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How to Judge Prophetic Messages
<page 2>In my previous book, A Dream Interpretation Journey, I mentioned that I went through a time when I did not know how to judge prophetic messages.[1] (A prophetic message is a message that a person senses the Holy Spirit is speaking to them. It may or may not be spelled out in the Bible.) I believed, based on the Bible, that God could speak in this way, but with the exception of those times when a message was obviously scriptural, edifying, and supernatural, I had little idea how to decide whether it was from God or not.
My questions became especially important when I found myself disagreeing with others. I would sense one thing while another person would sense something else, and I couldn’t figure out how to tell which of us was right.
In time, I became increasingly suspicious about whether any of us was actually hearing from God. It wasn’t that I believed He never spoke in this way. I saw in the New Testament that God spoke prophetically to the first century Christians. There were prophecies, visions, dreams, and other messages. I was even fairly certain that He had spoken to me in some of these ways on at least a few occasions.
What I didn’t know was what I should expect from these sorts of experiences. Were they necessary keys to my life? Or was I basically getting what I needed from the Bible and these experiences were just helpful add-ons. How often should I expect them? Was it OK that I didn’t have great confidence in what I was hearing? And how should I handle it when others disagreed?
What God says in the Bible is what I call His objective voice. Everyone can study it and compare notes to arrive at the truth. We won’t always agree, but we have a solid foundation for making decisions.
Hearing God speak outside of the Bible is what I call the subjective voice of God (or the prophetic voice of God – I use both terms to mean the same thing.) The word ‘subjective’ means that each individual must decide for themselves where the message came from and what it means. In many cases, it is tough for others to test. One person says, “I think God is saying this,” and another says, “I think He is saying something different.” Unless one of the messages is unscriptural, it is hard to say for sure who is right.
In this book, I will tend to use the word ‘subjective’ rather than ‘prophetic.’ The reason for this is personal. Using the word ‘subjective’ makes it easier for me to step back and test what I am hearing. I treat the word of God extremely seriously, and when I hear the word ‘prophetic,’ I tend to give great weight to what is said. The word ‘subjective’ is more neutral, and this makes it easier for me to honestly examine the message.
Before I started thinking in terms of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective,’ prophetic words were disheartening for me. There were so many different possibilities of what God might be saying that I felt emotionally overwhelmed. I feared missing His will, but it seemed just about impossible for me to figure out what His will was.
<page 3>Using the word ‘subjective’ helped create the emotional space I needed to impartially look at what I was hearing. I was less tempted to think of it as “God thundering from heaven.” Instead, it was a fallible human being (me or someone else) speaking what he or she believed had come from the Holy Spirit. This gave me perspective, and I found myself less tempted to grow to despise the whole subject of what God was saying prophetically.
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
In the late 1990s, I slowly lost hope that I would ever resolve my issues with the subjective voice of God.[2] I had been in groups that greatly valued it for close to twenty-five years. If thousands of hours of exposure and study hadn’t convinced me of what we were doing, what reason did I have to believe that I would ever be convinced?
God was about to surprise me. One day I heard someone make a brief comment about Deuteronomy 18:15-22, and I realized I had misunderstood what Moses had written about prophecy. This set off a chain reaction in my heart that rearranged my understanding of just about every scripture I knew on the subject. It didn’t stop until I had settled on a theology that I felt safe putting into practice.
I suddenly found that I knew how to make this “wisdom-defying” area work in everyday life. In a sense, I “Proverbsitized” it. I made it less mystical and more wisdom-related, which allowed me to act on it.
Where previously I had struggled to crawl, I was now able to run. This book describes the insights that led to that change.
Bill Cadden
2021
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