A Question of Faith : The prophecy movement has electrified many charismatic Christians, but others say it’s a sham.

Sometimes, his office walls dissolve, John Paul Jackson says, and he glimpses scenes from a person’s past or future.

At night, signs and omens fill his dreams, and voices occasionally wake him with whisperings of things to come.

Jackson is a fortuneteller of sorts, offering advice about relationships, careers and health. But he wouldn’t be caught dead with a crystal ball or Tarot cards.

When he peers into someone’s future, it’s strictly a religious affair. Jackson and others like him claim to practice a 1990s version of the prophesying found in the Bible.

The phenomenon has electrified charismatic Christians across the country. Stories are told of angels appearing to large crowds, freak power surges and Jesus riding shotgun in a 1950s Lincoln.

But the prophecy movement has also stirred controversy, a whiff of sexual scandal and scads of plain old disbelief. Some critics say the seeming accuracy of the predictions can be explained psychologically. Others suspect outright fraud.

At Anaheim’s 4,700-member Vineyard Christian Fellowship, where the 41-year-old Jackson works as an assistant pastor, he and associate pastor Jack Deere discuss prophecy’s rise. With his piercing, Old Testament eyes and graying mane and beard, Jackson could be the phenomenon’s poster child. Deere, 43, a bespectacled ex-professor of theology, is considered one of the movement’s scholars.

Both admit the whole thing is “weird”--the visions, the voices, the ministers who claim to even smell God. (The deity’s scent is like roses or honeysuckle, Jackson says; sin smells like sulfur.) But weird doesn’t necessarily mean untrue , says Deere.

Their story begins with a couple of earthquakes and a silver-haired celibate from Texas named Paul Cain.

In late 1988, Cain--prophecy’s reigning heavyweight--was scheduled for a Dec. 3 visit to the Anaheim Vineyard. When asked for a “sign” that the message he would deliver was true, Cain reportedly predicted a local quake for the day he arrived and a big jolt elsewhere in the world after his departure.

Sure enough, a 5.0 temblor rumbled out of Pasadena before dawn Dec. 3. And when Cain left four days later, a 6.9 quake flattened Soviet Armenia, although it actually occurred some hours before he departed.

That won over Vineyard leaders, who took Cain on a world tour that eventually captured the attention of everyone from “The 700 Club” television show to Christianity Today magazine.

Strange tales followed. In some cities, angel sightings accompanied Cain’s visits; in others, mysterious electrical surges reportedly melted fuses, tripped fire alarms and fried video cameras as he spoke.

And then there is Cain himself.

As recounted by several sources, Cain’s story was weird even before he was born: His mother was 44, pregnant and dying of tuberculosis, cancer and heart disease when an angel supposedly appeared, told her she would be healed and would give birth to a boy, whom she should name after the apostle Paul.

She lived another 60 years and Cain, at age 8, began logging angelic visits of his own.

One night during the 1950s, when Cain was engaged to be married, Jesus reportedly materialized in Cain’s Lincoln and said he was jealous of the prophet’s fiancee. The apparition then asked Cain to remain single and celibate. Cain managed to keep driving but ran several red lights and was pulled over.

The Lord, of course, conveniently disappeared, but the Santa Maria policeman who stopped the car turned pale when he approached the driver’s window and shined a flashlight inside.

“Where’s the other person?” he asked.

After the incident, Cain prayed, asking God to “change his chemistry” to remove all sexual desire, Deere says. A few years later, another supernatural encounter led Cain to abandon his successful ministry and await further instructions. He didn’t resurface for nearly 30 years.

Although such stories undoubtedly intrigue many rank-and-file Christians, the real attraction is the possibility of receiving a personal message from God.

It can be intimidating.

When Ann Harrison of Orange attended a Vineyard prophecy conference in 1990, she felt “a mixture of fear and desire” when speakers called to audience members with what they said were messages from on high.

“Part of you wants to hear from God directly,” she says, “but part of you is afraid of being publicly accountable for what he tells you to do.”

Others plunge in. Paul Thigpen, a Florida writer, says he has a 100-page notebook crammed with forecasts about geographic moves, new jobs, finances and family--many of them already fulfilled: “It’s a lot easier to hear from God than people thought.”

So it would seem. In recent years, all sorts of prophets have popped up.

A few, like Cain, mostly work large crowds--calling up selected listeners and identifying birth dates, addresses or personal secrets as ostensible proof that the subsequent predictions are from God.

