Written By Jessica 'Empress Lanice' Chalmers
Only a few people can executive produce America’s Black Prophet. But, two answered the call, Naomi Jordan Cook, the eldest child of Archbishop E. Bernard Jordan, and her husband Kenneth Cook. They both have firsthand experience and knowledge about the master prophet, the prophetic, ministry, and family. This dynamic duo answered the call to tell his story during a time it’s needed.
When asked what inspired them to become executive producers of the documentary, Kenneth stated,
“I just felt strongly that we needed to do a documentary that represented the prophetic. I felt like there was a lot that people didn’t know about Bishop Jordan and his body of work since I’ve known him since 1993. I just felt like it was the right time to do a documentary. So I spoke to the master prophet about it, and he agreed, and we went forward to do it. Thought that it’d be a great time to expose the prophetic even more so to the world.”
When asked why now, in 2022, Kenneth adds,
“Perfect time! You got a lot of people looking for answers. We’re on the hills of a pandemic. You got people uncertain about their lives and people uncertain about their futures. It’s a perfect time to expose the world to the prophetic so people can have access to answers in the mind of God in terms of what they need to do with their life.”
When asked, what was the process like working on this documentary, especially in a short time, Kenneth stated, “I don’t even think I could put that in words. Just put it this way, we accomplished in two months what probably should have taken us a year and a half to do. It was a real heavy weight of responsibility. It felt like it was a real true call that God put in our laps. It was fun, but at the same time, it was a large responsibility to birth this baby. I’ll let my wife answer that one as well.”
Naomi adds,
“No, you’re absolutely right. A lot of hard work and really just making sure the story is being told. So the process of this was a very tight deadline. It was a lot of work that went on in two and a half months.”
With Naomi being the firstborn of Dr. Archbishop E. Bernard Jordan and Pastor Debra Jordan, I was curious to know how it felt for her to pull all her father’s stories and hear stories that she may not have known. When asked, she stated,
“That experience was very exciting hearing some of the stories. Some stories I’ve heard before. Some stories were brand new. Or, I heard the story, but never looked at the story with my 41-year-old eyes or listening ears to really hear what went on in the background, even to listening to my father’s story of just starting out in the prophetic. We heard about it, but really capturing the details of the story, the experience, the ridicule, and the excitement that went behind it was really exciting. And really excited to really share that experience with the world.”
When asked what can people look forward to when watching the documentary, Naomi stated,
“Yeah. So one of the things I would say that people can look forward to if this is their first time hearing about E. Bernard Jordan and his story, or those that have experienced the power of prophecy, is to have them be in that seat to say, ‘how do I or how am I able to experience the power of prophecy?’ We also want those that have been receiving prophetic words and go into the different members of the company of prophets and use their Prophecy Now app to say, ‘let me go and work my prophetic word out just like the others that have seen so much success utilizing the power of prophecy in their life.’”
If you haven’t heard already, this documentary has now become a series and is broken into 4-parts so far. When asked did they expect it to turn into a series, here is what Kenneth said,
<both laughs>
“Yeah, well, you know, definitely knew that this was going to be a big project. I didn’t anticipate when I first came up with the idea and concept of doing it. I wouldn’t say I didn’t anticipate it being a series, but I wasn’t looking past the one that we were doing. However, in the process of putting it together, Archbishop fell so in love with the concept, that he started talking about multiple, and then as we progressed doing the interviews, we just realized there was no way that we were going to get this whole story into an hour <laugh>. So it kind of made room for itself. And the process kind of turned itself into a docu-series. But I think a docu-series is definitely going to come out of this, but I think a lot of other stuff will as well.”
When asked if they feel that America needs a black prophet, Kenneth stated,
“Do I feel America needs a black prophet? I don’t know if America needs a black prophet, but America has one. The reason why America’s black prophet is important is because it’s important that we stop deleting blackness out of America. I think even amongst our own black communities, and there are a lot of variations of black. I think that we even underestimate the importance and the uniqueness of black Americans who came over in slave trade and built this country and paved the way for a lot of us, blacks who derive from different spaces of the diaspora of black people. I think it’s truly important because we are a part of building this country. We’re part of the liberation of this country. America’s black prophet has to have a space and voice to continue that path of liberation for people and for God’s people.
When asked if there’s anything they want the readers to know about the documentary at the 63rd Birthday Celebration and premier of the documentary, Kenneth stated,
“Truthfully, on the night of Archbishop’s birthday celebration, I sincerely hope they are in a space to digest the documentary because I know there’s going to be a lot going on. So it’s definitely something that I assume they will watch over and over again. Our hopes are just as executive producers being a part of the project that we did a good job. Our hope is that we did a good job in making sure that the life of Archbishop E. Bernard Jordan, now Dr. Jordan, was articulated on the screen and reflected it. And that it’s a good representation of what the prophetic ministry and the master prophet are about. And, we sincerely hope people enjoy it.”
Lastly, Kenneth and Naomi would like to give a special thank you to director Zulu, director of photography Snyder, who was phenomenal on this project, and definitely all of the crew who worked on it, but also we want to thank each and every individual who donated towards making this documentary happen as well.
If you haven’t already, watch these Executive Producers’ first documentary here.
