In this thought-provoking episode, Ronald Dart delves into the complex world of prophets, dreams, and divine messages. He explores the criteria for recognizing genuine prophets and warns against those who falsely claim divine inspiration. Listeners are guided through biblical teachings to understand the significance of prophecy and the importance of discerning false messages.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Have you ever encountered a prophet? I mean the real thing, the genuine article. I’m not talking about some guy with wild eyes and a bad hair day who’s telling you the world is going to end next December 13th at 4.23 in the morning. No, I’m talking about a real, genuine, sent from the Lord type of prophet. You know, prophets, true and prophets false, come in many descriptions. And sometimes the ones sent by God don’t really know who they are. They don’t realize the significance of what they are and what they’re doing and what they’re saying. How do you evaluate a prophet? I mean, how would you know if one came on the scene and was telling you something and really had a message from God? Because the chances are the one that God wouldn’t even speak to, as a matter of fact, the one that God wouldn’t say hello to, will come and tell you, well, the Lord told me. Now, don’t make any mistake about it. There are false prophets out there. And false prophets, obviously, deserve no consideration at all. Now, one way you can tell is those who set dates for the return of Jesus Christ are surely uninspired and can be safely ignored. Why would I say that? Well, because Jesus himself said, read it in Matthew 24, he said, no man knows the day or the hour of his return. In fact, he strongly implies that he himself doesn’t know it. The angels don’t know it. No one knows the day of his return except the Father in heaven. And so when some guy comes and tells me, oh, hey, I know when Christ is coming back, I say, uh-huh, right. We have a false prophet here. Now, there are those also that will come along and tell you something about what’s going to happen in the future, but they teach against God’s law. Now, in another day and time, you could stone those fellows, but that option’s not available to us today. One thing you can do with a prophet like that, though, is slam the door in his face without incurring any displeasure from God at all. But, you know, there’s a broader group. of prophets, or people who claim to be at least, who are not so easily defined. For example, there are the dreamers. These are people who keep having dreams that come true. Now, of course, when they come and tell you that, you know, you won’t believe what happened to me the other day, I had this dream. And two days later, the dream came to pass. It was amazing. Now, I’ve listened to this from time to time from people, and I ask myself, how do I know that? What does it prove to me? The answer? Well, absolutely nothing. I don’t know if they had the dream in the first place. I’m not altogether absolutely sure they know they had the dream in the first place, but I surely do not. And what I’ve also noticed is that in so many cases of fulfilled dreams or dreams that come to pass, there’s no significance in it. I just don’t believe that God is out there idly giving visions and dreams to people just to titillate them, just to excite them, just to help them know, well, God exists. I believe he exists because I’ve had a dream come to pass. Give me a break. Now, on the other hand, if you had a dream that said you shouldn’t get on TWA Flight 800 and you skipped the flight and then the flight blew up, then I could say that dream had a point to it. Maybe God cared enough about you to save your life for His reasons, and someday, maybe you’ll know what those reasons are. But often as not, the dreamers find no significance to the dream at all. Another category of prophet abroad in the land is the seer. Now, these are people who will try to foretell future events. They’ll say, this is going to happen, or that’s going to happen. Oh, I’m not talking about the psychics like Gene Dixon. They give you enough things that if one thing comes to pass, they’ll trumpet that forevermore and claim that, well, see, I was right about that. Never mind that I was wrong about most of the things that I told you you ought to look for. Now, these people who foretell future events, when the event doesn’t come to pass, they well, you can safely ignore those people as well. There’s an interesting passage back in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 18, verse 17. The Lord said to me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. He’s actually going to foretell here the rising of a prophet in the end time, and the prophet he’s talking about will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He said, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like you, Moses, and I’ll put my words in his mouth, and he’ll speak to them all that I command him. It shall come to pass that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, well, I’m going to require that of them. In other words, I’m going to hold them responsible for it. But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak. Aha. Now, this is the one we’ve got to watch out for. The guy who comes along and speaks in God’s name, saying, well, the Lord told me this, and God says, I didn’t tell him anything like that. God said that happens, then that prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, well, how are we going to know the word which the Lord has spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. He’s just presumed it out of his own heart. You shall not be afraid of him. All right. So he tells us categorically if the guy comes along, speaks in the name of the Lord, gives us a prophecy and tells us that next July this is going to happen. We come to July. It doesn’t happen. Well, from that time on, we can safely presume that that prophet was not sent by God. There’s another category. They’re the message bearers. They go along the lines, the Lord told me to tell you. The most common variety of this message bearer is the television preacher who sends you this letter that says, ìThe Lord told me to tell you to send me some money to help me do whatever it is that heís trying to get done.