I have realised something in the financial world that has helped me to understand spiritual matters. I have encountered fake American dollar notes in my life. These were in the following denominations: $5, $10 and $100. I have never seen a fake $40 or $300 note. This is obviously because there are only genuine notes in these and $1, $2, $20 and $50 notes.
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| Picture By Life Moments Media. Reason Mushangwe studying the Word. |
What I learnt from this is that: there can never be a fake where there is no genuine. A fake is the imitation of the genuine. If there are fake prophets it is a sure sign that there are genuine prophets somewhere. If there are genuine prophets, fake ones will always arise.
Jeremiah and Hananiah both prophesied in the same era yet their messages were divergent (Jeremiah 28). While Jeremiah prophesied about the continued Babylonian captivity, Hannaniah prophesied that God had broken the yoke of Babylon. The altercation went on until Jeremiah left his soft diplomacy and declared: “Hear now Hannnaniah, the Lord has sent not sent you, but you make this people trust a lie. Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord’” (Jeremiah 28:15-16). After having done all Jeremiah was found to be the true prophet while Hananiah was a false one: “So Hannaniah the prophet died the same year in the seventh month” (Jeremiah 28:17).
The same happened with Zedekiah and Micaiah (1 Kings 22). Zedekiah and a host of four hundred prophets spoke out that the kings of Israel and Judah should go out to battle against Syria because God had given them victory (v6). Micaiah representing the lone prophet, spoke and said he saw Israel scattered as sheep without a shepherd, symbolising the defeat and subsequent death of Ahab(v17). Micaiah’s word became the true word because the king was wounded in battle, died and a shout was raised for all people to go to their homes(35-37). It is evident in the scripture that there are both true and genuine prophets and false or fake prophets…the hundred prophets of God (1 Kings 18:3) and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:22)…light and darkness…life and death!
The work of this book is to try and help the church to be able to discern between the sacred and the profane, the genuine and the false. It is very easy to call a witch a prophet and a prophet a witch. “But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practised sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘this man is the great power of God.”(Acts 8:9-10) Can you imagine that before Simon gave his life to Christ, he was a witch and yet the whole town called him the power of God? What a deception. How can a whole nation be deceived into believing this? Because, “…because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.” (v11) Zondervan K.J.V. They were bewitched to make them think that a witch was God’s prophet.
Adapted from a book By Pride Sibiya, Upholding True Prophecy:Testing Every Spirit.
