Discerning Prophecy I: Premise

When we talk about discerning Biblical prophecy, the question is never what words are on the pages of the Bible.  Those words have been “in print” for thousands of years.  We have no reason to be unclear about what God has said.

We’re always told it’s an essential discipline to read God’s word, the Bible, regularly: rightly so.  But Jesus emphasized even more “hearing” God's word: grasping in our spirits what God means by His words, and wishes us to understand.  He frequently exhorted His followers with commands such as “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 13:9).  He indeed makes hearing the substance of our relationship with Him: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them…” (John 10:27).

There can be no question what God has said.  But there is often great confusion, even contention, about what God means by His words, especially His words of prophecy.  It’s not unusual to find dozens of different interpretations of any given Biblical prophecy, each purporting to be what God wishes us to understand from His words.

That fact itself tells us that the enemy, “the father of lies,” is working hard right now to keep us from truly hearing what God is saying.  If God intends we understand a specific meaning in His prophetic words, all other interpretations of His words are false, and serve the enemy’s purpose.

There have been many outright “false prophets," of course, who falsely claim God is the author of the words they teach.  Mohammed and Joseph Smith are well-known examples.  God says there are extremely serious consequences, for the prophet and the people who receive his word, to "prophesy falsely in My Name," as Jeremiah 23 attests.

But equally dangerous, and much more numerous, are those who interpret God's authentic prophetic words in scripture to mean something other than God means.  It seems that many of today's "teacher of prophecy" authors and broadcasters offer Christians false interpretations of Biblical prophecy; and must therefore be deemed “false prophets” and "false teachers."

In His great teaching about the "last days" (Matthew 24) Jesus repeatedly warns His followers that there will be a proliferation of false prophets and false teachers at that time: which many of us believe is this time.  His repeated command to His followers is "...do not believe them" (Matthew 24:23, 26).

The critical question for Jesus' followers, especially those of us who believe we are living in the last days, is how we can discern false prophecy and teaching.

Amen.