The prophet's handbook

always existed as potential people in the man and woman’s bodies, but are not time-relevant until they are first conceived. After gestation and birth into the world, the child is subject to its tempo. As long as a baby is in the womb, it is exempt from time and its ordinances as we know them. It lives, is alive, and is a person, but it is not on life’s clock—the timepiece of earthly life, that is. Once the baby in the womb is born, it receives a birth date and becomes subject to the laws and processes of the earth. So it is with prophecy. By definition prophecy is pro—“beforehand” or “time”—and phemi (or phani)—“saying”—that which is said before it happens. Inasmuch as the Lord created and formed all we see, feel, hear, and touch outside time, every element of human existence may be seen as prophetic or as a manifestation of prophecy. The Genesis account of creation supports this. Before the world was, God said, “Let there be….” The Bible goes on to tell us that what He declared to be came forth, because the record says, “and it was so.” This truth is upheld in 2 Peter 3:5, a reiteration of Psalm 33:6 and Hebrews 11:3. Once the Lord God spoke what He wanted to make appear, He observed its formation and outworking from eternity as it moved from there to here. In eternity, things manifest at the speed of God, not man. With His word not being confined to our time clock and calendar, it was not a problem for Him to create His world in a week. Afterward, He assigned everything its time, season, purpose, vessel, genealogy, and history, and spoke its physicality into manifestation. They had always existed resident in Him, like the sperm and egg of a future baby. Once full gestation was complete, the Lord merely spoke His physical creation out of His being and into the world’s space He had created for it. It appeared whole at His word because He had carried the whole thing around within Himself until it could stand on its own and serve His purposes. Still working from heaven and earth at once, the Lord then recorded in eternity the events that unfolded in His earthly chronicles. From then it was all set in motion (albeit a drastically slowed-down motion) to be lived out in the flesh over time. The Lord has given us this same formula to repeat what He did in our own world and lives. Thus, prophecy mirrors God’s beforehand record of what took place at the speed of eternity, now unfolding in us in time, age to age, before it appeared on earth. Even the variables of human free will are known by God because, for the most part, what we do at a snail’s pace compared to eternity’s speed done under His observation before He placed us in our clay vessels on this planet. Prophets then get their information from the spirit realm. It comes from the Holy Spirit who communicates select portions and pieces of the Creator’s