The Great Prophet Ted

From the moment a prophecy was given to me that I would be a great prophet I was a new person. I felt honored and proud. I dug into the bible with a renewed interest and studied it diligently and for the next 3 months, I considered myself in preparation for greatness, but I was under a cloud of deception.

Somebody once said that no one is tempted who does not want to be tempted. I wanted to be great and I wanted every part of what it would be to be a great prophet. I imagined myself along the lines of Derek Prince speaking to large crowds in auditoriums about scriptural truths that were revealed just to me.

But something bothered me during those three months: I studied the bible but never learned about Jesus and his ministry on earth. I never learned about the cross and the resurrection and what they meant. When I prayed about it, I felt like God was telling me that it was O.K. and that would come later. But after 3 months of this I read 1 John 4:1-3:

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world.

The inward battle was huge. I saw the ramifications of these verses very clearly. I once again had fallen into a lie. Even though I was reading the bible, I was being misled. That night I decided to start all over again in my faith. Up until that night I had gravitated toward just about every new teaching and preaching that came along because I wanted everything God had, but I needed to start all over.

This is where I started:

1. Jesus Christ in the flesh, death and resurrection is first and foremost in the faith.
2. One must be born again to receive eternal life.
3. There is a Baptism of the Holy Spirit for believers with the evidence of praying in tongues. I did refine this one in the following years, but that night I held strongly to it.

As I saw it, everything else had to go... all my experiences, training and teachings - even what I was learning in the bible. I trusted no one to give me truth unless it was founded in one of the three statements I mentioned above. I felt like I had to destroy the building of faith that I had constructed for a year and a half and that was hard for me. I took comfort in the fact that there was a lot of material in the rubble of that building that could be used to build a new building. I just didn't know what material would fit where.

I didn't think about it then, but months later I remembered the vision I had at Ray's house - the vision where I wanted to build my house NEAR a huge and glorious rock and I heard a voice, "Why don't you build ON the Rock?" The night I read 1 John 4 - the night I started all over was the night I began building on the Rock.