We know there are people with mental disorders in the world, we know there are people who have been led to believe what they believe, and we know there are people who lack the intellectual capacity to understand. Under these circumstances, are they false prophets we read about? How do we, as Christians, distinguish the difference between the unlearned, unstable, unwise and the ‘intentional’ false prophet? How should we respond to the differences we, feel we, recognize?
Remember, the Lord prayed for those who persecuted Him…
It’s a mixture. I think most false prophets are unintentional, in that they believe what they “prophesy”. But there are spiritual con-men. My old Protestant was a jail chaplain for some time, and one of his comments was that he wondered if there was salvation for con-men. He said they told so many lies so convincingly that he wondered if they could knew what the truth was themselves after a while. If you’ve lost the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, there’s not much hope.
I myself was partly deceived for a short time. There’s a deception known as the ‘two witnesses’ deception. In chapter 11 of Revelation, there is mention of 2 witnesses. For the record, I believe they will be supernatural beings (angels, frankly) which will explain why men can’t hurt them and it takes an all-out brawl with the devil before they’re killed. In addition, no human could be trusted with the sorts of powers outlined there.
However a new Christian (especially Protestants, with their much greater interest in doomsday scenarios and lack of solid training, and without the eucharist to protect them), particularly someone who has low self-esteem, but who has also become aware through personal experience that there is a spiritual world out there, suddenly finds himself getting the “tingles” when he reads that passage. He next starts to think, are “you” (God or an angel) telling me that I’m one of the two prophets?
The “tingles” get stronger. When he tries to laugh it off, he gets this imperious sense of righteous anger. “Don’t doubt me! Who do you think you are to doubt God?”
Of course it’s the devil or a demon all along. For a short while, embarassingly, during my very early Christian walk, I got targetted for this myself. I went to see a few counsellors over this, and one of them commented, “I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on. You’re the sixth “Witness” I’ve seen in about a month!”.
Invariably this particular deception hits people with low self esteem (all that recognition and power is a tempting bait for someone who hasn’t received much affirmation all their life).
This particular deception very nearly wrecked a now quite well-known Creationism ministry in its early days, around about the same time I was getting singled out for the same treatment. I won’t go into that in any more detail, but it caused a lot of embarassment and immense difficulty for the bloke who was deceived.
So, “false prophets” are often misguided, for one reason or another. Sincerely misguided.
