If my title caught your attention it’s either because you think you’re a prophet, or more likely because you’re brave enough to question the legitimacy of the modern day “prophet of God” who seems to be around almost every church corner. I’ve known enough of them to know what I’m talking about: some well-meaning and helpful; some wanna-be Peters and Pauls, convinced that they are the power of God on the earth. This variety is looking for every opportunity to show you how spiritual they are. Their “prophecies” or “words of Knowledge” are commonly prefaced with the phrase, “The Lord has told me…”, and continues with instructions for the betterment of your life and possibly their bank accounts.
QUESTIONING GOD? ” Am I questioning the work of the Spirit?” People have accused me of not believing in the Holy Spirit, of not believing in the work of the Spirit or even of blaspheming the Spirit. Here, then, is my own disclaimer. I believe in the Holy Spirit of God – one member of the Trinity of God and the Person who our Lord and saviour sent to be our counsellor. He is the Spirit of Truth. I believe that God is able to do anything He chooses to do through His Spirit – and there’s the rub. God chooses to do whatever is within His will – not ours. He isn’t there to fulfill our desires or to perform magic tricks for us: we live by faith, not by sight. He is the high and mighty One over all things and who created all things. He is holy and we are not. He is God and we are not and never will be. We are His servants. All things truly of the Spirit are holy, just and faithful. God is perfect in all His ways. The problem is that we are not at all perfect, and the “we” of that phrase includes those who claim to be speaking a message directly from the Spirit when they are not.
For anyone who’s truly interested in the words of God there’s ample warning in Scripture – the Bible – to the effect that we are to watch out for false prophets, and to the person of God who is familiar with Scripture the false prophet is fairly easy to spot. John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” warned his flock and therefore us also that we are to put the one claiming to be a prophet to the test. We commonly hear that it’s wrong to question what’s being said or to question whether someone is really a prophet or an apostle. This is a falsehood and the tactic of someone determined to have control over you and to vaunt himself or herself. Warnings about fakes are throughout Scripture. While it’s true that we are not to “despise prophesies” (1 Thessalonians 5:20) the very next verse tells us to “test all things” (verse 21). John wrote,
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
Jesus both warned about false prophets and commended the Ephesian church for finding out such people:
“I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false” (Revelation 2:2).
Luke in the book of Acts highlights the Bereans who were “more noble” because they checked out the veracity of Paul’s teaching. Paul himself was zealous to warn of false prophets and false apostles (2 Corinthians 11). Peter gave his own warnings about such things in his epistles:
“But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you” (2 Peter 2:1).
Jesus warned of false prophets in end times:
“…and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people” (Matthew 24:11).
Will you be deceived? The way to avoid such an eventuality is to be familiar with the whole council of God as recorded in the Bible, and to put it above the word of man in your heart.
Warnings to avoid false prophets are also common in the Old Testament. In fact, it’s here that God’s own test of a prophet is found, so that if what they say doesn’t come true, they are not prophets of God – it’s as simple as that (Deuteronomy 18:20-22). The Peters and Pauls of our time are intent on diminishing the power of this clarification, dabbling in their own rejection of Truth as a means of gaining influence and power over the Church. While God said that anyone claiming to be a prophet was to display one hundred percent accuracy, they dismiss the necessity of this bar and insist that it isn’t necessary for today. On one occasion a certain “prophet” I know told me that in an upcoming visit to Jerusalem I was going to bump into a man named Alastair Clulow. I didn’t and never have since. When I drew his attention to his failure and to God’s instruction that such a “prophet” was to be stoned, he fired back at me with a verse from Jeremiah, in which the true prophet of God said the following:
“But if I say, “I will not mention his word
or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9).
In other words, my intended spiritual leader was saying that he didn’t care whether he was telling the truth or not because what he said had come from God: if anything was wrong it was God’s fault. This is nonsense: God cannot lie. He knows the end from the beginning and can’t ‘get it wrong. My “prophets” attitude is that of a scoundrel who is in intentional denial of truth, who is caught up in some strange delusion, and who is misrepresenting God.
An even more poignant scriptural example of the perilous state of the claimed but false prophet is given by Jesus. He told his disciples that on that great Day when he comes to judge the world many will claim to have done mighty works for Him, but it won’t be enough to save their souls:
“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matthew 7:22-23).
What I’m saying is this: do not be afraid of the one claiming to know your future or what your decisions should be in life! Yes, treat him with dignity and respect and weigh up what he is saying, but do not be afraid to question him, because that is your right and duty as a child of God.
WHAT EXACTLY IS PROPHECY ANYWAY? The modern-day prophet is convinced that prophecy is the ability given by the Spirit of God to tell someone what they should do, what’s going to happen to them next year, what they’re doing wrong and what’s going to happen in the world at large. A common prophecy I’ve been hearing for my entire Christian life is that there is going to be a great revival – local, regional, national and globally. Local or even national revivals there may be, and we should pray for them, but the testimony of Scripture is not that the world is going to cum-by-yah but “fall away” from the faith. Paul made this clear in his second letter to the Thessalonians and so did Jesus in his “Olivet Discourse”.
