Season of the Spirit in Retrospect from Panels Session
Theme: Prophets of the World to Come
Date: Sunday, 24th May 2026
Question 1
Who is a Prophet? How is a prophet of the world to come different from that of the present one?
Pastor Iyiola Oyebanjo
The term ‘prophet’ is not strange to us as believers. Although, we relate more to the office in terms of seeing visions and giving prophecies. Conventionally, people see a prophet as one who speaks about the future. One of the things that overturns this understanding is the life of our father, Abraham, whom God called a prophet (Genesis 20:7), but it was never recorded that he spoke a prophecy in his lifetime.
A prophet is one who exhibits a life. A good example is the Apostle Paul, whom the Lord Jesus called to be a minister and a witness (Acts 26:16). Another word for prophets are witnesses. A prophet is a witness — one who exhibits a life. Every man is a prophet because there is a life we all exhibit. One may not be exhibiting the life of God, but for the life which you do exhibit, you profess.
In the book of Revelation, John was told to eat a book that would make him prophesy (Rev. 10:10). The prophecy of John is about him showing forth a life that could be seen by everyone. A prophet is a witness and also a life expressor. A prophet bears witness to a life, whether it is the life in the milk of the word, Christ or everlasting life. Other examples of prophets in the New Testament were Stephen, Philip, and Timothy. Timothy, for instance, was a prophet of the life of Christ. Every life expression ends in the prophetic.
The prophets of the Old Testament were seers without understanding, but the prophets of the New Testament are men who have understanding of the life that they are prophesying. Prophecy is not just about foretelling but an exhibition of a life.
So, a prophet is one who has a form of life inside that is visible to all. Jesus was the first prophet of the life of God. He was the first Man who showed all the lives within God from milk to meat to strong meat and Eternal life. Our Lord Jesus is the first Prophet and wants to raise many prophets like Himself.
Question 2
Having heard the true meaning of who a prophet is, does this nullify the office of a prophet in the fivefold ministry?
Pastor Iyiola Oyebanjo
Being a prophet according to the order of life does not nullify the office of a prophet in the church. The current prophets are gifts of the Holy Spirit. “…having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone…” (Ephesians 2:20). All believers, in a sense, have an apostolic calling. Not in the sense of holding an apostolic office, but we are all sent ones. An angel is a sent one — an apostle. We are all meant to be angels of the world to come. This is because of the calling we have been called into. Prophets are needed in the church, and the Lord set them so to give direction (Acts 13:1), but that does not negate the fact that they should not also become the prophets of the world to come.
Pastor Tunji Adegoke
“And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
One of the banes of understanding a prophet is the present day proliferation of it. For some believers, the best definition of the prophets of the present are seers and soothsayers. If someone recounts precise events about your life, and speaks concerning your future, you should not be overwhelmed by the accuracy of the foresight.
One of the things the Lord is doing in the Season of the Spirit is to build us against the deception of the enemy that is coming with signs and lying wonders. These signs or wonders may be factual but not traceable to anything in God. We must understand what the office of a true prophet is so we are not taken away by the false. These deceptions are coming and the Lord expects us to be fortified against them.
Pastor Jude Anyalebechi
The scripture says that God declared the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10); this is a prophetic language. Being prophetic is an expression of life. The reason we are on earth is to come into the essence of God, which should bring us to the world to come. There is a script that we must fulfill to animate the life of the world to come. God’s attitude in relating to us is a prophetic expression. To be prophetic is to live out a life that shows the intent of God for man. God’s desire and expectation is that every man should express the code of life that will bring him into the new heaven and the new earth.
Question 3
This world to come that we speak of, is it heaven?
Pastor Tunji Adegoke
“Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness…” (2 Peter 3:11). The expression “to come” means that the subject in question is not present. Since there is a present heaven, this means there must be another one. Angels know that there is a world to come because they are the inhabitants of the present world but are seeing a glimpse of the world to come in Jesus. Jesus is the first entity of the world to come.
This present heaven is a place where disembodied spirits of believers dwell for now, waiting for the world to come. God never designed that the spirit, soul and body of man be separated, but for sin. When a believer dies today, they need a place to go because they will not be with their body. Even our Lord Jesus went to the present heaven to wait and sit at God’s right hand until His enemies are made His footstools (Ps. 110:1).
This present heaven is not the world to come. It is here, and one thing we must do as believers is to pull down the atmosphere of the present heaven to earth. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10). This scripture speaks both to this present heaven and the world to come. The will of God can be seen as entities of the world to come are thriving in heaven, they must also thrive on earth as well.
