In prayer this week the Lord spoke to me regarding the contemporary prophetic landscape. There are a lot of Prophet’s speaking; but how can you be sure that their message is from God or for that matter their message is for you? The prophetic has become a serve-yourself buffet and many presume they can just feast at any table. I believe the more access we have, the more diluted and impotent the message becomes.
Most prophets in the Bible lived a life of seclusion. John the Baptist was one voice crying in the wilderness (John 1:23). Jesus often moved away from the crowd (Luke 5:16). Elijah single-handedly took down 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:22); Which provides a framework that God does not move on the prevalent but inhabits those entrenched in the bastion of solitude that labor tirelessly to accurately hear His voice.
It is not notoriety that makes a prophet effective but isolation and anonymity (I Kings 22:6-8). I heard a prophet say, “Prophets don’t come out of the cave until God has something to say.” Our reliance, as believers, is on the God inside of us in the person of the Holy Spirit. You do not chase prophesy, prophesy chases you. Doing so, is no different than reading your horoscope or visiting a psychic.
Furthermore, The Holy Spirit said, “The prophetic has been contaminated with occultic practices (Deuteronomy 18:9-14). Very few discipline themselves to hear from God, crucify their flesh or drink from the well of revelation that flows from the Holy Spirit. So, they have to rely on other sources to keep their ministries going and maintain their cash flow. God is purifying the prophetic Office. Malachi 3:2 says,
“He’ll be like white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace. He will be like the strongest lye soap at the laundry. He will take his place as a refiner of silver, as a cleanser of dirty clothes. He will scrub the Levite priests clean, refine them like gold and silver, until they are fit for God, fit to present offerings of righteousness. Then, and only then, His people will be fit and pleasing to God, as they used to be in the years long ago” (MSG).
I believe this next season will be the exposition of the true nature and character of those that claim to speak in His name. In Jeremiah 23:30-31 says, “I’m against the prophets who steal my words from each other,” declares the Lord. “I’m against the prophets who speak their own thoughts and say that they speak for me.” He is revealing those that do not have the Spirit of the Father but possess the spirit of Balaam and Gahazi.
Balaam was a prophet for hire; Balak presented to him a diviner’s fee to curse the children of Israel and 2 Peter 2:15 says, “By leaving the straight path, they have gone astray, because they followed the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness” (LEB). Gahazi attempted to profit from Elisha’s divine assignment. Naaman the Leper tried to bless Elisha for his Healing and Elisha’s response was, “As surely as the Lord lives, I will not accept a thing ” (2 Kings 5:16). But His servant Gahazi followed after Naaman and accepted the gift Elijah rejected. The penalty for accepting forbidden fruit was the same disease Naaman was healed from clung to Gahazi at the word of the prophet. (2 Kings 5:27).
Many self-proclaimed prophets today are chasing diviner’s fees and filthy lucre
( Numbers 22:7). Author Desiree Mondesir said, “That in the prophetic, what you accept is what you become.” It is not wrong to receive offerings nor be paid for what you do; giving is an established Kingdom dynamic to care for those that give themselves tirelessly to the gospel. But that does not seem to be the case; these overzealous prophets are bordering on heresy. They do not even preach from the scriptures, but from opinion and post-modernistic ideology; if it feels right, it is right. To see cashapps plastered across Social Media everywhere is somewhat disturbing to me, is this what the church of Jesus Christ has come to? Are we money changers in the temple selling our wares?