î Now, I respond to these prophets by telling them that if the Lord wants me to send them money, Iíll send it, but the Lord is going to have to tell me Himself. I mean, big deal. God speaks to this preacher by his bed one night and tells him, you write to old Ron down there and tell him to send you $100. So he does. Well, the Lord could just as easily appear by my bed and told me to send the $100. Why do you have to tell him? And how do I know the Lord told him? I don’t. And so I don’t send it. Now, I want to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with legitimate fundraising. If a preacher, an evangelist, or what have you, believes that the Lord has told him to build a hospital, then I think he ought to get busy and build the hospital. And he has every right to write to me and anybody else he knows and say, Look, I’m trying to build a hospital for the glory of God. There are a lot of sick people in this community that aren’t getting the proper care. We’re going to make this a charity hospital, and I need your help. It’s going to be a lot of good works. It’s going to be the honor of God. Well, hey, you know, that might be something I would support. He has every right to ask me to help that and to say, we’re going to do some good works, and I’d like to invite you to contribute to help us in doing these good works. However— When he takes that next step and says, now the Lord appeared to me and told me to do this, well, now he’s gone into a kind of name-dropping now because I don’t know that the Lord told him to tell me that. I don’t know that he has seen the Lord at all. I can’t be absolutely sure he’s even going to build a hospital with the money I send him, except that he could go to jail if he tries to raise money from me to build a hospital and then goes out and builds his own house. So there’s perhaps some defense involved in that. But my point is this. When he has to tell me that God told him to do it in order to get me to send money, I’m afraid he’s at a dead loss in writing to me because I’m not going to send money to somebody where I’ve got no way of verifying what the Lord told him one way or the other. Now, I’m justified. I’ll tell you what you’re justified in doing if you’re ever on the receiving end of one of those letters. You are justified in waiting for the Lord to tell you, and I will put it to you this way. If God spoke to this preacher standing at the foot of his bed in an audible voice and said, go build a hospital, then I think you ought to wait, I certainly will, for the same manifestation before I decide to support it. The Lord needs to appear at the foot of my bed and speak to me in an audible voice just like he did to the preacher. He does that, then I’m going to get busy and do what the Lord tells me to do. But you see, just because the preacher told me that God did that, doesn’t mean that God did it. So we have the dreamers, and we have the people who bring along messages from God, and the seers, and you don’t really have to take them all that seriously unless you’ve got some reason yourself from God to take them seriously.
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Now, there are more of these people, and I’ll talk about them when I come back in just a moment. or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44.
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Now it’s not uncommon for a would-be prophet to have what he or she would call, quote, a word from the Lord, end quote. Now oftentimes when you have these, the words do not disagree with the Bible in any way. In fact, more often than not, they are actually paraphrases of what the Bible says somewhere. And my general reaction to those things is, okay, what’s the point? I mean, since it’s already in the Bible, why do I have to have a prophet come along with a word from the Lord for me when I’ve already had that word from the Lord from the pages of the Bible? Well, someone might say, this is to call it specially to your attention because you need to give maybe some real attention to that. Well, okay. But consider the parable, if you would, that Jesus gave of Lazarus and the rich man. Now, most of it is not particularly germane to what we’re talking about here today, but there came a point when the rich man who was in a great deal of torment looked across at Father Abraham and Lazarus there in his bosom, and he was very concerned about being in a place of torment and that his brothers might come to join him in this place of torment. And so he said to Abraham, he said, I pray you, therefore, Father, that you would send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers. This is in the 16th chapter of Luke. I have five brothers that he may testify unto them, lest they come to this place of torment. I don’t want them to have to go through what I have gone through. Well, Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. What? You mean you’re not going to make any special effort to send someone to speak to my brothers to really call this? Say, No, yeah, really. What you read in the Bible really is true after all, and you should go do that. He says, no, I’m not going to do that. And he said, well, look, Father Abraham. He said, I know they have Moses and the prophets. I know they’ve read that. But if one went to them from the dead, they would repent. And he said to them, if they won’t hear Moses and the prophets, he’s talking about the written word of God. Moses is the first five books of the Old Testament. The prophets, the way he’s speaking of it here is basically the rest of it. He says, if they won’t listen to the written word of God, then they’re not going to be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Think about it. Then if somebody’s not going to listen when somebody rises from the dead, do you think they’re going to listen to Sister Mabel from the back row of the church who has a word from the Lord for them that they really ought to pay attention to this particular passage of Scripture? I don’t think so. And I don’t see any indication in the Bible that God really works that way. So generally, I don’t presume inspiration on the part of the prophet who is merely stating the obvious. You know, they’re just telling me that, for example, a prophetess comes along and says, Ron, I have a word from the Lord for you. God loves you. Hey, I already know that. If she tells me that God has sent a message that I should take off some weight, well, I’m sorry, I know that too. So how are we to treat these prophets and prophetesses that come along stating the obvious to us or sometimes stating things that are wrong to us? How do we deal with it? Well, one thing you should understand is that just because a person claims to be a prophet, it doesn’t mean that you have to consider the person to be