False prophecy is when someone claims to speak for God, but God is not speaking through that person. The Bible has a lot to say on this topic. In short, God doesn't like it when we do that. In fact, He hates it.
Look at what God says about false prophecy in Jeremiah 14:14, "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." Now look at Jeremiah 23:32, where God goes on to say, "'Indeed, I am against those who prophesy false dreams,' declares the Lord. 'They tell them and lead My people astray with their reckless lies, yet I did not send or appoint them. They do not benefit these people in the least,' declares the Lord."
If God is not speaking through the false prophet, then who is? Sometimes the person is just making the message up on their own, from their own heart and soul. But much of the time, the devil is the one who is speaking through them. Why would the devil bother doing that? It is because he loves to deceive people and lead them astray. We know that he is a liar (John 8:44) and we know that he imitates God's voice with a false message (Mark 13:22). So it should not really surprise us that he will raise up false prophets and try to speak through them as though it were really God speaking.
He has a few strategies that he uses with his false prophets. Sometimes he merely uses persuasive or eloquent words, or maybe he tells people what they want to hear (like "it is OK to do this particular sin.") But other times, the enemy gives special spiritual power to his false prophet. In short, he uses them to deceive God's people into deceit, sin or rebellion. Then he backs up their false message with powerful works to make it seem more convincing, such as demon empowered healings or special demonic revelation. The reason the devil does this is because he wants to confuse those who are not well grounded in their faith; those who don't know God's word very well. He wants them to assume that if they see power demonstrated, then it must really be God, because they don't know that the devil also has power.
The devil wants to get God's people to believe and obey his lies. That is why he loves to use false revelation--to led believers astray. He has been doing this for a long time. Israel's spiritual history is riddled with it, and so is the church's. False teaching and false doctrine were one of the biggest problems Paul had to address over and over again in his writings to the early church. In fact, the Jesus personally warned about this in Matthew 24:24. He said, "For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect."
When someone claims to speak for God and then delivers the devil's message, God doesn't like it. In fact, God warns us not to do that over and over again in His word. For instance, in Deuteronomy 4:2 He said "You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you."
Right from the very start, God always intended His prophets to teach His people His ways. They were speak only what He was saying and nothing else. Yet throughout history, there have always been people who were willing to speak the devil's message as though it was the word of God. They did this to lead God's people astray, to get them to disobey God's commandments and alienate themselves from God.
This is still going on today in many different forms. Sometimes the devil uses books, sometimes he uses a false prophet and sometimes he even uses the entertainment media. In fact, this teaching is being written in May of 2006, and the devil has been very busy using the media to carry his false message these past couple of months.
Back in March, he began trying to deceive the intellectual community with a "recent discovery," the book of Jude. This is a scroll that has been dated back to the 1st century using carbon dating. It is supposed to be a "gospel" written by Judas (the disciple who betrayed Jesus). Scholars argue that because it is so old, the manuscript it is authentic. However the message it contains is heresy, giving misinformation about Jesus. It really doesn't matter if the heresy was written in the first century or if it was written more recently, it is still a lie of the devil.
Among other things, the gospel of Judas claims that Jesus instructed Judas to betray him, so he wasn't really a traitor but an obedient servant. It contradicts some of the facts given in the other gospels. The average person was not very interested in this, but public television began doing documentary after documentary about it. The book of Judas generated a lot of interest in the intellectual community. It claimed to release "new truth" that had been hidden for 2,000 years. But all it was is another attempt of the devil to deceive and mislead people about who Jesus really is.
Less than two months later, Hollywood released a movie that targets a similar deceit at the average person. The movie is based on the heresy book written by Dan Brown called "The Da Vinci Code." This is set as a fictional story of a Harvard professor who discovers a code in some of Leanardo Da Vinci's writings and paintings and begins trying to unravel them. This leads him into all sorts of hidden clues and it becomes a mental puzzle to unlock this code. But finally the hidden "truth" is uncovered. What is this truth? The "truth" is about Jesus-- that He was not divine, He was just a good man. By the way, Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a daughter by her, and there are descendants of Jesus still alive on this earth today. In fact, there is a whole secret society devoted to protecting the descendants of Jesus, and Leonardo Di Vinci was a member of that society. That is why he encoded hard to unravel code into his works... to share the "truth" with those who are "worthy" enough to decipher it.
The book is written as fiction, an action-adventure about the Harvard professor who accidentally stumbles on the code and then goes to great lengths to unravel it. However the book has a section that says something to the effect of, "This story is fiction, but it is based on fact." In reality, it is only false doctrine designed to get people to question Jesus' deity and to stop them from worshipping Him. This particular deceit is in the form of a book and movie, but the devil uses a similar tactic with his false prophets.
Some false prophets lead God's people astray by sharing "hidden truths" or "spiritual secrets" that twist what God said in the Bible. A lot of these "secret truths" present sin as "holiness." Others of these hidden truths deny the deity of Jesus or the message of the cross.
Some false prophets teach people on how to become demonized (or "how to receive power and enlightenment from your spirit-guide.") They put it into an attractive sounding package, such as how to gain spiritual power from "ancient ways." But in truth it is nothing more than drawing power from a demon and becoming enslaved by it.
Still Other false prophets claim to be believers, but they speak instruct people to do things that are directly contrary to the Bible and contrary to God's ways. All of this is false prophecy and all of it incurs the wrath of God.
The devil uses a lot of different strategies to release his false prophecy, and all of them designed to lead people astray. We won't look at all of them, but we will focus on two of his most common strategies:
- By giving people permission to sin, and
- By enticing people to worship someone or something other than God.
