Understanding the Prophetic Gift – The Dark Side

Narrator: Welcome to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, the place where you can get real answers to tough questions. Jesus promised you abundant life, but poor choices and dark forces stand in your way. It is time to learn how to overcome the obstacles that keep you out of your promised land. Knowledge of God will pave the path for you to walk in His blessing.

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Dr. Ray: Hello, and welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. I'm very proud to say that this podcast is brought to you by Premier Family Care, Dr. Jess Youngblood, with offices at Arab, Alabama, Blountsville, Alabama, and Guntersville, Alabama, as well as Medispa, Arab, Alabama. If you need medical assistance, Dr. Jess Youngblood is the man to see. 

God bless you folks, thank you for listening. I got a tough subject today. It's called the dark side of the prophetic. I've been talking about understanding the prophetic, what it is, and what it is not. You know, God is talking to us, Lord, that, that, that's… God's talking to us, God wants to communicate with us. We make the prophetic gift too weird. We make it like it's Nostradamus predicting all these dire event events in the end times - and, and there is of course, some of that in the book of Revelation you know, through the Apostle John - but the New Testament prophetic gift talked about in Corinthians chapter 12 is a gift where the Lord speaks through individuals to the church or to other individuals. Or, or maybe to the community or the nation. And you see example after example of this. Remember Agabus came to Paul and told him what was going to happen to him if he went to Jerusalem. And prophecies can be warnings, they can be confirmation, they can be encouraging. 

As a matter of fact, New Testament prophecy edifies us and comforts us, and encourages us. It's talking about– talking about that again in Corinthians. And very sadly… you know, I'm just transparent and honest, I really think one of the saddest things around is the denominations that teach that the the gifts of the Holy Spirit have stopped, that they take Corinthians, chapter 13 around verse 8 out of context. You know, “And when the perfect comes…” tongues shall cease and prophecies shall stop. And then they, they make excuses, “Well, the Bible's perfect, therefore we do not have this stuff anymore.” But if you read the whole thing in context, you read the book of Corinthians in context, it's very clear these gifts were given for the church. And you look at Ephesians, talking about the fivefold ministry - apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists - that these gifts were given for the equipping of the saints until we reach the fullness of Christ. We haven't reached it yet. We're still being trained, we're still being equipped. When the perfect comes someday, we'll have the perfect. We will be perfect and will be made perfect in Christ but that day has not come. When you read the Bible in context and don't take scriptures out of context to make a pretext, you'll see that the spiritual gifts and the power of the Holy Spirit is available for Christians today.

I think it's amazing that some mainline denominations - and I love my brothers and sisters in Christ, but they can believe the supernatural gift of salvation in Romans 10, “If you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart Jesus is Lord, you shall be saved.” How supernatural is that? So if you make this confession and believe with your heart Jesus is Lord, salvation comes, you become born again, a new creation, adopted into the family of God, have eternal life. That's really supernatural to me. That's harder to believe than First Corinthians 12, “To some have the word of knowledge, to some is given faith, to some is given miracles, to some is given to prophecy, to some is given tongues, to some is given interpretation of tongues.” Those are spiritual gifts and that's easier to believe than Romans chapter 10. But I believe the bible is the word of God. I believe Romans chapter 10. I also believe Corinthians chapter 12 and I do not take a scripture out of context to say that that's not for today. 

What happens is that people, based on their lack of experience, they come up with scriptures out of context to support their pre-conceived beliefs or what they've been taught. And some of these teachings, as bad as they are, are simply teachings that have been passed down generationally. But when you check it out with scripture, it does not hold water. Are spiritual gifts happening today… operating today? Absolutely. God is alive. What is prophecy? Prophecy is God speaking to us and hearing the voice of God is so powerful. Again, we talk about First Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 1, “Earnestly desire spiritual gifts, pursue love, especially that you would prophesy.” I mean, that scripture is pretty clear. In verse 39, “...do not forbid speaking in tongues but covet to prophesy.” And then you go to chapter 13, it talks about when, when the perfect comes, these gifts will cease. But then it goes in chapter 14, it talks more about operating in the gifts. And you see the gifts throughout the Bible. So to say that they have… the time has come, we've all been made perfect and therefore the gift– gifts have ceased, or we have the perfect word of God - and some teach this that we have the perfect word of God and because the word of God is perfect, we do not have the gifts anymore - which to me is kind of crazy because the perfect word of God says we do have the gifts. 

