Prophets Without Borders

Prophetic

Fasten your seat belt…

Prophetic
Grab your coffee, put your cat or dog out and say to God, “Hineni – Here I am.”

Here we go. Peter stands up in Acts 2 and does something bold and radical. He doesn’t try to explain away what’s happening around them; the noise and bewilderment, including the optics – seeing tongues of fire resting on everyone’s head. He just quotes Joel.

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy.”

All flesh. Not all Jewish flesh. Not all theologically trained flesh. Not all flesh that sounds like us or worships like us or comes from where we come from. All of it. Nothing is locked down. With eyes wide open, Joel saw this coming eight centuries before Pentecost, and Peter recognises it the moment the ball lands at their feet – the Spirit of prophecy is going, has gone, global, and nothing is going to contain it.

2026 is barely half way through. Haven’t we had enough challenges in last few years? Well let me fill your plate.

I want to suggest that we have a prophetic poverty problem in the Western church, and it’s largely self-inflicted. We’ve curated our prophetic input from a remarkably small pool – same streams, same conferences, same cultural post  codes. And we’ve called it discernment. What it often actually is, is comfort. Sip your coffee and let me ramble on a bit…

The unknown brother in Nigeria isn’t a lesser prophet waiting for Western validation. The unknown sister interceding in the underground church in Iran isn’t a footnote to the real story. You probably know more stories than me, without mentioning names and places. They are the fulfilment of Joel’s words. They are the ‘all flesh’ that Peter stood up and declared. God is speaking through them – with weight, with precision, with a perspective on his kingdom that we simply cannot generate from inside our own safe, cultural moment.

What we lose when we ignore that is not just breadth. We lose accuracy. Prophetic ministry that only ever reflects one cultural lens will eventually start to mistake that lens for the gospel itself. It happens slowly. It’s happening now in places. The encouragement is, a heart that is open to such distant challenge is a heart that draws on the providence of God for him to begin connecting those dots, opportunities, destiny.

Something else is happening too. And it matters more.

There is a rising sense – felt across multiple streams (not just Catalyst or NewFrontiers), multiple continents, multiple generations of intercessors who don’t know each other – that we are on the edge of a revelation of Christ and His purposes brought by genuine, authentic prophetic ministry that the church has not yet seen. An exhilarating fresh breath being blown into in the lungs of the prophetic community. Not a new Christ. The same Christ; but an astonishing unveiling of his rightful, immeasurable supremacy, his glory, his absolute Lordship over all creation, in a measure that will produce something we’ve largely lost: genuine awe, wonder and delight. The kind that makes you fall silent before you fall to your knees or lay on the carpet.

This is what authentic prophetic ministry is for. Not platform. Not personality. Not the ambiguous impressionism that we all know about, the elephant in the room nobody wants to name: social media. Instead, Holy Spirit-imparted revelation, carried by men and women who have been with God, that points – always, without deviation or wobbling – to the overwhelming, stunning glory of Jesus Christ. Isaiah testifies, “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”

In response Amos insists, “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” The Lion of Judah has roared – is roaring – will roar. The prophetic community doesn’t manufacture that sound. They carry it. Why? Because they’ve heard it.

When those Spirit-inspired words land – when genuine, cross-cultural, Christ-exalting prophetic ministry comes together in the gathered church – what it produces, is not hype or emotional manipulation. It produces worship. Undistracted, focused, costly worship, accompanied by faith that acts, courage that steps forward, obedience that doesn’t negotiate, and a servant-heartedness that makes the watching world stop and stare.

Joel’s vision was never a metaphor. It was a mandate. All flesh. Every nation. It’s nothing less than the whole earth filling with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Absolutely, we’re not there yet, but… the Lion has roared. And across this round earth, in languages we don’t speak, through vessels we haven’t noticed, the prophets are answering.

Trump Is Not Jehu

In case you are wondering.

