Learn how to recognize false prophecies and protect yourself from misleading religious claims.
Phylicia presents practical strategies for distinguishing truth from falsehood and explores common tactics employed in false prophecies and equips you with tools to critically assess various claims.
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Transcription
False prophecy happens when someone elevates their own knowledge and refuses to be held accountable to scripture. And when this happens, you can damage the lives of other people and you are in danger of shaming the name of God. Hello, friends, and welcome back to Verity podcast. My name is Phylicia Masonheimer, the founder of Every Woman A Theologian, and we are beginning a new series on discerning false teaching. So we’re gonna be talking about a variety of different teachings that arise in the church and what scripture says about them, what the early church said about them, and how to combat those in a gracious and loving way in today’s culture. I said this in the first episode of this series, but there is nothing new under the sun in terms of ideology, in terms of how we talk about these different, heretical or false beliefs. They’re usually just the same thing repackaged in a new way. And so in this very first episode, I wanna talk about false prophecy.
I know that we have quite a few people in our online community who grew up in the charismatic or Pentecostal tradition, including myself. And the charismatic Pentecostal tradition is massively growing. In fact, it’s one of the largest churches in the world right after or alongside the Roman Catholic Church. And because of this, it has a tremendous influence. But because it is largely independent, doesn’t have a centralized denominational authority structure, you end up with completely different versions of charismatic theology or charismatic expression depending on what church it is. And what this has led to is both good and bad theology. In the good theology, we have this desire and appreciation for the power of the Holy Spirit, for his work and his expression, For the power of the Lord to speak through dreams and visions. To empower people to speak prophecy.
So not new scriptures but prophecy in the sense of exhortation that upbuilds a church and explains the application of scripture. So we have a lot of good things that are coming out of the charismatic church and that have transformed culture and equipped people around the globe to know God and make him known. But on the side of bad theology, we also have a lot of room for concern. The side of the charismatic church that is unhealthy is where the desire to see the Holy Spirit move has actually led people to elevate the gifts of the spirit above the fruit of the spirit or to elevate the powerful visible miracles of God above the work of God in the inner man and in our hearts. And so when we fail to see what God is attempting to do or he is doing through the scriptures. When we fail to see that God is after both a heart submitted to him and after the work of the spirit in the world and powerful and magnificent ways, we end up emphasizing either one or the other instead of emphasizing both. And this happens in the charismatic Pentecostal church. In my own experience growing up in this environment, I often saw, the beautiful emphasis of the Holy Spirit leading to extremely, powerful, experiences of God’s love and God’s affection, of God’s power and God’s transformation in people’s lives.
But I also saw it abused. I saw times when the gifts of the spirit were used for show or there was an attempt to kind of garner this emotional response as if the Holy Spirit only moves through emotion and nothing else. Got to the point where it was hard to discern between what was a show of emotion and what was a genuine move of the holy spirit. And so, as usual, whenever we’re talking about these things, we don’t wanna throw the baby out with the Bathwater. I am actually extremely pro charismatic church. And I think that a healthy charismatic church is within the will of God, doing the will of God, and I want to champion and come alongside their work. However, the first thing that we should do is, as Christians, is we should be open to critique our own tradition. We should be open to critique the things that are not in alignment with the word of God.
And one of those major areas of failure in the charismatic church today is false prophecy. One of the areas that we saw this was in the election in 2020, where we saw many people prophesying that Donald Trump would win the election, only to see that he lost the election later on. These prophets would then adjust their prophecy and say that, actually, it applied to a different time where they have received extra revelation from God to change their prophecy to match the circumstances that were unfolding. Unfortunately, you can’t do this. And according to scripture, in Deuteronomy 18, we have an outline of what prophets are supposed to do and, in Deuteronomy, a death penalty for prophets who prophesy falsely. See false prophecy also thriving, we have see false prophecy also thriving. We have a tendency to to be eager to hear the voice of God or eager eager to hear God’s application of his word, which is, one of the ways prophecy exemplifies itself, we have this eagerness to the point that maybe we will actually overlook, false prophetic statements and false prophetic words. Even we’ll have a problem of not being grounded enough in scripture to check prophetic words against the truth.
