2013 Prophetic: A Coming Shift

by Donna Diorio
Because of a good word I heard from Joel Osteen's service yesterday proclaiming that a shift was coming when the things that hadn't budged in a long time were suddenly going to shift overnight, I realized that "a coming shift" is the key phrase I've been picking up by the prophets over the last few weeks. Joel Osteen is not someone I would think of in connection to the word prophet, and he himself even said as much, but clearly he was also impressed by the prophetic nature of what he was speaking.

Now, as far as the prophets, I'm not one that follows after particular prophets. This one has a word that resonates with me, and then that one does - and in between times they couldn't be any further apart in what they are seeing for us. This troubles me, so I take a guarded approach to prophecy. If it registers, I listen; if it doesn't, I don't. 

One thing I know about prophets and prophecy is something I heard Asher Intrater speak last decade at an Israel gathering at Mike Bickle's KC-IHOP. Asher was addressing the fact that true prophets were all over the place with their prophecies because they did not know what the end game is.

If you don't know where God's plan is supposed to end up then your trajectory of prayer and prophetic understanding is going to be off. That's why we have prophetic words all over the map. There is an essence of the word that is true, but all prophecy is interpreted through the current understanding of the prophet so the prophets may all be shooting in the same GENERAL direction, but not zeroing in on the bull's eye of God's intentions.

God has been restoring truths, gifts and ministry offices back to the Body. Starting with Martin Luther's revelation that salvation is a free gift of grace by faith, God is restoring all that we lost so quickly after the first century A.D.   All the Divine benefits are being restored to a Body that is being matured to handle them. The five-fold offices are also being restored. 

Now here's a second thing that I know: Although the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet has been restored, it has not reached the equilibrium of Divine stability.  It cannot until the prophets lay hold of the significance of Israel in God's grand plan, and specifically the significance of the role the Israeli Body of Messiah plays toward that end.

So, we have many who think of themselves as apostles, but the place where God raised up and established the apostolic office in multiple men, is Israel. They came from different parts of the country but Jerusalem was where the counseled/council-ed together for the believers in Israel and the nations. Until the apostolic office is restored in Jerusalem, I do not expect to see a mature expression of the office of apostle in the rest of the nations - certainly not in terms of wide general acceptance of the validity of the office.

It will take the acceptance of the significance of those Israeli Messianic 'our-generation' apostles and what they have to share before those apostles in the nations come into their full stature. It is the same thing with prophets.

Here it is in a nutshell: The Church is not operating independent of what God is doing ultimately in Israel through the Body of Messiah in Israel. The Church cannot fulfill the vision of completeness and harvest apart from entering into the vision that God has for the restoration of the LORD's Body in the nation of Israel.

When the prophets and the apostles of the nations embrace the Kingdom vision of the Body in Israel, then the prophets will begin to see their trajectory zero in accurately. When the apostles of the nations begin to esteem the apostles of the Body in Israel and what they bring to the table spiritually, then the office of the apostles in the worldwide Body will begin to firm up, established by God in the eyes of the saints. 

Not until. The Church will not get to the end without embracing God's purposes in the Israeli Body of Messiah.

"For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. . . .For if thou were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?" Rom 11:16, 24