How To Know A Congregation Is Thinking Unbiblically About God Speaking Through A Minister.

I'm currently teaching an adult class on the gifts of the Spirit, and specifically the gift of prophecy. I teach that the gift of prophecy was not a vehicle by which God gave us the New Testament, but rather a special, Spirit-guided word that encouraged, inspired, exhorted, or comforted the church. It doesn't undermine the Scripture, because it was not Scripture. Sometimes the Lord used it to warn believers of future troubles, as Agabus did in Acts 11 and 21. 

However, we know how wildly off-track churches in the past have gotten, by thinking wrongly about this ministry of the Holy Spirit. Most of the major cults got started by men or women falsely claiming to speak for the Lord. Joseph Smith and Ellen G. White are examples of these.

But there are also congregations, huge congregations, who encourage false prophecies because of their unscriptural attitudes and expectations of a minister. Here are four ways you can know a congregation is off-track regarding the Lord speaking through a minister:

(1) The congregation is dissatisfied if the minister "only" preaches a Bible message. The Bible is God's unique written medium for Christian conversion and edification. To hear an accurate, relevant Bible message from a Spirit-filled preacher is a great blessing. A group that feels disappointed if the p[reacher doesn't have any "personal words" from God to give them is off-track. The Bible is always fresh.

(2) They treat the minister like he can turn this insight-power on and off, like some sort of fortune-teller. People who walk up to a gifted minister and think he can tell them from God at will who they should marry, or what next year's finances will be, are thinking like the pagan world.  This was the sin of Simon Magus, the converted shaman in Acts 8. He thought he could buy spiritual power from Peter, because his thinking about spiritual things was still witch-crafty. 

(3) They only want to hear glory-predictions of health, happiness, fame, and finances. How many "prophecies" do people hear about this coming year being a year of harvest, or God opening the windows of heaven for mighty prosperity, to the point of cynicism and nausea? But preachers say these things because people lap it up.  There is one very wealthy preacher I can think of whose books are nothing but this sort of positive-thinking, whipped-cream message.

(4) They make excuses for failed predictions. Because some churches believe that God can still personally guide today, they accept predictions of the future. But then they make excuses if or when the predictions don't come true. Some even go so far as to say that Agabus the prophet in the book of Acts made errors, which is untrue.

But they are reverse-engineering a view of this gift that excuses the failures of their "prophets." The Bible is clear, if God really reveals a warning that involves the future, or reveals a hidden reality about someone, it will be true. Agabus predicted a famine, and a famine came. Agabus predicted Paul would be bound and turned over to the Romans, and Paul was.

God can still personally, specifically guide His people, through words spoken by a minister. But he isn't a wizard, he can't turn it on or off, if he knows a God-given secret it will turn out to be true, and what he says might have a lot less to do with money and a lot more to do with holiness.