Talk to apostle Theresa Harvard Johnson, and you’ll encounter her passion for building a scribal nation. Read her words, and you’ll see that passion multiplied for the kingdom to understand the width, breadth and depth of the scribe’s calling. Through her dual ministries, The School of the Scribe and The Scribal Conservatory Arts & Worship Center, the scribal commander, author, international speaker and veteran news journalist serves prophetic scribes by helping them walk in their divine destiny.
Johnson’s ministries, based in Atlanta, Georgia, have a variety of offshoots, including her podcast, Chamber of the Scribe, on the Charisma Podcast Network, and The Scribal Advance, an annual four-day prophetic conference focused on the scribal arts, scheduled this year for Oct. 27-30 at the Sonesta Atlanta Airport North.
“My ministry is multifaceted,” Johnson says. “I’m probably best known for The School of the Scribe, an educational center where we help prophetic writers and scribes of all kinds understand their purpose and calling while also unveiling their identity.” The School of the Scribe is based on an advanced, pioneering curriculum centered around The Scribal Anointing®, a 21st-century revelation of the office of the prophetic scribe. The school advances the understanding of the prophetic scribe beyond writing and publishing and into its three foundational areas: administration, instruction and creativity. Drawing on two decades of extensive biblical study, academic and historical research concerning scribes in scriptural history combined with revelatory insight and understanding, Johnson has merged two decades of study into the only comprehensive repository for understanding the calling of the scribe available today.
Her contribution to the kingdom has positioned her as a leading apostolic voice and trailblazer in the scribal realm. The school has established language for the scribal realm, provided definition governing the scribal movement and built an extensive library of video and teachings around it. Most recently, The School of the Scribe expanded to include the Dream Writers’ Academy specifically for prophetic writers, recorders and administrators assigned to the scribal realm of dreams and visions.
“I also oversee The Scribal Conservatory Arts & Worship Center,” Johnson says. “Our ministry is a safe community for believers to immerse themselves in Christ and spiritually mature while also exploring their unique calling and purpose through community. We produce students of the Word and activate believers in pure apostolic and prophetic ministry. We help them see their individual and corporate roles in the transforming, expanding 21st-century congregation. For us, it is a new day for the church. It is a day of exploration and new frontiers in which our ministry expression is amplified in a way the earth has never seen.”
Biblical Basis
After 20 years of serving her fellow scribes, Johnson exudes a contagious confidence. Part of that comes from her deep study of the Scriptures where, she says, the ministry of the scribe is well-documented throughout.
“The revelation was solidified for me through studying Matthew 13:52, which says, ‘Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old, from ancient of days,'” Johnson says. “In the scribe school, we focus primarily on being instructed in the kingdom and being a master of your own house. We take that as, ‘People, let’s be established in the Word first; that’s most important. You know who you are in Christ; you know that He is the ultimate expression of everything that you do, and then understanding what it looks like to be a scribe instructed.'”
Johnson says one of the things she’s learned to do is to study the Word of God. “The first time the phrase ‘scribe instructed’ was ever used was in the book of Ezra—Ezra 7, verse 6. And that Scripture says that Ezra was ‘a scribe instructed in the kingdom of God.’ And I began studying out who Ezra was, what he was sent to do, what his role was in the kingdom.” Ezra’s mandate when he brought the Jews back into Israel from Babylonian captivity was to “make sure people were instructed in the way of God again after being lost to Babylon and the ways of Babylon.
“When we look at the scribe, one of the primary functions of the scribe in the Scripture was to restore people to the heart of God, the Word of God,” she says. “Even more so than writing, more so than administration, more so than instruction, was aligning the body.”
Johnson says the Bible reveals the many different gifts of the scribe. “When you go over the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, scribes were your event planners; they were the ones who organized the feasts,” she says. “They were your treasurers. They were your copyists; they were your copywriters; they were your editors; they were your instructors. They were all of that before reading and writing was an everyday thing for us like it is today. They spoke multiple languages; they translated the Scriptures; they were the highest commodity of slaves in the Bible.”
