“If God calls you, then whom else will you hear?”

I was created by the Lord to be a prophet, but I didn’t understand it.  I was called to be a prophet at twenty years of age, but I didn’t fully believe it until I was forty five.  I thought it was my imagination.  Actually it was God’s imagination, calling and preparing a way for me. A Messiah class prophet comes as an incarnation of the Divine; they are called Manifestations.  These guys can heal on touch, walk on water, raise the dead, part the seas, feed five thousand people from a crust of bread they found in their pocket.  They know your name before they meet you, and you already know their names.  They terminate some religions and begin others, and each brings to the world what is referred to as a Dispensation.  They sit in the House of the Divine, the Twelfth House, and serve the greater glory of the One God, whose name is so holy that no man can pronounce or endure it. 

The prophet is their servant; they are like towel boys to the messiah class prophets.   They sit in the eleventh house and listen to the masters.  These prophets are messengers who bring continued visions, corrections, and periodic updates to the dispensations already existing.  They range from the Isaiah and Hosea class prophets all the way down to Avante Garde artists.  In this world a prophet is a person with vision.  But they have to wrestle with the Almighty in order to come to know Him, His terms, and His vision of what society needs.  Then they have to wrestle with the gods of this world to inspire change.  I am one of the eleventh house towel boys, a janitor in the hallways of Their peerless grace and wisdom.  I do not come with my own vision, but continuing confirmation and a periodic update of Their vision.  They have written into my heart a story, and this story is itself a clarification of Their unity.

I knew that I was blessed from my youth, but I knew that I was no messiah.  Jesus walked on the water,  I walked in the rain.  Jesus commanded demons to leave people and they obeyed Him.  I once commanded a fly to walk across a pool table and it obeyed me.  A dove descended from Heaven and landed upon Him, but birds still poop on me. 

The Lord trained Moses for forty years to prepare Him for his eventual duty.  Abraham waited for His blessing until it became all but impossible. Noah observed His calling in the face of mockery unto its completion.  For three years after being given the Message of God, Muhammad was mocked and made fun of.  All true prophets, even Jesus, were initially rejected.  This is par for the course.

All of them have to learn, train, and prepare before their time is at hand.  They all have to come to know God in the heart of man.  We have so little insight into this process, this “Art of Wrestling God”.  It is my hope that I can share with you this reality as well, that when God calls you might believe, that you might follow, that you might persevere unto its realization.  For in this wisdom of progressive revelation is the truth of the many prophets who all serve the One God. 

The Lord appeared to me in a vision when I was a boy.  At the age of forty my mother became pregnant by seeming miracle, my parents couldn’t have children and my sister and I were adopted.  Our family rejoiced in the hope of our new baby brother.  But tragedy stuck us, and he died in labor.  My families’ hopes and dreams were shattered.  I saw my dad's face break as he fell into tears, and I had never seen him cry before.  I prayed my best prayer that night for the Lord to bring Stephen back to life, and when He did not I abandoned my faith in God as superstition.  One afternoon the next year I was pondering what I would do in life, and Jesus appeared in my vision.  I knew it was Him; He did not have to announce Himself.  As I looked at Him I could feel the most overwhelming love, and I could feel the love of His family, a family to which I belonged. 

“What will you do in life?”  He asked me.

“I will help Your family, Lord.”  I replied, overwhelmed by His Divine Love.  I did not hear from Him again for another seven years.  Instead I fell into the sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll of the early seventies.  By the age of seventeen I had nearly died of a drug overdose, and my home life was in shambles.  I was shooting drugs, drinking heavily, smoking weed and cigarettes, and only wanted to party, get high, and get laid.  I guess God wanted me to see what I would make of myself by my own hand.

I was eventually rescued from the hard drug crowd by my best friend.  At the age of twenty, while pondering the futility of our society and our lives in the midst of it, the Spirit of the Lord came upon us.  Something supernatural happened to us, and as it did he looked into my eyes and told me that I was a prophet.  As I committed my faith to belief I was filled with the Holy Spirit for the first time in my life.  I revealed myself to be the Prophet Sonyata (Son of Enlightenment) and he revealed himself to be the Prophet Katura (Incense of Prayer).   At the time we were high as kites, tripping on ecstasy, smoking weed, and drinking gin.

Moses saw a burning bush and wandered in the wilderness for forty years with his people.  A modern day prophet burns a little herb, and then drives all over town with his friends looking for a Jack in the Box.

We wandered homeless like vagabonds trying to ascertain the specifics of our calling, but by 1981 had both rejoined society.  I guess I was expecting to see a burning bush.  We did not understand, but the Lord was going to train us, and teach us to understand the prophets whom we serve.  I sought to write off the experience as nonsense, but the Lord would not let me off the hook.