And so now we’re just allowing people to change and adjust their word from the lord, which puts God’s name on the line and treads dangerously close to blasphemy. So this is why false prophecy is such a big deal. Not only does it come very close to blaspheming the Holy Spirit, speaking for God falsely, which is what false prophets do as we will quickly see here in scripture. But it also has the risk of leading weaker believers astray. Specifically, weaker women, I have found, who I believe, generally have the gift of prophecy. In fact, if you look at the Old and New Testaments, the predominant gift of women, Godly and righteous women, is prophecy. You can see this with Hulda and Isaiah’s wife, with Miriam, with Philip’s daughters, with Anna. These women were all prophesying, and God gave them that gift.
But what’s the opposite of prophecy? It’s spiritual pride and a quest for information, secret messages, the power of discerning what’s going on in the universe and the patterns that are in it, and using that perceived discernment to wield power over people. The difference between true prophecy and false prophecy is that true prophecy is selfless. It says false prophecy happens when someone elevates their own knowledge and refuses to be held accountable to scripture. And when this happens, you can damage the lives of other people, and you are in danger of shaming the name of God. It’s a very serious thing. Let’s look at Deuteronomy eighteen twenty. Deuteronomy eighteen twenty says, but a prophet who presumes to speak in my name, anything I have not commanded or a prophet who speaks in the name of other Gods is to be put to death. Now, obviously, this is an Old Testament command.
The death penalty was very common in those times and eras, and we live under the new covenant in Jesus Christ. So the question is not do we put prophets to death now, but what’s the principle that applies? The principle here that surpasses all cultures and all areas is that we should never be speaking anything in the name of God that he did not command. And this is where it gets sticky because most false prophets actually think that they are speaking in the name of God. They’ve deceived themselves into thinking that they’re speaking for God. But how could you draw that conclusion? How could you come to that conclusion and begin to think that you’re speaking for God when you’re not? Well, I believe that a lot of this confusion comes from number one, not emphasizing the word of God as the anchor enough. And this is born from a church culture that emphasized signs and gifts and miracles above being grounded in the word. See, we can have the signs and the gifts and the miracles, but they should line up with what scripture said is going to happen and not a proof text out of context verse but in context of the whole of scripture. If someone is no longer respecting their accountability to the word of God, then very quickly, they can say whatever they want in the name of God with no real accountability.
They can even tell you that you’re limiting God or you’re legalistic or not listening to the Holy Spirit because you resist their word from the Lord. This is again very dangerous ground to be in, but it’s the natural product of a lack of accountability to scripture and a slow build of spiritual pride. Ezekiel thirteen nine says, my hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of Israel nor will they enter the land of Israel. You will know that I am the sovereign Lord. So here in Ezekiel, you have Ezekiel, a prophet, talking about false prophets. So, Ezekiel, he did some crazy stuff. He did some wild stuff.
Sometimes prophecy in the Old Testament would use these extreme, kind of like role playing examples to show Israel just how awful their sin was and what judgment was coming if they didn’t repent. So Ezekiel, for example, had to lay on his side for, I think, almost a year. He had to cook food over, animal excrement and do all these weird things and it was to show Israel just how far they’d wandered from God. It was to shock them into repentance. So, it’s not like the prophets that are seeing false visions are just doing crazy things and that’s what’s wrong. I think that those of you who aren’t in charismatic Pentecostal environments, your struggle may not be so much with, discerning false prophecy itself but that you don’t accept prophecy at all and that you don’t realize that there are certain gifts of the spirit that still are available today but they must be rightly ordered and accountable to the word. Just because a church practices prophecy doesn’t mean they’re automatically doing false teaching. Just because they believe in it doesn’t mean that they’re automatically in the new apostolic reformation as some like to label them.