In the present heaven, there is no opposition to the reign of the world to come because Jesus is officiating that world in heaven. However, it has not come on the earth because the Lord needs us to be ready for Him to bring the world to come to us. It is our readiness that will pull it to us.
“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. [11] Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness…” (2 Peter 3:10-11). It is worthy to note that this present heaven, where even our Lord Jesus is seated, will be burnt and also pass away. The new heaven is not yet here, but the Lord expects us to pull it here by our doing of His will. The world to come is not this present heaven, although the world to come has its own heaven and earth.
Question 4
How does one qualify for this world to come? Is it enough to just be born again in my spirit to inherit the world to come? Or does one have to be a prophet to qualify to inherit it?
Pastor Jude Anyalebechi
Every believer is a candidate of the world to come because the life we have in our spirit, which is the life of Christ, is already of the world to come. The world to come has the new heaven and the new earth. The question is where we would belong, which is determined by how much we have been able to fulfil what is in the heart of God for us. Since the life in our spirits is the life of the world to come, then we must be more concerned about how to work out the life in our spirits in our souls; our souls work by knowledge.
For us to qualify to come into the core purpose, which is the divine nature, there are things required. To come into the fulfilment of the world to come, we must first receive the word, which is the beginning of our blessing. By the hearing of this word, the Spirit of God begins to instruct us. It is our obedience that makes us qualified to come into life of the world to come we speak of.
Pastor Iyiola Oyebanjo
One of the challenges we face as believers is that we think the present world is too big to be destroyed. God is very much capable of destroying this world with just a word from His mouth. The reason this world is still preserved is because of the believers. Without believers, God has no reason to sustain this present world.
“For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” (Isaiah 65:17). In the new world, we would not even recall this present world. This present holds sway over the believers because there is a cast over our minds, which is responsible for our daily thoughts.
It is by God’s mercy that our thoughts are interjected. The state of every man on earth is that we are close to destruction (Deuteronomy 26:5). Many of us are not actually interested in going up to God. In our minds, we try to restrain ourselves to love and obey the dictates of God. The Lord Jesus, on the other hand, cannot do but love and chase after the Father.
It has to be established in our minds that the world to come is much better than the present.
Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away, but His word will not pass away (Matthew 5:18). This means that only His word can cause this world to be rolled away. What will make this world not hold sway over us is His word. One thing about this world is that as a man increases in affluence and prosperity in the natural wealth, the more difficult he will find it to let go of it. We must find strength for the new heaven and not hold on to the old and things passing away.
The world is passing away, and satan is doing all he can to forestall it. The world that will not pass away has to be more real to us — the world wherein dwelleth righteousness. We are the reason that the present is not passed because we are holding unto it.
We should not be enticed by this present world, but we should excite ourselves and have peace in constantly hearing the word of the world to come. It is more important than anything present. If we refuse to let this world pass, we will pass with it. We should be able to declare that this world is vanity with strength in our souls. We should keep hearing this word that will make us look for a new heaven.
The criteria for one to be in the world to come is to be born again. Angels are administrators of this present world. God is using this present world to raise administrators of the world to come. It will be painful for a believer to arrive in the world to come and be useless. Each word that God is bringing to us through His servants is for us to pay attention to the sayings of the world to come that it may become real to us. We must become conversant with everything about the world to come so that we can become the administrators of that world.
Question 5
Our daddy has taught that the Lord hid treasures in us, and God purposely exerts pressure in our lives for those treasures to be pressed out. These treasures are the life of the world to come. So, what sort of pressure is this?
Pastor Tunji Adegoke
At the new birth, the first download of the properties of the world to come is made available to us. The unregenerated human spirit is tied to this present world and is in allegiance to Satan. Thus, everyone who is not born again hates God because what Adam ate was the code of a life that is inherently opposed to anything God.
At the new birth, the life deposited in your spirit is nothing of the present. The power responsible for regenerating your human spirit is not a power of the present. Angels do not know that power that can eject a dead spirit and put new life into the spirit. That power is not in the present; it is from the world to come and that is a treasure. But it is a treasure in a chest or a box that is your spirit.
Reverend Kenneth E. Hagin taught us to live from our spirits; this is another way of saying that we should draw our essence from the world to come. At the new birth, we ought not to live according to the world, but we still do that for a while because it takes a weaning process to separate us from this present. God did not wean us from the present completely at the new birth, otherwise, we would have been offended. One of the reasons this world still remains is that we are still using it. When we no longer depend on it, God will roll it away.
The power of the world to come that is in us is unlocked by suffering. Suffering is to not have our own way. Whenever we suffer, it is a result of our will not being done and this can cover every area of our lives. Our ways are not in allegiance to the power in our spirits; thus the flesh warreth against the spirit (1 Peter 2:11). This war is necessary for whosoever is going to end up pleasing God.
