The Navigators
The Bible has a rich history of prophetic utterances. Jewish scholars list a section of the Old Testament, or rather, to them, the Tanakh, the Jewish Canon, as the Nevi’im, a compilation of writings by prophets. This section is broken into two categories: major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.) and minor prophets (Amos, Zechariah, etc.). The major and minor differentiators do not imply value, as if to say that one prophet’s message was more important than the other. It simply refers to the quantity of utterances issued by said prophet and perhaps the length of their ministry as a prophet.
But how does the Bible define a prophet and his prophecy? The word “navi” in Hebrew means a spokesperson, and in other languages, the term can be understood as someone who speaks on behalf of a divine entity. Prophets are heralds of the unseen world, imparting knowledge, advice, woes, and lament on behalf of the supernatural. A prophecy is the word, edict, law, or condemnation uttered, kept through oral tradition, and later inscribed for future reference and cross reference.
The Bible exposes us to a litany of prophets whose prophetic messages were acquired through some of the most horrifying experiences. One man hears a voice from a burning bush that does not burn. A spurned woman is visited by an apparition that encourages her to keep wandering the desert because her son will become the father of many nations. Another man is marked with a curse and forced to live life as the most infamous murderer. Another yet experiences dreams of fat cows and skinny cows. Another yet, a monarch, dreams of a large tree that reaches the heavens. Every experience is different from the other, instructing us, the readers of these passages, to see that visions, dreams, and communication from the netherworld can reach us through various unexpected and potentially horrifying means. The messages or prophecies for each, as you guess it, depend on the individuals or groups receiving them. Blessings for some. Curses for others.
Moses was not the first person to receive divine words from God. There were numerous prophets before him who engaged God and vice versa, imparting to their immediate communities what God had in store for the future. Take Noah, for example, who received a message of both deliverance and judgment, a prophecy of salvation for anyone who believed in the impending deluvian catastrophe that would erase that section of the world and a message of absolute horror for anyone who dismissed it.
But Moses was the first person (along with his scribes) who codified much of what God had said and done up to that day. It is through Moses’s many writings that we have a mytho-historic narrative of the origins of the world which also hold Abrahamic patrilineal history and Mosaic theo-political edicts called the Torah (Law) or the first five books of the Bible. And it is here, in the Torah, long before we get a prophetic section of the Tanakh, where Moses advises the Israelites on how to know whether prophets and their prophecies are true and from God.
The Test
“If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and show you omens or portents (signs or warnings), and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, ‘Let us follow other gods’ whom you have not known ‘and let us serve them,’ you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.” Deut. 13:1-3
“You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?’ If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously (arrogant or egotistical); do not be frightened by it.” Deut. 18:22
Prophecies in the Old Testament had religious but also economic, social, geo-political, and health crisis consequences for the Israelites and their neighboring nation-states. The words that were presumed to be from the Divine were seen through the black and white lens of blessings and curses, there was no in-between when it came to prophetic messages. Therefore, the messages were either of restoration and national exuberance, affluence, and prosperity as a result of obedience or, as many cases show in the Bible and other religious texts, a message of doom, gloom, pestilence, austerity, starvation, drought, war, and death.
So God instructs Moses to inscribe these guardrails against frivolous mouthing off in the name of God to protect people from arrogant soothsayers and itinerant prophets for profit who prophesy lies.
- If what the prophet states does not come true, do not fear him or his prophecy. It is not of God.
- If what the prophet states does come true but he leads you astray to other gods, do not trust him, his prophecy, or his gods, because God sent that prophet to test your love.
Two metrics. Two means to determine the veracity of prophetic utterances. Does it come true, and if it does, does this message lead me away from God?
Wolves In Sheep’s Balenciagas
How often we stare down the man or woman of God who claims to speak for the Creator, watching as they utter the most extravagant, ambiguous, thunderous prophecies we have ever heard, only for the prophecy and the prophet (once they’re paid for the visit) to disappear and nothing come of it.
I’ve attended some of the most charismatic Pentecostal churches you can think of and name. Churches where the language spoken was Portuguese, English, Spanish, and, in many cases, in glossolailic terminology (speaking in tongues), sadly left untranslated for the body of believers and unbelievers alike who were present. In these circles, I’ve witnessed prophetic messages from pastors, evangelists, self-described apostles and prophets, ushers, deacons, presbyters, and run-of-the-mill prayer circle ministry leaders whose prophecies were so ambiguous that to determine whether or not they could come true was impossible.
Prophecies about keys, doors, golden keys, golden doors, large doors, and large keys because regular keys wouldn’t work as well. Prophecies about houses, large houses, and wide houses. Prophecies about grand accomplishments and feats of courage. Prophecies about miraculous events, cures, and healings. Prophecies about reanimation of the dead, miraculous onsite excisions of cancers, and the reversal of an HIV/AIDS diagnosis.
And after, I’ve seen, for years, the same people go without keys, some losing their keys. People go without homes, struggling in abject poverty. I’ve seen people get shut out of work, doors shut behind them. I’ve seen feats of great disappointment as the leaders of many ministries fell to sexual sins or were accused of defrauding church members of thousands, if not millions of dollars. I’ve witnessed many prophets enter the body of believers and utter the most beautiful messages of hope, faith, and courage, only to find them absent of a church and body of believers, living as if God no longer exists years later.
