A Profile of the Prophetic Person by R. Loren Sandford

    What kind of person is prophetic?  Is there a personality profile that accompanies the gift?  Are there common life experiences among prophetic people that result in similar defining characteristics?  The answer is that prophetic people vary in nature as widely as the population in general while at the same time sharing to a significant degree a number of elements of personality and life experience.  We come in all sizes and shapes, some of us serious in nature and some of us loving a good joke, some intellectual and others having no education at all.  But at heart, we are very much alike in many respects.

Prophetic people are rarely "happy" people, at least until they have served long and made peace with the pain, with the gift and with God.  First, remember that the training for a prophetic person involves depths of crushing and breaking incomprehensible to the average person.  This training period and the heaviness of spirit that may accompany it can last for many years, but the heaviness need not be permanent.  Seasoned prophetic people who have persevered over time in seeking the presence and the heart of God and who have allowed the character changes to occur that were the purpose of the suffering, come at last into a deep and abiding peace and joy that are not easily shaken.  One source of the dark moodiness that so plagues some prophetic types, therefore, is the pressure of the constant seasons of crucifixion required to produce the character adjustments that are so essential to the calling.

    The burden-bearing function I have mentioned so often is one of the most difficult aspects of prophetic awareness to sort out and balance. The emotional weight of the faithlessness and unrighteousness of the people of Israel so crushed Moses that he pled with God to kill him (Numbers 11:15).  Jeremiah bore the burden of Israel's sin and the destruction that was to come so deeply that scholars have dubbed him "the weeping prophet".

  
    I recall visiting my girlfriend's home on the top of a mountain overlooking Spokane, Washington when I was just sixteen years old.  From the huge picture window in the living room the entire city could be seen laid out below like a sparkling jewel lighting up the night.  As I stood before that window one evening gazing out at the lights, an almost physical force of something I didn't understand came rushing up at me from the city and flooded my heart.  I began to weep without an inkling of understanding of what it was about.  I knew only that it hurt and that the grief overflowed my emotional controls.  Years later, I understood that my Lord had identified my heart and spirit with the sin and pain of the people and had allowed to me to feel it compassionately, to bear the burden of it within myself for a moment. 

 
    Had I understood it at the time, I would have answered the call to pray, but I was too young.  Prophetic analysis and understanding of that kind of prompting would come later.  At the age of sixteen it simply became part of my ongoing struggle with depression and added to my sense of weirdness, not to mention the judgment of others that I was a bit strange.

    Most of the prophetic people I know today are much like me at the age of sixteen, lacking the awareness, training and seasoning necessary to sort out what emotional currents are theirs personally from those that are not, much less avoid being overwhelmed.  Much moody unhappiness results.  Without good pastoring or coaching from others who understand, the resulting depressive episodes can become a prison of habit that further isolates the prophetic person from real connection with others and label him or her as weird and/or unstable.

  
    In my early years of ministry as an adult I would force myself to think it through, "Is there any reason in my own life for me to be feeling these things?"  If an adequate answer could not be found in my own situation, I would assume the feelings had their source in something I was sensing for someone else.  When I had determined that it applied to something outside of myself, I would pray for revelation concerning what it was, whether it concerned an individual or some wider issue affecting groups of people or nations.  Finally, I would pray concerning the revelation I received.  So far so good.  Even today I begin that way when the burdens come.

    The trouble came when my childhood training took over.  From my earliest years my parents schooled me in emotional control and suppression rather than healthy emotional release.  Consequently, I would identify certain feelings as coming from an outside source and then put them in another "room" in my heart, while I went on about my daily business.  It was a form of suppression that felt natural and right to me because of the way I had been trained.
    I did not learn until years later how destructive that approach was.  In that other room the feelings had nowhere to go.  Much like a septic tank that eventually needs to be pumped in order to remain functional, the feelings only built up and became infected until I was overcome by a huge mass of undefined pain and confusion that could no longer be controlled or understood.  The room had been filled.  Once filled, the overflowing pain I had locked away in that place made it difficult for me to hear from God clearly or see any of the positive things He was accomplishing in my life and ministry.

