What Profit is there in Prophecy?
His presence is with me and His presence is in me. What the Lord has proclaimed the Lord will do. Shall I fill myself up with many prophecies to speak so that I might gain the attention of men? There are many who do that and I have done that, but now I stand back and see the vanity and futility of it. I search for power in the words of the “prophets” these days and I find no power. There are many prophets and a multitude of prophecies, and there are great words of promise being spoken and there are many… but yet I can find no words of power in them. For more than 37 years I have heard these prophecies. They are not new to me. They are the same prophecies spoken year after year without fulfillment. The prophets profit by their speaking and I do not mean only that they are being paid money, but they are being “paid attention” and are given recognition. I think maybe when these prophets prophecy and receive profit from it then maybe it should be called “profit-sying”. Being given attention and recognition, in itself, can become somewhat of an addiction. There can easily build up within a person a hunger for that continued attention one gets from profit-sying. It needs to be fed everyday and eventually, like a ferocious beast living within our bellies that must be fed, then we seek to feed it. We say we are “seeking a word” from the Lord, and to some degree that may be true, but more than not it is often merely “seeking to feed the beast” within us that was birthed and is growing and is demanding that daily feeding of attention and recognition. And most all of the prophets will not stop prophesying based on the fact that nothing they have said has come true yet because… their focus in NOT on whether it comes true or not… their focus is giving another “word” as though from the mouth of God so as to get yet another feeding of attention and recognition.
It seems that one is not able to see the many errors of this arena until one is out of it and can look back. Do I say there are no prophets from God today? No, I don’t. I believe God has raised up prophets, but the question really becomes, “Who are they really?” How can they be these many prophets who prophecy year after year with no fulfillment? But then many of them point to some situation that has occurred as the fulfillment of the words they spoke previously, but the situation they point to as the fulfillment is nothing more than just another occurrence of little or NO real significance. And if they don’t do that, then they use the “contingency” excuse whereby the prophecy did not come true because people failed to bring it to pass by their failure to fulfill some condition. Again, this is NOT true prophecy to say it relies on a condition. That is called a covenant, but they never say it is a covenant when they are speaking it. They say it is a “sure word of prophecy from God”. But they never rely on the truth that what God says he will do, he will do… because then when God does NOT do it they are left with the accountability to explain why He did not do it. The only answer to that is that prophet did not prophecy from the spirit of God. How can they say they prophecy from the spirit of God when such a word proves to be a lie? The so called many prophets out there today do not take seriously enough what is to be the calling or office of a prophet. One cannot be a prophet and deal so lightly with such matters. It is and can only be a false prophet who makes such excuses for his or her words not coming to pass. My soul hungers to see the fulfillment of something from God. Shall we all pass away in the vanities of our own words? Will we ever see the Spirit of God truly poured out as described by Joel that in the end time the Spirit of God will be poured out upon all flesh? It must be true that those words will come true as we know at least that Joel was a true prophet and recognized by God as such. Who can we point to today as reputable as was Joel? They are hard to find. Oh yes… it’s not hard to find one who is called or recognized as a prophet, but who among those who are recognized as a prophet really is credible as a prophet? Not many I am afraid. There are countless prophets out there prophesying… but who really are credible prophets? I have to give this challenge – of all the prophesies given over many years who can point to one of them and show me the fulfillment of it?
The Bible says not to “despise prophecy” and it may seem as though that is what I am doing here, but that is not true. I am doing what God commanded we all do and that is to test the word to see if it was a true word or not… and I have to say… most all I have heard or read of for many years have not proven to be true… they have proven to be vanity and not true and only words given from the imaginations of men caught up in the frenzy of the prophetic arena. Also the Bible says not to “touch his anointed” which some would say I am doing here to come against these prophets… but, in the same context, was it “touching the anointed” for Elijah to have come against the prophets of Baal when he challenged them? So then, like Elijah I challenge these many prophets to show me the power of their god… because, as I have tested their words, their god has not been the God of the Bible… but rather the god of their own desires.
We have concluded that true prophets do make mistakes and I find I agree, but I also find that now because we have accepted that, it seems they can make all the mistakes they want and go on without any accountability. When do you suppose this merry-go-round will stop? When will the Body of Christ put aside all the clamor of these many empty words that are proclaimed as from the mouth of God?
And all my words here are really no less vain then are the words of these false prophecies if the Lord is not with me in the matter. I could be writing these words for the same reason the false prophets are speaking… for attention and recognition. The heart can be a very black and unsearchable realm and one must be brutally honest with oneself in these matters to be of any worth or potential worth to God.
The prophetic arena has become so inundated with so much that is not from God that what few true words may be coming forth from true prophets one can hardly find. True prophets and true prophecy are as pearls that have been buried under a mountain of sewage from the mouths of the false. And what false prophet will stop and weigh what things he or she has said? They do not stop to consider. They only continue on convinced they speak by the spirit of God. If so, then they should be able to show me what things they spoke that came true. And when they do point to some event as the fulfillment of what they spoke they point to something so inconsequential that, in essence, they make then the whole image of God fulfilling His words as though God were so impotent that the fulfillment of His great words are relegated to often random simple occurrences in life that simply happen and have no basis in being some act of God that brought such things about. So then, they first lie by their false words… then they portray God as impotent to say He fulfilled such things in such simplistic and powerless common events.
And I have found only a person here and there who will “reason together with me” on these issues. There has been only a person here and there who has taken note of my former statements about having known Charles Manson, those of Heaven’s Gate and other such cults and to say that I find no difference in the way they started out and the way I see now a multitude of people following in their same footsteps. How can any who follow in the steps of false prophecy hope to have a better end than has been the end of other false prophets we have seen over the years? They will not consider that their end may well be death and destruction. Ah yes! I cannot be talking about them… I surely must be talking about someone else… I certainly cannot be talking about them or any WELL KNOWN PROPHETS. And listen to this bit of insane logic… I have been told that these “well known” prophets MUST BE FROM GOD… because it is God’s signature of approval upon them because they are well known. So they say they are from God because God has made them well known and thereby has given His sign of approval upon them otherwise if they were false prophets they would not be well known and would not have the ear of the many that they do. The anti-Christ and the false prophet of Revelation will have the ear of many… does that mean they will be from God? Same logic is it not?
I could, of course, labor on this point in a thousand different ways, but if one has not given any credence to my words by now then it would be futile to write more. I can only hope and pray for that day that Joel really did talk about. I do not believe that day will come upon us with such impotence as I have seen these many other words supposedly fulfilled. I really don’t think those days Joel spoke of will pass us by with such little occurrence so as to hardly recognize it as the fulfillment of what Joel spoke. I should think it will be a very NOTICALBE fulfillment. When that day comes and “Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams” I rather think we shall experience the vast difference that will display itself compared to what we currently call… “The spirit poured out” upon us.
Let Christ be brought forth to the Nations. Let us preach the Gospel of the Cross. Let us lift up Jesus Christ and let us cease from lifting up “prophecy” as though it was in itself the power of God. As the Bible says… the power of God is in the cross… not in prophecy. Let the cross be lifted up and then maybe we really shall see the power of God manifest. May God give us a heart after the cross and not after prophecy or any other side issue or spiritual gift that can so draw our attention away from the cross.