By Rev. Mel C. Montgomery

     There is a deeply erroneous teaching floating around now called:

     "The God-given Ministry of False Prophets."

     My first thought when I read it was,  "You've got to be kidding!"

     It is astonishing the extent to which Cessationists will go in order to attempt to prove that prophecy, miracles, tongues, and the other Gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased. 

     This teaching begins with a misrepresentation of a Deuteronomy 13:1-3.:

"If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods...You shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proves you..."

     The Scripture says, "if there arise...," not "if God sends..." 

     This indicates someone that arises, and that God is obviously aware of and does not remove through His Own sovereign power. Taking this a step beyond God being aware that someone "arises," to claiming that He deliberately "sends forth," is a gigantic step that is not supported by this, or any other Scripture. Yet that is exactly what the adherents of this teaching promote: that God isn't simply aware of false prophets arising, but that He actually sends them to us. 

     God did not deliberately and actively send such a false prophet, anymore than He actively and deliberately sent Satan to tempt Eve. God's command to Adam and Eve had been clear: "Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Satan came--of his own accord, not because God "sent" him--to see whether he could talk them out of obedience and into disobedience. And he succeeded. 

     God's commands to Israel in the Law of Moses had been explicit. They were to stay away from idolatry and other gods. Therefore, if a false prophet were to "arise" among them, tempting them to disobey God by worshipping other gods, God would tolerate the appearance of this false prophet. But such false prophet would be doing so under his own volition, not because God deliberately sent him. The Scripture adherents qoute does not support the idea of "sending" false prophets.    

     The Book of Jeremiah flatly refutes the idea of God sending false prophets:

     "Then the Lord said unto me, the prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them..."--Jer. 14:14.

     The next point in this erroneous teaching rests upon a misinterpretation of the events, drawn from the Old Testament account of the death of King Ahab. 

     King Ahab had disobeyed God all his life, manipulated people, lead Israel into worshipping false Gods, and had murdered people. God had sent Elijah and numerous other prophets to warn Ahab to repent. He repented not. So God is discussing with the angels in Heaven how to go about persuading Ahab to enter into a particular battle, which would take his life, so that God could raise up another King over Israel. At this point a spirit comes before God's throne and offers a plan. He says:  

      "...I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets. And He [God] said, You shall persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and so do."--I Kings 22:22. 

     This spirit became a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's prophets, persuading him to engage in this ill-conceived battle. 

     But it is clear from the context of this Scripture that God did not seek out, and send forth in a forceful sense, a lying spirit, as this teaching claims. Instead, a lying spirit appeared before Him, presented his plan, and God approved it. 

     God did this only once in the history of mankind. (Job's case was similar, but God did not seek out and "send" Satan in that case either). In this one instance only, the spirit went into the mouths of those who were already false prophets of many years standing. These false prophets prophesied under the inspiration of this lying spirit, not to the righteous, but to a king who was wicked, disobedient, and murderous. In this case, the lying spirit entering into the false prophets fit in with God's plan to remove Ahab from the throne. Ahab reaped what he had sowed. He got exactly the judgment of God that was warranted, and that the genuine prophet, Micah, had prophesied would come. 

     Beginning with a misreading of Deut. 13:1, continuing by misinterpreting I Kings 22:22, and ignoring Jeremiah 14:14, this teaching then jumps thousands of years forward in time, to quote what Paul tells us will happen after the Anti-Christ is revealed in the future. 

     The Apostle Paul writes: 

     "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall comsume with the spirit of his mouth...because they [people who will follow the Anti-Christ] received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.." II Thes. 2:8,10,11.

     The phrasing Paul uses here is future tense, "shall send" not present tense, "is sending." 

     Also it is true that God will indeed "send them strong delusion," but who are the "them" to which this Scripture refers? The "them" are those who have hardened themselves against the salvation message time and time again, and end up staying behind on the Earth after the Rapture of the Saints. The "strong delusion" is not sent to God's people. 

     In the instance with Ahab, and the one in the future during the Tribulation, these were not righteous saints diligently praying, seeking God, and obeying His word. 

     No. 

     Both Scriptures are describing people of hard hearts, and of disobedience and sin of many years standing. They are already determined to walk in sin. In both cases God just sends along a "lying spirit," or "strong delusion," to harden them fruther in their decisions that they have already made to disobey Him. 