Trump Is Not Jehu

Who do people say you are? It’s a similar question Jesus asked the disciples of Himself. Comparisons can throw a few odd things into the mix. What about a present-day comparison of Donald Trump with King Jehu? It’s probably a bit unfair on Jehu and may incur a higher trade tariff on the UK. I can understand the instinct to do so though. The church feels side-lined, the culture hostile, and then along comes a disruptive, bull-in-a-china-shop figure and someone opens 2 Kings and says, there. There you go, that’s your man. Sent by God – God’s wrecking ball.

Trump? Really?

Such comparison demands a response, not because of politics but because of Scripture. And also because the prophetic community I love is doing itself serious damage every time we reach for a biblical typecast without following the whole story to the end.

Let’s start with the obvious.

Jehu’s anointing was genuine. Elisha’s young prophet arrives, clears the room, pours oil on his head and declares the word of the Lord with terrifying clarity: “I anoint you king over Israel… you shall strike down the house of Ahab your master” (2 Kings 9:6–7). Then he runs. Minutes later, after a few blasts of a trumpet, Jehu is king.

That’s how quickly God can turn a life. Commander at breakfast, king by nightfall. Jehu delivered on his commission, fired up his tanks and in the roar of military might, drew his bow, and Joram fell in the field of Naboth, the very place where innocent blood had been shed. The judgment landed exactly where God said it would.

God used Jehu. Completely. That should not be disputed.

But then, disaster. Jehu kept the golden calves at Bethel. That shiny metal…

“Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam… which he made Israel to sin” (2 Kings 10:29). He had zeal for God’s judgment and none for God’s presence, executed a commission without entering communion, functioned as an instrument but never became a friend. Scripture does not soften that, and neither should we.

Friendship with God leaves marks. It marked Abraham, who interceded for cities he could have walked away from. It marked David, who sinned grievously and came back not with spin but with a broken and contrite heart. It marked Moses, who stood in the gap for people ready to stone him. These men were not perfect, but they were pursued. The hunger was visible. The brokenness was real.

No one is asking for perfection, but for fruit. Not platform. Not performance. Not winning. Not a deal, even if it is a very good one – the greatest ever.. Just fruit. The kind that grows in a life that has been undone before God and remade in His presence.

That fruit takes time to recognise. It is a process. But in drawing this comparison, we are not being asked to observe a process. We are being asked to declare an anointing. And that requires evidence that goes beyond shared enemies or political outcomes.

There is also something else going on here, and it needs naming. This is a form of spiritual navel gazing. Not discernment, but projection. We are not letting Scripture speak. We are bending it toward our moment so that it baptises what we already want.

Scripture is clear. Jehu was Jehu. We are not looking for an encore of biblical characters. These lives stand as examples for us, those upon whom the ends of the ages have come. They are patterns and warnings, not roles to be recast in every generation.

Once you see this, the comparison starts to collapse. You can find something of Jehu in decisive leaders, something of Abraham in men of faith, something of Samson in raw strength, something of Obadiah in quiet faithfulness. But that proves the point. These are fragments of fallen humanity and common grace, not titles to be assigned. If everyone can be made to fit, then the pattern is no longer doing any work.

What grieves me most is what this does to the genuine prophetic voice. When we attach divine typology to political allegiance, we do not just risk being wrong. We risk becoming unrecognisable. We become people who cannot be trusted to call things as they are, because it is obvious we are calling things as we want them to be.

God absolutely uses unlikely people. Yourself included. Scripture is clear on that. But an unlikely instrument is not the same thing as a friend of God. Cyrus was an instrument. He did not know the Lord. That did not make the instrument less real. It simply made it less than some claim.

And Scripture does not let us forget how God deals with His people when they harden themselves. He raises nations. He humbles pride. He sends what we would never choose in order to turn our hearts back to Him. Babylon, as usual is never far from the story – not because God delights in judgment, but because He is relentless in mercy. He will never leave His people to their own devices and initiative.

Jehu received four generations on the throne for the obedience he did offer. God is that faithful to partial faithfulness. But Jehu died without knowing God. That is not a legacy to celebrate. That is a category to handle with fear before placing anyone in it.

Donald Trump is not Jehu, but he still has time to repent of his sin, put his faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour, and grow in faith and obedience, bearing much fruit not for himself, but for Jesus Christ.