What is prophecy and how do we recognize it?

Last week I started a debate on facebook about the charismatic movement and it’s compatibility with the Lutheran tradition that I grew up in. I have always had a love for charismatics, but have often run into people within the Lutheran church that do not agree with my stance on the issue.

This really brought home an age old question: What is prophecy and how do we recognize it?

How does one tell a prophet sent by God from one not sent by God?

It’s easy to look back at the Prophets in the Bible and simply say God spoke then, but won’t speak now. This provides a list of prophets that have been approved by the church. If you want to know if a prophet is genuine all you have to do is see if he’s in the Bible. If he’s not then you can just throw him out.

This is not a healthy approach to prophecy. It might be easy, but it limits God to someone who used to speak, but has stopped. It can even imply that God is limited in his power in some way.

Another option is that of the appraiser.

In this context a person who says they have a word from God is put in lockdown. Their teachings are evaluated in the light of the scripture and the creeds. Their writings are scrutinized. Their theology is tested.

This is a better option, because it allows God to speak, but it too has it’s problems. It limits God to only being able to speak through people who have all their theological ducks in a row. By this test many prophets in the Bible would have trouble. Sometimes the message of the prophets was condemned by the religious establishment of their day, and sometimes not so perfect people were called to speak the word of the Lord. Saul prophesied in one place and he doesn’t have the best track record of being faithful to God. There is even the story of balaam’s ass speaking at one point.

On the other end there are people who say they speak from God, but they speak messages of driven by greed, pride and power. Many false prophets have come and led many people into danger. These people are not rare. Every generation seems to have a handful of would-be-prophets. If we accepted everyone who said that they had a message from God things would get out of control pretty fast.

At this point I don’t really have a great answer. How can we recognize that God has spoken to people throughout history and can still speak through people in history, and yet avoid manipulation and narcissism from taking over.

Here is my simple rule… test the message.


It seems that most false prophets that have come along could be easily recognized by people who have a decent amount of biblical literacy and some training in historic Christian theology.

This is why false teachers often discourage their followers from getting a good theological education, and mock people who desire to go “deeper” in their faith.

If a leader wants to give you a message from God, but doesn’t want you to delve deeply into the Word of God you know you have a problem. A message from God will point to the action of God. A prophet does not come to tell you to be nice to everyone. A prophet comes to call a people called by God to remember what God has done, is doing, and promises to do.

This is Centered in Jesus.

If Jesus can be removed from the prophecy and the message remains essentially the same you are probably dealing with a false prophet.