By Funom Makama
When you watch the television screen and observe our present day churches, you'll be marveled on the way lots of self acclaimed prophets have sprung up. All upholding the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, performing Miracles of all kinds and pulling a lot of crowd both locally and internationally. Have you ever wondered if truly these acclaimed Prophets are servants of God or not? If not sure of this position, what do you have to do? What should your reaction as a Christian be?
Jesus once said in Matthew 12:25b-26. "Any kingdom where people fight each other will end up ruined. And a town of family that fights will soon destroy itself. So if Satan fights against himself, how can his kingdom last? From this statement, it is very clear what Jesus Christ is saying. Any prophet who works in the vineyard of the Lord Is definitely on the Lord's side and since a kingdom cannot fight against itself. We can consider prophets glorifying the name of the Lord as of the Lord's.
On the contrary, Prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 23:9-10 said "when I think of the prophets, I am shocked and I tremble like someone drunk because of the Lord and His sacred words. Those unfaithful prophets misuse their power all over the country. So God turned the pasture lands into scorching deserts. And also in Matthew 24:11; 24, Jesus Christ warned, "Many false prophets will come and fool a lot of people, false messiahs and false prophets will come and work great miracles and signs. They will even try to fool God's chosen ones. (More of such warnings can be read from Matthew7:22-32; Matthew12:36-37; Matthew7:15-16). That is to say, some of these Prophets can misuse their powers or anointing to displease God, while in fact some will rise up as "false Prophets" to purposely deceive God's chosen ones. How can we handle this dilemma? What should our reaction be to any prophet we come across? We have to be careful not to misjudge the right ones, thereby attributing God's might to the Devil. And as well, do not give in to the false ones so as to avoid deceit. How can we then strike this balance?
This is a very simple situation. In Mark 9:38, John said, "Teacher we saw a man using your name to force Demons out of people. But he wasn't one of us and we told him to stop". Jesus said to his disciples, don't stop him! No one who works miracles in my name will soon turn and say something bad about me. Anyone who isn't against us is for us". The first step is to consider if the 'man of God' is using the name of God to manifest his activities. If he does, then consider him not against God. The next and very important step can be deduced from Matthew13:24-30. "The kingdom of heaven is like what happened when a farmer scattered good seed in a field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and scattered weed seeds in the field and then left. When the plants came up and began to ripen, the farmer's servant could see the weeds. The servants came and asked, "Sir, didn't you scatter good seeds in your fields? Where did these weeds come from?" An enemy did this", he replied. His servants then asked, "Do you want us to go out and pull up the weeds?" "No!" he answered. "You might also pull up the wheat. Leave the weeds a lone until harvest time. Then I'll tell my workers to gather the weeds and tie them up and burn them. But I'll have them store the wheat in my ban"/
If you understand this parable well, then you should be able to single out each figurative representative when applied to the context of this article. Basically, it is not our responsibility to pull up the weeds, because we might also pull up the wheat along. It is the master's responsibility in which He will definitely do, during the harvest. This is directed to us as Christians or workers of the Vineyard of the Lord not to condemn any acclaimed prophet we see, because he might be wheat we are trying to pull out. So far as these prophets proclaimed the name of the Lord and even perform some miracles in His name, we should then give GOD the glory for His mercies and power been manifested unto man. Remember, the master told the workers to leave the weed to grow with the wheat. That is to say, they both can co-exist without the weed harming the wheat. So in as much as you avoid blasphemy and give glory to God when His name is used to manifest his powers, do well to be careful not to be deceived by any prophet by becoming like the People of Berea in Acts 17:11. We read that this people were good students of the scriptures. They know that God's word was true, but they weren't sure about Paul and his message. So they studied scriptures to see if Paul's teaching was correct. The believers in Berea set a good example for us. Today, when there are many people who falsely claim to speak God's message, we need to have reliable source to verify the message. That is not to say, we should immediately reject a message just because we've never heard it before, but we do need to check out what we are taught against the Bible. We should not bother about the transparency of the prophets because the day of Judgment (the harvest), will bring the false one to book (matthew7:22-23).
If we apply these Biblical instructions, we can easily create an equilibrium thereby praising God and at the same time avoid falling into the trap of false prophets.
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