[Course 25 Index] [Prophetic-School Index] [Mini-Series Index] [Prev Lesson] [Next Lesson]


-- © GodSpeak International 2003 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Elvi Glass

Detecting The Spirit of Deception

Lesson 2
What Is A Mixed Word?

By Teresa Seputis

A "false prophecy" is something that is presented as a prophecy, but it does not come from God. That makes it a false word. Some false words are very easy to spot because they are so clearly in error. For instance, if someone gave us a "prophecy" that God wanted us to murder anyone who lived together as a couple without actually being married, we would clearly recognize this as a false prophecy. God would never say that! He has already commanded us not to murder in His written word, the Bible. God does not contradict Himself when He releases prophetic words. Since that "prophecy" (asking us to murder people involved in a sexual sin) clearly contradicts what God has already said in the Bible, it cannot be a true word from God and it must be rejected as false prophecy. That is clear-cut; it is easy to detect and reject.

But not all false prophecy is that easy to detect. The bible tells us that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14) and that "he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44). As a liar, one of Satan's goals is to "deceive the elect." Now, deception is a very tricky thing. The dictionary defines "deceive" as "To cause to believe what is not true; mislead." Blatant lies would not mislead anyone because they are easily recognized as lies. I can't remember who said this, but some famous person once defined deception this way, "if you want someone to believe a lie, then you need to wrap it in the truth."

And that is what mixed words do. They contain some truth. The goal of the truth included in the word is not to teach truth. It is to get you to say to yourself, "I recognize this truth, therefore this word must be ok." Then you let your guard down, and you may become willing to receive the rest of the word. Then, when you are in that receptive place, they throw the lie at you. And they usually try to state the lie in a way that sounds "good" or "nice" or "right."

In other words, a "mixed word" is where they phrase the lie in an attractive way and then wrap it in truth. This makes it much harder to identify the lie because it is not so blatant and obvious.

And that is a tool that Satan wants to use in the realm of the prophetic. He wants to give some accurate details, throw in a bit of truth and then throw in an attractively worded lie. The purpose of the lie is to draw us away from God, to interfere in our walk with Him, to deceive the very elect. And, if possible, he wants to cause us to fall into error or to fall away from God. Jesus warned us that this would happen back when He walked on the earth. He said, in Matthew 24:24, "For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect."

Now you may think to yourself that it would take a terrible and ungodly person to deliver a false or mixed word. Unfortunately that is not quite the case. Satan can, at times, deceive and speak through very committed and godly men and women. This happened to the Apostle Peter one time. Jesus had asked them, "who do you say I am?" and Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." Jesus agreed with Peter's answer, saying that the Holy Spirit had revealed that to him and it was truth. Immediately after that, Jesus began to talk about His upcoming suffering, death and resurrection. (That actually makes sense, because Jesus was trying to tell them that the Messiah came to die for their sins and rise again, so that they could have eternal life.) But Peter cut him off and even began to rebuke Jesus for saying that.

Let's pick up the story in Matt 16, verses 22 and 23. "Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 'Never, Lord!' he said. 'This shall never happen to you!' Jesus turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.'"

Satan jumped in and spoke to Jesus through one of His most trusted disciples. He tried to wrap the lie in an attractive way, "No, Jesus, you don't have to suffer and die." That was very attractive to Jesus who, just before His death in the Garden of Gethsemane fervently prayed, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me..." (Matt 26:39). In fact, the prospect of suffering and dieing on the cross was so unattractive to Jesus that He prayed it a second time in verse 42. Jesus did not look forward to suffering and pain and dieing -- it was not a very pleasant prospect for Him. However, He was firmly resolved to do God's will instead of His own. We also see this in His Gethsemane prayer. "Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done" (Matt 26:42).

So the prospect of not having to die on the cross sounded very tempting to Jesus -- so tempting in fact that He called the proposal "a stumbling block" in Matt 16:23. It was something Satan devised to deceive Him, to lead him astray from God's will by offering Him an attractively packaged alternative. And to make the deception more powerful, it was spoken through the mouth of one of His closest disciples, Peter. This was so tempting to Jesus that He had to resist the temptation and rebuke the devil. Jesus had to do what James 1:4 tells us, "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

We have seen that even occasionally the devil can use even the most Godly people to speak mixed words.. such as Peter first proclaiming that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God, then telling Jesus that He did not have to suffer and die on the cross. However, most of the time, Satan is unable to use the mature, godly and committed believers to deliver false prophecies. His use of Peter was a one-shot thing, there is no other place recorded in scripture where the devil spoke through Peter.

Since the devil wants to release a lot of mixed words into the realm of the prophetic, he would like to use real prophets to do this. But most of the time, mature prophets are able to detect and resist his strategies, so they are not a good source for him to use to release mixed words. So the devil has to look for others to exploit for his purposes. Occasionally he finds someone who delights to intentionally deceive and lie. Satan can and will use those type of people to deliver false words. Most of the time, the devil prefers to use people who have good motives, but who are easy for him to deceive because they are not saved or they are not very mature in their relationship with Christ.

