The prophet's handbook

gauge to project the rate of God’s truth dispensed to the believer from the lie. You may appreciate it. Here is how it works. There were twelve tribes, yet in the book of Revelation only one is lost. That is the tribe of Dan. Christ chose twelve apostles and, according to the book of Acts, only one was lost—as foretold by Jesus. That was Judas Iscariot. In carrying this principle over to the seven churches, of all those with which Christ had an issue, only one was threatened with complete dissolution—that was Ephesus. He said only to them that they were in danger of having Him remove their candlestick out of its place. I use this pattern to explore how much of what God does fails, or better yet in His vernacular, is given over to the devil. What the above principle means to you who give and receive prophecy is that God permits very little error to get through to those who honestly desire and pursue His truth. (Ezekiel 14:16 explains it best.) Whatever error does get through, the Lord permits for two reasons. One reason is to enable you to hone your instincts in discerning the truth from the lie. The Lord wants you to learn to protect yourself from the latter. The second reason is what Ezekiel 14 shares: the desires of people’s hearts have turned to idols that caused them to be estranged from Him. For these reasons, prophets need to be well versed in the Scriptures and articulate them well enough to depict their prophecies with the correct imagery. Verifiable prophets are eloquent enough to translate their chosen imagery and revelation to the right audience at the right time. What all this means is that prophets must be highly trained communicators. They must be adept at choosing and employing the most precise words to convey God’s thoughts visually and intelligently. This suggests the need for an extensive and thorough learning development program that demonstrates how, and why, spiritual words work. The better programs will have strong public speaking and other communications components attached to them. Moreover, the best program would show prophets and their hearers why spiritual words have physical objectives that do not limit them to strictly spiritual reactions or behavior. In fact, prophetic words are designed to be ignitions or determiners of human response and conduct. Heavenly communications publicized on earth and dispersed for human beings are not interested in sheer ethereal responses. In the next chapter, I introduce you to the features and functions of the prophetic company.