The school of prophets is not some term we have devised. It originates with Samuel in the Old Testament, who trained young men to be prophets. Perhaps there was no greater force created by God than what Samuel foresaw and utilized. Witchcraft had been very common in the land of Canaan, and with the school of prophets it was so completely eliminated that under the reign of Saul (although Saul was halfhearted about it and later, when he was in trouble, sought out the witch of En-dor), there were scarcely any witches or any witchcraft to be found. The school of prophets created such a powerful environment that it retarded the apostasy of Israel for a long time. They moved very much like Body ministry, and in fact, it is my conviction that the school of prophets started a great deal of the interest in the Kingdom that shows up in the later prophets in the Old Testament. The whole theme underlying them, of the King coming and the Kingdom and the day of the Lord, largely began with the school of prophets.
These schools of prophets walked in the miraculous. They prophesied a great thing. They could create unbelievable forces. When Saul sent his hatchet men to kill David, they passed them on the road, and the force of their prophesying was so great that the messengers stopped and entered in dancing and prophesied with them. The second messengers were sent, and the same thing happened. Saul went himself, and he threw aside his garments and began to dance and prophesy until they said, “Is Saul also one of the prophets?” (I Samuel 19:20–24).
The Prophets moved collectively a great deal. They answered to Samuel. Ramah was the main center of his activities, but Samuel headed up this school. Long after Samuel’s departure, even in the days of Elijah and Elisha, the school of prophets was still a strong force. When Elijah and Elisha were going down to the place across the Jordan where Elijah would be translated, they passed the school of prophets, who prophesied, “Your master will be taken from you today.” Elisha answered, “I know it. Don’t bother me” (II Kings 2:3); they had to go on to the fulfillment. It is important to see the very clear perception and revelation these prophets had.
In this end time God has promised the return of such men. It will not be just local, though it must start someplace. It will multiply not by books and revelation teaching alone; it will multiply as the men themselves come into the ministry and bring forth other men to do the same thing. Remember the whole purpose of the prophets was the firsthand conveying of a ministry to another person. It was through impartation more than anything else.
Bible schools were a very modern invention, and they teach a certain curriculum. The Walk will never go to the Bible school method. We are following the principle of the school of the prophets. In every local church there is a man of God who gathers young men to him. They work together and flow together. It is not long before the same thing that is in the pastor is reproduced in the young men. There are very few casualties, but very few successes in the Bible school system. Most pastors know this. In the first place, there are few Bible schools which are really spiritual, and even when there is such a school, nine out of ten of the students lose out with the Lord. The principle we follow in the Walk is to convey by communication, by direct contact. We believe that the things of God are highly catching. We can create a high level of spiritual expression which can literally sweep people into manifesting the same thing.
There are certain principles and guidelines which have been laid down over the last twenty years. The tape library will have a catalogue with outlines and summaries of ministry schools which have come, because as far as we know there is nothing like this in existence. There will be certain tapes and cassettes and manuals which can be devoured by those who are interested in this. It is good to get the background. We save a lot of trouble if we learn in advance the principles for prophecy God is outlining. There is so much that is not committed to tape or to paper. Once we have the principles, we can start to work with them.
A word is given, and fantastic levels of revelation begin to come up from the young prophets. It is just a sample of what we will see. Eventually it will be possible for groups of prophets to come in, not to take over and change a church and usurp the whole role of ministry and authority, but to so completely minister to a church that a church which is moving in the right direction can be enhanced with just a few weeks of young prophets ministering in their midst. It would be far better than the old campaigns and revivals and evangelists coming to try to stir up a church. This is a true Body function. When they are finished there will be people brought into Christ and moving in the gifts and ministries. It will be fantastic.