God cannot unlock the treasure in us if we keep having our way. This is the reason for suffering/pressure. If we are left to our ways, we will not unlock these treasures because we would have enough proof why the world should not pass away. It is difficult to repent of something that produces the results we require. Thus, we need wisdom from the Lord in our interaction with this world and its things. This world is the instrument of Satan that he uses to make sure that we remain worldly, thus making this present world remain.
If the Lord wants to make you an entity of the world to come, He will separate you from this world. The reason the Lord ruined the first world by a flood is that the men decided to have their own way. The devil made God look optional to all of humanity, whereas God is never supposed to be optional. Whosoever sees God as optional is a worldly person. One thing that separated Jesus from every other man was that Jesus never decided by Himself.
Jesus showed us the template of how to live, and that was His suffering—to make sure that God is not optional both deliberately and consciously. To separate a man from the thinking that God is optional is through suffering and that is who they call a prophet, because such a person will be strange to this world. The world will wonder why we never make certain decisions, as logical and appealing as they might be.
To separate us from what we have defined as life, we must go through the suffering of being separated. Our will must be disappointed until the will of the Lord is raised. Not having your own ways is what we call pressure and it will come in as many areas as the Lord deems fit. The aim is to unlock the power that is resident in your spirit. If you can unlock all the power in your spirit and live after it in your soul, you become an entity of the world to come. What God put in your spirit are the powers of the world to come, and they are in measures that you can carry that will not implode you.
Pastor Jude Anyalebechi
Pressure is for pressing out treasures in us. Every one of us here is already living a life, which is the life of an inverted heaven that is resident in us. If we are expecting the world to come, it can’t come into our inverted heaven, it has to exert pressure. This inverted heaven is a kind of life. Our aspiration in life, our desires and choices sprang from somewhere. The Bible says the way that seemeth right to a man, the end thereof is destruction (Proverbs 14:12). We cannot know what is right except it is revealed. The revelation of what is right, which is the world to come, is coming not just as knowledge but to form a nature in us.
For nature to be formed in us, there has to be pressure exerted on the present world (life) to give way. The present world will not just give way without opposition because it is not just knowledge in us but a life we live by. Nature is not something that you cast out or you wish out, it is something that we have married. A culture is a life that we all have agreed to live and becomes our conversation. We have lived our life based on inverted heaven as a result of the fall and to us that is what life is.
God is speaking concerning the world to come and the suffering we will have because a life has to go for another life to come in. The life we live now is one we were born into. It will be very difficult, except God helps us through understanding for us to see this present world as the world that is to pass away. Jesus lived here on earth and He said in (John 3:13) “…Son of man which is in heaven.” which means that the life that He was expressing on earth was the life of heaven.
To take away this present world in us, it takes revelation which comes by grace to free us because God knows that none of us will just willingly want this present to go. The Bible says “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,…” (Hebrews 12:6), so the dealing of the Lord is exerting pressure for the present to go. When we engage in obedience, even though we do not respond easily, we gradually allow that pressure to ensure the present gives way. Most times the pressure that God puts on us that will cause failure, is a way of helping us if we can understand His ways.
Question 6
From the scripture John 3:13, no man has ascended to the heaven of the world to come. Does this also include John the Baptist and other fathers from the Old Testament? It also says in Matthew 11:11 that the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than John the baptist. So, in the world to come, is it that John the Baptist and Adam will be in the new earth while those who inherit everlasting life will be in the heaven of the world to come?
Pastor Iyiola Oyebanjo
“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God…” (Revelation 3:14). Jesus was saying to the church in Laodicea, he said unto Jesus “the beginning of the creation of God.” Now of course we know that God has His own creation, God has His own children. All of our fathers of faith that we had in the Old Testament, were examples to us. They also live the typology of every life that we are meant to come into.
For example, God gave a whole allocation in this present to Abraham —they call it Abraham’s bosom. God gave him one single allocation; everybody that was dying that was supposed to go to hell, God carved out a bosom for Abraham. Do you now think you’ll be higher than Abraham? So I just feel in reality one thing we need to do is pay attention to your development. Do not wait to see the end result.
“Would I be Christ? Would I be this and that?” Please you can thrive to be the best and get the ultimate in God. Now some of those things are left for God’s sovereignty. For example, Pastor Tosin Gabriel said that Moses saw the back of God—it was not just God’s back, God took him back in time. Moses wrote about things in the beginning, John also wrote about them. Those are places that we might not be able to tamper into as it is on God’s sovereignty. But one thing you can tamper with is who you will become.
