Latter-Day False Prophets – Part 1

1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,

2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;

3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

4 Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.

5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. Deut. 13:1-5

There is this business of people going to heaven… people who claim to have been supernaturally taken up to heaven. There are people, especially preachers, who claim to have visited heaven and who love describing their experiences. They describe in detail everything they saw and heard in heaven. You will hear someone say, “I saw Elijah”. Or, “I saw a store full of arms and legs and Jesus weeping because there are people who need them and are not claiming them.”

Some of these people have even written books about their heavenly experiences. Others choose to tell it on TV, where the realism can be better appreciated. Believers, on the other hand, love this heavenly talk. They love to hear descriptions of the things in heaven.

Personally, though, for the time being I will ask to be excused from believing in these beautiful stories. I am not saying people have not been caught up to heaven, and that they have not seen and heard things there. But among all those whose stories I have heard, there is only one man whose account I can believe in – the Apostle Paul’s. As I said, that’s me. The reason for my believing only in Paul is because among all the accounts that I have heard, it is only Paul who never described what he saw or heard in heaven. And he tells us why he would not talk about what he saw in heaven. In fact, it is important that we read the entire account of Paul in relation to his going to heaven.

“1 It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. 2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. 3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) 4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” (v. 1-4)

Notice that even though he later on lets on that it was he who was caught up to heaven (v. 7), Paul does not explicitly state that it was he who went up to heaven. He does not say, “I was caught up to the third heaven” or, “It was I who was taken up to heaven.” Paul, being a true man of God, knew that the issue of being caught up to the third heaven is too spiritual for a man to say, “I was…”

But the scripture that destroys all the claims of descriptions of heaven is verse 4.

“… he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

Paul tells us the reason he did not describe his experiences in heaven. It was because they are “unspeakable”! And that is as it ought to be. I cannot imagine you and I describing God or the things in heaven as if we were talking about meeting the pope. And the things of heaven being unspeakable, therefore, the Bible authoritatively states that it is “not lawful” for a man to utter them. That ought to be clear enough, but again man has a propensity for blatantly ignoring what God has said.

So, what is it with today’s self-proclaimed apostles and prophets who claim their ministries originated from a trip they made to heaven, and who go into all the details of the mandates they were given? Either they heard words different from the ones that Paul heard, in which case they are carrying a different doctrine and should be steered clear of; OR (if they heard words equivalent to those that Paul heard) they are deliberately breaking God’s law, for God through the Apostle Paul expressly says that it is “not lawful” for a man to utter words that he has heard in heaven.

Either way, these false prophets end up losing the debate.

And yet… it is these prophets who are reining in more crowds of believers than even Jesus Himself could pull during His earthly ministry!

Notice verses 1 and 2:

“1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, 2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them”.

Nearly – or possibly all – of the world’s false denominations began with a vision, a sign or a miracle. Modern-day false prophets are performing even more incredible signs and wonders; and believers are flocking to them, eager to see these signs. But the prophets are leading God’s people away from God. One of the things they are leading God’s people into is materialism. Inspired by the spirit of covetousness, they are leading God’s people into idolatry. Scripture calls covetousness “idolatry” (Col. 3:5).  But the Bible also tell us:

“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry”.

From the Arctic to Antarctica, these prophets are prophesying only positive and good things to their hearers. Sadly, modern-day prophets are even leading God’s people into manifest demonically-inspired doctrines. But, even if they do all these miracles and prophesy all these things, the Bible says:

3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.

God is allowing these false prophets into our midst in order to prove us. God is testing us! And He says:

“Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams”.

God is testing whether it is the world we love, or Him. When we love the world, we will love the ‘good news’ these worldly prophets are telling us. It is just as it says in 2 Tim. 4:3-4:

“3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”

We should beware of these “positive confession” prophets. They are leading us away from the cross, from Christ. Why would we rather not cleave to the Apostle Paul’s doctrine of suffering with Christ? For that is the true doctrine of Christ.

We should also beware of prophets who claim to have been handed their mandate in heaven. It is so easy for one to be led into demonic visions and dreams, and the Bible says these false prophets definitely are under the power of demons.

Finally:

“5 And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.”

God says to put such people to death. Under the new covenant of Christ, we wouldn’t literally stone them or kill them with the sword. But I believe a good way of putting these prophets to death is by not giving heed to them or their teachings. The Bible says in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 that one of the ways that God will punish unbelievers is by banishing them away from His presence (ignoring them).

“Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power”.

But, incredibly, these false prophets are the very people believers are worshipping as if they were God Himself! Incredible.

Prosperity Gospel – The Bane of The True Gospel

1 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. 2 Pet. 2:1-3

Personally – and I ain’t too much of a person, but thank God for this blog, because here my voice can reach out from the wilderness – personally, the thing that riles me most in the church today are the prosperity preachers. Nothing vexes my spirit more than these people. In a word, they are charlatans. They are fraudsters and swindlers. And they have hoarded the gospel TV, where they are spilling out their shame for all the world to see and the world is having a field day slandering the Name of the LORD. (What do you think the world thinks when they see a larger-than-life preacher announcing on prime-time TV that he is divorcing his wife? C’mon!!)

