True prophesy is where you say only what God is saying, and you only say it when He is saying it. If you share something as a "thus sayeth the Lord" when He hasn't actually said it, then it is false prophesy. And that is something we definitely don't want to do.
We have to be careful not to put words into God's mouth based on what we wish He would say. Likewise, we can't guess at God's opinion is on something, and then prophesy that guess as through God actually said it. Even when we are pretty sure that we know what His opinion is, we still must not present that as a word from God unless He tells us to. Otherwise, it become a false prophecy.
Besides, we might have guessed wrong about what He thinks about that thing. Even when we know Him well and have a pretty good idea of how He thinks, we can still make wrong assumptions. He thinks differently than we do. His ways are higher than our ways, and He has information that we are not privy to. That is why we must never presume to speak for God unless He has actually given us something to say.
The Temptation To Prophesy Falsely
There are times when it can be very tempting to speak our own opinion as though it were a word from God. This is especially true when we feel strongly about something. But the instant we saying something that God is not saying as through He were saying it, we have entered the realm of false prophesy. That is something we must not do. The temptation will come at us from time to time, but we must never give into it.
Some of you haven't experienced this temptation yet, and you can't imagine how putting words in God's mouth might be tempting. I am going to give you an example from my own experience, so that you can understand why it can, at times, this can be tempting. (I am happy to report that I did not give into the temptation, but it was not easy for me to resist it).
I have to give you a little background to explain why this was so tempting for me, so please bare with me as I seem to "switch gears" and talk about sports...it is very relevant to my example.
My husband and I are season ticket holders for the local hockey team, the San Jose Sharks. The Sharks are one of those teams that generally does "good" but never does "great." Year after year, we make it into the four-round playoffs, and we are usually eliminated in the second round. But this last season that we just had was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be the year we went all the way to the Stanley Cup finals and won the cup. The general manager did some amazing trades to acquire some really good players and we all thought we were set to win. In fact, the team had the most incredible regular season we've ever had, and set several records. They were the number 1 ranked team in the NHL at the end of the regular season, and won the "President's Trophy."
But when playoffs started, the Sharks seemed to fall apart. They played the lowest ranked team in the first round, and that lower ranked team dominated them. That first game was on home ice, which should have given the Sharks an advantage, but they still lost. We all left the arena puzzled, confused and disappointed. We all told ourselves, "that was a fluke" and expected the team to do better.
The second game of the series was also a home game, and I attended that one as well. I was personally convinced that this game would be different--that the Sharks would come alive and really win. My husband and I usually sit in the front row during the pre-game warm-ups to watch the team. But the day of this second playoff game, they all looked really worried during the warm-ups. Their facial expressions and body language made it clear that they were "psyched out" and that they had completely lost their confidence. We could tell that unless they had a mental change of attitude, they already lost the game before they even started to play.
I am a fan and I really wanted my team to win. In fact, I thought that God told me they would win this second playoff game. But my personal hearing on hockey scores is not all that accurate, because I am emotionally involved. I want Him to say that my team will win so badly that my heart can easily imitate God's voice to me on that subject.
Then this truly amazing thing happened. I had been sitting directly behind the spot where a photographer shoots. There is a little window that the photographers open to put the lens of their camera through, so that they don't have to shoot through glass. The photographer got up and left, and he forgot to close the window. Then Patrick Marlow, the team captain, came and stood right in front of me. He stayed there for a really long time...several minutes. (It is very unusual for hockey players to stay in any one position along the boards for more than a few seconds, but he stayed there minutes.)
I knew that if I spoke to him through the open photographer's window, he would be able to hear me. He (and the rest of the team) looked so dejected and defeated. Something rose up in me and I really wanted to prophesy to him that God's favor would be on the team for this game, that everything would click and they would win.
I wanted to say that so bad that I literally had to bite my tongue to keep those words from coming out. I knew God had not actually said that, so I should not say it either. But A part of me thought that if I spoke those words in His name, then it would come to pass anyhow. Besides, it seemed like a divine setup that God was allowing me an opportunity to speak to a player just before the game, since that type of thing NEVER happens. I had about three minutes where I could have done that.
