Beware of False Prophets

(Messiah's 35th Command)

By Brother R. Michel Lankford

Matthew 7:15-20 Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.”A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a Bad tree produce good fruit. "Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "So then, you will know them by their fruits. Matthew 7:15-20 (NASB)

Hello and God be with you. As you may know, God has me working on an ongoing teaching series where we discuss how to obey each and every command that Jesus Christ (Yeshua the Messiah), gave in the New Testament. I do this in loving concern for the flock of God, and in loving obedience to my Lord who said that making disciples meant teaching people how to obey everything that he commanded (Matthew 28:19-20). In this process, we've now reached Christ's 35th command, "Beware of false prophets...."

#35 Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

 

Command Principles

1. False prophets and false teachers are out there. They do exist. If we are going to truly succeed as disciples we must reach a point where we understand that Yahweh Almighty God and Jesus His Incarnate Word do not speak in vain. God does not speak empty words. When God says something it's always on purpose and meaningful. So if God tells us to, “Beware of false prophets,” then false prophets must truly exist in our world. If He tells us to, “Beware” then obviously there is real danger connected with falling prey to false prophets and false teachers. Otherwise, Almighty God and His Word made flesh would not have spoken as He did

2. We CAN be deceived. I stress this point because there are many in our world of modern-day Christendom who conveniently believe that since they have confessed Jesus the Messiah to be their Lord and Savior, and because they are supposedly "filled with the Holy Spirit," they then conclude that they cannot possibly be deceived. In over 25 years of actively seeking and walking with the Lord, I have seen this scenario play out multiple times. I've seen people that I would consider to be wonderful pastors, teachers and beloved brothers and sisters in Christ fall prey to the enemy’s devices in varying degrees, because they first fell into believing the lie that they could not be deceived. Jesus Christ gave specific instructions that we should be on our guard against false prophets and false teachers. Twice Messiah said that we would know them by their fruits, (Matthew 7:16, 20).

3. False prophets and false teachers do not glow in the dark. Unfortunately, false prophets and false teachers do not come with flashing neon signs in different colors which read: "I'm a false prophet. I am here to deceive you. My job is to trick you, so please do not fall for the lies that I'm about to tell you, okay? Ready... Set... Go!" On the contrary, false prophets and false teachers often look and sound like the real thing. On some occasion even the false teachers and false prophets do not know that they are false teachers and false prophets. The enemy has them so completely deceived that they sincerely believe themselves to be true prophets and teachers of God's Word, even while they are being false prophets and false teachers. Therefore, becoming a thoroughly effective fruit inspector becomes imperative in our efforts to avoid being deceived.

4. Being deceived is not a free pass. Learning to avoid and overcome deception is each believer's own personal responsibility. Notice that early on in human history, Adam and Eve where deceived by the serpent in the garden (Genesis 3). Notice if you will that being deceived did not get them off of the hook. Please notice that God DID NOT SAY to them, Well hey, since the serpent deceived you and tricked you into disobeying Me, then you are not responsible and you will not have to bear the consequences of disobedience because you were deceived. Nowhere in rightly divided Scripture is the Almighty represented as having responded to any human deception in such a manner. Honestly, almost no preacher, teacher or rank-and-file Christian would overtly teach or misrepresent God in such a manner, but what generally happens is that we get hung up on our own human understanding and definitions of love and grace. If we are not careful, we can delude ourselves into drawing the false conclusion that since God is so perfectly loving and gracious; (based on our own human preferences and understanding of the terms for Love and Grace), then we can accidentally train ourselves to believe that on the basis of our mis-definitions, then surely Almighty God certainly would not make us bear the consequences of our disobediences if we were deceived into it. Beloved, while many people would prefer to think and believe that God operates this way, based on the way that they mis-define Love and Grace, the truth is that the weight of biblical evidence and rightly divided Scripture clearly teaches that we will bear the consequences of disobeying God, regardless of how we were deceived into disobeying Him. There is simply no truly Biblical basis to believe otherwise.

