The Father is doing so much in here that I’m not even sure how to unpack it all. I have been praying and fasting for Part 3 for a while now and have been pressing in to understand His image probably more than any other thing I have ever pursued. And last night, the breakthrough came in such a grand finale fireworks display that I simply need some time to truly figure out what to do with it. BL, Kevin, and I are in daily prayer and discussion trying to process what He is revealing. This seems to be the biggest revelation any of us have ever been given.

In the meantime, while I am trying to figure out how and what to do with what He is showing us, I would like to share with you a bit more about my new “prophet” friend, BL.

First of all, for those of you that are new to the whole supernatural vision thing, I can understand how strange it might be or how skeptical you might find yourself feeling. The truth is that it is only abnormal to the body of Christ because we have hardly been operating in the Spirit in the things of the supernatural for almost 2000 years. In the first century, people were healed just by Peter’s shadow. Philip was transported through time to a different location in Acts. John saw visions so vivid most of us would think he was on some sort of hallucinogenic drug. What was normal in the first century has now become taboo with Christians; they even call it demonic at times. The scriptures say that near the end of days, visions and dreams will increase. Their purpose is to guide, build up and edify the body of Messiah.

Like most of us, BL grew up in the church. He attended several Baptist churches off and on until he was about 10 years old. His mom worked a job in a factory but couldn’t make ends meet. So she prostituted herself out to many different men so she could feed the six kids she had at home. When BL was almost 15, a man from a local Pentecostal church in Brownsville, Tennessee led his mom to Christ, starting a major ripple effect in his family and beyond. On BL’s 15th birthday, all six of his mom’s kids gave their lives to Christ in that little Pentecostal Church. His mom would eventually lead over 100 souls to Christ in that church.

Several months after he got saved, BL was in his room and heard someone call his name twice. He went to his mom in the kitchen and asked her if she’d called him. She told him no. He went back to his room and it happened again. He went to his sister and she said she didn’t call him, so he ended back up in the kitchen. His mom said that maybe God was calling him, and because she was familiar with the story of Samuel, she said that if he heard the voice again to just say, “Here I am Lord.” When he got back to his room, sure enough, he heard the voice say his name again. This time, he responded exactly the way his mom had said to. BL says that from there the voice of God told him that he was to be a prophet unto the nations and that He wanted him to give his life unto that purpose. He said that God explained to him what that meant and then was quiet. BL responded by telling Him that he wasn’t ready to give his life up yet and that he wanted to get married first and do this and do that. It was a typical young teenager’s response. He basically turned down God’s offer to follow his own desires. God never even responded. Only left the room quietly.

But as scripture says, “the gifts are given without reproach.” When BL gave his life to Christ on his birthday, the Father gave him a very unique gift of prophecy. He says that every week since then, he has had visions, dreams, words of knowledge, or some other supernatural experience. His stories are similar to those that we all read about in scripture, and are just as fantastic, in my opinion. From dreams to visions (both open and closed), to being transported to someone’s house and witnessing an attempted murder four days before it actually happened, BL has seen and experienced a lot.

I have seen this man’s gift first hand. He’s “read my mail” and others, as well. The second day he got here, he saw a vision of someone in serious sin as he was passing him in the hallway. He went up to him, introduced himself, and told him the sin he saw him engaged in, where the object of the sin was located, and when he saw him doing it. The man immediately started crying and repenting. This man is the same man who got right up in my face when I first got here, cursed like a sailor, and told me that he was going to be watching me to see if I was going to be like all the rest of the hypocritical “Christians.” I have since watched him be transformed by the power of God as BL disciples him each and every day. Whatever BL learns from me, he teaches to him and to others. It is truly remarkable to watch the Ruach (Spirit) work like this.

BL is a 5’7,” very meek and gentle man that loves people like no one I have ever met. Growing up was very difficult for him socially because he had a very serious learning disability. He said that he rode the “slow” bus to school. He is nearly blind and wears glasses so thick I think they might actually be bulletproof! And although he laughs about it now, growing up was no fun. His small frame, learning disability, and thick glasses made for constant ridicule. He spent most of his school days in the principal’s office for beating up kids who made fun of him. He didn’t understand why people hated him so much when all he did was love everyone. He couldn’t even tie his shoes and didn’t learn until he was almost 12 years old. He didn’t learn how to read fluently until he was almost 16. And the only reason he DID learn was that he wanted to be able to read the Bible. So after he got saved he would take the words he would learn in his phonics class, find them in the Bible, and then learn the words around them. He wanted to find answers to the things that would happen to him every week in the prophetic realm so he tried hard to read the Bible to get his answers.

