The False Prophet’s Fount

And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (Deuteronomy 6: 5 – 7)

Today I want us to look the false prophet from a different angle. This angle also includes the falsely prophesied because that is what makes them loyal to false prophets.

Why would I follow someone who gives prophesies that rarely, if ever get fulfilled? How do I continue faithfully following someone whose lifestyle destroys what they preach? How do I become a faithful supporter of a pastor and church whose practice and doctrine I disagree with? And why do I continue calling myself a prophet yet the bulk of my many or few prophesies never see the light of day?

I want us to get to the source. And it is really very simple.

How committed am I to God, the source of all true prophecy?

You see, I can be hearing very clearly but hearing from another god. I can be very committed to the prophetic and be feeding from the wrong sources. This is because the spiritual is not constrained to God. The devil and his demons are also spiritual with a capacity to give spiritual revelation for their own purposes.

Only a definite and unwavering commitment to God can break through all the deception the evil one is sure to introduce as a virus to any message from God.

I am asked many times to teach about God’s voice and how to know it. And I normally start from this point. Are you ready to go all the way with whatever God tells you?

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27)

You see, once obedience becomes optional, God’s voice becomes unnecessary to our experience. And you can be sure that God will never speak just for information. He speaks for us to obey as opposed to satisfying our curiosity.

With the avalanche of information, much that require filtering to be useful to us, could it be that we have started treating God like one other source of information? Have we started dealing with His revelation the same way we deal with research findings?

Lordship is the key to knowing when or whether God is speaking or not. Some time ago I posted a message on lordship (on the blog) that I suggest you read to make this message clearer. This is because I am convinced that the main problem with the church of our time has to do with Christ’s Lordship as opposed to many other issues.

And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? (Numbers 12:  6 – 8)

How does one distinguish between a vision or dream from God and one from elsewhere?

The point here is not that the false prophet is creating things. It is that he is accessing revelation from another source; a source whose validity can only be tested by an unwavering love and submission to God and the revelation we already have, the Bible. You remember that even the witch of Endor was able to access accurate prophecy from Samuel the prophet.

I won’t be surprised to hear the false prophets completely convinced that they are hearing from God because the revelations they received did not have horns and tails. They have valid visions and valid dreams that some record meticulously so that they do not miss a single detail. But they are not receiving them from God though they are convinced of it. They will never receive from God if they are not completely committed to God’s agenda.

I am never scared of someone who is sold out to Christ being swept away by false doctrines or prophets simply because God will never allow anyone sold out to Him to be sidetracked by anything or anyone from their pursuit of God. The only time it can happen is when a spiritual leader lost his connection with God and became a spiritual shell of his past spirituality. But even that is short lived because God will certainly protect someone solidly committed to walk in obedience.

You realize that even with the false religions God is able to get through to those sincere pursuers of the truth and connect them with their Savior.

For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2Chronicles 16:9a)

The source of the false prophet’s prophecy is humanistic as it seeks to offer humanistic solutions to spiritual dilemmas. And it is no wonder that they are very popular with the masses and the structures they lead. A true prophet offends because his message is not content with keeping people comfortable but seeks to have them aligned with God’s scheme of things.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. (James 4:4)

There is one very short step towards the false once the masses become the focal point of our ministry. This is because we will slowly but surely find true revelation at odds with popular expectation. That is when alternative sources slowly and surely start seeping through the revelation we search. And since we started by hearing from God we will very easily confuse them with God’s clear voice.

But Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near, and smote Micaiah on the cheek, and said, Which way went the Spirit of the LORD from me to speak unto thee? (1Kings 22:24)

That is what we see with this prophet who had incidentally become the royal prophet. He was wondering how someone could claim to hear from the source he thought he was feeding from yet giving a contrary prophecy.

Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. (Jeremiah 28:2)

This is another royal prophet who was so convinced God was speaking to him when He wasn’t. And it was so bad that God Himself had to intervene so that not only did He promise to judge him, He killed him within two months because he was misleading people in the name of the Lord.

Relevance is many times the beginning of false prophecy because a minister seeks the approval of men until they forget that it is the favor of God they should be continually seeking. And one clear product of that is the desire to be the expert. I am the best person at prayer. I am the best at worship. I am the best at preaching. I am best at anything I put my hand at. It makes me more desirable. But it also puts me in the path of danger.

Let me use one illustration to put my point across. We have heard of pastors who sleep with their parishioners. Do you know that many do not start purposefully?

