The Spirit of Prophecy Part 2: full transcript and answers

▶ 0:00 I want to give you the marks of a real prophet. They’re right here. Characteristic number one: God did speak to them. God did send them. Can I hear an amen? It’s right here, the opposite of the false. Characteristic number two: they did stand in His counsel. They were people of the Word. They found time to read and study the Word and get in teaching where the Word was being taught, not some book out of the Bible bookstore, but the Scriptures were being taught by the Holy Spirit revealing them. That’s the kind of people that are real prophets. “And they caused my people to hear my words,” not their words. See, it doesn’t matter what Copeland says, it doesn’t matter what the pope says, it’s what the Bible says.

▶ 1:11 Hallelujah. And I hear this all the time: “Well, you think you’re right and everybody else is wrong.” I didn’t say that. I’m just telling you what the Bible says. I’m not telling you what I say, I’m not telling you what I believe, I’m telling you what the Bible says. They probably put you on a guilt trip. “Well, how can all these people...” I hear this too: “How can all these people be wrong and you’re right?” I’m not telling you I’m right, I’m telling you what the Bible says. You show me in the Bible where you are right, and they can’t. They just believe some book, some tape, some CD, some guy off the TV.

▶ 1:59 And number, item, characteristic number four: “They turn many people from their evil way and from the evil of their doings.” Folks, that’s what the church is all about. It’s not about a social club. It’s about us having our act together, so when people come, they are convicted by the Holy Spirit. They can reject Him (I see people reject), but they’re convicted by the Holy Spirit to turn from the wrong. And, folks, I don’t care how good a speaker you are, you don’t have the power to convict people. Oh, you might speak so well that they feel good at the moment, but the Holy Ghost is lasting, and you’re not lasting. When they go home and they get up the next day, that feel-good, inspired message is gone, but when they are touched by the Holy Ghost, He’s there the next morning saying, “Come on, boy. Come on, boy.”

▶ 3:03 Hallelujah. So us as a church, we need the Holy Spirit, don’t we? And we need the Holy Spirit speaking, and so that means He needs a mouthpiece, and all of us can, what? Prophesy one by one. In other words, you know, you can speak when you need to speak by the Holy Ghost. You might be talking to someone one-on-one, and the Holy Ghost will give you something to say, and you don’t have to say, “I got a word for you, for you,” that just puts a, that just makes you look good. That’s why you do that. “I have a word of God, God gave me a word for you.” Like the things of God are something that we go to the Olympics to win a prize about. “Oh boy, I got the prize of healing.” Oh, shut up. The gifts of the Spirit are weapons to use when we need them, and when you need them, the Holy Spirit will touch you and use that at the time. Can I hear an amen?

▶ 4:10 Amen. Did Paul have all nine gifts of the Spirit? Yes, he did. Oh man, you’re looking at me like a “duh.” Did he use them every day? No. There were cities where he went into, God did no healing. He couldn’t turn that on: “Oh, I have the gift of healing.” He’d go from one city, he couldn’t do nothing in the miraculous; he’d go to another city, and God released the miraculous. And when the Holy Ghost releases, then you can do something, and you don’t get any credit. It’s the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Now that’s the marks of a real prophet. Can I hear an amen? And, folks, we need in America some real prophets rising up. See, America’s, I mean, God is bringing us low in America so that we can get an ear to hear. You see His style all through the Bible. He has a style. We get up to the peak, and then we start forgetting how we got there, and then we start doing things on our own, and we start heading down.

▶ 5:30 You know, we don’t get it. You know, economic problems come, health problems come, all this stuff comes. “Oh, we just believe God, hallelujah, you know, positive confession.” You know, we hit rock bottom like the guy in the pigpen, and then we come to our senses: “Okay, God, what do I need to do?” Then we get back up to the top of the mountain again. Real prophecy speaks by the Spirit and gives nothing but scriptural facts. Can I hear an amen? Nothing but scriptural facts. Now, I want to give you a quick example. Now, this is a very important part of this; you need to hear this. Okay, so open both ears. In 1 Chronicles 25:1 we read the story of David, David anointed or separated to service. Say “separated to service.” Separated service, that’s what an anointing is.

▶ 6:31 Okay, it’s a place where God does a ceremonial act to separate you for service. Okay, he separated the Levites here for service, and it’s very interesting. He took Asaph and his sons, Heman and his sons, Jeduthun [unclear] and his sons, to prophesy, speak, play by the inspiration, with harps, [unclear] and cymbals. Now, folks, this is vitally important. Music is a real key in God’s church, and He doesn’t need it. He chose to use it. Are you there? They could play by the inspiration of the Spirit on these instruments. They weren’t just up doing a little thing and, “No, no.” Just like Elijah spoke by the Spirit, these guys were playing by the Spirit.