Because of his lack of reading skills, he compensated by memorizing scripture. His repertoire of memorized scriptures is far beyond mine and most others I know. He “sees” them in his head and says it’s like the ticker tape that runs across the bottom of the news screens on television except it has scripture verses on it. There are verses he remembers, and then there are verses that he flat out sees, like in a vision. It’s crazy. We’ll be sitting there studying and all of the sudden he’ll see a scripture citation in his head. When we read it it’ll be the exact scripture we needed to solve whatever puzzle we were trying to solve. I told him I don’t need a Bible app on an iPhone to find what I need. I’ve got him! I’ve decided that “BL” stands for “Bible Lexicon.” Ha! Now don’t go taking me literally…I still use my Bible!

Growing up, BL always remembered having crazy visions and interesting things happening to him. He would go everywhere to try to find out what he thought was “wrong with him.” Pastors didn’t have answers. One said he probably had a demon and everyone else just basically told him he was crazy. He even asked other so-called “prophets and apostles” but none of them had any answers. Even the ones that said they had the gift of prophecy had never experienced anything on the level that he was experiencing. So because he couldn’t get any answers in the church, he resorted to a path leading to a life of crime, doing everything you can imagine. He tried to love God in and out of prison and in-between all the sinful acts he was doing when he wasn’t in church. But he just couldn’t make anything make sense. He knew the scriptures but couldn’t put anything together to make sense in his own mind.

For whatever reason, God has gifted this 48-year-old, 5’7,” stout black man with an extraordinary gift of prophecy. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that I could be living with a real bible character and, quite possibly, a real prophet. After all, if the end days are coming, there will no doubt be people that will have to fill all those slots of the last Joshua Generation that will be commissioned to finish all of the prophecies that have been foretold. And I’m not joking…I seriously believe that he might very well be a real, living, end-times bible character. And Kevin believes the same thing. Neither of us have seen anything like what we’ve seen in the last six weeks. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not putting him on a pedestal as he is a real man just like the rest of us. Our job is to test the spirits and make sure it is from the Father. And from what we have seen, we believe it is from the Father. BL’s foundation is love and he displays the fruits of the Spirit so beautifully. He uses the guardrails of the front of the book AND the back of the book as his guide, and his gifts are leading people to repentance and into a deeper covenant with God.

Backing up a bit now… BL has been in prison now for six years and has six more to go. He arrived at our camp on December 24th, 2015. One week before that is when he totally recommitted his life to the Lord and surrendered everything. He had a major encounter with the Father at the last prison he was at where he instantly started speaking in tongues and had a vision of an unclean spirit that came out of him. One week later, he was transported halfway across the country to this camp and that is where we would meet. One week after that, he found himself “all in” for Torah, began truly following all of the scriptures, and now can’t get enough of learning the “front of the book.” Every day I find him witnessing to someone and am amazed at how much of a strong grasp he has of the whole Covenant.

BL is one of the most tender-hearted people I have ever met and loves Yahweh with passionate, pure love. He says that I have been the key that he has been looking for his whole life to help him understand his gift and the missing pieces in the scriptures that he hasn’t been able to understand. But truth be told, he has been the missing piece in my life. He is the missing piece in the dream of the multi-colored bread that when the missing piece showed up and fell into place the entire piece turned into a sword. (This was from a vision I shared many moons ago.) BL has ministered to me in more ways than I can count. The Father has used him so much in my life in such a short time to help me in areas that I just couldn’t solve on my own. He has been one of the biggest impacts on my life, and I am giving the Father all of the glory for sending him!

So please pray for BL that the Father will continue to bless him and grow all of us. Pray that He will continue to reveal to us the things that He has destined us to see for the edification of the body. Also, for anyone that might feel led by the Spirit to “sponsor” him, BL doesn’t really have anyone to support him while he is in here. His mom has passed away and he only had his first visitor in over six years just a couple of weeks ago. So if anyone would like to bless him by supporting him monthly, please contact my wife at jimstaleyblog@gmail.com and she can tell you how to do that. I would love for him to know that he has a “mishpicah” (family) that loves him, too.

Most every believer desires to be used by God. And most every believer finds themselves feeling like Moses: unworthy and unskilled…a stuttering fool. But that is exactly the kind of people the Father is looking for. He desires the “foolish” of this world because He loves confounding the “wise.” He loves taking weak things and making them supernaturally strong. For millennia, the enemy has convinced the army of the Most High that they aren’t good enough, qualified enough, strong enough, spiritual enough, or knowledgeable enough to actually be used by Him. From day one he has deceived man, getting us to focus on our own needs and desires, bending toward the deductions that we make from our own human senses. The truth is that although talents and personalities may be different, the inner spirit man of every believer is the same. It is an awaiting reservoir for the infinite power of God to pour His pure, life-transforming water into a thirsty soul. When the spirit man is awakened and strengthened, it matters not how well you talk, how much you know or how long you have walked with Him. What matters is that the heart’s desire of that man is bent like a reed in the Spirit’s wind in reverent devotion and desire to discover the infinite riches of His glory that are found in Christ.

Shalom,
Jim Staley