He was dismissed and we had to take a decision. Are we going to make sure he is OK or send him on his way. We waited on God and prayed and majority felt we had to part ways with him and send him into the world. Many felt that we were not doing the right thing as for the same argument that Susana mentioned.

Now a few years later the same people look back and realize that the congregation was not ready and fit enough for the task. In our sending him away we actually forced him to move and this caused him to get into contact with a elderly pastor couple who took them under their wings and after about 4 years he was preaching again and now even stronger as a shepherd than before. We sometimes need to throw the Jonah over board for him to end up in the fish to learn his lesson and to end up in the place God intended.

From then many time we had to take a decision on someones future and we would look at it from this Jonah point of view. Are we to rescue or are we to allow a Jonah experience to allow God to work. We cannot judge a situation as to being right or wrong if we are not in the middle of it or being part of it. Lets use it as an instrument of learning and pray that the difficult decisions we have to make sometimes are guided by God. Even if we choose wrong then God will make a way to get His way.

And therein lies the problem. Just because it is in the Bible doesn’t mean that you should expect to experience it nor that it is normative for believers today. With so few people actually knowing what the Bible teaches, too many of them are expecting extra-biblical revelation to guide them. Yet Scripture teaches that Christ is the ultimate intent of all Biblical revelation.

Heb 1:1-2
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

God ~has spoken~ to us by Christ and by His apostles through the only God-breathed Word, holy scripture.

Now, I realize a lot of folks will have trouble with this line of thinking, but I beg you to read the Bible and search to see if the kinds of claims made by those with so-called prophetic dreams match the experiences and specifics of Biblical prophecy. Keep in mind that God doesn’t do anything for no reason, prophecy and the other sign gifts had specific purposes in a pre-Canon age, before people had access to the written word and before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.

M Burke