Prophetic Perfect

Prophetic Perfect
By Bob Mumford www.lifechangers.org

Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.”

Only the eternal, uncreated, omnipotent and omniscient God has the capacity and willingness to declare a thing to be what it is years before it has even come into being. The Seed is God’s inheritance in the form of the prophetic perfect. God speaks of the future as if it were already in the present and declares something complete because it is anchored in the certainty of God’s intention to bring it to fulfillment.

Results are well over the horizon, so we cannot see them yet. This is another way of saying, “bringing many sons to glory.” There are many prophetic perfect statements in Scripture such as, “For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth.” God’s confidence is in His ability to bring His Own purpose into being. Because He knows the end from the beginning, He calls that which is naught as though it is. We can better understand the coming of the Kingdom as seen in Matthew 5 - 7 in this light. These chapters describe what we will be like when the Kingdom Seed has been cultivated and is fruitful in our own lives. Often travail is necessary to bring forth God’s purposes. He knows what we will look like when He is done with us and He speaks the prophetic perfect into each of us. We may not be able to see it yet, but we do see Him. Living in the prophetic perfect requires us to see through rather than look at circumstances. In the prophetic perfect, whatever God wants to do in us is already achieved.

The Eternal Seed falls into this prophetic perfect category. God’s confidence is in His ability to bring His own purposes into being. Jesus told us that if we followed Him into His Kingdom, we would look like Him when we got there. We cannot make ourselves loving, but He can. He does so by means of imparting to us His nature in the form of Agape as the Eternal Seed.

Success is in generational transfer; it is not just what you can do, but what you can get others to accomplish. We are to cultivate the Agape Seed in our own backyard and in the nations of the world. Jesus said He accomplished the work that the Father gave Him to do. I always thought that was the crucifixion, but it primarily had to do with delivering the eleven disciples from their own selfish darkness and bringing them into the governing principles of the Kingdom. The entire chapter of John 17 is Jesus praying for the eleven disciples. Jesus was going away and everything depended on them. The disciples were His success or His generational transfer and He spoke the prophetic perfect into their lives. The Eternal Seed is destined to bring forth a disciple, not a convert. Conformity to the image of God’s Son is not inevitable—it takes cultivation in us and in others. Even when we can’t see it, God is faithful to fulfill His Word.

Learning to cultivate, nourish, and prophetically speak to the Seed and call it forth into all God intended is what makes us farmers.

THOUGHTS & QUESTIONS
• Explain how living in the prophetic perfect requires us to see through rather than look at.
• Why does it take cultivation to be conformed into the image of God’s Son?
• How does the prophetic perfect result in generational transfer?