Awakening The Prophetic - An Interview With Tomi Arayomi

A

Welcome to Prayerstone podcast. We trust that it will be a blessing to you and that it will stir you and equip you to be all God calls you to be.

B

I'm so excited to be in Exeter today and I've got a really good friend with me. He's a prophet, He's a man of God. I've known him for a few years. I've seen God use him in incredible ways. So we're going to be having an incredible time discussing the prophetic. Tomi Arayomi, it's good to have you with us finally.

C

Good to be here with you too, yes.

B

So I followed your ministry for some time and you're quite popular online. And you know, you might say, you know, some people don't like you and people post, I mean, people post the kind of funny things anyway, generally. I mean, online, it can be really funny being online, just watching some of the crazy things people post, people say. However, I really appreciate, value, honor, the way God's been using you with the prophetic ministry. And this is not something new. It's been going on for a while. It's just of recent. There's been more of a influence, the acceleration that's come with it, even on YouTube and just the views and the. And the connection with the words you've been releasing, I think it's been kind of touching people in a whole new level, really. And God is like exposing you to the world in a whole new way. So it's really exciting to see that. But I also want to find out some of the journey, the process, how did you end up there? Now, most people don't know you're a twin, identical twin. They look exactly the same. And so you may have seen his twin thinking it was him, but they're two different people.

C

And the difference in us is our wives.

B

Yes, exactly, exactly. So it's just amazing, really. So what I want you to do is just talk me through. At what point did you start to realize that you were prophetic and that you were receiving things from God when you other people weren't receiving? At what point did you notice something was different going on with you and your brother?

C

I think growing up, I probably can't speak for my brother. His journey has been very different, but also very interlinked. So I can speak for the interlinkedness in our journey, but when I was five was when it really started, I was sitting, I lived in Glasgow, so believe it or not, you have the proper accent. So I lived in Glasgow. I was looking outside A window of my house. And I saw these planes just falling out of the sky as if the pilots had disappeared. And I saw these buildings just being burned down by cars crashing into them. And I knew for some reason that Christians had left those planes or left those cars. And I was seeing a picture of what I dubbed the apocalypse or the end of the world. I didn't have a word for it, but I knew it was the end. And then as I'm looking at this vision, I hear these angels singing a song my mom used to sing, you know, when the saints come marching in. And I hear them like a chorus. And it's the first time I heard the audible voice of God in my life was when I was five. And he said, one day you're going to lead my saints in. Wow. And it was that day that I knew there was something different. I called it God. I didn't call him Jesus. I didn't have a name for him until maybe I was 15 years old. And I was. My twin brother and I were doing exams that would determine whether we go into higher education or a comprehensive school.

B

And was this still in Glasgow?

C

No, this was. Now we're moving from a place called Lincolnshire to a place to Essex, to South End, and we were getting ready to go into a very top grammar school or into a comprehensive school. And I was always. My brother and I, I guess we were. We were academically brilliant. It just never manifested. And so our intelligence was delayed. I don't know what else to call it. But here we are, getting ready to sit this exam and anxiety just took us over. I remember just fumbling over the spelling of my name, for instance.

B

Wow.

C

And so grade basically came out. It was so bad. I mean, it was U, which means. Which means ungradable. Okay. It just means that you're lucky.

B

Unclassified.

C

You're lucky you know how to put your socks on or your shoes on. And so here I am, I'm in my house, in a Nigerian home, which you probably know well about. And in Nigerian upbringing, we bear the stripes of Christ, literally. And so a failed grade is terrible. In my family, professional doctors, both my parents are doctors and my sisters are dentists. And here we are, two boys failed. And my dad was so angry, he didn't even beat us that day. He was just so ashamed, so angry and so disappointed. I remember sitting on one side of my garden. We had a big house back then in Lincolnshire. I'm sitting on one side and I just said, God, if you're real, show me who you are tonight. I just don't want to live. I just want to die. I'm going to kill myself. I was so dead serious and angry and upset and lonely. And I didn't know my twin brother was praying the exact same prayer on the other side of the garden that night, had a dream I was crawling through a tiny hole in my house. But then I was overweight with asthma, and rickets, which is a deep. Is a vitamin D deficiency that makes your legs like boomerangs. So I'm slithering through this hole and the holes getting tinier and tinier. But I'm so glad that I got out. On the other side, I see a stage as far as the eye. I could see thousands of people chanting and shouting and rainbow colors going over them. And all of a sudden, I'm transported onto the stage, where I see myself skinnier, taller, as you are now. And I see myself here on this stage, and I'm like, finally, my rap career has begun. That was my first thought. I'm gonna be a rapper, and I'm gonna be famous like Tupac. But all of a sudden, they're not saying Tomi. The crowd is saying, jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And I could only hear it because I was transported on the stage. And there's me doing what I now know as preaching and prophesying. I didn't have a word for. Because I was raised as a Catholic, so I didn't have the word for it. And there's this being in the corner of the room who I now know as Jesus. And he said, my son, you asked me, and this is what I've called you to. So I wake up, my brother wakes up. I sit up, my brother sits up. And at the same time, he said, I had a dream. And my brother said, I crawled through a hole in my house. I came out the other side, and I saw myself on the stage. And I thought everybody said, at the same time, my rap career has begun because we both wanted to be rappers.

