False Prophecy & Second Heaven Revelation

The devil uses a lot of different strategies to release his false prophecy, and all of them designed to lead people astray. We won't look at all of them, but we will focus on two of his most common strategies:

1. By giving people permission to sin, and
2. By enticing people to worship someone or something other than God.

Giving Permission To Sin

One from of false prophecy is to give people permission to sin or do things that God says are not OK. For instance, a false prophet might teach that God wants our joy to be full and He wants us to love one another (a truth from the Bible), so He wants us to engage freely in sexual intercourse with each other (a lie). The truth is that God disapproves of any sort of sexual relationship outside of marriage and the Bible makes this very clear. All the same, this false prophet would twist the truth to suggest that because sex is pleasurable (e.g., it gives us joy) and it is an expression of love, that God wants us to all have sex with each other.

We know that is an absolute lie! It contradicts the Bible. It caters to the carnal nature, not to God's guidelines on how He wants us to live. We know that God calls any sort of sex outside of marriage "sin." But the false prophet tells people that it is OK with God for us to engage in this particular sin.

This type of problem happened so frequently in the Old Testament that God commented on it in Micah 2:11, where He said, "If a liar and deceiver comes and says, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' he would be just the prophet for this people!" Reworded in the Contemporary English Version, it says, "the only prophet you want is a liar who will say, 'Drink and get drunk!'" In other words, this type of false prophecy was a common problem back in Old Testament times.

Satan hasn't changed his strategy after what Jesus did on Calvary, he still does this today. We have a New Testament example of this in Revelation 2:20, where Jesus said, "Nevertheless I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols."

There are false prophets who tell people what the want to hear in order to gain control and influence over them. There are "prophets" who purposely mislead people into sin so that God's retribution will fall on them. God absolutely hates it when we sin in "His name." It offends Him when people claim to speak for God and tell people that it is ok to sin. It makes Him angry.

Suggesting We Worship Someone Other Than God

There are times when people use the prophetic to try and get us to worship someone or something other than God. They may try to get us to worship an angel or a person or possibly even another "god." We must, of course, never do that! We are instructed, in Exodus 20:2-5a, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them."

God warned us that there would be false prophets who come in great power, working signs and wonders, to lead us astray. Deut 13:1-4 says, "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods'--which you have not known--'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him." The reason God warned his people about this is because He knew it was a strategy that the devil would use against God's people.

In fact, Jesus also warned His disciples about this in Matthew 24:24-26. He said, "For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. So if anyone tells you, 'There he is, out in the desert,' do not go out; or, 'Here he is, in the inner rooms,' do not believe it."

There will be people who can do "mighty" works empowered by the devil. They will claim to speak for God, but they will not be from God and they will say things designed to turn us from God into sin and false religion.

Balaam is an example of a false prophet who enticed God's people into idolatry. Balaam was asked to curse the Israelites and he could not, he had to bless them instead. Some people read Balaam's story in Numbers 22 to 24 and think that Balaam converted from being a spiritualist and false prophet to become a true prophet. They think this because of Numbers 24:1, which says, "Now when Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless Israel, he did not resort to sorcery as at other times, but turned his face toward the desert" (to seek God). But both the Old and New Testament treat him like a greedy false prophet. (See Joshua 13:22, Micah 6:5, 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 1:11 and Revelation 2:14.)

It is true that King Balak hired Balaam, a spiritualist, to curse the Israelites and he ended up blessing them multiple times instead. But later on, Balaam advised King Balak and the Median people (where he lived) of a strategy to defeat Israel, by seducing them to follow after other gods and then falling under God's judgment. And that strategy worked -- they fell into idolatry and immorality and God struck them with a plague at Peor, where many people died. The strategy involved using attractive women and getting the Israeli men to fall in love with them. Then the woman would say something along the lines of "If you really love me, then prove it to me by worshipping my gods with me." The story is recorded in Numbers 31:7-16. The Lord comments on this in Revelation 2:14, "Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality."

There are modern day examples of this as well. Some of them move in power and some simply use words and deceit. Some of them are quite extreme. For instance, cult leader Jim Jones was a false prophet who started his own "church," teaching them his version of how to approach God. (It was really a cult and many of his teachings were not biblical at all.) His members lived in a commune and Jim Jones got rich as they turned all of their possessions over to him. He called himself a prophet and took on a god-like status with his followers. He slept with many of the women and he even murdered some US politicians in the name of "God." In the end, he told over 900 of his followers (many of whom where children) that God wanted them to commit mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with poison. Some did this willingly. Others were forced to do so at gunpoint. As soon as his followers were dead, Jim Jones took his own life.

A lot of the modern false prophets today much more subtle than Jim Jones. Many of them build churches around them that are strongly manipulating and controlling, that try to control areas of the person's life that are inappropriate, such as their finances, their education, their social life and who they are allowed to associate with, etc. These false prophets try to make people dependent on them instead of teaching them how to go to God and hear God for themselves. They teach their members "hidden secrets" that may involve focusing on angels or spirit beings instead of on God. Or they may introduce their members to "ascended beings," or "Spirit guides," people who have arrived and have come back to help others find the way. Anytime we look to anyone other than Jesus Christ as our salvation and path to God, we enter into idolatry. We must not do that. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is the only way to God. Jesus Himself said this in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

God expects His people to beware of false prophets who try to get them to sin or to worship other gods. He expects us to reject any message that does not lift up the name of Jesus and follow what God has already said in His word, the Bible. He expects us to be familiar enough with Scripture that we are not deceived when someone comes with demonic power to promote false doctrine. God wants each of us to develop a personal relationship with Him and to learn to recognize His voice. Then the Holy Spirit, Who lives inside of us, will help us to discern God's truth from false prophecy designed to turn us away from God.

Our best defense against being taken in by the counterfeit (the devil's deceits), is to get to know the real thing (God) really well.