You know… I’m on a tangent here. Forgive me, this was not what I was going to talk about today. I'm talking about the gift of prophecy. It's a wonderful gift. This gift– people have given me prophetic words that have changed my life, that have saved me, that have helped direct my life, have encouraged me, have changed my life. And I have seen prophetic words from God completely transform people. As a counselor, sometimes I've been able to give prophetic words that have literally done more than hours and hours and hours of counseling. One word from God can change your life, and I can tell you countless stories of God speaking and changing people's lives. This gift is extremely powerful and unfortunately, it is also twisted and perverted which is very sad. But if I were the devil and I really wanted to cause some damage to God, if I wanted to discredit God in some shape, form, or fashion, one thing I would do is take a wonderful spiritual gift and twist it and pervert it. Well, it's just what some of the psychics have done. I believe some psychics actually have a prophetic gift and they have twisted it and perverted it and are causing all kinds of harm and damage and opening up demonic doorways to countless people. Don't get involved in that, it's very, very bad.

So the prophetic gift is a beautiful gift. What I mean– I really want to hear what God has to say. He's got something to tell me, He's got something to tell you that can change your life. He's got a answer to your problem, He's got a answer to your marriage, He has an answer to your finances, He has an answer to your health. We just need to be able to listen to Him and the prophetic gift is a wonderful way that He speaks. He also speaks through dreams and visions and through the word - yes, He speaks through the word of God, He does - and through preachers… in a lot of different ways. The prophetic gift is very powerful. And then it gets twisted and there's a dark side to it. There are those that would use this gift for personal gain. They would literally use this gift for money. They're– in the old days, some of the old Spirit-filled days, I remember you know, a revival or something there would be a line of people who were willing to make a certain donation to this particular, quote, “Prophet’s” ministry. And if you're willing to donate a hundred dollars or more, come stand in line, I've got a prophetic word for you. It is a very serious and dangerous thing to use a wonderful, beautiful gift of God for profit. 

I knew a pastor years ago that would prophesy to people continually that they were to be a part of their Church and they were using the prophetic gift to build their church and to get more church members. And I heard the prophecies. As a matter of fact, they presented the prophecies to me to judge them and I looked at them and said this is not from God, this is self-serving. You see, if I'm operating in the prophetic gift and I want to give you a prophetic word, it's not serving me, it's serving you. It's not glorifying me, it's glorifying Christ. It's not for my benefit, it's for your benefit and is to, to increase your faith. That's one of the cool things that prophecy does, is it builds our faith in Christ. It confirms that God is alive and God is speaking to us and God wants to, to communicate with us. It's an incredible, an incredible gift. And I've told you even in my marriage when I'm– the Lord confirmed me who– that my wife was to be Christie. He gave me a prophecy and he told me that Christie was my perfect gift from Him. At this time, my wife and I were just casual friends but He gave me this prophetic word, Christie is my perfect gift from Him. I was able to get the courage and uh, tell my now wife who was just my friend back then about this prophetic word I had received. I was very shy and uncertain about it and when I gave her the word, she let out a large gasp and she went and she grabbed her journal. And years before, the Lord had spoken to her and said, “Your husband-to-be will say that you are his perfect gift from me.” In other words, the Lord spoke to me something that He had spoken to my wife years ago, and that helped put us together, plus a number of other confirmations. And the Lord began to prophetically give us prophetic words that were continual confirmations. And I did not take that one word and run with it and say, “Okay, now we got to get married,” no, there was a process that God wanted to use and I had to wait for many confirmations. 