B

Wow.

C

And there is Jesus in the corner saying, my son, you asked me, and this is what I called you to. And it was the exact same dream, the exact same time, on the exact same night. And it was then that we started taking this journey seriously, the journey with God.

B

At that point, did you have a concept for, you know, relationship with Jesus, relationship with the father, or were you still in a place of. You didn't really know what was going on?

C

No, I had no clue. I had a relationship with my priest. I would say confession every now and again. Hail Mary and the rosemary beads a few times. So I was still very religious. And nothing really changed for me. Until one day my mom had a dream. And everything in our family has been dreams and visions, dreams and visions. My mom had a dream and God told her to get us out of that school. We went. My parents didn't want to drop us in a comprehensive school. Whether it was cultural embarrassment, I don't know what it was. So they took us to a private school, which was very expensive. I mean, ridiculous.

B

So your parents must be very rich.

C

They're blessed to the world. So they took us to a. A private school. I mean, type of private school where you play with Eton. That was. Who in football Playing.

B

Okay.

C

Very posh, very private, very whatever. And one day my mom just heard God say, get him out. And so she came midway through GCSEs and she was. She said, this is your last day here. And she came in right in the middle of me, asking the most popular girl in school if she'd be my girlfriend. And it was like, romeo and Juliet, I'm down there, she's up there. I'm like, isabelle Stevens, Yeah. Will you be my girlfriend? And all her girlfriends, her maidens are like. And she said, yes. And everyone's clapping the whole school. And then you just see this African woman come in and ruin the scene. And she's like, you're leaving now. And imagine that in a Nigerian accent. It was just complete bathos. The whole atmosphere broke and we left and we got trapped up in this school that was literally a caravan. Imagine going from a school where lunch is filet mignon to a school where lunch is beans on toast, spaghetti hoops in a tin. And it was so humbling and so annoying to us that we were so angry with my mum that she. On the same day, it wasn't. Next day, same day, we went to this new school. And mid GCSE is, which you don't do. But it was then that we met a girl that would change our lives forever. And her name was Ezekiela. And we met Ezekiela one day because she was running down what's called the staff path at school. Only the teachers are allowed down that path. Everybody has to go the wrong way. So we see her running down and we're like, why is she running down here? She runs so fast because she didn't want to get caught by the teachers taking the staff path that she flips up in the air, falls on a banana, and her wig falls off and she bangs onto the floor. This was How God introduced this to the woman that would lead us to Jesus Christ. Okay. Talk about divine intervention. So he helped her up, and she just loved the Lord. She's the daughter of a bishop. And so she just started telling us about Jesus. And we were like. We were two kids who had encountered the Lord, obviously, but we weren't taking it that seriously. You know, we were taking it seriously, but not seriously enough. And so we told her our experience. She said, that was Jesus. Like, what's wrong with you guys? My brother gave his life to Christ straight away, like that. Next day, my brother's preaching to everything that moves.

B

Wow.

C

And because we're identical twins, it's bad prayer. When you look the same and you have the one that's preaching and the other one that's rebelling, it looks really bad. And so my brother prayed me into salvation. It wasn't long before his grades started going up and my grades started going down. And then we were differentiating as twins. He's having success and I'm having failure. And so I asked the same girl that preached to him to preach to me. She came at lunchtime with her Dakes Bible, you know, the one you have for the heathen. And she's going at me, and it's not penetrating. Nothing's going through, and she can tell. So she grabs me by the shirt and she said, you're not listening to me. She said, you know what? God's gonna show you himself. And so that night, we were on a long journey back from Manchester, actually. So we were leaving Manchester, visiting friends, coming back into Essex. And somewhere along the way, I think it was the M6 or something, one of the roads, I heard this loud voice just call my name, Tomi. And my eyes were closed because I thought it was my dad. And usually nine times out of ten, if my dad's calling you. So ask about three things. Studies, studies, and studies in that order. And so I just closed my eyes. And then second time, called my name again, Tommy. And this time a white flash came over my eyes. And I opened my eyes. I was blinded for a second. I said, hey, dad. Dad, what happened? He goes, what do you mean, what happened? I said, you just got hit by a speeding camera. He said, no. I said, okay, but you called me. And he said, I didn't call you. And so I woke up.

