A Sad Story With a Surprise Ending
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| Click here to watch the full interview between Mike Winger and Elijah Stephens |
The picture above is Mike Winger on the left, who is a popular bible teacher online. I watch him frequently, and highly recommend him. The guy on the far right is Elijah Stephens. You may recognize him from preaching at Wellspring a couple of times, including the first time my wife and I ever visited Wellspring.
The guy in the middle is Shawn Bolz, and he represents something enormous and not good going on in the prophecy world. Wellspring believes in prophecy, and we even practice what is called "stage prophetic," where a prophetic minister stands on a stage and delivers prophetic words to random people. I want to take the time in this post to 1) explain Elijah's story, 2) explain this avalanche of false prophets getting exposed, and 3) explain how our practices differ from that false stuff.
Elijah's story
While Elijah was a student at a ministry school, Shawn Bolz came to minister there and called Elijah out from stage. Shawn appeared to know 7 or 8 things about Elijah that Elijah was shocked that he was able to know. In the prophecy world, we call that a "word of knowledge." Elijah was highly encouraged that this famous prophet was getting these very specific words about him. Shawn essentially told Elijah to make the movie that he was planning on making, promising that it would be a huge deal. Because of the prophetic word from Shawn, Elijah passed on a lead pastor job at another church and instead spent his life savings to make the movie.
The movie won several awards, and here at Wellspring, we highly encouraged everyone to watch it. The movie featured the amazing prophetic words from Shawn. The problem is Shawn didn't really get a prophetic word for Elijah. He looked up 7 or 8 pieces of information about Elijah online before coming to minister at the school where Elijah was a student. Shawn used the info he looked up to convince Elijah and the rest of the crowd that he was getting divine revelation from God.
If you watch the interview with Mike Winger and Elijah, you will find that Elijah has PTSD-like symptoms from this entire thing. Because the movie heavily features Shawn Bolz, and because Shawn Bolz has recently been exposed as faking prophecies in this same manner, the movie is dead in the water. The title of the movie is Send Proof. Ironically, it documents medically verified miracles, and it's actually really good... except for the bit where Shawn is featured.
Elijah is a man of integrity, so the film does good work researching real healing miracles. Shawn Bolz on the other hand has proven himself to be a deceiver, so the fact that he is in the movie means that Elijah can't do anything with it anymore. All that time and money now appears to be wasted.
The Avalanche
Shawn Bolz is one of several false prophets who have recently been exposed as doing what is called data mining. Data mining, when it comes to this prophetic charade, is the act of looking up data about people ahead of time and using that data to make people believe you are getting divine knowledge from God. Another false prophet who was recently exposed is Bob Hartley (a major "prophet" at IHOP and Bethel whose son is a major whistleblower). Click here to see Raised by a False Prophet, where Bob Hartley's son Jed talks about his dad's prophetic abuse.
Yet another is Chris Reed (a "prophet" from Morning Star ministries). Click here to see our friends at Remnant Radio address Chris's deception in Chris Reed Faking Prophecy.
Stage Prophetic at Wellspring
Jesus promises that there will be false prophets among the true prophets. We still practice prophetic ministry at Wellspring even though grifters are using it to take advantage of others. One of the most common ways we practice the prophetic at Wellspring is with our team on Sunday morning. In this scenario, people come up to the team. It's not the team selecting the person, so there's no time or chance to look anything up.
Our team has a great track record of accuracy and accountability. We record our words and encourage people to test the words in their communities for wisdom. For more details on how to weigh and test words, click here for Types, Tests, and Shelves for Prophetic Words.
When we do Stage Prophetic ministry, our vetted ministers stand on a stage and select people from the crowd that they feel the Lord has given them words for. Sometimes our ministers get detailed words for people that match with their lives. However, the details are usually not surface-level details like addresses, phone numbers, names, etc. They are more on the level of secrets of the heart. It's not normally the kind of thing a person could find online.
Recently, one of our ministers got a prophetic word for a young man and delivered it from stage. The young man said that the words our minister used were "eerily similar" to the words his counselor had been using. It appeared to be a genuine word of knowledge, and it was something that the young man knew only he, his wife, and his counselor knew about.
That fellow gave his life to Jesus that day, and was baptized at my house on Wednesday. Here is a picture of a group praying for him after his baptism.
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