  
    I finally fell into clinical depression and remained there for many years, although I continued to function as a pastor, husband and father.  No one understood.  Several attempts at counseling led nowhere, having run aground on the failure of my counselors to understand what they were dealing with.  At last, at the perfect time in my life and in the plan of God, I met a healing couple whose tools and level of compassion were just the right stuff.  With their help God granted release and freedom where locked up feelings were concerned, not just in the area of burden bearing, but in all of my emotional life.  Everyone connected with me benefited, beginning with my family.

    Months later, I found myself once again overwhelmed.  Waves of paranoia, fear and despair that I knew had no root in my own life threatened to sweep me away, but this time the outcome was different.  Good counseling had at last connected me with the Father's love at a level I had never before known, so that as I sought the Lord in prayer, He did something new with me.  I share it here as a visual representation of the scriptural command in II Peter 5:6-7,

 "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you."  As I prayed, I suddenly felt as if I had become the center of an inverted funnel standing under and inside the mouth of an upsidedown tornado of the Holy Spirit swirling all around me.  The funnel served as a great vortex drawing the paranoia, fear and despair out of my people and up through me to the Lord.

  
    After what must have been about thirty minutes of this form of resting in the Spirit and letting the swirling funnel do its work, I found myself in a state of perfect peace.  Better than this, I was filled with a clean, rested and holy love for my people that I had not felt in a very long time.  That day I participated in a quinseannera (fifteenth year rite of passage for a girl in Mexican culture) for one the families in our church and enjoyed a whole new sense of tender love and joy for my people as I moved among them.

 
Today, I take care to remember the inverted funnel and what it means in terms of passing things through to Jesus.  It helps keep me in the joy and prevents my spiritual plumbing from clogging up with unsurrendered burdens picked up from the folk around me.  Jesus is the burden-bearer/intercessor, not me.  I am just a servant.  Burden bearing can be a prophetic indicator pointing the way to prayer, but done wrongly, it can be enormously destructive.  Dealing with burden bearing can be one of the most difficult learning curves for any prophetic person to master, and so unhappiness persists.

    II Corinthians 12:7-10, "Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me to keep me from exalting myself.  Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.  And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

    I have already written of the necessity and purpose of the wilderness in the life of the prophetic person.  Even with the abiding peace and joy that come with maturity, some elements of wilderness suffering never end.  Paul pled three times for release from his thorn in the flesh, but was denied for his own sake and that of the kingdom of God.  The flesh remains a persistent and relentless opponent requiring much discipline from the Father who loves us.  Matthew 16:24, "Then Jesus said to His disciples, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.'"  Luke 9:23 adds the word, "daily".  What is the cross if not an instrument of death?  Is it not the place where corrupt flesh dies so that new life can emerge in union with Jesus in His resurrection?

  
    While every believer responding to the call to discipleship must live this life of the cross, it must go deeper for the prophetic person, and so there are constant blows to pride and ego and to those elements of character that do not yet resonate the character of Jesus.  Sometimes this aspect of the heavy hand of God sends me into seasons of heaviness, but mostly at this more mature stage of my life I am able to welcome it in gratitude and go on with joy undisturbed.  Proverbs 17:10, "A rebuke goes deeper into one who has understanding Than a hundred blows into a fool."  Proverbs 27:6, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."  And what a friend I have in Jesus!

    But this life of humbling and breaking can cause the prophetic person, especially the immature and unseasoned, to appear to be constantly unhappy.

    Prophetic types are usually eccentric personalities who have experienced more than their share of rejection because they do not think, feel or even act like normal folk.  Not only are they misunderstood by others, and even by their families and intimate loved ones, but they are seldom understood even by themselves.  Like so many things prophetic people face internally, this lack of self-understanding passes when maturity comes, often with the help of good counselors, but I do not think I know of a prophetic person who has not experienced it.

    Many a burden-bearing child with prophetic gifts becomes the family scapegoat, the repository of everything the rest of the family cannot face or express.  Instinctively the brothers and sisters, and parents as well, project their pain onto the moody one, often acting it out with ridicule and torment until a root of rejection takes hold that shapes life and pollutes perceptions.

 
Additionally, the prophetic child may experience things that seem strange or weird to others.  There may be dreams, visitations in the night by angels or demons, visions and things the prophetic child can "see" that others cannot (like angels or demons).  He or she may share these things with the rest of the family and be ridiculed for it, which only serves to reinforce the growing root of rejection and sense of imminent danger everywhere in the child's world.

