We are living in a time in which false prophets are giving true prophecies and releasing real signs and wonders. It’s crucial that we hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church right now so that we are not swept away in delusion or trapped by the enemy in the coming days.
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass concerning that which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods,” which you have not known, “and let us serve them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You must follow after the Lord your God, fear Him, and keep His commandments, obey His voice, and you must serve Him, and cling to Him. That prophet or that dreamer of dreams must be put to death because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to entice you away from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you must put the evil away from your midst.” Deuteronomy 13:1-5 MEV
True Signs
Prophets have arisen in the church who give accurate prophecies and perform valid signs and wonders, but their character, lifestyle, and fruit of the Spirit are not godly. These are the bad trees that Jesus warned us about (Matthew chapter 7). These people have crept into the church stealthily and deceived many charismatic believers. Some of their prophecies and works of power are legitimate, but their very ministry and message lead people away from Christ.
Other Gods
These false ministers don’t openly say, “Let us go after other gods.” Rather, they say it through their lifestyle and preach it through their character. These false ministers may never directly tell you to serve another god, but they lead people to themselves as a god. They want to be followed and exalted among the people, taking the place of God in the hearts of believers. They desire for believers to see how powerful they are and how they are the “chosen mouthpiece of God.” They point out their accurate prophecies so that believers will be impressed and follow them. These false ministries, knowingly or unknowingly, make themselves as God.
The prosperity gospel message is an example of leading people away from Christ to another god through a message. The prosperity gospel focuses on being blessed, becoming wealthy, and lusts for a transfer of wealth that will never come. Those who have embraced this have wandered from Christ and are serving the god of mammon.
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24 NKJV
Mammon means, “wealth, treasure, or riches.” Some believers have fallen into this deceptive trap, and they mostly think about becoming wealthy or the coming transfer of wealth. Their focus has drifted from knowing the Lord intimately to becoming wealthy. They have been led away from the Lord to a false god by a false minister’s teaching.
Other false ministers shift the focus of believers away from Christ by preaching and focusing on the things that God does, until those things become a god to those hearing the preaching and teaching. Some false ministers have led people away from God by focusing their messages on healing, impartation, revival, miracles, prophecy, power, and ministry. Some believers have then drifted from the command to pick up their crosses and follow Jesus as disciples. They have rejected the message of the cross, which has the power to transform us into the image of Christ. Without the cross of suffering, we cannot be Jesus’ disciples, and without being His disciples, we will never attain to the perfect man—the full measure of the stature of Christ.
Another way these false ministers lead people away from Christ is by their true character being exposed. They give accurate prophetic words so believers follow them and invest in their ministries. Then they are exposed as being unfaithful to their spouse or involved in some other evil scandal. Believers lose trust in Christian leaders and the church in general, and some fall away from Christ because of a “stumbling block” caused by a false minister. These ministers are proven to be false because of their character, not their prophetic revelation. These ministers have been doing great damage to the Lord’s church.
These Balaam-like prophets can hear the Lord and prophesy accurately, just as Balaam did, but their souls are not right within them. Balaam eventually accepted money in exchange for counseling the enemy to entice Israel to sin, which in turn would bring God’s judgment on them (Numbers 31:16). These Balaam-like prophets may not counsel someone else to entice God’s people into sexual sin, but they entice God’s people into sexual sin through their own immoral lifestyle.
When immature believers see that the “prophet” was unfaithful to his wife because of lust for another woman, they too may give themselves over to sexual sin. These immature believers reason that if the “man of God” can engage in sexual sin and simply be quickly restored to leadership and ministry, then it isn’t a big deal and they can engage in similar sinful activity. This false minister, who can prophesy accurately and perform true signs, has now become a stumbling block to the church and causes the Lord’s little ones to stumble and fall into sin.
Jesus also warned us that false prophets would arise and would have the potential of deceiving elect believers if we are not careful:
“For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Matthew 24:24 NKJV
We, as the church, really need to understand the teaching from Matthew chapter 7 so that we are not fooled by false prophets who are performing true signs and wonders while prophesying accurately.
The Testing of the Lord
Deuteronomy 13 states that the Lord allows false prophets to perform real signs and wonders in order to test our hearts. He wants to see if He is our first love and if we are so in love with Him that our love cannot be shaken. The Lord tests us to see if our love is only surface level and if we will easily give ourselves to idols because a “prophet” mesmerizes us with prophecy and miracles. The test is, “Do we want the Lord more than anything or anyone else.”
Miracles Without the New Birth
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonderful works in Your name?’ But then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice evil.’ Matthew 7:21-23 MEV
The church needs to understand that not every minister operating in prophecy and power is from the Lord. There have been prophets who could prophesy accurately but they were engaged in homosexual sin or adultery for the majority of their lives. These are ones who deny Jesus by their deeds and practice evil or wickedness. They operated in deliverances and performed healings in Jesus’ name, but they weren’t born again (didn’t know Jesus inwardly). These false prophets knew the Bible, how to preach, and information about church culture, but they didn’t know the Lord. These are tares in the midst of the Lord’s wheat field that are still sometimes difficult to distinguish becasue the field is not fully mature yet.
The Scriptural Solution
“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch? Therefore purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened. For even Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, nor with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I did not mean the sexually immoral people of this world, or the covetous and extortioners, or the idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But I have written to you not to keep company with any man who is called a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner. Do not even eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But God judges those who are outside. Therefore “put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” 1 Corinthians 5:6-13 MEV
When a false prophet is corrupting the church through immoral character, lifestyle, or teachings that are leading people away from Christ, they are shown to be yeast that is corrupting the purity of the church. False human love will allow them to remain in the church as a leader under the guise of “mercy.” This human love is actually opposed to the real love of God. The love of God is to drive these false ministers from the church and their positions of leadership so that their wickedness does not infect the entire church and destroy the people of God.
The Holy Spirit gives us the counsel of the Father so that the church is protected from a single person who could destroy it. We do not know better than the Holy Spirit. His love is pure and right. If the “yeast” is a leader of God’s people, then by the command in Scripture, that yeast is to be purged from the church. The false minister is not to be allowed to continue in ministry, and they are not to be restored to ministry. They should be restored to their family and the church if they truly repent and demonstrate fruits consistent with repentance.
If a leader disqualifies himself from overseeing a ministry according to the qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and the church does nothing to remove him as a church leader, then the church is not in obedience to the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures. The church will be corrupted by the yeast, and it will leaven the entire church. Sin will spread, and the Lord’s lambs will be destroyed. The Lord’s little ones will be caused to stumble and fall away.
The enemy is a master of trickery. He will twist the truth until we believe lies. He does not want us to act in truth and in the real love of God. The enemy wants us bound in a false human love so that we stand by and let the Lord’s church be destroyed right in front of us. The enemy will say, “Paul is the accuser of the brethren,” since Paul is calling for the yeast—the sinning person—to be removed from the church.
The definition of gaslighting is, “a form of psychological manipulation where someone tries to make another person doubt their own memory, perception, judgment, or understanding of reality.” This is the exact tactic and weapon that Satan is using against the church right now. This psychological manipulation is coming through false ministers and prophets. Once their true character and sins have been revealed, they dig in and engage in psychological manipulation in order to keep their power and influence.
We must be aware of the enemy’s schemes because his tactics have become increasingly subtle in these last days before the Lord’s return. We, as the church, must truly come to know the Lord inwardly and the truth in His Word so that we can stand in this current wave of delusion.
-Ty Unruh (September 8, 2026)
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