To properly discern the times requires that several things be present. We must be open to the voice of the Spirit and have the desire to explore a different reality outside the small box of the biased news offered to us by conventional news sources. We also need a measure of courage to challenge long-held perspectives people firmly believe to be true and were promised would last forever. The underlying motivation to entertain these issues is to find out what will harm people and to bring those things to light. That disclosure is loving our neighbor as ourselves. Love involves disclosure.

Last week, I posted a video on my Facebook wall telling people that in the next two months things will be revealed in our world the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetimes. Prophetic insight is never the promise of a full picture. Many times, it is simply a declaration without all the details. Those declarations can make people uneasy especially when they demand all the evidence upfront. 

As a personal policy, I don’t tell people what they can discover for themselves.  A little digging into what is currently taking place will reveal issues like the severe diesel fuel shortage in our nation that will negatively affect the trucking and transportation sector. When fully developed, the shortage will create suffering. Everything we eat comes by truck. Supermarket shelves have about three days of food on their shelves. After the shelves become empty anarchy breaks out. 

Digging further will also reveal the U.S. dollar is no longer the global petrol dollar that gave us dominance in world politics. It looks like the Russian ruble and the Chinese yuan may be stepping up to become the new global standard. An alliance called BRICS (Brazil, Russian, India, China, and South Africa) is shifting the global hegemony of the United States in the financial world ushering in a significant change none of us yet fully understand. We are being pushed toward a cashless global economy. All transactions from buying chewing gum to purchasing a home will be known and tracked. The approval and dispersal of the funds needed for those purchases will not be based on your bank balance. It will be metered through your allegiance to what the distributors of those funds consider to be appropriate and in alignment with their worldview.

Our world is changing before our eyes and as our national leaders dance to insane music and a light show of illusions they are creating policies that make a person ask “Why?” Our nation and the world are being led to outcomes our favorite news sources are not reporting. 

In the last few years, I and many others have made a departure from the traditional thinking about the Church and how we apply our faith in the world. That departure is not an abandonment of what we knew and cherished. It is a shift of assignment to include things we did not previously understand as part of our calling. We discovered that the prophetic gift is like a scout in the expansion of the American West in the 1800s. Scouts reveal trails not seen by the pioneers riding in the wagons that follow behind their revelation. It is not a position of pride. It is simply part of a fully functioning model of the Church.

Prophetic scouts are being assigned by the Lord to lead the Church into deeper revelations of reality. The Church is so much more than trying to get enough money to build yet another building or expand or retain staff. It is more than the kind acts of service we do in our community. We must have a global view that takes in uncomfortable, even frightening realities. The perspective we provide to others should create hope and peace when the earthly evidence reveals something else. We have been programmed to reject such inquiries as too social, political, or even conspiratorial. How can we maintain our prophetic voice in a culture if we are afraid or unwilling to uncover what is hidden, especially as the decisions and plans of governments and hidden cabals of power are creating scenarios leading to control and the eventual suffering of those being governed? 

In all of these issues, our primary task is to keep our eyes on Jesus and not allow what we discover to divert our attention and destroy our hope. A focus on the Lord will keep the reporting of prophetic insight pure and filled with hope, not polluted with personal bias or the fear of offense, especially when the Lord tells us to report the reality of what is taking place to an uninformed and resistive audience.