In Mormonism, whenever we think of false prophets we tend to think of the charismatic liar or the evil leader in a strange cult. However, we rarely think of the many people around us constantly giving us messages from God that never seem to accomplish anything. There are so many false prophets among us that the righteous in the past would be afraid of living today.
Overview
In studying the scriptures, we of course have many examples of what a true prophet and a false prophet look like. A true prophet is rarely popular and rarely tells people what they want to hear. Instead, they give a message which is to typically turn back to God and repent. A true prophet’s message is almost always simple and direct. The message is that the people have deviated and need to return to the simple doctrine of Christ.
On the other hand, false prophets can look and act the same as true prophets. They can also give almost identical messages. This makes differentiating between the two sometimes quite difficult. In addition, both true and false prophets will have faithful adherents who can convincingly testify of their deep spiritual testimony that the prophet, whether true or false, is in fact sent from God. Over time these faithful adherents can turn into a rather large group which gives further legitimacy to the message.
Often times, the false prophets will teach a pleasing message telling people what they want to hear. However, they can also tell people a scripturally correct message and instead use their popularity as a way of enriching themselves. Sometimes, as we will see, a false prophet can also teach a message which they are firmly convinced is true. This message though can be designed to move people away from God towards another gospel. It is honestly quite difficult sometimes to tell the difference. We must constantly pray to God for guidance and humble ourselves to accept it.
Hananiah
In the scriptures we can see numerous examples of false prophets. In Jeremiah 28, one of these false prophets was Hananiah during the time of Jeremiah the true prophet. At that time Jerusalem had been invaded, by Babylon, with many of the people taken as captives. It was absolutely a trying time for a people who claimed to be protected by the true god.
In response to this, Hananiah declared a message in the name of God, that within two years Babylon would return all the people they had taken as captives and all the items they had stolen. Particularly the sacred items they had taken from the temple. This is exactly the message the people wanted to hear. They wanted everything to go back to the way it was and to feel like God was on their side again.
Jeremiah, the true prophet, simply responded by saying that the people could easily tell who was a true prophet and who was a false prophet by observing whether the things they said would actually happen. Hananiah, doubled down on his message, and prophesized again in the name of God. Jeremiah then received a message from God to tell Hananiah that the Babylonian captivity was actually the will of God because of their disobedience and that Hananiah would die because of his false prophecies in God’s name. Hananiah died two months later, and Babylon didn’t capitulate within two years.
There is no indication whether Hananiah actually believed his message or whether he just made it up because he wanted to believe it. This is where the complexity of the situation really comes into play. Hananiah could have really wanted his message to be true or even really felt like it was God’s will. Maybe even an angel told him that it was in fact God’s will. However, according to the scriptures the message was completely false and Hananiah was killed because he spoke in the name of God, when God wasn’t speaking.
Nehor
Another example of a false prophet is found in the Book of Mormon. Alma 1 begins by discussing a man named Nehor that was starting to teach a particular message. In his message, he was teaching what he called the word of God which was that those who were teaching religious messages should be elevated socially and financially. He also was teaching a message of peace, happiness, and joy. His message was quite pleasing, and it drew a lot of people into his new view of religion.
The problem with Nehor’s message was that he also spoke in the name of God when it wasn’t God’s message. Of course, God wants to elevate us, and he wants us to have peace and happiness. However, God’s message is an inward change instead of an outward one. We cannot become God’s people until we have changed our inward thoughts and desires. Once we have, then we will naturally change our environment. However, a common false message is that we can remain the type of people that we want to be and then get the blessings of God anyway. This is a false message and is spiritually damaging.
We know very little about what caused Nehor to teach his message. It is very easy to assume motivations based upon our own understanding of religion. However, it is possible that Nehor also had an angelic visitation, and this demonic angel told him what to say and do just like Korihor’s experience. Of course, we don’t know. However, we do know that Nehor believed his message fully and was willing to go to extremes to confirm this.
Prelest
The concept of prelest is relatively new to me. However, once I understood it then it instantly made things in Christianity much more clear to me. Prelest is an Eastern Orthodox Christian term describing a state of spiritual experiences that are essentially deceptive in nature. These experiences can be entirely fictional or can also be caused by demonic spirits, which is likely far more common than we like to admit. Prelest is not a mental illness, but an actual active state of spiritual warfare with us being the ones caught in the middle.
In Charismatic Christianity, which Mormonism originally was a part of, we are taught to seek after spiritual signs and experiences. This is good and it is certainly a sign of God’s approbation. However, it can also quite easily be misunderstood or even taken to extremes. It is these extremes that prelest describes.
For instance, a new Christian can be filled with the spirit and excitement of their new belief. They are then taught about physical manifestations and miraculous works and consequently seek them for themselves. In some cases, Satan can take advantage of the eager person and give them what they want whether a physical manifestation or a miraculous sign from heaven. This spiritual event is typically quite hard for an inexperienced person to distinguish whether it is of God or not. Consequently, it can be seen as a vindication of the person’s beliefs and the new Christian can then follow whatever message they received from beyond.
In Eastern Orthodox tradition there are several stories of individuals that had visions, dreams, and miraculous events that led them away from God and towards a different gospel. These manifestations would immediately cease once the individual returned to a simple life focused on God.
It is hard to imagine, however Satan is described as an angel of light by Nephi in the Book of Mormon, and Paul in the New Testament. It is also described how Satan appeared as an angel of light to Korihor, which caused him to start teaching a different gospel. This new gospel was one that he firmly believed in. It would then be entirely consistent to believe that Satan, and his followers, continue to do this today with many people we could call false prophets. These false prophets then can have very real spiritual manifestations, that they might have really longed for, however they are deceived by their own spiritual overextension.
