Beware of False Prophets

Near the end of Jesus’ public ministry He had a private meeting with His disciples. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this experience. As they were leaving the temple, the disciples pointed out its beauty, whereupon Jesus told them that the temple would be destroyed—not one stone left upon another (see Matt. 24:1, 2).

When they reached the Mount of Olives, they found a quiet place and sat down. The Bible records their conversation: “Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?’ And Jesus answered and said to them: ‘Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and will deceive many’ ” (verses 3-5).

Jesus answered their questions in Matthew 24 by giving them signs of the destruction of Jerusalem and His second coming. It is interesting to note that Jesus warns His disciples (and us) three times about false christs and false prophets. The second of these warnings is found in verse 11: “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.”

So what is a false prophet? A false prophet is any person who claims to speak for God but doesn’t meet the biblical tests of a prophet. Note that in the first and second warnings Jesus says many will be deceived. Revelation 12:9 reminds us that the whole world will be deceived: “So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”

The third warning of deception from false prophets is recorded in Matthew 24:24-26: “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it.”

This warning is very specific regarding the nature of the deception. It is “great signs and wonders” that put even the very elect at risk of deception. Jesus adds, “Don’t go see them.” Apparently the “the great signs and wonders” are so impressive that even a minister could be deceived.

The Sad Story of Pastor Eoin Giller

While doing the research for my book Battle of the Spirits in the 1990s, I discovered the then-active experience of a pastor named Eoin Giller, and gave a brief account about it in the book (published in 2001).[1] What I discovered is the following.

Originally from Australia and trained as a Seventh-day Adventist minister at Avondale College, Eoin Giller moved to the United States and attended Andrews University, where he received his Doctor of Ministry degree in 1977. Subsequently he worked as a minister in several conferences, including Arizona and New York. While he pastored the Desert Valley Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tucson, Arizona, he wrote two articles for Ministry magazine.[2]

Giller left the Seventh-day Adventist Church following an association with the “healing ministry of Benny Hinn” and the “Toronto Airport Blessing.” Having returned to Australia in 2001, he considers himself a healer and a prophet. Here is how Mr. Giller described what happened:

“The importance of what I believe to be a revelation from God for the Seventh-day Adventist Church impels me to write this background account so that seasoned Christian leaders may understand a little about who I am, and the spirit in which I bring my testimony at this critical hour for the church. . . . I invite you to reserve judgment until the fruit of this work is fully manifested. May God bless you as you ponder a small portion of one man’s experience of the supernatural in our time.

“A new experience of God’s Spirit entered my life in 1991. I noticed that my hands began to burn with heat sometimes during a regular weekly prayer meeting in the Desert Valley church in Tucson, Arizona. At first, I ignored it, but the sensation gradually increased from week to week, and it came only in prayer meeting! What could it mean? Was it the stealthy advance of arthritis, or some dread malady? It wasn’t until three years later that I discovered from experienced Spirit-baptized Christians that people who experience this radiant burning heat in the nerves of their hands are often the recipients of the biblical gift of healing mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12.”

Giller then relates how he healed himself of migraine headaches and also “healed” several church members in Albany, New York, of back problems. He then relates this story of his involvement with TV healer Benny Hinn:

“My second granddaughter was born a few days after Christmas. This happy event was marred by the gradual unfolding of Kymber’s physical difficulties. Her left hand was twisted and curled back at her side. Her head seemed to be always on its side on her left shoulder. When we lifted her up above our heads, she would ‘body surf’ as we called it. Instead of curling up with flexed limbs like a normal baby, her whole body would stretch out rigid. A crisis developed when Kymber was hospitalized for some days with uncontrollable seizures. Heavy medication eventually controlled the seizures, but by then we were all aware that Kymber had suffered some sort of brain damage, a condition that medical science could not help.

