Can We Trust Contemporary Prophecies?

Today, the day after Inauguration Day, many U.S. churches are in a turmoil because their pastor-prophets predicted something that did not come true.  These false prophecies brought about discredit to the name and cause of Christ. One young man testified on a recent website I read that he had confidently, dogmatically insisted on these prophecies to his unsaved family members. Now, he says, he doesn't feel like he can talk to them about spiritual things again, because of how discredited he looks in their eyes. 

What lessons can we learn from this? How does God's Word, the Bible, speak to us about this?

First, I believe that God still has the power to reveal future things to His people, if and when He wants to. But He spoke to us very clearly through the apostle John: do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, for there are many false prophets gone out into the world (1st John 4:1-2). John was chiming in with Moses, who, in Deuteronomy 18, commanded the Israelites not to believe someone just because they claimed to be a prophet. 

John gave us a clear doctrinal test: does the person confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? Moses gave us a practical test: if the person makes a prediction about the future, does it literally come true? No excuses, no moving of the goal-posts, no invisible, "spiritual" fulfillments.

Why did Moses set such a strict standard? Because prophecy is not like preaching or teaching. Preachers can err, and do err. But prophecy in both testaments is God speaking directly to or through a person.

Solomon said that only the naive believe everything they hear (Proverbs 14:15). What we see in these prophetic ministries are thousands of naive people, unquestioningly believing prophecies that offered no proof that they were real prophecies, and now these flocks feel heartbroken and confused. 

Second, Biblical prophets gave listeners ways to know that they really were prophets. Elijah prophesied, but God also caused a mighty fire to publicly come down from heaven and consume the sacrifice (1 Kings 18). Elijah prophesied, but he also worked public miracles like the ax-head that floated. God gave many prophets short-range predictions, which came true, and these supported the long-range predictions. For example, Isaiah made predictions about two local war-lords (Pekah and Rezin), and his short-range prophecies (which came true) support the reliability of his far-distant prophecies about Messiah. Agabus correctly predicted the famine which befell the empire during the reign of Claudius (Acts 11).

I have heard no evidence that these contemporary preacher-prophets gave people that same sort of reason for confidence. Anyone can stick the words, "Thus says the Lord" in front of a message, but why should I believe him, or her? I am not obligated to believe. In fact, Scripture says we should be skeptical. 1st Corinthians 14:29 says that the congregation was to evaluate every message.

Third, 1st Corinthians 14 teaches that the spiritual gift of prophecy is mainly to build up, exhort, and encourage the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 14:3). We know that it's the Word of God that builds up God's people; and only the written Word of God has highest authority. Any prophet who didn't respect Paul's apostolic authority or the canonical Scripture was to be disregarded (1 Cor. 14:37-38).

So, a New Testament prophet was someone who was spontaneously moved and guided by the Holy Spirit to exhort, instruct, and encourage the Lord's people. 1 Cor, 14 implies that this usually happened in a Lord's Day worship service. We see zero examples in the New Testament of prophets predicting secular, worldly election outcomes.

When we don't test the spirits, we open ourselves up to deception, disillusionment, and shame. The Bible gives us two kinds of tests for prophetic claims: a doctrinal test, and a practical test. Does the prophecy conform to the written Word of God, which has been given to us, without error in written form, by the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles? If the prophecy predicts a future event, or claims to know some hidden truth about someone, does the prediction come true? Is the claim of hidden knowledge accurate? Moses also said the doctrinal test takes precedence over the practical test (see Deuteronomy 13:1-3).

I don't believe every person who erroneously claims the Lord "told" him or her something qualifies as an all-out false prophet in the 1st John 4 sense. There are naive people who have been taught wrong doctrines, and as a result they imagine that every dream they dream or feeling they feel is a divine revelation. They need to be gently and kindly corrected, and led back to the written Word of God. 

I hope the disillusionment about preacher-prophecies that some Christians are experiencing today leads them back to the Bible -- to re-examine what the spiritual gift of prophecy really is, how it works, and how we discern the true from the untrue.