Christ Church International

TRUE AND FALSE PROPHETS

BY J.P. TIMMONS

January 31, 2021

©2021 CCI PUBLISHING

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“And many false prophets will arise and

            Lead many astray ... For false christs and false

Prophets will arise and perform great

Signs and wonders, to lead astray,

               If possible, the elect."    †Mt. 24:11, 24 ESV    

Praise the Lord God forever! We are living in the last of the Last Days. Even the secular world seems to know this. Therefore, in the Church we should be looking up for the soon returning Redeemer of our souls.

The Bibles speaks much about false prophets and so did the Lord Jesus in particular during His day and He warned us solemnly about how to know the true from the false. But I want you to notice in the above Scripture that He used the word many so that is what we should expect to see. And what is the main spirit behind a false prophet? Well, it was the subject of a recent YouTube video I did this month titled “Religious and Deceiving Spirits.” And this morning at 3:33 a.m. the Lord spoke to me about doing a YouTube video today on this subject so you might go to our channel, J.P. Timmons, after you have read this article and watch it as well to help you understand and distinguish the difference between the true and false. The same is true for wheat—the tares look just like the wheat from a distance and everybody who calls themselves a Christian isn’t one. There are believers, unbelievers and make believers and as I wrote in MSDK, Satan knows the difference—in fact he, himself, refers to the “make believers” as “church goers”; in other words, they attend church but they have not been born again by the Spirit of God so they have not experienced the new birth. And he can tell because as I wrote in MSDK it’s a spiritual fact, my brothers and sisters, that if you are a genuine, born-again believer then you are always clothed in white in the realm of the spirit! No matter what your physical body is wearing or even if you are naked, in the spirit realm you are always clothed in white. That’s because it is your spiritual body that Satan and his demons are looking at, not your physical body.

False prophets are influenced (or sometimes completely possessed) by a religious and a deceiving spirit. And as I’ve preached, written (see my book The Prophetic Voice), and talked about for 35 years or more, there are always more false prophets than there are genuine ones. In fact, the biblical ratio is about 1000:1 so that is a cause for concern. And of course the genuine prophets have to contend with all of the false prophets in trying to get God’s genuine truth out there for the Church and the world to see and hear.

One of the reasons that the Lord had me write MSDK 30 years ago was because there is very little in the Bible that discusses the devil and his evil government’s operations against the people of God. One day a number of years ago we came home from church and when I opened the front door of our house there was a tall (about 10 foot) angel in our living room. In his right hand he was holding a Bible and in his left hand he was holding a copy of MSDK. He held up his right hand and said, “With this book people can learn about the Kingdom of God,” and then he held up his left hand and spoke, “And with this book people can learn about the kingdom of Satan.”

And we’ve received many testimonies over the years regarding miracles related to that book so I know its value in the heart of God. We’ve had reports of angels delivering copies of the books to ministries in Africa; testimonies of people being healed of terminal diseases just from reading it. And as you know, I take no credit for any of that or even for writing the book or any of the other 8 books that the Lord has used me to write—each has a special and specific anointing to accomplish His purposes. For example, our newest book, Living in the Now of Faith is anointed to increase your faith. I’ve read it myself about five times and each time that I do it increases my own faith!

You see, my brothers and sisters, there is much wrong in the Church and a lot of it has to do with money, materialism and glory. Too many people record worship albums or write books just to become well-known or for money. That is wrong! And too many churches and ministries hold conferences for the same reason—not because God told them to but to make money! Now they may be using that money for the Kingdom of God, I don’t know—that’s between them and God, but, unfortunately, many become corrupted. Remember, Jesus Himself said that you “cannot serve God and money (mammon KJV).” That means you have to choose one of the other and at CCI we have always chosen God.

One of the traits of the false prophets is that they like to be in the limelight and that is one of the traits of a religious spirit—to be recognized at church as the worship leader, senior pastor or they want to be seen on TBN or Sid Roth’s show and have him tell everybody that they are a “Top shelf prophet” (whatever that is) or something else. Yet God has never allowed me to go on any of those programs even though we have been contacted by them from time to time beginning in 1985. And we see that trait among the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Scriptures, don’t we? We also see it among the false prophets in the Bible, especially the Old Testament where we have more written about false prophets. But now let me ask you an Eye of the Eagle question: why do you think that Elijah did not hang out with the other genuine prophets for the most part? During the days that Jezebel was pursuing him, i.e., the 3 ½ years of the drought that he had prophesied, there were at least more than 100 genuine prophets of the Lord left alive because we see that Obadiah, a prophet himself, hid them and took them food but Elijah was never with them.