And let me say this now on this podcast because it's my podcast and I can kind of talk about what I want to talk about. These people that are prophesied together, and I remember um, couples that you know, they said, “Well, the Lord gave us prophetic words that that we are to be husband and wife.” I want to tell you something. That's not absolutely the normal for God. Normally the way God works in relationships, if you meet someone you become friends, you get close, you grow closer together, and then through prayer, the Lord begins to confirm that this is your husband or this is your wife and there's many confirmations and there's a long growing process involved in it. But I have seen people where a so-called prophet would go– look at– being a church; and literally, I saw this happen. I was in a church and the prophet looked at this man, he pointed to this man and said, “This woman is to be your wife,” and they got married. They literally: “Well, the prophet said we're to get married.” Was there love? Not really. She was a very beautiful young woman and he was uh, a guy… I won't call him handsome. But anyway, uh, they got together, it turned out to be an abusive, dysfunctional, awful relationship. And they got married not because God put them together but because a prophet had perverted the gift. This is the dark side of gift– he had perverted the gift and said, “You are to marry this woman,” And I saw it happen with my own eyes. And it caused so much pain and so much suffering. 

And so, lesson here is there are a lot of people out there who may claim they have a prophetic word but you never ever, ever just take a word from anybody and go, “Oh, I know,” you know, “this is God. I'm gonna, I'm gonna drop everything and do exactly what the prophet says.” God will confirm his word and His word can be judged. It should bear witness in your spirit, it should line up with the Bible, it should be something a loving father would say. And if you have the Holy Spirit in you, when the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, the Holy Spirit should recognize His own voice. It's critical that we have the gift of discernment to be able to discern when God is speaking. Now, in the charismatic circles - and I have moved in those circles, you know, for years - in the Spirit-filled churches, the gift of prophecy is very, very common and I've heard a lot of wonderful prophetic words given that I knew were from God. I've heard a lot of prophetic words given that I knew were not from God. Now, if it's given to me, it doesn't bother me if it's not from God. Hear me, I really don't care if it's not from God. I say, “Well, thank you so much for that.” And I might say a little prayer to myself like, “Lord, if that's not from you, just let it fall to the ground.” I just don't receive it. I don't receive it. 

Then there's these prophetic words I get– that I'm not sure about, “Well… let's see…Dr. Self, I hear someone– I hear the Lord saying to you that you are to…” I'll never forget for an example years ago, I was at a home group and somebody gave me a prophetic word that they saw me ministering in New Mexico. And I still remember that word that uh, for uh, ministering in New Mexico, and did not mean anything to me at all. And this was probably 10 or 12 years ago I received this word, so I just sort of said, “Well, thank you very much.” It didn't really bear witness with me. It didn't… didn't gel with me so to speak.

So I've never really thought about– and as I'm saying this to you now on this show, a few weeks ago I was at a church up in Missouri and they were actually talking to me about their ministry in New Mexico and how… you know, I formed a connection with this church which actually has a Ministry in New Mexico so, who knows? But the point is sometimes God will speak to you, you're not sure about it, so you set it aside and you just wait and see. Hopefully, you've written it down or you remember the word.

But the, the dark side is people who will use this gift as manipulation, as control, as a monetary making scheme to build their ministry, to increase their pocketbook to have un– to, to give the… well, some people will use the gift to bring attention to themselves, to glorify themselves, to say, “Look, world, look at me, church, I'm a prophet of God.” You see, if someone is a prophet of God flowing in this gift, the attention is not on them, the attention and the glory is always going to Jesus Christ. See, the devil likes to say– take something that's wonderful and beautiful and pervert it. Now, the books– in the book of– the Bible says in Corinthians we should not be ignorant of Satan's schemes. So one of his schemes is, is to take the beautiful, wonderful, Incredible gift of prophecy and twist it and pervert it. But listen to me carefully. You– just because you see a perversion of something doesn't mean that it's not valuable. Satan will only try to pervert or counterfeit things that are good and important so sometimes in a very strange way, when I see something that's constantly being twisted and counterfeited, I know there must be something valuable to begin with and I look for that treasure and I look for the truth. But sometimes it's… you know, in the South we just say sometimes you have to… when… it's like eating fish. You have to eat the meat and spit out the bones and that's the way it is with the prophetic gift. Unfortunately, you have to listen for what's right, you have to listen what is from God, and you have to know what is not from God. But don't throw the gift away just because you've heard something that doesn't resonate with you or you've seen somebody misuse it or twist it. And this has happened so many times that “I'll have nothing to do with the prophetic!” 

