Hello Brethren,
I hope this message meets you well. It has been a while since I made a post, so I have decided to make a post today. Dear Friends and siblings in Christ, today I want to talk about false prophets. It is a fact that these days, Church has become a big business. Yes, preachers and prophets make money from the house of the Lord. It is okay to make money from the house of the Lord if they have a mandate to do so from God. Even then, they need to be obedient to God's instructions on what to do with any profit they gain. However, there are people who are not quite called by God, but who have established churches just because of the financial benefit of doing so. I am a strong believer in the fact that a man of God has to be called. Jesus called the disciples before they could minister with him. As Christians, we all should evangelize and share the gospel, whether at work, at school, or in other places. However, starting a church and leading a flock is something that I expect a person to be called to. And by called here, I mean that they must have specifically heard an instruction from God to start a church. Any pastor who is not called might genuinely be a false prophet, because if God did not call them to that position, then whose authority are they relying on?
1 John 4: 1 says:
Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.
So, how do we spot a false prophet?
- Does what the prophet says align with scripture? or is it out of the character of God and the Bible?
- Did you pray about what the prophet told you, Did God tell you something contrary to what the prophet told you? --> Make sure you pray about everything you are told, test the spirit and make sure that God is truly saying what they say that he is saying.
- Does the prophet make repeated references to beliefs and ideas that are pagan in ways that praise those beliefs and even recommend them?
- Do they have a story of how God called them to the pulpit? or is it the case that they have no story about that? If they have a story, is the story convincing? or does it seem like a stretch? [please bear in mind that some prophets lie about their "called to the pulpit" story]
- Are their sermons authentic? or do they copy sermons from other preachers? [this can be a sign of a lazy preacher and not a fake one, but there are fake prophets who do this too]
- Does the prophet claim to be Jesus or extol himself to the same position as God?
- Does the prophet encourage secret church practices that you are not allowed to share with people you love? i.e. do they tell you to give all your belongings to the church but not let your family know that you did so.
- Is the prophet more focused on money than sharing the word of God?
- Do they misconstrue Bible verses and twist them to mean something that they are not?
- Do they speak prophecies that repeatedly do not come to pass? i.e. they said something would happen that never happens.
- Are they people pleasers who only preach what people want to hear, and not necessarily the hard truth of the Word of God?
These are the signs that I thought of. Please add the ones you can think of in the comments section below.
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