Marko Joensuu's Blog, page 3

5 principles for knowing if it is God speaking to you

I have discovered 5 simple principles that can help determine if it is the Holy Spirit speaking to you. The issue of hearing from God is expanded in more detail in my book Five Movements: Winning the Battle for Your Prophetic Gift. 1. Word comes with a strong presence of GodUnless a word or thought comes with a strong presence of God you shouldn’t accept or share it straight away. Instead, pray over it until you are sure that it is from God. Often, God will reveal you more. I have spent a month or two seeking God before sharing a major prophecy to church leaders. But if the word or thought is accompanied with strong anointing to share it and the person it is meant for is present you can often share it immediately.2. Word should never contradict the BibleA prophecy should never contradict the Bible but it can challenge your Bible interpretation. God often speaks to you to illuminate a biblical truth you might not be aware of. If a revelatory word challenges your Bible interpretation but you discover through your Bible study that it is in fact consistent with the Bible truth, the chances are that God is dealing with your imperfect understanding of the Word. After all, God is the chief theologian of the universe.3. God’s words are always enveloped in His presenceThe Holy Spirit never speaks a word that doesn’t come enveloped in His presence. The devil can camouflage as an angel of light but he can’t fake God’s presence.
Words spoken by the enemy are either full of poison, or when he masquerades as the angel of light, like empty shells, devoid of life. They have a presence of restlessness about them.
The enemy might recite the Bible, as he did to Jesus when He was tempted, but he can never manufacture the unique mix of peace and energy that accompanies the presence of God. Jesus said,
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. (John 10:1-5)
The enemy often tries to conceal his venomous presence behind false sense of triumphalism, as if it were the Holy Spirit promising you victory. This is designed to appeal to your pride.
2 Samuel 24:1 says,
Again the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel, and He moved David against them to say, “Go, number Israel and Judah.”
The events are seen from a different perspective in 1 Chronicles 21:1.
Now Satan stood up against Israel, and moved David to number Israel.



God tests His people by letting the enemy whisper in their ear. If your heart is right with God you don’t listen to the enemy. God had given the kingdom to David but now his heart was puffed up and he thought that he owned God’s people. Joab was aware that the Law of Moses advised against counting people and tried to stop David. Exodus 30:12 says,
When you take the census of the children of Israel for their number, then every man shall give a ransom for himself to the Lord, when you number them, that there may be no plague among them when you number them.
There is no indication that every man gave a ransom for himself as part of this census, and God cursed Israel with a plague.
It seems that David genuinely failed to distinguish between God and Satan’s voice. If your heart is proud, the enemy’s voice can sound indistinguishable from the Lord’s. There are deceiving spirits who know how to appeal to your desire for significance.4. God will give you enough time to test a prophecyGod has already factored in the time it will take for you to discover whether a prophecy is from Him or not. He will never ask you to proclaim or act on a prophecy you aren’t 100% sure about.5. God’s focus is on your relationship with Him
Sometimes discerning whether a word really came from God takes a lot of time. I have spent months in seeking clarity regarding certain prophecies with the Holy Spirit never answering to me clearly but drawing me deeper into His presence. This is God’s way of luring you to spend more time with Him!
You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at  facebook.com/marko.joensuu  or by visiting  markojoensuu.com . 

Rejecting Branham's false model of ministry with spiritual gifts

If there is one person who has influenced the spiritual gift ministry model in the contemporary prophetic movement the most, it must be William Branham, whom many prominent Charismatic and prophetic leaders call “the greatest prophet that ever lived”—even when at the same breath they seem to admit that some of his teachings were "strange". And even if Branham didn't single-handedly create the stage performance driven ministry model of today, he certainly made it popular.

But in reality Branham wasn't the greatest prophet that ever lived. Instead, he was a false prophet whose teachings and ministry model are still poisoning the Charismatic movement. 

How come so many Christian leaders today idolise a man who taught that the Trinity is a doctrine created by Satan, a man who never rejected freemasonry? Many people today visit his grave, believing that going there could somehow impart Branham's anointing, as this video demonstrates. 

At the heart of this man-worship is commonplace but false perception that Branham had allegedly 100% accurate words of knowledge. 

But what if Branham's allegedly accurate words of knowledge were a result of his mastery of stagecraft and illusion rather than hearing from God? Then the ministry model that he has passed on to the contemporary body of Christ would be based on a lie. And it is a lie I have, over the years, seen destroy the lives of many Charismatic ministers, as they have, in vain, pursued stage performance driven use of the spiritual gifts, rather than learning to use the gifts as vehicles for God's love. That has taken many down the road of hypocrisy and the using of unethical methods in ministry.



The reality is that the contemporary worship of Branham as the greatest prophet that ever lived is based on a rather unhistorical legend—and the Branham of the legend never existed. But unlike with say King Arthur or Merlin, there is plenty of historically reliable material that contradicts the legend.

It is my conviction that it is this honouring of Branham by the prophetic movement that has opened the doors of deception and is one of the main reasons why the prophetic ministry is failing so spectacularly in the Charismatic movement today. Why? Because nearly everyone in the prophetic movement pays at least a lip service to Branham as the greatest prophet since Jesus—even when they should know better. When you single out a false prophet as the highest expression of ministry, it is bound to have consequences.

But what Branham really gave us is the perfection of a false ministry model that is based on a performance act on stage. Branham didn't invent it; he only perfected it. 

Kris Vallotton offers the standard Charismatic defence of Branham in his Facebook post.

“So the question is who should we let influence us and is it okay to admire people such as William Branham who believed things (especially towards the end of his life), which definitely fit into this definition. Branham was reported in his latter years to not believe in the Trinity, there are mixed reports concerning the possibility that he believed that he was Elijah and his view of women was always harsh throughout the years of his ministry. There many other questionable things that he believed also but I think you get the idea why people get pretty anxious when you mention his name. On the other hand, he was probably greatest miracle worker since the 12 apostles. There were literally thousands of doctor verified miracles that William Branham performed by the power of Jesus Christ. He was partner with Gordon Lindsay for many years, and during that time, for the most part he was very orthodox in his approach to Charismatic Christianity. It was only after Lindsay left William's ministry that Branham's doctrine became quite controversial. There are many people like William Branham who did great miracles and yet had character and/or theological issues in their lives throughout church history. . . So what's my conclusion, I think that admiring people who walked with God and learning from their successes and failures is not only healthy but biblical, (at least by example). To throw away the lessons we can learn from men like William Branham seems silly to me.”

This defence has a number of major problems, which frankly speaking, I find unsurmountable. 
1. Using supernatural as evidence for GodFirst, Vallotton uses miracles as evidence of Branham’s spiritual authority and claims that this should be enough proof for us—even when Branham's teaching was clearly unbiblical. But Jesus warned us of this very obsession with the supernatural.

In Matthew 24:23-25 Jesus says, “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand."

See, I have told you beforehand. (But we didn't care.)

Obviously, you can't use miracles as an evidence against anyone either, like many cessationists do. Not every miracle is fake. Even the fake Rolex is sellable only because there are genuine ones. But it should be clear that miracles themselves aren't enough, and that the enemy can use them to deceive Christians. 

Should we just keep on ignoring the warnings of Jesus? Or is He no more our Master, whose words should matter more to us than the words of any men? Certainly Branham seemed to think that he was bigger than the Bible. But when we are talking about someone like Branham, who said that the Trinity is Satan's doctrine, then we certainly should inspect his teaching and works carefully. There are still people who expect Branham to be resurrected—and not on the Last Day. Because of that, anything else but careful inspection would simply be irresponsible. And it seems to me that Vallotton—and large part of the prophetic movement—seems to think that a false teacher can perform genuine miracles.

I am sorry if I am offending some of my friends here. But we need to be truthful about things.  
2. Misunderstanding the role of prophets in the New Testament ChurchSecond, Vallotton misunderstands the role of the prophet in the New Testament. He argues that it is alright that Branham didn't get his theology right, because he was not a theologian or a teacher. He was just a prophet. (And yet we should respect Branham more than theologians and teachers that got their teaching right.) Many Charismatic leaders list Branham's venturing into teaching as the main reason for his failure. But what they fail to understand is that our ministry is always an outflow of our theology. There really isn't any separation between our theology and our ministry. If Branham's theology was false, it is also likely that his ministry and practice were also false. After all, he wasn't a new believer who had been instantly filled with the Holy Spirit and ministering before their theological and biblical understanding had managed to catch up with their experience. No. Branham was a veteran, and he had plenty of opportunities to correct his teaching.

The Bible doesn't know the separation between a prophet and a theologian that we like to make today.

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:11-16,

"And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love."

The fact is that most of the Charismatic movement has got the main role of the prophet—and the whole fivefold ministry—completely wrong. According to Paul the role of the prophet is—together with the apostles, teachers, pastors and evangelists—to connect the body to the Head by removing the main obstruction—false teachings. Based on this job description, William Branham could never have been a genuine prophet, as he spread false doctrines rather than fought them.


Prophets in the fivefold ministry (audio teaching by Marko Joensuu)
Branham clearly taught unbiblical doctrines that seem designed to connect people to Branham rather than Jesus. The existence of Branhamism as a cult today with its total focus on the person and sayings of Branham and ignoring the Bible shows that he has been remarkably successful. 

There is a misconception in the Charismatic Church about prophets. The misconception is that prophets don't really need to know the Bible and theology. But in fact, the prophets are supposed to be theologians and Bible scholars; otherwise they won't be able to do their job of dealing with false doctrines and teachings. How can a prophet deal with a false teaching if  he or she isn't clear about what sound teaching is?

This might sound countercultural to you, but in fact, if you look at the prophets in the Bible, it is clearly the case. 

Why shouldn't the lover of God's word love God's Word even more? 

True prophets are friends of God. And if they know God intimately, why would they go on writing and proclaiming lies about Him? But that's what Branham did. He went against the person of God and the teachings of the Bible—and yet many Charismatic leaders continue to celebrate him—because they want to have a supernatural ministry so badly that they don't really care too much about the source.
3. Sugarcoating Branham's failuresThird, Vallotton sugarcoats Branham’s failings and presents the legend of Branham rather than true historical account of Branham’s life. Vallotton says that "Branham was reported in his latter years to not believe in the Trinity", making Branham's disbelief into some sort of unsubstantiated allegation—as if the jury were still out on the issue. But what Branham said himself is: 

"Satan is a liar and the father of lies, and whenever he comes with any light it is still a lie. He is a murderer. And his doctrine of the trinity has destroyed the multitudes and will destroy until Jesus comes."

These aren't some reports that Branham might have denied the doctrine of the Trinity. This is Branham himself saying that the doctrine of the Trinity is satanic. And his followers keep on teaching that the doctrine of the Trinity is not not biblical doctrine. And all his followers do is to study Branham's teachings, so they should know the best. Who but the devil himself would come up with such a teaching? And yet there are many in the Charismatic movement who worship this man.

There is so much real historical data about Branham's ministry that ignoring it all is perhaps not unforgivable, but it is inexcusable. You are not much of a teacher if you don't bother to study the subject of your teaching first. But that's what these Charismatic teachers are doing. Either they are lying wilfully or they have never really bothered to study what they are teaching.

For example, it seems clear that Branham got his most famous prophecies wrong. This is not a matter of interpretation, but his prophecies clearly failed to pass the test of time. And yet so many Charismatic leaders call him the greatest prophet that ever lived. I mean, how bad are the other prophets for him to be named the greatest? 

It is worth at looking at this Facebook page created by ex-members of his cult, as it collates historical evidence to combat the legend of Branham.

Braham’s most infamous teaching was the doctrine of the serpent’s seed. According to Branham, Eve gave birth to Cain through sexual intercourse with the snake; consequently every woman potentially carried the literal seed of the devil. He also taught that denominations were the mark of the beast.

As I said, there are many credible websites created by the Christians who have left Branhamism. I don't want to duplicate their work here. But let me say one thing—when I researched Branham for my book—and I only deal with him for one simple reason—he has brought a false model of ministry which must be uprooted—the road soon led into total darkness. It doesn't take you long—if you really want to have an educated opinion—to find out what Branham really stood for in real life, and the kind of things he really did. You can find clear allegations of child molestation, which appear quite credible, you can judge them yourself—they should be alarming enough for us to pause to think, whether we should promote Branham's ministry so enthusiastically.

But you don't even need to hear his critics. All you need to hear is his followers, who have made all his sermons available online as transcriptions. You can let Branham's own teachings judge him. That is why I find the collective amnesia in the prophetic movement about the real Branham inexcusable. 
4. Ministry model based on legendAny study of Branham’s actual ministry model would make it evident quickly that perhaps Branham didn’t actually perform thousands of doctor-verified miracles at all. I don't know why Kris Vallotton makes this statement about medically verified miracles, as mostly, the only person who verified Branham's 'miracles' was Branham himself.

For example, famously, Branham allegedly raised a boy from death in Finland, but if you investigate the claim you soon find out that the only person who made that claim and witnessed the 'resurrection' was Branham himself. His most amazing miracles stories can not withstand any scrutiny or verification at all.

I have deconstructed Branham’s ministry model in my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit, on my journey to look for biblically sound model of ministry with the spiritual gifts. But let me outline it here briefly.

If you look at any videos of Branham’s stage ministry, you can easily come to the conclusion that Branham had a powerful gift of the word of knowledge. But it is possible that Branham was one of the best illusionists the Church has ever seen, or as Derek Prince said, Branham might have been channelling a demonic spirit. I personally find Derek Prince's theory concerning Branham having two spirits—the Holy Spirit and a demonic spirit—theologically rather problematic, but it is illuminating, as he ministered with Branham and knew him well enough. I think that Derek Prince was unaware of Branham's card trick that I will describe below, and that's why he came to a at least slightly wrong conclusion. I don't think that at this stage Branham had the Holy Spirit at all. 

When Branham ministered, what seemed to happen is that he invited people randomly on stage, told intimate details of their life, and then he healed them.

And like any illusion artist worthy of their profession, Branham went to the grave without revealing the exact way he performed his illusion act. But it was preceded by an extreme level of manipulation and preparation that caused the crowd to see what Branham wanted them to see.

First, Branham insured himself against anyone not getting healed by claiming that any failure was never his fault. 

According to F.F. Bosworth, a healing evangelist that assisted Branham,

"If a sick person did not receive healing, the problem was either some unconfessed sin or the presence of a demon."

Branham used fear and intimidation to manipulate his audiences. He said that the exorcised demons looked for new inhabitants and warned that the demons would enter the sceptics, asking them to leave before the healing stage of the service. He was convinced that it was lack of faith that obstructed people from getting healed. He admonished audiences to persevere in their faith, and said that some healings were gradual. 

