Anytime a person claims to speak for God and says something God is not saying, that is false prophecy. Not all false prophecy comes from the devil. In Jeremiah 23:21, God says, "I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied." He goes on to explain where their motivation is coming from in verses 25 to 26: "25 I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in My name. They say, 'I had a dream! I had a dream!' 26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?
Manipulation and False Prophecy
There are manipulative people in the world who will use whatever tactic they can to get you to do what they want you to do, and some of them have found their way into the prophetic. The try to convince you that God is telling you to do what they want you to do. It might be giving them some money, or it might be giving them some sort of status or power, or doing something to make their lives more comfortable. But whatever it is, you can be assured they have their own good at heart, not yours.
We have an alarming example of this in 1 Kings 13. This details a story where God sends a prophet from Judah to Bethel to confront Jeroboam for his idolatry and to destroy his altar. They have a power encounter and God wins. As a result the king offers to reward the prophet financially, but the prophet refuses. He explains that God gave him specific instructions to fast and not to backtrack. Of course, everyone is impressed by how powerfully God moved through this Judean prophet and he becomes the "talk of the town.
Verse 11 tells us that there was a retired prophet who lived in Bethel, and he heard about this power encounter. He decided that he wanted to have this Judean prophet come to his house for a meal. The passage does not clarify his motives, but it was most likely a status thing. In that society, if you have an important person to come as a guest to your house, it raised your status in the eyes of all your neighbors. (In fact, that thinking still common in many parts of the world today.) Whatever his reason was, the retired prophet wanted to get this prophet come eat at his house.
So he got on a donkey and went after the prophet. When he found him, in invited him to come for dinner. The prophet declined and explained God's instructions to him about fasting and not backtracking. Verse 18 tells us that the retired prophet responded by lying to the real prophet. He did this to get his way, to manipulate the prophet into coming to eat at his house. Verse 18 tells us, "The old prophet answered, 'I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the Lord: "Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water."' (But he was lying to him.)"
That was a drastic misuse of the prophetic: lying to manipulate the man to do what he wanted him to do. In this instance, it had dyer consequences for the person who believed the lie and acted on it. He backtracked to the retired prophet's house and broke his fast, and as a result God struck him dead for disobedience.
Sadly, prophetic manipulation still happens today. Some people will lie to you in the name of the Lord. They will claim that God is telling you to do something that they want you to do. This is not an uncommon practice. It is manipulation and control, and it makes God very angry. But people still do it today.
The 1 Kings 13 story has a really alarming part. God knew the prophet had been lied to, yet He still held him accountable for his disobedience. The prophet knew God's original instructions and choose to discard them because the new instructions sounded better to him. If he had taken the time/effort to seek God about this supposed change of directions, God would have let him know the truth. But he did not do that. He simply believed the lie and acted on it. As a result, he suffered the consequences for disobeying God. In short, God allowed him to suffer the consequences of acting on the lie that was told to him in the Lord's name.
This still happens today. When someone gives us a manipulative prophecy, God will show us the truth if we seek Him for it as we prayerfully judge the word. If we don't do that and we act on the manipulative prophecy, it is not uncommon for us to suffer the negative consequences that come with being manipulated, just like the prophet in 1 Kings 13 did.
Let me give you a real-life example of a person who used the prophetic to manipulate others for her own gain. This story took place years ago when I was still new to the prophetic. I had a friend named Sally (not her real name) who fell prey to prophetic manipulation by a person named Tina (again, not her real name). Sally and I were both new to the prophetic and we were both looking for someone to mentor us in it.
One day Sally met Tina online. Tina did not get out of the house much, but she would to go into various Christian chatrooms to prophesy to people, then to talk to them for hours in private chat. One day she prophesied to Sally and after that the two of them chatted together online every day for about three weeks. Then Tina offered to mentor my friend. At fist this seemed like an answer to Sally's prayers. It turned out that Tina lived about a six-hour drive from Sally's home. So Sally began to drive out to Tina's home for the weekend two or three times a month to be mentored and to have Tina speak into her life.
After three or four months, the nature of the words Tina gave Sally began to change. It seemed that God was appointing Sally to be financially responsible for Tina. Tina's husband did not have a steady job and the family was frequently in financial trouble. One day Tina's family car broke down. The following weekend, she gave Sally a word that Sally was to give her car to Tina's family. She did so, over her husband's objections. Sally began to get more and more financial words from Tina. She began giving her more and more money until her husband forbid her to give away any more of his hard-earned money. After that, "the Lord" suddenly had new direction for Sally, given to her (of course) when Tina prophesied to her. Sally was instructed to get a part-time job and to give the salary from that job to Tina, because "God appointed her to provide financially" for Tina.
