About a year ago as I got off the bus, two Mormon missionaries standing at the intersection started talking to me. They offered me some reading materials but I refused them and told them that I was a Christian. We spent few minutes discussing our different beliefs. They said, “Just like in the Old Testament times there were prophecies, God sent prophecies to speak again to us about 200 years ago.†I asked them, “Why did God decide not to talk to us through prophecies in those 1,800 years between the ministry of Christ on earth and 200 years ago?†There were no answers.
In the summer (I think) of 2006 a friend in Windsor, Ontario took me and my uncle and his wife to her church. It was a small church and I had never been there before. As soon as the service ended this old woman came directly to me and says in a commanding voice, “Young man..†and I was thinking, “Me?!†and continued saying, “When I first saw you I thought of a stop sign…†then my aunt quickly got a piece of paper and pen started writing down what the old woman was saying. The old woman continued basically saying that God will use me as a spiritual crossing guard to direct His children. I remember laughing on the inside thinking, “Yea, sure that’s going to happen!†To be honest, for whatever reasons I never believed those words but I kept the piece of paper out of fear just in case those words could really be from God.
Modern Day Prophecies by Fadi
Another time, few years back, I attended a Pentecostal church (I am not bashing Pentecostal churches, I am just stating a fact) for about 2 months. The pastor (a very nice man) kept making prophecies week after week , but they simply did not come true. He would say that he is seeing a vision of this and that and next week God would do this and that. Next week nothing happened–it was just like any other week. I still remember an incident where the pastor prayed over a Christian woman in a wheelchair and he said she will be healed immediately, and she did not. Then he said she will be healed by the end of the service, and she did not. In fact she wasn’t healed by next week either. Needless to say I stopped going to that church.
What bothered me is how everybody at the church ignored the facts that whatever this pastor was saying did not come true. They all rationalized why his prophecies did not come true. The pastor was a nice man and he could be a very sincere person, but that doesn’t mean he was teaching the truth. As Christians we cannot ignore the lack of evidence of an unfulfilled prophecy. The Bible says..
“If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.†Deuteronomy 18:22
Recently while I was getting a haircut I saw this “inspirational†Barack Obama-Prophecy Fulfilled poster on the mirror. It basically claimed that Barack Obama becoming a president of U.S.A is a good thing because he will do God’s work. I don’t know how people define God’s work nowadays but murdering babies, God’s most precious creation, through abortion is not God’s work.
I personally believe that we should spend less time trying to decipher the Bible’s prophecies to support a motive of ours (whether personal or political), and spend more time doing God’s work: spreading His word, serving and helping others, glorifying Him through holy and obedient life, and getting to know Him more personally.
That being said I am not saying in any way that God does not speak through prophecies to us, the Bible says in Joel 2:28-32:
“And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.â€
What are you experiences with prophecies? What are your thoughts on them?
5 thoughts on “Modern Day Prophecies”
We need less self proclaimed “prophets” trying to predict the rapture or read the future and more prohetic wisdom calling us to repentence and obedience! Too bad the OT test of a prophet couldn’t still be applied today. Anyone up for a good old fashioned stoning?
Thanks for opening such an interesting dialog Fadi, great that you share from your personal experience, many Church does not speak about prophecy or the voice of God speaking to His people. If you search the Bible you will find many examples of God speaking to people or transferring messages through His servants my favorite story is in 1 Samuel 3:1-10
Samuels response to God: “Speak, for your servant is listening.â€
I think this is kinda what loswl experienced, but not in an audible fashion. The Bible do warn us of false prophets and teachers and I guess that was your experience, as Christians we should pray that our eyes will be open and we should be able to know when false prophets are trying to trick His people, I think you did a great job of warding off the Mormons..that was funny 🙂 but shows that you have the gift of discernment.
I agree with Robert Sackey, that we cannot turn our backs on the gift of prophecy (It is a Gift) Romans 12:6, 1 Corinthians 13:2, 1 Corinthians 12:7, 1 Corinthians 14:3 and many others shows this.
I love the passage you gave from Deuteronomy 18:22 truly this verse shows us that some people will start to make up false prophecies and this verse is a fair warning to the Church, that if the prophecies are not being fulfilled then we should not believe the prophet,
“That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.â€
presumptuously: too bold or forward; taking too much for granted; showing overconfidence, arrogance, or taking liberties, Going beyond what is right or proper; excessively forward, overstepping due bounds.
These prophets are acting presumptuously, means that they are doing a work, they are saying words, that God did not put in their mouths to say. It is a vision from their own hearts, very dangerous!
