What To Make of The Untimely Passing of John Paul Jackson

I was terribly shocked and saddened, when I learned of John Paul's passing yesterday and like many of you I wondered why in the world did The Lord allowed this to happen. John Paul Jackson was a very godly man and his ministry blessed millions of people over the 30 years of his ministry. He was also one of the very few prophetic ministers in the church who still preached repentance.

In fact, teaching about sin and against sin was his very last message recorded on his TV program "Dreams & Mysteries" that is still available to watch free of charge on the website by the same name. I encourage you to watch it as well when you finish reading this post.

As I wrote before, this was a man of God, but even when he was still among us, he was accused by many of being a "false prophet." There will be many in the following days and years who will continue saying so. They will bring up such things as, "he said many times that The Lord revealed to him that he will be living into very old age, but look, he is already gone at the age of 65, so he must have been a false prophet." And other such things they will write and say, but this is not true.

What I believe had happened to John Paul was the same thing that happened to Moses and Elijah. They had a very close relationship with The Lord and were greatly beloved by Him as was brother John Paul, but they made some mistakes too. They were not infallible.

Moses died on the mountain and was not permitted by The Lord to go into the promised land because he hit the rock with his staff to give the people water just like he did before instead of following God's command to speak to it, so the Lord took him home earlier than He first had planned.

The Lord similarly dealt with Elijah who despite of very supernatural power that God displayed to confirm His message to Israelites, then got intimidated and ran away from Jezebel, even hiding in the rocks because of fear. The Lord then decided to take him to Himself in a fiery chariot and put Elisha as a prophet in his place.

I believe that a similar thing might have happened to John Paul. He often admitted himself that he had a very hard time delivering the messages of God's judgment to His people. Perhaps The Lord wanted John Paul to confront someone or some things in the church and John Paul was reluctant to do it, so the Lord took him home early and will raise someone else to deliver this difficult message.

The other possibility is that the Lord wanted to protect him from something. We know that the enemy planned to kill him. Even John Paul himself shared a dream a friend delivered to him shortly before his battle with cancer began. You can watch it yourself on  the Daystar Television archives:

http://www.daystar.com/ondemand/video/?video=3740101682001 

Either way, it was The Lord's will for him to pass at this time or else He would have prevented it from happening. For all we know, The Lord even now can raise him from the dead if his ministry is not complete yet. But if this does not happen, then we will know that the 11th hour ministry is now over and we must therefore be much closer to midnight than ever before.

The Bible teaches us that the Lord disciplines those whom He loves and I have strong conviction that we are entering the time of Church history during which The Lord Himself will separate the wheat from the chaff and discipline His people beginning with its leaders. John Paul was the servant of His and is now home with Him in heaven. He left an amazing legacy and his teachings will continue to bless many in the church. He will be greatly missed.

Image the courtesy of Wikipedia.com