Beware of False Prophets

“Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.” 
Matthew 24:11

In the apostolic period, two main gifts of the Spirit were those of the apostle and prophet. In fact, the church itself was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Eph. 2:20). One function of these men was to receive and transmit God’s revelation to His people - first verbally, then eventually written in permanent form in the New Testament. “Which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5).

The apostle Paul revealed also that such prophecies would cease once they were no longer needed. “But when the perfect [or ‘complete’] comes, the partial will be done away” (1 Cor. 13:9-10). Clearly in the context, this refers to the complete revelation of God. When the last book of the Bible was transmitted to the church by the last living apostle, the Lord warned us neither to “add to them” nor “take away from the words of the book of this prophecy” (Rev. 22:18-19).

But many false prophets have indeed “gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1), just as Jesus warned, and they have “mislead many.” One of them, a self-asserted seventh century “prophet” from Arabia, received certain “revelations” from a “god” that were vastly different from those of the God of the Bible, and his followers now number over a billion.

There have been others, before and since, and the Lord Jesus warned us always to “beware of the false prophets” (Matt. 7:15). The basic criterion by which to test any alleged prophecy, ancient or modern, is whether or not it fully conforms to the written Word of God, the Bible. “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn” (Isaiah 8:20).