    In response, such a child may develop illegal self-protections based in judgments on others and fear of vulnerability that carry over into adult life.  As a result, the prophetic person may subconsciously and sometimes deliberately reject the very fellowship that would be so healing and helpful for balance if it could only be accepted.  Worse, these self-protective judgments and fears can open the door to demonic influence masquerading as God.  Genuine prophetic gifts can be invaded and co-opted for the enemy's unclean purposes while the victim never knows the difference. 
If not faced head-on, this can lead to a compromised ministry in which some perceptions and some "words" are demonic and destructive in ways that become obvious to everyone but the one giving them.  Such demonic influence can make discernment into the lives of others invasive and violating.  Thus compromised, the prophetic person may see into things the demon reveals but that God would have kept concealed.  He or she may demand vulnerability of others without ever sharing anything of real substance from his or her own heart.  The information may then be used to strengthen his or her own sphere of influence and sense of position at the expense of those who should have been receiving ministry.  People instinctively react to this with mistrust, which adds to the problem of rejection.

    As eccentrics, we prophetic people ask questions about life and faith that do not seem to matter to others and, in pondering these questions, we often find ourselves off in a dream world somewhere while the rest of the world passes us by.  We are looking for answers and seeking the deep meaning of things and we find ourselves incapable of settling for shallow or easy answers.  The quest often consumes so much of our awareness that we seem disconnected, even aloof, from other people.  Life seems to hold a different set of meanings for us than for regular folk.

    Because of this lack of things to hold in common, people sometimes have trouble relating to us as friends and peers.  For instance, when all that matters to me is the spiritual significance of the next natural disaster, it can become difficult to join others in their excitement over last Sunday's victory for the local professional football team.  Being prophetic can enforce a profound sense of loneliness and isolation.  Normal folk do not know how to relate.
    It goes further.  Prophetic people live as forerunners.  They are usually one step ahead of the rest of the body of Christ.  When other people are down and out, the prophetic person may already be rejoicing in the blessing to come.  Or when others catch up and find the joy and the blessing the prophet saw coming, the prophet has already moved on and now grieves over the failure and apostasy that will form the essence of the coming days.

  
    In my own ministry, I have always seemed to be on a different page than everyone else.  For instance, I am a worship leader, but I have never been allowed by God to do the music everyone else is doing.  I am always different, always writing in different vein or choosing different songs than the mainstream.

  
    I recall when the Father's love became the major emphasis of the renewal I am a part of.  It was wonderful and life changing for untold thousands, but my prophetic eye knew where it was going and so from the beginning I fought for the corrective balance, moving against the mainstream to bring about that balance.  It was not until years later that we had a high level meeting in which leadership stated that we had focused on the Father's love at the expense of the centrality of Jesus and His sacrifice.  It was a day of welcome return to balance but for years I felt out of step.
This loneliness and isolation can cause damage to more than ministry.  It is not unusual to find significant conflict in a prophetic marriage because the prophetic one is so often not "present" for the mate.  Worse, until the root of rejection is healed, the prophetic person can misinterpret even innocent things his or her mate does.  Something as simple as a call to, "Come out of it!" can be interpreted as criticism and rejection.

  
    I left home in 1969, but I can still see my father sunk down in his easy chair, lost in a world of his own, pondering the deep mysteries of the universe while my mother stood defiantly before him, hands planted firmly on her hips, fire leaping from her eyes as she nearly shouted, "John!  You come out here and talk with me!"  After several minutes of this, he would suddenly look stuporously up at her as if nothing had been going on and grunt, "Huh?" Of course, by this time she was furious while he acted as though his feelings were hurt, having not a clue why she would be so upset.

  
    The same thing would happen as we children tore up the house and fought with one another.  Mom would call for help while Dad remained oblivious and withdrawn, plumbing the depths of some question of profound importance.  Eventually my desperate mother would lose her temper in her demands that he be aware and helpful.  It was not easy for either of them.  Obviously, being married to a prophetic person can require both patience and understanding in extra measure, especially when the wounds of rejection go back to childhood and now color present perceptions of every relationship.