When Branham started his ministry, all people were allowed in the line. But soon, Branham was exhausted. After that, one hundred cards were given out for each service. I don’t know exactly when Branham introduced the prayer cards, but I would conjecture that the timing was somewhat linked to the introduction of his new gift of “discernment”—the word of knowledge.

Each person was instructed to write the nature of their illness and other personal details on the card. As he passed through the prayer line, a Branham team member collected the card.

Bosworth said,

Branham does not begin to pray for the healing of the afflicted in body in the healing line each night, until God anoints him for the operation of the gift, and until he is conscious of the presence of the Angel with him on the platform. Without this consciousness, he seems to be perfectly helpless . . . When he is conscious of the angel’s presence, he seems to break through the veil of the flesh into the world of the spirit, to be struck through[…]”

Branham asked the people in the prayer line:

Sir, do you believe me? Do you accept me as God’s servant? Do you believe that I am his prophet that was sent here for your purpose that you might be healed, and will you obey what I tell you to do? . . . You have arthritis . . . Jump up like this on the platform like this. 
You’re healed my brother."

Often, Branham ‘healed’ people of sicknesses they didn’t even know they had. But because of high level of manipulation and subtle intimidation, not many people would have protested, with most believing afterwards that they had in fact had the sickness.

Like with today’s healing evangelists, many criticised Branham because his healings didn’t last. But in the Bible no one ever lost their healing.

But how did Branham acquire his seemingly accurate words of knowledge?

They would have been easily taken from the prayer cards, as most of his words of knowledge referred to people’s sicknesses and their home addresses.

We can see this model at work in this video:

Branham 'healing' through the 'word of knowledge'
You can see how Branham asks for confirmation from one of his assistants regarding the identity of the person he will pray for. And nearly everything that he says as 'word of knowledge' would have easily been picked from one of the cards. Neither the audience nor the person being 'healed' fully grasps what is going on, as no one on stage mentions the prayer cards, which were all in numerical order, and Branham always called them on stage based on their number in the queue. So, Branham could, for example, memorise the prayer card details of number twelve in the queue and focus on that person. This would give an illusion that Branham would know—if needed—the details of everyone in the queue. The art of the illusionist is distraction.

You can call me cynical. But I am cynical based on experience. I was raised in the Pentecostal movement after all, lived in a Penteocostal church for seven years, encountered my first book by Branham on my grandmother's bookshelf when I was younger than ten, and I have now worked in the Charismatic movement full-time for over seventeen years. I have seen a lot of things. And that gives me the courage to write about these things. It was because Martin Luther was so steeped in the ways of Catholicism that he had the courage to stand up against issues such as indulgences and ask for a reformation.

If the people in Branham's prayer queue were in the wrong order, the 'word of knowledge' usually stopped working.

Now if all the details in the 'word of knowledge' were available on the prayer cards, what is the probability that Branham got those details from the prayer cards? Or put differently, why should God give Branham a word of knowledge about what had already been revealed on the prayer cards?

What made the illusion work is that the audience—and the person being prayed for—took Branham's accurate words as word of knowledge, which created a powerful effect. And because of the 'word of knowledge' no verification of the 'miracle' was needed, as most people in the audience took the 'word of knowledge' as the verification for healing. If God revealed all these details to Branham, surely He would also heal the person!

When Vallotton says that Branham performed thousands of medically confirmed miracles, that is simply not true. Usually, the only person who 'verified' the miracles was Branham himself—on stage. I have come across hundreds of claims that Branham had a healing ministry but not across a single verified testimony of healing.

Now,  I am not saying that you can't have a word of knowledge about someone's sickness in the audience. I have seen it happen. I am also slightly worried about the use of this technique for the simple reason that if, say, a pastor says that he feels someone in the audience suffers from back pain, statistically, if there are more than 2-3 people in the church, at least one of them will suffer from back pain. So, the seemingly successful feedback loop can encourage ministers to develop unhealthy forms of ministry that might seem impressive but might also be deceitful—even to the ministers themselves.

But it seems clear that Branham's industrial manufacturing of these 'words of knowledge' was largely based on the one hundred numbered prayer cards that were given out before the meeting. It seems clear that he was a master of deception. But who are you serving really, if your ministry model is based on deception?

But because many Charismatic leaders believe the legend about Branham's accurate words of knowledge, they are tempted to follow him into a manipulation of the audiences—without being aware that the trick of their 'master' was actually a card trick.

I find it unfathomable that many in the Charismatic movement idolise a man whose followers have created a cult that worships a man. And following Branham's model has led the prophetic movement into a crisis, as it has opened the doors to deception. Not only are we tolerating deception but through our idolatry of Branham we actively embrace it. 

It seems to me that Branham's card trick that many try to emulate—but without the cards—is behind the failure of the Charismatic stage performance driven use of gifts, and the Charismatic movement will continue to fail, until we renounce the ways of Branham. We desperately need authentic expressions of the gifts of the Spirit, but as long as we are more concerned of how it looks rather than whether the gifts are genuine, we won't be getting any of these genuine expressions. 

True gifts of the Spirit are expressions of God's love. Their use might sometimes be public, but the stage performance is never at the heart of them.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at  facebook.com/marko.joensuu  or by visiting  markojoensuu.com . 

Fear, false hope & wrong season – 3 false prophecies causing Church inaction

False prophecies aren't harmless entertainment, but they obfuscate our vision, so that we no more see what God is doing in our generation.  

After many years, I have come to the conclusion that we accept false prophecies primarily as they give us justification for our indifference to the needs of our neighbour.

In this post, I look briefly at prophecies about Trump, the islamisation of Europe and demonisation of the EU as part of the Brexit campaign with some help of the prophet Jeremiah and his ministry. 

In recent months we have seen many prophets reduced to Trump apologists in a sometimes tragicomic effort to defend their prophetic position and authority. This has led to endless spin doctoring, as events happening in the real world are either denied or reframed beyond any scope of rational reinterpretation. And if nothing else works, these prophets will always attack the liberals, claiming that things would be much worse if they were in power.

For example, Chuck Pierce, explaining the internal chaos in the White House and investigation into relationship with Russia, prophesied recently that there would be ten months of internal war in the White House, followed by three years of great success and progress, because Trump has the "breaker anointing".  It seems that the prophetic movement will keep on redefining biblical concepts and theology based on whatever Trump will be doing. 
Now, I am not concerned of Trump. I am sure America will survive his presidency, much as it has survived any other presidency. I am not much concerned of the political spin doctors either. They are only doing the job they have been paid to do. I am concerned of the prophetic movement. We are supposed to speak on God's behalf—not to apologise for a man who doesn't even claim to be a Christian. What happened to us? 
The answer is rather simple, but it is the one that most of us want to avoid thinking about. Perhaps these prophets aren't speaking on behalf of God at all. Perhaps all they are doing is repeating the rumination of their own mind and confusing it with the word of God.
It seems that contemporary prophecy is largely a call to inaction. It might resemble a call to action, but it is a call to inaction when it comes to its real target group, as it never challenges the lifestyle of prosperity-obsessed Christians. The contemporary prophecy is there largely to justify our love for the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It might come with Christian-looking wrappings, but that's all it is.
Tragically, the function of much of contemporary prophecy appears to be protecting us from the Word of God, so that we can keep our self-centred lifestyle! 
And let me tell you something: God is not automatically pleased just because we call our gatherings prophetic.
Amos 5:21-24 says, “I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from Me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
According to Amos, if our meetings don’t lead to an increase of justice in the world, they are detestable to God. I find that shocking too, but that is the Word of God.
I fear that the endless stream of prophecies that we are bombarded with today is designed to keep us from reading the Bible. Today’s Charismatic Church seems to require a new prophetic word every day! The sad truth is that many in the Charismatic Church have become addicted to the thrill of receiving a new prophecy, but by and large, we are unwilling to obey the clear word of the Bible. That’s why we need a steady stream of prophecy, so that we won’t have time to take the clear word of God seriously. 
Paul prophesies in 2 Timothy 4:3, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
2 Timothy 4:3 is where we are—right now. We have discovered that false prophecy is far more pleasant to us than following Jesus.  

Charles H. Spurgeon said, “A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." 
We want prophetic emotions but not a clear word from God, as it demands obedience as response. We prophesy a revolution that doesn’t need to change our lifestyle—a reformation that looks exactly like us. By and large, prophecy has become part of the Charismatic stage and media entertainment industry. We have become slaves to the media and entertainment principles of this world. (I look at this phenomenon from the perspective of spiritual gifts in my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit.) 
Jeremiah 5:31 says, “The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule by their own power; and My people love to have it so”.
We keep on consuming the material from false prophets, as they keep on prophesying blessings to us. And we keep on consuming false prophecies of fear, as they justify our lifestyle of not loving our neighbour.  We like the fact that the false prophets demonise our neighbours, as that justifies our indifference to their suffering.
There are many streams of false prophecy in Church today. Here I will be touching on three false prophecies which are currently causing inaction in the Body of Christ—in America and Europe. The first is based on false hope, the second one on a projected fear and the third one on wrong timing. In different ways, these three false prophecies are obstructing us from doing what God is challenging us to do in this generation.False hope—Trump The widespread acceptance of the Trump prophecies in the Charismatic Church reveals how the prosperity gospel has worked its way through our churches. There is no other explanation for this phenomenon. We do listen and obey to the voice of our master—but our master seems to be mammon!
If you believe in Trump prophecies, I challenge you to pick any book from the Bible and read it. No matter which book you will choose, it will contradict the Trump prophecies and show that he is a false hope for the Church. And no matter which book you will choose, it will contradict the kind of political gospel of indifference to the suffering of our neighbours that we are preaching today.
I have written extensively about the Trump prophecies in the past, and there is no need to cover this ground again. Below are some links to previous blog posts.

Do Trump prophecies mark the destruction of the prophetic movement?
Don't lose your prophetic calling for partisan politics
When a prophetic movement merges with a political partyProphecy as propaganda: the Trump prophecies as political persuasionThe Trump prophecies and the urgent need for prophetic reformation
The Trump prophecies have exposed the Laodicean state of the prophetic and much of the Charismatic Church. In Revelation 3:18 Jesus asks the Laodicean church to “anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see”. It seems that much like the prophetic movement today, the Laodicean church boasted of their ability to see spiritually; yet Jesus said that they were spiritually blind.
Jeremiah 23:16-18 says, 
This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The Lord says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ But which of them has stood in the council of the Lord to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word?
Trump is a false hope. But what made the Trump prophets particularly emboldened was that his election was a winning bet against all odds. 
This is not dissimilar to what happened in the times of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 27 the King of Judah is contemplating whether to rebel against the Babylonian rule.  False prophets promise that Jerusalem would be delivered from the yoke of Babylon in two years. But Jeremiah says that this is a false hope. 
Jeremiah 27:9-10 says, 
"Therefore do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, 'You shall not serve the king of Babylon.' For they prophesy a lie to you, to remove you far from your land; and I will drive you out, and you will perish. But the nations that bring their necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let them remain in their own land," says the Lord, "and they shall till it and dwell in it."
Initially, it seemed that the false prophets were winning and that rebellion against vassalage to Nebuchadnezzar might be the right option, as the ruler of Babylon had many problems. 
Around that time, after a brief Syrian campaign in 596/595 BC, Nebuchadnezzar had to act in eastern Babylonia to repel a threatened invasion, probably from Elam (modern southwestern Iran). Tensions in Babylonia were revealed by a rebellion late in 595/594 BC involving elements of the army, but he was able to put this down decisively enough to undertake two further campaigns in Syria during 594 BC. 
Initially, it must have looked as if Babylon was about to collapse. And the false prophets seemed right. But all they did was reacting to the news. And following the false prophets led to much greater destruction than was necessary.

So, because of Trump prophecies we are now defending not caring about the global environment, not caring about refugees and cutting the healthcare from the poorest of society. We defend nepotism, corruption and we forget that we have attacked the previous government over many of the issues we now choose to ignore. Then we demanded impeachment and resignation, now we look away and pretend that it is all a liberal conspiracy. All it reveals is our self-centredness and lack of integrity when it comes to politics. All this might be OK, if we were just political operators. But we are the Church.

Why are we doing it? All this is supported by widespread demonisation of the liberals, Muslims, illegal immigrants and so on. Let me suggest that we prefer it this way, because that gives us an excuse not to love the neighbour—the one who doesn't look like us.

But Jesus didn't say: "Love your neighbour as yourself—unless he is transgender, Muslim, liberal, gay or Mexican." Jesus never gave us the option to opt out from loving all our neighbours. To make this absolutely clear, He asked us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. 

But these kinds of false prophecies give us an excuse not to love our neighbour that is different from us, as they tend to demonise the neighbours we don't like. But we are not supposed to fight against flesh and blood but against demonic principalities.

You might not approve someone's views on politics. Yet, Jesus commanded us to love them nevertheless. How can you love them if you always speak badly about them?

The Church needs to decide if we want to be Christians or a political party.  Fear—islamisation of Europe The false prophecy about the islamisation of Britain is largely based on reacting to the news. So many prophets have prophesied about the islamisation of Europe that I have lost count. But in reality, the much bigger danger facing Europe is the secularisation of our nations. And the terrorism that much of Europe has experienced, as terrible as it is, works against any islamisation process, as the Europeans and even many Muslims experience the violent side of Islam for the first time, which is leading to increasing hostility against Islam. I have always said that if nothing else will get the Brits and Germans to fight, try to take away their beer! 

False prophecy files: the Islamisation of Europe
In a previous blog post I have written about the amazing things God is doing in the Middle East. If you want to know more please read 12 lessons from fulfilled vision.

But now our church is getting involved in Europe-wide work with Muslim refugees and huge numbers of them are coming to faith. We are helping to training converts from Islam to become pastors in Europe, so that they can plant churches. And the Arab churches in Europe are now planning for Europe-wide evangelistic campaigns!

But many Christians are actively speaking against the European nations accepting refugees, believing that it is some kind of Trojan horse scheme by Islamists to sneak in a huge number of Muslims. 

I partially understand those fears. But I disagree with these prophets. It seems that they can only see what the devil is doing. They have lost their ability to see what God is doing.

I believe that God has a different perspective. Just because we have lost faith in His power, it doesn't mean that He would stop proceeding in His salvation plan. And He knows He has all the power! 

It has been estimated that Germany has let in nearly 2 million refugees, although the official numbers are lower.

