I have always aspired to be a man of “reason.” Even though I have been a believer and follower of Jesus for nearly two decades, there was always a part of me that didn’t want to go off into the “deep end” of religion, where we find people making outlandish claims. I wanted to remain reasonable. Yet, I have found that God has surprised me. Not by getting rid of any sense of reason, but rather by helping me to redefine what reasonable is and isn’t. In the midst of my learning and transformation over the past three years, I have discovered something akin to a prophetic gift residing within me. However, it is nothing something that allows me to forsee the future, but rather I can peer into deeper truths that get confirmed in the following days that I write about it.
If one were to look at my life leading up to these past few years and one believed in signs and visions and audible words coming from God, one would not be surprised at this possibility. My name came from a dream that my mother had and I heard the words “Follow me” uttered to me with no one around, following by “Owen” in a similar fashion a week later.
On another level, I was born on a solar eclipse. Before I went to St. Andrews, we had a full solar eclipse in North American. This event was fortunate as it ended up saving my mother’s life. As my parents went traveling to their cabin where there would be a better view, they had a wreck. In that wreck, my mother was forced to go to the emergency room, where she was mostly okay but they discovered that she had cancer. This solar eclipse which was marking my transition to a new phase in my life was also the instrument of saving my mother’s life. Then a few weeks ago, the comet NEOWISE passed through. I had spent the past three years studying wisdom in 1 Corinthians as part of my thesis, but with the arrival of the comet, a few days later I went through a total upturning of my life where God granted me the ability to see and understand in a way that I couldn’t prior: to combine the sense of the Spiritual and the demonic with my analytical eye.
In the past couple weeks and really past couple of months, I have observed at least three times where my writing foreshadowed something that would happen in the days immediately following. On May 30th, I used the example of an idolatrous billionaire. On May 31st (my blog says June 1st because my blog was still set to my timezone in Scotland, but my twitter verifies it was psoted in May 31), I wrote about the illusion of a national rightenouss. Then during the early afternoon of June 1st (see my twitter to verify the time), I wrote a blog post that made reference to the burdens that the religious Pharisees placed upon people. Then, on the evening of June 1st, we then see Trump, the idolatrous billionaire, hold up the Bible in response to protests, not recognizing the illusion of righteousness such an act had with the manner in which the photo op was set up. In so doing, he used religion that came from God to overlook and ignore the burdens that had been and were continuing to be placed upon people.
Then on August 5th (The blog post says August 6th as my time settings are set for when I was in Scotland, but my twitter account verifies that I posted it on August 5th), I made a post that had the following that I wrote in it:
Repent, you who have celebrated joyously over money!
Discern, you who have lifted up human power over God!
Then, the next morning on August 6th, Donald Trump, one who celebrates joyously over money, said that Joe Biden would “hurt God,” lifting up a human as one who has power to inflict a wound upon God.
Then, just this week on August 19th, I wrote a post about the image of God and evolution. My purpose behind that post was to make the case that the image of God should undercut the way evolution has been used to control the way we see humans, which implicitly was my way of tearing apart the basis for the eugenics propoganda that fueled 20th century racism that still has an impact today. In that post, I make reference to humans who do not disclose their activities but yet they have an effect as an analogy for understanding how God may not disclose His activities but they still have an effect of human life (to be clear, there is no necessary moral analogy between God and human lack of disclosure). On the next day, August 20th, Steven Bannon, associated with the alt-right, was arrested for with fraud with a fundraising scheme where he did not disclose the truth about the money he was raising.
So, while I don’t understand, for some reason, my writings seem to be a mirrored in one way or another by the impurities and evils that have been plaguing our country. Call me a prophet or not, you can decide. Yet, for some reason, this seems to be happening that I can not readily explain to chance, but that God has been giving my heart and mind insights that are then somehow being verified soon thereafter in American politics.
