The Judgments of God

So why is that that so much of "false prophecy" takes the form of doom and gloom words, where the person speaks forth some type of threat or condemnation? There are two main reasons for this:

1. The would-be "prophet" is prophesying from inner character flaws.
2. The would-be "prophet" is making assumptions and has misunderstandings.

Let's take a brief look at both of these.

Prophesying From Character Flaws

Jesus explained one of the reasons for false prophesy in Matthew 12:34: "...How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."

In short, when our heart is full of things like unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, etc, then we will end up speaking words of complaint, criticism, judgment and condemnation. So many of the people who bring forth these false words of judgment are in fact full of some type of hurt, resentment or bitterness. They using the false word as a psychological way to "lash out" and deal with their own pain and woundedness. Also, many of the people who release this type of false prophesy tend to have critical and hard to please personalities. Or sometimes they are just filled with so much hate and prejudice that it spills out of them in the form of false judgment/condemnation types of words.

People who prophesy out of this type of character flaw will often give negative or outlandish words to people, then they threaten the person with God's punishment/condemnation if they won't receive the word.

In fact, I get reports from people who've received this type of "threat" all of the time. There story is pretty much the same. Let me share it with you...

Someone gives them a "word" that is harsh or corrective, but that word just doesn't seem to fit them at all. In silent prayer, they open their hearts to God and invite the Holy Spirit to convict and to change anything in them that He wants to work on. But instead of getting any sort of witness in their spirit about the "word," they get a check in their spirit.

Then the one who gave the questionable word to them starts to pressure them to "receive the word" right then and there. Most believers won't lie and tell the "false prophet" that this was a good word. There are several reasons for that: 1) they know lying is a sin, 2) they don't relate to the word at all, 3) the word is full of untrue criticisms and/or put downs that they don't want to take ownership of, and 4) because they have a check in their spirit about it.

So the one who gave the "word" tells them that if they reject this word, they are rejecting God and God will punish them for it. Or the false prophet may spin it a bit differently, saying that he (or she) is "God's anointed," and if they reject the word, then they are "touching God's anointed," and God will punish them for that.

Some of these false prophets have gone so far as to threaten that the ones who won't "receive" their false words will either be struck dead or sent to hell.

However, most of them are more subtle and just accuse their victims of pride and rebellion for not relating to their false prophecy. Most of them just leave a veiled threat that "God will punish you if you don't repent."

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:

Let me give you an example of this. There is a man (his first name is Brian) who seemed to take great pleasure in sending out judgment and destruction words by email. He searched the internet for the email addresses of anyone even remotely related to prophetic ministry, and then sends his false judgment words to them--several times a week. He seems to take great delight in telling those who already honor and serve the Lord that they need to repent or they will be destroyed.

I discussed a few of Brian's 'words' with the Lord, and God told me that Brian was not speaking for Him. Since the words are false and a bit on the offensive side, I politely wrote Brian many times, asking him to stop sending these to me. But, he refused to remove my name from his list, and he kept sending unwanted doom and gloom false prophesies to me.

After weeks of this, I finally wrote a script to send multiple "please remove my address from your list" replies to each false prophesy email he sent.

Brian's response was to send a word to me personally and repeatedly. He sent it to me about a dozen times. I haven't read the content of his email because I have already judged him as 'not credible,' which means that I now I delete all of his emails unread. But the subject line was: "Repent Teresa."

In short, Brian's response was that I need to repent for not receiving his false "word." That is typical of people who prophesy judgment words out of their own hurts and character flaws. They frequently threaten that God will punish anyone who won't receive their word. In fact, that type of threat is one of the earmarks of false prophecy.

A NOTE ABOUT "NOT RECEIVING" THESE FALSE WORDS:

Sometimes these false judgment words are corporate (or given to a group of people). If you don't relate to a false judgment word over a group or nation, you usually don't need to deal with it. There is not a lot of emotional struggle, you just tell yourself, "That is not God" and you forget about it. And that is usually an ok way to deal with corporate false words. If God wants you to do more than simply forget about it, the Holy Spirit will speak to you and show you what He wants you to do.

But if the false judgment word is given to you personally (instead of to a group) then you are going to have to deal with it in some way, so that there isn't something spiritual hanging over your head. You will need to decide whether or not it is a God-word. If you think it is really a legitimate word from God, then you will need to find out how God wants you to respond to it and then do what He shows you to do. If you decide it is a false word, you will need to reject it.

But you should either receive or reject it instead of "putting it on a shelf" as some people advise. If you put it on a shelf and if it contains untrue negative things, the enemy of your soul could use it to empower some of those things against you as a curse.