Of course, Sally's husband objected to this, because Sally was supposed to be a stay-at-home Mom to take care of the kids. That lead to some marital strife and finally Sally began to cry out to God about why He would direct her to do something that was harmful to her marriage. At that point, she figured out that she was being manipulated by Tina and that the words she had been receiving were from Tina instead of from God. That, of course, ended the mentorship. It is never a good thing when someone uses the prophetic as a guise to manipulate another person.
Woundedness and False Prophecy
Some false prophecy comes from human woundedness and immaturity, where a person truly desires to speak for God and begins to "do so" even when God is not speaking through them. Perhaps they want to "feel important" or feel they are of value, and they perceive that speaking for God will make them important. So in their own woundedness, they convince themselves that God has given them an important message to proclaim for Him when He has not done so.
Sometimes their false message is harmless and other times it is extremely harmful. Most of the time these wounded false prophets sabotage them- selves because their issues are so "raw." They have problems interacting with others and they are not received--based on their inappropriate interactions. Much of the time they tend to alienate people until the people don't want to be around them any more. Then they think they are being rejected because of the message they carry, but they are really being rejected because of their own issues and their inability to interact effectively with others. They will be the ones who believe that a prophet's lot is lonely and to be rejected.
(Please note that not all people who are rejected because of their own issues are false prophets. Some truly have a message from God, but they have not yet had their character refined enough to deliver it yet. There are wounded "true" prophets as well as wounded false ones. But if someone is a true prophet of God, then God will begin to work on that woundedness and character issues and bring them to a place of wholeness where they will stop getting in the way of the message God has given them to proclaim.)
At times false prophets are not received because they have obvious sin issues in their lives. Other times they are like con-men and they have so much charisma that they are received for a season. But over time their character shows through and people become repulsed when they see the underlying motives and true character.
The people who are false prophets because of their own woundedness usually alienate people. They may even cause people to become leery of the true prophetic. At times they can be hurtful, misdirecting a person in their own spiritual growth and development and relationship with God. They can do great harm to a person emotionally. Some false prophets try to build co-dependent relationships with people, making the person dependent on them instead of on God.
It is never a good thing to misspeak on God's behalf. God doesn't like that and ultimately we will appear before Him and have to give account for our actions. I would not want to be in their shoes on that day. But this does not mean that every false prophet is a pawn of the enemy. Some are just very wounded people trying to feel important in the church. In other words, not everyone wounded "would-be prophet" is the enemy counterfeit of the true prophetic -- sometimes the false prophetic comes from their own spirit, not from the devil.
This teaching series is primarily designed to make us aware of the false prophecy strategies that the devil uses so that we won't fall prey to them. But not all false prophecy is demonic. Some of it comes from the flesh instead of from the enemy. We have already looked at two of these in the previous lesson:
- Using The Prophetic To Manipulate Others
- Prophesying Out Of One's Woundedness
There is another false prophecy that we need to be aware of. That is when someone rebukes or condemns another person in the guise of prophecy.
False Words of Condemnation
There are two dynamics that can lead people to give false words of judgment and condemnation. The first category are is comprised of those who are emotionally wounded and who are reacting to their pain. This is usually personal in nature, directed towards someone who hurt them. But it can also be projected in nature, e.g., directed towards someone who reminds them of the one who hurt them. For instance, a person who had a lot of issues with their mother may "act out" their aggression with other female authority figures. The second category is those who are not impulsively ruled by their emotions, but those who carefully plan "revenge" against someone who hurt them.
THOSE WHO "PROPHESY" FROM THEIR PAIN
Let's look at the first category. Most of these people are so emotionally wounded that it is easy for others to see that they have problems. These people often come across as hostile and aggressive. If they give a judgment word, very few people would take them seriously. Most would view them as some sort of quack or flake. They are the kind of person that makes you feel like you need to "walk on eggshells" around them.
This type of false prophet is not really a big danger because their character flaws are so obvious that it is easy for others to realize that they are speaking out of their own personal woundedness. As a result, most people simply reject their words and don't even consider that they might be speaking for God.
This type of false prophet usually has a very critical nature. They are often hostile and aggressive, quick to judge others, and they anger easily. They are easily offended and they are run by their feelings. They tend to convert their feelings into harsh and negative words of warning, rebuke or judgment.
What would cause a person like this to give false negative words? Sometimes it is because they are so wounded that they cannot discern between God's Spirit and their own spirit (e.g., feeling offended, hurt, angry at the way they were treated, etc). This type of person usually has poor interpersonal skills and often ends up interacting with others in ways that make others avoid them. In short, they set themselves up to be rejected and then they feel hurt and angry when someone does reject them. They become offended. Their offense mills around in their hearts for a while and anger begins to kindle. They assume the anger and offense they are feeling comes from God instead of from their own hearts. It doesn't take them long to turn that into a rebuking or condemning word against that person they are upset with.
Others are able to discern the difference between their own feelings and God's voice. But when they get hurt or angry or offended by someone, they assume that God must be angry with the person who treated them like this. So they launch into a false prophetic word of judgment or condemnation.
