When Prophets Get it Wrong

It is a holy, sacred, and weighty thing to claim to speak for the Almighty.

Image via Pixabay

We call such people “prophets,” and both Old and New Testaments affirm the role of some believers to receive revelation from the Holy Spirit which is meant to be shared with the people of God in the Name of the Lord.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit was not given to everyone, but a choice few. Because of this, prophets were the ones with access to God, and the only ones who could discern His voice and share it.

This being the case, the words of the prophets were to be obeyed by God’s people, as the prophets were the only ones in communion with God (e.g. Dt 18.19; 1Ki 20.35-36; 2Ki 13.18-19).

What is more, if a prophet spoke something that did not come to pass, they were to be executed as a false prophet (Dt 18.20-22). With limited access to God, those who claimed to speak for Him needed to be true prophets, or else no one would be able trust the Word of the Lord when it came.

A shift happens in the New Testament, the main part being thaton this side of the cross, everyone who calls upon the Name of the Lord is saved and is given the Holy Spirit (Joel 2.28-29; Acts 2.16-18; 2Co 1.21-22).

So while in the Old Testament, the call was “obey the prophets,” (Dt 18.19), in the New Testament, the call is “Weigh carefully what is prophesied, discern it as a community, throw away the bad, hold on to the good” (1Co 14.29-33; 1Th 5.19-22).

So there seems to be almost an expectation that not everything prophesied will be right or true, so the faith community is to discern carefully together, and not just automatically accept everything that is spoken in the Name of the Lord.

Since we all have the Holy Spirt now, we don’t need to rely on prophets in the same as we did in the Old Testament, when the prophets were your only access to God.

If it is indeed the Holy Spirit speaking through a person, then the same Holy Spirit should confirm it with other believers. To mindlessly “obey the prophets” is not what we do anymore, in spite of what some modern prophetic ministries suggest.

We also see a shift in the New Testament where we stopped executing false prophets. Partly this is because we are no longer under the Law which called for that (Rom 7.4-6), but also I think because the role of the prophet has changed on this side of the cross.

Since we all have the Spirit now, and the biblical canon is complete and in our hands, it is not upon a New Testament prophet to be the sole voice of God, but rather to speak the revelation of the Spirit to the church for “strengthening, encouragement, and comfort” (1Co 14.3).

Paul would acknowledge that, right now on earth, “We prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears” (1Cor 13.8-10).

So no single prophet gets the whole picture of what God is doing, and when “completeness comes,” (which I interpret as when Christ returns), we will have the whole picture.

We also have a story in Acts 21 of the prophet Agabus getting the broad strokes right in a prophetic word about Paul ending up in chains with the Gentiles, but actually prophesying the details wrong. No ones rejects Agabus’ gift or talks about stoning him because of this.

All that to say, we can have some grace for when prophetic voices get a word wrong from time to time.

Even if we don’t call ourselves “prophets,” surely anyone who walks with Jesus has at times missed His will, made a bad choice, chosen a wrong way, or thought that they were following the Spirit but really weren’t.

But again, it is a holy, sacred, and weighty thing to claim to speak for the Almighty.

In 2016, many prophetic voices prophesied that God had told them that Trump would be elected President.

At the time, it seemed a crazy idea. The mainstream media hated him, as did many Americans, he was an unproven outsider, and his opponent Hillary had a sizeable lead in the polls.

Sure enough, Trump went on to win, and win quite handily.

If anyone had said one year earlier that this would come to pass, you would have thought they were insane!

But in this case, the predictions of the prophets were indeed fulfilled.

In 2020, many of these same voices spoke again: God would allow Trump to win the election, and serve a second term as President.

This time, these words did not come to pass. Biden won, and won quite handily.

A few prophets spoke up in the aftermath, acknowledging that they got it wrong, and asking for forgiveness for speaking something in the name of the Lord that did not come to pass.

(This is exactly the right way to respond.)

If an error is made in private, it can be acknowledged, repented of, and corrected in private.

If an error is made in public, it must be acknowledged, repented of, and corrected in public.

Unfortunately, many prophetic voices did not do this, and instead doubled-down on their predictions which had not come to pass.

“Trump did win, we were right, it’s just that Biden came along and stole the election that Trump legitimately won, so that’s why it looks like we were wrong.”

“We never said Trump would win this election, but just that he would win and serve a second term. 2024 is coming!”

“Trump really won, and that is going to be proven and vindicated by December 31! Ok, by January 6! Ok, by the end of March…ok, by the end of June…”

Or, the most likely answer is that these prophets simply got it wrong.

Surely we all hate being wrong, and have likely all tried to justify ourselves when we are wrong.

The instinct is certainly understandable.

But such actions cheapen the authority of God’s revelation and weaken the witness of the prophetic.

Such actions also show a lack of reverence for the Name of the Lord. To speak incorrectly in that Name without acknowledgment suggests that God is the one who was wrong or unclear, not the messenger, and that is a notion that we must reject entirely.

To suggest that Trump legitimately won but Biden stole it, therefore voiding the prophetic word, is borderline blasphemous, suggesting a truly weak God who has a will that can easily be thwarted by man, and who apparently was caught off-guard by a deceptive plan and/or was unable to tell the prophets clearly about it beforehand.

To suggest that Trump will win a future election, and that’s why the word doesn’t look like it is coming to pass, is at best disingenuous and at worst full-on manipulative. That is not what was being said before the election. The prophetic words clearly pointed to a 2020 victory.

To suggest that Trump won and that it will be proven any day (with several predicted dates passing by with no such victory happening), just weakens the authority of the speaker more and more.

If God wanted Trump to be President right now, he would be President (Dan 2.21; Rom 13.1).

Period.

On this one, it appears that the prophets simply missed the mark.

I suspect this was because their souls really wanted to see another Trump term, and that desire likely interfered with their discernment, so that they spoke what was in their own hearts, and not what the Spirit was saying.

And the thing is, don’t get too judgey – that can easily happen to any of us when we are trying to figure out God’s will.

This column is not actually really about Trump – that’s just a high-profile example of getting God’s will and revelation wrong, which we’ve all witnessed the last couple of years.

We can have grace for someone missing the Holy Spirit. We all do this. It happens. There is no room for self-righteousness in this area.

But when someone claims to speak for the Lord, and it does not come to pass, it must be acknowledged and repented of.

Again, if the word was given publicly, the acknowledgment must also be public.

Those who prophesy without doing this risk having the revelation in their life limited until they deal with the error, as they have not proven to the Lord that they are faithful and good stewards of what they have been entrusted with (Mt 25.21; v.23; Lk 16.10).

Any prophet who regularly misses the mark without repentance is not a voice we should be listening to.

I love the prophetic gift. I believe in it. I have been greatly blessed by it. I believe the Spirit still speaks (always in line with Scripture) and that we desperately need to hear and know His voice.

And I desire to see the prophetic grow, to be pure, to be a place where the Holy Spirit moves in power.

Being humble enough to acknowledge our mistakes is crucial in any context, but especially when speaking on the Lord’s behalf.

When we fail to repent, our pride easily blinds us and leads us astray.

When we walk in repentance, we walk in the humble path that Christ calls us to, allowing ourselves to be changed by Him for the better through the process.

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