False Prophets in the Bible

Beware of the False Prophets

Jesus begins with a warning: “Beware of the false prophets.” That opening controls everything that follows. The trees are prophets. The fruit is what reveals them.

This matters because the passage is routinely pulled away from its subject. Christians use it to inspect one another’s behavior, judge whether somebody looks spiritual enough, or decide whether a teacher fits a preferred religious mold. But Jesus was not giving His hearers a checklist for measuring another Christian’s daily performance. He was warning Israel about false prophets.

A false prophet could look convincing. Jesus says they come in sheep’s clothing. Appearance is part of the danger. That is why looking religious, gathering a crowd, speaking confidently, or producing visible activity is not enough.

The question is not simply, Does this look good? The question is, Where did it come from, and is it true?

Have you ever gone to the grocery store and picked out what looked like the perfect fruit? It looked excellent. You got it home, took a bite, and discovered it was bitter. That is the same principle behind the fruit illustration I began with. You cannot determine the source of fruit from appearance alone. A wise shopper prefers to taste the fruit before putting it in the cart. Appearance alone is not enough. You have to test it.

You Will Know Them by Their Fruits

Jesus continues, “You will know them by their fruits.” A good tree bears good fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit. In the setting Jesus gave us, the fruit identifies the prophet.

That takes us naturally back to the Law, where Israel had already been told how to recognize a prophet. Deuteronomy 18 describes a prophet as one through whom the Lord speaks. The words were not the prophet’s private guesses, impressions, or spiritual experiments. The Lord put His words in the prophet’s mouth.

That means prophecy left no room for a prophet to be wrong and still claim to be speaking for God. Deuteronomy 18 says that when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord and the thing does not happen, the Lord has not spoken that word.

Now Jesus’ fruit language becomes sharper. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit because a true prophet speaks what God has given him. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit because a false prophet is not speaking for the Lord.

So when we ask how to identify false prophets in the Bible, we do not need to invent a modern personality test. Scripture already supplied the standard. The prophet’s word had to be true.

That is also why prophecy was never a casual title. Under Deuteronomy 18, someone who claimed to speak for the Lord and was wrong even once was a false prophet, and under the Law that carried the death sentence. That standard should make us far more careful about the way Christians use the word prophet today. I am not saying Christians should carry out Israel’s civil penalty now. I am saying we should not treat a failed prophecy as a harmless mistake or keep calling someone a prophet after his word has failed.

If we are going to call someone a false prophet, then where are the true prophets? The truth is, we should have stopped seeking prophets a long time ago. Our Bible is not an open book waiting for another chapter, and there are no apostles leading the church today. The age of the Law and the Prophets is over because it reached its fulfillment in Christ.

We have Scripture, and we have the Spirit of Christ to guide us into truth. We are not standing where Israel stood under the Law, trying to become or remain right with God through our performance. In Christ we have been made right with God and given His Spirit. We are fully alive to God, yet we can still lean on our own understanding instead of His. Discernment still matters, but we are discerning from the finished work of Christ, not waiting for another prophet to finish the Bible for us. True Israel is now in Christ and will be forever.

Jesus Put His Own Words to the Test

If that standard applies to prophets, then it also brings us to Jesus’ own prophetic words. Jesus did not speak vaguely about Jerusalem. In Luke 21 He said that when Jerusalem was surrounded by armies, her desolation was near. He told those in Judea to flee, called those days “days of vengeance,” and said they would fulfill all things which are written.

That is not a small prophetic claim. Jesus tied Jerusalem’s coming destruction to the fulfillment of what had been written, and He also gave His hearers a time frame. In Matthew 24:34 He said, “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”

That included the triumphant return of Christ that so many Christians are still waiting for today. Jesus did not separate His coming from “all these things” and move it thousands of years beyond that generation. He included it in the very events He said would take place before that generation passed away.

In fact, He tied His return directly to the judgment and tribulation of those days:

Matthew 24:29–31 ESV: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

John 21 adds another piece. After Jesus spoke about Peter’s death, Peter asked about the disciple whom Jesus loved. Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” The saying then spread among the brethren that this disciple would not die. John corrects that rumor, not Jesus’ words. Jesus had not said that the disciple would never die. He had said, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” His coming would occur within that generation, and Jesus spoke of that disciple remaining until it did.

The Greek verb mellō means “to be about to” or “to be on the point of.” That language matters to the way these passages are read. Jesus’ words “this generation” are just as direct. In Matthew 24:34, the generation He was speaking about was the generation then living.

Across more than one hundred New Testament occurrences, mellō repeatedly carries the force of its definition: something impending, about to happen, or on the point of occurring. Every occurrence is not about Christ’s coming, but the word does not lose its temporal force when it appears in prophetic passages. I do not believe words like this generation, near, and about to can be stretched into thousands of years simply because a later system requires it.

That is why fulfilled prophecy matters. If Jesus is the true Prophet, His words must be allowed to mean what He said. I understand His coming in judgment and the destruction of Jerusalem as belonging to the same first-century prophetic fulfillment. Luke 21, Matthew 24, and the repeated language of nearness belong together.

