Within the past few days, I received this note. This note is like others I've received over the years:
Bill,
Please, please, please remove me from your email list. I really don't want to read your drivel and/or your rants.
I have not read any of them for quite a while and just send them to the spam folder or delete them.
You are wasting your time with me.
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These notes are hard for me because I honestly do believe that I'm called to be a prophet and that the Lord gives me Words for the people of the CGGC.
I think that what I put on this blog fits into three categories:
1. Prophecies. Actually messages from the Lord to someone, usually the people of the CGGC.
2. Prophetic comments. Thoughts or musings that feel to me to be prophety. These are not formally prophecies but have a prophetic flavor. ( I plan to enter three posts today. All of them fit this category.)
3. Journal entries and miscellaneous thoughts. I enter these for my own benefit. I try to be clear when a post is in the category and send these posts out to a different list than the others.
Many, but certainly not all, of the people to whom I send links to my posts are people with whom I am friendly, or have been friendly. For them, I assume, even posts of the third category are of value, or, at least, of interest.
But, the prophecies and the prophetic comments? They are of a different nature. I consider them not to belong to me. As far as I am concerned, they are between the Lord and the people for whom He has his message.
Perhaps, most importantly, the posts that fall into the first two categories are a type of Performance Art.
By that, I mean that, in spite of their content, they have a value in the fact that they exist.
During the last regime of CGGC leadership, our Mission Statement asserted that we establish churches specifically on the New Testament Plan.
Even under this regime, the claim for our body is that the Bible is our only rule of faith and practice.
Jesus is very clear about what to do about people who claim to be prophets.
People who follow Jesus have the command to watch out for false prophets.
Jesus gives a very stern warning about the danger of false prophets to His disciples.
As I say, over the years, I have received several notes like the one I copied near the beginning of this post.
On the level of what I do as a type of Performance Art, notes like this illuminate disobedience.
If I'm a false prophet, what I write and say is far more than "drivel" or a "rant." If I am a false prophet, what I write and say is a Satanic attack against the people of the Kingdom...against brothers and sisters of the writer of that note.
If I'm truly a prophet, thinking that what I write and say, is a waste of time is not an option.
Jesus leaves no wiggle room. You may disagree with APEST. You may choose to think I'm deluded. But, I'm claiming, among others in the body of disciples, to speak for the Lord.
According to Jesus, that's a serious matter.
On the level of what I do as Performance Art, where the broad notion of what I do is itself a challenge, the guy who wrote that note is failing Jesus and the Kingdom and, that a serious matter.
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Back in the day, when my now unconsummated defrocking was being perpetrated, I asked numerous people who witnessed the events that took place during ERC Conference Sessions, what I was accused of doing.
No one I asked had a specific answer. They all shared the same general impression. But, no one could recall that a specific charge was laid against me. Certainly, I know of nothing in the record.
If the people of the Conference believe that I am a false prophet, that was the time to make that charge.
However, I suspect that the writer of the email speaks for the whole of the ERC. They'd had enough of my driveled rants. They wished to declare that what I do is a waste of their time.
Despite the command of Jesus regarding what to do about people who falsely claim to speak for Him, my sense that I've become merely a nondefrocked, defrocked nuisance. That's not a category that Jesus provides for in the battle between darkness and light.
And, if I correct, it makes the case that community doesn't exist in the ERC and that, certainly, the love described in the New Command is not alive.
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In my response to the note, I promised to pray about the request and I noted that that is the best I can do.
It will sound audacious, but how do you suppose that Isaiah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist responded to similar requests? I'm certain that they received them.
Please understand: I'm not comparing myself to those great people of faith.
What I'm suggesting is that prophecy itself, true or false, is a powerful tool for the Lord,...and for the devil.
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