Yesterday, the Lord’s Day, Sunday April 23, 2023 started like any other day for me. Little did I know what was about to happen!
As usual, first thing in the morning I prepared a cup of espresso and sat down in my favorite chair for devotions before heading out to public worship. It is soft brown leather with nicely padded arms and a deep, deep cushioning that just swallows you up like a bear-hug of love. I adore that chair! So it makes sense that Jesus would choose that chair in which to reveal to me the amazing words that He unveiled that fateful morning.
Just as I returned the empty cup to the saucer, the sun broke through the morning clouds. It was still low in the sky so its rays seemed to come directly at me. At the same time I realized I had thoughtlessly left a crystal glass on the table from the night before and now it was catching the sun’s bright rays and bouncing them onto the ceiling in a spectacular array of glimmering spots that seemed to move magically in a silent dance of glory that God was staging especially just for me.
I felt a gentle tingling sensation come all over me. As it grew, I knew something special and powerful was about to happen! Just then, the prophetic words of Jesus Himself came forcefully into my consciousness. I am absolutely certain that these words were directly from the Mouth of Jesus Himself for the church today, for YOU today, so listen closely. I am about to share with you the exact words Jesus revealed to me about the Latter Days and the THINGS TO COME! Things that have COME ALREADY! Spiritual things. Real things. Powerful things. Things that, if you will just open your minds and your hearts; if you will just have eyes to see and ears to hear, you will start to notice these things all around you. Those Things that were Prophesied Before are HAPPENING Right Now!
Here are His exact words, the actual Words of Jesus Himself which divinely entered into my consciousness in those precious moments as my earthly body sat in that chair:
“See to it that you are not misled; for many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not go after them. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ See, I have told you ahead of time. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not listen to me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will listen to him.”
Coincidentally, at the time these words directly from the mouth of Jesus entered my consciousness, I happened to be reading my Bible…which is a good thing to do. You should try it! The Bible contains LOTS of words that came directly from the mouth of Jesus! And they ALL apply to the church in these last days.
The above words of Jesus which entered into my consciousness just popped in there as I was reading John 5:43, Matt. 24:24-25, Luke 21:8, and Matt. 7:21-23.
Jesus is not the only Prophet to predict false prophets and teachers would come. God the Father, it turns out, also happens to be a Prophet. Perhaps if Jesus’ predictions don’t impress us overly much, we might nevertheless pay attention to Father’s predictions?
“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. You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.”
Deuteronomy 18:20-22
And we know the Father is not a false prophet because His prediction came true. This is what happened in Jeremiah’s day:
Then the LORD said to me, “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.”
This is what 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, not from the mouth of the LORD.”
Jeremiah 14:4 and 23:16
Notice that these prophets did not realize they were false. They were not necessarily evil people with a deliberate design to lead God’s people in the wrong direction. They were just excitable and presumed their own excitements were from God’s mind not, as was the true case, from their own. One might think of them more as ‘careless’ prophets. They were not diligent to discern whether the things coming into their minds were from God or from themselves.
False teachers are something different. They know what they are dong. The Apostles in many places in the epistles predicted false teachers also would enter the church, with terrible consequences both to themselves and their hearers.
So let’s in our minds eye right now gather together into one room those all of those who claim to be prophets today. Got everybody in the room?
Good. Now look around. It is impossible for all of them to be true prophets because we were told there will be at least some false prophets and false teachers and false apostles in the last days. Plus, they can’t all be right because some of them have contradicted others of them, as you will see if you go back over everything all of them have prophesied. So look around the room and identify a false one, because it is guaranteed there is at least one. No, I mean actually do it. Pick one. Name that person and set them to one side of the room in your mind’s eye.
So now that you have crossed over the threshold into a universe where false prophets actually do exist, you have a simple process before you. Look around the room and try to identify a true prophet to put on the other side of the room so that you can go through everybody else one by one and assign them to one side of the room or the other.
There is no guarantee any of these folks is a true prophet but it is possible. Jesus promised He would send prophets in the last days, and one of them might be in the room where you keep your prophets. But remember, in order for you to classify one as true, they cannot have predicted anything, not even one time, that did not come to pass. (While it is true that people sometimes give an individual personal prophecy to someone that does not come true and is not necessarily a false prophet, looking at Deuteronomy if a prophet speaks to an entire nation or the entire church, they are under the zero-tolerance standard.) So go over each record diligently. (Yes, that takes homework. Did you think taking the narrow gate would come naturally?)
I am willing to bet that almost everybody in that room predicted Donald Trump would win a second term. He did not. So start immediately by putting all of those folks on the “careless” side of the room.