“Some are almost like the Amazing Kreskin, telling you how much change you have in your pocket,” says John Archer, associate editor of Charisma magazine, a Christian monthly that has been following the trend since 1989.

Other prophetic ministers, including Jackson, work one-on-one. “It’s very much like going to a spiritual medium or fortuneteller,” says Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion.

In general, the movement’s following is among Pentecostal and charismatic Christians (including pockets of Anglicans, Episcopalians and Southern Baptists, Deere says), who stress divinely inspired healings and speaking in tongues.

Nevertheless, the movement has provoked considerable criticism, much of it from other Christians.

In Kansas City, Mo., a dispute broke out two years ago as various pastors noticed their flocks defecting to several prophecy-oriented churches. One pastor assembled a 233-page report that cited, among other things, examples of inaccurate or psychologically harmful prophecies.

A woman in the midst of divorce proceedings, for example, was reportedly told she would win custody of her daughter. She didn’t.

Another woman, who had had a miscarriage, allegedly received a prophecy that “God had martyred her baby and that for every drop of blood the baby lost, a soul will be saved in Wichita.”

Many of the accusations, however, were made anonymously or secondhand. But the criticism drew national attention in the Christian press and prompted Vineyard officials--whose network of sister churches has grown from 300 to 500 in the past year and now includes the Kansas City prophet group--to concede some prophecies were exaggerated, misinterpreted or wrong. And Jackson--one of the Missouri seers--was sent to Anaheim, where Vineyard leaders could keep closer tabs on him.

Then a different problem unfolded. Late last year, another Kansas City prophet admitted touching and fondling two women, Deere says. The indiscretions stopped short of intercourse but “went way beyond what a Christian should do.” Vineyard officials yanked the prophet from the ministry, perhaps permanently, Deere says.

Even without such controversies, many remain skeptical.

“It’s just not possible to actually know someone’s future or someone’s secret past,” says Rex Julian Beaber, a psychologist and attorney in West Los Angeles.

As for the reputed accuracy of the seers, Beaber offers several explanations.

One is audience attitude. “People go to these places with the hope and expectation of something special happening,” he says. If a prophet calls up a member of the crowd and describes some aspect of that person’s life, “it’s very difficult to be the spoilsport . . . to publicly invalidate the speaker.”

An illusion of accuracy can also be created, he says, by the “Barnum effect” (in which the mind tends to remember the successes more than the misses) and by self-fulfilling prophecies (in which someone’s belief in a prediction causes him to bring it about).

Finally, Beaber suggests that many prophecies are so generalized they could fit almost anyone.

For example, Deere was told by one prophet that his father had “dropped the ball” when Deere was young, and that God had allowed Deere’s athletic ability to be frustrated so he would channel his energy into intellectual pursuits.

But what Deere considers remarkable insights into turning points of his life (his father had committed suicide, and perennial sports injuries were “the major frustration of my youth”), Beaber sees as applying to lots of men: “Everybody’s father drops the ball . . . (and) many boys think they have an athletic talent that somehow didn’t come out.”

(The Vineyard’s Jackson declined an invitation to demonstrate his psychic ability for a reporter. And Cain, at a New Year’s Eve service attended by the press, skipped his usual issuing of prophecies to audience members. Nor would he grant an interview.)

On the other hand, several people who have witnessed or received prophecies say the messages can be disarmingly specific. Seers have reportedly supplied detailed answers to unspoken questions, recounted private prayers, and described secret habits, illnesses and past events.

Skeptics say the only plausible explanation for that is fraud--the prophets have some other method of obtaining their information.

Vineyard officials reply that fraud is ruled out by the ridiculous amount of research that would be needed to carry it off. But ultimately, Deere says, it’s a matter of faith: “If you don’t believe in miracles, then no amount of empirical evidence will convince you.”

And so the movement continues.

Its future, however, appears uncertain. Controversy has taken a toll, observers says, and even some prophets aren’t sure what’s next.

Jackson says God has informed him that the movement needs new direction, but He hasn’t laid out any details. Jackson’s own view is that prophetic ministries have turned into Psychic 7-Elevens where people seek “quick-fix” answers to problems they should figure out on their own.

At his Anaheim appearance New Year’s Eve, Cain also seemed weary of followers pestering him for guidance. “Do you have a word for me from God?” he said one woman had recently asked.

“Yes,” Cain said he replied, handing her a Bible. “Here’s a whole book of them.”