Having spend alot of time in the prophetic movement in America and having spend alot of time with its’ leader; I have had a front row seat to the movement since its’ earliest days in Kansas City under the leadership of Mike Bickle.

The prophetic movement is really understood by three seasons: the Kansas City Fellowship, the Toronto Blessing, and Post-Lakeland. Each have their high points and each have their low points. However, to understand where we are today; you have to understand where we started back in the 1980′s.

The Kansas City era

In the 1980′s, there was alot of prophetic stuff happening in Kansas City, namely around Bob Jones and Noel Alexander. It was a time of powerful words and signs from Heaven. One of the most powerful times was when Mike Bickle heard directly from the Lord, “I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation.” There was many confirmations of this.

If you would like more information on this, you can go MikeBickle.org and download Encountering Jesus, a 12 part history for free.

The Toronto Era

When the Toronto Blessing broke loose with Randy Clark at the church of John Arnott, prophecy quickly became central to alot of expression of God’s heart to people. In fact, the era of Toronto is in alot of ways, just an overflow of Kansas City.

In fact, Bob Jones prophesied that in 1984 that in 10 years that the New Wine would be poured out. Mike Bickle himself questioned this as he though it would be the fire of God, not the wine that was poured out. Now, we understand that the fire was later come on Father’s Day 1995.

The Post-Lakeland Era

In the last few years, a third wave of the prophetic movement has started and one could very easily get way off track very quickly if not tamed. It is what I called the Glory movement. Prophetic meetings are giving way to some crazy mantifestations and less and less of the gospel is coming forth. This is what I call the Post-Lakeland prophetic movement.

One of the keys to understand that we could be in trouble is every ministry is devoloping “guidelines for prophecy.” If the prophetic movement is really in the Spirit, we don’t need to give the Holy Spirit a list of guidelines. The truth is, alot of people are trying to be just as anointed as Jim Goll and Bob Jones when they aren’t! They are missing the mark on so much in the name of zeal and passion.

Zeal and passion will never give way to sound doctrine. In my opinion, we should require all prophetic people, especially those in ministry, to have completed at least a year of theological training and studied systemic theology. So much of the crazy teaching in the movement would be dealt with a simple study of theology and the themes of the gospels. There is something wrong when we get more excited about some gold dust than we do about a creative miracle. I have seen this happen!

If prophecy is the expression of the heart of God, then it is building on what God has already given us as His heart from Genesis to Revelation. It would be us so good to know what God has already spoken prophetically so we have more to work with. The more you understand in the natural, the more God can you use in the Spirit! God can speak to you about a greek meaning but that won’t mean anything unless you know the word in greek!

The road to getting the movement back on track is found in a class I took at Bible College called Hermeneutics. It is by definition, “the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law.”