These preachers are the curse of the gospel. People generally make fun of the devil, thinking he is a clownish old grandpa. But he is not. If these preachers originate from him – and they do – then the devil is not someone to fool with. He is deadly.

The Bible calls these jokers “false prophets”. Now, we all know that falsehood will not take you far. The prosperity gospel is not taking anybody anywhere. Just a few miles down the road, and they run into the quicksands. That is why there is so much sin stewing in these prosperity churches. There is so much divorce, and preachers themselves are divorcing and remarrying like the castanets.

Let a preacher teach and preach the gospel that the Apostle Paul preached, and I vouch that he will never go through this spiritual foolhardiness in his life, nor hear of it in his church. Sin will be dealt with! Paul told the sinning Corinthians, “What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?” (1 Cor. 14:21)

A rod? That was to deal with sin in the church. And Paul was speaking in the Spirit.

But, of course, I might as well be talking into the wind. This is because prosperity preachers are people who have come with a mission of their own and they are intent on carrying it out. Moreover, they have brought their agenda into the church stealthily, which proves that right from the beginning, they had never had any intention of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are, in fact, anti-Christ. The Bible said long aforetime that they “privily shall bring in damnable heresies”.

“Privily” means secretly. These people are in cahoots with the devil, and they know full well what they are doing.

What is their agenda, anyway? I heard one prosperity preacher say, “The notion that a preacher should be walking in sandals and riding on a bicycle is foolish!” In other words, they teach that a child of God should live the high life materially. That is their agenda. And they use the Bible to bring in these damnable heresies into the church.

“And many shall follow their pernicious ways…”

The word “many” here refers to the rise of the modern-day mega-church. God saw these things long before they would occur, and He described them exactly as we are seeing them today.

During the Early Church, the mega-church was the church of the cross, as we see from the Book of Acts and the apostolic epistles. But that was because the falsehoods had not yet been introduced into the church. Once the falsehoods came in, God’s people quickly embraced this easy gospel. Fewer and fewer were willing to pay the cost. And thus rose the new mega-church – the church of the un-cross.

Today, the mega-church is not a place where sin is dealt with. I am not saying they do not preach against sin. They do, but there is no power in these churches to deal with sin. Where the gospel of the cross is not being preached, there is no power to deal with sin. As a result, the gospel of Jesus Christ is maligned in the world because of sin within the church of Jesus Christ.

In the meantime, prosperity preachers spend their time teaching about the tithe!

Lastly, let us look at verse 3:

“And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.”

Why is it that God has reserved severe judgment against these preachers, a judgment which will unquestionably befall them, and swiftly? (With God, “swiftly” could be an entire lifetime!)

In the Old Testament God said,

“If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.” Deut. 24:7

With all their voracious Bible-searching, preachers still cannot put two and two together! But it is difficult to have your head on straight with the dollar sign swinging in front of you.

But notice:

2 Peter: “…make merchandise of you”;

And here, in Deutoronomy: “…maketh merchandise of him”.

These two statements are alike. They are talking of the same thing.

In the Old Testament, the general punishment for a thief was to pay double the amount he had stolen (Ex. 22:7, etc). But God made exception to the thief who would “…be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him”.

The punishment for that particular thief, God said, was death!

The situation today is far worse in the Spirit than it appears. Prosperity preachers – under the New Covenant – are not simply stealing from God’s people; they are stealing God’s people. What does that mean? It means that apart from stealing their property, they are also stealing their souls. When you preach a man a false gospel you are stealing his soul. And when you steal someone’s soul you effectively just killed them.

And for what reason are these preachers doing this? It is so they can become rich! Prosperity preachers are extremely wealthy. If you didn’t know that, you must have just dropped in from the moon!

One of these preachers is so rich he went to Rome to donate money to preserve the works of Michelangelo. Yes, the man supports the works of Michelangelo with money that he has taken from God’s people!

Personally, I think that for a man to do such a thing, there is a certain amount of arrogance involved. Another owns  a $16,000 dog. And so on and so forth…

People, these are facts! and they probably are among the less shocking ones.

But thank God, He is not deaf, He is not blind – and He certainly is not dead. Soon he will deal with these prosperity fraudsters who have brought their damnable heresies of money into the church. He will judge them, and throw them into hell. That’s what the Bible says.

Prosperity preachers have only one option: to repent. No excuses, no “You don’t know what my ministry is doing around the world” (a smokescreen); just repent and leave off deceiving God’s people. If you want to continue preaching the gospel, lose your life, and teach God’s people to do the same, for this is the revelation of the gospel that has come to the church under the New Covenant.

Jesus looked upon the Jews – God’s own people – and He grieved deeply because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Equally so today, God’s people – the church – are like sheep without a shepherd.

But the Shepherd of our souls calls out to us… He calls out to us through the revelation of the cross. There is only one true gospel: the narrow road that Jesus and the apostles taught. If we come to Christ but are unwilling to lose all, we will fall into the hands of the devil and he will destroy us.

But the gospel of the cross liberates us to serve the true living God, and to do so in freedom.

The gospel of the cross is the true mystery of God, and it was for this very reason that Jesus said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Mat. 11:15

Finally, I wish all my readers a lovely weekend.

[Below: The new Dar es Salaam – Bagamoyo Road]