Other people are just so emotionally wounded that they feel they need to find an outlet--any outlet--for their frustrations. So they take their frustrations out on whoever happens to be around when they need to vent. They have been molded by their experiences, and they usually had parents who ere critical and hard to please, and they were constantly put down and criticized for even the most minor things. So that is the pattern they learn for relating to others, and they see God as critical and very hard to please.
They have all this hurt and frustration built up inside of them and when they have to vent, they find a way to turn it into a judgment or critical word. The others target those who have offended them, but these people just target whoever happens to be handy at the moment they need to vent. This makes them a bit more dangerous, because the person they give the negative false prophecy to may not know about their unstable emotional nature.
So far we have been talking about giving false personal "words" of correction, judgment or rebuke. However, this group we just talked about (those who need to vent) might just as easily come up with a corporate word as a personal one. They might judge a nation, a people group, the church at large, a profession, etc. Remember, they are not trying to get even with a specific person who hurt them, they are just so frustrated that they need to strike out at anyone--at whoever happens to be there at the time. Sometimes that will take the form of personal words and sometimes it will take the form of corporate words.
Of course this practice of giving negative words because we are upset at someone or something is wrong. We should never say "thus sayeth the Lord" when the Lord is not actually saying something. It is false prophecy and Jesus will hold them accountable for it, but it is not demonic in origin. Instead it comes from the persons own woundedness and critical nature.
THOSE WHO "PROPHESY" TO INTEINTIONALLY HURT OR TO GET REVENGE
These are the most dangerous type of human-empowered false prophet. They aren't motivated by their own emotional pain of the moment, they are motivated by revenge. People who fall into this category are what psychologists call "passive-aggressive." In layman's terms, these are the ones who like to exact revenge, who carefully plan it and who are willing to wait a while until the victim is totally unsuspecting and unprepared for the attack.
Most passive-aggressive false prophets appear to be "normal," but some are sometimes cold and calculating. They do not appear to be ruled by their feelings. They usually have good social skills and they sometimes go out of their way to put their "prey" at ease before pouncing on them, so that their prey is more devastated by their attack. They go out of their way to intentionally hurt someone. They are not reacting to the pain of the moment, they are carefully exacting revenge from an earlier pain.
If you get a false judgment word from one of these people, it will seem out "of the blue" to you. You may have done something to hurt or offend them at some point. Since they are about revenge and not about venting their feelings, they won't appear to react to it at that time. They will wait until the "right moment" to get their revenge. It might be a week later or it might be two months later. Suddenly out of the blue they give you a word that rebukes you, puts you down, makes you feel that God is mad at you or that God doesn't like you anymore. That type of word can be devastating because it doesn't look like retaliation when it comes.
Mistakes By Prophetic Beginners
"Beginners" who are learning to hear God go through a learning curve and they sometimes make mistakes. They may hear wrong and as a result, they may share messages "from God" that are not really from God. Their learning-curve mistakes don't usually hurt anything when the hearer judges their words. They have no intent to mislead or manipulate or deceive. They simply heard wrong and shared what they heard.
As beginners, they should be probably following 1 Corinthians 14 guidelines, so it has been edifying or building or encouraging or comforting. The hearer is able to judge this "word" and realize that it does not relate to them. So most of the time, no harm is done by their mistake. Also, God will usually put His grace on beginners so that their mistakes will not have a big effect on people. A common beginners prayer is, "Lord please help me to be accurate and let any mistakes I make roll off of people like water rolls off of a duck's back."
We encourage beginners to be tentative in their words until they develop a good degree of accuracy in their hearing. We encourage them to say something along the lines of "I think the Lord might be saying ..." or "I am new at prophesying, so I may not be 100% accurate yet, but I am hearing ..." We encourage beginners to freely admit if they make a mistake or "miss it." That makes them more teachable. We encourage them to go back to God and debrief with Him when they do make a mistake. Some people learn more from making one mistake than they do from 100 successes. So sometimes God will allow a beginner to make a mistake in order to teach them something He wants them to learn.
We ask beginners to stretch in order to grow in their gifting. Most of the time, they will hear God and do well when they stretch. But sometimes they will miss it...that is part of the learning process. We want to be truthful in our feedback so they understand when they miss it. But at the same time, we don't want to discourage or rebuke them for missing it. We want to encourage them for stepping out in faith and trying, because that is how they grow in their gifting.
The truth is that mistakes are a part of the learning process and we must expect that beginners will occasionally make some mistakes. We expect beginners to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes, that they might grow in their gifting. We expect them to be humble and teachable, but we do understand that making mistakes is a part of the learning process. At the same time, we do expect beginners to grow in their gifting, to gain in accuracy and clarity of hearing and to eventually stop making mistakes, or at least not to make them very often.
We do not consider beginner's mistakes as being in the realm of false prophecy.
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