“My daughter Sherryn [Kymber’s mother] and her husband Thumper [Don is his first name] were burned out as Adventist young adults. They had stopped regular church attendance, having been exposed to too much legalism and critical attitudes among church people. But Sherryn had not stopped seeking the Lord. In her desperation to have her baby healed, she was watching Benny Hinn on TV. One morning she asked me if I would take her to a Benny Hinn crusade and see if the Lord would heal Kymber. I thought about the implications of attending the Hinn crusade. As an Adventist pastor I would incur potential risk to my employment. But Sherryn’s pleading eyes won the day. By then I had become convinced that the days of miracles were not over, and that God could heal Kymber when medical science had no cure. This was Kymber’s hope for a normal life and future, and all else fell into a very second place beside the hope for her healing. I decided to take Sherryn and Kymber to a Benny Hinn crusade in Philadelphia the next week. But I did ask Sherryn to keep the two-day trip quiet, for the sake of fragile church members.

“Sherryn, Kymber, and I booked into a motel south of Philadelphia. We stood in line for hours to get into the Thursday evening crusade meeting and eventually secured seats in the bleachers on the left-hand side of the auditorium. Neither Sherryn nor I had ever experienced such powerful, God-centered worship. It was simply awesome! During the worship a young woman standing in the row in front of Sherryn turned and asked if she could hold Kymber. Sherryn passed her across. As the young woman played with Kymber she raised her above her head. For the first time ever I saw Kymber lifted up without her body stiffening in the body-surf position. I thought nothing of it at the time.

‘Great signs and wonders’ put even the very elect at risk of deception.

“Sherryn was amazed at the numbers and qualities of the healings manifested in the meeting. So was I! It was clear that Benny Hinn could not pay enough actors to fake the hundreds of healings. We saw people walk out of wheelchairs, blind eyes and deaf ears opened, oxygen tanks discarded, and healings of almost every kind. The reaction of the people healed and their relatives convinced us that this was genuine healing. Benny Hinn gave all the glory to God. We were convinced that this was not Satan casting out Satan. The creative miracles were stamped with divinity.

“Then Pastor Hinn gave an altar call. My burned-out daughter responded. Years of experiencing traditional Christianity dropped away in a moment. She had seen the hand of God. This was the real thing. Sherry carried Kymber down to the floor of the auditorium (still unaware of her daughter’s healing) and surrendered her life to Christ. She was born again. (This was the greater of the two miracles for us that night, for the miracle of the new birth reaches into eternity.)

“When we arrived back to our hotel, Sherryn took Kymber’s temperature. The baby was so hot, Sherryn was concerned Kymber was catching some malady. We were too new to the physical phenomena which accompany divine healings to recognize that heat is often significant in physical healings. The thermometer indicated a normal body temperature. Strange! we thought. ‘Strange’ is the right word! One doesn’t normally take a damaged and sick baby to church and return home to report a wonderful healing, at least not in conservative or evangelical religious circles. Yes, Kymber was healed from neurological damage that had been with her since birth. Her hand has uncurled, her head is upright, and her seizures have completely stopped. She has been taken off Phenobarbital and has been given a clean bill of health.”

Giller then relates how his “healing ministry” has developed and that during the past three years he believes he has witnessed more than 30 verifiable miracles. He goes on to relate: “Coming now to recent times, a deeper experience awaited me in 1994. On October 22 of that year many Adventist clergy in the New York Conference attended the 150th anniversary of the Millerite Great Disappointment. After much heart-searching and prayer, my family chose rather to travel to Worcester [Massachusetts] to attend a Benny Hinn crusade on that same day.

“I’ll never forget what happened in that crusade. The Lord gave me the baptism in fire! Prior to this experience, I had regarded the words of John the Baptist as largely metaphorical: ‘When He comes, He will baptize you in the Spirit and with fire.’ During that morning crusade meeting fire rolled through my body for two and a half hours. I could not focus on the worship, the preaching, nor the healings. I was immersed in fire, lost to everything around me. Pastor Hinn even spoke a word of knowledge about the fire on someone in the congregation.”

Giller then reports about his trip to the Toronto Airport Vineyard Christian Fellowship and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He says it was at this meeting that he received the prophetic gift. And now as a prophet, “the Lord has revealed to me the secrets of people’s hearts and instructed me how to minister to them in ways I would never have thought of on my own.”