Now slow down and follow me in this line of thought:
Numbers 35:33 says about blood defiling the land: "So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it." 
In the Old Testament world, it was an eye for an eye: only the blood of a murderer could cleanse the land.
Thankfully, 2 Chronicles 7:14 promises, "If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

Let me ask a question: if God wanted to atone for the land where six million Jews were killed, how would he do it? Today.

Through repentance. And how could Germany express repentance? Through accepting a huge number of refugees. 

Right now, God is healing the land of Germany through cleansing the bloodshed of the Holocaust. He is removing the curse caused by the shedding of innocent blood in Europe. He is doing that through helping Germany to save lives of over a million refugees.  He is making the land ready for revival and reformation.

I believe that through all the Islamic terror the devil is trying to harden our hearts, so that we would close them to the millions of Muslims that are ready to accept the gospel in Europe.
In 2009, God gave me a prophetic word about a coming season of 30 years of reformation in Europe. And this leads me to a false prophecy that is false mainly because of wrong timing.Wrong timing—the BeastThere is a false understanding in the Body of Christ about prophecies predicting an imminent apocalypse. It says that as the apocalypse is prophesied in the Bible, there is not much harm done if someone prophesies an apocalypse but the timing turns out to be off. But in fact, a wrong timing of a prophecy can be intensely harmful. Endless prophecies about the apocalypse often stop Christians from reaching out to their neighbour and loving them, and anyone disagreeing with them becomes the enemy.

Since I was a child, I have heard prophecies about the EU being the beast in the Book of Daniel and Revelation. In 1994, when Finland held a referendum regarding joining the EU, those prophecies were troubling me. At the time I had no deep biblical understanding about the issue, but when I prayed about it, I received an assurance that although Europe or parts of it will undoubtedly play a part in the End Time events and not necessarily in a positive way, the EU itself won’t be the institution that would be the beast.

In fact, looking at the history of Europe, it is far more likely that the EU is the cage that is restraining the beast, as it was created to pacify the European nations after two very destructive world wars.

This theory about the EU being the beast or somehow involved with the beast has been resurrected over and over again, and it has evolved and found new incarnations over the years. For example, David Hathaway claims that Europe will be raped by Islam. I have dealt with his poor understanding of history and biblical prophecy in Fact-checking 'The Rape of Europe'.

As I mentioned earlier, I received a prophecy about the coming reformation in Europe in 2009, and because of this prophecy I have always had a fairly optimistic outlook when it comes to near future.

When the EU referendum neared in Britain in 2016, I was reluctant to say anything about the issue prophetically. I had many reasons for that, not least as politically I am a Remainer, and I feared that it would colour my judgment, and I didn't want to speak prophetically about an issue Christians should simply vote about according to their political views and conscience.

But, I was intensely disturbed before the election, as many Christians framed the referendum as a separation of Christian Britain from the non-Christian continent.  And they began to demonise the EU, even when they clearly knew very little about its workings and history. And they forgot that it was not just the Roman Empire but later on the Church that united Europe. 

The Church was the first truly global organisation and I think it is fair to say that extreme forms of nationalism should be alien to the Christian worldview. A true Christian should be unable to obsess of the fate of their own nation exclusively, mainly as they know that all the people of the earth can potentially become their brothers and sisters.

And many Christians criticising the ungodly Europe simply forgot that Britain is one of the most atheist nations in Europe. And statistically, Christianity is doing better in the mainland Europe than in Britain.

But why do so many Brits and Americans think that Christianity is doing so poorly in Europe? I believe there are two main reasons. First, the Christianity in the mainland Europe often seems somewhat traditional, and many Charismatics despise traditional expressions of Christianity. In essence, they don't consider traditional Christianity to be true Christianity. Second, most Americans and Brits only speak English, so they find it difficult to follow what is actually going on in Europe. Whereas in Europe many Christians speak English, so they tend to know what is going on in the English-speaking churches. And because we all hear more about what is going on in the English-speaking churches, this creates an illusion that Christianity is somehow stronger in the English-speaking world. 

Whereas Latin was the 'holy language' of the medieval church, English has become the 'holy language' of the Charismatic world church. 
Anyway, about a week before the referendum in the UK, God finally gave me a reading from the Scripture, making it prophetically applicable to Britain.
Now the referendum is long past, so I think it is fine to release this word.

This leads me back to Jeremiah 27-29.
The word I got was that like Babylon, the EU has been appointed to be there for a time. Britain has chosen to take a different route but, unless we are careful and understand that the EU has been appointed to be there for a time, this will lead to weakening and impoverishing of our own nation. 

Most Christians don't know that if there were a hard Brexit, Britain would need to renegotiate over 750 international agreements. They have not even begun to think about the practicalities of all of it. So, whatever happens, Britain must be able to have a constructive relationship with the mainland Europe. 
I would have more to say about this, but I don't want to go any further.

In Jeremiah 29:10 the prophet says to the Jews,
"For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place." 
The destruction of Babylon had been preordained by God, but it would take 70 years. Then its destruction would surely come. But in the meantime, Jeremiah advised the Jews to choose the path of non-resistance. God would surely deliver them from Babylon, and rather than rebelling in the name of independence, He wanted them to prosper.

Rather than fighting a rebellion against Babylon and being punished by it, Jeremiah asked the Jews to wait. In 70 years, someone else would bring that destruction, and the Jews would be able to return to Jerusalem free. In fact, they would rebuild the temple and the city with the provision they accumulated in Babylon. 

If you read my prophecy about the reformation in Europe, you will find out that I do believe that there is an appointed time that will bring darkness to Europe. But that time is not yet. Now is the time to bring in a great harvest in Europe. With or without Brexit, now is the time to love Europe. So, no matter how firmly you believe in Brexit—yes, you can support it politically, that is not the issue—please don't close your eyes to what God is doing and will be doing in the mainland Europe, as you might end up missing out from a mighty blessing.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at  facebook.com/marko.joensuu  or by visiting  markojoensuu.com . 


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False prophecy files: the Islamisation of Europe

Not long after the 9/11, prophecies about the Islamisation of Europe began to circulate in the Charismatic Church. Recently, they have gained more momentum because of the immigration crisis. 

For example, Walid Shoebat writes that Muslim invasion of Europe was predicted by medieval saints, and it is now happening.  Jihad Watch predicts the collapse of Europe due to the Muslim migrants.  In my article Fact-Checking the Rape of Europe I deal with David Hathaway’s prophecy that makes the claim that the EU is the prostitute of Revelation 17, riding on the Beast of Islam–which will eventually rape it.

Apparently, these prophecies are supported by demographic trends. Two years ago, Pew Research Center forecast that by 2050, the world Muslim population will nearly match Christians by 2050.  Now they forecast that Islam will overcome Christianity to become the most popular religion in the world by 2070, with migration seeing a surge in Europe and America's Muslim population. 

I have always had a problem with these prophecies, perhaps because they always seem to focus on what the devil will be doing, but they never seem to bring any awareness of what God is doing. But aren't prophets meant to be 'friends of God'? Aren't they the ones who are supposed to know what God is doing? 

Isis—false prophets of Islamic apocalypse
12 lessons from a fulfilled vision
Love your neighbour—unless they are Muslim, poor, refugees or not like me


Now, it seems that although there has been an influx of Muslim migrants to Europe, large numbers of them have become rather disillusioned of their faith, and they are now converting to Christianity in large numbers. 

In Finland, the national broadcaster reports that large number of asylum-seekers are getting baptised. These people are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. This is not due to trying to influence the decision on their refugee status, as it really has no impact on it, and many of the converts are scared because of their families. But many also return to their homeland as Christians after a negative decision. I hear similar reports from other parts in Finland.

The Guardian reports that ‘A growing number of Muslim refugees in Europe are converting to Christianity, according to churches, which have conducted mass baptisms in some places.’

At Trinity Church in the Berlin suburb of Steglitz, the congregation has grown from 150 two years ago to almost 700, swollen by Muslim converts, according to Pastor Gottfried Martens. Earlier in 2016, churches in Berlin and Hamburg reportedly held mass conversions for asylum seekers at municipal swimming pools.

The Independent reports of large number of conversions in Germany. Express also reports on the same topic. Christian Post writes that baptism more than double in Austria despite Muslim threats. A local paper reports of conversions in Oldham. 

There are many similar reports in the media, and undoubtedly, some of the same stories get repeated in the different articles. Nevertheless, this is a real phenomenon.

What is fascinating that many of these churches are traditional churches, which have been rather empty for a long time.  Undoubtedly, there are some Muslims in this group who think that converting would help them to gain asylum, but that would be a small percentage, mainly as converting can be dangerous, even in Europe. 

It seems to me that most of these ‘prophecies’ are simply based on population growth projections, fears caused by Islamic terrorism and watching the news. But they don’t factor in what God is planning to do–for a more positive take on what God might be doing in Europe, please read my prophecy on 30 years of reformation in Europe. 

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at  facebook.com/marko.joensuu  or by visiting  markojoensuu.com . 

Do Trump prophecies mark the destruction of the prophetic movement?

You might be forgiven to wonder why anyone would ask that question, as right now, many Charismatic Christians are convinced that God has anointed Trump to be the president, and the proof has already been received by his election. But in fact the Trump prophecies are a sign of the destruction of the prophetic movement, as its prostitution with money and political power is now complete. We are no more hearing the prophets of God but the prophets of a political movement. God has given us what we have wanted for so long; He is not responsible for the consequences.

There are eight factors that have contributed to the current politization of the prophetic movement. We will look at them a little later. And day by day this process of politization is taking more troubling forms. For example, in a charismamag.com article Michael Snyder implies that the Satanic Temple is in an alliance with the Democratic Party. And when witches gather to pray against Trump, we take it as a sign that surely God is with Trump, so we will defend him even louder. But we forget that the devil's greatest weapon has always been deception: his main operation rarely is the one he shouts the loudest about.

But how is it that we have moved away from the biblical Christianity of preaching the gospel, making disciples and helping the poor? For that is the manifesto of the Early Church, as expressed in Galatians 2:6-9.

"But from those who seemed to be something—whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no man—for those who seemed to be something added nothing to me. But on the contrary, when they saw that the gospel for the uncircumcised had been committed to me, as the gospel for the circumcised was to Peter (for He who worked effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in me toward the Gentiles), and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do." 

But day by day, it becomes clearer and clearer that the prophetic movement has really become the "chosen vessel" of spreading political propaganda to the Charismatic Church, and more and more rightwing operators, such as Michael Snyder, have learnt to mimic prophetic voices.

Now, if you are a Republican, you might not find this particularly troubling, as your side seems to be winning, but you should be, as it is the Charismatic Church and the prophetic movement that are really losing. For if we are claiming to speak with the voice of God, a day will come when God will make us accountable for giving a false witness about Him.

Today, the prophetic movement seems to be stuck in circular reasoning: Trump has been anointed by God, hence everything he does must be right, and everything Trump does must be right because he has been anointed by God. Hence they will seek to defend Trump no matter what he does, often even defending him against the Bible! Because what matters to us is victory, not whether it all stands the test of the Word or not.


Putting Trump's words above Jesus' wordsBut this is not biblical reasoning. And the Bible is there to judge all prophecy. A prophetic word does not entitle us to an exclusion clause from the jurisdiction of the Word. But I have seen Christians defending Trump against Jesus; it seems that many are giving Trump's words more eternal significance than the words of our Master! For if a policy is against the words and principles of Jesus, we will defend it.

Even if you did believe that God has anointed someone to be a national leader, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he would be a blessing to  a nation. For example, in 2 Kings 8 the prophet Elisha goes to Damascus, and Ben-Hadad king of Syria is sick. He sends Hazael to ask Elisha if he will recover. 

2 Kings 8:10-12 says, 

And Elisha said to him, “Go, say to him, ‘You shall certainly recover.’ However the Lord has shown me that he will really die.” Then he set his countenance in a stare until he was ashamed; and the man of God wept. And Hazael said, “Why is my lord weeping?” He answered, “Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword; and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child.”

In this case, the anointing of a political leader brought destruction to Israel. Now, I am not saying that Trump will cause destruction to America; I only make this point to make it clear that the word ‘anointing’ works differently in the Old Testament an alleged anointing of a political leader. 

Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

Currently, we behave as if there is no price to pay if we call evil good and good evil; but I really don't want to know personally what the words "Woe to those" really signify.

But all this is just an indication of a far greater malaise in the prophetic movement. The prophetic movement that should be specialised in how to use words carefully has in fact become pretty careless with words; but this only reflects our casual relationship to the Word. 

We seem to have been gripped by collective madness; we seem to believe that God has given us the license to redefine the meaning of His words rather than that we should keep on studying His Word diligently in order to discover what He really means.
The spirit of the ageI fear that we have now fully been captured by the spirit of the age.

We seem to have embraced the postmodern definition of truth, and perceive it to be merely an opinion. But that is the spirit of the age.

We now defend a political leader against the Bible. That is the spirit of the age.

We ignore large chunks of the Bible to protect our political views. That is the spirit of the age.

We forward fake and  questionable stories if they fit our agenda. That is the spirit of the age.

We label any facts we disagree with as “liberal bias”. That is the spirit of the age.

We demonise our opposition. That is the spirit of the age.

Rather than looking for truth, we feel that our opinion is the truth. That is the spirit of the age.

When our prophets sound identical to the political pundits, that is the spirit of the age.

When a prophet spreads hate speech,  that is the spirit of the age. 

When a prophet puts a party political agenda above God’s Word, that is the spirit of the age.

When prophets compete with each other to give a better version of the same word, that is the spirit of the age.

It should be no secret that the prophetic movement has been rather unwell for a long time. When charismag.com, the leading Charismatic website, publishes an article on What the Aquarius Constellation Teaches Us About Pentecost—and the End Times  and no editor blinks an eyelid, it should be clear to anyone still reading the Bible that we have lost our way. 

Over the last two years I have written numerous articles about the Trump prophecies and other political prophecies; it is not my intention to go through them here. Below are some links to them. They show that if you actually study the Trump prophecies carefully, they turn out not to be quite what they have been advertised to be.

Prophecy as propaganda
Is God finished with current prophetic movement?
The Trump prophecies and the urgent need for prophetic reformation
Why did so many prophets get the 2012 election wrong?
I believe that unless the prophetic movement returns to God and to faithfully presenting His word—which always begins with faithfulness to the Scripture—it will soon be written off by God as an unredeemable failure.

I deal with the crisis of the Charismatic movement in my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit, which gives an in-depth look into these things. For this article, I have identified eight reasons that have led to the current crisis in the prophetic movement. If these issues aren’t dealt with I fear that soon there won't be much left of our testimony.

