is yet future, namely, an 'Elijah company' upon the earth in that same separation, the same audacity and that same confident knowledge of God.
They will have the same authority to perform the last day's works of God and to confront a church and a world that have become fugitive and challenge them by challenging its prophets and bringing down the demonstration of God and the revelation of God in fire.