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January 7, 2015
Inside the False Thinking of a False Prophet
By Anthony Wade
False Prophetess Michelle McClain displays how the false really think...
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"Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law" (Prov. 29:18, RSV).
http://www.charismamag.com/spirit/prophecy/17452-do-you-need-a-prophetic-word
It is the new year. The time of new beginnings and unmet resolutions. The busiest month for gym memberships and false prophets. Neither of which will be of much use. Sometimes a false prophet provides us with an insight into just how badly they understand God and the Bible. It is a rare glimpse into the mind of the deceived who spend their lives deceiving others. This month the example comes to us from Crusaders Church in Chicago. It appears that this church adheres to the beliefs followed by the heretical New Apostolic Reformation and is seriously into the false signs and lying wonders movement. One of the "house prophets" there is a woman by the name of Michelle McClain and she penned an article for Charisma News which can be found at the above link. This article is entitled - "Do You Need a Prophetic Word?" Let us explore the flawed thinking of a false prophet today.
Prophecy provides revelation of the purposes of God. It is the revealed will of God for your life. "Where there is no prophecy the people cast off restraint." "Casting off restraint" is letting go of your goals and focus in life. You become passionless, living an undisciplined, mediocre life. Without prophetic revelation, we lose a grip on life and become like a wild person.
We see right away how flawed her thinking is. Prophecy is not the revealed will of God for our lives. That is what the Bible is. Drawing on her obvious purpose driven teaching, she also mischaracterizes casting off restraint into Warrenesque language. Casting off restraint has nothing to do with becoming purposeless, passionless, or mediocre. It has everything to do with becoming ungovernable. As is the trademark of false prophets who abuse today's key verse by overly focusing on the first portion not realizing the second portion is in direct relation. If blessed is he who keeps the law, then casting of restraint means to cast off the law. To do as once wishes instead of what God commands. To the purpose driven false prophet however, it is always about goals and focus in life because they desperately want to make the Christian experience about you when it is supposed to about Christ. She continues:
Without prophecy, we become like savages, never grasping the potential God has placed within us. Prophecy can inspire within us a sense of purpose that brings focus, determination and discipline into our lives.
Savages? Really? Notice beloved who this is all about in the mind of the false prophet. It is all about you! You have un-grasped potential. Prophecy is not about God! It is about inspiring a sense of purpose in our life! It is so we can regain some focus and determination! Search the Scriptures and see if you can find any instance of prophets doing this. It was never about them - it was always about God. Unless they were false:
And the Lord said to me: "The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. - Jeremiah 14: 14 (ESV)
A lying vision. A worthless divination. A deceit of their own minds. Wow. That is one frightening indictment for the likes of Michelle McClain. Yet she would continue:
The prophetic word will align our lives with the law, which is the decree of God. Without prophetic vision, we will be untrained in the ways of God, living our lives without the discipline of God. We are called to be disciples of Christ. A disciple is a disciplined learner. The prophetic ministry will equip you with the advantage of living under the discipline of God.
What? Are you making this up as you go along? Sometimes when you hear false prophets speak, it seems as if they think we are still in the days of the Old Testament. You see then, there was no real written word. Most of religion was passed down through oral history. God used prophets to speak to kings and the people because there was no revealed will. Not so today. We have the Bible today. The revealed will of God. His Word. In it is all the discipline we need if we would simply obey it. When Luke writes in Acts about the nobility of the Bereans it was not because they sought prophetic interpretation of what they had been taught by Paul. No. They went and searched the Scriptures to see if what he said was true. A disciple is a disciplined learner who learns through the Word of God - not the mouth of a false prophet. McClain marches on:
The disadvantage of not having prophecy released in your life is that you will live your life in a vacuum. One translation of Proverbs 29:18 states, "Without prophetic vision the people run wild" (GW). In other words, they live life taking risks with no control or direction, leaving them uncultivated, out of rhythm and out of reason. The prophetic word brings order and structure to your life. God wants your life to mean something--your money, your efforts. The prophetic word of God causes you to live your life for something greater than yourself.
Dear Lord her depravity knows no end. My life has been lived in a vacuum? Who knew? I was not aware that we need to have a prophecy "released" in our lives. Perhaps because it does not say that anywhere in the Bible. In the mind of the deceived deceivers, prophecy, not the Bible brings order, structure and purpose to your life. You just can't make this stuff up.
Life and time are speeding along so fast for all of us. We should be able to look back over our lives and say that we have accomplished the purpose God created us for. We should want to be able to confidently say, "I was here."
No beloved. Do not fall for the egocentric gospel of me. There are plenty of people who live very ordinary lives. Others who live lives of abject sorrow. Believers do not have a birthright to expect that their life will leave a mark that says "I was here." How narcissistic can you get? It is not supposed to be about us but about Him. What did Paul say?
What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ."Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. - 1Corinthians 1: 12-17 (ESV)
Beloved, people should be able to look back over our lives and say - God was there. The false prophetess now ratchets up the purpose driven false teaching:
The prophetic word will allow you to live for eternal purpose and not the temporal. It changes your value system. Once the revealed purpose of the Lord is known, you set your affections on things above, transcending this temporal world. There are people who live their lives never knowing or obeying the prophetic purpose of God. The graveyard is one of the richest places in the earth. People live and die on the earth with so much potential for greatness. They never impact the world around them. Don't let your gravestone epitaph read: "It was like they were never here." "They settled for too little." "They never discovered the riches and treasures that were inside of them." "They lived for the temporal, fading purposes, never living out God's eternal purposes."
