Prophetic Wheat and Tares
There are few things that can ignite passion and zeal for the Lord and His work like authentic prophetic ministry. In the Book of Ezra we see that the work of restoring the house of God ceased until Haggai and Zechariah the prophets started prophesying. It says in Ezra 6:14 that “the elders of the Jews were successful in building through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo.” This is a prophetic parallel of where the Church is today. Many had the vision of seeing the Church restored to all of its glory but got discouraged and distracted from the work. It will require the prophets to arise as Haggai and Zechariah did to again awaken and inspire the people to finish the work they began.
Just as there are few things that can inspire zeal for the Lord and His purposes as authentic prophetic ministry, there are few things that can be more devastating to the work of the Lord than false or pseudo prophetic ministry. Therefore a key issue is how do we recognize and receive from the real, and how do we recognize and reject the false.
We see in Scripture that virtually every prophet of God had to deal with false prophets. We can also note that there were many more false prophets than true ones. We also can see that in virtually every case the false ones were prophesying what the people, or the leaders, wanted to hear, and the true prophets often stood alone with their counterpoint.
So how do we distinguish the real from the false? How do we receive the true and reject the false? This should begin with recognizing that this will not be easy because Satan is a skilled counterfeiter. Even more challenging is how the Lord seemed to want to make distinguishing the true from the false difficult. When the devil sowed tares in the midst of His wheat, His command was to “let them grow up together.” Why would God do this?”In the Parable of the Wheat and Tares we have several important factors. First, the Lord only planted the wheat; the tares were planted by the devil. There are some whom the Lord sends, and there are some whom the devil sends. Even so, we must consider that the only way the devil could have done this is for the Lord to allow it. Why would He allow it? It seems that learning to deal with tares is part of His curriculum for His people. This is likely a reason why He would even allow someone like Judas in His own inner circle.
Wheat and tares look so much alike that it is almost impossible to distinguish them before they mature. Those who are true can be just as arrogant, foolish, and sinful as the tares until they mature.
Second, the Lord said to let the wheat and the tares grow up together so that the wheat will not be damaged when we try to separate them. Many prophets whom the Lord sent carry the wounds caused by the disregard of the Lord’s command to let the wheat and tares grow together by leaders who thought they were wise enough to discern between the wheat and tares before they matured. Many of these leaders would end up throwing out the wheat, and keeping the tares, and then blame the prophetic movement for the chaos they caused by their own works.
Wheat and tares look so much alike that it is almost impossible to distinguish them before they mature. Those who are true can be just as arrogant, foolish, and sinful as the tares until they mature. The main way that wheat and tares are distinguished at “the harvest,” or when both have matured, is that the wheat will bow over and the tares remain standing upright. This is a metaphor for how the true grow in humility and the false grow in pride. If one is maturing but getting more resistant to correction, we have a problem. God resists the proud, but gives His grace to the humble (see James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5). We are told throughout Proverbs that the wise love correction and reproof, but the foolish hate it. So, watching those who are more prone to embrace and appreciate correction and those who are not can tell us a lot.
These are general principles, but there are additional factors, such as if the correction is valid or from a valid authority. It is right to resist correction from invalid authority. Many Christians live in perpetual defeat because they wrongly accept the devil’s condemnation as correction from God.
Others get misled because they receive guidance or correction from other Christians who may have the best intentions but are illegitimate because they have presumed authority that was not given to them from the Lord—the only Source of true authority in the kingdom. A good example of this is the media, even “Christian” media. Being a journalist does not give one authority in the Church. Neither does being a good writer or speaker. God established leaders such as apostles, elders, pastors, etc. as authorities in His Church. Most of those who fall into this presumption and become illegitimate judges of the Church become “fault-finders,” and as we see in Jude a special judgement is reserved for them we should all fear.
Even those authorities appointed by God have specific “spheres” of authority that are based on experience and fruitfulness. The apostle Paul explained to the Corinthians that if he was not an apostle to others, he was to them because they were his fruit, an obvious result of his authority. So Paul was admitting that he was not an authority to everyone, and he wasn’t. For example, he was not an apostle to the Jews, as the Lord had given that sphere to Peter. As Paul also related to the Corinthians, he had authority for building them up or tearing them down, by which we can conclude that we do not have authority to tear down what we have not been used to build.