Don’t ask me how this will come to be. More and more as I have approached this in dedication, the Lord has led me by revelation in every service. I walk in, and the Lord gives the message He wants. I do not try to preach difficult, deep sermons, and yet there is a depth to them that reaches everyone because I look to the Lord for revelation. I have been preaching almost wholly by revelation for many months. Sometimes the Lord will keep me up all night talking about something. When I speak it, it is a fantastic flow that moves the people tremendously because it is alive, it is real revelation. This kind of ministry shall be reproduced, but it will not be as simple as you think.
Do you know what I was saying in my heart today? “I wish I knew the Word better,” yet I have studied it all my life. We will never feel we really know the Word as we should. We must have the basics. We must have the Word in our heart. We must hide it there. I am not so much concerned about reading the Word to create sermons or for devotions, but just about reading it. We must read it until the Lord makes it alive. Then, when it comes time there is a great reservoir that the Spirit of the Lord can draw from, and it can begin to come forth. There is no question about it, if we are to be a prophetic company, the strength of the prophecy will be our knowledge and understanding of the Word and our ability to move in revelation and perception. These two things will be very basic. That is the reason there must be a great deal of study involved for any who will be a part of the school of the prophets. That is essential. In addition, there must be a great deal of teaching and ministry to bring them into accurate revelation.
At the present time the churches are handicapped inasmuch as the good ministries of revelation are too limited. This school of propets at this time is not some extra boost so the brothers can go around prophesying; the churches do not have the level of revelation that they need. There is not enough discernment. There is not enough deep perception. There are not enough confirming ministries of deep revelation. Sometimes the ministries pray and get a good witness, but we need the prophets to speak two or three and let the others judge. If we are to have a I Corinthians 14 type of service, it will have to be. Every pastor feels he needs the backing of real prophets who are established. The whole purpose of the school of prophets is to bring this to pass.
When we get into the school, it will take quite a bit of discipline and revelation. God will give a Word to send ministries into an area for a few weeks to start working on that area and reproducing other ministries. I anticipate a minimum of mechanical aids, but sometimes it is good in a completely new community to recruit experienced ministries. It is not to con people or sell them on something, but until they actually see and hear the ministries in operation, they don’t get a hold of it. A few choice video tapes could be sent to churches to stir them up to the school of the prophets and put the burden on them because they will be called upon to send men to the school. Maybe they will need to support them for a while. If they come to California, we will try to find a place for them to stay, and the churches can help pay the rent. We will sacrifice to help them also. We will let them get in and work in the Living Word.
I feel that the school of prophets will break through to the prophecies that are about eighteen years old now. The prophecies over each of the three Southern California churches said there would be a time when their doors would never close. There would be no time of starting or ending a service, but there would be a continual moving of God. There would be those who would continually stand before the Lord, for the tabernacle of David that is fallen down will be restored again. Amos prophesies that for the end time (Amos 9:11).
Do you remember what the tabernacle of David was? After some difficulties over the procedure, David finally brought the ark of the covenant back into the city of David and built a tabernacle for it. It was not a tabernacle restricted like the tabernacle of the wilderness or like the temple built under Solomon or Herod’s temple; it did not restrict people from the presence of the Lord. It was ordered that continually psalms and praises were to be sung, and they were to continually make sacrifice. Day and night that continued in this tabernacle until finally the ark was moved into Solomon’s temple.
In many ways I think that the tabernacle of David was better than what they had under Solomon, although the glory was great. It was a perfect type of what God was to bring in the end time. The verse in Amos is quoted in Acts 15:16; After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down;… The Gentiles could not enter in to worship before, but in Acts 15 the apostles said, “This is the tabernacle of David which was fallen down, where Gentiles and everyone can stand in the presence of the Lord and worship.” They had accurately interpreted, yet the prophecy in Amos actually refers to the end time when God would bring this glorious fulfillment. We will witness in many churches the prophets standing, praising and worshiping God. The prophetic community will continue on and on, and instead of a backlog of personal ministry that is never accomplished as in the present time, everyone will have a word from the Lord.