Three minutes can seem like an eternity when you have a "word" busting to come out of you. I can't tell you how bad I wanted to speak that false word, to manipulate things so that my team would win. But as much as I wanted my team to win, I wanted to remain a true and faithful spokesperson to God even more. So I did not allow those words of false prophesy to come out of my mouth. But the point is that I was really tempted to say them because I really wanted our team to win.
(I should mention that our team lost that game very badly. In fact they lost the entire series, winning only two games out of six, and they were eliminated in the first round. That is one round earlier than they are usually eliminated.)
Now you might laugh at my example of really wanting my sporting team to win, but it was a real temptation for me. The truth is that every one of us will at some time in our life have something that we really want, or something we feel very strongly about. And if you are a prophetic person, you may very well end up facing the temptation to "prophesy" your feelings/desires when God hasn't said anything about it.
The truth is that people face this temptation from time to time--the temptation to say something they feel strongly about as though God had said it. If they are not mature in their gifting (or in their walk with God), then they might give into the temptation and enter into the realm of false prophesy.
Credibility and Temptation
Just about every prophetic person will face a situation in his or her life. They will be in a position where they will be tempted to present their own idea or opinion as a "thus sayeth the Lord." The devil will bring that temptation to almost every one of God's messengers.
Fortunately, that that type of temptation is not something you will face every day. It is a rare thing, and most of us will only face it a few times during our life/ministry.
However, there is an interesting dynamic between our self image and how likely we are to be tempted that way. This is how it works: The lower a person perceives their own credibility to be, the more likely they are to be tempted to express their opinion as a false prophetic word. In other words, the more credibility you have, the less you likely you will feel the need to pull out the "big guns" (e.g., God) to back up what you want to say.
Let me explain that a bit further. If you are a person who has a lot of credibility, that means you know that people are likely to listen to what you have to say, and they are likely to respect your opinion. You don't feel a need to find other things to support what you are saying, because you already have confidence that people will be willing to hear what you want to say.
But if you don't think that have credibility in a given circle, you believe it will be hard to get people to listen you. Even if you can get them to listen, you are not sure that they will take what you have to say seriously.
Now this is where the temptation arises: If you don't think that people will listen to you when you have something important to say, you might be tempted to pretend that what you want to say is a word from God. You know that people love God and want to listen to Him, so it becomes tempting to present what you want to say as though it were a prophetic word.
Of course, we understand that it is a sin to do that, and prophesying falsely will get God really angry at you. But sometimes when something is burning inside of you, you might try to talk yourself into believing that God will look the other way "just this once."
Please let me emphasize that I am not condoning false prophecy under any circumstances. It is wrong and God hates it. I am merely explaining why some people fall into that temptation more than others do.
I should also mention that being tempted to prophesy falsely is not a sin--it is only a sin if you give in to that temptation. So, if you get tempted that way, you must resist it. It is never ok to say "thus sayeth the Lord" when God is not actually saying it.
Why Are There So Many False "Judgment Words?"
So why is that that so much of "false prophecy" takes the form of doom and gloom words, where the person speaks forth some type of threat or condemnation? There are two main reasons for this:
- The would-be "prophet" is prophesying from inner character flaws.
- The would-be "prophet" is making assumptions and has misunderstandings.
Let's take a brief look at both of these.
Prophesying From Character Flaws
Jesus explained one of the reasons for false prophesy in Matthew 12:34: "...How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
In short, when our heart is full of things like unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, etc, then we will end up speaking words of complaint, criticism, judgment and condemnation. So many of the people who bring forth these false words of judgment are in fact full of some type of hurt, resentment or bitterness. They using the false word as a psychological way to "lash out" and deal with their own pain and woundedness. Also, many of the people who release this type of false prophesy tend to have critical and hard to please personalities. Or sometimes they are just filled with so much hate and prejudice that it spills out of them in the form of false judgment/condemnation types of words.
People who prophesy out of this type of character flaw will often give negative or outlandish words to people, then they threaten the person with God's punishment/condemnation if they won't receive the word.