I have seen churches who literally will not allow the prophetic gift to operate anymore in their church because somebody came in one time and caused damage and harm with a prophetic gift. And that is the dark side of the prophetic, that you can cause– People will cause harm and cause pain and cause suffering and do damage to the body of Christ with this gift but that doesn't mean the gift is not real. It means that people are sinners… and people are demonically influenced and even people who do not realize are being influenced by the devil, are being influenced by the devil and this gift gets twisted. You have to have discernment but do not, do not dismiss this gift because it has a dark side. It just means there's something real and important behind it all.

I've said this many times. You don't see too many counterfeit one dollar bills. Usually, when you see counterfeit, they'll start with 20s and 50s and one hundred dollar bills because the people who do the counterfeit only want to counterfeit what is valuable, and the devil will only counterfeit what is important to God. So the fact that this gift is twisted and perverted and people will use it for gain, and people will use it to manipulate and control, blah, blah, blah, tells me that the gift really underneath it all must be very important and we are to desire this. I just want to hear God speak, I need to hear God speak to me. And I know that God speaks to my heart and to my spirit and through the word. Sometimes God will speak to me through another individual using the gift of prophecy and it is a wonderful thing. And when somebody comes up to me and says, “Dr. Self, this is what I believe the Lord is saying to you,” I'm going to listen to that very carefully, and that I'm going to judge in my heart if this is God speaking to me. If it is God speaking to me, I hope and pray I have the courage and conviction to do something about it. 

God wants to be heard. There are some that teach He only speaks through the written word. He does speak through the written word, I've been studying the Bible for many years, I love the word of God. But I know the author of the word is still alive and He's still talking to us and He still wants to communicate with us. And one of the important ways He communicates is through the gift of prophecy. The Lord tells us all to desire this gift,  He wants us to prophesy, He wants us, to hear His voice, He wants us to be His voice. Hey, that sounds like a book I just wrote. I did write a book called - that He wants us to be able to hear Him speak and relay his message to other people. And do you know what? So many times when I have received a prophetic gift or somebody comes up to me and says, “I have this word for you,” if it's really from God, usually it's something that God's already been trying to tell me and I have either forgotten about it or I was in doubt or I had dismissed it and all of a sudden, He brings another individual to tell me the same thing that God's been trying to tell me over and over again. 

So many times, the prophetic gift is simply God's mercy. He's been trying to tell us something, we weren't listening, so He sent someone else to tell us what He's been trying to tell us all along. It's an Incredible gift and you get this gift by prayer and asking the Lord to give you this gift. He said just pray His word. Like this, for instance, “Father, in your word you said that I should pursue love. I purpose in my heart to do that. Lord, you said I should desire spiritual gifts. Lord, I desire spiritual gifts. Lord, you said especially that I would prophesy. Father, I especially desire to prophesy. I ask for you to give me that gift now, Father. I receive it Father by faith in Jesus’ name. Amen.” And that's how it works and then you've got to stir the gift and activate the gift. 

I hope this has ministered to you. I'm Dr Ray Self. Please, please like this, this podcast. Subscribe, follow, download, you know the drill. Another thing they tell me is very important is give me a review and a rating. That really, really helps. If you'd like to help partner with me, here's the financial plea, here it comes. You can go to patreon/selftalkicm, my Patreon page. Or you can go to my website which is actually my college, International College of Ministry, icmcollege.org, icmcollege.org. Donate to one of my scholarship funds. I'm helping people in Africa, India, and Peru get educated - they have no money - and also I'm helping a lot of pastors who cannot afford a seminary education. That's my main heart, that's what I really want to do. You can go to icmcollege.org. I appreciate you, God bless you, this is Dr. Ray Self. Don't forget to stay tuned for next episode. Amen.

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This is Dr. Ray Self. Thank you very much for listening to my show. If this show has been a blessing to you and if the Holy Spirit so leads you, I would appreciate you becoming a partner with me so we can reach more people with the truth that will set them free. You can do this very easily by going to patreon.com/selftalkicm. That is patreon.com/icm I appreciate you very much listening. Don't forget to check out my book, Hear His Voice, Be His Voice, available on amazon.com. Don't forget to follow my show and download every episode, it really helps. God bless you.