 

Recognizing a True Prophet

Scripture is extremely definite and precise about what are the marks of a true Prophet of Almighty God

1. He must be 100% accurate. Absolutely everything that the prophet says that God told him, MUST come to pass. If he is not 100% accurate, then he is a false prophet, and no follower of Yahweh or the Messiah should believe or follow a supposed prophet, if he is not been 100% accurate (Deuteronomy 18:21-22; cf. Jeremiah 28:9).

2. He will always agree with God’s Law and Commandments. A true prophet sent by God will always agree with God's Law and the true testimony of rightly divided Scripture. The difficulty here though is that many people re-define key biblical terms and ideas to suit their own personal preferences according to the traditions that they have been taught, instead of truly paying attention to what Scripture actually says and teaches. Nevertheless however, a true prophet of God will always speak in agreement with God's Law and Commandments according to the rightly divided testimony of the Scriptures. If he does not speak according to these, he is not sent by God. In fact, even if everything the prophet predicts does indeed come to pass, but he does not speak according to the Law and Commandments which God gave to Moses, then he is a false prophet, according to the Scriptures. God allowed him to be sent to us to test us, to see whether or not we would love and obey God, or whether we would choose to follow a convincing fake (Deuteronomy 13:1-5; Isaiah 8:20).

3. He will bear consistently good and biblical fruit. It's critical to recognize when we say that he will bear consistently good biblical fruit, we are talking about good biblical fruit as Scripture defines those key terms and concepts, not as our human religious tradition, personal preferences or our own desires defines what good fruit is. In other words the prophet of God will produce the fruit of love, but it will be God's true biblical love, not necessarily what human religious tradition and our personal preferences tell us that love is (Matthew 7:15-20; Galatians 5:22-24; 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; John 15:1-11; James 3:13-18).

So, in summary, in order to test whether a prophet and his prophecies are truly sent by Almighty God; they must be 100% accurate and all come to pass. They must agree 100% with what God has already said especially in His Laws and Commandments, because even if everything the prophet says comes to pass, but he teaches you to disobey something that God has already said, then he is a false prophet according to Scripture (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Lastly, everything the prophet says must be in keeping with the good fruit of the Holy Spirit and heavenly wisdom, as God and Scripture defines those key terms, NOT as popular language and culture defines those all-important terms. If a prophet and his prophecies do not fulfill these three absolute biblical criterion, then it simply is not of God and that prophet should not be believed or followed, because he will lead you astray.

How to Become More Deception Resistant

(Notice pleased that I did not say, become deception proof, but deception resistant, there is a difference).

1. Be humble and understand that you CAN be deceived. God resists the proud, but gives His Grace to the humble. The moment a person becomes prideful enough to believe that they cannot be deceived, they place themselves in triple jeopardy because; (a) They step out from underneath God's protection (Luke 18:14; 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6); (b) They immediately make themselves a target for the devil who wants to destroy them (John 10:9-10). The moment a person believes that they cannot be deceived, they make themselves a greater target, because the great deceiver takes it as a personal challenge (1 Peter 5:8); (c) most importantly, the person who believes that they cannot be deceived will let down their guard. They will not be as careful to be watchful prayerful and vigilant about scrutinizing what information they take in and believe, because they will not value the need to guard against deception, if they assume that they cannot be deceived.