What many don't realise is that much of the 'prophetic' out there is really agenda-based and not a result of seeking God. We prophesy because we believe that we have the right position on something. So, if we believe in the prosperity gospel, for example, we will prophesy prosperity to every Christian we meet on the way. If we believe in revival, we will prophesy revival to everyone on the way. But hardly anyone stops listening to God afresh. 

In 2 Samuel 7:3 the prophet Nathan says to King David, Nathan said to the king, “Go and do what you really want to do, because the Lord is with you.”

But then Nathan goes home and God actually speaks to him, saying that King David isn't the right man to build Him a temple. 

Much of the prophetic today is actually agenda-based assumptions. We believe that we have a God-given agenda, and we believe God wants to give us the victory. And we think that it is OK to prophesy victory, as we see that as exercising faith. But much of the time, no one really seeks the Lord. Instead, they proclaim the first things that comes to their mind, believing that God is with them! 

Here are eight factors that are operating together through our prophetic culture, but are bringing destruction to the prophetic movement.
1. Idolising our leaders leading to biblical illiteracy 
We seem to respect our Charismatic leaders and party-political consensus more than the Bible. This is the result of decades of being drip-fed by other people’s ideas about the Bible rather than us studying the Bible diligently ourselves. I have spoken with countless of Charismatic Christians who seem to be blind to what the Bible says because some Charismatic leaders have taught them something different.

We have a created a generation of Christians who think they know everything because they have attended a conference about everything, but in reality they are biblically illiterate.
2. William BranhamMost Pentecostals and Charismatics are unaware how intimately the current prophetic movement is linked with William Branham—a healing evangelist who operated from the late 1940s to 1960s. 

A multitude of Charismatic leaders and prophets see Branham as the greatest prophet and healer that ever lived, and often they pray for his mantle. Practically everyone in the Apostolic-Prophetic movement pays at least lip service to him.

In my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit I show how deeply Branham’s teaching has affected our Charismatic and prophetic movement.

Paul Cain, another leading figure in the American prophetic movement, called Branham “the greatest prophet that ever lived.”

So, who was this remarkable man so many seem to respect?

Branham was indeed the first revivalist in the Healing Revival of 1946-1956. He was known for alleged healings and for allegedly accurate words of knowledge.

Kris Valloton, a prophetic leader at Bethel Church, Redding, tells in one video available on YouTube that he once asked God, “Would you give me the mantle of William Branham?” He says that God’s answer was that Branham’s mantle would destroy him, and that it would be too heavy to be carried by one man.

C. Douglas Weaver, Professor of Religion and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Religion in Baylor University writes,

“The influence of William Branham did not end with his death. His ministry has made a significant impact upon the broader Pentecostal movement of this day. As the pacesetter for revival, Branham was a primary source of inspiration in the development of other deliverance ministries.”

According to Weaver, “Branham’s ministry must also be considered, at least in part, as a precursor of the Faith/Confession movement…”

According to many, William Branham is the prototype of the end-time ministry, and we should all follow his lead. Bill Johnson, Senior Minister of Bethel Church, Redding, writes about Branham,

“It is very possible that no one since Jesus Himself carried this particular measure of anointing. But he was not without faults. The strangeness of his doctrine later in life has caused many to once again ‘throw out the baby with the bath-water.’  It seems easier to reject a person for error than it is to learn to eat the meat and throw out the bones. One response only needs an opinion; the other requires maturity.”

Bill Johnson refers to Branham’s “faults”, but he doesn’t seem to perceive them as significant. According to this view, Branham’s doctrine “later in life” is the problem, but his ministry model still remains the gold standard in the Charismatic ministry.

In Derek Prince’s view, Branham operated under the influence of a demonic spirit at least part of the time. And yet many expect us to accept Branham’s ministry uncritically.
Branham’s teachings and life history indicate that, contrary to what he insisted, he might not have been called into ministry by God at all.

Branham had many doctrines that were clearly wrong. For instance, he affirmed the Old Testament law that man had the right to divorce his wife, if she cut her hair short.

But Braham’s most infamous teaching was the doctrine of the serpent’s seed. According to Branham, Eve gave birth to Cain through sexual intercourse with the snake; consequently every woman potentially carried the literal seed of the devil. He also taught that denominations were the mark of the beast.

Most alarmingly, Branham said, “Trinitarianism is of the Devil. I say ‘Thus saith the Lord.’”
 You might ask how much this really matters. A lot.

Remember the Protestant Reformation? We are celebrating its 500th anniversary this year. It started as a reaction against corruption in the Church. Most Christians have heard about the The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences.  

But perhaps the Reformation could also be seen as a protest movement against the marriage ban that was instituted for the priests in the 11th century as part of a reforming effort of the Church.

The marriage ban of the Church for the priests released “many abominations” to the priesthood, an issue the Catholic Church is still struggling with.

And this marriage ban went clearly against the Bible, although it was supposed to bring holiness to the priests. 1 Timothy 4:1-3 says,

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”

We can see that sound doctrine matters. It is my sincere conviction that Branham propagated many “doctrines of demons” and that the idolatry of him by the prophetic movement has released a great deception into the Church.

Clearly, Branham has brought a worship of the supernatural into the Charismatic Church, and nowadays we put our supernatural experiences above the witness of the Bible.
3. ‘Bending reality’ through a word of faithOne of the major streams that has affected Charismatic Christianity is the Word of Faith movement, and the Healing Revival was very much influenced by it. This seems clear to most, but what has been lost to the mists of the 19th and the early 20th century is that the Word of Faith movement itself was profoundly affected by New Thought.

Kate Bowler, Assistant Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School writes about New Thought.

New thought represents a cluster of thinkers and metaphysical ideas that emerged in the 1880s as the era’s most powerful vehicle of mind-power. Three aspects of New Thought became foundational to the twentieth century’s view of mind-power.  First, New Thought assumed unity between God and humanity, perceiving that separation between them was only relative and not absolute.

Bowler writes,

“As many New Thought authors worked inside a Christian framework, they explored ‘salvation’ not as a act imposed from above by God, but rather an act of drawing out humanity’s potential.”

New Thought saw the material world as subject to the mind and began to perceive faith as something that could bend reality.

“Second, New Thought taught that the world should be reimagined as thought rather than substance. The spiritual world formed absolute reality, while the material world was the mind’s projection.”

Third, they thought that human beings shared God’s creative power of thought and words.

“Third, New Thought argued that people shared in God’s power to created by means of thought. People shaped their own worlds by their thinking, just as God had created the world using thought. Positive thoughts yielded positive circumstances, and negative thoughts yielded negative circumstances.”

Phineas P. Quimby (1802–66) is usually cited as the founder or the earliest proponent of New Thought. A native of Portland, Maine, Quimby was a clockmaker with little traditional education. After observing the power of the mind to heal through hypnosis, suggestion and the placebo effect, Quimby began to practise hypnotism and developed the view that illness was simply a matter of the mind. He opened an office for mentally aided healing in Portland, Maine in 1859. One of Quimby’s students was Mary Baker Eddy, who went on to found the Christian Science movement.

E.W. Kenyon, who is considered to be the father of the Word of Faith movement, brought the New Thought way of thinking into teaching about healing. F. Bosworth, who would later on work with Branham, then carried the New Thought framework to healing revivals.
Later on, there was a shift from an emphasis on healing to focus on prosperity in New Thought. This shift was followed by a similar shift in the Christian camp, which led to prosperity gospel.

It is vital to understand that behind the Word of Faith understanding of faith is a belief that man’s mind has the ability to bend physical reality. The word of faith was seen as the law of faith, or as “faith force”.

But this is distinctly different understanding of faith than what the Bible gives to us. In the Bible, faith is a gift from God, and the gift of faith is a gift given by the Holy Spirit. In the Word of Faith teaching you hear a lot about the “spirit man”. This goes back to Kenyon’s teaching about the “spiritual man” that is born again, but rather than with the apostle Paul, who teaches that we are a temple of God’s Spirit, in Kenyon’s teaching our reborn spirit remains very much in charge. 

This influence has led to science scepticism and disrespect of facts. This might be one of the reasons why so many Christians are able to share fake news so easily, as long as they confirm their assumptions.

But Psalm 51:6, “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”

There is one thing faith can't overcome: the truth.
4.  DominionismIt seems to me that dominionism has been creeping into our midst over the last few decades. It seems that many Charismatics have forgotten that one day we will die, and that we go to our grave naked. We have become the rich man of Luke 12:16-21:

Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

In the Charismatic world today, this is exemplified by Lance Wallnau’s Seven Mountain Mandate where the Church is supposed to take over the society.

But this is naive political theology at best. Besides, the Church did that in the Roman Empire, and it didn't end up well. It assumes that the Charismatics could somehow be the one corruption free generation that will somehow be free of the temptations of political power and money. But Revelation 17 shows how by seeking earthly power the Church will end up becoming a prostitute. Like Trump's government, the Seven Mountain Mandate is all about getting the power, but there is zero reflection on how to maintain your integrity, and how to actually use that power in a responsible way. 

Considering the Seven Mountain Mandate, I find it rather ironic that the prostitute church of Revelation 17 sits on 7 mountains. She gets on top of the mountains, but in the process she has become a prostitute.

And what the church history teaches us is that every generation of Christians that has been greedy for political power will end up prostituting itself, and more experienced political theology would definitely focus a lot more on the corrupting influence of political power. That is what we are seeing right now in the Charismatic movement.

Yes, we are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its saltiness, it is only useful for being thrown away and trampled. We should remember that if we believe we have been called to be salt in politics. We need more mature political theology that actually factors in the imperfection of us Christians.
5. Prosperity gospelLoosely linked to dominionism is our acceptance of the prosperity gospel, which has made us deaf and blind to the clear biblical stream of social justice, starting from Moses and continuing through the prophets and Jesus.

Trump himself says, “Norman Vincent Peale - the great Norman Vincent Peale - was my pastor. ‘The Power Of Positive Thinking’ - everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.” 

Prosperity gospel and positive thinking have worked their way through the Charismatic movement so deeply that in Trump the movement has recognised their own messiah—after all, Trump is speaking the same language of prosperity gospel that we speak. It is worth asking if we are today serving God or mammon.
6. Decades of conspiracy theories masquerading as prophecy
Isaiah 8:12 “Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’ Concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.”

We have seen decades of conspiracy theories with a multitude of apocalyptic interpretations in the prophetic movement. Many of these conspiracy theories are pushed out in books that become bestsellers for a moment but are soon forgotten—which is good for the authors, as their theories are generally proved false within a few years—sometimes within months. 

2 Peter 1:20-21 says,  “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

Most of these conspiracy theories are empty speculation based on “one’s own interpretation” – books made for a quick buck. But consuming these books for decades has left its mark in the Charismatic movement which doesn’t seem to believe a prophecy unless there is a conspiracy in it.

Why are most books on End Times so bad for you
7. Politicised spiritual warfare Although spiritual warfare as such is vital, disconnected from biblical teaching it becomes unhealthy. Paul says in Ephesians 6:12,

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

Today, spiritual warfare has become connected to a political ideology, and it has been harnessed to deliver rather partisan and earthly goals. Nowadays, political operators are well verse in the rhetorics of spiritual warfare, and they harness it to their political ends.
8. Confessional Christianity
We don’t really care about the people’s lifestyle. We say we do. But we don't. We are only disturbed by the bad lifestyle of our enemies. But as for our friends, it is enough for us that they confess Jesus with their mouths. What we have kept of the evangelical movement is the confession, but we no more care about evangelism. 

In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus says,  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

Now I don’t want to bring anyone under legalism. We all need grace, every single day. I need grace every single day. But the fact that we don't always get things right doesn't mean that we have been given permission to teach against the more ethical teachings of Jesus. We need to begin to move from a mere confession to discipleship. 

The Charismatic movement is not a discipleship movement. We will only become a discipleship movement when we stop talking about discipleship and begin to apply the words of Jesus to our lives. 

These eight factors are slowly destroying our movement from the inside.  And it takes at least partial acceptance of all these factors to even begin to be able to take the Trump prophecies seriously. 

In Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Moses says, 

“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”

My conviction is that today God is giving the prophetic movement a choice: either return to God and faithfulness to His Word, seek truth in all things, and choose life—or continue on the way that leads to the destruction of the house of prophecy.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .

12 lessons from a fulfilled vision

Around 25 years ago, the Holy Spirit showed me a vision, which was soon followed by the first time I clearly heard God’s voice. Now, much of what was revealed to me then has come to pass. Looking back at the way to the fulfilment, I can discern some important lessons.

But first, let's have a look at what the Holy Spirit revealed to me back then.
Jesus as the conqueror of the Middle EastWhen I was around twenty-two I went to a mission conference at my church in Tampere, Finland. It was 1992, I think.

This mission conference focused on reaching out to Muslims. I remember standing up and praying. When I did, I saw something that greatly astonished me. It was a single image, superimposed over everything else in my line of sight.

What I saw was Jesus, dressed in a white robe. He leaned onto a large sword that rested on the Stone of Kaaba, the Islamic shrine in Mecca.

To me, it seemed like an end point of a long battle. One day, Jesus would stand triumphant and victorious over every power in the Middle East.
The satellite broadcasting to the whole Middle EastSoon after seeing the vision of Jesus standing on the Stone of Kaaba I was reading a scholarly journal at the library of my university’s media department. I got up to take the journal back on the shelf when a clear internal voice spoke to me.

“In five years, there will be a satellite that will cover the whole of the Middle East.”

I sensed strongly that it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me. I had no idea why. It was the year 1992, and after brief research—I was in the media department’s library, which helped a lot—I discovered that, indeed, no satellite covered the whole Middle East yet.

But it would take twelve years for the Holy Spirit to continue this particular conversation. By that time, the year 2004, I had nearly forgotten it. I had started to work for Kensington Temple, a large multicultural church in London, in 2000, and I was preoccupied with the media and publishing work of the church.

Then, once when I was in prayer, I saw a vision. It was a vision of a large field, ripe for harvesting. There were only a handful of men cutting the crop with sickles. I realised that it would take an eternity to bring the harvest in that way. Then, out of nowhere, four gigantic harvesting machines appeared. They began to bring the harvest in rapidly.

The vision faded. Then the Holy Spirit explained it. The field is the Middle East, and the four gigantic harvesting machines are satellite TV, the internet, small groups and large-scale evangelistic crusades. The Holy Spirit said clearly that no individual church or organisation could achieve this vision single-handedly, but that many of them would be needed. I prayed over the vision for about a month and felt that I should share the vision with Senior Minister Colin Dye, the leader of Kensington Temple.
Around a year later, I was given an opportunity to redesign my job. I prayed and put research into the Middle Eastern media on top of my list. I had a clear sense by then that our church should do something in the area of satellite TV. It would take a few years before we would get around to do that. It was only when the KingdomSat, an Arabic-language channel run by Michael Youssef was launched in 2009 that Colin felt released to go ahead with commissioning the editing of over 250 half-an-hour programs that were then subtitled in Arabic.