This is so backwards. We are not called to be great but to be humble. We are not called to live our purpose but His. What is inside of us is filth and sin not riches and treasures. When the disciples argued over who would be greatest did Jesus warn them to not leave their greatness in the graveyard? No. Jesus said he who is the least is the greatest. This is simply carnal, worldly thinking couched in Christianese. McClain unfortunately continues:
Life before Christ can be so devastating and confusing. It's like having the wind knocked out of you. The prophetic word provides spiritual oxygen for life and destiny. Prophecy is the breath of life being released back into you. When God breathed into Adam, He released life and prophetic purpose into him. We must understand that God will always give us pictures, maps and directions to show us how we should be living our lives. His will for our lives is knowable. This is revealed by prophecy. Everything in the earth is trying to take us away from the original purposes of God for our lives. It dangles every kind of glitter in front of us. Its ultimate goal is to lead us down paths of destruction.
Wow. The spiritual and biblical ignorance is staggering here. So life before Christ is like having the wind knocked out of you? Really? When we were dead in our trespasses, under the yoke of bondage to slavery and destined for hell, that is just like when someone punches us in the stomach and we can't catch our breath? When your foundation for our sinful state is this trivialized, it is no wonder that everything that comes out of your mouth is so heretical. Prophecy is not the breath of life being released back into you. Go back and read the creation account. There is zero indication that God breathed prophetic purpose into Adam. That is simply being added to the text here. God does not give us maps and pictures to show us how to live our lives. He gave us the Bible. His Word. We do not need your word on top of it like God forgot something. His revealed will for our life is very knowable because it is written down in the Bible. His decretive will however is not known and He has no intention of revealing it to us, let alone to you, to tell us.
Do you notice the self indulgent set up here though? Michelle McClain fancies herself a prophetess. She has carved out this niche for herself in life, business and church. So in her explanations, she has to pretend the Bible supports the lie she lives. She actually claims here that the unknown will of God for our lives is revealed by prophecy. That is nonsense with a capital N. She is right that the devil and the world dangles all sorts of glitter in front of us to distract us and lead us down paths of destruction. She just is so blinded by her own carnality she cannot see how she is one of those paths. What she teaches is unbiblical and fanciful. It distracts people from Jesus and puts their eyes on her instead. Thankfully she is wrapping up:
God, in His love and mercy, sends prophets and prophetic people with insight and direction. We must then make a decision to follow and align our lives with the revealed prophetic word. We must go to the cross. I am not talking about suffering, but rather where your desires are in conflict with God's desires--you must be willing to put those desires to death on the cross.
Beloved, God in His love and mercy sent His only Son to die for our sins. Not prophetic people with insight and direction. It is true He sent them in the Old Testament because there was no widespread Word of God. Christ came to fulfill all of that though. Now we have the full revealed will of God. Everything He intended to reveal to us He has. False prophets, which Jesus warned us about, will always draw our attention to themselves. A true prophet or someone exhibiting the gift of prophecy will always guide us back to Scripture because that is what sayeth the Lord. God did not forget anything. It is not like over 2000 years after the Gospels God suddenly remembered that He wanted to tell you to open up a business so He is telling Michelle McClain to tell you. Sorry Michelle, it just does not work that way. She concludes:
The moment you choose to align your life with the prophetic purpose of God, the Lord is watching and sends every resource you need to accomplish His prophetic purpose in your life. You're not in this world by chance. Embrace the prophetic anointing that gives you an advantage to live a rich and full life.
Let me ask you something Michelle. Does the underground Christian in China have this advantage you are bragging about? What about the martyred Iraqi Christian? How does this prophetic purpose theology play in third world countries where believers have to pray for clean water? If your teaching cannot transcend our mere geographical borders when the Bible transcends all time and culture, then your teaching is not from God. Period.
Listen, I get it. I understand the desire to know more. To see the future. To be assured everything is going to be OK. I understand the desire to want our life to be this grand play where we are the star. It feeds the flesh. Pride is the greatest of sins. But it is not "prophecy" beloved. Having someone lay their hands on you and sputter sentence fragments and vague predictions over your life is not from God. It is from Satan. It is not prophetic. It is clairvoyance. Let's be real clear here. We do not align ourselves with some made up prophetic purpose. We align ourselves with His Word. It is His revealed will that brings us closer to His decretive will. Don't believe the slick marketing and fancy Christo-speak of people selling prophecy to you. Think about this seriously for a second. Have you ever seen one of these charlatans give a negative prophecy? Have you ever heard them say, "whoa, God is telling me that things are not going well with you. You are not going to be birthing anything. There is no shift in your atmosphere and quite frankly, you need to repent cause your life may be required of you soon." Of course not because that won't sell. It reminds me of one of my favorite prophets who never wrote a book:
And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, "Inquire first for the word of the Lord."Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, "Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or shall I refrain?" And they said, "Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king."But Jehoshaphat said, "Is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire?" And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil." And Jehoshaphat said, "Let not the king say so." - 1Kings 22: 5-8 (ESV)
Do you get that? He hates him because he prophesies the truth! Ahab didn't want the truth. He wanted what the other 400 "prophets" had to say. He wanted to hear what he wanted to hear. Michelle McClain is one of those 400 telling us to go up for the Lord will give it into our hands. Except she did not actually hear that from the Lord. She made it up. Micaiah however only spoke what sayeth the Lord. He is like the Bible for us today. We have to decide this day who it is that we will listen to. The 400 prophets who tell us what our itching ears want to hear or the one who tells us the truth, even if it is not what we want to hear. Before you answer realize that Ahab listened to the 400 and was killed in battle as Micaiah told him the Lord said he would be.
Choose wisely.
Reverend Anthony Wade - January 7, 2015