In fact, I get reports from people who've received this type of "threat" all of the time. There story is pretty much the same. Let me share it with you...
Someone gives them a "word" that is harsh or corrective, but that word just doesn't seem to fit them at all. In silent prayer, they open their hearts to God and invite the Holy Spirit to convict and to change anything in them that He wants to work on. But instead of getting any sort of witness in their spirit about the "word," they get a check in their spirit.
Then the one who gave the questionable word to them starts to pressure them to "receive the word" right then and there. Most believers won't lie and tell the "false prophet" that this was a good word. There are several reasons for that: 1) they know lying is a sin, 2) they don't relate to the word at all, 3) the word is full of untrue criticisms and/or put downs that they don't want to take ownership of, and 4) because they have a check in their spirit about it.
So the one who gave the "word" tells them that if they reject this word, they are rejecting God and God will punish them for it. Or the false prophet may spin it a bit differently, saying that he (or she) is "God's anointed," and if they reject the word, then they are "touching God's anointed," and God will punish them for that.
Some of these false prophets have gone so far as to threaten that the ones who won't "receive" their false words will either be struck dead or sent to hell.
However, most of them are more subtle and just accuse their victims of pride and rebellion for not relating to their false prophecy. Most of them just leave a veiled threat that "God will punish you if you don't repent."
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:
Let me give you an example of this. There is a man (his first name is Brian) who seemed to take great pleasure in sending out judgment and destruction words by email. He searched the internet for the email addresses of anyone even remotely related to prophetic ministry, and then sends his false judgment words to them--several times a week. He seems to take great delight in telling those who already honor and serve the Lord that they need to repent or they will be destroyed.
I discussed a few of Brian's 'words' with the Lord, and God told me that Brian was not speaking for Him. Since the words are false and a bit on the offensive side, I politely wrote Brian many times, asking him to stop sending these to me. But, he refused to remove my name from his list, and he kept sending unwanted doom and gloom false prophesies to me.
After weeks of this, I finally wrote a script to send multiple "please remove my address from your list" replies to each false prophesy email he sent.
Brian's response was to send a word to me personally and repeatedly. He sent it to me about a dozen times. I haven't read the content of his email because I have already judged him as 'not credible,' which means that I now I delete all of his emails unread. But the subject line was: "Repent Teresa."
In short, Brian's response was that I need to repent for not receiving his false "word." That is typical of people who prophesy judgment words out of their own hurts and character flaws. They frequently threaten that God will punish anyone who won't receive their word. In fact, that type of threat is one of the earmarks of false prophecy.
A NOTE ABOUT "NOT RECEIVING" THESE FALSE WORDS:
Sometimes these false judgment words are corporate (or given to a group of people). If you don't relate to a false judgment word over a group or nation, you usually don't need to deal with it. There is not a lot of emotional struggle, you just tell yourself, "That is not God" and you forget about it. And that is usually an ok way to deal with corporate false words. If God wants you to do more than simply forget about it, the Holy Spirit will speak to you and show you what He wants you to do.
But if the false judgment word is given to you personally (instead of to a group) then you are going to have to deal with it in some way, so that there isn't something spiritual hanging over your head. You will need to decide whether or not it is a God-word. If you think it is really a legitimate word from God, then you will need to find out how God wants you to respond to it and then do what He shows you to do. If you decide it is a false word, you will need to reject it.
But you should either receive or reject it instead of "putting it on a shelf" as some people advise. If you put it on a shelf and if it contains untrue negative things, the enemy of your soul could use it to empower some of those things against you as a curse.
Most believers go through all sorts of inner trauma when then get a false negative word. They are upset by the word, they know it doesn't fit them, and they want to reject it. But there is this little voice inside that asks, "But what if this really is God? I don't want to reject God's word. I don't want to have a hard towards Him if He is trying to convict and correct me."
And because they love God so much, they struggle with this negative word much longer than they should.
So let me tell you what I do went I get a word that I don't think is a God-word. First, I do my best to prayerfully judge it. I bring the word to Him and ask Him to look at it with Me. I ask Him to speak to me in some way (of His choosing) so that I will know is Him. I ask Him to show me if this was from Him. Then I give it a short while (maybe two or three days). If I don't hear from God on it, and my gut feel is that this is not a "God word," then I reject it.
