The Encounters
Though I was a college student, I remember it almost like it was yesterday. It was summer. It was hot in downtown Kansas City. We were involved with citywide evangelistic meetings in the Radisson-Muehlebach Hotel. It was about an hour before the meetings were to start, and my dad asked me to get something out of his car.
I remember going out to the car, retrieving the item and closing the door. When I turned, there was a man standing almost on top of me. In fact, he startled me. As I finished closing the door of the car, he blurted out that he was a prophet. He proceeded to ask if I believed he was a prophet of God.
What a question to ask a young college student! It took me a moment to get my head working after being startled. Yet, I remember breathing a silent prayer for wisdom and remembrance, and God blessed my memory with the tests of a prophet. I asked about his relationship to God and his answer seemed perfectly normal. I asked if he believed in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. I asked if his work was to lead men and women to a saving relationship with Jesus. He answered those questions with positive and encouraging answers. Then I asked him if he believed the Bible was the Word of God and was God’s highest written authority. He stumbled a bit and began to share that the Bible was only partially correct. I quickly followed up, asking him how accurate his predictions as a prophet were. He responded that he was only 65 percent accurate. I remember responding that I didn’t believe he was a prophet of God because a genuine prophet of God would always uplift Jesus Christ and lead men and women to walk with God, and the Bible was the ultimate source because it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, of whom, if he was a genuine prophet, he would also be inspired by. And I shared that God’s predictions through His mouthpieces were always 100 percent accurate.
With that, he turned and walked away. I never saw him again, and that experience has never left me. God has given us the gift of prophecy. The apostle Paul records in 1 Corinthians 12 that God gave it and the other spiritual gifts to the church for the purpose of glorifying God and building up the church. “But God has so composed the body…so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another” 1 Corinthians 12:24,25 (NASB).
There are millions of voices today that are calling out to men and women in ways like we have never seen before. Each one of those voices are trying to pull us away from God, much like that first temptation that Satan confronted Eve with in the Garden of Eden.
As believers in Jesus, we must stand firm on the Word of God with our faith completely in Him. Remember Revelation 12:17 (NASB), “So the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
By Richard C. Dye, Sr.
President
