I am a pastor in a small inner city church in Halifax Nova Scotia Canada. On Tuesday September 23rd, we were having our midweek service, which developed into an intense conversation about the format of our services, things like, where the concept of altars came from, the layout of the chairs, how they face a pulpit; for that matter, where did the idea of a pulpit come from.
In a very short time, we covered many issues concerning the traditional set up of how we conduct a typical church service. Understanding that we as a church have been without a “paid full time minister” for over 2 years, opting instead to pursue the ministries God has put in the body.
Over these two years we have seen the most growth, spiritual invigoration and personal growth our church has ever experienced in it’s 25 year history. To jump to the prophecy, we finished the evening off feeling very excited about God taking us in an even more open and informal direction for our church services, allowing the body to minister to each other instead of “the paid professional minister” and that we want to rid ourselves of the traditional trappings of a typical Pentecostal church service. What this totally means, who knows, but we felt strongly it was God’s will and intent. I closed with a prayer, and was led to speak the following prophecy/vision:
I saw a large whitewashed tower in a somewhat half built fortification. This whitewashed tower was taking up most of the space inside this fortification, and the Spirit revealed to me it was Satan’s presence in the church. This tower was whitewashed with both false righteousness and demonic traditions within the church. More significant is what I saw and heard next. God said, that he will rise up the individual within the church, and as they take their place and authority within the church body and structure … they will each start taking a brick out of this tower, eventually weakening it and causing it to crumble. In the vision I saw the crumbled tower, destroyed by the saints of God reaching up and taking out the bricks it was made of.
But behind the tower, coming out from behind it, were poor, ragged, weak and emaciated saints of God. They had been overshadowed and dominated by the shadow of this tower and they came staggering so to speak, out from behind it into the light of God. In my mind, the understanding was given that this tower had been spiritually suffocating the saints, but God said he is in the process of bringing this tower down.
The fact that Satan could have such a position and prominence in the church structure and tradition is serious cause for evaluating and scrutinizing our way of handling the living organism called “the church.”
God free us from the bondage of what was … move us into a vibrant and powerful body, created in equality and openness, where everyone is an active part, and esteemed as such. Father release the ministers of God that are caught in the mold of being “the Pastor” and bring them out into the knowledge of what you offer not just through them but your whole body. Tear down the idols Father … clean the house … and set the saints free.
Amen amen!
That was good John…
Know how you can hear or read something, and you just know the Holy Spirit was behind the words. Thats how i felt reading this.
[...] November 19, 2007 by pjmiller As always we should use our God given discernment when it comes to dreams, visions, or prophecy. Tonight over on True Discernment, John posted what I believed to be a true word… You can check it out HERE. [...]
PJ,
Yes when I read it I knew in my spirit that it was genuine plus the fact that it was also linked to from a trusted web site:
http://www.apostasywatch.com/
[...] blog called ‘True Discernment’. In that blog there is an interesting post called ‘Tear Down the Idols‘. It speaks about a tower being built, one that is about to have an individual rise up out of [...]
Thanks for stopping by and clearing up my misunderstanding about the prophecy given to you.
I agree with this gist that error is afoot and it must be confronted. The only thing I think may have been either misunderstood or not communicated clearly was the conditional element of this. ‘God said he is in the process of bringing this tower down…’
God is raising people up to speak up about this tower and to pull it down…but they must step up to the plate or it will not fall. People can heed or deny the call. God will only tear this tower down if the Saints obey – just like tearing down the high places, God does not blast them by fire he expects his saints to destroy them for themselves. The Saints need to come up to the plate and take their stand against the whitewashing and heresy in the modern church – ‘Christian get up and ride your place of its idols!’ or they can be slack and stay asleep or afraid as most will.
If they do not obey, then the end times delusion becomes even stronger around them. There is no prophetic guarantee the tower will come down unless the Saints obey. It may get considerably worse.
My feeling is there will be a separation of the faithful remnant from the apostate church, which is already happening. Many people just cannot stay in their churches any more.
Yes, definately a separation happening.
As far as strong people/leaders standing up in truth goes, that is happening as well.
Some a listening and are coming out of her, and others are not. A prime example of this is what has happened to Roger Oakland lately.