2. Develop an internal attitude of personal responsibility for your own beliefs. This concept could become a blog or teaching all its own, but I will try and summarize it here for time’s sake. What we believe determines whether we are considered righteous or unrighteous before Almighty God (Genesis 15:6; Habakkuk 2:4; Galatians 3:11). Each one of us will give an account before God of whether we believed and obeyed God or we did not, (Hebrews 4:12-13; John 3:36). Ultimately, each one of us is individually responsible before God for what we believe and what we do with those beliefs. The problem is that we live in a culture that repeatedly and progressively trains us by experience not to take personal responsibility. Please try to think about it objectively and not emotionally for a moment. Someone else grows, and in many cases prepares our food. In the majority of cases, from preschool to public school to college, most often it is the God hating worldly culture that has nurtured an educated and trained up our children for the major part of their days while growing up. Then we wonder why a staggering 87% of students fall away from God and His Word after leaving home for college. Did I burn my legs with hot coffee because I drove with it between my legs? Society teaches us that the solution to that problem is to sue McDonald's and make a ton of money. Are the kids fat? The problem cannot possibly be that I am not disciplining and training my children instead of over indulging their appetites. Oh no, Society teaches that the solution to this problem is to sue McDonald's, sue Sesame Street and the cookie monster and make a lot of money in the process, by making them responsible for the childhood obesity problem in our society. With all of these types of attitudes being so prevalent in our culture it's easy to fall into the habit of going to church and believing that it is the pastor's responsibility to make sure that I'm told the truth, to ensure I believe the truth, and to ensure that I will make it to heaven. When we make someone else responsible for how we think and what we believe, it is easy for those upon whom we depend to become puffed up with pride and self-importance, because we are depending upon them for so great a task. When we allow someone else to take the responsibility for what we think and believe we can easily become emotionally and spiritually lazy, and not as watchful as we should be. The truth is that older brothers and sisters and clergy can sometimes be helpful in showing us where to look and how to study, but ultimately making sure that I learn the truth, making sure that I believe the truth, and making sure that I obey and persevere in walking in the truth before God is my own personal responsibility and no one else’s.

3. Develop a real appetite for God's Word. Quite simply, if you do not truly know what God has already said and done in the past, then it will be relatively simple to deceive you concerning what God is saying and doing in your midst. If you do not have a real appetite to be in God's Word, tell the truth. Ask God to change your "Want to," and then make the commitment, make the daily choice, and then getting God's Word and stay there on a daily basis even before your "Want to" changes.

4. Let Scripture define truth. For example, we all know that Christians and God followers are supposed to be loving, right? However, what you will often find is that what culture and human tradition or our own personal preferences defines as being loving is often quite different from what Scripture defines as loving. If we allow ourselves to redefine love according to what culture and our personal preferences defines as love, then we will find that we will often tolerate and practice things which are drastically different than what God says He requires. Remember, when God judges the world, He will be using His own definitions of right and wrong, not ours.

5. Practice doing the Scriptures that you already know and understand. One of the biggest things that opens us up to being deceived by others is living a lifestyle of self-deception. Scripture clearly tells us that one of the ways that we deceive ourselves is by hearing God's Word, but not putting into practice what we have heard from God's Word (James 1:19-27). Scripture also tells us that one of the ways that we can train ourselves to distinguish good from evil, (in other words we would not be deceived by evil), is by practicing God's Word (Hebrews 5:11-14; John 14:21).

6. Put our sinful nature on a starvation diet. One of the chief characteristics of sin is that it is extremely deceitful, (Hebrews 3:13; Romans 8:5-8). In other words, sin deceives us. The more that we give in to our sinful nature, the more it gets us to rationalize ourselves into believing that what we're doing isn't really that bad after all.

In conclusion, deception is in our world and anyone of us can fall into being deceived. The good news is That Yahweh Almighty God loves us. He sent His Son Yeshua Who is the embodiment of Truth, so that if we will take the responsibility and we will choose to truly love the Truth and follow His directions, then we have a much better chance of becoming deception resistant.

God be with you,

Brother R. Michel Lankford

MAKING SURE THAT I AM NOT DECEIVED IS MY OWN PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Matthew 24:4 And Jesus answered and said to them: "Take heed that no one deceives you. (Matthew 24:4 NKJV)

Ephesians 5:6-7 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them. (Ephesians 5:6-7 NKJV)

Hebrews 3:12-13 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12-13 ESV)

Romans 8:5-8 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8 ESV)

Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.  Colossians 2:8 (ESV)

Galatians 6:7-9 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:7-9 ESV)