A pastor appears to the congregation as the one with the most powerful prayers, probably because of his sermons. As a result he is called everywhere a prayer intervention is needed. Now imagine a lady who is so sick that she is unable to get out of bed! She calls the pastor. Of course the prayer expert will go to the place prayer is needed. Then he will lay a hand. Then the lady will get up, dressed to kill - someone’s spiritual heritage. How do you expect a woman to sleep in a suit when she is ‘sick’?

I have heard enough of these stories to dismiss all of them as propaganda. I have also interacted with women enough to know that it is not only possible, but highly desirable for some women and girls to sleep with men of God.  I remember a girl once telling me that God had told her that sleeping with me was the solution to her problems, whatever they were I did not care to know as I promised her a thorough beating if she repeated that ever again.

The other danger with stardom is the attraction of all the giving to your person. And it becomes a danger because we are prone to specialize with the people offering bigger offerings and neglect the ones  without, operating in a spirit opposite Christ’s who was sent to the needy.

But even more dangerous could be our desire (which is natural) to offer greater gratitude to those with larger offering packages. We will many times respond to them without considering other aspects of our ministry because, truth be told, who wants to offend the goose that lays the golden egg? That will automatically disconnect us from God and His purpose as He does not look at the size of those offerings, or even the potential of the same. Many times He will send us to those farthest from our support base. I my experience God will many times lead to people who will deplete those meager offerings because of the need you will see. No wonder Christ said His anointing sent Him to preach the Gospel to the poor and all other dimensions of human need and desperation.

There are ministers who camp at large churches and will never hear any other call if it does not originate from that church because the church has enough money to support them. They will block other ministry invitations and employment because they are waiting for their big break when they become employed or sent by the rich church. Many have wasted their calling due to that single fact. Sadly, they become so emasculated in that waiting that even that break makes them eunuchs as they will never consider ministry outside the narrow confines of their employer. They become more loyal to the boss (church leadership) than to the Christ they presume to preach. These are things I have seen many times so do not think I am theorizing. You see, waiting several years for the church of your choice to employ you will automatically kill your spiritual fervor, and with that the connection to the voice of God.

Sin is another thing that opens a door to hear voices other than God’s and confuse them with God’s voice. I am talking about the sin that we excuse instead of repenting of. I am also talking of unconfessed sin, hidden sin, addictive sin and in short anything that we initially knew was wrong but are now confused or battered by it to the extent that you really do not know where to classify it.

But lack of commitment to the Bible is probably the single greatest cause of confusion concerning God’s voice.

The Bible is the standard by which we measure anything and everything to know whether it is consistent with God’s revelation. It is sad that many prophets treat the Bible as a simple accessory instead of the absolute standard for their prophecy. As opposed to the Bible verifying their prophecy as they use it for, it should be the standard by which they should measure their prophecy by. You see the Bible is the complete prophecy not a complement to prophecy.

Many prophets will quote the scriptures to justify their prophecy instead of using them to examine their lives and prophecy. I believe that only someone saturated with God’s word can be able to accurately access God’s revelation in terms of prophecy. This is because the Bible defines who God is and how He operates.

I am an example of such ignorance. I once had a very difficult experience with God as I was seeking a deeper experience with the Holy Spirit. I went through an experience that was so painful, an experience whose resultant spiritual lesson was permanently etched in my spirit. Of course I came out with a spiritually understandable conclusion and explanation.

A few friends we were growing with challenged that conclusion in the light of the scriptures. And I studied the scriptures. And I had to agree that my experience, valid as I was, could not be explained the way I had. In short, the doctrine or theology I had developed through that experience was inconsistent with God’s word.

I therefore had to trash my explanation of that experience.

I wonder how many prophets are willing to examine their revelations against the light of the scriptures. This is because any prophecy not baptized in the scriptures is spurious. And it is not because it is not a revelation or that its validity is questionable. It is because scripture is the complete prophecy released by God for our instruction.

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. (John 5:39)

How come Jesus used the scriptures to prove the fact that He is the Christ when we are using our arguments to justify whatever imagination we call revelation or prophecy?

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20)

This is where I want us to close. If the scriptures do not describe or determine your prophecy, I think it is safe to assume that the fountain you are feeding from is not the Holy Spirit as He will never operate outside the word He inspired.

This takes us full circle, that we cannot claim to be prophetic if the Bible is not our standard. And the Bible cannot be our standard unless we have undying love for God, the source of that Bible. Like the Bible says we cannot say we love God if we do not love His Son. In the same way we can really not be able to love God if we do not value and love His word.

How committed are you to God? How sold out are you to His cause? How easily do you trash something if He shows you that He doesn’t like it? How do you rate the world and everything it has? What about friendships and their relationships to God’s word?

If you have issues with such commitment issues, then it is possible that your prophecy or prophets are feeding from false fountains.

But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. (Jeremiah 23:22)