Another well-intentioned but misguided Evangelical leader

I believe David Wilkerson is a decent man with only the best of intentions. But his recent pronouncement of a prophecy which he feels he has received from the Holy Spirit is almost certainly misguided.

Here’s Wilkerson’s prophecy in his own words:
http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/urgent-message.html
And a follow-up post he published to underscore the urgency of his first message:
http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com/2009/03/further-word.html

Have a look at a couple of articles concerning Wilkerson’s latest proclamation of imminent apocalyptic doom here:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2009/03/david-wilkerson-and-prophecy.html
and here:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91097

Reverend Wilkerson has definitely done some great things for the progress of the Gospel, including starting Teen Challenge which came out of the gang ministry described in The Cross and The Switchblade, a book that was very inspiring to me as a young Christian 25 years ago.

But he has a rather sketchy record of prophetic over-reaching. In 1994 Wilkerson claimed at the Solomon Church that he “felt in his spirit” that there would be no more Christian television networks. Considering the state of the 1-800-BIG-HAIR network, he may have had a point – what is there claims the name of Christian but the actual content is questionable at very best. In a prophecy of September 7, 1992, Wilkerson claimed recurring visions of a thousand fires burning in New York City, with race riots and other civic mayhem. Although at the time Wilkerson said “next year” he has demurred and claims this is still a valid prophecy for some future time.

On April 15, 2000 Wilkerson predicted the imminent collapse of the financial system after the Dow fell 618 points. The stock market rallied and reached a record high the next month. Wilkerson confessed that he was wrong, and questioned if those who called him a false prophet were right.

I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I think that Reverend Wilkerson is misguided and mistaken, and his record of ill-advised highly public pronouncements has become an embarrassing punctuation mark on a spiritual career that has seen some genuine contributions.

The real concern I have for this kind of foolishness is that a leader like David Wilkerson is genuinely respected in the evangelical community. When someone who commands the kind of respect Wilkerson has among evangelicals makes public proclamations that are the stuff of the tabloid press, the Gospel suffers.

“Oh yeah,” I can hear an unbeliever saying. “Christianity, huh? That’s like that windbag Wilkerson at Times Square Church, the world about to blow up or something like that? Thanks but no thanks. I need to live in the real world.”

I am sad to see someone like Wilkerson devolving into a convenient clown for the media to trot out and say, “Here’s someone who speaks for Christians!”

Perhaps Reverend Wilkerson really is hearing from God. I’ll admit the possibility, but in view of his very spotty track record, I don’t really expect to see him vindicated. His latest Jeremiad is a lose-lose proposition: If he’s right New York burns. If he’s wrong, people have more excuses to avoid investigating Christianity – I say excuses, not evidence. The problem is, people wind up rejecting this sort of nonsense, and quite rightly so! – thinking they are rejecting Christianity, which they can’t reject because they’ve never even seen the genuine thing itself.