▶ 7:39 Are you out there? You know, where do we send our kids to learn how to play music? To the world. Does the world know how to tune our kids in to the Spirit of the music? No, they got the wrong spirit of the music. They’re into the lust of the flesh, man. They’re into... See, the church is blindsided so much. Hallelujah. I know churches that wouldn’t allow anything but a piano and an organ for decades, and that’s sad, because the Bible said they prophesied with harps, stringed instruments (those are stringed instruments), and cymbals (that’s percussion). Amen. All right, the sons of Asaph, four, prophesied “according to the order of the king.” You see, who’s the king of the kingdom? Jesus. What order do we need to follow? His order. I don’t care what they’re doing out in the world. What is the Holy Ghost doing?

▶ 8:55 Church, I’m giving you some very good stuff here. I’m going to be dead and gone one of these days, and you need to have this in you so God can stir you. America needs to hear a real voice, and we need to take the responsibility to do it. The sons of Jeduthun, six, prophesied with a harp to give thanks and to praise the Lord. Praising who? The Lord. Not flattering people, giving honor to the Lord, giving honor to the Scriptures, teaching through music. And now remember, they were anointed back there, separated for service, right? Yes. Now look at this. Twenty years later Solomon comes along. It’s no more than 20 years, might be a little less, but anyway, 20 is a good figure here. Uh, I’ll tell you how I got there. David was old when he gave that separation. He lived, we don’t know how many years after he gave that separation. Solomon became king, and in the fourth year of his reign he built the temple of God and finished it in the 11th year, didn’t dedicate it till the 12th year.

▶ 10:17 Are you there? So we add 12 to whatever David lived, and about 20 years. Okay, 20 years have gone by. Now look what happened. They built the temple, they’re dedicating it. Now Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, with their sons and brethren, “arrayed in white linen.” What’s white linen? Righteousness of the saints. We got to live right. We got to, you know, keep our repentance level up. We, amen, we got to keep admitting we’re wrong, not being stubborn. And they having cymbals, [unclear], harps, and 120 priests sounding with the trumpets. Now we got the wind instruments. Back in the Vine in La Habra, we had a 27-piece orchestra. Okay, it had violas, it had violins, it had cellos, piccolo, flutes, harp.

▶ 11:13 We had a percussion section, we had a guitar, we had a bass, string bass and electric bass, okay. We had a flugelhorn, he said, “[unclear]?” We had an [unclear]. And let me tell you, you couldn’t come an hour before service and get ready with a 27-piece orchestra. You had to meet during the week, you had to pull this thing together, and you had to teach that electric guitar to quieten down when we needed to hear the stringed instruments, and you had to teach the string instruments, “Just lay your instruments down and just enjoy the high praises,” because the electric and the percussion and certain instruments just do the high praise, they just do it. Are you there? And so you got all these hassles, but boy, the results were staggering, weren’t they? The presence of God and the conviction on people, and God moving them and breaking them down, was powerful.

▶ 12:34 “The trumpeters and singers were as one to make one sound in praising and thanking the Lord.” And when they did, and they sang this song, “For He is good, for His mercy endures forever,” “the glory of the Lord filled the house.” See, results came. Now, 20 years went by. Did they lose their anointing? Well, that’s what I hear all the time: “I’ve lost my anointing.” How do you lose an anointing? You’re separated for service. You know, some woman comes up to me and offers sex to me (this has happened over and over in my life). Am I supposed to lose my anointing because I don’t feel like saying no? Do you go by feelings, or do you go by what you’ve been selected to serve in? And you’re selected to serve in what? Holiness and righteousness. Are you there?

▶ 13:42 See, I don’t have to feel like it. “Well, I don’t feel like I got anything.” The anointing has nothing to do with your feeling. The feeling will come when you participate in what you’ve been set apart to do. Wow, that was good. Man, I’ve heard people say, “Well, I lost the anointing.” How do you lose serving Jesus? You’ve been set apart to serve Jesus and living a right life. You’ve been set apart to praise Him, worship Him, play instruments under Him. You know, maybe you don’t feel like it today. I didn’t feel like getting up and going to work every day. How many of you can raise your hand and say, “Yeah, I ain’t...” That’s the last thing I wanted to do, but I did it, because that was my responsibility. And once I got to work and got moving, I, man, everything was fine.