Most believers go through all sorts of inner trauma when then get a false negative word. They are upset by the word, they know it doesn't fit them, and they want to reject it. But there is this little voice inside that asks, "But what if this really is God? I don't want to reject God's word. I don't want to have a hard towards Him if He is trying to convict and correct me."

And because they love God so much, they struggle with this negative word much longer than they should.

So let me tell you what I do went I get a word that I don't think is a God-word. First, I do my best to prayerfully judge it. I bring the word to Him and ask Him to look at it with Me. I ask Him to speak to me in some way (of His choosing) so that I will know is Him. I ask Him to show me if this was from Him. Then I give it a short while (maybe two or three days). If I don't hear from God on it, and my gut feel is that this is not a "God word," then I reject it.

I never "put it on the shelf" and wait until God either confirms it or shows clearly it wasn't Him. But I don't do that because you can end up waiting "years" and not hear from Him. That gives the devil all sorts of time to empower the negative things in that word against me as a curse, and I don't want to give him that sort of opportunity. So, I try to deal with words shortly after I get them, to either receive them or reject them. And in the case where I think it is not a God-word, I tell the Lord something like this:

Lord, I have done my best to judge this word, and at this point I really don't think it is from You, so I am rejecting it. Lord, if I am wrong and this is from You, then please bring it around again from a different source, and in a different way where I am able to recognize it as You. If I come to see that it really is from You, then I will receive it, because I love You and I want to receive whatever You speak to me. But at this point, I don't think that this is You and that is why I reject it.

Assumptions and Misunderstandings

I said earlier that there are two main reasons why people give false judgment and condemnation words. We just finished talking about the first, that they are prophesying out of inner issues and character flaws. But not everyone who gives a false judgment word has these character flaws. Sometimes people prophesy this way because of wrong assumptions they have made, or because of misunderstandings about God's word and His ways.

These are ones who see "only" the judgment words in the Old Testament and come to the conclusion that the word "prophesy" means to "condemn sin and command sinners to repent." They make a leap of assumption, figuring that since God did something a certain way one time in the Old Testament, He will always do it precisely that way.

They read that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their immorality (including homosexuality), so they assume that God is about to destroy any other city that has a stronghold of that same sin...such as San Francisco or New York City. (And while God may in fact decide to do that at some future time, they don't even seek God's timing or plans for a given city. They just assume that God will destroy it the same way He did Sodom and Gomorrah.)

Or they read how God judged a nation for sacrificing their children to idols. Then they decide that abortion is really a "sacrifice of babies to the idol of hedonism." So they began to cry out condemnation and punishment against some cities/nations that permit abortion. They don't want to see what God's activity or plans are for that city/nation. They simply draw a parallel between one thing they read in the bible and what they see in the modern-day word. Then, without actually hearing from God or consulting Him, they speak out their assumptions as though it was a "thus sayeth the Lord."

Another mistake they make is to look at the hostile/confrontational delivery style that God occasionally used when addressing people who hardened their hearts and repeatedly rejected and ignored several earlier prophetic warnings. They say to themselves, "This is the style God uses for prophetic words," so they use that style in all of their words.

They assume that God always talks to people like Jesus talked to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:33 when He said, "You Serpents, you brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?" So they copy that harsh style, wrongly assuming that this is how God talks to everyone.

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE:

A lady came into a Christian chatroom and wanted to share a "word" she had received in the email. No one was particularly interested in hearing it, but she insisted on sharing it anyhow. Then she began to cut and paste a searing judgment word to the residents of a certain nation. The word threatened horrible and hideous things would happen to every single person there because was not a single righteous person left in it, so God was going to completely destroy and annihilate it. But He was going to punish he sinners and make them suffer horribly before He killed them and sent them to Hell.

Some people in the room stopped her because they did not feel that what she was sharing was "of God." Then someone asked her who the "prophet" was that sent this word to her. She had no idea who he was and did not know him. Then she was asked how she could consider this a credible word if she did not even know whether or not it came from a legitimate prophetic source. She explained that she believed it had to be credible because it was so harsh. Her idea was that when God spoke, all He said was harsh and condemning things.

She also believed that it was her solemn duty to pass this word on to others--because of how horrible it was. Since we did not want to hear it in this room, she decided to go to another room where she could share this "word."

As it turns out, I happen to personally know of many believers in the nation this false word was supposedly for. These men and women of God are actively honoring, obeying and serving Him, which emphasized to me how inaccurate her doom/gloom "word" was.

But there was something inside of this lady that wanted to proclaim the judgment and condemnation of God upon others, so she was keen to share what she got in the mail with anyone who would listen.