The Gift of Prophecy Alive or Dead? True or False? Part 2, Ep 2-23
Welcome back! I am your host Dawn Simmons and in this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are going to be discussing the second part of our discussion on prophecy. Is the gift of prophecy alive today or dead? Is it true or false? Today we are going to talk about false prophecy. We will examine what the Bible tells us about false prophets and how we can develop what is needed to discern false from true.
Let’s start by recapping the gifts of the Spirit Paul discussed in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11.
7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues,[a] and to still another the interpretation of tongues.[b] 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
To review, the 9 Spiritual Gifts are: wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healings, miraculous powers, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues.
To help us to remember the gifts and to aid in understanding them, there are Power Gifts, Revelation gifts and Spoken gifts.
Prophecy is a Spoken gift. Of the three Spoken gifts it is the one that is the strongest in that it can stand on its own. Tongues and interpretation of tongues need each other, so they cannot stand on their own in terms of edifying the church.
The spiritual gift of prophecy involves three things: edification, exhortation and comfort.
· Edification is the instruction or improvement of a person morally or intellectually.
· Exhortation is using language that is intended to incite or encourage another to take action in a positive way
· Comfort is to ease or alleviate a person’s feeling of grief or distress.
In my experience, there are two kinds of false prophets, the knowing and the unknowing. We could also call them the intentional and the unintentional or the evil and the ignorant. Neither are good but generally only one is willing to be corrected.
Let’s take a look at what the Bible tells us about false prophets:
We’ll start off in Isaiah, I think Isaiah is one of the richest, that sounds like bad grammar, one of the most rich, that doesn’t sound any better, one of the most revealing books in the Bible of the nature and character of God.
So, let’s look at Isaiah 44:24:
“This is what the Lord says—
your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb:
I am the Lord,
the Maker of all things,
who stretches out the heavens,
who spreads out the earth by myself,
25 who foils the signs of false prophets
and makes fools of diviners,
who overthrows the learning of the wise
and turns it into nonsense,
26 who carries out the words of his servants
and fulfills the predictions of his messengers,
Here God is talking about both false prophets and his own prophets in verse 26. We can see here that God clearly indicates false prophets not only exist but in addition to them being false, He will interfere and “foil” or prevent the success of, whatever they are doing. As long as we are here, let’s not overlook the majesty of how God describes Himself, the maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens and spreads out the earth. When you are having a bad day, remember, you know the “Maker of all things” Ok, I digressed.
Ok, I am going to give you several more verses on false prophets before we begin our discussion so just stay with me here. These are all very interesting and God does not mince words on how He feels about them.
Jeremiah 14:14: Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.
Jeremiah 23:16: This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.
Lamentations 2:14: The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The prophecies they gave you were false and misleading.
Ezekiel 13:9: My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord.
Hosea 11:6: A sword will flash in their cities; it will devour their false prophets and put an end to their plans.
Matthew 7:15: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
Matthew 24:24: For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
2 Peter 2:1: But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.
1 John 4:1: 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.
Now that is not an exhaustive list of scriptures on false prophets, but those are some of my favorites. We have a good cross section of old testament and new testament spanning several centuries and one thing we can see is that God’s position or His opinion of these false prophets has not changed. We also can see that the existence of false prophets has not diminished. We know that we have them today. This is why the issue of prophecy becomes such a sticky subject. Those who would rather not learn the difference will simply shut down all prophecy. Any church teaching that prophecy is dead is in fact a dead church. Why do I say that? The Bible does not say for example, watch out for all prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. It does not say in test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many prophets have gone out into the world. The Bible is warning against false prophets. If there are false prophets, then there must be “true” prophets as well. You cannot have something be false if there is no true. False cannot exist without truth. A church who wants to disregard prophecy for today is not willing to read the bible and hear the Holy Spirit, be led by the Holy Spirit or seek knowledge or understanding from the Holy Spirit. It’s like putting a blindfold on and heading out into the street thinking you are going to get to where you want to go without encountering harm. You may know the way by heart, just like you can know scripture by heart, but you cannot know the Truth of what obstacles lie before you which will change daily if you don’t have the light which the blindfold will prevent you from receiving. The better way is to know the way, the truth and the light and prophecy is a part of all of those things when we receive it from the Lord.
