Hello there, fellow exiles,
Today, let’s look at a rather disturbing charge that God gives to the prophet Ezekiel to prophesy against other prophets in Israel:
“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to those who prophesy from their own heart, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh!’”
— Ezekiel 13:2
Throughout the book of Ezekiel, the prophet is given the title “son of man.” So we know that God is addressing Ezekiel specifically. However, the instruction that He gives him is rather concerning and needs a closer look.
God tells Ezekiel to go ahead and put this up against the prophets in Israel. God then qualifies the kind of prophets that He wants Ezekiel to prophesy against. God says that these prophets prophesy from their own hearts.
Here we see the confusion debunked. The charge that God gives to Ezekiel to prophesy against other prophets teaches us a couple of things:
1. Not every prophet is a true prophet
God says that these prophets are liars and they’re lying to the people. In the next verse, God calls these kinds of prophets wicked and foolish:
“Thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘Woe to the wickedly foolish prophets who are walking after their own spirit and have seen nothing.’”
— Ezekiel 13:3
2. Not all prophecy comes from God
These false prophets, God says, “prophesy from their own heart.” This highlights the source of the prophecy. Unlike true prophecy that comes straight from God, with the prophet acting as a mouthpiece for God, these false prophecies originate from the hearts of the prophets themselves. The prophets would claim that they have heard from God and would then convey the message to the people, but God never really spoke to them:
“They behold worthlessness and lying divination who are saying, ‘Yahweh declares,’ when Yahweh has not sent them; yet they wait for the establishing of their word.”
— Ezekiel 13:6
3. Prophecy from the heart is deceptive
Another thing we can learn from this pronouncement by God is that the prophecies uttered by the false prophets are deceptive.
“God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not establish it?”
— Numbers 23:19
No prophecy from our true and living God can be errant or fallible. With this, we even have the appropriate tool to test for true and false prophecy. No true prophet can ever get a prophecy wrong. There are no mistakes or errors in true prophecy.
Some who claim to be prophets would say they were speaking from God, while the actual prompting comes from their own feelings and emotions, even when the prophet is well-meaning.
There’s great severity in God’s pronouncement against false prophets. Whoever claimed to be speaking for God was not to get anything wrong because God does not lie:
“But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.”
— Deuteronomy 18:20
For this, God says to Ezekiel:
“Did you not see a worthless vision and speak a lying divination when you said, ‘Yahweh declares,’ but it is not I who have spoken?”
— Ezekiel 13:7
Such are the prophecies proclaimed by the false prophets. God calls them worthless visions and lying divinations.
Let’s try to keep these truths in mind:
- The enemy will raise up false prophets to mislead the people of God.
- Let’s be grounded in the word of God so as not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
- Let us warn others against such false prophets who claim to speak for God.
I pray this word keeps you alert to the danger of self-proclaimed prophets.
May God be with you.
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