In 2009, our church started airing the programs on the KingdomSat which used the Hot Bird satellite platform that covers Europe and large parts of the Middle East. I was thankful but felt that this was only a partial answer. But God is not working for us; we are working for Him. He doesn’t always fill us in every detail of His plan but gives us the bits that we need to play our part.

The next year the KingdomSat also got on the Nilesat. It was the first Christian channel airing on this satellite partially owned and controlled by the Egyptian government. Nilesat was launched in 1997, around five years after the Holy Spirit had spoken to me about a satellite that would cover the whole Middle East, and it is the leading satellite in the region. We were airing our broadcasts on the Nilesat five days a week, four times a day. Now that is a miracle! This is a nation where the Coptic Christian minority is often persecuted, where churches are burned, and Islam is the official state religion.

Yet God could do better than that. In October 2010, the Nilesat suspended the licenses of twelve Islamic channels due to their extremist content. At the same time, the number of Christian channels in Arabic on the Nilesat went up from one to ten. An Egyptian satellite platform owned mostly by a Muslim government and Islamic banks got rid of twelve Muslim channels and replaced them with Christian ones!

Now that is a miracle.

But in many ways, I felt that we hadn’t quite finished the job at the time.

We hadn’t future-proofed the programming, and after a few years, all the programmes had been played at least once, and they were now being repeated. And these programmes had been originally recorded in analog and digitised only later, so the visual quality wasn’t the best possible.

We struggled with finding a new format and at some stage I was about to give up pushing for this vision.

It seemed that the burden of producing these programmes was far too high for us, and would necessitate some major investment.

At that time, I remember praying over this issue. I felt like giving up. There was too much organisational stagnation over the issue.

 Then the Holy Spirit spoke to me.

“These programmes are precious to me,” He said, simply. That was that.

After another year of trial and error, trying things such as digital sets, we finally resorted to turning the actual church building into a studio. Now we were able to deliver new programmes with only a minimal additional workflow.

The new programmes started airing in February 2017, and now we are able to produce them as a side product of the regular life of the church.

I am deeply thankful as I have now realised that what I saw and heard in 1992 has been one of the main reasons why God has put me to serve in one church faithfully for such a long time—to see this through. In honesty, most of the work has been done by other people, but I have been around at the right times to nudge the project a little forward.

So, what have I learned from all this?
1. God’s vision is bigger than oursWhen I saw the vision, and after hearing the prophecy, my immediate thought was that God would want to send me to the Middle East as some sort of tentmaker. He was showing me the Middle East after all. And being a tentmaker was the only ministry model that seemed available at the time. So, I envisaged that the right route might be to begin to learn some Arabic (which I still haven’t learnt).
But what God was really showing to me was that one day, you could reach the whole Middle East with a satellite broadcast.

I foolishly interpreted the vision and prophecy based on my circumstances at the time. But God was showing me something that would take many more years before it would be activated.

But He was working towards delivering something decades later. And He wasn’t expecting me to deliver it. He would deliver it. Hence His vision was a lot bigger than mine.

One of these channels recently reported that over 100,000 Muslims have demonstrably given their lives to Jesus as a result of watching their programmes. You can safely multiply this number, as there are more than one of these channels.
2. Your vision doesn’t exist in isolationGod never said that I would have to do anything on my own. Instead, He was showing me a vision and other people other visions—but all these visions would mean that one day we would all work together to fulfil His great vision. Most visions are meant to be connected with other visions and to coexist with other visions in collaboration. Unfortunately, we often teach about visions as some sort of top-down CEO-led management vision that exists in separation from everything else God is doing in the world.
3. You need to keep on hearing from the Lord–each step of the wayMy first steps toward the fulfilment of the vision failed miserably. By the time it was time to step into the fulfilment I had already forgotten the vision because of many failures in trying to implement it. But then He began to remind me about the vision and to show the next steps.

Often, we make a mistake of thinking that once we have seen a vision we need to begin to take immediate steps toward its fulfilment. Instead, we need to keep on listening.

Moses already knew that the vision was to got to the Promised Land, but he says in Exodus 33:15,

 “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.”

Seeing a vision or hearing a prophecy doesn’t mean that we have received the full plan. Instead, they are an invitation to seek God even more, so that we can find out what the revelation really means and how it should be implemented.

When God-given visions fail, it is mainly because we rush to implement the vision—without asking Him how to do it first.

The vision might be the destination, but the daily communion with the Holy Spirit gives us the navigation that we need through the Wilderness that stands between where we are and the Promised Land.
4. We should focus on the bit of the vision God gives to usWe need to focus on the specific task that God has given us to do. God might shows us a large vision, but then He will give us specific tasks. Often, other people have been called to deliver other parts of the vision. If we try to do what they have been called to do, we will fail.
5. Visions should never be all-consumingMany visions are like Queen Esther’s life. She was promoted to be the Queen of Persia to save Israel. But in fact, she only used very little time for that. Most of her life was spent on other things.

Often, we present visions as something that should be all-consuming. The more we give to them and the quicker, the better they will prosper, we think.

But God is a gardener. He sows the seed, and then He leaves it to grow. He returns to it when the time is right. He has the patience and understanding of seasons.

We often kill the vision by being over-consumed by it. Rather than trusting in God regarding Him being able to tell us which steps to take at which time, we spent all our time chasing the vision—often at a great expense to our families and the people around us.

So, it is good to remember that no vision God has given to us cancels the Bible. No matter what He has asked us to do, it doesn’t give us an excuse not to love our spouse or kids, or to ignore the needs of other people around us.
6. Your vision serves othersThe vision God showed me has never served me. Instead, it has served others. God-given visions will probably give you the biggest troubles in your life.

God-given visions are visions of how you will serve Him, His people and the people He wants to bring into His family.
7. The most direct-looking route is not always the bestI looked for the most obvious route to the fulfilment of the vision. But instead of sending me to the Middle East, God sent me to London. He had a far less obvious route in mind. Even Joseph made it to the court of the Pharaoh through a prison cell, so the route doesn't always seem obvious.
8. There will be delays and challengesWith God-given visions, things rarely happen the way we anticipate, and often the timing makes no sense to us. We face unexpected challenges. But that is because it is God’s vision and not our vision. And we are caught in a war between two armies—Satan and God’s.

The devil will always seek to delay and challenge anyone who is being called by a God-given vision.
9. God’s speed is the right oneBut God will deliver the fulfilment at the right time—not too early and not too late, for maximum triumph for His Kingdom.
10. God’s vision is always a plan for salvation We dream about fame and riches; God dreams about Heaven filled with people. Our perspectives are very different. Everything He is doing on earth is somehow linked to His salvation plan.
11. All glory belongs to GodGod-given visions can sometimes make us look smarter and more powerful than we are. After all, they are backed by the intelligence and resources of His Kingdom. But in the end, all glory belongs to God, as all we have done is to obey His command.

Jesus said to His disciples,

“So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” (Luke 17:10)
12. The work will go on often without usThere are still aspects of the 2nd vision that are unfulfilled. I believe that we will see them fulfilled in our lifetime. But much of what God has shown to us has little to do with our action. Abraham, for example, never saw the fulfilment of most of God's promises to him. He never saw the many nations that came out of him, for example. But God will remain faithful to His plan and promises—even when we won't be around.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .

7 reasons why hearing many contemporary prophets can be harmful for you

I believe passionately in the value of the prophetic ministry, but for years, I have simply ignored most contemporary prophecies that are often paraded in the Charismatic Church as the latest word of God.

To me prophetic ministry is not primarily a ministry of proclamation, but mainly something that happens when I seek God in solitude. And I might sound selfish, but it has always been more important for me to hear God for myself rather than the Church. But as I have sought to hear the Lord for myself, it has often led to blessing the Church.

Although I have seen much of contemporary prophecy as worthless, I used to think that mostly, it was just harmless fun. I mean, how many significant prophetic words will an individual be able to absorb in a lifetime? What's the damage in hearing too many of them? Most of these prophetic words seem to concern the seasons the whole Church is presumably going through the same time—everywhere in the world. But that's how horoscopes work. Everyone with the same star sign is supposed to go through the same season, and it seems that the Hebrew dates and numbers have become our star signs.

But when I look around, I see one Christian promoted, another persecuted, one going through sickness, another experiencing healing, and so on. Yes, there are some seasons that everyone will experience the same time, like World War 2 or major revivals, but most of the time, not the whole Church is going through the same season at the same time. 

So, you can be blessed whilst your church is in decline. And you can be in trouble when your church is in revival. But what is God doing in your life? And are you hearing His voice? Are you obeying His voice? These are the important questions.

But I have come to believe that consuming too many contemporary prophecies might in fact be harmful to the Church.
In the New Testament, there are clear examples of personal prophecy, prophecy for churches and even national and international prophecy. But what is noteworthy is that not that many national and international prophecies are mentioned, but the ones that are mentioned are deeply meaningful. In fact, if you look at the Bible prophecy, it tracks the whole world history from the perspective of God's plan, but it is all one way or another connected with the covenants God made with Abraham—Israel, the nations, the Church, all of it. For thousands of years, God has been working the same plan.

There are national and international prophecies, but God works according to His own seasons, not according to our clock. And the Hebrew calendar is really a Babylonian calendar—not God's calendar.

The truth is that in today’s Charismatic Church prophecy is suffering from a severe inflation—it is possible to receive a new prophecy each day to your email inbox, but most of these prophecies have very little value. They are generic and addressed to all Christians, but most of the time, they are not even actionable. 

Most of the time, they seem like some sort of spiritual weather reports. 
  I have a handful of major prophetic words God has given to me that I have spent a lifetime in putting into action. I know many ministers who have served in ministry for a lifetime simply because they heard one prophetic word that called them into ministry. I don’t suggest that as Christians we should suffer from a lifetime of drought, so that we should only expect to hear from God once in ten years. But we aren't going to receive significant prophetic words every day. Most of your communication from God is gentle, daily guidance.

The reason is simple. God isn't going to change His plan every day. Instead, He reveals to us His plan, and He works to accomplish His plan. Infrequently, He will bring more clarity to His plan, but most of the time, He is simply reminding us of His plan.
Personally, I expect to hear from God every day. But only a very tiny fraction of what I hear from the Holy Spirit is something that I would even consider sharing to others as prophecy. Most of the time, the Holy Spirit is encouraging me in my daily walk, giving me direction or illuminating the Scripture.
I have made most key decisions in my life through prayer, seeking to hear the Holy Spirit first. But that is the business between God and I. Most of it is not relevant for the rest of the Church, and often I share these experiences only as examples, when they seem to help teach other Christians how they can hear from God.
But for years I thought that the kind of ‘easy come easy go’ prophecy that we see every day in Charismatic websites was at worst just a waste of time. Yet there are seven clear reasons why consuming these kinds of prophecies excessively can in fact be harmful to your spiritual life.1. They disconnect you from the WordBelow is a typical prophecy that seems relatively harmless, as it mainly duplicates Jesus’ prophecy about the negative news we hear every day:
"I heard the Father say, 'I will begin to shake the news media through the perilous events coming upon the earth.' As news anchors are sent to certain locations where devastation and dangerous conditions emerge, there will be those news stations whose anchors will not be able to withstand the stress and pressure of reporting horrendous news day after day."
You could argue that this isn’t even a prophecy, as we have already seen that happen so many times. And it really only repeats what Jesus says in Matthew 24:6-8:
"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."
But why do you need to ‘prophesy’ what’s already in the Bible? Isn’t this prophecy simply redundant? But it is precisely these kinds of prophecies that have created a culture where many Christians are deaf to the Word—unless it is prophesied to them!

I have met countless of Charismatic Christians who are deaf to the Word—unless it is quoted 'prophetically' by some well-known Charismatic leader. Only then they will accept the Word. Otherwise it seems to have no relevance to them.
I can read chapter after chapter of the Bible to them—all pages with a clear message directly from the Lord—but they seem unable to absorb it. The Word just doesn’t seem to connect with their inner being.

Our Charismatic generation is astonishingly disconnected from the Word, and prophecies that simply rephrase the Bible don’t help the situation at all, no matter how well-meaning they sound. This has taken the Church to a place of biblical illiteracy. I have another word for that place—disobedience!