The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 is therefore not an interesting historical footnote to this study. It is part of the fruit test. Jesus said what would happen, gave His hearers the generation in which it would happen, and His words proved true. The true Prophet spoke truly.

That is the framework developed more fully in What Is Preterism?. Here the point is narrower: if we are going to use Deuteronomy 18 to understand false prophets in the Bible, then we should also recognize what Jesus’ fulfilled words tell us about Him.

This is also where my disagreement with futurism and dispensationalism becomes more than a calendar dispute. These systems can separate Israel and the church and move major kingdom promises into a future program involving national Israel, a future kingdom, and in some forms a future temple and sacrifices. I reject that framework because I believe it moves into our future what Jesus and His apostles presented as near and fulfilled in the New Covenant age.

Whether every futurist agrees on every detail is beside the point. I reject the framework because I believe it forces the timing statements of Scripture to serve the system instead of allowing the system to be corrected by the timing statements. Ten Reasons Futurism is Destructive develops that larger argument.

The fruit test of Matthew 7 is not disconnected from fulfilled prophecy. It helps explain why the truthfulness of prophetic words matters in the first place.

The Warning Continues into “I Never Knew You”

Matthew 7 does not stop with the fruit warning. A few verses later Jesus speaks of people saying, “Lord, Lord,” and appealing to prophecy, exorcisms, and mighty works before hearing, “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.”

That warning is often turned into a threat against Christians who have not performed well enough. If we begin by applying it directly to ourselves, it is easy to make the passage say that believers who sin too much, fail badly enough, or trust their works will eventually be rejected by Christ. But that skips the audience and the argument Jesus has already been making.

Jesus’ earthly ministry was directed to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Matthew 7 has just warned about false prophets. That means we should first ask what false prophets in that setting were saying about Jesus. They were not leading Israel to receive Him as Messiah. They were rejecting Him.

That matters when they say, “Lord, Lord.” When Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’” He is declaring Himself to be the Lord they are addressing. Those words do not make them Christians. They could call upon the Father while rejecting the Son. First John 2:23 is direct: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father.” These people were not Christians. They rejected the Son, and calling on God did not change that.

The signs they appeal to do not change that. Israel had the Law and the Prophets, and signs and exorcisms were known in Jesus’ day. When His opponents accused Him of casting out demons by Beelzebul, Jesus answered by asking, “If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?” The existence of impressive works did not establish the source. We are right back to the warning about fruit and appearance.

For years I accepted another grace-centered explanation. I understood these people as professing Christians who were trusting their own works instead of Christ. That is much closer to the gospel than using the passage to threaten believers with losing salvation because they failed to live up to a standard. But I eventually concluded that it still was not what Jesus was saying in this passage.

I understand Matthew 7:21–23 as continuing the first-century warning about false prophets and those in Israel who rejected Jesus as Messiah. Whether that conclusion sounds familiar or not, the audience and context have to control the interpretation before we move to application.

I develop that passage directly in I Never Knew You. The point here is that Matthew 7:21–23 should not be cut away from Matthew 7:15–20. The warning about “Lord, Lord,” prophecy, miracles, lawlessness, and being unknown by Christ comes immediately after Jesus tells His hearers how to recognize false prophets.

Discern the Message Before You Apply the Passage

This is where the lesson comes home for us. Sloppy hermeneutics produces sloppy understanding. If we begin with ourselves every time we open Scripture, we can make almost any warning say almost anything.

Start with the audience. Start with the subject. Start with the problem being addressed. Then follow the argument before moving into application.

Matthew 7:15–20 is not telling Christians to spend their lives inspecting one another for visible proof of salvation. Jesus was warning about false prophets, and Scripture already told Israel how a prophet was to be tested. Truth is the issue.

That does not mean discernment has ended. We still need it. We still hear teachers, claims, systems, and interpretations that need to be tested. But our standard is not whether the message feels spiritual or whether the speaker looks successful. We test what is taught by Scripture and by the finished work of Christ.

Test What You Are Being Taught

That warning has a practical application for what we listen to and who we trust. In institutional Christianity, being “plugged in” can become the proof that someone is healthy, while the person who does not conform is treated like a barren Lone Ranger. But a church can be full of activity, smiling people, programs, service, giving, and enthusiasm while still teaching error. Visible energy does not tell us the source of the fruit.

Are you testing the fruit of what your local church teaches? Are you listening carefully and checking Scripture like the Bereans, or are you assuming the pastor has it all together? The old saying “you are what you eat” fits here. If we continually take in truth, truth shapes us. If we continually take in error, error shapes us.

The New Covenant did not make an institution the temple of God. The body of Christ is His temple. Buildings, programs, offices, and structures can organize activity, but they cannot manufacture the fruit of the Spirit or turn error into truth. You cannot institutionalize grace.

And this is where the next part of the fruit discussion goes. Once we distinguish the prophetic fruit in Matthew 7 from the way fruit language is used elsewhere, we can ask what fruit bearing actually looks like for those who are in Christ. The next study on fruit bearing takes that question directly.

Keep your eyes on Christ. Test what you hear. Let Scripture define its own words in their own setting before anyone turns them into another religious burden.