If you can find one left who predicted Biden (or made no prediction), the next step is to check if they predicted COVID-19. If not, clearly they are not hearing from God, because if God had selected them to confide what to expect in the future, God would have told them about such a huge planetary event on the horizon. If you find one who passes that test, check to see if any of their prophesies contradict Scripture or if any of their other prophecies failed to come true.
Also ask yourself if they ever said anything preposterous on its face. For example, one so-called prophet said Donald Trump appeared in person in his bedroom one night in 2020 and asked him to be his Vice-President. And Sid Roth (Host of “It’s Supernatural!”) was overjoyed: “Wow! Praise God! That’s amazing!”
A casual glance immediately tells you this guy came up with this nonsense himself, perhaps in the elevator on his way to the broadcast floor. Bible characters who have passed away no longer have earthly bodies and can supernaturally appear at the occasional Mount of Transfiguration or weird guy’s bedroom. But that night Donald Trump was still alive, somewhere else on earth, sleeping or pounding away at Twitter. Biblical characters can’t be two places at once. And besides, when did Trump become one of those? It’s just not his thing.
C’mon! Anybody with common sense knows Trump would not embark on such a momentous supernatural journey to appoint some obscure person as his Vice-President, given he happened to have one of those already. A pizza he might have needed, but not a Vice-President. And this “prophet” did not bother to mention (nor did anybody think to ask) whether or not he accepted this astonishing offer. Nor did he discuss how, if he accepted, he did not end up on the ticket and why, if he did not accept, he would turn down a mission so obviously appointed by God with all the miracles and supernatural glowsticks and divine visitation stuff He had thrown together especially for the momentous occasion.
If you can hear a story like that and your inner alarm system is flat-lined, you are not qualified to evaluate spiritual things. Reject everything supernatural, even if in the process you might miss an actual true prophecy (these are not essential to your salvation). The only way for someone as gullible as you to walk safely is for you to just stick to the Bible and leave it at that. I myself am quite happy with it. I find it always comes through quite nicely in a pinch. In spite of the tens of thousands of prophetic broadcasts and services I have failed to attend over the years, I somehow seem to be getting along just fine. I have plenty of deep, intimate times with Jesus (of the “I Come to the Garden Alone” variety), the Word comes alive to me and lives inside me, the Holy Spirit leads me throughout the day, and God just shows up all the time in my daily situations. Many times when I pray God supernaturally moves in that situation. And God is speaking to me constantly about what is going on right now in the spirit realm and what He thinks and how He feels about all the sexual sin His Bride is wallowing in right now. I really don’t need any interruptions at this point.
In fact the larger question is why, in the first place, do we think we need prophets to come to us and predict what the next year is going to hold and who will win the next election and what the weather will or what the market will do or whatnot? That is exactly the type of stuff people go to palm readers and tarot dealers for. We should not seek the same things the world seeks or expect God to speak about the same things the devil speaks about.
God did in fact prophesy that some supernatural things in the last days would be from Him (Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17).
But even if something is genuinely supernatural (hate to break this to you Sid), that does not mean it comes from God. He gave us both a promise of the divine supernatural in the end times, AND a warning about the false supernatural in the end times. The genuinely supernatural things we encounter can’t be–ARE NOT–all from God.
Think about it. If you were to get a written transcript of every prophesy all these supposed prophets had given—and there are dozens and dozens of them who have been going at it for decades—the page count would be in the tens if not hundreds of thousands of pages. If every one of these prophets were true, that would mean God has suddenly shifted the balance of all history in his communications with the human race. Why would God, after giving us a book of less than two thousand pages over the course of many thousands of years, suddenly become so atypically loquacious today? He would never distract His people from His written Word by drowning it out like that.
Again, the prophecy of Jesus can be seen as accurate. He said: “I have come in my Father’s Name and you do not listen to Me.” And that is what we are seeing. Jesus is the Word, and the Word is Jesus, yet so many supposed Christians spend more time clamoring after the latest prophecy than they do reading His Word. I have seen church services in which the entire sermon contains maybe one or two verses of Scripture (usually about some wonderful thing they can expect from God) along with lengthy depictions of a dream or vision or prophecy. The speaker spends more time exegeting this personal experience than they do exegeting the Word. So even though their audience would describe themselves as people who follow Jesus, by being so disinterested in the Bible as a whole, these speakers have lost sight of the Jesus who characterized His followers as those who primarily focus on the Bible itself:
“If you continue in My Word, then you are truly My disciples”
John 8:31
And the accuracy of Jesus’ prediction is further seen when He said: “but if someone else comes in his own name, you will listen to him.” Almost nobody in these circles checks to rule out if a so-called prophet is coming in his own name. They never take a written transcript of a prophecy or vision or dream and evaluate it to see if it contains anything inconsistent with the Word or to follow up afterward and verify that everything did come to pass in the manner prophesied. There seem to be no specific tests for acceptance yet we are instructed to test the spirits. No sense that if the prophesy fails it will be rejected. Everybody just just accepts the prophet and their revelation as though God Himself were speaking, no questions asked. Our churches invite them to the large pulpits, our people buy their books and send them big donations so they can prosper. Instant, unquestioning, total acceptance. We all love that verse: “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” But did you know what God told us to rely on this Greater One for? It is so we can test the spirits!
