False Prophets

One of the subjects I'll discuss next Sunday will be false prophets/teachers. Look at today's world--the air waves are filled with people predicting every possible outcome for a given situation, when only one will come to pass. Here's a small example, one I'm using because I witnessed part of it.

For those that don't know (or don't care), Major League Baseball has a trading deadline of July 31st each year, which means that teams in contention the playoffs are looking to acquire players that can help them, and teams that are having a bad year  trade players that can get them prospects in return. One of the players involved in this is Hunter Pence of the Astros, a excellent right fielder on a very bad team. One web site for trade rumors had NINETEEN separate thoughts regarding three different teams that might be interested in him. Not all of these "prophets" were going to be correct. 

I happened to be at the Brewers/Astros game Friday night in Milwaukee as we were visiting our daughter. Pence was playing right field and was pulled from the game after the fourth inning, at which point I mentioned to my daughter's friend, "He must have hurt himself, they wouldn't pull him in a 0-0 game." We got back to our hotel room, I turned on ESPN and saw how Pence had been traded to the Phillies (a good number, but by all means not all, of the "prophets" had "prophesied" this).

So how do we tell a false prophet from a true one? That will be a question that will never be completely answered, because one of final characters in the Bible will be an adjunct to the Beast, the False Prophet who will bring people to the Anti-Christ. It's easy to tell false prophets in hindsight, because their prophecies were (wait for it) false. Even when Christ discusses this very issue in Matthew 24, it still won't be easy. Christ tells us that these false prophets will claim to be in his name and do remarkable signs and miracles, but he makes it pretty clear that those who are vigilant and mindful will not be deceived. 

As I've said over and over again, Old Testament prophecy is a three-step process:

1. Don't do it

2. Or else

3. But I'll forgive you if you repent

This is still the same for us, because we're just as stiff-necked and stubborn today as they were back then, but to me, the easiest way to discern false prophecy would be if one of these three steps is changed--for example, if we're told we can continue to sin because God doesn't really care, or any other notion that is not supported in Scripture, I would suggest would be false prophecy. One of the first things Jesus said publicly was to warn against false prophets (in the Sermon on the  Mount, Matthew 7:15) and one of his last public preachings was the aforementioned Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24-25, where he spent almost all of Matthew 24 warning of false prophets. I'll revisit the issue when we get there in late October, but the message of Jeremiah is just as important to us today--beware the false prophet, and always be discerning enough to recognize one, because we'll never know when we'll be faced with one.

Scott