B

Was your brother in the car this morning?

C

Everyone's asleep. I woke everybody up and I said, bro, did you call me? He said, no. I woke my mom, everybody. Nobody called me, so I'm Getting ready to go back to sleep. And I hear this voice again. Audibly, audibly. It'll be the second time I hear the audible voice of God out of four. So to me again, I opened my eyes. I said, who is this? He says, this is Jesus. Said, today you were supposed to die. The enemy planned to kill you, but I'm going to save you and call you into the ministry. I said, okay, so wake your family up. I woke everybody up. And I'm hearing voices, by the way, tell, everyone, put their seatbelts on. Say, everybody, put your seatbelts on. So why. I don't. No. This is my first ever prophetic word. I was like, everyone, put your seatbelts on. I said, just do it. Everyone put their seatbelts on. Then the voice said, now yell, watch out. I yelled at the top of my lungs, watch out. My dad was so startled by my shot, he switched lanes. Moment he switched lanes, five cars crashed into each other in the lane we had just left, including the police car. And we missed it by a fraction of a second. They pulled over. I was like, how did you know that? I was like, God told me so I was in the backseat of that car. I gave my life to Jesus.

B

Wow, that's dramatic.

C

Yeah. God's going to get your attention.

B

That's amazing. Now, with the prophetic ministry you have, which is really, really significant. I mean, you're one of the most accurate prophetic people I have known or I know at the moment in terms of just watching you prophesy over people, speak over people. Have you always found that gift that accurate? And I want to explore how God speaks to you and how a lot of believers experience God speaking to them. Just breaking it down, really. Can you just dissect that a bit? Have you always heard God that accurately? Are there times where you've missed it? You thought you heard God and you didn't? Just expand on that.

C

Okay. So there are lots of times where I thought that I missed it, and other times where I most. I think most people don't miss God. I think most people misinterpret God. I think, you know, when God speaks, He speaks to us like we're children. That's why he says, if you want to receive the kingdom of heaven, you have to become like a little child again. Children learn through pictures. They don't learn through words. The first language of a child is pictures, and it's the language of heaven. Dreams and visions, images that God chooses to imprint on you. And then he gives you the childlike Desire to decipher stories for hidden mysteries of the kingdom. So that's why he says, when there's a prophet among you, I speak to him in parables and in secrets and in mysteries. And a parable really is a parallel fable or something in this realm used to describe something in that realm. And so when I'm hearing God or seeing God, so often, if it's not clear speech, so often it's God's parable to me in a vision. And so I say God said, or I say, I saw. But I'm so often not sharing with the person what exactly I saw. I'm sharing what God's saying to me off of what I saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I don't need to say, I saw you and I saw a daffodil coming out of your head and blah, blah, blah. When you learn to interpret God, you begin to understand his codes and his language. It's like Joseph saying, well, seven years, seven years of corn, that's seven years. So. So you learned to decipher his communication language. Because one thing I learned about God is he doesn't talk, he communicates. And when I miss God, it's because I miss his communication. And I go for what he's saying and not for what he's trying to communicate to me. And so becoming more spiritually intelligent, I think is probably more accurate than saying becoming more accurate. Hearing God, I just grew my spiritual intelligence. I grew my ability to deciphen his mysteries to the point that I think God started just recently becoming more literal to me than figurative. And God becomes clearer to his friends. And that's what we learn in the book of Exodus 13. A prophet among you, I do this. But when you become my friend, I speak to you intimately and face to face. And so God always starts off symbolically because he's trying to coax us into friendship. It's not, I'm better than you because I get plain speech. He's trying to coax me into friendship by understanding his communication. You know, he tells me, when you make the tabernacle, put red and purple and white. And this because God's trying to communicate the expression of Christ in the tabernacle and the tapestry of it. And it's the same thing when God communicates to the prophet, and he communicates through artistic designs just to express the fullness. Like, if God wanted you to avoid this person because they're dangerous for you, he'd show you them. Then they turn into a dragon, breathe fire at you, and you'd be like, what is this? And it's God trying to communicate with the intensity of what he's trying to get you to avoid. And I think we misinterpreted the divine language of heaven. So have I got it wrong? Yes, plenty of times. I think, just to give you one example, we used to run these clinics and they were like hospitals, you know, but people would come with a dream they'd had, or they come looking for direction and we would interpret their dream or give them direction. My late spirit. One of my late spiritual mentors, Bishop Joe Ibogi, was a real modern day Joseph. He was a Joseph, he was a best selling author of Dreams of Vision. So he called me to do it with him and he'd just sit people down. They'd come with the dream they had. He'd interpret their dreams as part of his conference and we'd prophesy with them. They'd go home feeling encouraged and stuff. So this woman comes in and she's like, I had this dream and she's a pregnant woman. You can tell she's at least six months pregnant. She had a dream and she's quite distraught and emotional and she's like, in this dream, my husband was in a living room with a photocopy machine. And on top of the photocopy machine, he was having an affair with a woman called Tiffany. Now in my carnal mind, when I woke up, when she told me the dream, I was like, woo, that boy's cheating on you. So I was like, well, what did you do? She said, well, when I woke up, I kicked him out of the house. Like she was that. Have you ever been convinced by a dream you had? You're just angry with the person. She got so convicted that she kicked the man out the house.