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
1 John 4:1-6
You would never invest with a stock broker who operated without demanding documentation from people trying to sell investment products. But in matters of eternal truth and eternal destiny, you don’t take so much as one glance at the documentation. Even if you are the type (as am I) to just click “I Agree” to the terms and conditions of unimportant websites, I heartily advise you not to take that approach to things eternal. The Terms and Conditions of the Kingdom of Heaven have been around for two thousand years and they haven’t changed. You will be held to them on that Final Day, whether you checked a box or not.
Not receiving Jesus’ words and receiving the words of careless prophets are flip sides of the same coin. By not dwelling upon the whole counsel of God in His Word, which is failing to listen to Jesus’s teachings, these people either are ignorant of—or they are ignoring—His predictions to be wary of false prophets, and that type of carelessness creates a posture for them to receive every “prophet” unquestioningly.
I am just banging my head against the wall.
How can it be that we have been warned numerous times beforehand to be wary of false prophets and teachers and then we buy wholesale into everything that comes along without even considering if it might be nothing more than careless words? We take much thought to evaluate the food we eat for wholesomeness and to get the right amount of exercise and to monitor our finances. But we swallow whole without a thought whatever spiritual stuff (which affects our eternal health) is put in front of us. Like a stupid fish blindly gobbling at a worm on a hook.
And, speaking of eternity, the Bible doesn’t just warn us to be careful about what teachings and revelations we accept. It also warns us of the consequences if we go after careless prophets and teachers. And it describes the terrible outpouring of God’s wrath such prophets and teachers will experience. So next time you see some so-called prophet spouting off, ask yourself if you are looking at an actual hell-bound person because that is not someone you want to follow.
The predictions of Jesus and the Apostles about the doom of careless prophets and teachers and those who follow them, and the reality of a coming judgment day, are very real. But abstract discussions like this article don’t bring the reality home. So let me share with you how I recently had a small taste of how real the things of life and death can actually be.
In a town about fifty miles from where I live and go to church, a fire recently broke out early one morning. It started in the basement. The couple were in a second floor bedroom. On the first level were five children, four of them belonging to other families who had come for a sleepover.
By the time the fire reached the second floor and awakened the parents, the first floor was already in flames. The parents desperately tried to reach the children, receiving massive third-degree burns in the process, but were driven back upstairs. They jumped out a window and, from the lawn outside, they listened in horror as the children were crying out their final screams.
A firemen asked a neighbor if the wounded couple could wait in their air-conditioned house for the helicopter to arrive which they did. The husband was upbeat, even telling jokes, and as they took him away he kissed his wife, reassuring her he would be waiting for her when she arrived at the hospital behind him. But on the couch he left so much blood, skin, and muscle tissue that the couch had to be thrown away.
When the wife reached the hospital, she learned her husband had died on the way there. So there she was, all alone. All her possessions were gone, all her children were dead, and her husband whom she had last seen being upbeat was suddenly gone forever. On top of her emotional pain she was in physical agony. She would have to endure months of tortuous treatment with only a small chance of survival, and even if she survived she would be permanently disfigured, something no woman wants. Which is nothing compared to her emotional disfigurement. Those screams will be in her head and heart as long as she lives.
Although this woman did not go to our church, we put on fundraisers for her. When she did survive and finally got out of the hospital, she appeared in our sanctuary to receive our donation. As she entered the sanctuary I stared: “That’s her. That’s the actual person in real life right there in front of me.” I sat in amazement at seeing the actual person in real life in front of me. I was gripped by the stunning horror of the tragedy in her recent past. The look on her face was indescribable. It burned right through me. The scars and disfigurement made the reality of her horror palpable. The reality of her past horror will always be with me.
A few days later I happened to chance upon a sermon by someone I know to be a careless prophet and false teacher. It does look like this guy started out right as a young man, having been raised Pentecostal and having remained true to his faith even when ridiculed in school for believing that Jesus is God and will come again to judge the earth. But over the last decade or two, ever since his first extra-marital affair, he has been getting stranger and stranger.