As a prophetically gifted person I have come to realise that precisely because of my gift, I must study the Bible as if my life depended on it. Because it does. 
And that means I can’t afford to pass on any ‘prophetic’ interpretations of the Bible, just because I feel like it, but I must discover and validate those prophetic applications of the Bible through a thorough Bible study—just like the rest of the Church. If a Bible text has a prophetic application, it should be possible to make it clear to other readers through proper study of the text, so that they don’t have to rely on my ‘prophetic’ imagination for the interpretation. Because if they have to rely on that, the interpretation is probably just my imagination.
Our contemporary interpretation must be consistent with the original meaning of the text. Yes, God does speak to us prophetically in our current situation through the Bible. But if that happens, we must study the Bible text properly and not just read whatever we want into it.
We have created a 'prophetic' culture that doesn’t take the Bible seriously. But prophets should take the Bible text more seriously than any other ministry and treat the Bible text with holy respect.2. They conceal the real purposes of God in our generationOne of the now clearly false prophecies given out a few years ago was a prophecy about ISIS bringing Armageddon and the anti-Christ. From biblical perspective, this fairly ‘popular’ prophecy could have been proven false from the beginning, and I have dealt with it in an earlier blog post. 
It should be obvious to anyone that the West—and the Muslims in the Middle East—will suffer from terrorism for years to come, but the much prophesied caliphate is clearly failing to materialise.
But what’s the harm done when we share these kinds of prophecies? A few Charismatic authors sold a few books that are now in the bargain bin? And now these authors have moved on to other things, often cleverly camouflaging their past false interpretations. 
But the damage created by these kinds of prophecies is far greater than somebody being charged $15 for a bad book.
At worst, if possible, these kinds of prophecies negate God’s plan for our generation, although I don’t think it is possible to thwart God’s purposes, only that a large part of the Church ends up not partaking in them. Harvesters might be only a few, but there will always be harvesters. The question is if we are one of them.
What is the mission of the Church? It is to preach the gospel to all the nations and make disciples. And to start with, Jesus didn’t say that we should be preaching the gospel to all the nations—expect say the Israelis, Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East. Yet, much of contemporary prophecy is stopping us to preach the gospel in Israel and the Middle East.
Many of today’s prophecies stop us preaching the gospel to the Jews by idolising the modern state of Israel. And they stop many preaching the gospel to the Arabs by demonising the whole Muslim world. 
But in Romans 10:1 Paul says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” This implies that Paul believed that right then, the whole of Israel was not being saved.
It is my heart’s desire for Israel to be saved. And that is also my heart’s desire for the Palestinians and the Arabs. But many prophets today would claim that Israel doesn’t need salvation and scare nearly anyone off from reaching out to Muslims. Hence they work as an obstruction to God’s salvation plan.
In my book Five Movements: Winning the Battle for Your Prophetic Gift I tell how in 1992 the Holy Spirit spoke to me about broadcasting Christian TV programmes in the Middle East via a satellite, and my current church has been doing that since 2009. 
But when the Holy Spirit spoke to me about this particular satellite, it was five years before it even existed! 
Now, our church is but a small player in this field, and many other churches and mission organisations are doing a far greater work.
Nevertheless, this is work God spoke to me about 25 years ago, at a time when everything what He described seemed impossible.
Now, we are seeing thousands of Muslim refugees being baptised to Christ in Europe. But they didn’t come to Europe and hear the gospel for the first time. In fact, many if not most of them had been exposed to the gospel through satellite TV and the internet.
There are hundreds of Christian organisations doing this kind of work in the Middle East, but often they are poorly supported—both financially and in prayer.
We are seeing the early days of a great harvest in the Middle East. But, instead, many Christians are focused on shutting the borders and demonising the very people who Christ came to save. We should protect our citizens from any sort of extremism but not at the cost of not reaching out to people God wants to save. If we do that, we are no more partnering with God in His plan for the world but can in fact end up working against His plan.
We should be first Christians, and only after that Brits, Americans, Finns or representatives of any other nation. But our patriotism has become an obstruction to God’s salvation plan.3. They can conceal Satan’s plan for this generationYou might have heard prophecies about the the islamisation of Britain and Europe, or about the coming Sharia law in America.
It is true that there are many more Muslims in Europe and Britain than 50 years ago, but this has been largely a result of immigration. But as we have seen, many of the new refugees are now ready to give their lives to Jesus, as they have seen the calamity that Islamic extremism can bring. Yes, Islamic extremists can abuse the refugee crisis and import terrorism, but they are only a handful of people in the mass of millions.

But what the devil is actually doing here in Britain is eroding people’s belief in God. A December 2016 YouGov poll for The Times has shown a four-point decline in the percentage of people who believe in a higher power, from 32% in February last year to 28% now. 
While we are busy fighting against the islamisation of our nation, our nation is rapidly turning to atheism! False prophets have caused us to fight against the wrong enemy.4. They can disconnect the Church from her mission in societyNowadays we hear a lot about the Church’s mission in society. And I very much believe that the Church has that mission. But why is it that so few contemporary prophets stand up for the poor? Why is it that most of them seem to be prophesying prosperity but there is hardly no reference to helping the poor? Is it because they are so busy asking money from them?

Much of the Old Testament prophetic ministry consisted of standing up on behalf of the poor. Isaiah 3:14-15 says,
The Lord will enter into judgmentWith the elders of His peopleAnd His princes:“For you have eaten up the vineyard;The plunder of the poor is in your houses.What do you mean by crushing My peopleAnd grinding the faces of the poor?”Says the Lord God of hosts.
It is not just the prophets, but it is also the Law that spoke on behalf of the poor. Deuteronomy 24:14-15 says,
"You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens who is in your land in your towns. You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it; so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it become sin in you."
And not just the Law and the prophets but also the New Testament. James 5:4 says,
"Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth."
Why is it that we have a prophetic movement that is so oblivious of the poor? How can a prophetic movement be prophetic unless it speaks on behalf of the poor? Or is it so that our prophetic movement has become disconnected from the prophetic message of the Bible?

Matthew 25:41-46 says,

“Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ “Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
I have the privilege of being married to a woman who has a passion for social justice, and she has really opened my eyes in this area.  And because of that, well over 10 years ago, we got involved with the London Living Wage campaign by London Citizens. Both my son and my wife were on the local campaign video produced by a BBC journalist in his free time. And she did many more things for this campaign.

London Citizens is an umbrella organisation of whose members are mainly churches, but there are also trade unions, hospitals, local schools and even synagogues, temples and mosques. You might object to such a loose coalition of vicars, priests, reformed rabbis, moderate imams and trade union activists. But this coalition is made up of mainly Christians that support all political parties. It is led by a rather middle-class Quaker whom I have a privilege of knowing quite well.
Slowly, this campaign started by Christians has been working its way through our society. First, the living wage language was adopted by London’s Evening Standard. Later on, the language was adopted by the Conservative Government, until it became law.
In December 2016, papers reported that up to 6 million Britons have received a pay rise either as a direct or indirect result of the living wage policy.
And it was all started by a few thousand Christians who read the prophetic Scriptures of the Old Testament and believed in the words of Jesus. They teamed up with the poor and the immigrants, and yes, they also teamed up with the rabbis and the imams, and even with the trade union activists, but this was because they believed the words of Jesus and the prophets about the hospitality that Christians should practise.
And because of this small bunch, we now have millions of Britons who have better chances of raising their kids out of poverty.
Why is it that most Charismatics and Pentecostals who pride themselves in being Bible-believing Christians are not even seen in these kinds of campaigns that actually help millions of people?
Or is it that we are too scared to be seen next to the vicar that we consider too liberal, the Catholic priest we consider to be an idolater or the trade union activist we consider to be a communist?
There is a place for Christian action in society that is based on acts of love. It is not compromising the gospel but demonstrating God's love in a practical way to anyone in society. 
But today’s Charismatic prophetic movement practically ignores the poor.5. Most of them are a waste of your timeMost of the contemporary prophecies add very little value to your life. You can live easily without them. If you don’t hear them, you don’t miss anything. 

That’s not so different from entertainment. If you miss your favourite TV series you don’t really miss anything. 

By and large, spiritual gifts have become entertainment in the Charismatic Church. I deal with that in my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus with the Gifts of the Spirit.6. Many of them go against the clear advice of the BibleToday’s Charismatic Church is full of belief in numerology.
For example, in collating all the prophecies for the year 2017, Cindy Jacobs focuses on the symbolism of the number 17.

Or Michael Snyder writes how Trump was born exactly 700 days before the modern Israel was birthed. 
I have a news flash for you. Just because something has been invented by a Jew, it doesn’t mean that it is automatically sanctified. Even communism was invented by a Jew. It seems God has blessed the Jewish nation with plenty of creativity! But not all of that is being used for good. Thankfully, much of it is!
In Titus 1:13-14 Paul writes, 
"This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men who turn from the truth."
In 1 Timothy 1:3-7 Paul writes,
"As I urged you when I went into Macedonia—remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith,  from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm."
Referring to Jewish numbers gives an appearance that somebody knows the Bible. But the apostle Paul would have called it a Jewish fable, although the Jewish numerology was properly developed only in the Medieval Europe by the Jewish occultists, so Paul might not have encountered it in its full form—especially as the chapter and verse structure that we are so used to didn’t exist in the Bible but was finalised  in the 16th century.

Also, the Jewish organising of the Bible differs from ours.
So, for example, the Isaiah 45 ‘prophecy’ about Trump being the 45th president of the USA is simple nonsense, as the chapters and verses of our current Bible weren’t there originally, so this simply can’t be some ancient Bible prophecy, as originally, there was no chapter 45! It was all one long reading with only minimum reading aids. Chapters and verses were not part of the actual Bible text.7. They disconnect the Church from the HeadSome time ago I became really disturbed about the fact that much of my writing about prophecy today seems to be about dealing with the false prophecy. Isn’t the job of the prophets to prophesy rather than pick up a fight? I thought. And yet I sensed strongly that the Holy Spirit was leading my ministry in that direction.

I believe that the Holy Spirit led me to study Ephesians, and Ephesians 4:11-16 gives an illuminating insight into this issue. Paul writes, 
"11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13 till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love."
I used to stop reading about the fivefold ministry after the verse 12, but in fact, the sentence continues.

The verse 14 says clearly that the function of the fivefold ministry—prophets included—is to teach the body of Christ, so that they won’t be led astray by any false doctrines. Dealing with “every wind of doctrine” isn’t the job of just the teachers—but also the job of the prophet, apostle, pastor and evangelist!
This has led me to begin to radically review my understanding of the fivefold ministry.
And why does the fivefold ministry have to deal with every wind of doctrine? The verse 15 seems to imply that all these winds of doctrine can disconnect the body from the Head—Jesus Christ. 
So, the main task of the fivefold ministry is not governmental but connecting. (Seeing fivefold ministry mainly governmentally is another “wind of doctrine”.)
The task is to connect the Church to the Head, so that there is a clear communication between the Head and the body. 
Unfortunately, many fivefold ministries attempt to connect the body to themselves—instead of the Head. They want to see themselves as some sort of governmental ministry—a mediator between man and God.
That is why there is so much talk about aligning in today’s Charismatic Church.
But there is only one mediator between man and God—Jesus Christ.
The task of the prophets is not to help the Church hear the prophets better. The task of the prophets is to help the body to hear from Christ better—and remove any obstructions, so that God’s body would be able to act according to His words.
Today, this means that perhaps the prophets should be a lot less focused on prophesying and a lot more focused on helping the Church to read the Word better—and helping the Church to pray in such a way that they will be able to hear the voice of Head directly from the Head, so that they can obey the Head. That’s what growing into the Head means.
Otherwise, the body of Christ will remain a partially paralysed body, not receiving the instructions of the Head properly, and unable to put those instructions into action.

It is my fear that by and large, contemporary prophetic ministry has become an impediment to connecting the body to the Head. And this is the main reason why hearing many contemporary prophets can be so harmful to Christians.
You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .

Prophecy as propaganda: the Trump prophecies as political persuasion

What is often worse than defeat is the illusion of victory. Right now, the Charismatic prophets are celebrating the election victory and the fulfilment of the Trump prophecies, and if you look at the headlines, it might seem that these prophecies were accurate. But if you read the prophecies more carefully, a very different picture emerges.

This article might cost me some friends, but it is vital that the prophetic movement tests their prophecies, and the beginning of testing is actually reading and hearing them more carefully and taking their content seriously. 



Personally, I believe the Trump prophecies will turn out to be a snare for the prophetic movement, as it now bows to power rather than to truth. But the celebrations and the high-fives are still continuing in time of writing. For example, Jennifer McClaire writes on charismamag.com that Trump’s win "should open the eyes of those who were on the fence about modern-day prophetic unctions. It should confirm to those who have long believed in the prophetic and that we can have accuracy." She also says, "Clearly, now we see someone wasn't hearing correctly. Now, I wonder, will those people come out and repent and say, 'You know what? I missed it.'" 

I find Jennifer’s call for repentance for false prophecies rather ironic in the context of dozens of false prophecies charismamag.com has published under her editorial watch without any signs of repentance.  It is the sheer volume of these predictions that should ensure that at least one or two of them get it right.

But the real issue is that Trump’s election victory didn’t in fact fulfil the Trump prophecies, as they were always about so much more. 

In my book Five Movements: Winning the Battle for Your Prophetic Gift I show how, although prophecies are partial, they are also always precise. It is like getting only a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The individual pieces are all clear, but you don’t always know how to put all these pieces together. But what we see in the individual pieces is still accurate; we just don’t know how the whole jigsaw will look like.

The problem with the Trump prophecies is that they are causing many Christians to give unqualified support to Trump, as they feel he has been elected and anointed by God and has a mandate from Him.  

For the last eight years, the Republican Christians have been blaming Obama for everything wrong in America, but now when the Republican Party has the presidency, the Congress and the Senate in their hands, they have an opportunity to govern. And they will also be responsible for the outcome. Real politics is a dirty business, and soon many will be forced to call good evil and evil good if they want to keep on endorsing these prophecies. 

But Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

Regardless of many prophecies, we have been called to exercise discernment between right and wrong and good and evil. But right now, it seems that the white Charismatic church cares very little if something is right or wrong, or good and evil, false or true, as long as it furthers their political interests.

We have won, but at what a cost. At the cost of the Church ignoring lies and often propagating them, not caring if something is true or not. We have politicised facts to the point that we no more think that we need to care about them. But there is something wrong with the prophetic movement if we are happier to forward fake news than real news.

Rather ironically, this website also got a strong boost from the Russian bots, as they were promoting my previous articles on Trump prophecies. 

Now lets look at the actual content of some individual prophecies regarding Trump in detail. You should never just read the headlines.
Trump as truth-teller and with tender heartJeremiah Johnson, one of the prophets who prophesied quite early about Trump, didn’t in fact prophesy that Trump would be elected, but that he would become a trumpet and that “Trump does not fear man nor will he allow deception and lies to go unnoticed.” 

This has already turned out to be false, and Trump winning won't change that. By any reasonable fact-checking standards Trump has lied perhaps more than any other American presidential candidate. Ever. Before the election day hundreds of his own lies went unnoticed by Trump.

Today, it seems fine for Christians to propagate clear lies, as long as it furthers their political interests. We pass on political lies, but we would be horrified if any of our friends would tell us similar lies in our private life. We have come to the point in the Church where truth and facts don't seem to matter. To many, they seem to be just opinions. And it seems OK to lie, as long as we get what we want.

But Zechariah 8:16-17 says, "'These are the things you shall do: speak each man the truth to his neighbor; give judgment in your gates for truth, justice, and peace; let none of you think evil in your heart against your neighbor; and do not love a false oath. For all these are things that I hate,’ says the Lord.”

Personally, I steer clear of the prophets who routinely pass on political lies without bothering to do any fact-checking. I do think that fact-checking should be an indispensable part of prophetic ministry. Aren't we supposed to be the guardians of truth, no matter how uncomfortable that might be?

It seems clear that Trump is not intent on clearing the swamp of Washington D.C. any time soon but on simply bringing his own alligators to the swamp with the wealthiest ever proposed administration filled with billionaires, Wall Street bankers and millionaires. Although the lobby groups and special interest groups that have access to power are changing to new ones, it is business as usual in Washington. 

Jeremiah Johnson said about Trump, “Though many see the outward pride and arrogance, I have given him the tender heart of a father that wants to lend a helping hand to the poor and the needy, to the foreigner and the stranger.”