B

Wow.

C

And so I was like, well, you know, that's it, you know, God, he saved her, he warned her. But Bishop Joe, I mean, he was always, he really taught me about community, communicating, the heart of God. And he said, you know, this is a very simple dream. He'd always say, this is simple. That was his thing. This is simple. This is simple. I'm looking, I'm like, how? Like. Anyway, so he says, what does your husband do? She said, oh, he works in this office and he does an office job. She goes, oh, so how do you feel about his job? Oh, I can't stand his job. Oh, tell me why I feel like his job is more important than ours. And it's like he's, he's always too Busy to take care of us. And it's like he values his work more than me, and he always brings his work home. And he said, well, you know, that might be why the photocopy is in your house. She goes, well, what about the woman? Her name's Tiffany. And he said, well, have you checked what Tiffany means? And so she opened a dictionary, and it means God's glory will manifest.

B

Wow.

C

The dream means you feel like your husband's job is more important than you, and like he's almost having an affair with his workplace, and he values his job more than you, and he brings his work home. But in the midst of this, if you'll hold on, God's glory is gonna manifest. Now here's me completely misinterpreting God. I would have told her, girl, you heard a word from the Lord, leave that joke. But because he was so in the heart of God, and I think people miss being in the heart of God.

B

Yeah.

C

And because you're so in the heart of God, it taught me something about filtering God's voice with God's heart and passing it by the filter of his heart to see the expression of him and how he's reflecting that back to that person. And that changed me forever.

B

Absolutely. That's powerful. I do think there's something about the bride of Christ and sons of God. Like, we're called to be the bride of Christ, obviously, as the body of Christ, as believers, but we're also the sons of God who are called to move in the power of God. So it's similar to what you're saying in that we're not just called to move in the power. We're called to have his heart. So as the bride, we have access to his heart. As the sons, we have access to his power. And we have to have the two going together, otherwise we're going to be in trouble.

C

Yeah, no, I agree with you 100%.

B

Now, I want to ask you something about just the way you move in the prophetic, because it seems to me like you can almost prophesy at will. Now, I know other prophets that you know, thus says the Lord, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How does that work? Do you just tap into a stream that's already there? You look in the spirit realm and you just download? Or is it. How does the prophetic. Because I know they're the seer prophets. And then there's the nabi prophets. I believe that. Just speak. Can you just unpack that for us?

C

Okay, so the seer prophets are what you call the roe. The Bible says he who is now called Nabi was formerly called roe. I don't actually like the separation of powers. I believe that if you're a prophet, you should be able to flow in both streams. I think there's a lot we're missing as nabi prophets because we're not seeing. And I think when 450 prophets all prophesied wrong and one Micaiah prophesied right, the difference was I saw.

B

Wow.

C

The pivotal moment was the seer anointing and nabis, because we're so inspired in our prophecy, sometimes we just scoop off the top and we don't take time to see or investigate. You really look at Isaac and the Bible says his eyes were about to go dim and he's about to call forth the blessing on his son Esau. And he says, hey, is that really you? So he smells him. Then he says, come close and he touches it. Then he says, come close and he hears his voice. Hey. The voice is like the voice of Jacob, but the hands are like the hands of Esau. What's he trying to do? Discern God. But what let him down?

B

His sight. Wow, that's powerful.

