January/February 1998

 

The Plumb-line

 

 

Tony Pearce considers how to use the Bible as a standard for contemporary prophecy

 

 

When I first became a Christian in 1970, I read most of the Bible and became convinced of three things:­

  1. It is the word of God.

  2. Jesus is the Messiah and one way to God.

  3. Bible prophecies about the end times are relevant to the world situation in which we find ourselves.

  As I was converted mainly through the witness of Pentecostal Christians, it was natural that I ended up being involved in the Pentecostal/charismatic scene in the 1970s. By the beginning of the 1980s, however, I began to find myself in a situation of some confusion. ‘Prophetic words’ given by leaders who were widely respected and admired by those I was in fellowship with seemed to contradict the understanding I had received from my own study of the Bible about how this age would end. We were being told that a great revival was coming, in which spec­tacular public miracles would convince the world of the truth of the Gospel. ‘Prophetic words’ spoke of the nations going up ‘to the mountain of the house of the Lord’ (by which was meant the church) to hear the word of the Lord and walk in his ways.

 This particular prophecy, which was printed in a well-known charis­matic magazine, alerted me to what was going wrong. I recognised it as being based on Isaiah 2, a passage which I had always applied to the events following the return of Christ, but which was now being applied to events which would precede the return of Christ. The magazine went on to dismiss the pre-millennial view in which I had always believed, ie that this age would end in the world catastrophe known as the Great Tribulation and the rule of Antichrist —‘an eschatological disaster’. This was being replaced with a triumphalist agenda which saw the church marching to victory in this age and the nations submitting to the rule of Christ as a result.

 I have to say that I sorted out my dilemma by dismissing the prophecies of the leaders of these churches and holding to the prophe­cies of God. I am very glad that I did because as events have turned out the signs of the approach of the Great Tribulation are much clearer now than they were in the early 1980s and the prophecies of imminent revival have come and gone with monotonous regularity and with disappointment upon dis­appointment for those who received them. What lessons can be learnt from this experience?

We need to test all prophecies of human origin

Deuteronomy 13 and 18 give two clear tests. One is very simple. If the word that is spoken does not happen then the Lord has not spoken (Deut 18: 22). I recently had an example of the relevance of this test during a discussion with a Christian leader regarding the prophecy concerning Diana, Princess of Wales, and the flowers. He had interpreted this as meaning that revival would come by 23 October. Since all that happened on 23 October was a fall in the stock market, this was reinterpreted to mean that there was (apparently) a new mood of openness to the Gospel in the nation since Diana’s death. This would eventually bring a huge movement of the Holy Spirit which would sweep the nation as the mourning for Diana had already done. By removing the time reference, which was actually crucial to the prophecy, it in fact reduced it to no more than a pious wish for people to turn to the Lord. The only alterna­tive was to say it was false and lose face. The second test is more difficult.

 If the word spoken does come to pass but causes people to run after other gods then it is not the voice of the Lord, but something to test our loyalty to him (Deut 13: 14). Leading occultist Benjamin Creme has claimed that the mood in the nation after Diana’s death was a

preparation for the ‘Day of Declaration’ and the revelation of the New Age Messiah he calls Maitreya. So, maybe, we should ask a few questions about the source of some of these prophecies connect­ing a revival of biblical Christianity to the mood in the nation after Diana’s death. This may also make us question the direction in which today’s charismatic church is being led. If things do apparently come to pass which appear supernatural but people are in fact being led into a counterfeit spirituality in the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, then we have the situation warned about in Deuteronomy 13.

Biblical prophecies themselves are the standard for all prophecy.

In the Old Testament, we have prophecies relating to the following:­

  1. Immediate events relating to sit­uations the prophet was involved in. Almost all of these are warnings of coming calami­ties as a result of disobedience (for example: Jer 25:1-14).

  2. Prophecies of Israel’s dispersion and restoration. Some refer to the Babylonian dispersion only, others to a worldwide dispersion and restoration (Jer 29, Ezek 36).

