In June 2006 I went to Ivan and Isabel Allum’s “School of the Prophetic” in Stratford Ontario. Why? Because I’d been on the receiving end of several prophetic experiences that were so astonishing they couldn’t be denied.

I HAD to find out more about this.

I’d grown up in a church that insisted that the gift of prophecy died with the apostles. Then I’d gone to Willow Creek, where prophecy (listed as a spiritual gift in Romans 12) was defined as simply the ability to speak truth boldly and be confrontational when necessary.

But the prophetic experiences I’d had were light years beyond this. One experience (which to me is still too private to share with the whole world), a complete stranger walked up to me and began prophesying to me exactly what I’d been thinking about all day long and urging me to pursue it.

It was the most uncanny thing that had ever happened to me, ever. She told me what the future held, and 2 years later she turned out to be exactly right in a most unbelievable way.

So I knew from personal experience that prophetic gifts are for the here and now, not only for 2000 years ago.

So here I was in the very first hour of Isabel’s class. She had everyone write down their name on a piece of paper, fold it up so their name is not visible and pass it to the front. The papers were redistributed to 60+ people in the room, people from all over North America. All of us had somebody’s piece of paper.

Isabel – who has an unbelievable prophetic anointing, as anyone who’s seen her knows – said: “Not all are prophets, but EVERY Christian can prophesy.” She instructed: “Ask God to give you a word for this person and whatever comes into your mind, WRITE IT DOWN on the piece of paper.”

Man this was so weird. It felt like jumping off a cliff with no net. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m just making this up? It was completely foreign to listen to my intuition. I didn’t even know quite *what* I was supposed to listen to.

OK, I’ll follow instructions: Write down the first thing that comes to your mind.

I did notice that my mind was wandering and a picture was forming. It was a picture of a woman sitting at a table near a window. Sunlight is coming through the window. The woman is sad, very sad, she is writing in a notebook. There is a powerful feeling of sorrow coming from this picture.

I begin to write this down. And this impression comes to me: “God knows her sadness and He wants her to know that He knows, and He is there to comfort her.”

I write it down and sign it.

I fold the paper back up and turn it in.

Isabel distributes the pieces of paper back to their original owners. Some person has now read my “prophecy” and hopefully it makes some kind of sense to them.

5 minutes later a friend who is on the trip, Rachel, comes up to me with tears rolling down her cheeks. She’s actually one of my pastors.

She says, “Perry, you just described me, every single morning, in my quiet time with God, ever since I moved here from Ireland. You described the nook where I sit including the window and the sunlight and the sadness and the notebook. I miss home so bad and I miss my father dearly. You nailed it. There is NO WAY you could have known this, but it is 100% on target.”

Wow. Isabel was right. If I can prophesy, anybody can.

Remember, this was just my 1st kindergarten prophetic crayon drawing. It made me wonder what might happen when a person spends 5 or 10 or 20 years honing their prophetic gift.

But I already knew. I’d seen it in action. An incredibly powerful way to edify and encourage our brothers and sisters, simply by hearing God’s words for another and speaking them.

When you have a REAL prophetic experience, it’s unmistakable and life-changing. It’s nothing like on TV where some perceptive person reads your body language and gropes around as they try to guess what color dress your mother liked to wear. It’s forceful and direct. Seasoned prophets don’t grope around. They speak without hesitation. Sometimes words stream faster than they can speak them.

One of my favorite verses in in James 1: “If any man lacks wisdom let him ask of God and it will be given to him, generously and without reproach.”

The very first thing I discovered in Isabel’s Prophecy 101 class was: When you ask, you’d better be prepared to listen. Because sometimes the answer comes back instantaneously.

Perry Marshall