I never "put it on the shelf" and wait until God either confirms it or shows clearly it wasn't Him. But I don't do that because you can end up waiting "years" and not hear from Him. That gives the devil all sorts of time to empower the negative things in that word against me as a curse, and I don't want to give him that sort of opportunity. So, I try to deal with words shortly after I get them, to either receive them or reject them. And in the case where I think it is not a God-word, I tell the Lord something like this:
Lord, I have done my best to judge this word, and at this point I really don't think it is from You, so I am rejecting it. Lord, if I am wrong and this is from You, then please bring it around again from a different source, and in a different way where I am able to recognize it as You. If I come to see that it really is from You, then I will receive it, because I love You and I want to receive whatever You speak to me. But at this point, I don't think that this is You and that is why I reject it.
Assumptions and Misunderstandings
I said earlier that there are two main reasons why people give false judgment and condemnation words. We just finished talking about the first, that they are prophesying out of inner issues and character flaws. But not everyone who gives a false judgment word has these character flaws. Sometimes people prophesy this way because of wrong assumptions they have made, or because of misunderstandings about God's word and His ways.
These are ones who see "only" the judgment words in the Old Testament and come to the conclusion that the word "prophesy" means to "condemn sin and command sinners to repent." They make a leap of assumption, figuring that since God did something a certain way one time in the Old Testament, He will always do it precisely that way.
They read that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their immorality (including homosexuality), so they assume that God is about to destroy any other city that has a stronghold of that same sin...such as San Francisco or New York City. (And while God may in fact decide to do that at some future time, they don't even seek God's timing or plans for a given city. They just assume that God will destroy it the same way He did Sodom and Gomorrah.)
Or they read how God judged a nation for sacrificing their children to idols. Then they decide that abortion is really a "sacrifice of babies to the idol of hedonism." So they began to cry out condemnation and punishment against some cities/nations that permit abortion. They don't want to see what God's activity or plans are for that city/nation. They simply draw a parallel between one thing they read in the bible and what they see in the modern-day word. Then, without actually hearing from God or consulting Him, they speak out their assumptions as though it was a "thus sayeth the Lord."
Another mistake they make is to look at the hostile/confrontational delivery style that God occasionally used when addressing people who hardened their hearts and repeatedly rejected and ignored several earlier prophetic warnings. They say to themselves, "This is the style God uses for prophetic words," so they use that style in all of their words.
They assume that God always talks to people like Jesus talked to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:33 when He said, "You Serpents, you brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?" So they copy that harsh style, wrongly assuming that this is how God talks to everyone.
REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:
A lady came into a Christian chatroom and wanted to share a "word" she had received in the email. No one was particularly interested in hearing it, but she insisted on sharing it anyhow. Then she began to cut and paste a searing judgment word to the residents of a certain nation. The word threatened horrible and hideous things would happen to every single person there because was not a single righteous person left in it, so God was going to completely destroy and annihilate it. But He was going to punish he sinners and make them suffer horribly before He killed them and sent them to Hell.
Some people in the room stopped her because they did not feel that what she was sharing was "of God." Then someone asked her who the "prophet" was that sent this word to her. She had no idea who he was and did not know him. Then she was asked how she could consider this a credible word if she did not even know whether or not it came from a legitimate prophetic source. She explained that she believed it had to be credible because it was so harsh. Her idea was that when God spoke, all He said was harsh and condemning things.
She also believed that it was her solemn duty to pass this word on to others--because of how horrible it was. Since we did not want to hear it in this room, she decided to go to another room where she could share this "word."
As it turns out, I happen to personally know of many believers in the nation this false word was supposedly for. These men and women of God are actively honoring, obeying and serving Him, which emphasized to me how inaccurate her doom/gloom "word" was.
But there was something inside of this lady that wanted to proclaim the judgment and condemnation of God upon others, so she was keen to share what she got in the mail with anyone who would listen.
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