Some of the most high-impact people to ever walk the earth will be present at the end of this age. Many of these are alive now, and they are just waking up to their purpose. For forty-five years, I have been shown things about these who will  shake the nations and prepare the way for the Lord’s second coming. These are the ones about whom Enoch prophesied. Some will be people of uncommon depth and vision. Others will be the opposite, having little education and depth of knowledge, but they will have great faith and courage. One characteristic they will all share is that they will be different. They will be more at home in the heavenly realm than in the earthly.

     What separated the major prophets from the minor prophets was more than the length of their prophecies. It was their depth of knowledge of history and current events that set them apart. Many think that their great expanse of knowledge was given to them supernaturally. Some of it was of course, but probably not as much as many presume. Operating in what we think of as a “natural” way can be just as much from God as what we get supernaturally. We see this in the lives of the prophets themselves. Daniel, one of the greatest of all the prophets, received much from his study of the works of his predecessors, such as Jeremiah. It was said of Daniel and his friends that they had expansive wisdom, knowledge, and understanding in all matters. This was a great platform for their prophetic lives and vision.

     The Apostle Paul was a man of such knowledge that Festus accused him of having been driven mad by his great learning (see Acts 26:24). It seems that the other apostles were not so educated. We all have our part, and we are all made different by a Creator who loves diversity so much that He makes every snowflake unique. This is an important characteristic that we should see as we study the great lives of history—they were all different. None of them were copies. We are not called to be a copy either.

     The degree to which we are able to fulfill our purpose is largely dependent on our ability to be ourselves, or who we are created to be. We are not called to be like anyone else. We learn from others and receive an impartation from them, but we will not succeed if we are trying to be like others.

     In future weeks, I will be sharing on a number of the extraordinary Christian lives in history, from the first century to the present. One of the things we gain from looking at those who were so different is the whole picture, or at least more of it. As we are told in I Corinthians 13, we see in part and know in part. To have the whole picture, we must put different parts together. We study these from history to get a clearer perspective on our own lives and times. We want to look and see how the differences complement each other—how they fit together.

     One final note about the lessons we learn from history and those who made it—it is a serious and often costly delusion to take partial information about people or events and draw huge, sweeping conclusions from them. We can hear something about someone and think we “know someone just like them.” No we do not. People are diverse. The same characteristic or event that has a certain impact on one person can have a totally different impact on someone else. We can learn much from history as long as we do not presume to carry the lessons too far. To get the maximum benefit from any knowledge, we must stay humble. That means staying teachable, knowing that as much as we are seeing, we are still only seeing in part.