It will be fantastic to see the people come. All day long, all night long men will be standing, worshiping. When they get tired they will go home, sleep, and come back—or there may even be places in the church where they can stretch out on a cot to get a few hours of sleep and get up and go at it again. I anticipate we are ready for the real latter rain, and it will lift us a great deal out of the scheduling of services that on a certain day we meet at a certain time.
The school of prophets, if it comes forth and they really seek the face of the Lord, will be the thrust that will break through into marvelous meetings with God. Eventually there will not be the designation, “the school of prophets,” because it will have permeated all the churches, and all will begin to reach up in the Lord. I have not gone into this with the churches before; we were not ready for it, but I think we are now. Many of the brothers have felt that I should be away from a rigid schedule in the three Southern California churches, and the general witness was that I should give more time to the school of prophets.
One very simple way of teaching begins when. I speak something, and one person after another comes up with revelation, and each puts things together with real revelation teaching. This is very important.) as we sit around and talk and answer questions. It opens up things which do not normally come in sermons. The questions are significant, and the people contributed back and forth. There really is no better way of teaching, if the level of interest is there so that they know what to ask and are really concerned. All of this is embraced in the school of prophets. This burden has not only been mine, but on others has rested this same burden for the school of prophets. They see as I do the necessity of more real revelation ministries in the church. We have many with a good prophetic flow or psalms. The level of worship is slowly rising, but we need more with a revelation ministry.
God brings men under my ministry for a specific purpose. The pastors and associate pastors are the most important ministries in authority over the people. When they are in it enough, they will have the vision and the burden until it becomes a type of missionary enterprise that they back up in prayer and finances. They will lose the idea, “This boy is mine, and I’m not going to give him up at any cost. I can’t let go of this elder.” They will let go of them because sooner or later, as the men are trained and cycled back into the churches, they become the life of the church.
The pastors should understand this recycling program. If they begin to go to seed (do you understand that term? Any farmer does. Going to seed means to lose the young life and stop growing), they should not hesitate to say, “I’m in trouble. Help me. I’m stagnated.” Some way will be worked out so that they can leave their church and have a place to stay here and come and get right back into the flow. The vision is not always sustained independent of this. Even if you sustain the vision but have been away from my ministry for several years, a lot of things have happened. Even if you are walking in more than you had at that level, you may be missing some very important keys which are coming, for this Walk is changing rapidly.
Recently a Living Word came that described the coming worship. It was prophetic. It described the coming worship and the focus on it. If we would listen to one of our services now and listen to that prophecy, we would realize that we are going to make a step in the worship that is far greater than this Walk is from old order. We are ready to take steps that are even more drastic and more distant than the old order. The word was speaking about the real focus of the Lord and the return of His glory, that ties in with the school of the prophets, which will be based upon one thing—that the presence of the Lord is so real that it breaks through the barriers of unawareness which exist in the church. It is not based on anything else.
The school is not to train boys so that they can flow on and on in just a glib flow of prophecy. We are seeking something that exalts the Lord and makes His presence real to people. This is the key. The mechanics of the gifts will lead the Walk right into a dead-end street if they do not lead us into a greater awareness of the presence of the Lord and the glory of the Lord returning. That is the whole purpose of the school of the prophets. Until we break into that our worship will have restraints on it; our people will have walls when they approach the Lord. They must have something which breaks that down and God breaks through on them. The whole purpose of it is not a glib flow, but His living presence in our midst.
The school of the prophets will emphasize waiting upon the Lord. If people cannot wait on the Lord, there is no point in teaching them the finer points of Scripture; order and prophesying. If they cannot wait on the Lord, we will produce people who are mechanics instead of ministries. It cannot be. At this particular point the ministry of gifts could go into mechanics. Someone may say, “I don’t believe that. The Lord is still in mechanics.” But the Lord is still in old-order pentecost too, and they have their type of mechanics which is definitely a drawback from what God is trying to do today.
