The Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International is a Christian, Neo-Pentecostal and Restorationist Congregation. With the use of research and by speaking to a pastor of this specific congregation, I learned how it differs from other Christian churches. The name of the individual that I interviewed is Pastor Larry Restrepo. I will be discussing briefly the history of the church and its components and specifically, the belief and use of Prophecy in the denomination.
According to Natanael Disla, author of the Journal of Latin American Theology, Neo-Pentecostalism has integrated itself in the circles of power in Latin American and Caribbean nations and arose around the 1970s. It permits believers to manage their destiny through religious elements such as: the gift of speaking tongues, ability to give prophecy, ability to heal others, receive spiritual visions, cast away bad spirits and demons, and an overall receiving of the holy spirit. So, it is no surprise that all of these religious elements are part of the congregation of the Church of God Ministry of Jesus Christ International and are shared from the New Testament.
The Church started in Colombia in 1972 by its current female leader Maria Luisa Piravique along with her husband Luis Eduardo Moreno. She gave him a detailed prophecy from the holy spirit in “ which God promised to teach them the doctrine that they would preach to numerous people, give them spiritual gifts, and spread the church through the world.” Today, there are more than 500 locations of the international church in the world and it continues to spread in countries like Bolivia, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and more.
One of the largest beliefs that drive this congregation is the gift of Prophecy from the New Testament that they believe the Holy Spirit of God gives to its “children”. In chapter 7 of The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft by Phillip L. Stein and Rebecca L Stein, “Divination can be defined as techniques that are used for obtaining unknown information, including future events”. Prophecy is a form of divination that can also be classified as fortuitous, meaning it happens without “any purposeful conscious effort on the part of the individual” (Chaper 7; Inspirational forms of divination). However, its primary purpose is not precisely to tell the future, or connect with the dead as in some other religions. In both the Old and the New Testament, the purpose of the biblical prophet was to have a direct contact with God in order to announce the will of God to his people and the community and guided them towards practice and faith. According to F. David Farnell, a professor of the New Testament from The Master’s Seminary, who wrote “The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament”, Prophecy is a supernatural gift that connects God’s will and word to certain individuals, or prophets who spread the word to others. He also claims that “because God’s spirit controls the entire prophetic process, including the chosen prophet, a true prophet and his prophecy will never fail or be inaccurate (p. 46).”
Prophecy results in edification, exhortation, and encouragement. Edification is the act of improvement that is done in the church to build people in their religious path, or in other words, to do right, to pray, to learn the bible, and to give thanks to the lord. Exhortation is to incite, or urge, which is what prophecy does in a sense by promising blessings and health, or just by hearing that God is with you. Which leads to encouragement to proceed to right in the eyes of God and the church.
After completing my research on this form of divination, there were lots of questions I still had saved for Pastor Restrepo. I wanted to know how they got thousands of people to believe in this and stand by their church. First, he explained to me what a regular Sunday morning in the church was like. The first twenty minutes are singing hymns and choruses, then there is forty-five minutes of “teaching”, or preaching of a particular lesson in the bible, and then there is twenty minutes of “testimonies”. Testimonies are the detailed explanations of spiritual experiences that occur to people with god. They can be visions, dreams, or prophecies that end up occurring. The purpose of sharing them, is to spread the word.
What makes prophecy different in this church is that no one ever approaches anyone to ask them for their name, and the prophecy is never given publically in front of the congregation for everyone to hear, but participants of the congregation sit in a chair next to those with the “gift of prophecy” and they simply whisper the words that they receive from the holy spirit. Pastor Larry told me that he believes in prophecy because of a personal experience that occurred to him a few years back. He suffered from an addiction to alcohol for a very long time, but decided to quit and found himself attending this particular church. In a prophecy, he was told that he would get very sick from an illness but not to worry because God would take care of the rest. A few months later, he was diagnosed with Cancer.