1956 – 2016
Seven years ago my wife, Wendy-Lee, and I were having a coffee when she picked up her phone to open Whatsapp message. I happened to look up at her and saw the blood drain from her face as she whispered the words to me, “Kim died.”
Two words of seven letters were all it took to shake me to the very core of my being.
It took me months to process and accept those words. Although I’m now reconciled to the fact, I have begun to process a far greater truth: The Sound of God’s voice though Kim Clement has created an echo. We are the echoes! The RE-SOUND of the Light that the Prophet carried.
I first met Kim Clement in Durban South Africa. My family attended Durban Christian Centre and my parents soon became close friends with Kim and Jane and became ardent supporters and financiers of Kim’s frequent missionary trips to the USA.
It was a strange season of my life as a 13-year-old teenager with a somewhat rebellious, immature streak. Think about it – which teenager struggling to find their identity and not fully living in a spiritual walk with God wants to listen to a prophet preach? Compounded by the fact that that my parents were ministers and elders in the church – the pressure to conform to a model of a PK (preacher’s kid) certainly didn’t help matters.
My idea of prophets was always the picture of a pointed, wagging, shaking crooked finger in your face highlighting all the sin and mischievous thoughts you secretly hid. Yet when Kim was scheduled to minister from the pulpit or conduct the youth service, I was the first one dressed and even eager to get the closest seat possible to the front row.
Something about him drew me. His message excited and ignited something in me. His sound was a unique expression I couldn’t find in anyone else. His gift was incredible and his anointing undeniable. If this was what Jesus was all about then I wanted in lock, stock and barrel! I had decided that whatever he carried, I wanted!
Most don’t get the blessing to get close to a prophet. But I have come to believe that God had moved my family from another church that they had grown up in where their own parents were both ministers so that I could encounter Jesus through the life of Kim Clement.
During the mid 1990’s I had the opportunity to move to Dallas, TX and spend a lot of time with Kim who poured out so freely into my life. There was a point where I would finish his thoughts for him when we discussed spiritual things and he would pre-empt my own with a mischievous grin on his face!
Fast forward 30+ years and I am today unashamedly a product of the ministry of this extraordinary prophet. I carry every word, every thought, every message deep within me. Nothing is lost.
The fact is that Kim has passed from this world. The truth, however, is that his sound is still very much with us and the greatest way to honour those we love is to live our lives to the fullest potential of what they saw in us and laboured to produce in us.
Kim wasn’t interested in building a great empire or reputation. He was all about investing in lives and in a generation so that we could take our rightful place and become who God allowed him to see we could be: A generation that would shake the very gates of hell because we walked in revelation’s Light.
Where to from here God?
Recently I was confronted by a self-asked question. Do I have revelation of my own or is it all Kim’s revelation that I am merely echoing? I was startled. I was affronted. I was confused. Was this true? Was I just an echo? Was I living and ministering according to a glory that was fading? Did I not have my own sound to make?
I began to pray about this. I thought in my heart that it would break me apart if I discovered I was just an echo. But how wrong I was!
Kim made an investment in all of us who recognized the unique sound he carried. It was the same sound that was heard walking in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden. It was the sound of the Lord! Kim gave voice to that sound. He became the voice to that Sound. He didn’t operate in opinion or even walk by it.
Actually, the crazier it sounded to him, the more he recognized God in the sound. And he would boldly and courageously proclaim it often painting on his back a bulls-eye for the naysayers and critics.
Indeed many of the scars on his back were from amongst the clergy and ecclesiastical order of the day whose opinion the prophet defied by the revelation God gave to him. Kim Clement paid a great price to raise The Warriors. He willingly suffered the slings and arrows of ridicule and jealousy from a religious order in order to raise sons and daughters that would become vessels of Light in their own right, infused with the spirit that was upon him.
Today you and I who honour him do so because we refuse to allow that Light to dim even for a split second. We are the echoes of the sound! We are the RE-SOUND.
Will we receive fresh insights and revelation?
Absolutely. Kim always taught that revelation is progressive and that without progressive revelation people live (dwell) in the mode of another’s opinion (i.e. carelessly). But at the same time we must understand that we can only see more, go higher, achieve greater if we stand on the same vantage point that the Prophet did.
This was always his desire. That we would see what he saw and hear what he heard for ourselves! And when we do we will become the Voice of the Sound of God in our generation and time-line.
David built Mt Zion so that Solomon his son could build the Temple thereon. I think of Jesus saying to John on the Isle of Patmos, “Come up here and I will show you things to come.” This to me is what Kim Clement did for so many of us. He stood on Mount Zion, the altar he built before his God, and extended his hand to all of us and said the same thing: “Come on up here Warriors. I will show you God’s perspective. Here – take my hand.”
I believe that the spirit that was on Kim is available to all that would be humble enough to become the echo and the re-sound of the message and revelation he carried. Does that mean we are “living in the old”? Nay! We are living in the atmosphere of revelation and illumination. We are standing on the shoulders of a giant who prayed for the spirit on him to also be upon us so that we can progress to the next level where God can show us more, tell us more and do more through us.
It is our great honour to be the echo! In truth we are not echoing Kim, but we are Re-Sounding Yeshua’s Voice – which we all recognize the Prophet carried. The glory of what comes next is because of the Sound that came before!
For me it is not an exaggeration to say that there is not a day that goes by when somehow in someway I don’t miss Kim Clement. As a 13-year-old boy I saw Kim as my hero. But he introduced me to his hero: Jesus. My life has never been the same again.
There will be another time that I can address the things that must happen as part of the prophetic reformation and restoration. There will be an appropriate moment to explain why as things stand today I weep for the state of the prophetic and have chosen exile in the wilderness of isolation whilst false prophets and witches woo and seduce. But that is not today.
Today I’m taking a moment to honour my spiritual mentor but more dear to me – a friend. I’m taking a moment to tell you about his impact in my own life and the lives of countless others. And I’m defying and denying any haughty voice that suggests that those of us who still cling to the Prophet’s message and teachings are an old order. No my friends – We are the Future!
Colloquial wisdom suggests that you measure the legacy of a man by those he impacted in his lifetime and beyond. How great then is this man’s legacy? Kim’s legacy is not the prophecies and words of knowledge. It’s not the heights of visions and encounters. Kim’s legacy is you and I.
So let is not be said that Kim is gone from the earth and therefore we are merely echoes of the past. No! The prophet might be gone from the earth but the deposit, of the Voice of Jesus and the revelation of the Spirit, lives and breathes in each of us who recognised and gravitated to the sound he carried.
We are the Re-Sound. A Remnant. A double-portion generation ready to move forward carrying the unaccountable impulse of the very breath of Heaven – The Spirit of Jesus.
We are the Echoes of the Future!
Kim Clement – Thank you. Forever loved. Forever missed.
