In Matthew 7:15, Jesus tells us to beware of false prophets. But how can we know who they are? How can we recognize a false prophet?
Pastor Jim Kibler, host of the Receiving From God podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, has some answers for these questions. “If you don’t recognize these wolves, they will destroy you. And pastors, they will destroy your church,” he says.
During the last year, Kibler says, he had a false prophet at his own church who wanted a ministry there. “‘God sent me,’ she said,” explains Kibler. “You know, in Bible college, they told us that when somebody says, ‘God sent me to help you,’ that is the red flag. … And so that’s exactly what she said, because they all operate the same way. So many pastors … who are gullible will fall for that.”
But there’s another critical way to recognize a false prophet, Kibler explains. “The people who are actually accusing everybody of being false prophets are actually false prophets themselves. And nobody ever says anything. Well, I’m saying something,” he says.
“Here’s how to recognize these false prophets. False prophets are people who deny the power of the Holy Spirit right away. If they deny the power of the Holy Spirit, you know they’re a false prophet. And they do,” Kibler says. “They believe the power of the Holy Spirit left here when the apostles left this earth, that the power of the Holy Spirit was only for the book of Acts just to initially build up the church, and then we don’t need it anymore because we have a Bible. That’s what they say: ‘We don’t need miracles anymore; we have a Bible.’
“Well, in the Bible, it doesn’t say we don’t need miracles anymore. [False prophets] deny the power of the Holy Spirit,” he says. “They deny the gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
To learn more about false prophets and how you can identify their evil work, click here to listen.
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