C

I don't think Samuel was trying to establish a distinction between two types of prophets. I think he was trying to establish a distinction between false prophetic and true prophetic because witches were also called seers, necromancers were also called seers. So in establishing the school of the prophets, he was really just trying to break it away from that main. Now, are there people who specialize more? Yes, but I think that's because they strengthened more. And that's why I think we need the school of the prophets to re engage muscles that haven't been activated. Otherwise people go, well, I'm a seer. That's really my gift. And I'm a Na'. Vi. That's really my gift. And I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know if that was what God was trying to establish. So I try to operate in both things. I tried to go right in between both. Now where I'm strongest is the nabi. Just to articulate the rowe or the seer needs to have an encounter before they speak.

B

Yeah.

C

So you go to a rower and you go, have you got a word for me? They're like, no, but I'll pray and maybe tomorrow I'll come back with a word for you. You get to a nabi and you say, have you got a word for me? The Nabbe needs to Speak before they have a word.

B

Okay, okay.

C

So what God said, open, wind your mouth, and I will fill it. So I don't actually believe God intended for them to be separate. So when you look at the nabi, the nabi needs to speak before they see. The rowe needs to see before they speak. And so for a rowe prophet, the most frustrating thing you can do to them is go to them and go, hey, have you got a word for me? Because, truth be told, they'll need to go back to God or into the spirit, have an encounter, and then they need to speak that over you. The nabi has the encounter by speaking it, and so they speak it by faith. And then they receive more as they deposit the part the spirit of God has given to them to speak. The danger of the nabi is that they scoop off the top too easily. And in that, they don't take time to investigate the complexity that the seer has the ability to investigate. By having an encounter with heaven, is God going to deliver the enemy into your hands? Probably. But is there also a lying spirit involved in that that you're not discerning? The source is the most important part, not necessarily the revelation itself. Where is it source? Because God will only bring to manifest his revelation. And so if it's sourced in a lying spirit, it's not going to manifest. And so I think nabis are the most deceivable of the prophetic because there's a flow that they rely too heavily on. And if they rely too heavily on it, they don't take enough time to spend time investigating with the Lord what he might be showing them. The weakness of the seer is communication. Most seers don't know how to turn what they see into communicable language. And so they do stuff like this. You know, they have a dream and maybe somebody died, and they're covered in blood, and they wake up. Go to the pastor that week, hey, pastor, I just had a dream about you last night. Night you were covered in blood and you went in a coffin, and the coffin crashed down a hill. And God's warning you from pride. You know, that might not be what God is saying about that dream. Or I saw you on a toilet seat and you were just. You were just. You were naked from the top. You know, most pastors, when they see the watchman in their church, they just go in the opposite direction every time they see that person. Not because they're wrong in what they see, they're wrong in the communication of what they're seeing. And I Find seer prophets have a hard task turning heavenly things into earthly languages. And this is why God told Habakkuk, write down the vision. And I know we've pastorized that message, have a vision for your life. No, no, that word is a prophetic word. It means write down the revelation, the prophetic mystery. Seers and watchmen need to learn how to write it down first. Make it plain. So plain that anybody that reads it, any herald that, that sees that vision can go, oh, that's exactly what that means, and they'll run thereby. And so the seer prophet needs to go from seeing to interpreting, then to articulating. The nabi prophet literally goes through articulating. And because there's a spokesman anointing on the nabi, they're more receivable because they have an articulation gift or a gift of communication or what we call utterance. It comes with their anointing, whereas the seer doesn't. And so for the seer, it's not a harder task. It's just one of those things where good prophetic stewardship begins with writing stuff down. And then it moves into not leaning on your own understanding. And that's so hard for most seers to do. They see somebody and then they see a cat. And depending on what race you are, a cat can mean two different things. You know, to my western friends, a cat is fun, cute and friendly. To my eastern and African friends, a cat is a witch. You know, it's your in laws moving back into your house. And so you can't lean on your own understanding. You have to learn to see us, to acknowledge God in everything. Like Jeremiah. What do you see? I see a fig tree. Oh, that's Israel. You know, Jeremiah didn't come out and go, oh, I just see you like a fig and you're God's fig. And oh, you're so figgy. That's what see us do. But you're so figgy. Oh, you're just God's fig. And God's fig garden. Oh, whoa. Hallelujah. That's not what he did. He investigated. And God's like, oh, that's Israel. I'm watching over my word to perform it. What do you see? I see a boiling pot. Oh, oh, it's not hunger. It's not a pipe dream. That's the enemy coming.