We must break through to the next step, and we have to be willing to walk on. Everything now is based on the presence of the Lord because this is the beginning of the Parousia. There must be a faith, a concentration, and emphasis on the Parousia. This is important. Parousia means the presence of the Lord. It is translated coming or presence, but it is an extended period of time during which everything takes place: the end-time events, the glorious gospel of the Kingdom being preached into all the world for a witness, the judgment of principalities and powers, the first resurrection, all of those things culminating in the great revelation of the Lord and the establishment of the Kingdom. But we who walk with Him through these days of the Parousia must first realize that this is a time to experience His presence by faith. We can do it; His presence is here. It is our unawareness we must break down, our lack of awareness of the Lord and of His presence. How to come into it is what the school of prophets is all about. I have yearned and waited for it. I know in the timing of the Lord it should be right on us; this should have priority.
At the present time we look for confirmation for the Lord to set ministries aside and set them in, and we have amazing good success, but we have too few men who are really capable of giving an apostolic company witness from a source outside the local church. No local church at this time should allow itself to become an independent church. In no way do we want to become independent churches, nor do we want a denomination. In a process of having ministries set in, it is most essential that wherever it initiates on the local level, the people in fasting and prayer say, “Here’s a brother who should be an elder or a deacon.” They can set him aside, but it is sometimes good to have him exposed to some good sharp prophets who are unrelated to that church, as far as being constant in attendance, for the revelation to be checked out and confirmed. There have been some ministries set in too hastily and had to be set back out.
We should not feel that we never make mistakes; this is the purpose of confirmation. Spiritual pride could build up and an independence: “We don’t need confirmation from some other source.” We do need this confirmation. By the time the school of prophets is finally established there will be many churches coming forth, and they are not going to send all their elders to California to be confirmed. It will not be possible. The school of prophets is the only way to perpetuate the level of revelation on which the Walk has begun and even to see it furthered and increased. It is the only way it can be done. If we do not have that, one or two men will be like Moses, crying, “Oh, Lord, have mercy on me and kill me” (Numbers 11:15). The ministry must be conferred to seventy elders; it must be conferred to others. The ministries must multiply, but not in a diminished level of revelation. It has to be the same sharp spiritual perception that has existed in a few of the brothers, but now it reaches out. The school of the prophets is the answer, the way to duplicate the ministries and even deepen them.
“The school of the prophets looses the apostolic ministry to come into new levels of revelation and into the things that God has designated will come through the apostolic ministry. God has given the apostolic ministry a unique ability to break into new levels in God and then impart them to the people; but as long as the apostolic ministry is bogged down with a lower level of revelation or lower level of conflict, then the real days of revelation that are to come to this Walk are held back.
“This Walk is ordained to come into tremendous wisdom and revelation about the age to come, and God has ordained that the first fruits of that will come through the apostolic ministry. But as long as we hold the apostolic ministry back in our immaturity, in our failure to rise up and also become channels which can handle some of these other areas, we are holding back the Kingdom. That is the reason this school of the prophets is more than just loosing the apostolic ministry alone; it is loosing the earth; it is loosing another age. I feel that the timing of the age unfolding to us now is something almost given into our hands. We are bringing it forth. We can bring it forth in a couple of years, or it could take more than that. It will depend on how we would rise up to walk in what God has set before us.”
If we concentrate on producing ministries rather than trying to put out the fires and answering problems, we will have the whole key of multiplying the Gospel. We are sometimes accused of not having any burden for the world. We do. Shall we do as the old order does? Someone who has been a misfit here and wants to run away they send to the mission fields to work. They pray and believe that when he crosses the boundary of the United States, automatically he becomes a marvelous ministry. Five years later he is bogging down with the same problems there that he was bogging down with here. Wouldn’t it be much better, instead of being so zealous to send people running with no tidings ready, that we concentrate on getting the ministries set and then see the gospel of the Kingdom preached into all the world as an apostolic company goes forth. The quality of the ministry right now is of the utmost importance if we are to reach the world for the Lord; otherwise, we just become another religious system.
