Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

The Bible is clear that we should not treat prophecies and prophetic gifts with contempt. Healthy church cultures should make room for every follower of Jesus to hear from the Lord for themselves. The priesthood of the believers means that we don’t wait for the super-gifted to tell us what God is saying. Instead, we each cultivate an intimacy with Jesus, and that includes hearing from the Holy Spirit ourselves.

When each person is hearing the Lord in their own lives, this creates a prophetic culture where we can “test” whether what someone is saying is from the Lord. Just as our own personal study of scripture helps us to know if the preacher is preaching a sermon that is biblically sound, hearing from the Lord in our own lives helps us to test whether someone is giving a prophetic word that is actually from the Lord.

So while we don’t want to stifle prophetic gifts in the church, we also don’t want them to be used without checks and balances. Accountability and feedback are important tools that help a prophetic community stay healthy. Untested prophetic words are not biblical. If there are going to be people hearing from God and operating in prophetic gifts, then there also needs to be a community of those who are discerning and testing those words.

If someone has the gift of prophecy, why do they give wrong words sometimes?

First, we need to understand that every prophetic word has three parts to it. There’s 1) the word, 2) the interpretation of the word, and 3) the application of the word. The core revelation from the Holy Spirit is the word. It could be an actual word, a sentence, a mental picture, a mental movie, an external vision or a dream. And that word can never contradict the Bible because scripture has ultimate authority.

After the word comes, it has to be interpreted. Interpretation answers the question, “What does this mean?” Finally, it must be applied. Application answers the question, “What do I do?”

Sometimes a prophetic person gets the word right but the interpretation wrong. Sometimes they get the word right and the interpretation right but the application wrong (most of the time the application should be left to the person the word is for). Because there is a lot of room to have the flesh of the prophetic person get in the way (even if they get the word right), there needs to be discernment and testing of every word.

There are also times that it isn’t about the interpretation or the application. Sometimes the prophetic person simply gets the actual word wrong. The core revelation isn’t from the Lord. How does this happen?

In the new covenant, prophecy is different than it was in the old covenant. The Holy Spirit isn’t just resting upon us (like Old Testament prophets) but is now dwelling within us. That means, in the new covenant, God has chosen to use us, His Church, as conduits of ushering in the Kingdom of God on the earth.

What this means for prophecy is that when we get a word from the Lord, it is flowing through us. Most of the time, we aren’t hearing the audible voice of God and then simply repeating what we heard (like Old Testament prophets). One way to put it is that we aren’t “receiving” the word in a simple form, but instead we are “perceiving” a word from the Lord. God’s communication isn’t hitting our ears, but instead it is flowing through our spirit and through our soul (our mind, will, and emotions).

Because God’s communication is coming through our mind, will and emotions, it is coming through our personality. It’s like light pouring through a lens. Those lenses are often colored with our thoughts and our emotions. And, sometimes, those lenses are cracked. If we’ve been hurt and haven’t totally healed emotionally from that hurt, it creates little cracks in the lenses of our heart and mind.

Now, as the light of God’s revelation comes pouring through our cracked lenses, sometimes it will come through clean with maybe just a little coloring of our personality and vocabulary. Other times it will hit one of those cracks and skew the direction and content of the word. That means the same person could sometimes have a word that is actually from the Lord and other times they could be totally off. This is why discernment is so important in the church community.

Here are some things that skew words that the Lord gives us:

1. hurtful experiences
2. prejudices toward particular kinds of people
3. emotional pain, especially a perpetual feeling of rejection
4. strong political opinions (notice this in election years)
5. unbiblical theological views, especially of end-times
6. chronic sin (unrepentant)

It’s one thing to realize that God is okay with our personality slightly coloring the words that He gives us (metaphorically giving the light a tint of blue or yellow or green). God actually designed the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be like that, to have a little bit of our personality mixed in. He wants the gifts of the Spirit to be incarnated in us and through us.

But it’s a different thing to operate in the prophetic with a cracked lens. With cracks in our heart and our mind, some of the words that come through end up being entirely wrong. And it’s not just the interpretation or the application that end up being wrong but the core word itself.

So, if a prophetic person gives a wrong word, does that make them a false prophet?

Well, if we were in the old covenant, that is what that would mean. But in the new covenant, we all have the Holy Spirit and are called to test and discern the words. They didn’t have this ability in the Old Testament so the accountability had to be more severe.

But, no, if a person gives a wrong word it doesn’t make them a false prophet. What makes a person a false prophet in the new covenant is if they reject Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, God-incarnate, the Lord and Savior of the world. Those who deny that Jesus is who He said He is are false prophets. But a prophetic person who gives a wrong word is simply a “wrong prophet” not a false prophet.

There needs to be accountability for wrong words, but we don’t need to stone the person to death or throw them out of the church (like in the old covenant). We need, instead, to pastor them. If a person consistently gets wrong words from the Lord, it means they’re operating with cracked lenses. Most often it’s a sign of a broken heart born out of continual rejection, biased political views, unhealthy end-times theology, or chronic sin in their life. They need pastoring and accountability. They also need to put a pause on the use of their prophetic gifts to ensure the enemy doesn’t continue to hijack the gifts and use them for his purposes.