Johnson reminds us that Joseph in the Old Testament was a scribe who ultimately became governor “based on his financial gifts, based on his writing gifts, based on his experience in commerce.”
Divine Encounter
Johnson entered her own prophetic scribal ministry through a dramatic divine encounter in the year 2000. “I didn’t know anything about the prophetic, angels or hearing God,” she says. “I woke up one night writing uncontrollably. I was writing words of healing and divine declarations concerning the recovery of my own broken soul primarily in the form of poetry and spoken word.” Her experiences were continuous and intense; they included encounters with Jesus and visitations from angels handing her scrolls in dreams that became books, articles and prophecy for prophetic scribes and artisans spanning 18 years.
At first, she thought she was alone in her scribal calling, Johnson says, but she realized there must be others like her, and she began sharing her prophetic writings and utterances in ministry and secular environments. As she did so, other prophetic scribes connected with her for motivation and guidance, eventually forming an evangelistic ministry, the Voices of Christ Prophetic Poetry Team. They soon expanded into Voices of Christ Literary Ministries International, through which Johnson mentored scribes around the world and in prisons, taught at conferences, led weekly prayer calls and mentoring sessions, and established chapters across the United States. The ministry became a safe place for prophetic scribes to connect in a time long before scribal ministry at the level seen today was a global consideration.
“We needed an environment just for us,” Johnson says. “But what blew me away was that around 2015, there were these prophecies that started coming out on the Elijah List; they were coming out on all of these other networks. People were seeing angels delivering scrolls; they were seeing pens fall from heaven. There were just all these prophecies about the prophetic writer. I thought, This means that this is the time for us. This means that the Spirit is opening this up over the congregation and over the church. These prophecies provided confirmation and validation for the path we had already been walking out, praying and prophesying into.”
Hearing the same words from others that she had heard and shared years before helped confirm for Johnson that her interest in scribes was more than just her own idea.
“This is a move of God; the Lord is speaking,” she says. “And I’m here, and I’ve been doing this the entire time. So this may mean that what I have is a contribution that I can add to what the Lord is doing in the earth.”
As people began to search for understanding, Johnson found herself at the epicenter of a divine scribal movement as a vanguard whose entire life had been orchestrated to lead an apostolic scribal nation.
Today, The School of the Scribe is empowered by a dedicated, capable team of instructors from around the world who have studied The Scribal Anointing® comprehensively, partnered with Johnson and have been personally mentored by her. Together, they are providing nurturing communities, progressive courses and mentorship for those called and gifted.
“We are supplying answers for prophetic scribes concerning their calling,” Johnson says. “We are affirming and confirming their gifts and purposes. We are helping them discover where they fit and dig deep into their identity.”
Apostolic Mentoring
This expansion of her ministry to other scribes followed a season of disillusionment when she couldn’t find anyone who understood her calling, Johnson says.
“What in the world is a scribe?” they asked her. “And why do you think you’re supposed to do this as a ministry? … This couldn’t possibly be God. Didn’t the scribes kill Jesus?”
“I was hearing everything,” she says. “And I was getting really discouraged.
God breathed life into her as she kept moving forward. He would eventually connect her with people who gave life to her apostolic ministry, but she still experienced a disconnect and longing for a deeper connection.
Her pastor at the time knew he could not guide her in the scribal area, so he prayed and agreed with her about finding someone who could help. Then one Sunday, by the leading of Holy Spirit, he released her through a public statement and prayer before the church.
“I didn’t even know I needed this,” Johnson says. “But I felt it … I felt it all the way through me.”
Immediately afterward, Johnson began seeking to fill that void. After randomly searching online for a school of the apostles to give her some understanding about her calling, she found the woman who would become her mentor and spiritual mother, Dr. Kluane Spake. She ordered one of Spake’s books and then realized she was also in Atlanta.
