Over the years, I have met many well-meaning people who have used the words, “God told me.” I have also watched others elevate men and women because of their charisma, their ability to speak with confidence, or the prophetic words they claim to receive. Books are written and sold about their prophecies, conferences are organized around them, and ministries will spend large amounts of God’s money to bring them in to speak. People will even travel great distances just to hear what they believe is the latest word from the Lord.

Yet somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that God commands us to test what we hear. I am not saying that God cannot speak through someone, because I believe He can. However, if a word truly comes from God, then it will bring life because its source is the God of truth. It will never contradict His character or His written Word. A false word, on the other hand, can bring tremendous damage because it can produce confusion, fear, false hope, and disappointment. It can cause people to make decisions based on something God never said, and when the promised outcome does not happen, people may end up questioning God rather than questioning the person who claimed to speak for Him.

For this reason, I believe we need to be extremely careful whenever someone says, “God told me.” Those words should not cause us to stop asking questions, but should cause us to pay even closer attention to what follows.

The Scriptures never tell us to accept someone’s words simply because that person is charismatic, has written bestselling books, draws large crowds, has a successful ministry, or claims to have a prophetic gift. We should not judge a prophetic claim according to how convincing someone sounds, but according to whether what that person says can stand the test of God’s Word.

This problem is certainly not new. As the children of Israel prepared to enter the Land of Promise, God knew they would encounter people claiming access to supernatural knowledge. He also knew that there would be those who would claim to speak in His name when He had not spoken through them. The warning Moses gives Israel in this week’s Scripture reading is therefore just as important for us today as it was thousands of years ago.

Moses first warns the children of Israel not to imitate the spiritual practices of the nations they were about to encounter:

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, a soothsayer, one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.
Deuteronomy 18:10-11

The children of Israel were not to look to the practices of the nations in order to discover what the future held. They belonged to the God of Israel, and their confidence was not to be in someone who claimed special access to hidden knowledge, but in the One who knows the beginning from the end.

Immediately after this warning, Moses gives Israel a remarkable promise:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.
Deuteronomy 18:15

This promise is important because God does not simply tell Israel which voices they should reject. He also tells them that He will provide the one to whom they should listen. A few verses later, the Lord says:

I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
Deuteronomy 18:18

For me, there is no question that this ultimately points us to Messiah. God promised a Prophet like Moses, and the words in His mouth would come from God. Immediately after giving this promise, however, God gives Israel a very serious warning:

But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.
Deuteronomy 18:20

God is not only warning Israel about someone speaking in the name of another god. He specifically warns about someone who speaks presumptuously in His name, which is what makes this warning so serious.

There is a great difference between being wrong about something and saying that God told you something that He did not say. All of us can misunderstand something, and all of us can make mistakes. However, the moment I say, “God told me,” I am no longer presenting my opinion simply as my opinion. I am placing the authority of God behind my words.

God knew that His people would need to know how to respond to such claims, so He anticipated their question:

You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’
Deuteronomy 18:21

I appreciate how direct this question is because it is the same question we should be asking today. God does not tell Israel to judge according to how spiritual the person appears, the size of the crowd following that person, the number of books that person has sold, or how many people attend the conferences where that person speaks. Instead, God gives His people a clear test:

When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.
Deuteronomy 18:22

I do not know how much clearer God could have made this standard. If someone specifically says that the Lord told him something would happen, and it does not happen, Scripture does not tell us to move the date, redefine what the prophecy meant, or explain why the prophecy was spiritually fulfilled even though the thing that was actually predicted never happened. God simply says that “the LORD has not spoken” that word.

I believe this is precisely where we have a serious problem today. I have heard people make very specific claims about what God was supposedly going to do concerning Israel, wars, political leaders, elections, nations, and events that were supposed to happen on particular dates. Some of those predictions were made publicly and with complete confidence, yet the events they predicted never happened.

What concerns me is not only that the predictions were wrong, but also how quickly we seem to forget about them. The person continues speaking, the books continue selling, the invitations continue coming, and another prophetic word is given. Many of the same people who accepted the previous prediction then accept the next one without ever stopping to ask what Scripture says about the prediction that failed.

We should seriously consider why we are sometimes more willing to defend the person who made the prophecy than to apply the standard God gave us. We should also ask why we hesitate to test a person who says he speaks for God when God Himself commanded His people to do exactly that.

God has already given us the standard, and the question is whether we are willing to use it. We can easily become impressed by charisma, supernatural stories, large ministries, impressive platforms, and confident declarations about what God is supposedly doing next. None of these things, however, removes our responsibility to test what is being said according to God’s Word.

There is also a responsibility on those of us who teach God's Word. I need to be careful not to place God's authority behind my own thoughts. There may be times when I believe the Lord is leading me in a certain direction, or when I see something in Scripture and believe it has a particular application to what is happening around us. However, there is a great difference between saying what I believe and declaring that God has directly told me something that He has not revealed in His Word. We should never use the name of God to give our own words an authority they do not deserve.

This brings us back to the promise at the center of this passage, where God tells Israel: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth.” Deuteronomy 18:18

We find these words applied directly to Yeshua the Messiah in Acts 3, when Peter quotes this passage:

Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR COUNTRYMEN; TO HIM YOU SHALL LISTEN regarding everything He says to you.’
Acts 3:22

There is an important contrast here. On one side are people claiming that God has put words in their mouths, while on the other side is the One whom God Himself promised to raise up and commanded us to hear.

This does not mean that God cannot work through people to encourage, warn, teach, or speak truth into our lives, because He certainly can. However, no teacher, shepeard, prophet, author, or ministry leader should ever take the place that belongs to God's Word or to Messiah.

The Haftarah from Isaiah brings this into even clearer focus. Isaiah is speaking words of comfort to Zion after God's people had experienced suffering, fear, and uncertainty. They desperately needed hope, and in such circumstances it would have been easy to search for someone who could tell them exactly what would happen next. Instead, God reminds them who He is:

I, even I, am He who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, and of the son of man who is made like grass?
Isaiah 51:12

The answer to their fear was not greater dependence on men, but greater confidence in God. A few verses later, Isaiah says:

How delightful on the mountains are the feet of one who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’
Isaiah 52:7

I believe there is something very important for us in those final words because the true messenger does not draw people to himself, but points them back to God. The message is not that we should look to the messenger because he knows what will happen next. The message is that our God reigns.

We live in uncertain times, and Israel continues to face enemies on multiple fronts. Nations are shifting, political leaders come and go, wars begin, ceasefires are announced, agreements are made, and circumstances can change very quickly. I understand why people want to know what comes next, especially when so much around us feels uncertain.

However, our security was never meant to come from finding someone who claims to know the future. Our confidence is in the God who already knows it, which is why we must test what we hear. When someone says, “God told me,” we should not be afraid to ask whether what follows agrees with God's Word. When someone makes a prediction in the name of the Lord, we should remember the standard that God Himself gave us. When that prediction fails, we should not change the standard in order to protect the person who made it.

If a word truly comes from God, it has nothing to fear from being tested according to His Word. There will always be voices competing for our attention, and there will always be people claiming to know what God is about to do. However, God has already given us His Word, and He has pointed us to the One whom He told us to hear.

We do not need to live from one prophetic prediction to the next. We need to know God's Word, test what we hear, listen to Messiah, and hold firmly to the truth that Isaiah proclaimed to Zion when he declared, “Your God reigns.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Moran