Let’s go back and revisit what I said earlier about two types of false prophets. The knowing and the unknowing, the intentional and the unintentional or the evil and the ignorant. However you want to refer to them is fine but we want to understand the difference because the difference is HUGE.
Someone who is knowingly, intentionally behaving, directing, providing false prophecy is evil. Someone who is unknowingly, unintentionally providing false prophecy is ignorant. While both are harmful, the one who is ignorant is likely immature and is willing to take correction. If the one who is ignorant is unwilling to take correction, then they are acting out of the flesh and they are actually evil.
How do you tell the difference? Sometimes it can be difficult because the false or we can consider him to be a dark prophet will attempt to masquerade as light. I know of one in my area who claims to have the gift of prophecy and uses all the correct “verbage” or “Christainese” vocabulary, but when this person speaks, there is no truth. The mask of the Christainese vocabulary will fool many, but the Holy Spirit will reveal the falseness of the person if you pay attention or if you ask for revelation. There will be an uneasiness about what is being said. The Bible tells us to test the spirit to see whether they are from God. You can test them by evaluating their words against scripture. This is why knowing the scripture is so important. Our ability to discern is based on our knowledge of scripture or at least how to get the knowledge from the scripture. Taking the time to read and compare what was spoken to the nature of God and His direction to truth, fruit of the spirit, our relationship with Him. More often than not, a false prophet will direct the attention to themselves while giving the appearance they are speaking on behalf of God for you. We all want to believe God has a word for us, that He has something to say to us, and He does, but we can hear it ourselves if we have that relationship. A false prophet will pull you along for whatever benefit they can ultimately bring back to themselves.
Remember the distinction we made between the spiritual gift of prophecy versus the Ministry Gift of the Office of the Prophet. Dark False prophets generally don’t operate in the spiritual gift of prophecy, that is where you are more likely to encounter the unintentional false prophet, someone learning and usually excited about hearing the Holy Spirit. The example I gave last week of the word I was given “gold” more falls into this category. Generally speaking someone operating unintentionally is open to correction. If however, the correction isn’t received that is a red flag that their fleshly pride is getting in the way.
An evil false prophet will usually depict themselves as one who functions in the office of a Prophet. The reason for this is generally pride and greed. One who truly operates in this office will direct the honor and glory to God and acknowledge that God is the source of everything. An evil false prophet will not do that because they ultimately want something for themselves.
It is likely we hear more about false prophets out in the world than true prophets. Part of the reason is because a true prophet functions through the Holy Spirit, so they won’t be out there shouting to the world for attention. Being a true prophet is a hard gig. You are met with disbelief and distrust in most Christian circles, you can be incorrectly associated to false prophets and even when you have an audience who believes, we often act as the Israelites did and not listen and obey what is being provided. A true prophet is not distinguishable from his or her appearance. There is no flashy behavior or extravagance in their appearance, there is no need for that. They stand on truth, that’s all they need. A false prophet needs that extra to get attention and create excitement because there is no Holy Spirit excitement.
I am currently teaching a class in my area on how to hear God’s voice. Prior to the class starting I was in a public meeting and an announcement was made about the class so a number of people had come to me to talk to me about it. On this particular day, I was approached by the false prophet in my area I mentioned earlier. I had seen this person twice before in other meetings but have never spoken to them. I knew from hearing this person speak in those meetings there was an issue, but had not asked the Lord about it. I am not the Holy Spirit police so unless there is something definitively harmful or the Holy Spirit tells me to intercede, I will generally wait, watch and listen. Anyhow, this day, this person approached me and asked me one question and then proceeded to tell me all about themselves and all the prophetic work they do. I remained silent, just nodded my head, essentially acknowledging that I was being spoken to but not encouraging the conversation, just listening and watching as it unfolded. The conversation then shifted to this person attempting to compare themselves to me and then went even further to them stating they were gifted the same as I am. I found this quite strange as I have never spoken to this person before, and I can count on one hand the number of people that I have ever shared information about my giftings. What was being done here was an attempt to establish credibility by attaching to me. Any credibility I have comes from the Holy Spirit, not me. The Holy Spirit confirms my words, I don’t have to convince anyone. I don’t care if people believe me or not because it’s not by My words that truth comes, it is by His. As soon as she spoke the words “I am just like you” the Holy Spirit said to me “She is not like you.” The conversation pretty much ended after that and I have not seen her since. That was about 2 months ago.
