Daily Devotional Dives - Don't Put Words into God's Mouth

True or False?

From very early on, God tells His people to beware of false prophets and then again in the New Testament under the reference of 'false teachers'.  There is nothing new about it nowadays, either.  

1 John 4:1 warns...

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world"

God promised the Israelites in Deuteronomy 18:17-22 that He would send them prophets who would speak on His behalf and they were to listen to them.  However, He warned, there will be those who...

"...presume to speak in His name....or even in another 'god's' name...these (false prophets) must be put to death..."

They spread lies and had the gall to say it was from God.

God did show them how they could detect the true from the false prophets.  Continuing on in those Deuteronomy verses, He told them...

"If what a prophet proclaims in the Name of the LORD, does not take place or come true, that this is a message the LORD has not spoken.  That prophet has spoken presumptuously..."

The prophet Jeremiah cautions the people of his time in Jeremiah 23:16...

"Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes.  They speak from their own minds not from the mouth of the Lord."

I've written about this topic before so will not overly belabor the point; just a reminder to ourselves to be wary.   You can scroll through some of the Morning Musings entries.   Almost all the New Testament letters to the various churches as well as to the individuals, caution, again and again about false teachers and how they will creep into the congregations of God's people.  Beware of them so you do not get off on the wrong track.

The worst thing is that many proclaim that the words they speak come from God.  God never said those things.  Thus the test to test "the spirits".

Even our own thoughts need to be guided by God's Word, the Bible.  Sift through the thoughts that enter your mind to see if its' Satan's or one of his minions' ideas or not; do they tally with the Word of God?  Check and double check to be sure you are not putting words into God's mouth.

                                                      ~ERC  2017~
                                      Originally written June 1995; adapted for blog July 2017