On today's "Prophetic Perspective on Current Events" program, Rick Joyner recounted a prophecy delivered by evangelist Bob Jones, who, according to Joyner, declared years ago that a Super Bowl victory by the Carolina Panthers would be a sign of the start of the Third Great Awakening.
Despite the fact that Jones had once been removed from ministry for, among other things, sexually abusing women, he served as a spiritual mentor to Joyner and was highly regarded as a prophet by many in the movement. With the Carolina Panthers slated to play in the Super Bowl this weekend, Joyner recounted how Jones had not only prophesied the team's creation in North Carolina, but also foresaw that their first Super Bowl win would signal a nationwide awakening and movement of God, just as last year's Super Bowl victory by the New England Patriots was also a sign from God.
As Joyner recalled, Jones called him out of the blue in the late 1980s to tell him that he had received a prophetic message from God that "the black panthers are coming the Charlotte [and] they're coming to the lumber yard." Neither Jones nor Joyner knew what that meant until several years later when the NFL announced the creation of an expansion team in Charlotte to be called the Carolina Panthers, who, Joyner claims, built their stadium on the site of an old lumber yard.
"So we knew there was a prophetic destiny to this team," Joyner explained, stating that "many of the ups and downs that this team would go through ... were an incredibly accurate parallel" of the struggles of Joyner and his fellow Christians.
"Listen, I'm doing this program before the Super Bowl," Joyner said. "They haven't won it yet. But if they do, to me, it is a very definite marker of something remarkable breaking out ... If the Panthers win this year, we know it's all hands on deck and we are going to see the outbreak of, I believe, the Third Great Awakening in America."
Surely this has nothing to do with the fact that Joyner's church is based just outside of Charlotte.
UPDATE (2/8/16): It looks like the Third Great Awakening will have to wait.