    In this memory I am perhaps 6 years old.  It is 3:00 a.m. and I have been awakened by a breeze of wonderful power-filled wind and light blowing the full length of my body and causing me to feel as if I am floating a foot above my bed.  I have no idea what this is, but I know that it is wonderful and as I reach out to take hold of it to try to make it last, it fades away as if the window through which it blew were slowly being closed.

    Another night I am awakened at about the same time by a smothering force that paralyzes and terrifies me.  This time I struggle and when I can finally speak, I cry out, "Dad!" until he comes running to my bedside to hold and comfort me.  When at last I feel quiet and secure he explains that I have been attacked by an evil spirit and that when it happens again I must use the name of Jesus.  At the name of Jesus every knee in heaven and earth must bow - my first practical lesson in Philippians 2:10-11.  I protest that when I am attacked, I cannot speak, but he assures me that the demon will know what I am trying to say.  I tested his instruction the next time I experienced a similar attack and found that my father was absolutely right.

    I thought everyone had these experiences.  I really believed that all fathers paid visits to the heavens during the night and had dreams shared by their friends thousands of miles away in which they met with one another and conversed.  How painful it was to be ridiculed and even ostracized by other children when I innocently shared these things!

    What other sixteen-year-old stands in his girlfriend's living room weeping over the city for no discernable reason?  What do his testosterone-deranged friends think of such things?  What can a kid who ponders the depth of every question and who settles for no easy answers find in common with those whose lives consist of sports, fighting, girls and beer?

    The sixteen year old walks into an empty room at night with his friends behind him and stops dead in his tracks, adrenaline suddenly driving his heart rate higher, as a vision of a medieval warrior in full armor and weaponry appears below a canopy of swirling demons.  He forces down an urge to cry out audibly in the name of Jesus and reaches for the light switch to make it all go away as his friends file through the door behind him.  Warfare in the heavenlies comes early to this young and frightened prophet.

    Even in his teens he must avert his eyes from directly engaging others because they can seem so penetrating that his gaze makes them uncomfortable.  Girlfriends don't last long because his emotional intensity burns them out while his discernment lets him see more of their hurt and confusion than they are comfortable with.  At seventeen years of age he attends a bachelor party where friends of the groom have hired a stripper.  He is the only virgin in the room and so the stripper singles him out for a lap dance.  His only defense against this unwelcome invasion is to prophesy her life story to her as she plants herself in his face.  Deeply shaken, she backs away and leaves the party.

 
    He walks alone, even when he is with others and only then if he can learn to play their games and find their rhythms - a rare and tasty experience.  Or he leads the pack, creating the flow himself without really becoming one of the gang.  He learned long ago not to share what he really sees and feels.  He may never have a truly close friend.  If he is blessed he may find a mate to walk with whose special qualities of patience and kindness equip her to carry his heart.

    How he deals with loneliness will determine the shape of his life, whether it becomes a hard walk of bitterness in isolation and self-protection or a place of deep, sweet and private communion with God that becomes a fountainhead of peace and love for the sake of others.  He may vacillate between the two extremes until he settles on one side or the other.  With good help and the hand of God he will make the right choice.  Without that help he may join the ranks of those unsubmitted, bitter and arrogant pseudo-spiritual, self-appointed so-called prophets who torment pastors and their congregations with streams of condemnation and judgment - until asked to leave.  He may become a Jezebel, using his gifts in illegal self-protective ways to build a power base under his control at his pastors' expense and to the detriment of the church.

    Prophetic personalities often have little consciousness of what might be seen by others to be weird behavior and they may tend to communicate in ways that neither they nor others fully understand.  John the Baptist wore camel skin and ate bugs!  Hardly normal behavior!  Ezekiel dug holes in the city wall and carried his travel baggage around all day just for people to see (Ezekiel 12).  And that was nothing compared to Ezekiel 4 where he built a toy city in the public place, and then laid down by it for the better part of 430 days.  If that were not enough, he had himself tied up with ropes.  He did all of this just to proclaim the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the population into exile.  "Normal" people would never entertain such instructions as coming from God.

    My prophetic father never seemed to know or care what people might think of his abnormal behavior, whether or not that behavior was supposed to be prophetic.  For instance, I always knew when he was on his way home because I could hear him singing in tongues at the top of his lungs from far away as he walked the several blocks from the church.  Never mind that the neighborhood could hear him!  Countless Sundays he got himself in hot water with the people of the church for preaching his latest prophetic revelation, having no awareness at all of how it might affect them.  I am not sure he cared about that, but I know my mother did and she let him know about it over and over again.

