'PROPHETS’ AND FAILED PROPHESIES: DOES THAT MAKE THEM FALSE PROPHETS?

‘PROPHETS’ AND FAILED PROPHESIES: DOES THAT MAKE THEM FALSE PROPHETS?

  Recently, pastors, so called, have found a cheap way of popularity. What they do now is to make predictions on issues like politics, so that when their prediction comes to pass, they would suddenly become ‘renowned prophets’. This has almost recently put Prophet T.B. Joshua of the Synagogue Church of all Nations into serious credibility crises when he wrongly predicted that Hilary Clinton was to win the American Presidential Election of November 9, 2016.

  The first problem with our today’s prophets is that they seem to be hungry for recognition. They want to be known and praised at all cost. That in itself is wrong because we are supposed to focus on God’s recognition, and not men. Another problem is that many prophets, because of their desire to be known, either tell false prophesy which they got through putting one and two together or from genuine dream but which are personal to them, and which are wrongly interpreted.

    Dream, according to scriptures, are not all the time, message from God. Most of the times, they are simply a result of our mind’s activities or purely inspired by Satan ( Ecc. 5:3). The fact that you are a prophet does not mean that whatever you dream is a message from God. In Jeremiah 23:21, the Bible says ‘I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran…’ Note here that God did not say they are not prophets. But the only problem is that they have not been sent. There is a difference between having a dream, and God asking you to go and deliver a dream. The second set of prophets, according to that same verse, are those who have not seen any dream or message, yet they formulate one just to be recognized as prophets. Most of the Nigerian prophets fall into this category.

  In verse 28 0f the same Jeremiah 23, God says ‘’the prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who had my word, let him speak my word faithfully.’’ What God is simply saying here is that a dream is different from a message. When a prophet has a dream, he should be humble to say, this is the dream I had. He should not turn it into a message. Secondly, when a prophet gets a message, he should say it the way it is.

  Now, concerning Prophet T. B. Joshua’s prediction about the American Presidency, he was not prophesying, rather, he only made a prediction as a man. A prediction is a situation where one put one and two together, and then says the likely result or outcome. Prediction is purely a human process, nothing divine about it. In fact, most of his supposed prophesies on football matches and the like over the years are purely predictions. But the Prophet has, over these period refuse to explain to his followers that he was simply making a guess work. Rather, he allowed them to go on with the notion that being a man of God is determined by ability to predict events and see them come to pass.

   Second, the fact that the Prophet found the back of the net in his recent prophecy does not mean he is a lesser or no prophet. When a prophet says a thing that did not happen, it is either the prophet misinterpreted the message or dream, or that the prophet was only overtaken with his rush to be known and therefore did not take time to understand what his mind or God was saying. 

OHIMAI DANIEL