Just curious. Surly when you were prophesying you believed at the time that you were hearing from God, right? What other voices were you not hearing, that made you feel like you weren't a Christian? And what has changed your mind, that you now attribute the prophetic inspiration you once felt to something natural, rather than to God?
I was answering Antz' implied criticism that I wasn't a Christian because I couldn't, or didn't believe, I was hearing the voice of God. Yes, when I prophesied, during my Charismania years, I did believe it was from God. I got quite involved in the Charismatic movement. I sought the "gifts of the Spirit". One thing that always bothered me during those years though, was the Christians who would say "God spoke to me today...", or "I heard from the Lord...", or "The Lord said to me..." For a long time I searched for this voice of God they were hearing, and never found it. All I heard were my own thoughts. Antz would probably say, again, that this was because I wasn't a real Christian. Maybe... I don't know. I believe I was a genuine Christian though. I don't know how much more Christian I could have been - I read my Bible more than most Christians (who, if they're honest, don't bother, and many even confess that it's a struggle to pick up their Bible). I prayed every day, several times a day, sometimes in tongues. I struggled against my natural desires and tried to resist my temptations. If the only requirement of salvation and being a Christian is, as Paul says, to believe in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead and to confess him as Lord, then I surely met that. But... I just never heard anything I could attribute or identify as being God's voice. The way some Christians spoke, it was as if they were having conversations with God all day. I have to confess that, at the time, I was jealous of this and believed I was somehow a dysfunctional Christian, or immature, or too carnal, or something.
Why do I now believe this is all just emotionalism? Well, as I explained, I became weary of the Charismania and Word of Faith movement. The Christians involved in it, in the churches I went to, were simply not nice people. They were gossipy, bitter, and incredibly ambitious people who were extremely two faced. Now, not all of them were like this, as I've said in another thread - there were some genuinely "good apples" amongst all the bad ones. However, I eventually stopped going to church because I just didn't like being around these people, and so did my parents. I still listened to sermons and bought teaching tapes online though.
It was when I read that book - Post-Charismatic - that I really started to notice how shallow the whole Charismatic/Word of Faith movement was. Prophecies never came true, and were always of the grandiose type ("Thus saith the Lord, I am calling you out, I have separated you... blah blah blah"). I've had prophecies that I would meet beautiful women and get married, have my own ministry, etc. It's all bull. Sorry, but it is. I'm single and work a desk job. I gave up believing in those prophecies once I read Post-Charismatic. That book really did change things for me. It's a Christian book, and it's ultimate goal is to encourage Christians disillusioned with the Charismatic movement to keep seeking God in other ways, but it ended up making me question everything about my faith, not just the Spirit-filled stuff. I began to realise that no Christian has it nailed down; no one has the answers, even though they all claimed to share the same Spirit. If Christians all share the same Spirit of Christ, why is there no unity among the Protestant denominations?
I read that book 3 years ago and since then I slowly embraced agnosticism (after reading some of Bart Erhman's books) and, eventually I summoned up enough courage to read about evolution and other science books (and watching Prof. Brian Cox's excellent "Wonders of the Universe" series). That's basically how I became an atheist.