B

Yeah, that's really interesting to me. I want to explore taking that a bit further. I want to explore the move of God on the earth right now in the prophetic move. And you know I know that God has placed Nigeria on your heart. I know there's some things stirring your heart for Nigeria, and I know you travel a lot and I think we've had conversations about the abuse of the prophetic. Do you want to comment on what you've seen? Not necessarily going into naming names or anything like that, just what are some of the manifestations of the prophetic that has caused people to sometimes be turned off and not wanting to engage, whereas they've actually not realized they're also shutting down what God is wanting to do because they've kind of thrown the baby out of the baffle thinking, okay, well, you know, if that's what the prophetic is. Well, I'm not that or I'm not into that, or, you know, prophet asking them for money. I don't know what. What are some of the things you've seen that you are grieved about that you feel God's called you to bring order to. Because one thing I love about you is how you carry the prophetic ministry. And I think for some people who've experienced it the wrong way, it can be healing for them to see someone else carry the right way.

C

Well, thank you for that. I think when, when I go into Nigeria or Africa in general, even the uk, any continent I go into, people always go, kante. I just got back from Nigeria, for instance, and I had probably four people go, I thought you were a false prophet. I thought you were fake, or I thought you were one of those. And I'm like, what is one of those?

B

Yeah, what does one of those mean? We want to know what is one of those.

C

But I get it. I think what, what's happened with the prophetic is it's been thrown out because. For two reasons. Mainly what I call the Balaam prophetic, which is the transactional one, which is pay for play. You know, I'll give you a prophecy, you give me some money and I'll give you more prophecy. You give me some money and God speaking to 10 people to sow this much, and I'll give you another prophecy because of this. And that is a very Balaam type prophetic. It's very transactional, it's very demonic, it's not scriptural.

B

Now, would you say some of those people that function in. That started out right, and somehow have partnered with another spirit?

C

Of course. And that's the best way to describe it. In fact, some of them still prophesy by the Holy Ghost as well.

B

So they're prophesying because again, that could Explain. Explain the scripture where it says, I prophesied in your name. And he says, get away from me. So is it that at some point something was right and then they partnered with the enemy and now they're prophesying, but from a different source and they might even be accurate?

C

Yeah, it's. I think they're sharing a source. I'll give credence to that. The Bible says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. When you're mantled with the prophetic, it's upon you. It's the anointing that works upon you. The Bible talks about the anointing that works within me and the anointing that works upon me. Most people focus. When you lose focus, you really focus on the anointing that works upon you, which is charismatic. Doesn't affect your character, doesn't make you a nicer person, doesn't even set you free from sin, sets other people free. The Lord has anointed me for them to bind up them. So it's not a gift for you, it's a gift for them. Absolutely. The issue is that I've been challenged with is, can you have a demonic spirit in you and the Holy Spirit on you? Well, when you look at Saul and you look at the fact that a demon came and entered him, but yet the spirit of God came upon him and he prophesied, is it possible that God is so merciful that he will still let the anointing, which is irrevocable, operate on you and the gifts of the callings which he can't take back, operate on you? And yet you still have a familiar and demonic spirit operating in you. And I call that a mixture. And so many prophets have opted for the mixture. They. They moved into a place where. And it's so easy to happen. I used to judge those people until I stepped into that almost place myself. And I'll tell you what happened to me. One day, I was standing in front of Bishop Garlington, and he said, I've got to introduce you to my friend, and you gotta prophesy of him. So I'm like, okay, it's Bishop Garlington. I'll do what you tell me to do. So I meet his friend, and it just so happens his friend is Randy Clark. And so the wind just left me. Hey, this is Tony. He's an amazing prophet. Come prophesy. Come prophesy.

B

Prophesy.

C

Oh, dear God. And all of a sudden, it was accurate. It was great. It was, you know, his whole team were crying. They're just like, wow, this is amazing. I posted on Instagram and then I just felt like the conviction of the Lord hit me so hard. I deleted it.

B

I saw that post. Actually, I didn't know you deleted it.