If you remember, God used a real-life incident to motivate me to write this teaching series. Some recent submissions to the prophetic word list contained a mixture of truth and "bad theology." One word was fairly blatant in putting forth new-age theology, so I sent an email to the submitter explaining that we only accept Christian words that are in agreement with what the Bible says. The person wrote back "I don't understand." Of course he doesn't understand -- how can he understand the true prophetic if he is unsaved and he does not have the Holy Spirit living in him to guide him into all truth and to help him recognize error?

The problem with mixed words is that a lot of the time, the person who gives the mixed word gives it in all sincerity, unaware that it contains lies of the devil. Most of the time mixed words come from people who are either unsaved or who are not at all grounded in the bible and who have no idea of what God is really like. Sometimes they come from people with religious spirits or other demons who imitate the prophetic to the person, giving them "words from Hell" that are disguised as light.

The person who wrote back "I don't understand" submitted multiple other words to the list after that email, and they were mixed words, containing both truth and error. So I wrote him back, explaining that he needed to read the bible. I shared the salvation message and I also shared some of the specifics of where his words had violated scripture by quoting a portion of his word and then quoting the bible on the same topic.

This person is a 60 year old man who lives in Germany. He wrote back a lengthy email trying to convince me that he was saved and speaking for God. He was so deceived that he thought he was truly a born again prophet of God speaking for Him, and he clearly was not even born again. I would like to share some excerpts from his email to give you an idea of just how deceived this person was. This is not his whole email, but some pieces of it. It started with a quote from my email to him and his reply to that, which clearly shows that he is not born again:

> I already sent you an email explaining that your words do not
> line up with the bible. People do not come to God based on how
> much truth they carry, they come to God ONLY through the shed
> blood of Jesus Christ.

Teresa, here you are wrong, excuse my frankness.

Then he went on to identify "God's word" not as the bible, but as hearing God speak directly to us each day.

Does our Father in Heaven not talk to you and don't you talk with him every day, every hour?

I just can't believe that people claim to be Christians but don't even communicate with our Father in Heaven daily, in order to do His WILL.

How else could someone do His will every day, when not being able to listen to His WORD, which He talks to each of us at any time?!

Regarding my suggestion that he familiarize himself with the bible, he wrote,
I don't have to read the Bible over and over again, because I did it once and since then I am talking with our Father in Heaven from face to face.... and that is enough at least for me.

He then goes on to give a detailed testimony of his "belief in Jesus Christ." He had been dieing of cancer 15 years ago and God appeared to him and "came into my life very much like He came into the life of dear Paul." He was healed, got a job and made him a successful business man. So far that sounds like it could be a real born-again testimony. However, the man came to realize that revealed His "secrets" to those who mature themselves in the truth. Now this is where it gets scary:

He showed my the opposite and led me to His sources, to His handmaiden and servants across the past almost 2000 years.... and they are large numbers....

But again, as anything even in the world, this needs training, needs many conversations with Him in my heart (not with the lips,) and when having been led through the centuries with all His servants and handmaiden, inside and outside churches, I did ask Him about His whereabouts in our days... namely the past 200 years..... and He did not bring me right to His sources, but instead led me to many false prophets, in order to be able to differentiate the false but lovely words of Lucifer and his helpers, from His maiden and servants, of whom is written, that to the end He shall reveal to them in word and visions.....

In other words, he was taught of God by spirit beings (including a female spirit being referred to as "handmaiden"). I don't think these guys are real angels, but "angels of light."

Then he said that God told him to study false prophets instead of studying the bible. This meant that he had no absolute truth (e.g., Scripture) to evaluate his experiences. When you throw away the absolute standard of the bible, then you do open yourself to error. You don't have any way of evaluating what is true and what is false if you don't have the absolute standard of the bible as truth. Then you open yourself to all sorts of deception, to what sounds good. You can mix truths about God, such as Jesus is the Savior, with falsehood and wrong doctrine. This particular man learned from his spirit guides that salvation comes from embracing "truth" and maturing rather than through the blood of Jesus. He believed that if you don't do this on earth, you can do it after you die -- only then it is harder and more work.

Finally, this poor deceived man truly believes that God has sent him as His representative to share this message with the world. He believes it is a real message from God. This man is very sincere and he truly believes that He is serving God by delivering mixed prophecies.

It is a very sad thing, but most of the people who the devil uses to deliver mixed prophetic words sincerely believe that they are serving God. They usually have some sort of pride or arrogance that tells them that they don't need the Bible because they hear directly from God. Oftentimes they are not born again, but have accepted "another path to God" instead of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many times they use Christian terminology, claim to be Christians, and think that they are following and serving God when they are really serving the devil.


-- © GodSpeak International 2003 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

[Course 25 Index] [Prophetic-School Index] [Mini-Series Index ] [Prev Lesson] [Next Lesson]