False Prophets

If you say, “God said” and God did not say, then that is a terminal error.

Prophets for Profit (TM) have caught up with that truth nowadays. As a result, they coyly suggest that maybe, perhaps, they have had a vision or some revelation. They build a brand on an outrageous prediction or two mixed up with truth. As a result, we are drawn from what God is saying, because God is always saying what God is saying. The false prophet of today draws us with the specificity of his predictions, his resume, and then when wrong, reverts to generalities.

The true prophet begins in generalities, young women conceive and have sons, and then moves to the specifics. Look! This woman conceived and had a son! He is God with us!

God is timeless, eternal, speaking through His word, and His Church. God does have a fresh application of the Word to us, but this generally will not be predicting the future. Why? People are given free will, so what could be might not be. We might change and so avoid what is probable in a miracle of obedience. Israel was in trouble, doomed, but then the most brilliant woman in history, Mary, said “yes” to God. Everything one might have guessed changed.

Mary made history better than it could have been by doing what she should have done. She did not build a brand, market herself, put herself at the start of the story. I recall a very good theologian (and a better man!) saying to me: “Paul is more important than Mary. Paul is more of the New Testament.” This was not good.

Mary could have been one sentence of the New Testament, leave aside the Magnificat, and her “yes” to God, hearing the word of the Lord and consenting, would have been enough to make her the most important human in history. She became the very mother of God.

Note that the “establishment” mostly missed her miracle, but not all of the establishment. The best of the old guard, aged Symeon and holy Anna, knew Christmas had come forever. Beware the man with no bishop, cut off from the wise, running his own website, marketing himself, defending, fending off critics, and having nobody “greater” than he is supporting him.

That is a danger. Jesus had John the Baptist, Nicodemus, Blessed Symeon, Holy Anna, the shepherds keeping watch, wisemen. . . the local grifter generally has people irritated with the bishop, ranting on a blog, alone. In other words, be open to the dissident.

I thought George Bush right to go to war with Iraq. As it turned out, this was wrong. If I had mixed that judgment up with God’s word, then you should ignore me as a “prophet.” Instead, this was a prudential decision (as I said at the time) that did not work out. . . and so I had to admit error.

The Iraq War ended badly.

So the prophet for profit is not to be ignored because he made a judgment that was wrong (based on reason and experience), but because he mixed visions, angels, God’s voice in his writings. The man who says: “I think. . . ” who turns out to be wrong, might be more rational than the man who guesses and happens to be right!

We live in tough times, maybe an end of times. As a result, these false prophets will multiply. God help us to go to Church, pray, read the Bible, and love our family and friends.

That is enough for me!

If you are African-American in the United States, or a theist in atheist China, you know problems. Those remnants show the rest of us how to behave.