divineinsight:BY HUMPHREY MTANDWA
COUNTERFEITS have become so skilled that it’s become hard to know the difference between real and fake bills. But it’s rare to hear that people have stopped trading because of fear of fake bills. Trade continues, but measures are taken to equip the traders to recognise real bills. When learning to identify real bills one is not shown fakes notes, but is taught using real currency. When one familiarises with the real currency, they easily can identify fake currency.
But in the church it seems contrary, people are more concerned with identifying fake prophets and some even say that they do not trust all prophets and all prophets are fake. Could it be that the devil has more prophets than God? According to Wikipedia, about one note for every 10 000 notes is fake and also the approximate number of fake notes in circulation is 70 million. Imagine if man’s systems can manage to curb fake currency circulation to that extent, what about God’s system? Take note also that the devil when he rebelled against God, he took about a third of the angels. God always has more.
The prophetic ministry is paramount because God uses it to announce coming seasons. The Bibles says God will not do anything unless He reveals it to His servants: the prophets. These individuals carry great responsibility, but yet the world has been blinded to them because it is more focused on identifying the false.
What then are the marks of a true prophet? A prophet is a vessel the Spirit of God flows through; because of the difference in man’s personality the Spirit of God is expressed through the prophets differently. But the one key mark is that the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. When you meet a prophet, he manifests Christ to you through his personality and you are drawn more to Christ. Because man’s personalities are different, no one prophet can be similar to another and at times because the vessel is fleshy and there is room for error. Every prophet in the Bible was either a shadow or prophesied of the coming Messiah.
The central ministry of a prophet is to point man towards Jesus Christ. Kenneth E Hagin wrote of a man who gave a prophetic word in one of his services and just after the service a woman came and spoke out loud how the man was a sinner and should not have been allowed to speak in front of the church. She immediately gave an example that it could have been better if a certain woman in the church would have given the word because to her she lived a holy life.
The Spirit of God spoke through Hagin and he rebuked the woman and said that before he came into the church, the man had asked God to forgive him and that the woman she assumed was holy had for the past 15 years lived with bitterness towards her sister. Because the woman had used her natural eyes, she assumed that the sister was more righteous than the man who had given the prophetic word. That is how many in our time get lost when they try to separate true prophets from false disciples.
If the church accepts the prophetic mission, the faithful will see God move in a manner we have not yet experienced. Without prophets, there are certain seasons we will not see even though God intends them to happen. God has more prophets out there than we can imagine. Learn how to recognise His true prophets. God bless you.
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l Humphrey Mtandwa is an anointed minister of the gospel and teacher of the Word based in South Africa. He has written several books including The Enoch Generation, Truthfulness and Theophany. He blogs at mtandwa.blogspot.com and can be contacted via e-mail or WhatsApp on +27 610286350.