As soon as Johnson recognized that, she says: “In an audible voice, I heard the Lord say, ‘This is your apostle,’ just like that.” After she spent time pursuing Spake online, by phone, through social media and through her courses, the two met, and their relationship continues today. Mentorship with Spake has proved to be a critical catalyst to her ministry success.
Johnson says that her most popular book, Apostolic Mentorship, was written as a result of what she has drawn from her relationship with Spake, who would eventually commission her as an apostle. “So many people are looking for a mentor,” Johnson says. “They’re looking for people to genuinely help and guide them closely in their calling, especially if that calling is as obscure as mine.”
Johnson says she uses lessons learned—especially those from her own mistakes—to teach others about apostolic mentorship. “I really go through every mistake that I made as a mentee, how my expectations were misplaced with people, because if you have the wrong expectations, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re expecting something from people that they cannot give, you’ll be disappointed. Then on the flip side, as a mentor now, I talk about how to receive a mentee without messing up who they’re called to be. I provide great guidelines on how to walk that process out in that book.”
Johnson says mentorship should be what she calls a “relational exchange.”
“You should have someone mentoring you who’s willing to grab hold of your vision and not just want to transform you into a mini-them,” she explains. “It’s OK to be who God has called you to be. We have to get to this point where it’s a relationship and not just a transaction.”
Scribal Anointing
Johnson shares with her mentees that The Scribal Anointing® is based on the Scripture mentioned earlier, Matthew 13:52. “It says that the anointing of the scribe is on my life to accomplish this particular purpose or to accomplish this particular destiny in the earth,” she says. “And so we look at it as Holy Spirit putting a burden on you to release some type of help to the church.”
More than anything else, Johnson loves to share with scribes that “We’re the ministry of helps,” she says. “We’re the ones who come alongside apostles and prophets and help them administrate their ministries. We’re the ones who come alongside the evangelists to help them order their steps. We’re always in the background. And we have to accept that as a calling. We’re the thread that brings the tapestry together.
“The calling of the scribe is provable by logos [God’s Word in Scripture] alone,” Johnson says. “You don’t need revelation to prove that the scribal anointing is a legitimate ministry. You can see it functioning throughout the Scripture. And you can see it increasing with every generation because as it is propelled in the earth by technology.'”
Annual Conference
Johnson’s Chamber of the Scribe podcast, school and other online ministries offer ongoing mentoring for prophetic scribes, but The Scribal Advance, her annual prophetic conference focused on the scribal arts, offers hours of training and instruction packed into one four-day event Oct. 27-30. For more information and registration, go to scribaladvance.com.
“We’re doing all these things to help bring scribes together to help them learn their identity and their purpose,” she says. Through the conference courses, “You will learn how to build your ministry from the ground up … We have a scribal arts symposium, where you’re going to learn how to use your scribal gifts for therapy if you’re an artist. You’re going to learn a lot of things that you can do in the regular world, not just in the church. Johnson strongly encourages those with scribal gifts who are looking for direction and instruction to attend.
“The highlight of our conference is that we are very personable,” she says. “All of our teachers, all of our presenters are touchable. … So you make lifelong friendships there. And right now, we’re the only conference exclusively doing this.
“This is all we do,” Johnson emphasizes. “You’re not going to have other things going on in the conference. This conference is completely scribal from beginning to end. We’re talking about the new frontier. That’s the focus. We’re still pioneering. We haven’t finished this. We’re just at the beginning.”
The School of the Scribe currently hosts the largest, dedicated and free educational network for prophetic scribes on social media exclusively for understanding the purity of The Scribal Anointing® in the 21st century. To connect with Theresa Harvard Johnson, start here. {eoa}
Rachel Hadley is a freelance writer.
Read articles like this one and other Spirit-led content in our new platform, CHARISMA PLUS.
Ron Allen 
Charisma Media Staff 
Abby Trivett 
