Faithful Fridays Two - Matthew

 Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

400 years after Malachi penned his words, Gabriel appeared to Zechariah as he was going about his priestly duties, announcing the coming of John, and the timetable for the most amazing era of all history...when God took on flesh and walked among mankind...was set into motion.

Matthew doesn't record any of that bit, though.  He's not as interested in the forerunner of Jesus as he is in Jesus himself, laying argument after argument that Jesus was the one foretold.  He begins his narrative with an extensive genealogy, starting with Abraham, showing the lineage of Jesus.  

Several passages caught my eye as I read through, but one kicked up the prickles so that is the selection for today:

"At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.  Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." Matt. 24:10 - 13

This is, of course, from the Olivet Discourse, which was an answer to the disciples' questions about the end times.  It's all pretty familiar, but this time as I was reading this particular snippet struck me differently than before.

Always before, I had read the  'false prophets will appear and deceive many' as, well, clearly false prophets, with false doctrines...cults and the like.  But this time, it hit me as people who weren't necessarily proclaiming a different gospel...but are, nonetheless, false prophets.  People claiming to have a revelation from God who actually don't. Maybe their objectives are personal...there's money to be had doing that, if you're good at it.  Maybe their objectives are political...and I don't have to go down that rabbit trail; it's been pretty obvious.  Maybe they are genuinely confusing the aftermath of eating a pepperoni pizza with a revelation.  But the end result is the same.  Someone says, 'Thus says the Lord,  yadda yadda yadda,' and the Lord didn't say any of it.  It's a shame, because I really believe there ARE people who have prophetic giftings, but the actual prophets aren't getting heard because of the noise level coming from the bogus ones.

Which might be a better strategy of the enemy than just straight up creating cults.  It's harder to recognize the truth when there's so much almost-truth being proclaimed.  Or, as in Jeremiah's day, when the true prophets were proclaiming the opposite of what the false ones said.

There's a lot more in that passage that also rings true today...many turning away from the faith; hatred, increase of wickedness, love growing cold and indifferent, which is all very sad.  But false prophecy...that's dangerous...