With that said we should always be practicing the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives, because it strengthens the body of Christ 🙂
I don’t know whether to agree with you or disagree with you, but the point is that the gifts of prophecy, discernment, word of knowledge, and word of wisdom are an integral part of the Ministry of the Holy Spirit, and we can’t just put them on the shelf and “get on with the Christian Life”. The very fact that there exists phony or counterfeit manifestations of these gifts, is an indication that there are originals. For the cannot be a counterfeit, except there be an original.
We believers are servants and instruments of the Holy Spirit, and He should determine what gifts He operates through us. Frankly, the absence of the operation of these gifts is a sure sign of the absence of faith in God.
In my part of the world, I have come across prophecies and words of knowledge etc, that have been fulfilled and verified with pin point accuracy. I have experienced numerous personal ones.
If you’re not experiencing these, why don’t you go on your knees and ask the Lord? The Bible says that “and these signs and wonders shall follow those who believe…”. Signs and wonders were an integral part of Christ’s ministry. They still are,today. The Bible is full of prophecies. Jesus prophesied, and He also quoted the prophets. We cannot do away with prophecies. We cannot to resort to “academic Christianity”, simply because some have prophesied wrongly. Let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. The Holy Spirit is alive and working today, as ever before, and the we are going to see another worldwide out pouring of the Holy Spirit again. We need to, prayerfully, get ready for the end time fulfillment of the prophecy from Joel 2:28. God bless us all. Cheers.
Loving your writing Fadi, I will share with you the same as I did on Flickr.
This is a very interesting topic, I totally agree that we should spend less time trying to decipher the Bible’s prophecies to support a motive of ours” We stand on very dangerous grounds when we do that!
I have another perspective on what the lady told you after the service “God will use you as a spiritual crossing guard to direct His children”. It does not seem to be very specific as to how that may look in reality, it could be translated that you may become a preacher or that you are already a crossing guard as you share your writings on Flickr…who knows how to determine that?!?
I have had some experience with “God’s Voice” telling me to tell someone this or that. I will tell you of two of them, then you can decide if they are real or not.
First Incident:
I was at a crusade, I was inside the Church with others waiting for the praise and worship to start, it was early evening so it was already dark outside, all of a sudden the lights in the neighborhood, went out! I could hear the leaders talking in the darkness, discussing if they should call off the meeting and just send everyone home. Then within my heart (I can’t explain it) a still small voice said, “Tell the leaders that the lights will be back in fifteen minutes, they don’t have to worry” I sat there in disobedience, I said to myself, I am going to look so dumb!!, I am not sure, am I just telling myself this? So in the middle of me trying to figure out and rationalize what I had heard, I said, I am going to count out fifteen minutes and see if the lights really, really come back on. So I did, I held my head down like I was praying and counted out the fifteen minutes and to my amazement at the end of my counting, the lights came back on in the Church, I was so amazed, that I did tell one of the leaders, I don’t know if they believed me because, nothing was taught to us about hearing or discernment of Gods voice at my Church, but the thing is that God did not get the Glory, because I was disobedient.
Second Incident:
Many incidents happened after that, but I will tell you this particular one, which is very interesting. A huge hurricane passed over South Florida, I think it was Hurricane Charley, we lost light in a majority of our neighborhoods and we could not go to work. The lights came back in my neighborhood and I was able to car pool with my friend to work (she is a Christian), she did not have her light back as yet and she was very worried that she would have to spend another night in the darkness and heat. At lunch, she was on her phone talking to one of her friends and I over heard her telling her friend how worried she was about going back home in the darkness. When I heard her talking, I heard the still small voice in my heart say: “Tell her that when she gets home tonight, she will have light and everything will be ok, not to worry”
Well by this time I had enough sense not to disobey. As soon as my friend came off the phone, I pulled her aside and told her exactly what I heard, she looked at me like I was crazy, I said, I know, I know!! it sounds crazy, but just trust in the Lord and don’t believe that what I am saying is coming from me, because I have no authority to know what is going to happen, but I believe that it will happen, when we went back from our lunch to the office she told everyone what I had said (some were non-Christians, so they were very doubtful).
I proclaimed to them boldly that God controls everything not us, you see on the news they were giving estimated time of when certain neighborhoods would get their lights back on, my friends neighborhood was not even on the list as yet. In the evening I was not able to car pool back home with her, I went home with another friend. The next day I went back to work, I asked my friend…”so what happened?..did you have lights when you went home?” She paused for a couple minutes to catch her breath, ……she said, not only were there lights on her block, but her whole neighborhood was lit up!! street lights and all!!, hallelujah!. God was truly glorified in that situation. 🙂
PS: My church still do not teach anything about discernment of the Holy Spirit, this is just my personal experience.
Great insight!!!