C

Okay, I deleted it. And I wept and I wept and I wept for days. I didn't stop weeping. And I was wondering what happened on the inside of me. And I realized what happened was I was performing because I really did. I wanted so much to please them that I slipped into performance without knowing it. I was using the Holy Ghost to my advantage to get more platform. And when the Holy Spirit's heart is broken inside of you, you felt it. It's like your whole everyone could say that was really great. And you go home, you know, you've just broken his heart. And I went home and I wept and I wept. And he said something to me. It changed me. He said, tomi, be careful that you don't have more invitation than revelation. And I realized I was getting all these invites, all these really big places that I didn't have any word of the Lord for, I didn't have any revelation for. So what do you do in that place when you've got bills to pay, real needs, but you have more invitations to big places that can give you honorariums that are honorable, but the revelation just isn't there. And in that moment, there's a temptation that you have to refute, and it's a temptation to supplement for the paycheck or to supplement and compromise and say, well, God understands. And it's a very fine line between being a true sent one from God who was running so well, and then to be caught in the trappings of success. And so I had to pull back after that whole thing and say to, I mean, my team now, look, and you ask them, they say, why are you not going to that one? Why are you canceling that one? Why? If I don't have anything, I'm not carrying anything for that nation or that region. People Write on my YouTube. What about this place? Have you got a word for this place? No. You know, because God only speaks to you about what you're in love with. And if I don't fall in love with a nation or a region or I don't spend time scoping it unless for the mercy of God, it's not going to change my focus to something else. And so I've had some really epic invitations this year that are not part of the focus of the year.

B

So when you say epic invitations. Invitations for you to come and release the word of the Lord.

C

Epic people.

B

And are those epic people inviting you with the mindset of, obviously, you're a prophet, and we want you to come and release the word. God is speaking over our church, over our region, over our nation. And you're like, God hasn't given me anything.

C

Right? Yeah. It's either God hasn't given me anything, or God's just. You see, as a prophet, you have to be sent. When you're sent, there's something backing you that even when you're nabbing and flowing, it's a different thing because you're sent. And when you're not sent, I call it your went. You're not sent. You went. You just went. I've been there. I've been in places where I just went. Because the who's who of the zoo was there.

B

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C

And you just feel dirty and cheap and like you've just cheated the Holy Ghost or something. And that was the biggest caution of me last year when God, like you said, poured gasoline on the prophetic and ignited it. The biggest thing for me was, who is this person I've become? I didn't like him.

B

Yeah.

C

I didn't want to look in the mirror at that person. I was like, I've traded something for something. And it wasn't a false humility. It was really, I was robbing God of the integrity that I'd spent years investing and just securing the purity of it. And all of a sudden, a name and a face became more important than just stewarding what the spirit of God gives.

B

You know, it's so profound what you're talking about. And I often share this as well with my team in that when Jesus started his ministry, the first temptation was to turn stone to bread to prove if you are the son of God, perform. And, you know, the amazing thing is he could have done it. So I said to people, if you were there and you saw him turn stone to bread, you probably got out your iPhone, recorded it, put it on Instagram, put it on Facebook, Twitter. Man of God turned stone to bread. And that would have been the start of the Stone to Bread Ministries International. But no one would have known that he would have been functioning from a dysfunction, which was to prove. So, and what I like about this, what you're saying, is it's very easy for prophets who are called of God, anointed to God, to slip into the flesh, and then something comes on them that they started out right now they're in performance. And the enemy, they're vulnerable in the spirit, basically. And the enemy can easily land on that gift and become something else. So. So we're all vulnerable if we're not staying in the sacred place for him to challenge us, realign our priorities. It's so important. So as opposed to just going around and saying, hey, that's a false prophet now, yes, we need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and just be cautious about who's laying hands on us and all that kind of stuff. But I think there's also a need to watch ourselves that we are in that secret place. Because what you just talked about, I guarantee you, probably every minister understands. When I say minister, I mean the people who serve God in ministry on platforms understand the pressure in that context. You know, it's so delicate. So what would you say is the way forward for the body of Christ right now that is stuck with the bad manifestation and almost had a bad taste. And I've kind of said, you know what? I'm done with it. Maybe a pastor is watching right now that had a prophet come to their church and, you know, and it all went bad. How would you speak to someone like that? To not throw the prophetic away, but to almost open their hearts to realize there is the true. There might have been a wrong use or abuse, but there is an authentic, true manifestation of the prophetic that God wants to release in our generation.

C

I love the analogy you gave about baby. Throw the baby out with the bathwater because you have kids. And our son, when he was about. I'll never forget it. Maybe eight months old. We're on our way to the embassy to get our passports. We need. And he. My wife is in the back of the car. We're due to travel to Nigeria, I think, in a week or two. And he's just pooed everywhere. Like.

B

No, I had one of those recently. I know what you mean. Explosion.

C

And he was wearing white, so it all went through the white.

B

Yeah. And so then what?

C

My wife does what any mother does in the backseat of the car. She unstraps him, takes him out, and she's undoing him. And she asks me to slow down, and she's undoing his thing, and then he pull it off all over the car. I mean, the car smelled fat.

B

Duh.