As a postlude to this, remember that at the beginning of his “testimony” that was recorded on his website, Eoin Giller asked the reader to “reserve judgment until the fruit of this work is fully manifest.” What has happened since? Now Benny Hinn, who started Giller down this road away from God’s remnant church, is confessing publicly that he is praying at the graves of and communicating with dead healers of the past.[3] This can be called only spiritualism. Pastor Giller lost his credentials in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and moved back to Australia. Later pastors from Australia reported that Giller began praying for people with amalgam dental fillings and the fillings were turning to gold!

What Went Wrong?

Basic to understanding God’s plan of salvation is the need to recognize the underlying battle between the forces of good (God’s side) and the forces of evil (Satan’s side). We refer to this struggle as “the great controversy.”

“And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev. 12:7-9). In this battle for the souls of human beings God uses love and truth and Satan uses lies and deception. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Take a lesson from history. At the time of the Flood, some 1,500 years after Creation, the vast majority of humans living on the earth perished. They were deceived by the lies told by the servants of Satan. One can only imagine the mockery he endured: “Noah is crazy.” “There isn’t enough water to float the boat.” “God would never destroy His creatures.” The list of possibilities is endless. Thousands (maybe millions) lost their lives in the Flood, and only eight people were saved. God does not want us to be deceived, which is why He has given us so many clear warnings.

The Tests of a Prophet

Since the Bible is our only and ultimate standard of truth, we must find the tests of a true prophet, or anyone who claims to speak for God, in its teaching. We are explicitly told to test the spirits: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Paul adds similar counsel: “Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:20, 21). The Bible indicates that there are four basic tests to determine whether a person who claims to speak for God is trustworthy. If such a person doesn’t meet these biblical tests, they should be considered a deceiver.

Here are the four tests:

Do the teachings of the prophet agree with the Scriptures—the Biblical canon?

“To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isa.8:20). This is the basic overall test of a prophet and the real bottom line: a true prophet’s message must be in harmony with God’s unchanging law and the testimony given throughout the Bible. A prophet must not conflict with the inspired counsels of earlier prophets.

Do the prophet’s predictions come true?

The role and function of a prophet is much broader than merely making predictions. But when predictions are made, they must come true. Of course, many biblical prophecies are conditional—such as Jonah’s prediction of the destruction of Nineveh—but unless a prophecy is conditional, it must come to pass. “When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken” (Deut. 18:22). “When the word of the prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent” (Jer. 28:9).

Does the prophet acknowledge the incarnation of Christ?

This test applies especially to the New Testament and Christian Era prophets. “By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2, 3). This test requires more than a simple acknowledgment that Jesus Christ lived on earth: a true prophet will confess the biblical teachings about Christ. He must believe in Christ’s deity, His status as the Creator, His virgin birth, true humanity, sinless life, atoning sacrifice, resurrection, ascension, intercessory ministry, and second advent.

Does the life and teaching of the prophet bear good or bad fruit?

The Bible says, “You will know them by their fruits. . . . A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. . . .Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matt. 7:16-20). The Scriptures declare that the Holy Spirit inspired “holy men of God” (2 Peter 1:21). This does not mean that the prophet himself must be absolutely sinless and perfect. Not at all; in fact, we are told that Elijah “was a man subject to like passions as we are” (James 5:17, KJV). But the prophet’s life must be characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, not by the works of the flesh. A true prophet will help to equip the saints for the work of ministry and help bring unity of faith and fellowship in the church.

Out of love for us, Jesus has plainly warned us about the deceptions of Satan, and He has taught us how to test those who claim to speak for God: “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it” (Matt. 24:24-26).

[1] See G. Edward Reid, Battle of the Spirits (Fulton, Md.: Omega Productions, 2001), p. 119 onward.

[2] “Worship Renewal in the Seventh-day Adventist Church,” Ministry, October 1991, and “Evangelism in Worship,” Ministry, November 1993.

[3] For instance, Benny Hinn claims to have experienced “the anointing” at the grave of America’s first megachurch evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIzX-psjKzs). For more documented instances of Hinn’s claims of encounters with such dead as faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman, see https://churchwatchcentral.com/2015/10/15/documenting-benny-hinns-necromancy-and-encounters-with-the-dead/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.