Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves.  
Matthew 7:15 CSB

If a child predator wants to lure a child, they certainly won’t dress as the big bad wolf, or as a fire breathing dragon, right? They will present themselves as someone who has lost a cute little puppy or someone who wants to take the child to get ice cream. They will be kind and soft spoken. Even as adults we are easily fooled by someone who pretends to be our friend or who pretends to have our best interest at heart. We get duped or betrayed. When this happens, hopefully, it teaches us to be on guard as our Scripture passage says. Hopefully, it is a learning experience which helps us not to make the same mistakes again.

If you read the Bible, you notice that the really important things are mentioned over and over throughout the Bible. False prophets are mentioned throughout the Bible. Back in Deuteronomy 13, Moses warns the Israelites against false prophets. He tells them that they should not believe in them even if they make predictions that come true. Again in Deuteronomy 18, he warns the Israelites against false prophets. He told them that one surefire way to determine if a prophet is false is if he makes predictions that don’t come true. Back in chapter 13, he told them that God may allow a false prophet to get a prediction right from time to time to test us. If the false prophet makes a prediction that comes true, but then uses our trust to lead us away from God, then we know he’s a false prophet.

The problem we have today is many of us are like small children being led into the Lion’s Den by a child predator. We follow the prophet that promises cute little puppies and ice cream cones. We trust that we will get to pet and play with the puppy. We trust that we can even have sprinkles on our ice cream cones. Unfortunately, these false prophets promise great and wonderful things, but they deliver death and destruction.

Part of the problem seems to be that we have become a lazy bunch. We want everything handed to us on a silver platter through the drive-in window. We are in a hurry living our lives and we don’t have time to do things like study God’s word. So, we listen to the preacher on the radio or the tv while we are doing a dozen other things. We think we are good at multi-tasking and we may be. But, that’s not what God wants from us. He wants our undivided attention. The word whole heartedly is also used numerous times when it talks of our devotion to God.

Because we want everything handed to us we are quick to listen to others without fact checking them. We like what we hear so we listen. We don’t pick through what they are saying to see if it’s true. We don’t take the time to look up the Scriptures they mention to be sure they have not been pulled out of context and twisted. The predator just waves a bag of candy at us and we follow him right on into the creepy van.

The sad thing is we know better or at least we should. It’s in the Bible. As a new Christian, I was like a sponge. I wanted to soak up all that I could. I listened to many different televangelist. It didn’t take me long to see that what they were saying didn’t line up with what my pastor was saying. Then when I looked it up in the Bible, I could see that my pastor was telling me what was in the Bible. These televangelists were giving a distorted view of Scripture. They were twisting it to say what we want to hear.

What I find interesting is that many of us diligently teach our children to stay away from predators, but we don’t take the time to bring them to church or teach them to study their Bible. We don’t teach them to stay away from the ravaging wolf dressed like the cute little sheep. Sadly, parents often don’t do this because they lack wisdom and discernment because they don’t study the Bible. Therefore, they don’t understand the dangers of false prophets.

My friend, a false prophet is as dangerous to us and our children as a child predator is to a young child. They will use the same type of lures to get us to follow them. We must be on guard. We must teach our children to also be on guard against these false prophets and teachers just as diligently as we teach them to be aware of child predators. God will gladly give us wisdom and discernment, we need only to ask.

Have a great day!