one. Because with prophets, oftentimes the only way you have of knowing whether he is a true prophet of God or not is when his words come to pass, which means at the time the prophecy is given to you, just file it away in your memory and go on. There’s no call for you to do anything about it because you have no way of knowing whether what this person is telling you is true or whether it’s not. But when the words come to pass, well, even then you have to be careful what you do in response to the prophet. I’ll explain what I mean by this. Back in Deuteronomy again, this time the 13th chapter in verse 1, there is a very interesting challenge given before Israel about prophets. He says, “…if there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder.” All right? So here we got it. The guy comes along. There’s going to be a sign given to you. Something’s going to happen tomorrow about noon, and it happens. In Deuteronomy 13, verse 2, he gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spoke to you, saying, Let’s go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them. Oh, my goodness. Do you realize what he has just told you? He has just told you that someone can come along, give you a sign or a wonder. The sign or the wonder can actually come to pass, and then the person can try to lead you to break the very first commandment of honoring God above all others. What are you supposed to do about that? Verse 3 answers it. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God proves you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Wow. Do you know what he said here? He has said that God will actually allow a false prophet to perform a sign or wonder which actually comes to pass. Why would God do that? And it’s a false prophet. He leads you astray. Why would God do that? Well, we’re told in simplest possible terms. God wants to know whether you really love him or not, or whether you’ll go chasing off after anyone who tells you that you don’t need to obey God. That simple. He says, you shall walk after the Lord your God. You’ll fear him. You will keep his commandments and obey his voice, serve him and cleave to him, regardless of what the prophets do. I don’t care if they call down fire from heaven tomorrow at noon and consume your town hall. If they try to lead you away from obedience to Jesus Christ and God the Father, they are false, and you must not follow them. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice and serve him and cleave to him. But what about the prophet? It says, That prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death. because he has spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, who redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to thrust you out of the way which the Lord your God commanded you to walk in. He’s come along to try to push you out of the road, to get you off the beaten track that God wants you in. So shall you put away the evil from the middle of you. Oh my goodness, that’s strong stuff. But it gets stronger yet. In verse 6 he says, Namely, the gods of the people round about you, near you, or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. You shall not consent to him. You’re not to listen to him. Your eye is not to pity him. You’re not to spare, and you’re not to conceal him. I don’t care if it’s your son, or your daughter, or the wife whom you love like your own life. It says, you shall surely kill him. Wow. So God… will allow someone to come along like a prophet, perform a sign or wonder. And I don’t care if that person is the closest friend you have in the world or your husband, your wife, your children, your brother, your sister. He says, you kill him. Your hand shall be first upon him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the rest of the people because we’ve got to get this type of thing stamped out. Now, that option isn’t open to us anymore, but it does underline, I think, how serious God looks at this. What it underlines as much as anything else, though, is that just because someone performs a miracle doesn’t mean he’s of God. The solution was you stone him with stones that he die. Why? Because he has sought to thrust you away from the Lord your God. That’s why. And all Israel shall hear and fear and shall no longer do any such wickedness as this among you. Now, I want you to think about this very carefully because it’s important. It’s strange to say it, but a miracle or a fulfilled prophecy, a sign or a wonder, conveys no special authority on the person who performs it. Isn’t that interesting? They have no authority because of what they have done. Even if they are a true prophet of God, the miracle conveys no authority, for all the authority still belongs to God. And the ordinary person, the man in the street, people just like you, have the right, no, have the responsibility to think, to judge, to evaluate whether a prophet should be heard or not. or at another time, whether a prophet should be heard or stoned. But having said all that, let me say this. Jesus cautioned us about our response to people who come in his name. It’s absolutely true that you have every right, no, you have the responsibility to evaluate a prophet, and when you find him to be a false prophet, to reject him out of hand. But there is that broader category of people that you just really have no idea. You don’t know whether God sent them. You don’t know if he didn’t. You think probably he didn’t. We may doubt them, but we should not mistreat them. As Jesus sent out his disciples on their first mission to preach, he gave them a lot of warnings and cautions and encouragement. He closed his commission to them by saying this, Matthew 10 and verse 40, He that receives you receives me. So that when Christ sends somebody to us and we receive that person, we are receiving Christ. And if we mistreat that person, we are mistreating Christ. He goes on to say, he that receives a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward. And later, whoever shall give a drink unto one of these little ones, a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple. Verily I say unto you, he shall in no way lose his reward. I try not to be rude to people who’ve had dreams and visions and who are seers, as it were, and who come with me even when I do not believe a word they are saying. For time will tell, and God will judge. Those whom I know to be false, well, I treat as false. But I’m kind to the rest, and so should you be. I’ll be back in a moment to talk about a man who had a real claim to be a prophet.
