Prophetic revelations should be written down whenever possible. Prophecy is a process. Sometimes when I am journaling what Holy Spirit is teaching me or revealing to me, I put some of the words in quotations marks because I hear them as God’s voice in dialogue. Yet, at the same time I use quotations to denote the way I hear His voice, I don’t say that I’m “quoting God.” Nothing I hear has the same authority or inspiration as Scripture, and no matter how clearly I hear spiritually, even audibly, I wouldn’t ever assume that I am quoting God in the same way Scripture does. What I am doing is communicating the revelation in a the way I am receiving it.
The Scriptures fulfill a purpose that no prophetic ministry fulfills. They are the basis for our worldview. They introduce God and how He deals with people, nations, generations, and Creation. They are the Word of God.
In prophetic ministry, the initial influence of the inspiration immediately encounters the human mind. Immediately revelation comes, the person receiving it must process it, communicate it to themselves in order to communicate it to others. Prophetic revelation is different from other revelation in that prophecy means that something going to be communicated while other revelation may have its end point in the person experiencing the revelation. Not everything we experience in revelation is shared with others.
With Scripture, God guaranteed the process of communicating the revelation as well as guaranteeing the revelation, so every “graphe” of Scripture is inspired. Not so with the communication process of prophetic ministry as inspired preaching, teaching, or prophesying. That is, the perfect and pure word of The Lord immediately enters the communication process of the human mind in prophetic ministry, and some level of imperfection and impurity immediately occurs. Prophetic communication isn’t guaranteed the inerrancy and immutability that God guarantees for Scripture.
When we are training people in prophetic ministry, we put them into a place of communicating what they see or hear, what prophetic flow is being released through them, and the training begins with the communication process. That is, once a person is receiving revelation – and that part is relatively easy – the communication process of what to do with the revelation begins. While many people pass over this aspect to their own and other’s hurt, the communication process directly affects the subsequent steps through which all revelation of prophetic ministry should pass.
Revelation, interpretation, application, and implementation obviously begin with revelation, but interpretation begins when the person receiving communicates with themselves what they have received.
