Carlyn Robert Kulick, 70, citrus dealer, commercial printer, sailboat captain and prophet, sits in a fruit stand with his wife, Josephine, waiting for a $5 million check from God.
Outside the shop sits a large white van, plastered in bumper stickers reading “Pray for Canada’s Dollar!” and placards advertising Kulick’s Web site, NewsFromAbove.com. When offered a hand in greeting, the gruff-looking Kulick barks, “I don’t give handshakes.” In a moment, though, his eyes dance and his white mustache stretches upwards into a good-natured smirk. “I give hugs.” And then he does.
Kulick is aware that he’s an odd character. But his life is an example, perhaps cautionary, of an existence guided by faith without fear and without question. He is a model of adaptability in adverse circumstances. And he is a prophet.
Kulick’s general claim of having spoken to God is not peculiar by biblical standards. “The notion that people can be led by the spirit of God is, of course, quite traditional,” says the Rev. Dr. J. Philip Wogaman, professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. “But the devil is in the details.” Wogaman, along with other scholars of Christian charismatic theology, contends that prophesy in its modern incarnation should not be easily trusted, particularly when the prophet claims new revelation from God, as Kulick does.
Kulick prophesies that the Lord is strengthening North America and Great Britain for a final encounter with the rest of the world. Kulick believes that, as part of this mission, the Lord is sending him to Canada to raise the value of the Canadian dollar. “It doesn’t matter where I enter Canada,” he says, but at the moment he enters, he believes the value of the dollar will rise.
At Kulick’s fruit stand, customers get a counseling session with their fruit. Kulick keeps a number of self-published prophetic tracts handy as well, in case any visitors should evince an interest in his news from above. “Anybody reading this book,” he says, holding his latest publication, “will have no excuse for not becoming a child of God.”
Born in Lincoln Park, Mich., in 1933, Kulick’s life has been a struggle against poverty and adversity at every stage. He weathered a childhood darkened by his father’s alcoholism. He left home at 16, working his way through Christian high school until he could no longer pay tuition. He dropped out without graduating.
He met Josephine at a church gathering in 1955, and married her that same year. Each of the next three years brought a daughter to the pair. Then, Kulick jokes, in 1961, “we switched doctors and had a boy.”
Kulick's prophesies, from his publications:
On America: "The Lord told me that New York, Hollywood or America is not Babylon … not to listen to those reports."
"The Lord has told me in the past that America would take care of one-third of the deficit, drug kings would fall like leaves off a tree, the American prison system would have a revival … ‘A song of repentance’ would flow through the national system, and there would be a drug respite!" -- June 14, 1999
On Natural Disasters: "The Texas hurricane [Editor’s note: Kulick probably means Hurricane Bret, given the date of this report.] He said He would turn and diminish even as He spoke to me. The hurricane turned away from Corpus Christi (the second time in 20 years) and 'landed' in an area populated by only about 400 people, diminishing as it went, the news reported the benefits of the rain! He said there would be no disasters to hit America before He gave me a time to consider them, as His advocate upon the Earth." -- Aug. 23, 1999
On the Internet: "My son, it is time to reveal My Son Jesus to this darkened world, it is time to relate to this darkened generation through their special media, the internet. I have placed this responsibility on your shoulders. You are My king of prophets and advocate upon the Earth, I have given you, My prophet, the power and authority to do this. No power in heaven or on Earth will stand against you in this project, saith the Lord of Hosts!" -- Sept. 26, 1999
The family moved to Florida in 1969, where they lived for a while in a tent across the street from Kulick’s mother in Pinellas Park before purchasing a house of their own. Kulick and his wife both worked at the St. Petersburg Printing Company. Eager to stay involved in the lives of his children, Kulick became a youth pastor. “He took the kids [from his church] bowling and sailing,” says his daughter Cherilyn. “But that wasn’t enough. He had to buy them a sailboat.”
His experience in sailing as a youth pastor led him to start a sailing school, but his altruism trumped his business sense. “He did sailing lessons for $6 an hour,” says Cherilyn. “It was unheard of.”
Then, he says, he heard the voice of God, in slow, rumbling tones. “In 1977, the Lord called me to be a prophet,” says Kulick.
Shortly thereafter, Kulick says, “the Lord started a church in our home.” A few times a week, his neighbors and family would meet in his house for worship. While his ministry flourished, his financial ventures suffered. The sailing school shut down, and the family lived on the income from Josephine Kulick’s job at the printing company.
On Nov. 3, 1978, God spoke through one of Kulick’s church members to deliver another important message -- a promise that Kulick would receive a $5 million check.
The check had not arrived two years later, in 1980, and Josephine Kulick’s job could no longer sustain the family. After staving off the threat of foreclosure for years, the Kulicks saw their house sold at auction.
After briefly living in Michigan, Kulick went on a mission trip to Canada. There, Kulick says, his prophetic gifts enabled him to resolve a post office strike. “The Lord told me, ‘Go down to the post office, lay your hands on it, and demand that the strike be ended.’” So Kulick did. And when the leaders of the factions met, he says, the anticipated clash never came. The parties all agreed, and the dispute was ended.
This sort of intercession is within the realm of the prophet. In fact, according to Wogaman, “Prophesy is not prediction. From a biblical sense, it means someone who is speaking on behalf of God.”
The Canadian government expelled Kulick from the country after 63 days, because he lacked visible income. He returned to Josephine in Florida. On a whim, the couple began selling produce to businesses around town.
Kulick started running his citrus stand three years later, supplementing his income with a commercial printing business.
God told him in 1995 to sell only citrus. In 1996, he stopped printing for profit, also at God’s direction. Now, during the off-season for citrus sales, no customers enter the shop, the Kulicks’ home and only current source of income. Empty crates and empty freezers are decked with Christmas lights and artificial pine, as if the place had been abandoned in the middle of the winter holidays, at the height of the citrus season. What money they have is running out. And Kulick waits for a check from God to sustain them through the intervening months.
“I know $5 million is a crazy amount of money to fall out of the sky,” he admits. But he maintains an unwavering faith that the money will come soon. He’s collecting bank literature on windfalls so he is prepared when the gift arrives.
Kulick knows others are skeptical. “You know [prophets] by their fruit,” says John Engle, a doctoral student at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Boston. “Their works, their lifestyle, their character: Do they glorify God?”
“There’s a thin line between faith and stupidity for all of us, and it’s inherent in every religious system,” says Dr. Bill J. Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School, although he stresses that his comments don’t deal with Kulick specifically. Christian scholars generally agree that history is the test of any alleged prophet. The Rev. Dr. William Spencer, a professor at Gordon-Conwell, points to Deuteronomy 18:21-22: “When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him.”
Kulick does not have a plan for if the money does not arrive in the next few weeks. But he says he will not waver. Instead, he quotes Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”