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How to Judge Prophetic Messages
In spite of the insights of the previous five chapters, I was still unsure of myself. I had a framework for judging the subjective voice of God, but I wasn’t sure how to put it into practice. I prayed, “Father, when I needed to learn how to think, you sent me someone who taught me how to do that. I can’t imagine another person on the planet who could have been more perfect for me. Now I want to learn how to be prophetic. If you have someone out there who can teach me, I would very much appreciate you helping me to find him.”
I remembered a book on interpreting dreams that I had read many years earlier: Exploring the World of Dreams, by Benny Thomas.[5] It seemed like a good place to start, so I reread it and found out that its author sold a tape series called: You Can Know the Voice of God.[6] I bought it and started listening.
What I heard excited me. I had been afraid that delving into this mystical part of Christianity would cause me to lose the benefits of theology and wisdom. As I listened to Benny Thomas, I realized that this wasn’t the case at all. The goal wasn’t to think less; it was to think better. There was no need to choose between being prophetic and being logical. I had to become more skillful at both.
Seeing this changed my experience. For years I had not been able to reconcile a prophetic approach with the wisdom approach I had learned from Proverbs.[7] An emphasis on spiritual experience seemed to encourage me to move away from using my mind. I now saw that I could mix both approaches to come up with a practical spirituality that brought out the best of each. Prophetic insight and wisdom could add to each other and build on each other.
This led to one more piece to my theology of the subjective voice of God, and it turned out to be the most useful of all. I decided that there was a difference between speaking prophecy and being prophetic. When we speak prophecy, we proclaim God’s word publicly where the church should judge it. Being prophetic, however, is much broader. It refers to being able to hear God’s subjective voice in many different ways.
For example, when we discern that God is arranging our circumstances to point us in a certain direction, we are being prophetic, but no one would say that we should test that by the standards for prophecy. We aren’t saying, “Thus says the Lord …”, so there is no need for great accuracy. We are free to make an educated guess about what God is saying and learn as we go.
I came up with what I call “Providence Based Guidance.” Providence is a word that refers to the ongoing work of God in the earth. For Christians, it is God working all things together for good in the lives of His children (Rom 8:28).[8] Providence Based Guidance is direction that comes from looking at what is happening in our lives and coming to a conclusion about what He is doing. An example is found in Luke:
Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus (emphasis added)
Luke didn’t say, “God told me to write a gospel.” Instead, he saw what others had written, he realized that God had given him perfect understanding of all things from the very first, and he felt that he had the grace to record his own account. When he put it all together, it seemed good to him to write the gospel of Luke.
Was God telling him to do it? We know that He was, because the gospel of Luke has become a part of the Bible. God was inspiring him in a unique way.
Every part of Scripture is God-breathed …
(2 Timothy 3:16, The Message)
In spite of this sort of inspiration, however, Luke didn’t describe his decision to write in “thus says the Lord” terms. Instead, he basically said he wrote his gospel because doing so appeared to be a good idea.
This is the way that the Spirit often leads us. He rarely tells us, “do this” or “do that” on a moment by moment basis. Instead He gives us insights into His plan and asks for us to wisely choose how we will work with Him. We do what seems good to us. That is what Providence Based Guidance is all about.
Providence Based Guidance is an extension of the process of walking in wisdom. Like wisdom it relies on the foundational truths of the Scriptures. Then it builds on them with practical knowledge, understanding of circumstances, and other natural input. Where it extends what we normally think of as wisdom is that it adds subjective sources of information like dreams, impressions of the Spirit, and visions. We take some of our input from supernatural experiences.
How do we know if God is really speaking to us through Providence Based Guidance? One way is to step out in faith and see what happens. If God seems to move, we have some confidence that we have heard from Him. If not, we go back and try to figure out what went wrong.
We can never, however, be totally sure whether we have heard Him accurately. Many times we will realize that what we thought was His leading was actually a mixture of our own ideas and His. We learn through experience, pick out the good from the bad, and do what seems good to us at the next step in the journey.
We, of course, always need to test what we sense by the Scriptures. If we feel led to go against God’s objective voice, we know that we are being misled. We should also submit to church leadership (Hebrews 13:17). We also want to see if any predictions we make are accurate. We make adjustments if they aren’t.
But (and this is a big “but”) we don’t consider our mistakes to be speaking presumptuously in the name of the Lord (Deuteronomy 18:22). We aren’t prophesying; we are discerning the will of God for our lives. Mistakes are an important part of the process. We don’t pretend that God is telling us exactly what to do. We are figuring out His leading as we go. We might say, “I believe God is showing me …,” but we don’t say, “Thus says the Lord …,” because God isn’t leading us to say that. Our insights may be prophetic, but they aren’t prophecies. Instead they are a growing discernment about what He is doing.