People who were meant to live long and fruitful lives soon after passed away from a terminal diagnosis even though a prophet prophesied otherwise. Those who were condemned to death by a prophet lived long, healthy, productive lives.
I’ve witnessed countless pastors prophesy a consecutive second term for Donald Trump only to publicly apologize for misspeaking and misunderstanding the message they received from God when Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Their public humiliation was rightfully deserved considering just how adamant and confident they were about such an erroneous prediction. And I’ve seen these same pastors return to the pulpit Sunday after Sunday after such deplorable prophetic utterances failed to come true. Their tenure at their cultic environments was still solidly intact. Sadly, after Donald Trump won his second term, four years later, these same lunatics took to the stage to seek validation from their acolytes, indicating that their prophetic blunders were in fact the very words of God, the timing, however, was all that was off. Not the message nor the messenger.
And this is not to say that prophecies do not come true. They most certainly do. In fact, God is the originator of all Truth. Therefore, when He utters a word, you can guarantee that it will most certainly come to pass. I’ve been a witness of this in my life in numerous cases, far fewer, however, than those lackluster prophecies I mention above.
God is in the business of communicating with His people, often advising, admonishing, correcting, and redirecting their lives through His word, the body of believers, reason, logic, nature, and yes, the supernatural through the Holy Spirit.
Some believers hear of an impending tsunami nearing their beachside town. They acknowledge the flood warning sirens, and they admit to the fact that water levels have dropped drastically in the last couple of hours. They even admit that there seems to be a sixty-foot wave in the distance headed their way, but they will not leave their home until God audibly tells them to. They would rather die believing that God will reach down to them through time-space to point them to their keys, then their car, and then towards the evacuation route out of town, than they would listen to the advisory of a well-trusted government body that does the same. These people are religious fanatics who refuse to acknowledge the truth that exists in created order if it doesn’t come directly from a supernatural source. Their end is disastrous.
And others, religious fanatics of another kind, believe just about anything anyone ever says to them about the past, the present, and the future. These are the believers who are so enamored by faith that they fail to consider their intellectual development within it. They will sooner listen to a man who tells them to kiss a snake on the mouth because of potential healing properties derived from obeying the prophet than they will visit a physician to get that blister taken care of with modern medicine. They believe the prophecies about keys, doors, highways, lights, tunnels, impartations, coverings, declarations, alignments, utterances, visions, dreams, and condemnations, even when they fail to come true. The more unique the jargon the more likely the person is to fall for it.
The fanaticism is so ingrained within the life of this believer that even when said prophecies fail in their efforts, the believer holds on to the essence of the prophecy as if their faith will override the reality that God did not say what the prophet said. Meaning they would rather utilize their faith as a weapon against that which God did not say to force it into existence, thus believing they can force the hand of God.
When desperation sets in, these are the people you hear shout, “I declare!” As if a declaration, without God’s will, can override existence itself to make dreams, wants, and desires come true.
A Dangerous Time To Be Alive and Charismatic
In a world ripe with misinformation and one too accustomed to the rapid dissemination of that misinformation we can now be exposed and overexposed to false prophets and their false prophecies without knowing it.
Some social media prophets travel from town to town, ministering and prophesying for sport, joy, and pleasure, much of it done sincerely, thinking that their words are de facto the utterances of God in the same way we read prophecies codified in the Old Testament. The problem is if they’re prophesying to countless Christians, ten in one church, twenty in another, five in another, and thirty in another, some fifty-two weeks out of the year, they may be more prophetic and successful than Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Samuel, Daniel, and Jesus combined. Modern-day prophets can dispel more prophetic utterances than every prophet (good or bad) found within the canon of scripture in one year alone!
Now that’s a miracle!
Test The Spirits
The problem is properly determining the veracity of their words in a hyper digitized world. How can we cross examine their prophetic messages without having the means to know all of their prophetic utterances and who they would have said them to and where? We must have a metric. Moses, as I mention below, provides us with one:
- Did it come true?
- If it came true, did that prophet/prophecy lead people astray to worship something other than God?
Mind you, the “other gods” or “strange gods” Moses alludes to in Deuteronomy were the idols and gods of the Late Bronze Age Canaanite region (i.e., Baal, Asherah). But those idols no longer hold water in our religious culture today. Fertility gods, agriculture gods, gods of war, or gods of sensuality aren’t as explicitly followed today as they were understood then. Today, for us Western-minded Christians of the modern age, strange gods can be social media, aestheics, populist politicians, individuality, antinomian (lawless/amoral) faith, sensuality, identity, money, capitalism, materialism, consumerism, the occult, new age spirituality, or, as we have seen within the charismatic church, the worship of miracles, modes of worship, signs, wonders, and words of prophecy.
The spiritual codependence on anything other than God can become an idol or a strange god. Therefore, not only are there countless prophecies uttered in the modern church NOT coming true but the ones that do, we must ask, are these prophets leading people to worship modern-day gods and idols?