You have a choice to know whether you would become Christ, so likewise you have a choice to know whether you’ll become everlasting. So placement or not is not the issue; what I’m interested in is being fully saved.
Pastor Tayo Fasan
John the Baptist has more height than a Christ in the kingdom, but not a better texture. This is referring to the fact that the promise and the substances of the New Testament are better; Hebrews chapter 10 talks about better and enduring substances.
The everlasting life of the New Testament is a higher quality of life than the everlasting life of the Old Testament. The everlasting life of the Old Testament that even the likes of Adam had rated Adam less than angels (Psalm 103:20-22). So we can see that God relates with man based on dispensations.
The dispensation of the new man Christ Jesus, the Son of God is a different dispensation. That’s why the book of Hebrews chapter 11 spoke about Jesus having a better inheritance than angels. And then in the later verses, it speaks about his fellows, who will have a better inheritance than angels. If they will have a better inheritance than angels, that means they are higher than Adam; if they are higher than Adam, that means they are higher than John the Baptist.
So God relates with man based on dispensation; and many of them ended in their lot. Men like Daniel, Father Abraham, even our father in the faith, Pa Hagin of blessed memory, stood in their lot in their various dispensations. But God is now waiting for another dispensation, because with all that has been done in previous dispensations, they could not fulfill obedience that will fold the present earth and heaven.
Jesus is now waiting for those who will be a “Son of God” kind of dispensation; Matthew 1:1 called it the generation of Christ. The generation of Christ will be higher in their inheritance; they will have a higher lot than angels and Old Testament saints. That is why the book of Hebrews chapter 2 calls them witnesses; they are witnesses of those who will inherit a promise that they could not inherit in the days of their flesh.
John the Baptist is a witness, hoping that we would do better than he did. And how we will do better than him is in the book of Matthew chapter 11 where he said, “Blessed is he who is not offended in me.” You know where that blessing is? That blessing is in the book of (Revelation 1: 1-3); when you have that blessing, you have a nature that can handle the offense that Jesus handled and overcame, so you’ll be a higher kind of overcomer.
Question 7
Considering we are being made prophets of the world to come, what is the best heart state to have, while having this present? Are we to remain interested, be joyful and excited in this present world?
Pastor Jude Anyalebechi
We should try as much as possible to trust God not to be religious in following these things; God is not against you having good things in this present world. God gives; that’s why when you pray to God “I need this,” God will not give you something else—like he cited the example—you will not ask for bread and he gives you a stone (Matt. 7:9). Whatever you ask God and God gives you shows that God knows that that thing is somehow beneficial to you. So regarding the natural, we should not lose interest.
Now when somebody has a car, it is meant for you to rejoice with the person; do not say “it is things of this present world.” That shows that you do not even understand the world to come. Now, we are here, we are not naked, we need to be clothed, so God allows all of these things. Majorly in our heart, let none of those things be the reasons why we are living here on earth. It is for use. So when you begin to lose interest, it is a sign that something has actually happened to you; but as you keep growing, you can come into a place where you have balance of how to relate with this and yet your garment will not be spotted.
Pastor Tunji Adegoke
In our journey towards being delivered from this world, sometimes we fall into that gap where we have left the world but you have not seen well what you are supposed to hold on. It is as if you are in limbo, and the response is to just keep moving.
What Pastor Jude was describing is a sound and perfect act; it’s just describing where you are in your journey. You’ll come to where you can also rejoice; I mean, it’s a thing of the present, still rejoice. When Adam saw his wife, he didn’t say “she is a thing of this present”; he broke into spontaneous utterance. So when you see your wife, please rejoice. We did not get our example from our parents to not rejoice about those things, but they should not now be the occupation of your soul.
Contribution by Pastor Mike Oluwole
The world to come is not cheap; You cannot just stroll in there. If you read the book of Revelation 21:1-4, it talked about God creating a new heaven and a new earth; when you get to verse four, some people cried—why? Because this present earth is the ground for us to acquire that life. So if we do not do those things we need to do in the present world, there is also the Lord waiting there; so it’s not cheap.
You see our parents laboring and going deeper into the essence so that we can realize these things is a life to live which will also end us a status in the world to come. The present world where we are, is a ground for us to labor in obeying instruction, laboring as a prophet of the world to come is to live by faith. But if in this present world, we didn’t obey the instructions, at the end of the day in the world to come, we’ll come into a status that is commensurate to that level.
So, if you really want the world to come, then this place is the determining factor. We need to do all we can; what has come to us is not just for us to put in our minds, but to walk by it and live by it.
Amen.
Message Ends
