Just recently I read a book written by Graham Cooke, called : A Divine Confrontation. He too says that there are particular expressions of the prophetic ministry which will have a variety of effects within the Body of Christ. He talks about a blessing ministry. I call that the ministry of the Encourager. He says that some move only in healing; others solely in pastoral situations. Some are evangelistic, other prophesy within a holiness context for the Body of Christ. He talks about prophetic teaching . He says that we can move across the range of ministry and effects as circumstances dictate. He states that many people operate at a deep level in one or several areas, but have a shallower expression in other designations. Prophets can move from one designation to another. He himself went through a pastoral season, then he moved into working in training, equipping and discipling, then he ministered prophetically to people regarding their destiny, ministry and future call of God etc. So there are others that have seen what I saw.

In 1988 I was living in South Africa and visiting with a young prophet who had just come back from America. He had attended a conference from Bill Hamon and was rather disturbed about something that happened there. During the conference another prophet walked in and he did not seem to understand what Bill Hamon was busy with, he walked out again. This young prophet had seen this and wondered what this was all about.  The Lord has given me in the past several young prophets to train and nurture and when this young man came with his questions I sought God about it.  What happened there Lord?, I asked Him. The Lord gave me two names from prophets in the Bible: Nathan and Samuel. I studied their lives and found that both were prophets and that both had a different way of operating. The Holy Spirit Who is my teacher, had me look up the meaning of those names.

Samuel means: hearing God, to shew forth.
Nathan means: to bring forth.

In King Davids life Samuel was used to shew forth Gods plan for his life and Nathan was used to watch over him and to bring him forth.

It took quite a few years before David became a King.  While studying the lives of those prophets and their ways of operating the \Holy Spirit started to teach me that there were seven different types of prophets or different prophetic giftings, whatever you want to call it. The problem was that little was known about the different prophetic giftings and prophets were denouncing each other and calling each other false prophets, just because they did not understand how the other one was functioning.


Samuel was an exhorter. The exhorter is a direct pipeline between God and men. He is the man of the moment. He does not premeditate his messages. God speaks to him and he speaks out what he hears. I noticed that Samuel was used by the Lord to bring correction and order and the people were afraid when Samuel came to town. Have you come in peace, they asked him. Isaiah talks about the fact that God has hidden him in His quiver, like a sharpened arrow.

An exhorter walks alone with God and more time is spent walking with God than with man. But the time comes when God will take His exhorter, His arrow and pull him out of the quiver and shoot him at a certain situation or country to bring the word of the Lord and then he goes back into the quiver until the next time. We read about Samuel , that God did not let any of his words fall to the ground. But I also noticed that Samuel had no discernment, that will say, he could not see the endproduct. If he could, he would have never anointed Saul to be king and when God sent him to anoint David , he did not know immediately which son he had to anoint, until God showed him.

Nathan had a more fatherly role to fulfil in Davids life. When David sinned, he was sent to correct him and when David wanted to build the temple, he was sent to give advise to the king. I understood that this is the encourager. With what I know and have learned since about the different gifts etc, I see the encourager as a person with charisma. The encourager is a nice person to be with. They are always on the move, they are excellent networkers and always want to bring people in contact with each other. They seem to be quite superficial, because while they are busy with you, they are looking over your shoulder for the next one to encourage. The encourager sees the potential and gifts in a person, he can see the endproduct and wants to stir up the gifts in the people he meets. He is no teacher. An encourager could be seen as the evangelist amongst the prophets and he often functions in a presbytery team with other prophets. Once, while I was in the USA the Lord talked to me about a prophet I met. He showed me a meadow. The sun was shining and I saw this butterfly, flying from one bush of flowers to the other, collecting the honey and cross-pollinating between the different bushes.

The Lord said: there is the picture of an encourager. An encourager must never be tied down to one place, they must be free to fly and do what I have made them for. A delightful ministry indeed.  And God has gifted them with the personality to do it.

The next one the Lord showed me was the prophetic intercessor and the type was to be found in the role of the gatekeepers in the ordinance of David. I have written about that in a seperate article about the Gatekeepers.

Then came the Psalmist. King David called himself a Psalmist. The Lord showed me that there were three types of Psalmist anointings.  Asaph and his 4 sons have an evangelistic anointing.  Jeduthun and his 5 sons (no. 6 was a gatekeeper) had an anointing for warfare and Heman and his sons had an anointing to minister to the people of God,  to bring them to repentance and to bring healing and deliverance and prepare the Bride of Christ for her Bridegroom (Isa 61) together with another prophetic gifting, that of the Counselor.

The Counselor we find in Isa 1:26 and how they function is found in Isa 61. The type in the Old Testament is Elihu, friend of Job, the only one amongst a thousand to shew Job how to be in right standing with God, so he could be restored. (Job 33)


In Isaiah 1:26 we also find the Judge and when I asked the Lord about him, he said to me: look at Daniel. I did and I found that this prophetic gifting is to bring in the finance to build the Kingdom of God. Daniel’s gift was the Spirit of Wisdom to solve problems etc. Others also had this Wisdom. Bezaleel and Aholiab , who were to build the tabernacle in the wilderness and Joseph in Egypt.  And God promised in Isa 28:6 a spirit of strength and a spirit of judgment for His body. I wrote about that in the article : The Kingdom of God and Finance.


The last one I found was the Seer. In the Old testament prophets were often also called seers, but there is a specific prophetic gifting of the Seer. The type here is again Heman. He was the king’s seer in the Word, to lift up the horn. He had insight how God wanted things done in the kingdom and the ability to teach others and ofcourse the’ lifting up of the horn’ was done when someone was anointed for a specific function and we see that the Seer often functions together with the Encourager in a presbytery team.

I am still working on the articles about some of those special prophetic giftings. All I have tried to do here is, to give you an oversight of what the Lord shewed me concerning them.

I have kept these notes for years in my files and the Lord told me recently that it was time to bring them out. I have shown them to people before but most of them could not understand what I had seen. I even thought at one time to throw them away but the Holy Spirit stopped me and said, Those are the measurements, the pattern of the temple. He was talking about a scripture which He had given to me just before we left South Africa to come to Holland.

Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the pattern. And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof; and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof and all the ordinances thereof, and do them (Ezek.43:10,11)

In the next few chapters I will give a bit more understanding about the different prophetic giftings and how they function.

My own experience has been that the Lord  sometimes moves one from one specific function into another. I think it has to do with  our character. Rejection is one of the major tools the enemy uses to stop God’s prophets from coming forth. It is much easier to be an encourager than an exhorter, so that is where many people start and  after God has made their forehead like a flint, they are doing the work of an exhorter. All prophetic functions are birthed in intercession and some go on and become gatekeepers, real prophetic intercessors, but others are sent forth to teach  etc. The high prophetic giftings that Nita Johnson saw in her vision, are definitely mature prophetic giftings.

Those giftings will be clearly recognised in the Body of Christ. It is time for each one of us to take our place. The place where God wants us, not where we would like to be.

And the time is NOW!