▶ 14:40 And that’s the way it is here, folks. In the Pentecostal Spirit-filled circles, we say things that are just stupid. “Well, my anointing is molded, you know, like bread. You know, it’s old and molded and hard. I need a fresh anointing.” Jesus said, “I’ll baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire.” Have you ever seen fire get molded? You ever seen a fire that got stale? Where is our thinking? We are set apart, and music is very important. Music in the church, the worship service, is just as important as the message that’s going to follow or the message before it, because worship should have a message, because we learned that prophecy is for what? Our learning, our comfort. There should be a place in the worship for comfort. There should be a place for strengthening. There should be a place for souls to be saved. What’s the words up there? It worked, because the Holy Ghost come and added His ingredient to it.

▶ 16:09 Now, 100 years later the old guard is dead. The fathers who David anointed is gone. The new generation has come up. Jahaziel, a Levite, the son of Asaph, came on him, came the Spirit of the Lord, in the middle of the congregation. And that’s very important, these private prophecies. I’m getting more agitated every year I get older. You know, if we’re going to do something, we should do it in the presence of people, so they, how can two or three prophesy and the other judge if they’re not around to judge your nonsense? And let me tell you, I hear a lot of nonsense anyway. When they began, when he spoke and they, the army, the singers went out and began to sing praises, how many, you know, that is not a good idea for our military to go over to Iraq and start singing praises. We go over with our weapons. But when God is involved, that’s His weapon. He put the singers in front of the army, and listen to this: when they began to sing and to praise the Lord, God set ambushes against the enemy. When did God start moving against the enemy? At the beginning of their singing. And so they’re marching out there and they’re singing, “Great is the Lord, His mercy endureth forever,” and they’re marching, and these singers are going, “Oh man, we’re getting closer and closer, somebody better do something.” They didn’t know that God already started the ambush, and when they got there, the army had turned on one another, killed one another, and all they had to do is get the spoil. But it started when? At the beginning.

▶ 18:11 See, if God can just get us started. You understand the illustration. If He could just get us to start, we will see great things, the kingdom of darkness destroyed. Now remember, we just taught out of Ezra and Nehemiah. That’s, it’s, uh, 400 years later. Asaph, and that anointing is still there. All these guys are gone, the forefathers, the next one, the next one, everybody’s gone. It passed on. What am I trying to tell you? That separation to the service of the Lord in music and in prophecy just keeps being passed on to the next generation by God. You don’t have to say, “Boy, if I only had so-and-so’s anointing, boy, if I only had so-and-so’s gift of God.” No, no, no. Jesus is passing it on to the next generation, but you got to accept it, and you got to begin. What’s the two words? It worked. See, they didn’t have to feel it. They didn’t have to say, “I lost the anointing, it’s been years since God moved.” They just began again to do what they were separated to do, and God moved, and joy filled the place, and they sent gifts unto them for whom nothing was prepared. Great things happened in Ezra and Nehemiah.

▶ 19:57 Second Kings 3:14. Jehoshaphat is king, the army, the army went out to fight, and there’s no water. The army is dying from thirst, and when an army is dying from thirst, they’re going to lose the battle. So they went to Elisha the prophet, and Elisha the prophet said, “Bring me a musician.” Now, this really illustrates the power of music in the kingdom. Elisha had prophesied many a time without a musician, am I right? He had done mighty things without a musician, but here he had the sense to know he needed the musicians to come, the prophets that could play by the Spirit of God. And so they brought him the musicians, they began to play by the Spirit of God, and then he got a word from God how the thirst was going to be quenched. He said, “Go out and dig ditches. There’s going to be water coming from nowhere tomorrow. Tomorrow, not going to be any rain, not going to be any wind, they just going to be water. Dig some ditches, channel this water, because it’s coming.” So they went out and dug the ditches, and the next day, sure enough, the water came from Edom, their enemy. God took their water and brought it to Israel. Are you there?

▶ 21:21 Ah, is that how you read your Bible? Don’t you think you need to start reading your Bible like I’m telling you? Yeah, took the enemy’s water, brought it down supernaturally, ran into that valley. They had the ditches, the water was channeled through the valley, the soldiers could drink, and Elijah said also, “God is going to give you this battle with Moab and Edom. You’re going to win the battle.” And so the Moabite army, they had heard that Israel was coming, so they went out to fight them, and the water to them looked like blood. You see, it all matters what side of God you’re on, how you see things. It all depends on what side of God you’re on. See, Israel saw water, and they were drinking and getting their thirst quenched. The enemy saw blood, and they go, “Hey, the kings have turned on themselves, they’re all dead, we’ll just go and reap the spoil,” and they went right into a trap. Israel just annihilated it, women, children, and all. And my opponent say, “How can God be a God when He says to kill women, children, and all?” Listen, He’s God, and He’s the judge of the world, and when He judges a nation or a people and says, “Listen, it’s going to cost every one of your life,” that’s His business. Don’t be telling me my God is a bad God because He does His job.

