Our goal in this series of articles is to provide general patterns followed by false prophecies so that you can more easily identify them. In the process, we will learn how to protect our souls, our children and the church from their deadly influence. The Bible Rightly Calls false prophets False ministers, mass media, wicked politicians... waterless clouds Jude 1:12, 2 Peter 2:17. The Voice of God Is Deep Thunder John 12:29, Exodus 20:18-19 and His Eloquence Is Glorious Rain Isaiah 55:1, 10-11. But from the mouths of false prophets and antichrists come only loud noise and dry rain and their evil words pool in empty wells called ideologies.

Deceived by the illusion of watery depths, we listen diligently to these shallow fables only to be filled with even greater thirst. For here is the great secret of ideologies: they are more properly called idologies. They are idols we make from fallen words. Unlike The Living Word Who Feeds your soul, these idologies have no power until you pour out your soul upon them. And so we sit by the waters of Babylon, slowly being drained into undying thirst. Tragically, the church of Jesus Christ, the beautiful bride, although immune, has been pierced with many sorrows by these evil words. Many Holy regenerated believers have succumbed to false ideologies and thereby deny His body The Living Water Matthew 10:42. May God For His Son By His Spirit Save His Own.

Old Idols

False prophecies come in many shapes and sizes. They range from base ideas like “you’ve got to look out for number one” to more lofty fares like “judeo-christian values” Col 2:23. They are also heresies like liberation theology or the prosperity gospel but can also be complex cults like jehovah witnesses or mormonism Col 2:18-19. For the sake recognition, you can often identify an ideology because their names usually end in an -ism e.g. racism, communism, capitalism and so on. Under a steady barrage of these -isms, hundreds of millions have been killed in the previous century alone. Among the most prominent right now is this thing we currently call feminism. In the past, we called it chauvinism but slave morality becomes master morality and vice versa. See Friedrich Nietzche, On The Genealogy of Morality. While feminism is not the focus of these articles, the tools we acquire in its dissection will help us learn to think biblically about all false prophecies and false ideologies.

Gearing up to demolish any one of these ideologies can seem hard enough. The task of overcoming them all seems impossible. However, although these vices seem many and varied, they are in reality merely legion Mark 5:9. They are easily cast out, through prayer and fasting, with a single word. These ideologies are nothing more than duplications of the devil tempting man. Therefore, in order to be effective, a false prophet must first cloak her ideology in the illusion of newness and freshness or oldness and stability. He must, through his proclamation, make the vices glitter falsely, make them sing like morning stars though they exploded into dust long long ago. Revelation 12:7-9

This illusion of newness appeals to the heart of men. As a race we are physiologically and psychologically addicted to the new. The young are swayed by it and the old, toothless and weak, are forever longing for that first hit. Yet when a believer visits the house of mourning, the church of Jesus Christ, and listens to Solomon Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, 7:2-4, this addiction, this illusion is easily dispelled. There is great protection in knowing and believing God Who Says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 Until He Makes the heaven and earth pass away, everything under the sun is today was yesterday and will be tomorrow. Any claim of newness is therefore a farce. And when the believer hears The Word Of God, the wine is miraculously transformed into bitter gall, the decadent party into an infirmary and all the singing into the wailing of the sick and dying. There, alone with our tears and Godly sorrow, our hearts are made glad Ecclesiastes 7:3 in the hope of our coming Lord.

So be wary of anything that gives even the faintest impression of being new. None of the ideologies assailing us today are new. None of them are apogees or apotheoses. We do not by their darkness advance beyond the graves they dug for those who came before us. These ideologies are, in fact, the same idols carved by the flight of Adam from God’s Presence. Peer through their illusion of newness by reading God’s Word. Learn and understand how all false ideologies, in content and structure, are duplications of man’s temptation by the devil in Eden.

False Eschatologies

The illusion of newness is woven from the fabric of false promises. For example, feminism falsely promises to bring greater harmony in humanity by promoting equality among men and women. Now I have been generous in this statement. This is far more innocent and admirable than what is being taught in universities. This idea of unity through equality sounds innocuous and even miraculous. But it is, in truth, as sinful as turning stones into bread Matthew 4:3-4. Think cautiously and you will discover, that just like every false ideology, the means and ends to this “miracle” are echoes of the first temptation Genesis 3:5; facsimiles of the lie that we can become like God by disobeying God, stealing from God and killing God.

Look again at the stated goals of feminism: To bring greater harmony in humanity by promoting equality between men and women. This is a statement about the future. It is prophecy about the end of our current age (an age, I guess, of inequality) and the ushering in of a new one (where all are equal?). Statements about the future like this are called eschatologies. In the Bible, there is only one eschatology repeated anew from the mouth of every prophet as far back as Enoch. A day is coming when God Will Make all things new. Revelation 21:5 He Will Come with many angels to Destroy evil and all who are evil in hell for all eternity. Jude 1:14-15 He Will Make the heaven and the earth pass way and bring about new heavens and a new earth. Revelation 21:1 All the men and women who believe in Jesus Christ, The Son of God Who Is God, Revelation 4:7-11, Revelation 5:11-14 will live in the new Jerusalem Revelation 21:2 where the water of life flowing Ezekiel 47:1, Revelation 22:1 from the throne of God will bring life and healing to all nations. Ezekiel 47:8-12, Revelation 22:2 This is God’s True Eschatology. This is God’s Vision as He Ends this world and Begins a new one.

By knowing God’s True Eschatology, Christians can more immediately identify false prophecies. Every false prophecy and ideology lies by claiming to be the herald and means by which you and humanity will enter into a new age. Capitalism, communism, feminism, scientifism, every -ism all say that if we follow them or some combination of them (polyideology or intersectionality), they will be unto us the water of life. “Follow us,” they say, “we will end world hunger, heal the nations, bring more life and give you justice against the wicked.” Have you not heard the same words from the mouths of your politicians and mass media? Essentially, these false prophets are copying what the devil said in Eden, “You don’t need God. Just follow this -ism and the world will be better.”

But the believer, by studying and knowing God’s Prophecies, The True Eschatology, immediately recognizes that these ideologies are false. Healing only flows from One Throne Revelation 22:1. The Justification of those who believe in Jesus flows from His Veins alone Revelation 7:14, 12:10-11. The everlasting condemnation of sin and the sinner comes only from His Mouth Alone Psalms 2:9, Isaiah 11:4, 63:1-3, Revelation 14:19-20, 19:15, 17-21. The new creation is the Holy Work of Jesus Christ Alone Revelation 21:5. Yet where is the believer who rightly reads and studies in order to rightly read Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, Zechariah, 2 Peter and Revelation?! Where is the believer who even reads the Bible? It is no wonder then that we are so easily swayed.