Beware of False Prophets!

A BRAZILIAN couple had retired for the night when they heard thieves breaking into their home. The terrified couple managed to escape through the bedroom window and call the police. But afterward the wife was so shaken by the experience that she could not sleep in the house and had to go to her mother’s.

Anyone who has had his house burglarized or who has been robbed in some other way will sympathize with her. Such an experience can be unnerving, and, unhappily, more and more people are suffering in this way. There is, however, a form of theft that has far more serious consequences.

What is this more serious form of theft, and who are the thieves? Jesus Christ gave us some information about it when, in speaking about our day, he said: “Many false prophets will arise and mislead many.” (Matthew 24:11) False prophets are thieves. In what way? What are they stealing? Their thieving is tied in with their prophesying. So in order to understand the matter fully, we need first to know what prophesying is according to the Bible.

What It Means to Prophesy

When you think of prophesying, perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is the foretelling of the future. This was indeed an aspect of the work of God’s prophets of old, but it was not their primary work. For example, when in a vision the prophet Ezekiel was told to “prophesy to the wind,” he simply had to issue a command from God. (Ezekiel 37:9, 10) When Jesus was on trial before the priests, he was spit upon and slapped, and his persecutors mockingly said: “Prophesy to us, you Christ. Who is it that struck you?” They were not asking Jesus to foretell the future. They were challenging him to identify by God’s power those who had hit him.​—Matthew 26:67, 68.

In fact, the main thought conveyed by the original Bible language words translated “prophesy” or “prophecy” is basically to tell forth God’s mind on a matter or, as the book of Acts puts it, to tell “the magnificent things of God.” (Acts 2:11) It is in this sense that many people are being robbed by false prophets.

Who, though, are the false prophets, and what are they stealing? To answer this question, let us look back in the history of the nation of Israel to the time of Jeremiah.