“This idea of the pastors being involved in the school of the prophets is one of the purest visions that has yet come forth. We still have the idea concerning the churches we pastor, ‘This is my church; this is the one that I’m over. I may leave for a few days to go to a ministries’ conference, but they need me here. I have to be here or the church will fall apart.’ Although this may not be a conscious thought, nonetheless I believe that it is a reality. I know what it is like to start a church and then have to leave it. I could not call it my own. It wasn’t my church. It belongs to the Body, and the Body is responsible for it. The pastors should be loosed from their churches so that we can meet together more often to wait on God. The lesson on pastors in The New Testament Church says the pastor is not a stationary ministry. The pastor is one of the five ministries which is constantly moving among the churches, bringing up the level of the churches. I think if we begin to move in this way, the level of the entire Walk will come up.”
A pastor may be in one church for a period; Paul was in Ephesus two years, and all in Asia heard the word of the Lord (Acts 19:10). Sometimes a man may be in a place for a certain period of time. But the emphasis is not just to be local, and it is becoming less so as the time goes on. Even when we seem to be stationary, we should recognize our ministry to the whole Body.
The time has now come when I will have to travel, but there is another prophecy that people will come from the east and west and north and south to be led and taught by the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge and to be brought into the things of the Kingdom. That prophecy came over me twenty-two years ago, and I have always had it in a measure. I do not believe that my ministry will go forth as much as the spiritual force will pull men to me to be taught. Wherever I am, men will be drawn. They have to come for what God has ordained to complete their ministry.
The Lord is not the least bit concerned about the magnitude or greatness of the results that come through me. He is concerned about the quality of the men to whom I minister; He is concerned about the quality of their ministry. They will go out and move the world, but it is my business to see to it that they are taught and trained well, that they have the correct emphasis and vision, and that the things which will trip them up at some later time are literally boiled out of their spirits. That is the reason we will start every ministry school with weeks of repentance, until the last of their old spirit is out of them.
For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Philippians 3:3. This Walk is not to be an ego trip nor an ambitious striving. It is not to see how important we can be. It is to become completely yielded in the hand of the Lord, to be a ministry He can bring forth, one of His prophets in the earth.
We have maintained all along that the organization we have now must be a simple organization, like the Living Word. Out of a thousand churches, I doubt if a hundred will have buildings; churches will be in homes or anywhere we can get them because this will move too fast. Building programs will be too expensive for us to bother with when we will be into the Kingdom so quickly. We must have the leading of the Lord to get just the basic, essential organization, and no more.
Keep it as simple as you can so that you stay away from the institutionalism which is the strong foundation of Babylon. We do not want the church to become an institution instead of a living body of people. We have just a basic foundation: a place of printing literature and recording the tapes; we have people who are dedicated and are working at it.
We want just the bare essentials for the whole world to be moved. The world can be moved because the guidelines and the teaching have been right and the spiritual authority and submission are there. Men are going out well prepared in God for the sacrifice they will meet. This gospel of the Kingdom will go through countries like a tide. It will have such a blaze to it, it will be like a worldwide prairie fire! Everything of Satan will run before it. It will clean out witches; it will see judgements of God. It will see many things happen, but we are not doing it for that reason. The essential thing is the presence of the Lord and our awareness of Him. We are doing this in absolute obedience to Him.
There can be no ambition. We must be like Philip, who saw a whole city in Samaria converted to Christ, but he turned it over to the apostles to finish and left to win a black boy to the Lord, baptizing him in water. There is no sense of “my” kingdom, no thought, “I see something good going and I’m going to sit on it.” We are ready anytime to lay everything before the Lord: “It’s Yours, Lord!” On the other hand, there is no gypsy spirit that runs from anything, no matter how hot and hard the battle is; we will stay until God moves us. We have an awareness of the Lord. He will lead us. He shall utter His voice before His camp, and His army is exceedingly great (Joel 2:11).