    Jeremiah 20:7-10, "O Lord, You have deceived me and I was deceived; You have overcome me and prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; Everyone mocks me. For each time I speak, I cry aloud; I proclaim violence and destruction, Because for me the word of the Lord has resulted In reproach and derision all day long.  But if I say, 'I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name,' Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it.  For I have heard the whispering of many, 'Terror on every side! Denounce him; yes, let us denounce him!' All my trusted friends, Watching for my fall, say: 'Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him And take our revenge on him.'"

    During my high school years in the 1960s we lived in a small mining town where my father pastored a church just two blocks from the street where five houses of prostitution operated openly with neon signs advertising their presence.  My father spoke prophetically against them and drew persecution for it.  When I was sixteen years old I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper in which I spoke against the presence of these houses of ill repute and outlined how other communities spoke of our city - and especially of our girls - as a result of their presence.  I was a musician in a traveling rock group at the time.  I knew firsthand what was being said in other communities across the region.

  
    The city rose up in virtual unison to persecute us for challenging this "sacred" institution.  Anonymous phone calls came to our home questioning whether I was really a man.

  
    In addition to this, our family pioneered the charismatic movement in our denomination and inner healing for the wider body of Christ.  We were prophetic forerunners.  As a result of this we suffered persecution on every side.  Vile accusations were made.  The teachings were twisted and distorted beyond all recognition in order create justification for vilification.  In Bible times they threw Jeremiah down a well.  Elijah fled for his life to escape death at the hands of Jezebel.

    True prophetic people who have not yet fully made peace with the calling and its consequences can therefore seem crusty at times.  They can appear to be angry and defensive because they are geared up and prepared in advance for your negative response.  They have been lied about, misunderstood and misrepresented and it hurts. 
    What may seem to be pride can therefore actually be simple defensiveness.  What appears to be a hard and arrogant exterior can conceal a gentle and wounded heart of love.  Those who would nurture prophetic people must work to see past this defensive and even offensive exterior.  My own family has fought a long battle against a pattern of always gearing up for a fight.

    Worse we developed a stronghold of arrogant hubris to cover our sense of rejection.  The rest of world - the source of so much pain - was sick, but not us.  We had the revelation.  We knew what life was really all about.  We were the mature ones in possession of the truth because of the experiences we shared.  The rest of the Christian world just did not know.

    Those who would minister to prophetic people must take these things into account and determine to see past them.  Compassion and understanding, not frontal assault on perceived character flaws, wins the day.  Trust comes hard to the prophetic person, but it can be earned by one who comes in love.

    It is not unusual for a prophetic type - or anyone with high calling - to have been born in the midst of some kind of life-threatening trauma or to have a history of scrapes with death or serious injury, especially in childhood.  The enemy of our soul has an obvious vested interest in cutting off a destiny before it can happen, especially when that destiny touches the lives of many others.

    Pharaoh sought to kill all the male babies in Israel in order to reduce the threat their numbers represented.  Moses' family saved his life by placing him in a basket and floating him downriver where he was found by Pharaoh's daughter and raised in her household.  Herod tried desperately to kill Jesus before He could reach the age of two.  As my own mother was in labor with me, there was a foul up with her anesthetic.  I could have been stillborn.

  
    My life since birth has been peppered with near misses, like the time I felt myself supernaturally hurled into the air off of a ski jump I knew well - and I am an expert skier.  I found myself surrounded by blackness and much too high to land safely.  I overshot the slope that would have taken up the force of my descent and came down so hard from so high up that both of my skis popped off.  The loss of my skis threw me forward onto the top of my head in rock solid hard packed snow, driving my chin into my chest with incredible force.  A ski patrolman who witnessed the accident thought I was dead.  I got up and skied away, but I should not have.  My neck hurt for weeks.  One of my prophetic prayer people had been warned in a dream and had prayed for my protection before I went to the mountain.  Prophetic people need to be covered by protective prayers from those who love them.  Lives and destinies are at stake in an ongoing war.