So why do I share this? Do I share this so that you will start to listen to me more? Do I share this so I can have some greater status with my readers? Not precisely. I have a picture of my future in sight and while I am happy for God to continue to use me in this way, my hope and passion for compassion in the future is not contingent upon someone recognizing anything about me.
I in part share it because it seems like God is up to something. I can’t say exactly what, but God is up to something and I just have been graced to be a part of communicating that.
However, I also share this to lift up a teacher of this prophet as someone God is using and that you should be paying attention to. This teacher is a Diamond in the making, without whose sermons my heart would not have been restored and taught so as to be the person God has lead me to this day to be.
When I was transitioning from ministry to move to Scotland for my education, I had some time to read Scripture in a personal manner and reflect spiritually on where I was at and where God was leading me. I happened upon Isaiah 8.3, where a prophetess has a son and names him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. This passage had always been a bit of joke for me as I regularly quipped that if I ever had a son, I would name him that because it was the longest name in the Bible. However, as there was a small portion of my at that time who considered myself possibly a prophet because of past experiences, this passage was emotionally charged for me because I longed to be married and have a family.
Around this time, I also remet an old crush of mine from high school that I had not seen in years. While I wanted to talk and spend time with her more, I was moving to Scotland so that was a no. However, while I didn’t think about this at the time, my HS crush had the same name as the Diamond in the making, who comes back into my life story a few weeks later. After discovering news of my mother’s cancer, I found a sermon from the Diamond that for the coming months had a prophetic ring to it, as she said many things that were directly pertinent to my own life, including some things that she almost certainly did not understand. This sermon released a bevy of conflicting and powerful emotions, with me not being sure what to think of it, but amidst all the emotions it was a sort of comfort and hope.
In that sermon and in other sermons she gave over the following months, something was happening to me. My heart had been torn by many events in the years prior. While I still sought to follow Jesus, my heart was split and fractured and the part of my heart that guided my mind to learn from and follow Jesus was emotionally exhausted and weak.1 The warmth and love of God from and through the Diamond began to come together with the mind to form a heart that was growing in strength in seeking after God.2 This warmth of the prophetess joined together with the mind of this prophet to form the heart that was forming and brining to birth Christ in me, of which the pains of the previous months and years can only be described as part of the pain of this spiritual childbirth (Galatians 4.19).
I am where I am today because the Diamond spoke a truth that no other human, not even herself, could have known to tell her to speak on my behalf. Only God gets credit for that; no one else. While my hopes for marriage and a family as I resonated with from Isaiah 6.3 have come not true, that Scripture was analogically true for the relationship between the Diamond and me, as what was birthed and conceived in me is a signal to the changing of the times, much as Maher-shalal-hash-baz similarly foreshadowed the changing of Israel’s history. Quite the surprise from God, I might say.
So, for those who believe they have ears to hear and eyes to see and minds to comprehend: do I have a prophetic gift? If so, then pay attention to what God is doing and consider whether you yourselves need to repent. But beyond that, pay attention to and support the Diamond. If I am a prophet of some fashion, then God ordained her the teacher of this prophet: how much should you support and honor her! I stand here praying for and supporting her from the distance as the circumstances are, with her needing to only to say my name if she ever needs or wants something from me. I invite you get behind her and support her, because God has gifted her in a way that I don’t yet fully comprehend and you should be watching and supporting her future.
- May anyone who arrogantly suggests without any knowledge of my heart that I wasn’t seeking to follow Jesus at this time heed the words of Jesus in the Sermon o n the Mount about those who judge will be judged and the measure they use will be used against them. Humble yourselves and recognize it is Jesus who sees the heart; unless there is something I am not aware of, God did not ordain you to have this authority from Christ. So repent of your moral arrogance.
- A quick Biblical note here: the heart in the Bible is the seat of the purposes and intentions and not the emotions and feelings. Anyone who regards the importance of the heart in the Scriptures as pertaining to some sort of emotional passion needs to study a bit more. The heart does not mean the exact same thing in the Bible as it does in modern language.