C

And then she was smelling bad. And she joked to me, she was like, let's just throw him away. Cause, you know, he's so dirty that you just. You just don't know, should I wash the baby or do you throw the baby out as well. You know, just. It was the most terrible day. Just annoying. Cause we still went to the embassy smelling like feces. But we went to a shop first, got new clothes and it was just enough. But the prophetic is been reformed in the 80s. It's still a baby ministry in its reformation phase. Anytime something's being birthed, there's always going to be mess. You know, before your baby came, you bought nappies, wipes, probably you know how expensive they were until you bought them. And then you keep buying them, they get more expensive. Why do you buy these things? Because you, you know that if you want a cute baby, you're gonna have to deal with the poo.

B

Yeah, absolutely. That's good. That's good.

C

Where the oxen are, there's much strength, but there's also much mess. If you want oxen, if you want oxen, they make work light, you've got loads of them. You pull a plow. One farmer doing a little plowing versus 12 oxen, great. But there's also gonna be poo.

B

Mmm.

C

It's the same thing with the prophetic reformation and restoration back to the church and the apostolic. There's. You have to buy nappies, you have to buy wipes, you have to get prepared. He said, we don't want the prophetic in our church. Well, you just, you just don't want a hatchery, you don't want a birthing center for God's newness to come in. And when God's newness comes in, you have to clean. Someone's gonna have to take care of the mess that it comes with. And so are there horror stories with the prophetic? Absolutely. I've heard most, if not all of them. There's some really brutal ones. And I know you asked me to go into some examples. You know, God have mercy. There's extreme and then there's extreme. And I've heard of people, you know, talk to people and then they say, God told me to lie on you. Like Elijah laid on the, on the young boy and he came back to life. But then they raped the person whilst they're lying on them. I heard those terrible stories of the prophetic. But like any ministry, even the restoration of the church itself came through its own battles and infighting and killing of people on both sides versus Protestants or Christians. Birthings are messy. When Jesus was born, first firstborn children were being slaughtered. We didn't throw Jesus out because babies were being killed on the day he was born. There's always mess with Birthing and we have to be able to buy nappies.

B

Wow. Wow. Apostle prophet told me that was incredible. That's amazing. I'd love you to pray for people watching right now. Maybe some of them are hurt from similar things you've just talked about or some of them just want to grow in the prophetic. And what you said has been challenging, inspiring, giving us some insight into how to strengthen ourselves spiritually to be prophetic people. Because we're all called to prophesy. You may all prophesy. We should desire the gift of prophecy. Now. We appreciate that people are called into the office of the prophet. Not everyone is calling to that five fold expression, but we're all called to prophesy. And could you just pray over people watching right now, whether those that are hurt or those that also just wanting to grow in this grace.

C

I just want to pray for you who are watching today who have been wounded by the prophetic or you have been told that the prophetic is dead and somehow you stifled your prophetic growth or quenched the fire that was on the inside of you before. I believe there is a prophetic awakening happening in this season. I believe it is marked by the gift of frustration that God has placed on the inside of you and that you're watching this today because you know John 10:27, my sheep hear my voice. So Father, I just repent on behalf of anywhere, anybody who's ever been wounded or any leader that's ever wounded anybody in the prophetic ministry. Lord, I ask you for your healing anointing to begin to flow now into, into their very homes, their cars, wherever they're watching this right now. Lord, would you heal the wounds of the past? Lord, would you help us not to have high expectations or low expectations, but reasonable expectations of things being birthed, being messy. And Lord, churches, pastors who are watching this everywhere, may there be healing in the prophetic. Lord, I pray, take us from a theology about what was dead to a kingdom focus of what is now living alive and present today and begin to bring these apostolic prophetic fathers and leaders back into the house. Lord, the false is only evidence that the true exists out there somewhere. So Lord, I pray in the midst of, of the counterfeit that Lord you would raise up 7,000 authentic just like you did in Elijah's day. In Jesus name, Amen.

B

Wow. Wow, that was incredible. Just amazing wisdom. A lot of insight coming from you and people can find out more. You can find out more about Tomi's ministry online. It's very easy to find just type in Tomi into YouTube, Google Tomi or Iomi and you find lots of his prophecies and videos. I really honor and respect him a lot. So thank you for joining us and I'd love you to join us again on this program. But God bless you and choose to grow in your relationship with God. The intimate place that's so important, that's the foundation for this.

A

Thank you for tuning in to prayerstone podcast. We hope you have enjoyed today's edition. For more information and teaching and if you'd like to get connected, please visit www.prayerstorm.

C

Or.