    I myself cannot remember a time when I did not feel a sense of urgent destiny.  As a child I could not wait to grow up.  At the age of two I spoke with the clarity and vocabulary of a child twice my age.  I did everything early.  In school I refused to sing "kid" songs because they seemed so silly and immature.  The teacher thought I was being uncooperative.  There is no time for childhood.  There is a destiny to fulfill!  They called me "the little old man" even before I started school.

  
    Part of the seriousness comes from the other attributes and influences I have already listed.  The prophetic person often feels all of these things long before there is any possibility of understanding them.  So there is little time to really play and not much room to laugh, until maturity, seasoning and the cross bring the character of the prophetic person to rest.  At the age of 54, I am just now finding my freedom.  Maturity for the prophetic person can take a lot longer than for the one who does not walk under the burden of that kind of calling.  It is the difference between sprinting the one hundred meters and running the marathon.  The goal is further away and it takes longer to get there.

Some essentials

    In light of all this, it would seem obvious that most prophetic people need serious healing work.  God has given us the tools in the various streams and forms of Christian counseling that have emerged over the last few decades.  Holiness and character adjustment are imperative for the prophetic person and that means transformation of character at the deepest levels.  The resources are out there.  We have only to avail ourselves of them.

  
    Pastors and leaders must nurture these people with grace and understanding, without taking offense at their quirks and brokenesses.  It is too easy to be defensive or fearful when these often wounded people cross boundaries or act out their fears and lacerations of heart.  Correction can be brought but let it be brought with compassion and love with an eye to healing.

    Prophetic people need good friends who lovingly make them play, laugh (especially at themselves) and celebrate the goodness of their humanity.  Over the years God has sent me people who informed me - they did not ask me - that I was going skiing the following Tuesday.  One brother would simply present himself at my office and ask with a grin on his face, "Can Loren come out and play?"  Outside on his trailer behind his truck would be a pair of go-carts.  Off we would go for a couple of hours of fun!  I came back refreshed and more balanced than when I left.

    There should be good people of prayer in every church who take prophetic people into their hearts to be watchmen and watchwomen for their lives.  In Ephesians 6:18-20 the apostle Paul wrote, "With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."  In short, he called for prayers of protection and prayers for the effectiveness of his ministry.  We prophetic people are lost without that kind of support.

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When I encountered R. Loren Sandford, I felt like Willard meeting Kurtz for the first time in Apocalypse Now.....

He has just published a new book containing the above material in a revised format:

COMING IN mid-MAY FROM CHOSEN BOOKS!
"UNDERSTANDING PROPHETIC PEOPLE:  Blessings and Problems with the Prophetic Gift" by Pastor Loren Sandford, includes a foreword by John Paul Jackson.

• why prophets seem extreme and moody
• how prophetic people hear from God
• the difference between adrenaline and anointing
• the four signs of a true prophet
• how to pastor a prophetic person
• how to recognize this gift in children

Prophets can learn to step out of loneliness and isolation into balance and wholeness. As they grow in this unique calling, the Body of Christ will indeed be blessed.

ENDORSEMENTS:
When Loren asked me to consider writing an endorsement for his new book, "Understanding Prophetic People", I looked forward to reading the manuscript as I have both enjoyed and appreciated his previous books.  What I was not expecting, however, was a classic!  When I first began in prophetic ministry in the early '80s Loren's father's book, "The Elijah Task", was the classic I and many others looked to for understanding the ministry of a prophet.  However, what was sorely missing until now was the companion book on the making and make up of a true prophet.  Because the message is the messenger and the prophet is the prophecy, this book is a must read for both the church at large and for all called by God to be His prophetic spokespeople.  It is with real excitement that I recommend the study of this book.  It will prove to be an invaluable lifelong tool for many who desire to know God's voice and ways.  MARC A. DUPONT, Mantle of Praise Ministries, Inc.

With piercing accuracy, R. Loren Sandford paints a vivid picture for us in his new book, "Understanding Prophetic People".  Not only will this book grant sanity to prophetically gifted people, but it will give a measure of peace to pastors in their quest to relate to strongly gifted prophets.  This is a welcome addition to the growing arsenal of equipping materials to help mature the prophetic movement.  DR. JAMES GOLL, Encounters Network; author, "The Coming Prophetic Revolution", "The Seer", "Dream Language" and many others.

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I have lived all this and more - I might say something - the key to a prophetic person is understanding the burden of eternity in their hearts and how they have been chosen for this.