For this prophecy to come to pass, Trump will need to break most of his campaign promises, which is already happening, so perhaps this part of the prophecy has some legs. But I don't see him becoming the champion of the foreigners or strangers any time soon. 
Honor, respect and restoration to AmericaMark Taylor prophesied: "For I will use this man to bring honor, respect and restoration to America."

This one will be difficult to judge, as many respected America even when it was still trading in slaves and before the end of segregation. These kinds of nationalistic prophecies are difficult to assess. 

What is honour? Does Trump act honourably in your view? I find it difficult to reconcile Trump with any biblical sense of honour, but if you respect brutal power, perhaps he is your man.

In these kinds of issues the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it seems likely that the world will be divided on the issue of “honor and respect” of America. How does God define honour?
Trump as CyrusOne of the loudest prophets prophesying Trump’s victory is Lance Wallnau, who likened Trump to Cyrus, the apostle Peter, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther, and he also told us that Trump is a prophet.

“Jesus chose a businessman to give him governmental keys to restore the kingdom,” Wallnau said. “Jesus is putting his hand on a Peter right now; like you’re just saying, it’s a businessman. Trump is a businessman with the keys of the kingdom right now to wreck what hell has been doing over the United States.”

There is something very troubling about this. It seems to me that Wallnau is equating the Kingdom with the power of the Republican Party. This is presenting the Kingdom of God merely as a political movement—in direct opposition to the words of Jesus.

If you want to retain any meaning of words, I don’t think that anyone can be serious regarding calling Trump an apostle or a prophet, or like Martin Luther. To compare Trump to any of these people means asking Christians to ignore practically the whole message of the New Testament.

Churchill. Perhaps. But we will need a world war to verify that. And I certainly hope that no one will start one.

But what about Cyrus? This could be a possibility. But not in the way Lance Wallnau propagates it. Unfortunately, his argument works only with those who don’t know the Bible and the ancient history well.

Lance says about Trump, "With him in office, we have an authority in the Spirit to build the house of the Lord and restore the crumbling walls that separate us from cultural collapse. Even then, this national project is likely to be done, as Daniel prophesied, 'in times of trouble' (Dan. 9:25)."

Are we now deriving our spiritual authority from a man instead of God? 

The Jews knew Cyrus as their redeemer, but his liberation of the Jews was only a small part of his project of letting the nations that the Babylonians had conquered to return to their homeland and worship their own gods.

The historical truth about Cyrus was that he had no religious motivation to do what he did; what he did was simply in the interest of securing his own power by pleasing every nation that had been dealt with harshly by the Babylonians. 

The Cyrus Cylinder describes the beliefs of the real Cyrus:

"I collected together all of their people and returned them to their settlements, and the gods of the land of Sumer and Akkad which Nabonidus – to the fury of the lord of the gods – had brought into Shuanna, at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I returned them unharmed to their cells, in the sanctuaries that make them happy. May all the gods that I returned to their sanctuaries, every day before Marduk and Nabu, ask for a long life for me, and mention my good deeds, and say to Marduk, my lord, this: 'Cyrus, the king who fears you, and Cambyses his son, may their…'"

As far as Cyrus was concerned, he worshipped Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon.

There is an ancient 40-line hymnic praise of Marduk, in which his dual nature is described in complex poetic wording: Marduk is powerful, both good and evil, just as he can help humanity, he can also destroy people. 

If we were to apply the “Cyrus anointing” to Trump in any consistent way, that would mean that perhaps he would increase the freedom of Christians, but also every other religious group, like Cyrus did. So, if Trump is a Cyrus, America won’t become any more Christian, but more religiously pluralistic, although the Christians would also have the freedom to worship.

In the first millennium, Cyrus’s god Marduk was identified with Jupiter, the chief God of Rome, in whose name thousands of Christians were martyred. 

Looking at the prophecy of Isaiah 45 about Cyrus, the whole point is that although Cyrus was a pagan emperor, God would still use him to help the Jews to return to Israel. That was the limit of his assignment. We should not confuse the word ‘anointing’ here with anything like the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and I fear that Lance is abusing the fact that most Christians do just that.

All this happened in the context of Cyrus helping every nation in exile to return and worship their own gods.  So, if Trump really were Cyrus, he would mean that every Christian, Muslim, Hindu and even satanist would be given freedom to worship their gods.  But that definitely is not the way how Lance Wallnau refers to Trump as Cyrus.

And that begs a question: do prophets have the freedom to take biblical concepts and utterly redefine them? Is it OK to say that Trump is like Cyrus but not actually like Cyrus and give the word Cyrus a new meaning? Isn't the whole point of referring to Trump as Cyrus to claim that Trump is like Cyrus? And wouldn't it make sense to see who the biblical and historical Cyrus is first before putting too much weight on this prophecy?

In Lance Wallnau’s mouth words and biblical concepts have lost their meanings. But that is exactly how propaganda works: words and concepts lose their commonly agreed meanings and begin to mean something entirely different.

But the words God uses are accurate. He has chosen every word He uses very carefully. He doesn’t need to change the meaning of his words. 
Did Kim Clement prophesy that Trump will be the president?The short answer is no, at least not in the prophecy everyone refers to from the year 2007. I wish Christians would pay a little bit more attention to the actual wordings of prophecies.

According to Kim Clement’s prophecy, Trump will become the trumpet and Bill Gates will open the financial realm to the Church. What follows is a prophecy about a president—who Kim Clement doesn’t name—who will rule for eight years. 

As Kim Clement never names the president, the only prophetic thing about this “prophecy” is that there will be a president who will stay in White House for eight years.

But how did Kim Clement himself interpret this prophecy? Unfortunately, he is no more around, so we must go with what he has said or written.

At least on April 9 2008, he clearly seemed to think that the president he prophesied about was Barack Obama.

Kim says, 

“For they have unfairly spoken against an African man, and I'm not talking about Jeremiah Wright; I'm talking about Obama. For God said, ‘Even though you may think this or that, there is an element of righteousness inside of him to reach out for Jesus. Therefore, I will sway it next week,’ says the Spirit of God, ‘and I will cause My man, My power—to exalt in the White House what is necessary to declare victory. For this time, I shall rise up and I shall make known who I am in a way that I have never done it in this nation,’ says the Lord.
For the Spirit of God says, ‘Do not say, “Is it this one or is it that one?” Hear me out. I am raising up My mantle, My voice. This nation shall be awakened to a spiritual activity that has been dead for 42 years. Listen to Me,’ says the Lord. ‘I will take over in a way and in a fashion that will bring a force of spiritual unity in this nation for the first time. You can believe it or not. I will take white and I will take African, and I will bring a unity in the Church between the two of them,’ says the Spirit of God.

This night in America and in this next week, God has informed us to ‘watch’ as He unfolds and reveals things so you will know that your nation has not been set aside for division and discord; but a time in the Church where African-American, where white or Caucasian, where Hispanic and every race in this nation under the spiritual guidance of the Spirit within a midst of war and division—will bring them to a place of unity.

Also, he says ,"'I will bring you out of what they call "a recession" into your highest economy that you've ever had in your next four years,' says the Spirit of God. ‘Do not think it impossible, for it shall be so.’”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that this highly optimistic prophecy has come to pass. The blacks and the whites and the Hispanics never united, neither did the recession turn into the highest ever economy in four years. Trump was quite loud already in 2007, so Trump becoming a trumpet is perhaps not such a courageous prophecy. And as far as I am aware, Bill Gates is yet to open the gates of finance to the Church.

But Obama did rule for eight years, although the white Charismatic church never really accepted him as their president.
So how did they get the election right?I suggest that this election shouldn’t be seen in isolation of other elections, making the prophecies also appear in isolation. And the same prophetic movement that got the name of the president right in 2016 also got the 2012 election wrong.

So what was the difference this time? The answer is simple. This time, the winner was a Republican, and by and large, most Charismatic prophets tend to prophesy that the next American President will be a Republican.

The dissenting voices tend to come from the African-American Church, and this mostly simply reflects their base. It seems that both sides are quick to forgive any false prophecies. 

They meant well, didn’t they? After all, they were fighting on our side.

The hard fact is that the US presidential elections have followed the election cycle of maximum of 8 years in power by one party since 1953. This is because after 8 years in power, any rhetorics for change will begin to sound thin, and it is extremely difficult to campaign on the change agenda when a president from your party is in power.

So, from 1953, no party has held the presidency for longer than two terms. So, betting for a Republican president would have been quite a strong bet, simply because this election was always the one the Republicans should have won. And we saw how eventually most Republicans returned to their home base, even when initially they said that they would not vote for Trump, and how the independents followed them.

May I also suggest that the prophetic movement operates in a similar way to Saul’s army. The prophetic movement waits in one line for one “brave” prophet to stand up and declare a definitive prophecy about the Republican victory, whereas the more seasoned ones (once burnt) tend to make more vague statements, so that they don’t get caught of a false prophecy if a Republican doesn’t get elected, but they can participate in the victory if their candidate wins.

If the brave prophet gets it right, he or she gets the glory. If he or she gets it wrong, they are simply forgotten, or if they are famous enough, they will find a way to deluge the market with more prophesies so that the original prophecy is forgotten.

I might sound a bit harsh here. But that’s the way things have been. I guess I have observed the prophetic movement for far too long.

Also, it might come to you as a surprise, but these kinds of prophecies should matter very little to the Church. Yes, even Jesus prophesied about the world events, such as the destruction of the Temple. But his emphasis was rather different.

In Matthew 24:15-16 Jesus says, “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”

Jesus gives this prophecy, so that the Christians of Jerusalem and Judah would know to flee, as the Roman army would be merciless against the rebelling Jews.

In Luke 21:28 Jesus says, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”

The purpose of these kinds of prophecies in the Bible is very different than today. God wants to protect us in the world; the purpose of Trump prophecies is simply for Christians to organise and vote in order to gain political power.

In Lance Wallnau’s case, this is very much in line with his understanding of the seven mountains of influence.
The seven mountains of influence In 1975, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade and Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), developed a new strategy. Their mandate: Bring godly change to a nation by reaching its seven spheres, or mountains, of societal influence. They concluded that in order to truly transform any nation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, these seven facets of society must be reached: religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment and business.

One of the problems of the seven mountains philosophy is that it doesn’t really deal with the corrupting influence of power. There is a naive assumption that Christians won't ever be corrupted by it. But this generation is by no means the first generation of Christians desiring political power. And it has never ended well. Have your ever read the history of the popes? Or every Christian political party in power since the beginning of time?

Revelation 17 gives us a prophetic warning about what can happen to the Church that makes it to the seven mountains of influence. Rather than the nations loving the Church they will see her as a prostitute—which she really is—and turn against her.

I have dealt with this issue in my article on Fact-checking ‘The Rape of Europe’.

May I also suggest that the American prophetic movement has been unduly  influenced by William Branham, and sometimes it seems like some sort of Branham Club. To be accredited by the club prophets must pay at least lip service to William Branham, and so most do.

In my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit I look at how William Branham’s model of prophecy, healing and word of knowledge has permeated the Charismatic understanding of ministry. And I believe that William Branham’s ministry is one of the main reasons why the Charismatic Church is so much lacking in the gift of discerning spirits.
Propaganda as prophecyI have written earlier on about the polarisation of the American news environment. 

According to Mark Thompson, in his book Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics, the rhetorics of conscience that has taken over our political language has begun to resemble prophecy as a genre. This is because we have given up listening to those who disagree with us. There is no argument; you either agree or disagree. But there is no space for any rational arguments in this kind of communication. 

That is why, although I often hear from the Lord regarding political issues, I don't really like to bring prophecy into talking about politics: mostly it is much better to discuss the political issues from the perspective of the Scripture, as otherwise the scene will soon begin to resemble an argument between two toddlers.

All this demonising of people who disagree with your political view—especially when your view is based on a prophecy rather than the Bible—is rather sickening and disastrous to the Church.

As political communication has become more ‘prophetic’ in the level of rhetorics, the actual political prophecies have also become more acceptable. We no more debate the merits of policy issues, but we simply say that God has called someone to be the President, hence there is no debate.

If someone has been anointed by God to become the President, who are we to offer any resistance?  

Today, political communication and prophecy are meeting in the middle and merging into ‘prophetic’ propaganda.

The ultimate goal of propaganda is to persuade respondents to take a particular course of action. According to Douglas Walton, it follows a dialogue structure based on what she takes to be the commitments of the respondent. If you believe in the gift of prophecy, political propaganda will offer the message in the format of a prophecy. If you don't, it will find another way.

Propaganda has a goal directed structure—the goal is to get the respondent to act or to to support a particular policy or action—in this case, vote for Trump.

There is an involvement of social groups: the goal is to move mass audience to a particular direction—while a message can be delivered by an individual speaker she always represents a broader agency or organised group. This was very much true with every prophet of the Republican Church.

There is an indifference to logical reasoning. Propaganda appeals to emotion that is fallacious according to the standards of logical reasoning, but it also uses logic when it seems useful. As we have seen, these prophecies didn't engage with us on the level of logical reasoning. And we have seen that these prophets care very little for the conventional meaning of words.

Propaganda is one-sided argumentation. It presents the arguments in favour of one side as strongly as possible. There is no searching for fairness, or critically to discuss an issue openly considering all the arguments on both sides.  

Propaganda is justified by results. It is generally justified by citing a danger to the group and then stressing that the adoption of a particular point of view is needed to combat or guard against the danger. 

Propaganda uses emotive language and persuasive definitions: emotively charged words and phrases and highly positive coloration for own viewpoint and negative coloration to any opposing viewpoint. 

A whole new vocabulary can be invented (freedom fighter vs. terrorist or Elijah vs. Jezebel) There is also a structure of a quarrel.  We are fighting against the bad guys—if you are not for us, you must be against us.

For example, the call to warfare against the spirit of Jezebel just before the election, illustrates this well.

"We are calling to do warfare against the spirit of Jezebel that has become exposed in our nation and in our leadership," Amedia says. "We know the power and force behind the principalities that have oppressed our nation, that are diluting our Judeo-Christian principles, attacking the Christian faith and breaking our covenant with God. As one nation under God, it is time for the church to take its position as Esther. We are the bridge, as Esther was the bridge for her nation."

The language  and rhetorics of political campaigning seems to have nearly irrevocably entered the American prophetic movement, and they are now eating it from the inside. Soon there won’t be much left. I propose that the only way out of this is to begin to affirm the value of truth rather than power in our political life.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .

