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.
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.
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
I was Richly blessed by your book MSDK . It opened me to see a very wipe picture of our physical and spiritual world.
I am from Cameroon and will really love it if you can visit my country as the Spirit of our Heavenly Father will lead you .. Thank you very much
I just want to thank you for the recent YouTube videos. It's (they're) a LITERAL answer to my prayers (I mean, there's only so many times you can listen to and meditate on 3 videos, lol).
Thank you and may God continually bless you, the family and the ministry with much Spiritual and physical abundance, AMEN.
I'm immensely grateful for each and every video Sir❤️.
You know when the Holy Spirit is speaking TRUTH AN LIFE AN REVELATION because it has a sound, a tone, an a feel that's so
Pure an Rich. It's the Voice of God teaching us an revealing His Wisdom to us
I so respect an honor Brother Timmons
An the gift that God has placed within him.
It always transforms the heater.
Thank you Jesus praise you for loving us
Showing us how to OVERCOME AND OVERTHROW. PRAISE GOD.
From Nigeria Kaduna state thanks.
Sir, I do feel that the need for Very Strong Faith is becoming increasingly important if we're to remain Christian at all! Thank you and God bless you for yielding to the Spirit for this timely intervention.
I'm Nigerian but I KNOW that I'll eventually read all your books Legally and with the Spirit's Understanding
Shalom.
Shalom.
I have no Church trusted yet to give in my Tithe
Am from Uganda
Sir am so Lucky going through your book' secrets of the dark kingdom .Am interested in being trained please how do l go about it am a Nigerian living in Lagos. My phone number is 08037998984
(I'm from Nigeria)
If people would just listen and do as the Word tells us. As I was reading I thought this perverted Hybrid prosperity is total Rebellion against God and the true Gospel. This is the year of 2020 vision but its spiritual an I pray Ephesian 1:18 over the Body of Christ so that the Will of the Lord will be done. Love and God Bless.
Ghana? Your book about the secrets of the Dark
Kingdom have revealed so many things to me and I am interested in one about the gifts.
+233 544239715
Nungua, Accra, Ghana.