So, if you aren’t aware there’s a fair bit of internecine fighting within the charismatic movement, that may erupt into civil war! Julia Duin has written a very good article about how false prophecies about a Trump Reelection have caused a lot of discomfort and those discomfited are seeking someone to scapegoat. Right now they guy taking the most heat seems to be Jeremiah Johnson of Charlotte, NC. Now, you you haven’t heard of Jeremiah Johnson, don’t worry, I hadn’t either. But apparently he’s kind of a big deal in the NAR movement and so that means that a lot of people listen to him when he claims to have a Word from God. Frankly, I’m not really interested in him – nor am I interested in any other false prophet – because that’s what he is. I’m much more interested in the phenomena of self-delusion that surround men and women who are demonstrably false prophets!
But them’s fightin’ words! I’m not sure if you noticed how careful even Ms. Duin was to make sure they all picked up the turd from the clean-end. In the title of her article we see fail to see “false prophet” or the expression “false prophecy”. The title talks about “failed prophecies”. Failed…huh…like, in the sense of false?
See, I’m a language guy. You all probably know that – but I’m into languages. And I think that the words we choose are very important, and when people write articles or publish apologies – normally the verbiage is pretty massaged.
Ms. Duin seems to be pretty hip to the lingo, biblical and otherwise, and she uses the term “failed prophecy” in the title of her article.
Why would she choose to use the term “failed prophecy”? Well, I have some pretty expensive bible and theology software and so I did a search. I searched all my resources…and there are tens of thousands of resources available in this search. And you know how many times the term “failed prophecy” came up? The search yielded 43 results in 34 articles from 29 sources. All of them are modern – like 1950s till today, and some of them were junk. For instance, the word “failed” ended a sentence and the word “prophecy” started a new one. However, when I searched “false prophecy” the search yielded 849 results in 558 articles in 268 resources. That’s an order of magnitude times 2! And it’s spread out over time – the earliest Christian writers were using the term. And most significantly, “false prophecy” is a biblical term – you know – an expression God used when He revealed himself to man! Yet not a single Bible translation I know of uses the term “failed prophecy”. So the author of the article, she uses a term that is very new and is not a biblical expression for false prophecy…like I said, it seems to me that she’s be overly generous in her description of what is a capital crime in the Old Testament economy.
Now, if you go to Jeremiah Johnson’s facebook page…which I have…and that’s time I’ll never get back, by the way, you’ll notice that ALL and I mean ALL of his language just drips with biblical expressions and terminology. It’s also replete with conservative lingo terms like “liberal agenda” apparently come to Johnson from God in prophecy…which is…odd. But it’s also chock full of the dialectical idiom of the extreme branch of the charismatic movement.
But seriously, his verbiage is very biblical. Jeremiah Johnson is a man who knows how to use biblical language – well, read his apology. Nowhere – and I know that it isn’t there because I searched his entire apology. NOWHERE in his apology, does the expression “false prophesy” appear. Indeed, the word “false” isn’t even there! Friends, control-f is a powerful tool. It’s useful for teaching, rebuking, and training in righteousness. Read his apology, do the search yourself, control-f will allow you to search for specific words in webtext. The word wrong appears 3 times. The only descriptor he gives of the false prophesy itself is when he says he was “inaccurately prophesying”. “Inaccurately prophesying”?! You mean that thing that would get you stoned to death, by God’s command? You mean “falsely prophesying”?
Nope. No, he doesn’t. Because if he admitted he falsely prophesied, he’d have to admit he’s a false prophet – and he ain’t agonna do that! Now, you might ask, “well is there a distinction with a difference between an inaccurate prophecy and a false one?”
No. No there isn’t. If there were then the Bible would help us to make that distinction. But it doesn’t help us to make that distinction because there isn’t a distinction because there is no difference between inaccurately prophesying and falsely prophesying, because someone who prophesies falsely inaccurately prophesies falsely and whoever prophesies falsely is a false prophet.
Friends, this is not some small issue! If you’re a claiming to be a prophet – and I’m not saying that prophets cannot exist, or even that they don’t. I’m not a hard cessationist. I think that God can, and does, and will continue to give people insight into the future. But here’s the thing. Someone who claims to be a prophet is claiming to have heard directly from God and is speaking the very Word of God.