However, there are churches who are practicing these gifts wrongly. There are individuals who are practicing these gifts wrongly, and it is a dangerous ground to be in because it comes so close to blasphemy and heretical teaching. And this is why we should be brought to accountability when we look at something like Ezekiel that says, God’s hand is against people who have false visions, who lie about their visions or confuse anxiety or their own intrusive thoughts with the truth of God and his voice, which is very possible when you lack discernment and groundedness in scripture. Jeremiah fourteen fourteen says, the Lord said to me, Jeremiah, 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. Okay. This is important because Jeremiah is saying that this happened before and false prophecies marked by four things, false visions, divinations, idolatries, and delusions of their own minds.
True prophecy will not partner with any of these things. So what would this look like in modern day? Let’s talk about false visions. False visions can be these extremely broad, vague, prophetic words that are just kind of applied to everybody but without specific groundedness in scripture and without specific, action items. So one such example I will use, there’s a very famous, charismatic deliverance minister. She’s a woman, very well known. And part of what she’ll do is she’ll issue these prophetic words. And the reason I saw this one was somebody tagged me in it, hoping perhaps I would receive this word because it was directed to Christian leaders. And one of the things she said in this equivalent to the words of God himself, we’ve got a equivalent to the words of God himself, we’ve got a problem.
Because that then tells us that this individual believes that their revelation is actually equal with God’s and therefore equal with scripture. This happened during the twenty twenty election and it was happening in this particular prophetic word. But where did the authority come from? It came from a personal vision. And that personal vision was for self glorification. And that’s how we know it was a false vision. Because of the threat that anyone who doesn’t listen to this isn’t listening to God. It is for self glorification. It is a false vision.
It is a false teaching and a false prophecy. We do not receive it. Secondly, divinations. So, divinations would be when you’re seeing a mixture of new age or new thought philosophy with charismatic prophetic gifting. And this is actually increasing and it’s fascinating. I think that the way that this happens is that people who are coming out of the new age, coming out of new thought can actually get really twisted up into charismatic churches. Now, this is again one of those tensions because the charismatic church is extremely evangelistic and extremely good at being missional. Very bold and preaching the truth to people.
But here’s the weakness of the charismatic church, discipleship. The follow-up discipleship after that isn’t often grounded in the word of God. So what happens is you get these new believers that are coming out of pagan worship rituals. They’re suddenly coming into a charismatic church that also concentrates on signs and wonders much like what you might see. It’s the equal and opposite. You see in the church, the power of healing, the power of prophecy and discernment. Right? Well, the equal and opposite in the world of evil, the world of paganism would be things like crystals and astrology and, you know, tapping into the, you know, hearing the universe, connecting, you know, and aligning your chakras. All of those things, it’s opposite.
They’re parallel. So, if this is the case, then when someone comes out of one world and into the other, unless they’re very strongly discipled in the word of God, they can actually start to meld those things together and think that they are prophesying scripturally when in fact, they’re still kind of parroting these pagan ideas And it really comes from weakness and deception which is why discipleship is so important. So this would be the divinations. This is where divinations come from. It can happen by accident or if it goes unchecked, it can happen on purpose. Idolatries. What happens with idolatry? This can happen with politics. Happens when the church gets too entwined with politics and pretty soon we’re adjusting our prophecies to achieve the political ends that we’re hoping for.
Even if we think that the end result would be good, we don’t have the right to make a political person on any side of the spectrum the center of our prophetic ideals. And what can happen is if there is some kind of idolatry like we need this person or this movement or this particular policy, we need this in order for God to accomplish his purpose on earth and we lose sight of his sovereignty. Suddenly now false prophecy is starting to grow and it has at the center of it idolatry. So this can happen as well. And then the very last one is delusions of their own minds. How can a false prophet be diluted? I think that, what can really happen is again, you are trying to discern the voice of God without the word of God and when you allow your mind to be the only place where you are hearing God’s voice and not here to check does this sound like him through history? It is very easy to confuse anxiety, worry with conviction. It is easy to confuse intrusive thoughts with God’s prompting. It’s easy to confuse depression with, God pressuring you to take action on something and so, if you are not grounded in scriptures, truth, and what God’s voice sounds like, what can happen is you actually end up in a really unhealthy place where now the delusions of your own mind are coming out of your mouth and deceiving other people as false prophecy.
