Phony Prophets

Matthew 7:15-20 “15 Constantly be on your guard against phony prophets. They come disguised as lambs, appearing to be genuine, but on the inside they are like wild, ravenous wolves! 16 You can spot them by their actions, for the fruits of their character will be obvious. You won’t find sweet grapes hanging on a thorn bush, and you’ll never pick good fruit from a tumbleweed. So if the tree is good, it will produce good fruit; but if the tree is bad, it will bear only rotten fruit and it deserves to be cut down and burned. 20 Look at the obvious fruit of their lives and ministries, and then you’ll know whether they are true or false.”

How are phony false prophets discerned?
‭‭verse 16 states that you can spot them by their actions. “You won’t find find sweet grapes hanging on a thorn bush.”

Thorn bush and weed in the Bible can be represented with worries and concerns of the world rather than the fruit of the spirit. Such false prophets draws people or a ministry using fear, emotions, and hysteria to trap people. As ravenous wolves, they seek, and there are an abundant types of these people, a people who are living defeated, destitute, unable to overcome, and desperate people who want the world to end so their miserable lives can end and they can hurry up and go to heaven rather than doing the Will of God.

“You’ll never pick good fruit from a tumbleweed.” What is a tumbleweed? They are dried up round dead branches rolling across country highways. They are false prophets whose lives are dried out, broke, family messed up, own lives messed up, never have overcome anything, and self appointed looking for miserable people to say “God saith!”

How can a messed up life help another messed up life? How can a homeless person help another homeless person get back on their feet? By the way, many self proclaimed prophets are homeless and jobless.

I ask my church, if you can really hear God, then why is your life so messed up? That is the million dollar question for these self proclaimed “prophets.”

They are not experiencing blessings but curses. That is the fruit you need to discern. Are they blessed bearing fruit of the Spirit or cursed and bearing fruit of bad things?