Overview of Profile of the False Prophet. I outline the general characteristics of the false prophet, which in following posts I will define each characteristic. This fourth part will continue to deal with marks of the false prophet.
Contents
Marks – Impotent in Prayer
The true minister of God, as with the true obedient Christian, has a lively prayer life in which they get their requests answered more as a rule than an exception. The secret of getting God to listen to one’s prayers and sending answers is in the kind of spiritual life that that person lives before God. As the person establishes his life as holy before God, he is a righteous man, and God engages with that person’s prayers. The false prophet has no power in prayer with God. He can arrange a public prayer for something and then, behind the scenes, make it look like God answered his prayer for gaining awe among the simple watching him, but there is no real spiritual power in his prayer life. Actually, he doesn’t believe in prayer as a force of change in the reality of life. He fails in prayer.
Marks – Ingratiate their Lusts
One more mark of the false prophet’s mindset of focusing on the temporal instead of the eternal, they live for pleasure. They are not people who suffer, sacrifice, and work towards some spiritual goal. They want to indulge their own selves with the pleasures of life.
Marks – Are a Bad Moral Examples
The false prophet wants to present himself as a shining spiritual giant, but in reality, his life is a total spiritual failure. Even publically in his public “ministry”, elements of pride, lying, deception, etc. can be seen. Promising people something from God in order to control them is deception, something that Satan always uses and God never does. God allows man to deceive himself because that person will not listen to God.
Marks – Lack Integrity
Integrity means being whole and complete in one’s person. A divided or fractured person is one who is halting between two or more opinions or roads. Jesus said that no man can serve two masters, because his animating force of following things is fractured between two goals. This is seen, for example, in a good pastor’s ministry, he has to speak the truth, and when he “steps on the rich people’s toes”, he does so even though it may cause his church and his person financial loss in the future. The false prophet will bend his teaching and preaching to keep his followers under his control, and he does not preach the whole counsel of God, because it is not convenient to do so.
Marks – Merchandise in Souls
The false prophet barters in the manipulation of people, their souls. He brings them under his control and influence to use them for his own purposes (not for God’s work and purposes). He does not really care for their souls, because when they become useless to him, he discards them easily never thinking of their welfare, but only in how he can get gain from some easier souls to convince.
Marks – Are Not Responsible, not Duty Bound
The true man of God is rigidly bound by his obligation to obey, worship, and serve his Savior and Creator. The false prophet is marked by his lack of duty. What he considers absolute his duty is the building of his own glory, and he attacks and chastises any of his followers that would in any way diminish his or his ministry’s glory and power.
Marks – Preach a Substitute Message
A key mark of a true prophet (preacher, messenger, speaker of God) is that he has to be true and unique in speaking only what God has spoken to him. This has to be based in the Word of God and nothing more. The false prophet is marked by his sloppy way he treats Scripture, and his imprecise interpretations, understandings, and applications of Scripture. His message comes from his own heart, and not from God.
Overview of Profile of the False Prophet