Heaven invades Glasgow – A Bible Teacher’s response to a prophetic conference

Hope Church Glasgow recently arranged and hosted a conference with the intention of seeing something more of heaven on earth today; specifically in Glasgow.  The conference invited NewFrontiers’ prophet Julian Adams to preach several times about the Christian’s position as an adopted son of God, the Holy Spirit and such things.

The first thing that struck me about the conference was the sheer amount of administration required to set it up and actually make it happen. Being married to the church administrator, I saw first-hand the countless hours of emailing, phoning, printing and mapping out logistics for the day, and sitting at the welcome desk at the conference it did occur to me how little thought I, and most people, give to the folks in the background who make conferences like these work.

Secondly, one thing I can always be assured of at Hope Church is the exceptional quality of the worship band, and Heaven invades Glasgow was no different. Quite the opposite – if anything they were better than ever. But it’s not just the technical brilliance of the individual musicians; it’s the spiritual maturity they carry which makes the experience exceptional. The band has no interest in their own applause – to the point where if you’re of an average height and are sitting further than the third row back you cannot see who’s actually playing – but rather their objective is to point people’s attention and focus onto God, something they do very well.

Thirdly, and perhaps this says something more about myself than about prophetic people in general, but because he is a prophet (and I am not) I expected Julian Adams’s preaching to focus heavily on experience, feelings, subjectivity and making a lot of noise. Now, I know, respect and love several prophetic people, and because of the depth of relationship with them I don’t expect their preaching to be feelings and subjectivity-based, because I have first-hand knowledge of their heart and their theology. However, when someone I don’t know claiming to be a prophet gets up to speak, I subconsciously turn my heretic-ometer up to max and wait, unwilling to receive what they have to say unless and until I’m sure they’re legitimate.

Boy, was I wrong.

Within minutes of him beginning to speak I was sincerely impressed with what he had to say. This was partly because he obviously knew his Bible and effortlessly referred to it throughout his sermon, as well as showing a sound grasp of the meanings of the various Greek and Hebrew words he was referring to. Because of this, I turned my heretic-ometer down to its normal setting – moderate – and began listening to what he had to say. There’s too much to synthesise here, and I’d like to listen to the recordings of the sermons again once they’re on the Hope Church Website, but his provocative and engaging manner caused me to examine my soul and want to further my relationship with my heavenly Father.

But, the fourth and final point of consideration was after Julian’s evening session. He finished speaking and began prophesying – hearing specific things from God for people in the congregation – and I was literally sat with my mouth hanging open from astonishment. The specificity with which he spoke was mesmerising. Now, if I had been a delegate to the conference and didn’t know the people he was prophesying over, I would have had no point of reference as to whether he was speaking the words of God or whether he was just having a go or trying to fleece everyone. But, because the people he was prophesying about are my friends, I, and another hundred people in the room, immediately recognised that A) what he was saying was resonant with the people he was speaking to, and this was remarkable because B) he knew nothing about anybody he was prophesying over. He was specific, he was powerful, he was game-changing, but he was tender. When he prophesied that God wanted to heal the heart of someone who’d lost a close relative, he ministered to that person with Christ-like sensitivity. This sensitivity provoked a response in several people who began weeping, and before long fifty people, myself included, were crying in response to God’s tenderness towards hurting hearts. Julian was the catalyst, not the source. Again, without knowledge of the specific people involved, this would have looked like some over-emotional Kleenex-fest, or else a total mess. But knowing the people who were weeping in response to God gave the experience an authenticity; there was a lot of love in the room.

What I’ve learned from this conference is that while we’re both allowed and commanded to weigh prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:29, 1 John 4:1, etc), if prophesy is weighed and found to be true, it can be incredibly powerful, and it was at Heaven invades Glasgow. As a Bible teacher, I can sometimes be dismissive of the prophetic, as study of the Bible is more objective. However, the word of God tells us not to treat prophesy with contempt (1 Thessalonians 5:20), and sadly some of us do. I truly believe that the church is most effective when all the gifts are firing on all cylinders, and though I don’t always understand how God works sometimes with regards to the prophetic, that’s not to say that what I don’t understand cannot be God. His ways are higher than mine. Thankfully.