  3. Prophecies of the coming of Messiah as a suffering servant, fulfilled by Jesus at his first coming (Is 53).

  4. Prophecies of world catastrophe and conflict over Jerusalem preceding the day of the Lord (Is 24, Zech 12).

  5. Prophecies of world peace and blessing following the day of the Lord and the coming of the Messiah as the reigning king (Is 2, Zech 14).

In the New Testament we have similar categories of prophecy:­

  1. The main prophecy of an immediate event is Jesus’ words concerning the coming destruc­tion of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans (Lk 19: 41-44).

  2. This leads into a prophecy of the dispersion of the Jewish people and includes indications of their return to Jerusalem at the end of this age (Lk 21:20-24).

  3. Since the main subject of the New Testament is Jesus as Messiah, it is clear that the Gospels themselves are the fulfilment of my third category of Old Testament prophecy.

  4. Both Jesus and the apostles gave numerous prophecies of the catastrophes that would come at the end of this age, which they identified as the last days before the return of Christ (Mt 24, 2 Thess 2, Rev 6-19).

  5. There is only one passage which clearly relates to the Old Testament passages about the reign of Messiah, but it is plain in its meaning: that following the return of Christ at the battle of Armageddon he will rule and reign on earth for 1000 years during which time Satan will be bound and unable to deceive the nations (Rev 20).

I may be accused of being dogmatic but my view is that any spoken prophecy given today must harmonise with the written prophetic passages in the Old and New Testaments. Since there is not a single passage which indicates that ‘whole cities and whole nations will be won for Christ’, or that ‘a billion souls will be swept into the kingdom in a moment of time’ before the second coming, I have to reject such prophecies as false. The only scrip­tural justification that can be made for such prophecies is to take passages like Isaiah 2:1-4, which applies to the millennial reign of Christ, and apply it to the witness of the church now. But this is a misuse of scripture. 

Prophecies of wonderful things about to happen may make people feel good and bring in the crowds who are thrilled and fired up with the great expectation of revival. But these are false hopes and when these hopes fail, people become disillusioned and may give up altogether or go on to some spiritual alternative which may include a New Age agenda. One of the disturbing things I find from ministering at meetings around the country is the number of people there are who have dropped out of charismatic churches because of false prophecies and false teaching. Many no longer attend church or they just meet in small groups with very little ability to make much impact in their areas.

 When we look at biblical prophecies we find that most of them were actually warnings of negative things that were going to happen rather than promises of wonderful things that are about to happen. Obviously, we have virtually no record of spoken prophecies given in the New Testament era, but two we do have in the book of Acts are both warnings of bad things about to happen: Agabus warned of the famine in Acts 11: 28 and warned Paul of his coming captivity in Acts 21: 11. 

We see the apostles using spiritual gifts to discern evil in the people they encountered (Acts 5: 34, 8: 20-23, 16: 17,18), but we do not have any record of the kind of prophecies we hear in churches today, which usually tell people how wonderful they are and how God is thrilled with everything about them. In the book of Acts, when the Lord does want to communicate about blessing to come or to give direction it seems that he generally uses direct communication to the person concerned rather than prophecy through a third party (Acts 16: 9,10 & 18: 9,10). Some of the disasters in the mission field which have occurred through people going out into situations they were not prepared for because of a word of prophecy spoken in a highly charged meeting might have been avoided if they had listened to the voice of the Lord rather than these ‘prophetic’ directions.

 In conclusion, I have to say that much of what passes for prophetic words in charismatic churches today is little more than pious good wishes that something good will happen either to the individual or to the church and society. Such words are actually harmful in the long run because they lead to disappointment and disillusion. In my view, God is more likely to be giving our genera­tion the kind of warnings he gave through prophets like Jeremiah: judgment and calamity are coming on a world that has spurned his laws and a church that has trifled with his word and his gifts.

Tony Pearce is Director of the Messianic Testimony and an elder of Bridge Lane Chapel, Golders Green, London.