In 1 Kings 22 we see how incensed the false prophets—400 in number were—at God’s true prophet, Micaiah, who was not in the limelight of the king. Notice that these 400 spoke not as prophets of Baal but as prophets of Jehovah God. But they were operating through religious and deceiving spirits and the Bible tells us that it was “a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets” that caused them to prophesy what they did. I discuss this fine detail in my book, The Prophetic Voice, as an “enticing word” and you need to understand what that is and why God allows it. After all, these verses demonstrate that the Lord Himself told the lying spirit to go and do his work among the false prophets.

CHARACTERISTICS OF FALSE PROPHETS

In addition to wanting to be in the limelight and receive the glory that is reserved for God alone, the following are other key traits by which you can identify a false prophet if you don’t possess the Gift of Discerning of Spirits, one of the nine Gifts of the Holy Spirit discussed by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.

• Pride—generally speaking false prophets are prideful and all Christians must be especially careful not to be infected by pride, the very sin that caused Lucifer to rebel and fall from God’s Kingdom. But the Office of Prophet as I wrote in my book is especially susceptible to pride because it is mainly through this Five-fold office that God speaks and therefore much revelation knowledge can lead one to pride. Remember, even the great Apostle Paul, who was certainly a very humble man, was afflicted with a “thorn in the flesh.” Why? The Scriptures tell us, “…to keep me from becoming conceited (or exalted above measure) because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations.” 2 Cor. 12:7). In other words, this “thorn” was given to Paul to keep him from becoming prideful. Now it’s always been puzzling to me why theologians and Bible scholars have argued for years about what this thorn was—most think it was a problem with his eyes because of the text in Gal. 4:15; however, the Word is clear—it was “a messenger (angel) of Satan.” In other words, it was a demon that harassed Paul all the days of his ministry that the Lord chose not to remove.
• People speak well of them and praise them! “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” (Lk. 6:26)
• They “commit adultery,” (Jer. 23:14) meaning not necessarily that they commit physical adultery although that, too, is a sign of false prophet, but they commit spiritual adultery by not being true to Jehovah. They prophesy “smooth things” and wonderful things—everything is going to be great! Peace! Prosperity! Great blessings are coming upon you! That is always the message of the false prophets whereas the message of the genuine prophets is also the same—repent!
• They “strengthen the hand of evildoers” (Jer. 23:14) and I discuss this in The Prophetic Voice. One of Satan’s chief aims that we see throughout both the Old and New Covenants is to get people into sin. And we see that was the case with Balaam, a false prophet who heard from God but was killed by Israel when they came into Canaan under directions of the Lord because he had been responsible, because he wanted to be paid handsomely by the King, for telling the King how to get God to go against His own people because of sexual sin. Think about it. As long as Christians think that they are fine in the eyes of the Lord and not in need of repentance they will continue on with the evil that they are committing which the genuine prophets are sent to diffuse with the prophecies of “Repent!”

Remember, God sent Jeremiah down to the Temple (Ch. 7) to prophecy repentance because they thought that they could just sin all the time and then because they were God’s chosen people they could go to the Temple on the Sabbath and everything would be okay with the Lord.

• The false prophets “speak a vision out of their own imaginations”; it’s not from the Lord.
• True prophets “stand in the council of God” whereas false prophets do not; in fact they cannot even be in God’s presence because of their “unclean” hands so how could they get a genuine word from the Lord
• Their prophecy may sound anointed but it is a false anointing. Jesus spoke about “false christs” in his warning and although there are those who claim to be Jesus this is normally not in the Church because Christians know that Jesus will return in the clouds—He’s not going to just show up walking around town claiming to be Jesus Christ. No, the word, christ, means “anointed one” so a “false christ” would be a person with a false or satanic anointing. There is so much of this in the world today, especially in West Africa where “ministers” are now laying hands on people who fall out and are given a demonic spirit that influences them to speak in tongues. They think it’s the genuine Holy Spirit but it’s a religious, water spirit.
• Finally, Jesus Himself warned us in Mt. 7 that “false prophets” will “come to you in sheep’s clothing.” That means that they have a religious spirit and pretend to be sheep when in fact they are “ravenous wolves” and you should meditate on the word, ravenous. Jesus said, “By their fruit you will know them.” And that means by their physical and spiritual fruit, including the Fruit of the Spirit.

Unfortunately, as we learn from the Bible, normally the people of God will listen to the false prophets—because there are more of them all saying the same thing than the genuine prophets and that is Satan’s intent.

The Apostle Peter has much to teach you about false prophets in his second letter to the Church and I suggest that you read it and meditate upon it because as we approach the return of the Lord the number of false prophets will continue to increase and you need to know the true from the false. And as I wrote in Living in the Now of Faith and Another Gospel, their message is always sensual and not spiritual.

Praise the Lord! I hope that this teaching blesses you. Look for the video as well.

MARANATHA

Comments