What is often left out of the conversation in church when we invite people to speak, minister, and instruct us is the consequence of failing to uphold the word of God. Thankfully, however, we no longer subscribe to the Old Testament way of dealing with false prophets or prophets who prophesy truly but lead us astray. The consequence back then for speaking presumptuously was death.
I don’t want brother Junior, so-called apostle Lady, minister Joe-No Name, or elder Frivola Dolip to meet the sharp end of a guillotine blade because they prophesied falsely, or, as scripture states, spoke presumptiously, arrogantly, egotistically believing their words, in the moment, in the emotion, in the peak of spiritualized delirium to be equal to the words of God.
I want these people to live long productive lives… far… far away from positions of influence in the Church. I want them to thrive as believers, seeking Christ in spirit and in truth, growing daily in the grace and knowledge of our Lord.
But I do not want them near a microphone. I don’t want them near a stage or pulpit. I don’t want them near any place where they will have the opportunity to be tempted, as Eve and Adam were tempted in the Garden, to believe they can be like God.
Because in one way, when false prophets stand to speak their falsities, they believe themselves gods, with a lowercase “g,” of course. Who wouldn’t want the burden of speaking for the Most High? Who wouldn’t want to be the navi, the navigator, the mouthpiece, and spokesperson for the Creator of the Universe? Who wouldn’t want to be feared, revered, respected, and nearly worshipped because in their mouth are the words of God? No, not the words in the Bible, but words that can potentially supersede or coexist at the same level of revelation and significance as the Word of God.
The Prophetic Calling Is Not a Shiny Gemstone, It Is a Dark and Lonely Road Often Traveled Alone
The title and ministry of a prophet sounds promising, but the consequences are often disastrous for anyone who claims to speak for God. Don’t believe me? Just check out how many of God’s prophets ended up alone, ostracized, in jail, in cisterns, in exile, beheaded, or on a cross.
Therefore, we must do a better job of spotting false prophets who utilize false prophecies for gain and prominence in the body of believers and then publicly oust them.
If you believe this is harsh, consider the number of followers of Christ who suffer under these men and women who use sincere faith as a weapon, a driver for financial gain, a gateway to explore their wanton sensual desires with impunity. If you don’t believe me, look at the correlation between false prophets and the list of banal and venal horrors they’re connected with once their crimes are brought to light. Check their bank accounts, check their private messages, and consider what it is they do with the most vulnerable men, women, and children in their care once no one is looking. Watch the history of abuse of power, of bullying, and of extreme variations of emotions in private and in public that are not becoming of people filled and indwelled with the Holy Spirit of God.
These vipers, these unwashed tombs, these sepulchres that walk amongst us declaring that God said this or God said that, never sticking around long enough to prove the validity of their utterances should be publicly named and shunned by the Church wherever they fester, no matter their title, prominence, or history with the Church. Position and power are not foundational tenets to avoid accountability.
If they’re true believers they will acknowledge their sin and repent. If they’re not, they’ll abscond to another unsuspecting location to revamp their malignant grift.
In Closing
Noah’s contemporaries highly doubted his premonition that there would be a catastrophic flood in their day. They feared for Noah’s sanity because there had never, in this narrative, a flood to that scale before, therefore, to prophesy about one and then say that God told you about it, was absolute insanity for anyone who watched in awe as Noah toiled night and day on that superstructure, the Ark.
With time, however, when the rain began to fall and fall it did, for days, and the waters had nowhere to go, people began to rethink their logical outworkings. Could they have been wrong and Noah right all along? Impossible.
Impossible until they scratched and scrapped at the doors of the Ark to be let in only to succumb to the deluvian nightmare that extinguished life in that event.
I want to end with this story of the Ark because prophecies can only be measured by their coming true and whether that prophecy leads you towards God. There are grievous consequences in not listening to the words of God when they are in fact the words of God.
If someone has spoken a word to you, a prophetic word, take it and test it. Test not just the words but also where the prophet wants to lead you after.
Has the prophecy come true? Great. Step one. I’m healed, or I have that new home, or I am now a theologian, or, is there fire falling from the sky over my head as that one lady or guy said it would? Great. Now. Step two. Has this word led me astray?
Does the prophet and his prophecy, now that it has come true, lead you toward a deeper respect for Christ, a deeper interest in the salvific and wonder-working glorious love of Jesus?
Or does it gear you toward everything but Jesus?
Do not fear prophetic utterances. Don’t believe everything anyone says, either. Test it. Test them. Test yourself, your mind, your emotions, and your spiritual maturity. Has life beaten you down so bad, so often, that now you’re highly susceptible to believing just about anything anyone says if they claim to be speaking for God?
Trust the Lord. Trust in the Word. And, if the Lord decides to speak through modern-day saints, He will do so truthfully, leading His people toward salvific truth which turns sinners into saints.
And true prophets, those who despise their role as such, for they understand the gravity of misspeaking for God, will seldom dare speak unless they’re willing to put their lives on line for what comes out of their mouths.
Trust the Lord. Trust the Lord. Trust… the Lord.
So, when a false prophet comes calling, kick them in the prophetic groin.
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
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