Bishop Neil C. Ellis says GUF needs a total reset

One week after Global United Fellowship (GUF) Presiding Bishop Neil C. Ellis said he can foresee the day, which could probably be in his lifetime, where a woman could be the presiding bishop of GUF, and two weeks after he announced he would be stepping down from the office of senior pastor at Mount Tabor Church, Ellis continued to drop bombshells. His latest came during the closing of GUF’s convention with his announcement that “there must be a total reset of our fellowship”.

“I want to caution everybody – it does not matter what office you hold, get yourself together,” Ellis warned. “There has to be a total reset – not necessarily because things were wrong, but because things have changed. And if we don’t change with the change in times, that makes you irrelevant.”

This Ellis said as he recognized Prophetess Juanita Bynum, an American gospel singer, author, and pastor, who was sitting front row and flanked by Bishop Harold Ray, Redemptive Life Palm Beach senior pastor, in Palm Beach, Florida, and Dr. Jamal Bryant, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church senior pastor, in Lithonia, Georgia.

“Prophetess Bynum, I’m glad to see you because I was going to call you next week. Your place is here … your place is here,” said Ellis.

“We must reset the button,” the presiding bishop told the fellowship. “You must get back on your assignment. And don’t look left nor right. For what this season demands, we must be bold enough, we must be open enough to recognize that people who are younger than us must now sit around the table with us. For where God has taken this fellowship, the elders must now learn from the youngers. We gotta all sit around the table. And you cannot be threatened by their brilliance. They have brilliance. We have wisdom. Brilliance without wisdom is ignorance. And wisdom without brilliance is stupidity.”

Ellis said bringing wisdom and brilliance together was the reason why he looked outside GUF’s executive council for “The Gathering 2021 Global 360 Conference – Embracing our Call, Engaging our Culture”, which was held through Friday in Atlanta, Georgia, and brought in Bryant.

“Who can deny his [Bryant’s] brilliance?” he asked.

“I took wisdom [Ray] and connected it with brilliance [Bryant] – that is bone to bone. Dr. Jamal had the ideas … most of them; Bishop Ray had the know-how and the tenacity and the boldness to keep brilliance in line – not everybody can do that. That’s why we had a major week this week because bone to bone came together.”

Ellis told the convention the structure GUF functioned and operated with prior to the pandemic is now “in the valley of dry bones” and that as presiding bishop, he had been sent to “speak to the bones in the valley”. He said his word from God is that they hear the word of the Lord. And that God’s words were all they would get at GUF. He said that if the words aren’t in the Bible, it will not be tolerated in the fellowship.

“Those of you who are still waiting to come back, make sure you stay out as long as you need to stay, but when you get back, don’t bring the same form of malice and envy and jealousy and stupidness and craziness, and wickedness. Stay home, if that’s all you got,” said the presiding bishop.

“I am totally aware that people are not comfortable with changes, so as I preach right now, tongues have begun wagging … phones have begun ringing,” he said to a stunned audience both in person and virtually. Ellis said he knew his announcement upset a small segment of his fellowship, but said that it was not his intention.

“The intention is for me to be what you know I am – that’s obedient to the voice of God.”

Prior to the first case of COVID-19 being identified in The Bahamas in March 2020, Ellis recounted visits to the last two countries he visited prior to the shutdown – The Philippines and Cuba, countries outside of the United States and not among countries they would visit frequently – and of the reception they received in both places.

During lockdown, Ellis said God showed him something and told him to not allow people to hold him hostage.

“A lot of people who you serve are still bound by religion and I have raised you and the fellowship up to bring deliverance.”

Ellis said he was not prepared to appease and massage egos, so they could feel good about themselves.

“My desire and my responsibility as the leader of this fellowship with churches around the world is to make sure the correct bones connect to the right bones. I am doing everything I can to ensure that God does not eliminate me from the assignment. When we come out of this pandemic, we cannot look like, we cannot think like, and we cannot act like the way we looked, thought and acted before March 2020.”

Ellis said being able to engage in their conference, which was held October 13-15, happened because the media team of New Birth, the media team of Redemptive Life, and the media team of Mount Tabor came together “bone to bone”.

“Ray team have the writers, my team have the producers, New Birth team have the executioners and if they weren’t ‘bone to bone’, they would have all gone around the table with their egos and we would have been here in a major mess this week. When we got here, we knew who was in charge – and I sat back and just watched. I’m not intimidated by these brothers. Our time is winding down and if those of us who are at the table do not raise up younger ones and the next generation, we would have failed our assignment. Success is not success until you have succession. Lord help me not to die in office without a successor. Lord help me not to stay in office long enough to kill what we build. Lord give me the wisdom and courage and the determination to know when to step aside.”

He said he was talking to more than just himself, but to every presiding bishop and every president of every convention, and every pastor of every church, and that they should start raising up the next person because they don’t know when their time will be up.

Ellis gave Ray, Bryant and Bynum the opportunity to respond to the message he delivered at “The Gathering”.

In his response, Ray said the church can never be irrelevant because the word of God can never be irrelevant, and the church will never be irrelevant because the name of Jesus is still the only name by which men might be saved. And that relevance is being able to declare and decree that the blood still works.

In his response, which got Ellis and everyone in the room to their feet, Bryant spoke to the wind blowing and said if people want the Holy Ghost to start moving, that they have to start speaking, and to open up their mouth and let the spirit of the living God fall fresh on them.

“Let everything that has wind, praise the Lord,” said Bryant.

Bynum, who has been in ministry for 50 years, said one thing she was taught and likes to pass on, is to respect the anointing. She said when someone gets up and the glory of God falls on them, other people should not come behind them trying to prove their point.