What I want you to walk away with from this is an understanding of prophecy. I want you to be able to recognize true prophecy and whether it is the gift of the spirit of prophecy or an actual prophet functioning in the Ministry Gift in the Office of a prophet. I want you to develop discernment so that you know when you here either types of prophetic words the Holy Spirit will confirm whether it is true or false. When it is true, it is a blessing from the Maker of all things and we want to do with that word, whatever He is telling us. When we recognize a word is false we can rebuke and dismiss it and offer graceful correction when needed to those who are earnest and learning. Prophecy is alive and a beautiful gift from God.
I hope you have enjoyed our time discussing prophecy and I hope it has helped to build your understanding. We cannot fully conquer our unseen enemies until we understand everything the Holy Spirit makes available to us. If you know anyone who might benefit from this, please share. As always let’s discuss our
Top Show Points:
· This is the second part of our discussion on prophecy specifically discussing false prophecy
· Recap of the gifts of the Spirit Paul discussed in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11
· To review, the 9 Spiritual Gifts are: wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healings, miraculous powers, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues.
· To help us to remember the gifts and to aid in understanding them, there are Power Gifts, Revelation gifts and Spoken gifts.
· Prophecy is a Spoken gift. Of the three Spoken gifts it is the one that is the strongest in that it can stand on its own. Tongues and interpretation of tongues need each other, so they cannot stand on their own in terms of edifying the church.
· The spiritual gift of prophecy involves three things: edification, exhortation and comfort.
· In my experience, there are two kinds of false prophets, the knowing and the unknowing. We could also call them the intentional and the unintentional or the evil and the ignorant.
· Let’s take a look at what the Bible tells us about false prophets.
o Isaiah 44:24:
o Jeremiah 14:14:
o Jeremiah 23:16:
o Lamentations 2:14:
o Ezekiel 13:9:
o Hosea 11:6:
o Matthew 7:15:
o Matthew 24:24:
o 2 Peter 2:1:
o 1 John 4:1:
· The Bible is warning against false prophets. If there are false prophets, then there must be “true” prophets as well. You cannot have something be false if there is no true. False cannot exist without truth.
· Someone who is knowingly, intentionally behaving, directing, providing false prophecy is evil. Someone who is unknowingly, unintentionally providing false prophecy is ignorant.
· The Bible tells us to test the spirit to see whether they are from God. You can test them by evaluating their words against scripture. This is why knowing the scripture is so important.
· a false prophet will direct the attention to themselves while giving the appearance they are speaking on behalf of God for you.
· An evil false prophet will usually depict themselves as one who functions in the office of a Prophet. The reason for this is generally pride and greed. One who truly operates in this office will direct the honor and glory to God and acknowledge that God is the source of everything. An evil false prophet will not do that because they ultimately want something for themselves.
· A true prophet is not distinguishable from his or her appearance. There is no flashy behavior or extravagance in their appearance, there is no need for that. They stand on truth, that’s all they need. A false prophet needs that extra to get attention and create excitement because there is no Holy Spirit excitement.
· Story of someone in my area presenting themselves as functioning in the Office of a Prophet, but is a false prophet.
We encourage you:
· To have an active Bible reading plan, it will be helpful in gaining wisdom and understanding and it is required for the gift of spiritual discernment
· If you want to learn more about how to Hear God's Voice, take a look at my book, Loving Conversations: How to Pray and Hear God's Voice. There is also a Study Guide available and two new devotionals coming out based on the Loving Conversations Book. One devotional is for women and one is for men.
I have enjoyed our time this week and look forward to spending time with you again next week!
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