Giving Permission To Sin
One from of false prophecy is to give people permission to sin or do things that God says are not OK. For instance, a false prophet might teach that God wants our joy to be full and He wants us to love one another (a truth from the Bible), so He wants us to engage freely in sexual intercourse with each other (a lie). The truth is that God disapproves of any sort of sexual relationship outside of marriage and the Bible makes this very clear. All the same, this false prophet would twist the truth to suggest that because sex is pleasurable (e.g., it gives us joy) and it is an expression of love, that God wants us to all have sex with each other.
We know that is an absolute lie! It contradicts the Bible. It caters to the carnal nature, not to God's guidelines on how He wants us to live. We know that God calls any sort of sex outside of marriage "sin." But the false prophet tells people that it is OK with God for us to engage in this particular sin.
This type of problem happened so frequently in the Old Testament that God commented on it in Micah 2:11, where He said, "If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' he would be just the prophet for this people!" Reworded in the Contemporary English Version, it says, "the only prophet you want is a liar who will say, 'Drink and get drunk!'" In other words, this type of false prophecy was a common problem back in Old Testament times.
Satan hasn't changed his strategy after what Jesus did on Calvary, he still does this today. We have a New Testament example of this in Revelation 2:20, where Jesus said, "Nevertheless I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols."
There are false prophets who tell people what the want to hear in order to gain control and influence over them. There are "prophets" who purposely mislead people into sin so that God's retribution will fall on them. God absolutely hates it when we sin in "His name." It offends Him when people claim to speak for God and tell people that it is ok to sin. It makes Him angry.
Suggesting We Worship Someone Other Than God
There are times when people use the prophetic to try and get us to worship someone or something other than God. They may try to get us to worship an angel or a person or possibly even another "god." We must, of course, never do that! We are instructed, in Exodus 20:2-5a, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them."
God warned us that there would be false prophets who come in great power, working signs and wonders, to lead us astray. Deut 13:1-4 says, "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods'--which you have not known--'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him." The reason God warned his people about this is because He knew it was a strategy that the devil would use against God's people.
In fact, Jesus also warned His disciples about this in Matthew 24:24-26. He said, "For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it."
There will be people who can do "mighty" works empowered by the devil. They will claim to speak for God, but they will not be from God and they will say things designed to turn us from God into sin and false religion.
Balaam is an example of a false prophet who enticed God's people into idolatry. Balaam was asked to curse the Israelites and he could not, he had to bless them instead. Some people read Balaam's story in Numbers 22 to 24 and think that Balaam converted from being a spiritualist and false prophet to become a true prophet. They think this because of Numbers 24:1, which says, "Now when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not resort to sorcery as at other times, but turned his face toward the desert" (to seek God). But both the Old and New Testament treat him like a greedy false prophet. (See Joshua 13:22, Micah 6:5, 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 1:11 and Revelation 2:14.)
It is true that King Balak hired Balaam, a spiritualist, to curse the Israelites and he ended up blessing them multiple times instead. But later on, Balaam advised King Balak and the Median people (where he lived) of a strategy to defeat Israel, by seducing them to follow after other gods and then falling under God's judgment. And that strategy worked -- they fell into idolatry and immorality and God struck them with a plague at Peor, where many people died. The strategy involved using attractive women and getting the Israeli men to fall in love with them. Then the woman would say something along the lines of "If you really love me, then prove it to me by worshipping my gods with me." The story is recorded in Numbers 31:7-16. The Lord comments on this in Revelation 2:14, "Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality."
There are modern day examples of this as well. Some of them move in power and some simply use words and deceit. Some of them are quite extreme. For instance, cult leader Jim Jones was a false prophet who started his own "church," teaching them his version of how to approach God. (It was really a cult and many of his teachings were not biblical at all.) His members lived in a commune and Jim Jones got rich as they turned all of their possessions over to him. He called himself a prophet and took on a god-like status with his followers. He slept with many of the women and he even murdered some US politicians in the name of "God." In the end, he told over 900 of his followers (many of whom where children) that God wanted them to commit mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with poison. Some did this willingly. Others were forced to do so at gunpoint. As soon as his followers were dead, Jim Jones took his own life.
A lot of the modern false prophets today much more subtle than Jim Jones. Many of them build churches around them that are strongly manipulating and controlling, that try to control areas of the person's life that are inappropriate, such as their finances, their education, their social life and who they are allowed to associate with, etc. These false prophets try to make people dependent on them instead of teaching them how to go to God and hear God for themselves. They teach their members "hidden secrets" that may involve focusing on angels or spirit beings instead of on God. Or they may introduce their members to "ascended beings," or "Spirit guides," people who have arrived and have come back to help others find the way. Anytime we look to anyone other than Jesus Christ as our salvation and path to God, we enter into idolatry. We must not do that. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is the only way to God. Jesus Himself said this in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
God expects His people to beware of false prophets who try to get them to sin or to worship other gods. He expects us to reject any message that does not lift up the name of Jesus and follow what God has already said in His word, the Bible. He expects us to be familiar enough with Scripture that we are not deceived when someone comes with demonic power to promote false doctrine. God wants each of us to develop a personal relationship with Him and to learn to recognize His voice. Then the Holy Spirit, Who lives inside of us, will help us to discern God's truth from false prophecy designed to turn us away from God.
Our best defense against being taken in by the counterfeit (the devil's deceits), is to get to know the real thing (God) really well.
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