     By putting Deut. 13:1--false prophets arising, together with I Kings 22:22--a lying spirit lying, and then ending with II Thes. 2:8-11--strong delusion sent to the future followers of the Anti-Christ, these unrelated Scriptures are made to sound as though God has always deliberately sent false prophets to His own people and that He will continue sending to us false prophet after false prophet until the Rapture.  

     We can not conclude from either of these incidents that God actively sends false prophets to the Body of Christ today to deliberately try to pull us off into sin and away from God. 

     New Testament Examples of

 False Prophets:

     Peter confronted Simon the Sorceror in the 8th Chapter of Acts. Nowhere are we told that Simon the false prophet/sorceror had been sent from God to deceive the people.

     No. 

     Simon was one of the false prophets God said would "arise." He came to Samaria on his own, anointed of the Devil. And when Peter confronted the false prophet, the Apostle did not exclaim: 

     "A thousand blessings upon thee brother! Thou hast done thy work well! Thou has deceived these people for many years now. But your role is completed, and I am taking over now. So go somewhere else and bewitch people in some other city, and may the blessing of God be upon all thy work!"

     No. 

     Peter said: 

     "Your money perish with thee, because thou has thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money."--Acts 8:20. 

     Nor when Paul met Elymas the false prophet on the Isle of Paphos, did the Apostle act like they were both sent from God. 

     Quite the opposite! Paul said:

     "...O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?  And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season..."--Acts 13:10,11.

 

     No, God did not send Simon the Sorceror and Elymas the False Prophet as the advance team for the coming ministries of Peter and Paul. The false prophets were sent by the devil. They had nothing to do with God. And when the true Apostles and Prophets arrived on the scene, both false prophets were cursed and rejected, not blessed and welcomed. 

     God can, and does, tolerate many things in this world that are absolutely against His will: sin, darkness, sickness and disease, rape, incest, torture, False Prophets, False Teachings, False Apostles, and so on. Just because He has not put a full end to these things yet, and will not do so until the Millenial Kingdom, does not at all mean that He deliberately and actively sends false prophets to His Own Children to try to lead them away from Him and into eternal damnation. 

     The premise that God sends us false prophets is also refuted by two clearly stated New Testament principles: 

     One, Jesus said: 

     "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand: And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kindgom stand?"--Mat. 12:25,26.

      Are we really to believe that Satan does not work against Satan, but that God works against God? God sends true prophets to His people to lead them closer to Himself, and also sends false prophets to lead them from true faith to damnation? If so, then God's Kingdom is doomed to failure, because Jesus said such a kingdom divided against itself "shall not stand." 

     God's Kindgom is not divided against itself. 

     Satan does not cast out Satan. 

     And God does not fight agaisnt God.

     God does not send forth both true prophets and false prophets. 

     He sends forth the True Apostles and True Prophets to give us His Word, and He tolerates for the time being, the false apostles and false prophets in their attempts to draw us away from His Word. 

     The second New Testament principle that refutes the argument is what Jesus said in John 13:20:

     "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me."

      If God actually sends forth False Prophets, then we are commanded by this Scripture to gladly receive the False Prophets and obey them, for Jesus said, "He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me..."   Clearly "whomsoever" means "whomsoever" if you believe in the literal interpretation of God's Word, as I do, and as I hope you do. "Whomsoever" would include both True Prophets and false ones. 

     God's Kingdom is not divided against itself, with God sending True Prophets to lead us, and false prophets to mislead us. 

     And if they were truly "sent" from God, we would be under obligation to receive and welcome and obey all whom God sends. 

     And God Himself told us of false prophets, "...I sent them not..." 

     This strange idea of "the God-given ministry of false prophets," came straight from the Pit, and needs to be bundled up and tossed back into the Pit where it belongs. I've seen this argument quoted in many ways in different forms. And the people who have quoted it, I believe, have done so without fully thinking out the implications of its claim. 

     Cessationist arguments have been refuted by Scripture and common sense so many times, so thoroughly, for so long, that even the Cessationists themselves are finding it hard to keep offering the same old dog-eared arguments. So, they are grasping for straws. And this latest straw, the "God Given Ministry of False Prophets," is just as unscriptural and unsupported by Early Church history as are all the other cessationist arguments. Let's hope that this latest "straw" is the one that breaks the camel's back.

Copyright 2006 Mel C. Montgomery All rights reserved. Material may be copied and shared with others if done so without charge, in entirety, and if attribution is given.