“Everything will be confirmed by the mouth of two or three witnesses. You will hold everything loosely, as far as being anchored, so that if a confirmed word comes for you to move or to do something else, that you do not moan or have any heart pangs about leaving. Hold everything loosely in your hands.
“Another point is that some have in their mind the idea that one ministry will be directing this Walk. They may not voice it, but in the back of their mind it is there. But when the school of the prophets develops ministries of revelation, this idea will die.”
Already my role has changed, but not the image in the people’s minds. It is not that I was moving independently in the past; I did everything I knew how to do. I submitted my revelation to the brothers and had them pray. But I do not think that the apostolic company has really matured or taken formation until quite recently. I think now it is really laid out, and very shortly the image will change concerning me. The image will change; instead of speaking of submission to the Apostle, people will be speaking of submission to the apostolic company. It will come forth a company of apostles, prophets, elders, and ministries, mighty in the Lord.
With this company will come a great sense of responsibility. I know; I have been there. When you have to be the channel for the word of the Lord, it behooves you to be on your face waiting on the Lord continually. I know that responsibility. That is the reason everyone should start a new period of waiting on the Lord. Repent of anything in your nature which keeps you from it. Get the books on repentance and start crying out to God until God works it in your heart because the responsibility is going to rest upon you.
The extent of the faithfulness and stewardship of the apostolic company will determine the force of this Living Word to the ends of the earth. It will be in direct proportion to our emptying of ourselves and taking this responsibility to be the oracles of God. If any man minister, let him to it as of the ability which God giveth. I Peter 4:11. One brother commented that with some ministries revelation is like a toy instead of being a responsibility, a stewardship that requires their entire devotion. That is an important point. The procedure has been with us for a long time that when women who are especially perceptive begin to move in revelation, we immediately give them some task that requires a discipline to their spirits. When Paul said, “Knowledge puffeth up but love edifies” (I Corinthians 8:1), he was not talking about carnal knowledge. He was talking about spiritual knowledge. The love of God will edify, but knowledge will puff up. A person begins to move in a little bit, and God has to put him in some humble discipline in order to keep him humble. It cannot be a game with us. Anyone beginning to come into revelation should be given some discipline like cleaning the toilets and floors for six months. It is dangerous for people to start spooking because they begin to know a little bit and have a little bit revealed to them. If we want to be true prophets and prophetesses of the Lord, it will be with humility, not playing at it or being exalted by it, but humbly doing the will of the Lord.
It is not important whether the ministries are called prophets or not; that is not what people will be talking about anyway. They will be speaking of the presence of the Lord and how they meet God. If our focus is on the Lord, they will meet Him. If our focus is on the ministry, then they will look at the ministry. People rarely tell me I am a wonderful preacher. It has been a long time since I have heard that. But after a message I hear them say, “The Lord met my heart. That word was just for me.” That is the greatest compliment. That is the mark. We do not want to hear, “That man prophesies beautifully.” We want to hear, “When he was prophesying, the Lord met me. God just searched my heart.” That is the indication that we are bearers of the presence of the Lord. We will carry His presence and glory to the ends of the earth. We are the bearers of the ark of the covenant.
Be sure that you hold everything as belonging to the Lord. You can sense, “This is not mine; it belongs to the Body,” and you can still be very poor. But when you hold in a stewardship whatever He lays in your hand, and you sense the Lord’s ownership of you in everything, you have the key. I do not feel that what I have belongs to you more than it belongs to me. I do not think it belongs to you or me; it is the Lord’s. Whatever He has laid in my hand belongs to the Lord. All He needs to do is nudge me and say, “Give it to that brother. Give it to that church.” It is at the Lord’s disposal. You have a stewardship before Him in all things.
Thank You, Master, for this word. Lay the burden for the school of prophets on us, Lord. Let it burn in our hearts that we be prepared. This is what the Walk has to be. We believe it, Lord; seal this word to our hearts. Amen.