Ellis opened his closing message with an announcement of changes in the Mid-Atlantic Province and that Bishop Jerome Williams, the provincial bishop for the last seven years, effective Monday, October 18, would take over the metropolitan bishop for a new deanery; replacing Williams in the Mid-Atlantic Province would be Bishop Sean Bell as the new provincial bishop for the Mid-Atlantic Province.

Before making his bombshell announcements, Ellis spoke to the members about the Bible being the voice of God in print. He reminded them that it is a powerful book written by holy men inspired by God, but that the power of the book kicks in only when they allow it to transform the way they think, the way they speak, the way they act, and the way they live.

“I find it alarming that in the times in which we live, many Christian believers have become so secularized in their world view, that they no longer see the Bible as the authoritative, infallible, and inherent word of God – and that deeply concerns me. Many Christian believers are increasingly responding to popular human philosophies, oftentimes grounded in gimmicks and quick solutions to address their needs and sometimes their desires as opposed to turning to the word of God – and that deeply concerns me.”

Ellis said Satan wants believers to doubt God’s word and get to the place where they as a matter of public practice resort to other sources for answers in dealing with their many challenges in life.

“What God has for your life is designed to take you further than you can ever imagine. And because you are on a powerful trajectory, the enemy of God and the enemy of your souls, over the past nine months, has constantly been plotting against and attacking you. He’s been taking jabs at you wherever and whenever he saw the opportunity and oftentimes it’s been in very subtle ways. This is all designed for the express purpose of cutting you down before you really start walking in your divine purpose with power and with authority.”

Ellis said his view of the world is not based upon global economies, global crises or pandemics – but rather upon what God says in His word.

“I look at the way I do business, the way I make decisions, the way I commit myself to projects and events, and people, through lens that point me back to the word of God. The way I respond to challenges, the way I deal with discouragement, the way I deal with disappointment is by looking through lens that point me back to the word of God. And that’s what has been keeping me grounded during this global pandemic – because the word of God is truth.”

Ellis said the truth of God’s word has enough power in it to eliminate facts. And that, he said, is why followers of Christ should be careful and slow about making the facts surrounding their circumstances in life, absolute truth.

“I am not suggesting that you ignore your circumstances – neither am I saying you should live in denial, but what I am suggesting is that before you accept the circumstances in your life as truth, you have to see the bigger picture. Because whatever it is, it is not truth until the word of God agrees with it. No matter how factual something is, if the word of God does not agree with it, then it’s not the truth and it’s subject to change any minute.”

During his address, he referenced John 11:25 in which Jesus speaks to the resurrection, and broke it down for the people, saying that the resurrection is not primarily an event, and that if Jesus said he is the resurrection, then that means the resurrection must primarily be a person.

He also referenced passages in Ezekiel and the mess he finds himself in, going to a valley of bones, not by his own volition, but because the Lord’s hand was upon him, and commanded him.

“That was then and this is now, and I am mandated by heaven to tell you that as the hand of the Lord was on Ezekiel then, the hand of the Lord is on everybody who is under the sound of my voice right now. Wherever life has landed you, as I deliver this message, the hand of the Lord is upon you – and carried me. Where you are right now has landed you squarely in the center of God’s will for your life. Sometimes the anointing of God will take you into some strange places.”

Ellis reminded people that God knows what their situation is – what happened to them as a child and the struggle they’ve had from then to now; knows the rejection and the betrayal they’ve had to endure; knows about their unemployment status because of the pandemic; knows about their failing health; and knows their anxiety and fears, because there is nothing going on in their life right now that catches God by surprise.

He said God wants them to not allow a crisis to stop them from being what He called them to be, or doing what God assigned to their hands.

“If you want to impact your culture, you’ve got to embrace your call – no matter what,” said Ellis.

That call, the presiding bishop said, is prophecy, but not prophesying about feelings and desires, but saying to the “dry bones” to hear the word of the Lord, which he said is what it will take to get countries worldwide back on their feet again.

“Those of us who will endeavor to embrace our call, we must stand boldly and prophecy to this global situation. If you want to fix this world, put the word on it,” said Ellis. “If anything of substance or value is dying or dead in your life, put the word on it because the word of God has resurrection power. We don’t need to wait until this world wants to hear us; a charge to keep we have. You don’t wait until the conditions are conducive, you speak whether they hear it or not because we are not speaking to them, we are speaking to the spirit behind them.”

During the closing session, Ellis encouraged people to take a moment to look at their life – analyze their situations, relationships, career, finances, and as bad and as challenging and as dried up as things appear to be, to hear God through him asking them whether the dead, dried up areas of their life can live again.

He said the master and creator of Earth had given him the answer that they can have healing and wholeness, but that they have to command it by hearing the word of the Lord.

“If you want to rise from the ashes of this pandemic, and move beyond everything that has come against you to bury you, the Lord God Almighty has told me to tell you, command your situation, to hear the word of the Lord.”

Ellis also said that the only way a person can prophesy is as commanded. And that the world is in too great a mess for the people called of God to be making up prophecies.

“This is no season in life to be putting false prophesies over people’s heads. I know some people are looking for platforms and they’re hoping that a dressed-up prophetic desire will usher them to that platform, but I say tonight, the Lord rebukes you. Stop it!

“The problem we are having in these fellowships, and the problem we are having in these conventions, and the problem we are having in our churches, is because there is no structure and no order. We’re making a lot of noise, we’re having a lot of programs, we’re doing a lot of things, but things ain’t changing.”

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