Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Prophets and Profits

Darby Slaton is a Pennsylvania speaker, coach and teacher who bills himself as a prophet and teaches children to unlock their spiritual gifts of prophecy, as covered in last Sunday’s post. The mission statement on his website reads “Empowering people to discover their true identity, recognizing Gods [sic] voice and live out their calling.”

He also does not appear to be a fan of commas or apostrophes, but that’s a generational deficiency of education, not an accusation of heresy.

Laughing Jesus and the Clarity Call

Darby sells art online, including this “Laughing Jesus” framed print, possibly the single ugliest thing I’ve seen in months. That too is neither here nor there. To his credit, I suppose, none of his prints is terribly expensive. His original art is pricier, but the cost “helps cover the cost of my creative education, studio supplies, and the ministry that flows through my work”. A mere $75 will get you this original painting on a poker card that “captures the soul of a horse in all its untamed grace”. I doubt much of Slaton’s earned income comes from this stuff, but its presence speaks volumes about his priorities in ministry.

The website contains no biblical teaching at all, and no explanation of what Darby believes or teaches. It’s basically a way of monetizing his alleged spiritual gift. You can connect with him to book a “prophetic workshop” or a personal “Clarity Call”, buy his art, or just donate to his ministry.

The YouTube Rabbit Hole

However, he does include a link to a sample message. This is Darby preaching at a perfectly ordinary evening church service: essentially the prosperity gospel, lite version, with no predictions or pretensions to any greater or more immediate authority than what the Bible itself says. There’s much about living the “abundant life” and letting God speak to you, but most of the time he’s using the phrase “God speaking” in a fairly orthodox way, to mean that reading the scripture transforms your way of thinking. Other than the fact that he uses the words “prophet” or “prophetic” occasionally, you wouldn’t find much unusual above the video linked on the website.

However, go down the YouTube rabbit hole and you’ll find things getting a whole lot more mystical and weird. There, you can access dozens of Darby Slaton message videos from various churches, some more conservative than others. Perhaps he is as cautious in these as in the few minutes I watched of his preaching. However, in streamed interviews with charismatic YouTubers like this one, Darby is much more forthcoming about what he means by God “speaking” to him.

The Experience of ‘Supernatural Events’

He starts by explaining where he’s coming from:

“I was raised independent fundamental Baptist, and we did not believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We believed the gifts were done and over with. Then I basically started to experience supernatural events.”

Now, there may be Baptist churches that teach all spiritual gifts have ceased, but I suspect that’s rare. Usually, cessationists believe the Holy Spirit gave certain gifts for specific purposes during the roughly forty-year period between Pentecost and the fall of Jerusalem, after which they passed away: gifts like healing, prophecy, apostleship, tongues, miracles and interpretation. Some of these gifts served as signs of coming judgment to the rebellious Jewish nation. These became redundant after God judged Israel through Rome in AD70. Others were gifts necessary for the growth of the early church prior to the completion of much of the New Testament. These became redundant once the faith was delivered to the saints.

Most cessationists also believe the Holy Spirit is still giving gifts appropriate to the age in which we live today: gifts like teaching, helps, administration, service, exhortation, giving, leadership and acts of mercy. These may not be spectacular or obviously supernatural, but they minister to the body of Christ and help it grow, as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 12.

Intuition and the Voice of God

Cessationists may be right or wrong, but our view of the gifts is firmly grounded in the word of God. By his own testimony, Slaton’s change of mind about the gifts came not from studying the word of God, but from subjective experience. What Slaton calls “prophecy” seems to be a combination of superstitious impressions and instincts to which he began to open himself up.

There is nothing authoritative about impressions. I suspect we make much of our instincts when they turn out to be correct and quickly dismiss impressions that turn out to be false. For Slaton, feelings have now become the basis on which he directs his life and choices.

“I believe intuition is really the voice of God, whether people recognize it or not.”

“How I experienced the prophetic actually came in very strange ways, like if I was dating someone, I would know if the girl was cheating on me. I would tell them, ‘You were doing this’, and they were, like, ‘How did you know that?’ I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have a language for that.”

I do, and it’s not prophecy. At best, we might call it discernment or paying attention. At worst, paranoia. Someone’s established pattern of behavior changes in little ways and your Spidey sense goes on red alert. Many people have similar experiences without attributing them to anything more supernatural than pattern recognition.

God as GPS

Many of Slaton’s other “communications with God” seem trivial or possibly delusional:

“That day I went into the city, and I started listening to God tell me, ‘Make a left. Make a right.’ He was my GPS. He was my God Positioning System. Then I had a vision of this Rastafarian-looking guy sitting on this little brick wall. And as I’m listening and making a left, making a right, there is the man I just saw in my vision sitting there. So that was the beginning of me understanding the kingdom of God.”

Of course, nothing ever came of this. Darby didn’t talk to the Rastafarian. The Rastafarian didn’t get saved. Nothing happened beyond Slaton confirming in his own mind that God was speaking to him through a correlation between a brief mental picture and the real world. What the experience accomplished for the kingdom of God remains a mystery.

My question would be, “Was it really God?” In the Bible, visions have significance. When the Lord gave a vision to Peter, it was to change his way of thinking so that he would be open to preaching to a repentant Gentile and his family in their own home. When Paul received a vision, it was to reach Macedonia with the gospel. A later vision ensured Paul stayed in Corinth despite opposition for a year and a half teaching the church there. There was nothing trivial or personal about biblical visions. They concerned matters of the kingdom and had a huge impact on others.

A Personal Word from God

Nevertheless, having established his prophetic bona fides to his personal satisfaction, Darby finishes the stream by picking out names of people watching and offering them a “word from God” for them personally:

“I have a word for you, Jack. I really see that you have a heart of adventure. I feel like you’re going through a really big transition, and I believe there are some places that God is really opening up for you. I really feel like you’re going to be traveling. I actually see you taking some trips, specifically South America. I feel like God’s opening up South America for you. There’s something there that you have to give.”

This sort of thing has way more in common with a tarot reading or a crystal ball than with Bible prophecy. No prophet of old ever started a sentence with the words “I feel like …” There’s no possible way to verify the accuracy of such a general prediction to a person who may not even exist.

Danger Signs

There’s a lot to be wary of here, especially where children are involved. The big danger signs I see are these:

  • A preoccupation with monetization of gift, success and feeling good about self.
  • A definition of prophecy that bears little resemblance to the biblical gift.
  • Predictions so general there is no conceivable way to test them.
  • Prophecies so trivial they amount to little more than parlor tricks.
  • A pretense to divine authority that cannot be demonstrated.
  • The possibility of trafficking with the wrong kind of spirits.

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