When a prophetic movement merges with a political party

In the buildup to the US presidential election in November, we have seen the end point of a long process of the prophetic movement merging with the Republican Party in America. We have seen how one prophetic leader after another has publicly endorsed Donald Trump for president, even if he has never been a poster boy for Christianity. 
For decades, the Democrat Party has had its own ‘prophetic’ traditions, drawing from the ideas of the Civil Rights Movement, which have also occasionally used messianic language. But the alleged divine mandate behind it has always been implied and more centred on ideas rather than persons, whereas the ‘prophets’ of the Republican Party have often resorted to language that claims a direct approval and call from God.
But how did Trump end up becoming the messiah of the prophetic movement? 
The Trump propheciesFascinatingly, the first Trump prophecy I have come across goes back to his third wedding in 2005, as Bill Yount writes on the Elijah List on January 22, 2005: 
"DONALD TRUMP'S WEDDING MAY BE PROPHETIC TO THE BODY OF CHRIST! I want to caution many who may write off this extravagant wedding because it appears to not outwardly glorify the Lord. I believe I heard the Father say, ‘Donald Trump has the right idea of how to throw a great wedding celebration! Unknowingly to him, he is imitating My way of doing weddings!’
The wedding gown cost $200,000. Twenty eight seamstresses worked 1,550 hours to embroider it. The gown holds 1,500 crystal rhinestones and pearls! It is believed that this gown is so beautiful that many will be attracted to the gown more than the bride. It may actually be a distraction from the Bride's beauty.
The train of the wedding gown is thirteen feet long! I hear the Father saying, 'This is the year of My train (glory) beginning to fill My Temple!' We will begin to see the Glory of the Lord filling His people and overflowing onto the world, just as the waters cover the sea.
The veil of this wedding gown is sixteen feet long. The Father is going to lift the veil from off of the faces of women worldwide, beginning this year! Off of the faces of not only the Muslim women, but every woman. Women will be set free to worship the Lord, beginning this coming year. He will also begin to lift the veil, rapidly, off of the eyes of the Jewish people!"
Retrospectively, it seems evident that none of what Bill Yount prophesied has actually taken place, although the prophetic movement seems willing to ‘marry’ Trump in 2016.
In 2016, the American prophetic movement has lifted all the pretensions and is now openly and fully part of a political party.
For example, Lance Wallnau writes,  "Donald Trump has got like this Elijah mantle on him, the Cyrus anointing.”
In another article he writes, 
“There is a spirit assigned to destroy America. The strategy is laid bare if you read the 51-page democratic platform. It's the manifesto Hillary is expected to enforce when she is president. They call this revolution a 'reset!' Read it for yourself. Under Hillary, America will undergo the final phase of Obama's radical socialist cultural transformation with astonishing speed. Just one man stands in its path.”
A retired firefighter Mark Taylor prophesies, 
“The Spirit of God says, I have chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this. For as Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel, so shall this man be to the United States of America! For I will use this man to bring honor, respect and restoration to America. America will be respected once again as the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, (other than Israel). The dollar will be the strongest it has ever been in the history of the United States, and will once again be the currency by which all others are judged.”
Interestingly, the sign God’s blessing will be most visible on the value of the dollar. In this prophetic movement, it is the American money that will judge all the other currencies. Thankfully, America won’t be as prosperous as God’s chosen nation, Israel! But this vision seems like an antithesis to Jesus’ warning regarding us not being able to serve two masters—God and money.
Also, prophetic leaders called a prayer covering for Trump before the first debate. There was no request for a prayer covering for Hillary Clinton. This is a prophetic movement praying exclusively for one political party only.
"We are interceding to pull down strongholds, expose and strike down adversarial plots and strategies, bind every force that opposes the will of God, and loosen upon Mr. Trump the supernatural gifts of grace, favor, wisdom, revelation, power, peace and presidential authority," Amedia said.
Other prophetic leaders are more cautious, so rather than saying that Christians should vote for Trump, they define the issues that Christians should base their vote on in such a way that the only right answer to the question who to vote for becomes Trump.
That is the strategy of Cindy Jacobs and many other Republican prophets. 
Seeing that many Christians feel unease about voting for Trump, they claim that not voting is not an option. David Barton, in a teleconference with Cindy Jacobs, says,
"That's the way we should see our vote, is the Lord gave each of us a vote said, 'You take care of this vote 'til I get back. I want to see what you did with this vote.' If He comes back and say, 'What did you do with that vote I gave you in 2016?' 'well, I decided not to use it.' That's not the acceptable answer. We should first get out of our minds that we have any right to vote. We don't have a right to vote. We have a duty to vote. We have a responsibility to vote and we should tell our friends, 'You don't have a choice. You will vote.'"
Here voting becomes a duty of the Kingdom. Not voting becomes a sin that we will be accountable for in heaven. Then, referring to the prophet Isaiah, David Barton singles out from dozens of campaign issues what God presumably cares about the most. According to him, God cares about getting the right judges on the Supreme Court most, then Israel, marriage, abortion, and life.
Rather than commenting on which candidate Americans should vote for—I am not an American, so I don’t have a say—I am deeply concerned of the merging of the most influential prophetic movement in the world with an agenda of one political party. 
It seems to me that a prophetic movement needs to stay independent of political parties to remain influential. That doesn’t mean that prophets can’t have political leanings or convictions, only that we must guard the integrity of our prophetic gift when it comes to politics. 
But what is the biblical basis for the prophetic anointing of political leaders? 
Anointing political leaders in the New Testament 
Anointing political leaders is non-existent in the New Testament. When Jesus stood in front of Pilate, he said,  
“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.’” (John 18:36)
The early church operated in a society that was often hostile to Christianity, and it seems clear that Paul’s relationship with the Roman Empire was somewhat ambivalent. On one hand, he was a Roman citizen, on the other hand, the land of his fathers was occupied by the empire. But the early Christians very much followed the understanding that the Kingdom of God was not of this world and not part of the power structures of our society. The issues related to political power began to occupy Christians only when the Church began to increase in influence and theologians such as Augustine began to develop political theology. But you can’t find any of that in the New Testament.Seven mountains of influenceThe closest to any kind of coherent political theology the prophetic movement in America has come to political theology is an idea about the seven mountains of influence. 
In 1975, Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade and Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission(YWAM), developed a new strategy. Their mandate: Bring godly change to a nation by reaching its seven spheres, or mountains, of societal influence. They concluded that in order to truly transform any nation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, these seven facets of society must be reached: religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment and business.
In a nutshell, the idea is that if God’s people take over those mountains, they will be able to influence the whole society in a positive way. There are many interesting ideas included in the seven mountains thinking, but it seems that we are currently more focused on laying hold of power rather than the righteousness of our power. Here is a fairly balanced critique of this way of thinking. 
In many ways, this strategy seems derive much from the Old Testament thinking, and it is the Old Testament we must now turn to.Anointing political leaders in the Old TestamentAnointing political leaders is somewhat more prevalent in the Old Testament, and it is no surprise that most Bible references linked to anointing political leaders come from there. The prophet Samuel anointed Saul, the first king of Israel in 1 Samuel 10, although he also warned Israel against choosing a king.
1 Samuel 8:10-17 says,
“So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him for a king. And he said, ‘This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants. And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants. And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day.’”
Samuel doesn’t sound particularly optimistic regarding where all this anointing of leaders will lead to. But if you read Jeremiah who prophesied hundreds of years later, you will be able to see them clearly.
Jeremiah prophesies in Jeremiah 22:1-5, 
“Thus says the Lord: ‘Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this word, and say, “Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, you who sit on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates! Thus says the Lord: ‘Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. For if you indeed do this thing, then shall enter the gates of this house, riding on horses and in chariots, accompanied by servants and people, kings who sit on the throne of David. But if you will not hear these words, I swear by Myself,’ says the Lord, ‘that this house shall become a desolation.’””
The list Jeremiah gives is strikingly different from the stated political agenda of Donald Trump. It is also strikingly different from the list given by Christians who demand that we vote for Donald Trump. To be fair, there are elements such as shedding “innocent blood” that fit rather unwell with the abortion policies of most Western nations. But it seems that to Jeremiah, the righteousness of political leaders—no matter who they are—is measured by how well they bring social justice.You can’t choose between personal holiness and social justiceBoth the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are well versed in using Christian symbolism and language in their campaigning. It seems to me that the Democratic Party has chosen the path of social justice, whereas the Republican Party has leaned towards personal holiness, and it has always been important to them that their candidates profess Christianity as their personal choice. But in the process of neglecting the Bible teaching about social justice, the pursuit of personal holiness has also been disregarded, and it is now all about the pursuit of power. 
We can see this clearly in the last two presidential elections, as the Christian part of the Republican Party has found it difficult to present Romney and Trump as Christian candidates and hence the prophetic anointings have become more important that ever, as they can't argue from the personal values of the candidates anymore.
But the prophetic call in the Old Testament has always included both personal holiness and social justice. And in the New Testament,  we are asked to love our God with all our heart but also to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
The problem America is facing right now is the separation of these two strands of biblical values from each other in the Church. It seems that when they become separated from each other, the Church becomes dysfunctional, and today, this is reflected in our society.
We desperately need a Church that is not willing to compromise on either personal holiness or social justice. And that is why the Church has to go back to being the Church again and cease to be an extension of a political party.
We can see the damage done in both Democrat and Republican leaning churches.
But as the white Charismatic churches today are predominantly Republican leaning, the merging of a prophetic movement into a political party has meant that it has merged with the Republican Party.
We must understand that separating personal holiness from social justice inevitably leads to a culture of hypocrisy. And Jesus had more to say about hypocrisy of religious leaders than about nearly any other topic. His message to the religious leaders of our time is neatly capsulated in the story about the Good Samaritan. 
We have created a culture of hypocrisy where social justice and truthfulness matter very little. And this is damaging to our testimony.
In my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Holy Spirit I look at how our stage management driven churches have led to the loss of real spiritual power in the Body of Christ. In may ways, the failure of the prophetic movement is a direct result of the stage performance driven culture of our churches. 
You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .

Can Christians command angels?

In  the last few months, I have come across numerous articles claiming that Christians can command angels. Usually, these claims are backed up by some stories about angelic encounters. But is there any biblical basis for this claim?

For example, in charismamag.com, Tom Brown writes, 

“Today, angels wait on us because now we can use the name of Jesus, which is a greater name than angels, to dispatch angels to do their work.” 

Jennifer Eivaz writes, 

“At the same time, Jesus also gave us the power to ‘loose’ something. What then do we have the power to loose? We have the power to loose angels. We loose the angels the same way we bind demons—by using our words. We are charged with making known the will of God in the presence of the angels (Eph. 3:10). Angels also listen for and obey the word of the Lord (Ps. 103:20). The Word of the Lord comes from Jesus Himself in heaven, or through His church on earth in the form of a prophetic word. Our prophetic words are heard and observed by angels and will put them on assignment.”

Other ministers don’t go quite as far, but they imply that we can somehow affect the angelic coverage and protection over our lives.

Jennifer LeClaire, for example, writes, 

"Many neglect the angels of transition, and they bypass the help I have sent to transition them into the next stage of their journey. Many ignore the angels of transition and, therefore, fail to enter into the new place I have set aside for them at the appointed time. Many are working in their own strength, struggling in the flesh and failing to embrace the work of My angels on assignment to help them transition into the new thing. Look for the angels in times of transition."

Larry Tomczak writes, “Here's the deal: Are you activating angelic messengers to protect you and your loved ones? While these supernatural, unseen beings operate at God's bidding, we have a role to play to ensure they are with us especially in times of need.” 

This kind of thinking is making its way to the Charismatic mainstream, as Kris Vallotton writes, 

“It is my personal conviction that one of the essential elements that has ushered in this apostolic age is that the angels no longer recognize the performance-based authority of denominationalism. Paul teaches us that angels recognize true spiritual authority. In fact, it is the angels who answer our prayers and fulfill our prophecies (1 Cor. 11:4, 10)”

Kris Vallotton refers to 1 Corinthians 11:4 and 10 as his proof text. The verse 4 says, “Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head.” The verse 10 says, “For this reason the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” 

From this, Kris Vallotton infers that it is angels who answer our prayers or fulfil our prophecies. But we are now in a very dangerous territory, bordering on a heresy, as if it is the angels who answer our prayers, many Christians will soon be praying to angels and not to God. Also, Vallotton implies that the apostles have a spiritual authority to command angels, as angels now "recognize true spiritual authority." 

But Paul says in Colossians 2:18,

“Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.” 

Vallotton does some very bad Bible reading here. There is nothing in 1 Corinthians 11 that tells us that angels answer our prayers or that their relationship with us would have anything at all to do with our spiritual authority. 

All Paul is saying is to repeat a Jewish belief that angels are present when God is being worshipped. But it also  seems evident that Paul is using irony, as 1 Corinthians makes clear that the Christians in Corinth had fallen in love with angels, attempting to speak in the tongues of angels rather than in the tongues of men.

In my book Supernatural Love: Releasing the Compassion of Jesus Through the Gifts of the Spirit I show how the Christians in Corinth had been influenced by pagan understanding about speaking in tongues, and how the apostle Paul had to correct their understanding. And now he’s reminding the Corinthians that the same angels whose language the Corinthians ached to speak were actually accustomed to order in worship.

Put simply, there is not a singular verse in the Bible that says that Christians could exercise authority over God’s angels, and yet some Charismatic ministers seem to want to create a doctrine around their belief, seeking through the Bible in vain for anything that could possibly support their beliefs, even when these verses clearly give no support whatsoever to them.
Binding and loosingThere is clear evidence that binding in the New Testament refers to casting out demons, although it can also refer to the overall spiritual authority of the early apostles. 

Matthew  12:25-29 says, 

"But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house.'" 

When the phrase "binding and loosing" is used this way, the binding refers to binding a demon, so loosing must refer to loosing the human being from the demonic bondage. This must be the case, as the New Testament is full of stories of demon-possessed people being set free through exorcism, which, according to Jesus, can also bind a demon. But there is no singular story of anyone 'loosing' angels.  
Angels and spiritual authorityWhen Jesus walked on earth, He acknowledged that the angels were under the authority of the Father. 

"But Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.  Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?'" (Matthew 26:52-53)

1 Peter 3:21-22 says that after the Resurrection, the angels are now under the command of Jesus.

"... and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him."

And Jesus releases these angels to help us.

"Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14)

So, these angels do serve us, but they obey the spiritual authority of God only. When we pray to God, yes, one of the ways He answers our prayers undoubtedly is by sending His angelic army to help us. But these angels still remain under the command of Jesus.

There is no need to worry about activating your angels of 'transition'. There is no need to pray for angels to come to our aid. The only thing we must do is to pray to God and He will help us whichever way He chooses.

You can connect with Marko on Twitter @markojoensuu and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mpjoensuu/ or by visiting  markojoensuu.com .