Therefore we should ask those who presume to be judges and critics, journalists or presumed prophets, what they have built that gives them the authority to tear down. As a publisher we all too frequently receive manuscripts by authors who claim to have the new wineskin pattern for the Church. My first question to them is to show me the ones that they have been used to raise up. To date, none have been able to show me such a work, and therefore we have not published any such books. Authority comes from having fruit, not theories.
There are many books available on releasing the prophetic or raising up prophets. Some are legitimate because you can go to their work and find fruitful and maturing prophetic ministries. Others you go to have none, so why should we listen to them?
Authority comes from having fruit, not theories.
There are also books written seeking to bring correction to prophetic ministry by those who are not prophets, and admit to not being overseers of prophets. One well-known teacher recounted in a book many horror stories of the way supposed prophetic people wounded others or damaged churches. I have been around prophetic people for nearly 50 years now, and I have not heard anything as extreme as some of these stories, so I called the author to check some of these out. He asserted that every story was related to him by a pastor. I then asked if he went to the so-called prophetic people in any of these cases to hear their side of it, as there is almost always another side to every account. He had not done this. When I asked for the sources so I could check them out he would not provide them. As I continued to press this I became convinced that these stories were either made up or greatly embellished, and the book did great damage to the Church as we would expect.
The Pharisees had a legitimate question when they asked Jesus by what authority He did His works. Jesus commended the Ephesian church in Revelation 3 for having put to the test those who call themselves apostles and were not. We can expect that He would give the same commendation for those who put to the test any authority to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate. Whenever we tolerate the illegitimate we are allowing a terrible devaluation of our spiritual currency, not to mention allowing a wide-open gate of hell through which the Church will certainly be assaulted.
Even if someone has built a large work, if they want to bring correction on the prophetic I would first like to see what they have done to raise up prophets. There is a saying that “Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a skillful carpenter to build one.” The apostle corrected the Corinthians for honoring authorities who “slapped them in the face,” and abused them but for not recognizing Paul’s authority even though he was the one who had been used to build them into the church that they were. Immature or carnal people will respond to carnal or even abusive authority faster than they tend to recognize true builders.
Whenever we tolerate the illegitimate we are allowing a terrible devaluation of our spiritual currency.
We must not continue to pay attention to people unless they have fruit of their own to verify their wisdom. That is basically what Jesus said when He told us that we would know them by their fruit. It is not just what people say but what they have done that establishes true spiritual authority.
Jeremiah Johnson has written a new book called Cleansing and Igniting the Prophetic. What gives him the authority to say the things he has written in this book? First, maturity is not just the result of age or time served. I have met many Christians who have been so for decades and are still spiritually immature. Maturity requires experience, but experience alone does not result in maturity. Maturing comes from having the wisdom to learn from experience. Just as there are some who may have been Christians for a long time but remain immature, some mature far beyond their years by their wisdom and how they handle experience.
Maturing comes from having the wisdom to learn from experience.
Jeremiah Johnson is one who I think has a maturity far beyond his age. I think much of this can be attributed to how he got engaged at a young age in building a church and helping to raise up other prophetic ministries. There is a wisdom and a maturity that comes from building something that reading a multitude of books cannot duplicate.
I was a pilot by profession. I liken the way some are given influence in the body of Christ to accepting someone as the pilot of a commercial jet even though they have never actually flown a plane, but they have read a lot of books on the subject. Would you get on such a flight? No, because your life would certainly be in jeopardy if you did. Should we not be just as concerned for our spiritual life? We must heed the biblical exhortation to “know those who labor among us.”
What Jeremiah Johnson has written in this book can be helpful in evaluating those who claim to be prophets and their messages. This is not all-inclusive but provides a good foundation to start with. It comes from one who is actually engaged in the work, has been for some time, and already has fruit that can be measured. He is one prophets can look to and say “He’s one of us.” He’s also one pastors and church leaders can look at and say, “He’s one of us.”
What Jeremiah Johnson has written in this book can be helpful in evaluating those who claim to be prophets and their messages.
Even a skillful carpenter sometimes must tear down a faulty foundation before a good one can be built. There are mindsets and even teachings in some prophetic circles that need to be torn down, and Jeremiah does not shy away from them in this book. There are others that are off, but just need adjusting. I’m impressed by how he already seems to have the wisdom to know the difference and address them accordingly. That is the sign of one whom I believe will emerge as one of the true “master-builders” in these times.