Good-day, dear reader. Today I proudly announce that God has not told me verbally or audibly what is going to happen to me, to you, or to the nation…
I raise the subject of false prophets because I have been sickened by videos, released before the election, of people pronouncing that the Lord told them Donald Trump was going to win the 2020 election. He would serve a second term, they said, and continued to say even after the election had taken place. Unless something changes radically in the next couple of days, we can safely say that these people are false prophets. They didn’t just make a mistake or mishear the Lord: they are charlatans.
I regret deeply on behalf of the Church universal the situation I witnessed by video in which, before the election, Trump himself was in a church where a “prophetess” assured him, in front of the entire assembly and probably many thousands of witnesses to the video, that God had said he would win re-election. This makes a mockery of God and the Holy Spirit. It also is a severe attack on the faith not only of Trump himself…trying with all his might to do what was right in the sight of God, and trying to have faith at a time when the entire world seemed to be against him…but also with many others who witnessed it. How many people have had their faith damaged over this? I would say that at the least, it is many thousands.
When God speaks, it happens. There is no “Maybe”, or “Oops!”
We are told again and again in Scripture what God thinks of fakes:
When the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not happen or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you are not to be afraid of him (Deuteronomy 18:22 NASB)
And lest we think that a false prophecy is just a little slip, a well-intentioned misunderstanding to be brushed under the rug, while we go onto the next message spoken by God by way of Mister or Ms. super-spiritual, we perhaps should consider what our Father God, the creator of the universe and author of the Book of life, thought of such a thing:
But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death (verse 20).
I’m not saying we should start stoning the fakes. These verses are from the Law, under which every sin was to be dealt with severely: we are under Grace now. But we do need to take very seriously just how much God hates a fake. This is not a small issue. We all need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ himself warned that the main sign of his soon return would be deception. And unfortunately, a lot of people are going to fall for it. Jesus said:
many false prophets will appear and deceive many people (Matthew 24:11).
False prophets have been around since the day Adam and Eve were willingly misled in the Garden. You can find them on every page of the Bible-almost. And you can find them in many churches today. I’ve experienced them myself. I’ve been given false prophesies, when someone assured me that the Lord told him or her what was going to happen to me, and it didn’t happen. And I ‘ve been in a church many times when a prophecy was given to the entire church, which didn’t come true.
It always amazes me that these “prophets”, having got something hugely and blatantly wrong, continue in their error, while the majority of their admirers continue to admire them and pay attention to their predictions, rather than correct them or drive them out of the church. If only they would pay attention to what our God has told us through His Word, rather than a wanna-be Peter or Paul, they would know that one sure way to recognise a false prophet is when something he predicts does not come to pass. This person is not a prophet. If he or she gets it wrong, he’s a false prophet. He should learn humility and repentance, and keep his mouth shut. Duct tape works well.
Fuel for Faith 