In my book, The Deception of Eloquence, I dedicated a chapter to “What is False Teaching”? In that chapter, I critically examined 2 Peter 2:1, “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies”. I spent a good portion of print revealing what false prophets were in the Old Testament in order to recognize what false teachers are in the New Testament.
One of the characteristics of false prophets is that they may be demonically inspired. We find this in 1 Kings 22:13-23 when lying spirits were sent into the false prophets to deceive Ahab. In addition, we know that the prophet Balaam, who prophesied accurately, was also labeled a false prophet. But why?
In the case of Balaam, he knew he could not curse the people of God because they were blessed with God’s favor. Yet, he knew if he could have the people of God fall into sin, then God would curse them Himself. Therefore, because of his greed and avarice, he compromised by offering advice to Balak to send Moabite women in Israel’s camp so that Israel would participate in idolatry and immorality. Balaam’s, downfall was due to his lust for money; therefore, the Scriptures label him a false prophet (2 Pet 2:14-16; Numbers 23-25:1-9; 31:1-16; Rev. 2:14-15).
Recently, I came across a false prophet that is very similar to Balaam. He has been known to “prophesy” accurately and has been heralded in some circles as being a man/prophet of God. He’s internationally known, been on Christian TV, Sid Roth, etc. However, since I was not very familiar with this “prophet”, I began to do some investigation.
It did not take long to realize something was terribly wrong. When I visited this man’s website, he was advertising “prophetic consultations”. At first glance, this sounded extremely bizarre. It sounded more along the lines of a psychic consultation; however, it gets worse. This same “prophet of God” was charging $1,000.00 to receive a “high-level prophetic word over a 30-minute phone call”. That’s right $33.33 a minute! This man cost more than an attorney consultation! However, in his words, “you are not paying for a prophecy, you are honoring the prophet.”
When you think it could not get any worse, I perused his “giving” tab in which he encourages others to “partner with the prophet” and has links to make donations through PayPal or to have direct debits come straight out of your account or debit/credit card. Right below these links he quotes,
“And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.” (Philippians 4:15)
However, this charlatan added to the text and has the following stated,
“And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me and opened up a debit and credit account in giving and receiving, except you only.” (The False Prophet)
I couldn’t believe my eyes! At first, I thought this must be The Message translation (which I do not recommend). But even The Message translation wasn’t radical enough to add to the text the way this huckster did. This false prophet (FP) literally added this into the biblical text. Indeed, it gets worse. He states,
“Partnership with a prophet is tantamount to opening a debit and credit account with God. And God’s interest rate is 10,000%. According to Jesus’ own words in Mark 10:29&30, the return on anything we invest into the spreading of the Gospel is One Hundred Fold… that’s 10,000 percent!”
I almost puked. I could not believe what I was seeing. The fact this man is bold enough to add to Scripture in an attempt to manipulate people to give money to his ministry is literally sickening.
As I mentioned above, this “prophet” has a reputation as being accurate with his prophetic words. I felt the Spirit of God prompting me to delve deeper. As I was researching, I came across an interview by a man named Makhado Sinthumule Rambulana who wrote a book entitled Church Mafia: A True Story. Rambulana, who was a pastor of a church in South Africa, tells his story of how he planted a church but was seeing slow growth in his congregation. However, some of his colleagues who were “prophets” were holding massive crusades which boasted of them having the ability to know people’s addresses, ID numbers, DOB, without any prior knowledge. Since he wanted to grow his church at all costs, he inquired of them as to how they did what they did. In short, they told him they received their “powers” from the occult (spiritualists, witchdoctors, etc). Rambulana was open to receiving those “powers” (demonic) so he went to the occultists, did several rituals, incantations, etc and came back to his church. The rituals worked. Many people started coming to the church, he had the ability to prophesy with accuracy and he began holding crusades. The frightening thing is he stated, “Although he was saying the name of Jesus when he prophesied, he knew he was operating under another power that was demonic.”
He later goes on to share that the “powers” came with a cost. Those who gave him the powers wanted money. So they told him he needed to begin to have “consultations” and begin to charge people to meet with him. Doesn’t this sound familiar?
Now I can’t be 100% sure that the false prophet that I came across has gone to the occult to receive his “power to prophesy”. However, I will say the circumstantial evidence is pointing in that direction. Furthermore, the following text would make more sense that was uttered by Jesus,
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matt. 7:22-23)
This text makes a ton of sense if the persons who are doing all these incredible miracles are using the name of Jesus but are using demonic power in doing those miraculous works. We know the slave girl in Acts 16:16-18, was “prophesying” that Paul and Silas were men of God as Luke writes,
“As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” (Acts 16:16-18)
The slave girl who had a spirit of divination was accurate but was under the influence of demons.
In saying all of this, I believe in all of the offices in the church (apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists). However, just as there are legitimate leaders in all these offices, there are false ones as well. Be sure to know what the Word of God teaches and use every bit of discernment to avoid being deceived.
Below is the link to the interview with Makhado Sinthumule Rambulana…
