This isn’t a topic I usually write on, but in the last several months I’ve gotten e-mail newsletters or I’ve read various prophetically-gifted ministries’ websites concerning natural disasters that have been happening lately. I’ve had this bubbling in me ever since…well actually the Y2K New Year as we in the West entered into a new millennium worried if all of our electronics and computers would function properly when the clock struck midnight, January 1st 2000.

I did my research paper for an OAC World Issues class in high school on the Y2K crisis (does anyone remember when we used to have OAC classes?). With all the research I was compiling, I was finding that it was a legitimate problem, and not propaganda at all as some now believe after the fact, BUT, many people were preparing for it. It was a problem with potential for disaster if ignored, but nobody really ignored it, and the rest is history.

A man I look up to in the Lord came up to me the following Sunday after that New Year passed without major incident, and was really distraught because he’d been telling people the Lord was sending judgment using this whole situation, and now nothing but a few glitches here and there had actually occurred, making him worried he spoke presumptuously or fell for propaganda himself. I reminded him that we’d have a lot of problems on our hands if we had not prepared for it. Companies fixed their software, and people who made cars, elevators, etc… ran tests to make sure internal clocks wouldn’t mistakenly believe it was 1900, resulting in eventual malfunctions during the months ahead. Untold millions of dollars were spent in North America alone to remedy and avoid this problem.

So that is where I come from, only now in the wake of numerous natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, and Rita in the southern panhandle, as well as earthquakes and the tsunami almost one year ago. It almost seems a lot longer ago than just five years that Y2K was upon us, doesn’t it?

The scales tipped for me when I saw an article about Pat Robertson telling a community in Pennsylvania that because they rejected having intelligent design taught in their public schools, that as a result disaster would overtake them and God wouldn’t be there when they called out to Him, because they already rejected Him. I don’t defend Pat Robertson, nor do I know whether he’s speaking on behalf of the Lord or not, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me as to why I need to write something like this, and you may not at the outset understand how I correlate these events to prophesying accurately, but hopefully by the time I’m done writing this, you’ll understand and be willing to kill some sacred cows in your own thinking when it comes to Christians speaking prophetically on behalf of the Lord.

So, if a community heeds a preacher’s words, and repents of the impending judgment that the speaker said would overtake them, and as a result of their repentance they avert the judgment from the Lord, would that make the man a false prophet?

I am going to say no.

We have this sacred cow in evangelical circles that prophesying is the same as speaking what should be “canonized” like what popes think they do, and since we believe Scripture is complete, nobody prophesies on the level that we think mistakenly think ‘prophesying’ is. But that is a limited understanding of it. Prophesying is more accurately speaking forth what the Lord would say if He were physically present, and it can be futuristic and predicting events to come. Anyway, for more on this particular gift of the Spirit, click here for more for another blog I have specifically devoted to the gifts of the Spirit, because it’s not my focus to get into it here. Suffice it to say, prophesying is like being the Lord’s mouthpiece to a person or group.

The best Scriptural example of an outcome differing from what a prophet prophesied would be with the story of Jonah.

Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.” (Jonah 1:1-2)

Fact: The Lord told Jonah to go to Nineveh
Fact: The Lord told Jonah to call out against the city, because of their evil.

It should be observed, nothing is said here whatsoever about this word from God being conditional and that if they repent, that judgment would be averted. All Jonah was told was to deliver a message, which as we know from the story he initially avoided doing. All that was required of Jonah was to deliver the message, and I believe just as it says in Isaiah 55:11 “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it”. It wasn’t Jonah’s responsibility to tell them if they had an option to repent or not, or to stipulate the possibility that if they repented the judgment would be averted.

When the Lord puts it on our hearts to share something with someone else, it might not be our job to interpret its meaning either, or provide the receiver conditions upon which the Word of the Lord to them through you can be changed or averted.

After Jonah’s ordeal with being tossed into the sea, swallowed by a big fish, the Lord instructs him a second time:

Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying,
“Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.” (Jonah 3:1-2, emphasis mine)

Notice the instructions to Jonah do not change, nor does the content of the message.

So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.
Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water,
but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands.
Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. (Jonah 3:3-10, emphasis mine)

Observations:

  • Jonah delivered the Word given to Him by God, and now there was a forty day window before it would come to pass. The two times that record the Lord speaking to Jonah about the message he’s to deliver to Nineveh, our Scriptures don’t document more than the general content of the message to be delivered.


  • The people reacted and responded in humility to Jonah’s message (v. 5)


  • Laws and decrees were issued by the king, and everyone repented. (v. 6-8)


  • The king somehow knew instinctively to appeal to the Lord’s mercy (v.9), because it doesn’t document here that Jonah or anybody else told him to even try repenting


  • It’s a fact; God saw what they did, and did not allow the disaster to happen that he said he would.


These observations demonstrate some things about the character and personality of God.

  • I would say He’s not “judgment happy”, and is merciful


  • God can and does change His mind, whether that fits our theology or not.


  • Prayer, fasting, humility, etc… affect things from happening that God, even in His “sovereignty”, says will happen.


What do you think about that?

Anyway, to get back to prophesying things that don’t come about, clearly one is not a false prophet necessarily if the things he speaks don’t come about. A prophet is not one exclusively because he predicts future events accurately–although it’s necessary he predicts them accurately if he does predict future things–but if he accurately speaks forth from the Lord’s heart, which surely Jonah did.

To put a practical application to this;
There were many warnings prior toY2K, and they were heeded. Heeding the warnings so as to prevent the predicated disasters does not void the initial threat and the original warning.

After Hurricane Katrina, there were e-mails and newsletters going around sent by numerous well-respected prayer warriors and intercessors with reputable backgrounds, urging the Body of Christ to pray, because it was a hurricane intended to do greater damage than Katrina. It didn’t happen, I believe, because many members the Body of Christ fasted and prayed that the judgment could be averted, resulting in less damage being done than predicted.

And as for someone like Pat Robertson, there’s no telling necessarily if he speaks for the Lord unless his words come true. Either a whole community listens to his warning and repents, and we see nothing come about, or if he does speak from the Lord, exactly what he said would happen will happen.

But I will tell you one thing, it is obvious to me from experience and human tendency, that if nothing happens, people will automatically conclude he was prophesying falsely, which might not necessarily be the case as we see from our Biblical example.

Let’s be careful what our reactions are to the outcomes of things prophesied, good or bad.

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