A guard against this spiritual deception is the gift of discernment which John teaches in 1 John 4. This may actually be the best skill a seeker of God can develop. It is this skill which helps us to discern which things are of God and which things are not.
Otherwise, it can be incredibly easy to get caught up in the general concept of “good feelings” which seems to pervade most of Christianity, and Mormonism as well. For many people, if you “feel good” about it then it must be of God. This of course results in people vindicating what they wanted to do in the first place and then attributing it to God. This is not how things should work.
Today
If we take the concept of prelest, and apply it to modern times then it can be helpful in explaining the many visions, dreams, voices, and prophecies of God that people testify to with certainty yet are completely wrong. Of course, some of these are entirely deceptive in nature, however many of them are likely quite sincere since they had a real spiritual experience they are testifying of.
For instance, if we look at First Vision type experiences then we can see that there are numerous similar visits with some of them being almost identical to early accounts from Joseph Smith. During many of these events the heavenly being asked the individual to do or teach things that were contrary to the scriptures. During many of these events the heavenly being also prophesied about things which provably didn’t happen. Many of these individuals then repeated what they believed were messages from God and consequently became false prophets according to the scriptures.
Even today many people testify of visits from angels or God with special divine messages to share. Some of these are absolutely true, however some of these are also wrong. They can be motivated by a deceptive spirit, or just something the false prophet has convinced themselves of. It is frankly incredibly easy to deceive yourself if you want something bad enough. I personally have been so convinced of some spiritual things in my life that I felt that I knew them to be true. However, now I understand that I know very little and must trust in God for more understanding.
In thinking of false prophets, then it is important that we instead change the concept to a simple question of whether the message is of God or not. This is honestly harder than it sounds since messages can be so deceptive in nature. It also is inherently hard for us to do because we like to feel good and judge things by their appearance. Today would we accept a true prophet, that looked homeless and had a doom and gloom message? Honestly, we probably would just say they hit the bottle a little too much and move on to the slick personality that vindicated everything we wanted to hear.
If we look at people today, then we can see false prophets all around us. There are numerous mega-church pastors that would qualify as false prophets. They are teaching messages as if from God that are in fact just what the people want to hear. This is to increase their attendance and consequently tithing revenue. We can also see the leaders of many churches, including the LDS Church, that teach a message of obedience to the organization instead of obedience to God. Many times they also declare things “in the name of God” that are in fact spiritual perversions. These individuals would qualify as false prophets according to the scriptures.
There are also many individuals on the fringes of Christianity, and Mormonism in general, that are teaching a different gospel than the simple gospel of Christ. Some of these individuals want you to buy their book for further guidance, join their fellowship to learn their version of the truth, or listen to their latest prophetic counsel. The list is almost endless with the people who are vying for your spiritual attention. They of course declare they have things figured out and just want to help you to see things their way. Many also declare they have had personal visits from God with divine messages to share, which are strangely contradictory to the scriptures.
Many false prophets also have a scattershot approach where they prophecy of many things and then seemingly pray away the things that didn’t happen. On the outside this sounds absolutely bizarre, however this is exactly what a popular false prophet just did. They made several prophecies which were logically consistent with current events. When most of them didn’t happen, they announced that they were praying to God and God accepted their prayers to change the prophecy.
Other false prophets just downplay the many prophecies they made that didn’t happen, or even just delete them from the internet. After this, it is so easy to forget and then get excited when the next prophecy actually happens. According to scripture, if any person, which includes Joseph Smith or anyone else, makes a prophecy in the name of God and this prophecy doesn’t happen, then they are by definition, a false prophet and should be treated as such. We absolutely must hold false prophets accountable, otherwise we will be deceived by the next prophecy that happens to be true.
Just like in Jeremiah’s day we are in spiritual and physical bondage, and we are inundated with false prophets. Most of these false prophets are popular and are always ready to tell us the things that make us feel good. These false prophecies strangely seem to be positive in nature, or just negative enough so we don’t abandon the false prophet entirely. Scripturally though, it seems that God simply wants us to love him and love our neighbor as ourselves. There is nothing else that matters, yet we really want to focus on everything else except those two things.
Conclusion
Today, we are surrounded by false prophets who always want to share the wonderful vision they just received or the special message they just got from God. Without a doubt, most of them are well intentioned and likely really had a unique experience. However, we absolutely should be aware that demonic forces are active and are always ready to give people what they want. Not every spiritual experience is from God. This is true even if we really want the experience to vindicate our devotion to God.
We constantly need to be honing our gift of discernment and “try the spirits” like 1 John 4 teaches. We shouldn’t fear making mistakes, because we absolutely will. Everyone makes numerous mistakes until they improve their abilities. This is exactly like a child that is learning to walk for the first time. The child falls constantly and looks silly. However, they also have a loving parent that is always near to help them. This is the same with us and God. God wants us to study things out and develop our false prophet discernment muscles. If we though just accept what someone says because we like the conclusion then we have done nothing but damn ourselves.
God told Jeremiah, who was also surrounded by false prophets, exactly how to deal with these people that falsely speak in the name of God. God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 23:
Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you; they make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. … they say unto everyone that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, ‘No evil shall come upon you.’ … I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran; I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
Jeremiah 23:16-21
Today, this council equally applies. There are so many false prophets around us that have very pleasing messages. This can also include people that we originally thought were holy men of God. We must be introspective, “try the spirits”, and always ready to admit when we have made a mistake. Mistakes are not a problem but holding on to them because we are afraid of the consequences are a problem for many of us.