What if I got into the pulpit of a Sunday morning and just started incorrectly using the bible and quoting verses that aren’t in the bible and making up my own verses? Would you like that? Would you stand for it? No self-respecting Christian would or should stand for it. If you got a pastor changing the Bible to suit his needs then he’s not worthy to be called a pastor. People who try to change the Word of God are unworthy to serve the God of the Word.
Now if you wouldn’t tolerate a pastor messing with God’s written Word, why on earth would you tolerate someone to invent God’s spoken Word?! There is no meaningful difference at all between these things. None. And anybody who claims that there is a meaningful difference between a false prophecy and a failed prophecy is probably someone who has uttered a fair few false prophecies – or a devotee of someone who has uttered a lot of false prophecies. And by the way, if you’d like to take a trip down the rabbit hole, go and look at the people who are defending Jeremiah Johnson – after he apologized! Look at the comments on his apology video. People are mad at him for apologizing! Johnson prophesied that President Trump would be re-elected. Not that he would become President again through military action, or through some other fanatical and fantastical fever dream scenario where a military coup disrupts the transfer of power and the Donald established a Junta to root out corruption and drain the swamp.
But people are vociferously, or at least using a lot of capital letters in their facebook comments, telling Johnson that he’s being a coward for apologizing for uttering a false prophecy! Johnson says plainly, “I was wrong” and people are making the most ludicrous and outrageous comments defending and extolling him. I repeatedly saw the comment that “God is not bound by time”. No…He isn’t, but He operates in time and we cannot exist out of time, so for a time-bound prophesy – like reelection – to have any meaning it has to be fulfilled within the bounds of time established in the time bound prophecy!
For heaven’s sake, one woman even said that Johnson was throwing God under the bus! Now look, the comments section of the internet is the cloaca of humanity – we all know this. And in a country of 330 million people it isn’t hard to find a few thousand cranks and crackpots. As of now there are about 4 thousand comments on his apology video. And even if all of those comments came from unique individuals and were all positive towards Johnson, which they aren’t, that’s 4 thousand people out of 330 million. That’s one in every 82,500 people! Friends that’s a ratio of the population that approaches statistically zero. It’s not a significant portion of the populace.
But here’s the thing. People aren’t insignificant statistical anomalies – they’re people. And while there are only a few thousand people who’ve commented in support of Johnson and want him to continue asserting that he was right even when he was demonstrably wrong. Let me repeat that again, he was demonstrably wrong. He uttered a demonstrably false prophecy. Not some vague, nebulous, bit of jargony, self-help, or the huckster’s favorite -- cold-reading. Things like nebulous promises of favor and cold-reading are almost impossible to prove wrong because they’re open to interpretation and are deliberately vague.
But Johnson et al. they gave specific, time bound, and verifiable prophesies that are demonstrably false. The states received votes, they certified the elections, the electoral college elected President Elect Biden, the congress rubber stamped it. Nothing can change the fact that those who claimed Trump would be reelected in 2020 were wrong. It can be and had been demonstrated – they were wrong. This is irrespective of fraud. This is irrespective of any illegal and unconstitutional action that may take place hereafter. Donald Trump may rally the military and stage a coup – Elvis might be a lives still, too. Lots of things COULD happen. But just because something is possible doesn’t make it probable.
And the sad thing is, that those who support Johnson now, will continue to support him after President Biden is sworn in and President Trump goes off to live in Eastern Europe, which is swiftly becoming the last place where free-thought is legal. People will support Johnson and claim that his prophecy was right after Trump is dead, because they’ll say he was elected by God and we didn’t live up to God – they’ll make up some kind of lunatic answer.
Friends, psychologists have a word for this behavior – it’s called delusion. And God does not want us to be delusional. God commands us to test prophets – in the old and NEW testaments – read Corinthians! The problem we have is not a failure to have faith on the part of those who doubt these charlatan prophets, but a failure to respect the Word of God and to take it seriously. When we can flippantly accept man’s word when it’s clearly false and makes a mockery of God’s Word – then the problem is that we have no respect for God’s Word.
We need to turn off our TVs and pick up our Bibles and let God’s Word shape our minds and hearts and stop relying on these frauds and false prophets. We’d be a lot better off – and we wouldn’t have to live in embarrassing self-delusion, either. I know I can’t fix the problem. I know I can’t stop people from drinking the maddening wine of their adulteries, of drinking deeply from the cup of delusion. But I do hope to dilute it, but getting some living water in there. Hopefully it’ll help…but I have my doubts. But, of course, I could be wrong — I’m no prophet!