Biblical prophets such as Jeremiah were indeed speaking the words of God or the thoughts of God – sometimes relating to future events and sometimes drawing attention to events of the day, and especially to spiritual conditions. How many of today’s Peters and Pauls are walking the streets of our big cities warning the lost of judgment for sin? No, they are in our churches telling us who we should marry and that someone present has back pain. When a person speaks in a “thus saith the Lord” manner today, he or she is claiming to be speaking the very words or will of God: a huge presumption which may or may not lead eventually to judgment or discipline.
Clues are found in the New Testament as to the real nature of prophecy within the church. In particular, Paul addresses prophecy in the Corinthian church, largely because it had been abusing spiritual gifts, especially tongues. It seems the Corinthians were in a competition to show each other how spiritual and powerful they were, but Paul, in beginning his observations on their practises, had a sobering statement for them:
“Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready” (1 Corinthians 3:1-2).
The Corinthians were of the opinion that if they all spoke in tongues in the church it meant that they had “arrived” spiritually. Instead Paul informed them that without love they were “nothing”, no matter how much they spoke in tongues or prophesied (1 Corinthians 13:11-2).
In discussing the failures and emptiness of speaking languages or babble no-one could understand, Paul stressed the supremacy of prophecy – but what did he mean by “prophecy”? Should we all be going around telling each other what’s going to happen to them next week or who’s going to get elected?
According to Strongs Concordance prophecy can be a telling of the future, but it can also just be an inspired message, sometimes one encouraging obedience to God. Prophecy is “speaking forth” or “proclaiming publicly”. When your pastor or vicar gives a sermon on Sunday morning, he is prophesying. When you wax lyrical at work and tell your co-workers what Jesus means to you, you are prophesying. When the brave and rare Christian calls people in the street to repentance he is prophesying. When you share your testimony or what God did for you the other day, or what a passage of Scripture means to you or how it relates to a situation, you are prophesying. This explains much of Paul’s commentary on prophecy to the Corinthian church. The benefit and blessing of prophecy in the church is when people – sometimes believers and sometimes unbelievers – are given spiritual guidance and illumination. This is something the Spirit of God does through God’s Word:
“But if an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all, as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!'” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25).
When we speak and discuss what God has said, we are sharing truth and principles, and we may be convicting people of the truth of those principles, and bringing their attention to what needs to be changed in their lives. There doesn’t need to be any mystical insights into what may or may not happen next week or next year: it’s about how God’s truth applies in our lives. We can all speak by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3) so that if we say, “Jesus is Lord” and mean it, we are speaking by the Spirit. However, this is not the same as actually speaking the Words of God: there’s a very large difference in the two. To claim, therefore, that we are sharing a direct message from God is something we should be very cautious of, and we should definitely be cautious of anyone claiming to have a direct message from God. Joseph Smith was one such man.
In fact, prophesying as a means of sharing God’s truth is such a simple and accessible principle that the opportunity is available to everyone. While Paul controlled the use of tongues (and by that he meant unknown languages or babble) in the church, he encouraged “all” to prophesy (1 Corinthians 14:31). As a side note, Paul also made clear that in contradiction of my acquaintance’s insistence that Jeremiah’s fire was in his heart, “The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. For God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (verses 32 and 33). Anyone who tells you that they can’t control themselves is not telling you the truth or isn’t submitted to the real Spirit of God.
What about telling the future? God knows the future and everything about what will happen to you and I and the world at large. Therefore, potentially He can pass on something of that knowledge to us via anyone or anything – even a donkey. This may happen spontaneously. However, my experience has been that of nothing but unfulfilled prophecies. Everything I’ve ever heard in the way of prediction from people claiming to be prophets of God has either not happened or was so generalized that it couldn’t be proven wrong or right. Even if a “prophecy” were to come to pass, I will still be wary, because fallen spirits have greater knowledge than we do.
I am, therefore, very skeptical that prediction as coming from God is a genuine phenomenon in the Church as a norm. If God really intended to tell us our futures we would not need faith. The fact that so many end-times “prophecy experts” get their own predictions wrong shows us that there are some things the Lord does not want us to know until they happen. Think of it: if God is really speaking something “new” or making a prediction through one of His children, it means we should be busily writing new New Testaments all the time, and the one we have is out-dated and unnecessary. It means that new Scripture is being created all the time, but that God keeps getting it wrong and changing His mind so that we can’t really be sure of anything. It also means that each person presuming to speak for God is taking a very large leap of faith (or arrogance) indeed. There are warnings of this in the Word of God which we already have. Here are a few, and notice that the prospect of “woe” in God’s economy is very serious:
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!” (Ezekiel 13:3).
“You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22).
“I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied” (Jeremiah 23:21).
“They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’—when the Lord has not spoken” (Ezekiel 22:28b).
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 