The Season of Accusation

 The Season of Accusation

The current trend of Christian accusation against fellow Christians is an easily recognizable pattern with the foremost being Christians taking up the offense of the women's movement mindset of being abused by the patriarchy leading to the onslaught of sexual abuse accusations currently roiling the Church in America.

The second is a by-product of the accusations of rapes where no rapes occurred, and that is in the accusation of "prophetic manipulation" which has been used primarily as an excuse for women who have been involved in any level sexual activity - including sexual fantasies - related to their accusation of sexual abuse against a Christin leader.

"Prophetic manipulation" is the equivalent of "grooming" in non-religious sexual abuse accusations. It is used to weaponize normal behaviors making them more sinister than they actually are. Grooming is a valid term in CHILD sexual abuse, but is no excuse for any level of sexual temptations involving people of the age of consent.

The standard of judging these accusations is so loose, that almost anything can be chalked up to sexual abuse by a Christian leader and the accusation of "prophetic manipulation" can also be widely applied. It's now becoming a trend in non-sexual accusation, mostly applied to money. No one has to give any donation they don't want to, but for some reason asking for donations is OFTEN seen as a manipulation Christians use.

Many non-believers love to weigh in online on these particular accusations and parts of the Church even have developed a code name - NAR - that they use to discredit the Christian leaders who follow the New Testament injunction, "Do not despise prophecies." 1 Thessalonians 5:20

Is there sexual failure in church leadership? Yes, and even more in the pews.

Is there prophetic manipulation among those who prophesy? Yes, but whose responsibility is it not to be led around by your nose because of prophecy? It's your responsibility and if you do not exercise your own discernment, it will be your own failing when you do not reject all forms of prophetic manipulation.

As the Bible advises us, in 1 John 4:1 "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world."

In the first year of my return to God I was in a Faith church where everybody prophesied to everybody. But one day as a man started prophesying to me, the voice of God in my head spoke louder telling me that I had been absorbing everything I heard like a sponge since I returned to faith, and I needed to stop doing that and starting testing what I was hearing or I would end up with all the errors of those who were speaking to me.

Some call me rebellious but I have taken that word to heart. God made my love His Word, directly from the pages of the Bible, and nothing anyone ever said should be made higher than His Word.

Manipulation comes from every direction in human life. Sometimes we have a mother or father that uses manipulation to dominate us, even as children. It makes us wary of authority figures when we realize this is what our relationship was like with a parent.

But it also does not destroy the natural love we have even for a manipulating mom or dad. This should be true of our spiritual moms and dads too. Manipulation is a technique human beings pick up to better control what happens to them in life. The primary purpose is to look out for themselves, often they live with a deep sense of having not being taken care of, so they must take care of themselves through manipulation of those around them.

That is not to excuse their sin, but to humanize it. We all sin - before and after salvation. Manipulating others can turn into much greater sin becoming habitual and allowing the controlling spirit of Jezebel full reign in us. This is a sin that we must first repent of, get deliverance from, and for the rest of our lives keep watch over ourselves not to fall back into that spirit-sin. Using sexuality is just one tool of the Jezebel spirit, who driving force is to control others. The book of Revelation mentions "Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess" specifically because the end times will be fraught with the sins of that controlling spirit. Anyone who can see in the Spirit of God should be able to recognize the flood of activity of the Jezebel spirit already a major spirit of this age.

Whether it is in family relationships or in the church, at some point as we spiritually mature, we each have take responsibility to recognize attempts to manipulate us and to reject it. That doesn't always mean burning down the House of God to do it. In fact, it is not spiritually mature at all to take that route!

One of the biblical examples I can think of is in 1 Kings 13 when a young prophet who was sent by God on a mission with very specific orders "‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came’”. That was going well UNTIL an old prophet comes out and LIES to the young prophet on his way home by saying, "“I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’”

At supper the old prophet suddenly received a true word from God: “This is what the Lord says: ‘You have defied the word of the Lord and have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you. You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors.”

When the young prophet left, “a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it; the lion also stood beside the body.”

The old prophet who had lied buried the young man of God in his own grave and instructed his own sons to, upon his death, to bury him beside the young prophet. In doing these things, the old prophet showed his sincere belief that the prophet who died had been a true man of God—his prophecies against the idolaters of Israel would come true (1 Kings 13:31–32).

True prophets sometimes don't obey what God tells them, even after they deliver a hard word to a king, and sometimes even seasoned old prophets lie. The greatly revered prophet Moses is also an example. He struck the rock instead of speaking to it as commanded. His consequence was not going into the Promised Land, although Moses surely ascended into Heaven at death.

We are ALL RESPONSIBILE for what God speaks to us. There is no "entitlement" for the young prophet to say, the OLD prophet lied to me. And even the old prophet who lied to the younger prophet recognized that the younger's failure to obey the word of God to him, did NOT MAKE the young man A FALSE prophet.

Why did the older prophet lie to the younger? Clearly he did not intend to cause the death of the young prophet, but he did not take seriously the parameters that God had set out for the younger prophet to follow.

Both the donkey and the lion stood by the young prophet's dead body - the donkey as a witness to the stubbornness of the king who would reject the young prophet's prophecy and the lion as a witness to the old prophet who lied and caused the death of the younger prophet - whose death potentially impacted the king not to pay attention to the young man's prophetic warning.

The old prophet recognized that because the LORD allowed the lion to kill the young prophet on his wayward way home, that the word of the Lord to the young prophet was true. That is the reason the old prophet told his own sons that when he died he should be buried next to the young prophet as a sign that the younger had truly been a prophet of God.

What does all this have to do with the accusations against the men of God in our time? A lot.

First the season of accusations come out of the secular mindset of entitlement and their bogus attempt to establish justice apart from the accountability of ourselves before God. This entitlement has infantilized women and young people. Where no personal responsibility is expected, there entitlement stands to accuse others of our own failures to test the spirits and not blame others for the failures we take part in with others.

I did a lot more research this morning on Grok about who is talking about "prophetic manipulation," who is accused of it, what is "prophetic witchcraft" and other questions I had about it. The one thing lacking that I saw is what I wrote about today. And I hope you are paying attention out there, because like someone told me recently, "I tell my kids, 'when you stand before God, mama won't be standing beside you.' Which is a great way to express how we are ALL responsible for our own stuff before God. There is no "entitlement" excuses that works with our Heavenly Father.