Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

PROPHETS, False

Spokesmen, heralds, or messengers falsely speaking for, or on behalf of, someone else. The false prophet was often motivated not by loyalty to God but by a desire for popularity. This was the main difference between Jeremiah and his contemporaries. While Jeremiah was foretelling doom (Jer 4:19), the false prophets were assuring the people of peace (6:14; 8:11). The people preferred it that way; they said, “Don’t tell us the truth. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies” (Is 30:10, NLT).

The false prophet’s message frequently appealed to national pride: Israel was God’s people; God’s temple was in their midst; therefore, all would be well (Jer 7:10). Jeremiah, however, warned them not to be fooled into thinking that just because they had the temple they would never suffer (vv 12-15). Such confrontation between the prophet of God and the national cult is exemplified in Amos’s encounter with Amaziah the priest of Bethel, who accused Amos of conspiring against Israel (Am 7:10-13). Yet Amos was proved right when the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC and the Jews were taken into exile.

The message of the false prophet was usually spurred by self-interest and given to please the people. It was not necessarily his intention to speak falsely, yet when spoken with wrong motivation, his message was often in error. This sometimes means that even a true prophet could become false and occasionally a false prophet could be used of God for the right purpose. For example, Balaam, a non-Israelite with whom God entrusted a vision, found himself in the difficult position of having to please Balak, who had hired him, and the God of Israel, who spoke to him (Nm 22–23). A fascinating story is told in 1 Kings 13 of two nameless prophets—one true and the other false—who abruptly change roles when the lying prophet speaks truth and the true prophet is proven false by disobedience. In the case of Jeremiah in confrontation with Hananiah the son of Azzur, the two prophets meet in the temple to pitch prophecy against prophecy. Hananiah was proved false, though he appeared as a legitimate prophet from Gibeon (Jer 28:1). He prophesied the very thing the people in Jerusalem wanted to hear, namely, the imminent fall of Babylon. Subsequent events, however, proved this thinking wishful. We may therefore say that false prophecy is self-centered, wrongly motivated, and detached from reality.

The concept of the false prophet is carried over into the NT. Our Lord warns against those who disguise themselves as harmless sheep but are in fact wolves ready for the kill. Jesus also warned his disciples that false christs would arise who would try to deceive God’s elect (Mt 24:24). The early church must have been plagued by such pseudoprophets, for the apostolic letters further warn against such men (cf. 2 Pt 2:1; 1 Jn 4:1). In the context of these letters “prophets” and “teachers” are interchangeable, though the original text speaks of them as “false prophets.” While pretending to be Christians, they are deceptive teachers because their instruction is perverse. These people even perform miracles, but with the help of evil spirits, not the Spirit of Christ (cf. Rv 13:11-15).

False prophets, fraudulent spirits, and wrong teachings are recurring problems in the church. Believers should constantly stand guard against those who cleverly lie about the truth (cf. Eph 4:14-16); they should discern the spirits of prophets to determine whether they are from the evil one or from God (1 Cor 12:10-11). We are told not to believe everyone who claims that his or her message is from God, but to “test” the spirits to see whether their message is from the Holy Spirit and whether it agrees with the truth that Jesus is the Son of God in human form (cf. 1 Jn 4:1-3).