When God speaks through Providence Based Guidance, we usually don’t get the whole message all at once. We grow to understand it a little bit at a time. It might start out as a sense in our hearts that we have the grace to do something. Then God allows circumstances to clarify what He is stirring. If we can interpret dreams, we may pick up understanding from them. We might notice His voice in something that a friend says. Slowly and cautiously we pull together a picture of what is happening until we can act on it with some confidence.
The book of Acts has an example of the Apostle Peter doing this. It is found in Acts 10:1-11:18, and it shows many ways in which God hinted at a message without spelling it out. Peter took all of the pieces and drew them together into a conclusion that changed the history of the world.
It started with a vision. Peter saw a sheet let down from heaven with unclean animals in it. God told him to “kill and eat,” an activity that was forbidden to Jews like Peter. He wasn’t sure what to make of this.
The vision was immediately followed by a divine coincidence. Three men showed up to invite Peter to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. Normally Peter wouldn’t have gone with them, but in this case the Holy Spirit told him to go, doubting nothing. He still didn’t know how this was related to the vision, but I imagine his mind was considering the connection between God declaring food clean and then telling him to go to an unclean Gentile’s house.
When He arrived, he received another piece of the puzzle. An angel had visited Cornelius and told him to send for Peter to tell him how to be saved. Up until this point, no Gentile had turned to Christ without first converting to Judaism. Peter normally wouldn’t have attempted to preach to Cornelius, but it was obvious that God was doing something new that called for him to share the gospel.
As he spoke, an unusual display of power occurred. The Holy Spirit fell on the listeners before Peter had a chance to give an altar call. This was a demonstration of the fact that God was calling the Gentiles without requiring them to embrace Jewish customs. Peter then remembered the words of Jesus, “John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
At this point, the entire chain of events made sense. Providence Based Guidance had come together to produce a message that gave Peter confidence that He understood. It seemed good to him to conclude that God was opening the door for the Gentiles to enter His kingdom. We know he was correct, because this conclusion became a part of the teaching of the Bible.
The example of Peter and Cornelius shows that Providence Based Guidance can come a little bit at a time, but it doesn’t show anyone making mistakes while discerning it. Does the Bible contain any examples of people getting it wrong? I believe it does:
And finding disciples, we stayed there seven days. They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem. …
And as we stayed many days, a certain prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. When he had come to us, he took Paul’s belt, bound his own hands and feet, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man who owns this belt, and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’”
Now when we heard these things, both we and those from that place pleaded with him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
So when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, “The will of the Lord be done.”
Paul felt that God was leading him to go to Jerusalem; His friends felt God was leading him to stay away. Obviously, someone was wrong. If the phrase “They told Paul through the Spirit not to go up to Jerusalem” means that they prophesied by the Spirit that he shouldn’t go, then Paul was wrong. Since Paul felt free to disregard their advice, however, we have to conclude that they either weren’t prophesying or that he thought they were prophesying falsely.
Does “through the Spirit” have to mean prophecy? The Greek word for ‘through,’ ‘dia,’ can be translated in a number of different ways, including ‘because of.’ I believe that this is what it means here. The Spirit had revealed that Paul was going to suffer in Jerusalem, and “because of” this they urged him not to go there. They assumed that the warning had come so he could avoid the danger.
When Paul disagreed they said, “The will of the Lord be done.” This is evidence that they weren’t one hundred percent certain what Paul should do. If they were, they would have also known that the Lord’s will wouldn’t be done. Instead, it seems likely they were pleading with him based on prophecies like the one that Agabus spoke. Agabus didn’t say “Go” or “Don’t go” – he only said, “If you go, you will be bound and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.”
Paul’s friends took the prophecy as a sign that he should avoid Jerusalem. Paul took it as an encouragement to prepare for a serious trial. To this day, sincere Christians disagree about who was right.
I am not sure what Paul should have done, but I agree with how he made his decision. He wasn’t in a situation where the answers were spelled out in the objective word of God, so he looked at the evidence. When he put it all together, he felt that the Holy Spirit was stirring his heart to go. His friends could honestly disagree, but he was the one who was responsible to make the choice.
And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
Acts 21 is a helpful picture of Providence Based Guidance in action. It shows that good brothers and sisters will sometimes disagree on what should be done. The Holy Spirit doesn’t take all uncertainty from our lives. Sometimes we have to do what seems good to us and figure out the Lord’s will as events unfold.
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