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About this time, a real prophet, a genuine prophet was put in jail. His name was John. We know him as John the Baptist, the man who had baptized Jesus. Now, you might think that prophets are great towers of strength, that they know, and therefore they’re strong, and they have no doubts. Well, John was beginning to have his doubts, in fact, because when he was in prison and he heard what Jesus was doing, he sent two of his disciples, and he said to him, Are you he that should come, or should we look for somebody else? He just wasn’t sure. Some of the things he was hearing were leading him to wonder. Jesus said, You go show John again the things which you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. Not just people who’ve got money, but the poor. And blessed is he whoever shall not be offended in me. That last little phrase was a little caution back to John. Look, John, don’t be offended by the things you hear. The works are what you’re to judge by. And he said the works are pretty clear. Jesus’ ministry was really very different from John’s. John had been very strict with himself. Jesus had not been so strict. And he had been hearing things about Jesus that were troubling. So Jesus sent this message to him about the things that were really important. But when the disciples of John left, and to go back and report, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John, When you went out into the wilderness to see John, what did you go out there to see? A reed shaken with the wind? In other words, did you just think this man was out there blowing with the wind? What did you go out there to see? A man clothed with soft raiment? No, hardly. Those that wear soft clothing are in king’s houses. What did you go out there to see? A prophet? Yes, yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. Oh, so there is more, yes. For this is he, said Jesus, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face to prepare your way before you. Oh, really? So John himself was a fulfillment of prophecy as well as being a prophet. Jesus is talking about Malachi 3 and verse 1, which says, Behold, I will send my messenger. He will prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple. Even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in, behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But if you go back and read Malachi 3, you come to the very strong impression that this one to come and prepare the way before the Messiah was to come before his second coming, before the final days of man on the earth. And that’s a little different from the impression you get here. But Jesus goes on to say, “‘Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist, a powerful prophet, a great man. Nevertheless, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violent, and the violent take it by force.’ A lot of people are confused by that scripture. They don’t know what it means, but you can take one angle of it very simply. John and Jesus were both, in a sense, representatives of the kingdom of God, and both of them suffered violence. John was taken by force and put in jail. Jesus was about to be taken by force and killed. For all the prophets, he says, and the law prophesied until John. And if you will receive it, this, John, is Elijah, which was for to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear, which means everybody’s not going to understand this. Now, what’s odd about this is that when they asked John if he was Elijah, he said, no, I’m not. And he wasn’t pretending. He didn’t think he was Elijah. It’s what I mentioned earlier when I said oftentimes prophets don’t know who they are or what they are or the significance of their work. But you see, when John was born, the angel told his father before he was born about John, he said, He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just. It’s a reference to Malachi 4 and verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. This is end time stuff, folks. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Elijah, then, is to come at the time of the end. But I thought Elijah was dead. Well, he is, of course. So when one is to come as Elijah, or in the spirit and power of Elijah, he is said to be Elijah. Elijah was the archetype of all the prophets. He was a hairy man. He wore a wide leather belt. He was a man of very few words. When he comes on the scene, his only words are, quote, As the Lord God lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. Then no one heard a word from him for three and a half years. And it didn’t rain either. You know, this is in stark contrast to most of the wannabe prophets. You generally can’t get them to stop talking. Elijah, let the drought do the talking. All he did was give them this short word. As God lives before whom I stand, it’s not going to rain. And it didn’t. We’ll talk more about Elijah next time. Until then, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, it’s still raining.
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For now. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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