Later on in Jeremiah, he says, the Lord Almighty says, do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you. They fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds and not from the mouth of the Lord. False hopes, another characteristic of false prophecy. If the only thing that someone’s ever preaching is that you’re gonna have health, wealth, and prosperity, you have to ask the question, is this the Lord? Because Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, for I have overcome the world. So if someone’s only ever preaching that you’re gonna prosper and be well and you’re going to have everything you need on this earth, then we have to ask, is this true hope or is this false hope? These visions are from their own minds, not from the mouth of the lord. Alright, in Matthew twenty four twenty four, Jesus says this, for false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Who’s Jesus talking about here? He’s talking about the elect, which are the disciples. Those are that’s the church. That’s you. That’s me. And so there will be false messiahs and false prophets, he says, that will appear and perform great signs and wonders. Remember that the enemy or spiritual enemy has power to a degree. He can mimic and he can transform even to a certain degree but he’s always operating within the created realm. Like, he’s all he can’t make anything new.
He can’t make life. He can’t create out of nothing. So, he works with what he has and he repurposes a lot of his old teachings just with the new angle. So when we see these great signs and wonders, maybe, for example, I think, the new age and new thought movements are great example of this because you can actually get a degree of healing through Reiki. You can get a degree of healing through sound healing or through, these new energy healing kind of movements. You’ll see people who do it and then they say that they feel so much better and that they’re transformed. But like my friend Jeremy Jenkins says, just because it works doesn’t mean it’s good. In fact, we see this all the time with witch doctors.
We see this in history and Egypt when Moses throws his staff down and it turns into a snake and then the Egyptian witch doctors are able to do the same thing. The enemy has power. This is not just a situation where, you know, the enemy is just limited by, you know, being the enemy. He has a form of power but God has more power and he gives more wisdom so that we aren’t deceived by false prophecy. So how do you identify false prophecy? How would you look for it? Does it line up with scripture? Does it line up with the character of God? Is it moving me towards God or away from God? Is it moving me towards the church or away from the church? Is it moving me more into holiness or more towards myself? Is it something that is leading to my complete independence from needing God or is it leading me to a healthy dependence upon God? All of these questions should be asked. Is it self glorifying the prophet? Is it destructive to the church damaging causing tons of division? Now, the one exception to this would be if something is a a doctrinal issue that’s adhering to the truth of scripture and by teaching it, it causes division, then, yeah, that’s just a part of adhering to the truth. But in terms of false prophecy, false prophecy will not be accountable, and it will not be willing to repent, and it will not be willing, to pursue unity of the church as far as is possible. So if you’re out there navigating these things, if you’re watching those YouTube prophets or you’ve been sucked into this kind of teaching, I just wanna tell you, you can always turn around.
You can always walk away. God is the author of wisdom. He’s with you. He’s for you. Jesus warned that this would happen. He’s not scared of it or afraid of it and you don’t need to be either. But you do need to be aware that it’s happening. And you do need to be ready to discern through it.
Because even with all the good that the charismatic Pentecostal Church is doing. And again I’m a supporter and an advocate for it. There must be an accountability for the false teaching and false prophecy that’s coming out of the church. And if this doesn’t happen, if they are not held to the standard of the word, more people will be deceived. But I recently saw a quote from apologist Mike Winger, and I thought it was so true and good. He basically said that this generation, this charismatic generation of teachers that has manipulated people and led them astray, they’re starting to get understood and found out. And God is beginning to winnow those who have deceived many. And just like Jeremiah and Ezekiel say, his hand is against those who deceive his people.
God is a God of truth. And so he’s cleaning house. He’s winnowing out the false prophets, and he is in favor of those who truly speak in his name. If you would like to learn more about this, you can grab one our quick theologies in the Every Woman A Theologian shop. Specifically helpful might be how to hear God’s voice or interpreting the Bible correctly. Both of these are found on my website at phyliciamasonheimer.com. We also have ebook version of all of our resources and verse by verse of Bible studies on first through third John, Revelation, Leviticus, and Galatians. As always, thank you for listening.
I’m so glad that you join me on Verity podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with other people so that we can get the word out about this series and help more people come to know the truth of Jesus Christ in scripture and the freedom that he offers.