R. Loren Sandford - Purifying the Prophetic: Breaking Free from the Spirit of Self-Fulfillment

What Leaders Are Saying

Loren Sandfords book Purifying the Prophetic is an inyour-face, gut-checking, heart-wrenching, reality-based review of current prophetic paradigms that need serious adjusting. It would serve the reader to be warned beforehand: Reading this book could cause your blood pressure to rise.

John Paul Jackson, founder,
Streams Ministries International

This timely book will enable you to keep the scriptural mandate to despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:2021). This is a much-needed work.

John Arnott, senior pastor,
Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship

My hope and prayer is that we who call ourselves prophetic may be granted the humility to hear without rebellious reaction and to change without cavil.

from the foreword by John Sandford,
cofounder, Elijah House, Inc.

In Purifying the Prophetic, Loren challenges us to uproot and overthrow some of our culturally acceptable New Testament traditions and errors. He pleads passionately for the Church to experience Gods love to such a degree that the kingdom of self is displaced with a culture of honor, purity and love. The results? A fatherless generation will be drawn home to the Fathers house.

Jack Frost, cofounder,
Shiloh Place Ministries

One of the characteristics of a prophet is seeing things in black and white. Loren demonstrates this well as one with little tolerance for hypocrisy and one who is willing to point it out. Growing up in his parents home, he had many opportunities to see ministers up close, many of them prophetic (or claiming to be), many of them high profile. This book represents years of distilling the root causes behind the hypocrisy, the false faces, the need to be important, and so on. He points out the problems, yes, but he also points the way so that each of us may examine ourselves and submit to Gods purifying process.

Chester Kylstra, cofounder,
Proclaiming His Word Ministries

This is the first time I have read a book that is speaking correctives into the prophetic movement, as well as into other areas of popular Christian culture. It has the benefit of being written by a highly prophetically gifted leader. The book is forthright in its message and may offend some people. If it is read in the light of the spirit intended, however, it will bring desperately needed correctives into todays Church and into the wonderfully God-wrought ministering gift of prophecy. Loren has been a friend of mine since 1995. At that time he prophesied life, future and hope over me during a very difficult period of my life. I recommend Purifyingthe Prophetic to all who move in prophetic ministry already, to all who want to move in prophetic gifting in the future, and to all who are about to give up on prophetic ministry because of the problems associated with it.

Fred Wright, international coordinator,
Partners in Harvest

PURIFYING
THE
PROPHETIC

Breaking Free from the Spirit
of Self-Fulfillment

R. LOREN SANDFORD

2005 by R. Loren Sandford

Published by Chosen Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.chosenbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sandford, R. Loren.

Purifying the prophetic : breaking free from the spirit of selffulfillment / R. Loren Sandford.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-8007-9400-1 (pbk.)
1. Self-realizationReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. Christian life. I. Title.
BV4598.2.S25 2005
243dc22

2005011394

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked NRSV is taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from a letter of prophecy from John Sandford to his son, R. Loren Sandford, are used by permission.

No generation of believers ever stands alone. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, reaching higher than they were able because they paid the price to reach higher than those on whose shoulders they stand. I therefore humbly dedicate this book to my parents, John and Paula Sandford, who cleared the way before me and taught me more about the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ than any others ever have.

Contents

At last! A book that is truly prophetic! A word that cries out as Elijah did, How long will you falter between two opinions? (1 Kings 18:21, NKJV), and calls down fire on all that is idolatrous. Purifying the Prophetic dramatically plucks up and breaks down, builds and plants (see Jeremiah 1:10), as Loren declares that the prophetic should.

In 1977 Paula and I wrote The Elijah Task, and followed that in 2002 with Elijah Among Us, both about the prophetic. Lorens book does it. Purifying the Prophetic calls down fire upon the bullock of self, saturated by the waters of our cultural worship of Baal. It comes as a fullness of repentance at a most needful time, as the Holy Spirit purges His own in preparation for the challenging days ahead.

I am not meaning to denigrate the many great prophetic books that have been published recently. Many have done a good bit of plucking up and destroying and rebuilding. But so far as I can see, none has exposed the roots of our defilement. Roots that are seen will wither and die. As none other that I have seen, this book calls down Elijahs fire to burn away our accumulated false concepts and practices. The tremendous heat here is intended by the Lord to scorch us, like the sons of Levi in Malachi 3:3, and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness.

Lorens chapter on the cleansing of the prophetic stream flays us alive. My hope and prayer is that we who call ourselves prophetic may be granted the humility to hear without rebellious reaction and to change without cavil. Knowing us, I fear we may find all manner of reasonable objections rather than come to repentance and different modus operandi. God wants to purify us in preparation for effectiveness in the awesome times ahead. This book may be one of the tests that define who will persevere into the new, and who will not. May I sound the warning, dear friends? Who will respond to the meaning rather than find objections and reasons to reject and discard?

Lorens chapter on worship is the finest treatise on true motivations in our approaches to God that I have ever seen. This chapter shows us the glory that can be. It calls us to worship God for His sake, to please Him rather than trying to find goose-bump experiences for ourselves! His historical review shows us painfully how our mental demands for control have suppressed the emotional fires that are the essence of true worship. I grew up in staid, orderly Congregationalism, which made of the Trinity in practiceand unfortunately in theology as wellGod, Jesus and dignity. How often I have known myself still to be bound by my training that our awesome and holy God demands propriety above all else in worship. O God, set me free!