Personal prophecies were thought to be of great importance, especially if these were given by preachers. Prophecies given by our own leaders, or by Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland were thought to be beyond criticism and no one ever dared to question them. One personal prophecy I got went like this: “You are entering a new dimension. You have seen my power flow through others; but from now on, it will flow through you. Doors will be opened to you.” In general, the personal prophecies were full of promises. They gave me great hopes of a future position, usually as some kind of a preacher. It was, of course, taken for granted that my future was in connection with the Faith movement. Often the messages of the personal prophecies were rather flattering, and therefore, they bound me — and others — even closer to the movement, and caused us to work hard and be faithful.
Sometimes, there were also prophetical messages with more of a warning character. It might, for instance, be warnings against criticising God’s anointed or opposing what God was doing. Whether it was explicit or just implied, these warnings were always concerned with criticising the preachers or the Faith movement itself. It might also be messages that were warning other people against staying on the sidelines and merely watching what God is doing. In other words, it was vital to take part wholeheartedly in the movement.
I even began to live in a world where I started getting messages to myself regarding my future and what I had to do. I learned to pick up messages from my own thoughts. The teaching was continually reminding us how important it was to take “what God was saying” very seriously. This was creating a pre-occupation with one self, and great attention was concentrated and directed towards hearing these inner messages.
I have spoken to others who have received personal prophecies and words of knowledge. It is their opinion that they have received specific information which the person giving the message could not have known in a natural way. They thought, therefore, that this information must have been given supernaturally to the person who was prophesying or giving words of knowledge. In several cases, the message was connected with an exhortation to come into, or to continue in, the movement.
If we conclude that this kind of personal information could not have been obtained naturally, or by intelligent guess-work, then we are compelled to conclude that the source of the information must have been either God, the devil, or personal research. When the intention of such information is to get someone into the Faith movement, I would, personally, find it too hard to believe that God could be the source of it.