▶ 22:51 Amen. If He decides to let Satan bring a plague of AIDS or whatever to straighten things out, don’t you blame my God. My God is doing what His job is to do. First Samuel 16:23: “The evil spirit from God was upon Saul.” David, who was Holy Spirit anointed, played a harp. Saul, who was Holy Spirit anointed, but he never repented. Do you understand that both of these two men were Holy Spirit anointed, both of them filled with the Holy Ghost? But Saul never repented of his sins. David did. And so God sent an evil spirit, a troublesome spirit, upon Saul, trying to get his attention, and when David would play with his harp, the spirit would what? Depart. You see, music has a power over the witchcraft, the sorcerers, the kingdom of darkness in this world. Just music will drive them out.

▶ 23:59 And, folks, when I go to third world countries, you know, the sorcery, the witchcraft is very strong over there. Most of it is fleshly witchcraft, it’s not demonic at all. And, you know, when I’ve been in these nations and I confront these people, they will say a statement like, I’ll say, “Well, you know, come on, bring it on, do something to me. You guys got power, come on, do something, put a wart on my nose, you know, but don’t touch me.” You just curse me, you just put a spell on me, you know, “come on, do something, make me a leper, whatever, come on, bring it on.” This is what they’ll say: “There’s fire over your door.” Are you there? He will fill you with the Holy Ghost and fire.

▶ 24:56 You see, and let me tell you, there’s blood over my door too. I don’t have to have the fire, I got the blood. I mean, you know, when the Satan came through, the death angel at Egypt, he couldn’t go into those dwellings with the blood over their door. I got the blood of Jesus over my door, I got the fire over my door, they ain’t messing with me, and they’ll admit it. They were demonic, and they could see, without them knowing I’m a Christian, they could see they can’t touch me. Now we got a thousand years later, Paul and Silas are in prison, and at midnight they began to sing praises unto God. The anointing hasn’t worn off, it hasn’t gotten stale, and it hasn’t been lost. It’s still there because it’s God’s anointing.

▶ 25:56 And when they did that, the prisoners heard them. They weren’t praying and singing silently. You silent saints need to open your mouth up. It’s the sound that comes from your lip that God uses to fight the kingdom of darkness. Suddenly a great earthquake shook the foundations of the prison, and immediately all the doors were open and everyone’s bands were loosed, simply because they sang praises to God. They didn’t have any instrument here, couldn’t take them into the prison with them, but they had their voices. They couldn’t clap their hands because they were in shackles, but they had their voices, and God set the captive free, exactly what He said He would do in Isaiah and in the Gospels: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed me,” set me apart for service, “to preach the gospel to the poor, to set the captive free, to open the blinded eyes, to open the prison doors to them that are bound.” That’s exactly what God fulfilled right there, a thousand years later. That anointing was still working.

▶ 27:16 So the bottom line is this: do we want the testimony of Jesus in our life and in our church? Will we follow the guidelines and say nothing and do nothing except what is limited to us in the Scriptures? Do any of us have a right to take part of the Bible and leave the rest out? No one does, not just ministers, but ministers are going to be judged for it. Seriously, seriously, and I don’t want to get up there and have to face that. Man, if a church has Jesus, what will it have operating? The spirit of prophecy, speaking, playing, our music, our worship anointed, the Spirit moving upon it, touching people’s lives. Yes, they can reject God, they rejected Jesus, but that does not give us an excuse to water down the Word, reduce the Word in any way. We have to hang tight and let Jesus begin to bring them in, because I guarantee you real people will come to the water because they’re thirsty. Real people will come to the fire because they’re cold. See, fire attracts the cold, water attracts the thirsty, and food attracts the hungry, and I’m talking about spiritual water, the Holy Ghost, spiritual food, the Word of God, and spiritual fire.

▶ 29:06 And remember, He starts moving when we begin. He doesn’t wait for us to get mature. The minute we make a move toward Him, He starts working. Now, we won’t see the result for a while. We got to keep marching, but when we get down there, we’re going to see the result of what He started to do when we started to do our part.