Interestingly, he has made some counterintuitive prophesies that actually came true. But that does not make him a true prophet because other accounts of divine encounters are clearly fake. Or, if they were real, they were encounters with with someone OTHER than the True God! Not all careless prophets go as far out on a ledge as this guy does, which is why he is lesser known. But what is true of him is true of any genuinely false (I get the irony) prophet.
For example, he recounts that one night he was awakened by an “explosion of light” in his bedroom as Jesus walked through the wall and sat on the bed next to him. Jesus told him to tell His church the “mystery” that the Holy Spirit is not actually a person but a “Universal Language” God uses in speaking to His church that “awakens the senses” of the believer and confirms the message is authentically from God. He teaches that John the Baptist was a reincarnation of Elijah, Jesus was a reincarnation of Moses, and he is a reincarnation of Paul. He then cites verses where Paul asked the church for financial support as if he himself were speaking through the pages of the Bible to his modern followers when he asks them for their donations. I thought I was beyond being shocked with this guy, but I soon discovered I was wrong. There he stood before me, teaching his congregation that the Bible “contains” the Word of God and that Jesus is the “absolute best” way to get to heaven.
Although he was speaking and moving about normally in the pulpit, I was gripped by the stunning horror of what he will experience in the future, which is just as real as the stunning horror of what that fire victim experienced in her past. That woman experienced one or two minutes of burning alive. He will experience burning alive for ever and ever. I sat in amazement at seeing the actual person in real life right there in front of me on the screen who is actually going to hell; it was as though hell itself was just as real and just as close as that person in front of me. I literally shuddered in fear. I cut off the TV immediately because hearing him say these words was like looking at Challenger on the launch pad minutes before takeoff.
I once saw a movie about an Aztec culture that captured people from villages and brought them to the city to be sacrificed alive at the top of their temple. The priest would remove the heart while still beating, and then sever the head and send it rolling down the steps to the excited crowd. As the warriors brought the captives toward the temple, the citizens clamored to get near them because they were curious to look at and even touch the actual people whose dead bodies they would soon be celebrating over, but the captives had no clue what was going on. They had no idea that within moments their heads would be rolling down the steps they were now climbing.
That is this false prophet. He looks like everybody else in church, but this guy I am looking at is actually going to burn in hell forever and ever! This actual guy right here, right in front of me and looking so normal, so unaware that–in the eternal equivalent of seconds–his head will be bouncing down the steps to excited cheers from a throng of wild demons.
All of today’s false teachers and false prophets are exactly like him in that way.
You really want to risk the chance you might be following someone headed in that direction?
If not, why don’t you pay more attention to figuring out which direction the person you are listening to is headed? God told us in no uncertain terms that some of the of the people who are today claiming to be prophets are actually going to hell, fancy suits, cheerful demeanor, appearance of sincerity, slick presentations and all. You, and you alone, are responsible for making sure the road you are on does not end up at condemnation.
And condemnation is a very real thing and it is going to happen and you better make sure you get it right. The scary thing is that Jesus said: Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
So God the Father warned humankind in the old testament not to follow careless prophets, and Jesus His Son issued the same warning in the new testament. Yet after all that there still will be many churchgoers who will be surprised to find themselves condemned to hell. How can you be sure you are not among them, as things presently stand?
You don’t have much time left to be sure. So you had better devote yourself this very moment to some careful thinking, studying, and prayer to hear correctly from God and His Word now, while you still have the opportunity to select the people you will and will not trust with your eternal soul. If you carelessly make assumptions and leave this thing hanging up in the air, if you suddenly discover on that Day you were on the wrong road…you’re stuck! Right in front of you the horrible fire blasting against your face as you are about to be cast in, and right in that moment the realization it is impossible to avoid it. Picture that possibility in your mind today, right now. Then try to imagine the feeling that would come over you if that actually happened to you, with a crowd staring at you and thinking: “Wow! That is the actual person right there in front of me who stupidly threw it all away and is about to burn alive forever!”
If someone were to tell you there are two possible destinations for your temporary earthly experience, one being a wonderful career, a wonderful home, and a wonderful spouse, and the other being a plane crash that leaves you paralyzed from the neck down, and then they proposed to make the selection by the flip of a coin, you would refuse. So why are you the one carelessly flipping a coin that will determine the outcome of your own eternal experience?
The natural instinct is to not take warnings like this seriously (See Luke 16:19-31, below).
You need to consciously resist that tendency and take this warning very, very seriously.
(After all, two out of the three Persons in the Trinity can’t be wrong!)
So check INTO stuff!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
S C R I P T U R E P A S S A G E C I T E D
Luke 16:19-31
(These words also happen to be directly from the Mouth of Jesus):
“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him WARN them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
“ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
