By Odon Bulamba
It’s a joy to be here and I praise God to
see all of you. This morning I wasn’t
sure if I will be here today because I felt sick and I was telling myself, if I
feel sick now, what is going to happen, no one will have the opportunity to
hear what God wants us to hear this morning.
I started to feel better and now I am here.
Mathew 24:11, here Jesus is talking about
the end of times. Many prophets will
arise and will mislead a lot of people and believers. How can false prophets will come into the
church and mislead so many people who have known God for many years?
First, we have gifts of the Holy Spirit and
ministries and we also have the Word of God but many Christians today hate the Word
of God and don’t have time for it. When
you talk about other ministries, they find it boring but when a prophet stands
up and talks about what will happen in their physical lives, people will be
happy. For example, “in two days’ time
you will win lotto”. Or someone tells
you, “God has said what you are going through will end and you will get healing,
God spoke to me,” we feel it’s a good
message because our ears only want to hear what pleases our feelings.
This is how satan has set the trap in the
church. When I was child, my uncle asked
me what would I choose between money and wisdom? I said, “Money. What about you uncle?” and he said, “wisdom”. I said, “I choose money because money because
I need money”. My uncle asked, “Do you
say that I don’t have wisdom and that’s why I ask for it?”. He was offended.
My mother slapped me, “never say that to
people”. As an innocent child, my choice
was money and my words told my uncle it was a wrong choice. Today prophecy relies on people. If you look in the Bible, the prophets will
tell you exactly what God wants you to say but prophets today are vague so you
find your own interpretation.
Jesus is warning us, when false prophets
come, that is the end times. A prophecy
is to tell you what is going to happen in the future. It’s not the best gift because we don’t need
it every day because we all know what is going to happen. The false prophets don’t stick on the Bible
but say things about your day to day life but when it’s a matter of spiritual
things, they talk less about eternal life.
Good prophets will say, “it is written in the Word and you church have
forgotten”. False prophets tell you, you
won’t pass away. To pass away is normal
but they just want you to feel happy and please you.
In Africa, we have plenty of those
prophets. Most of them consult with
witches and they meet with you and tell you your entire life and tell you what
you did yesterday and it is the truth but they are false prophets, they are
being used by satan to tell you what is going to happen. “In 10 mins, you will receive a call and they
will tell you this and that”. Then the
friend calls you and it’s exactly what the false prophet said would happen. How not to believe such a person and once you
believe, you will start to follow him.
In many churches, believers don’t follow Jesus
but their pastors and prophets. When
they face a challenge, they go back to the prophet and the prophet says, “you
face that because of this and that but you can change it by doing this”. We discover that people no longer put trust
in Jesus but in human beings. If your
pastor is not there, then you feel that God doesn’t exist and your prayers are
blind because the pastor is the only person who can help us.
These false prophets are like mobile phone,
“I can’t live without it”. I trust my
phone to send a message to where I want.
Once I opened a Facebook page and I had hundreds of people who wanted to
request my friendship. If you have lots
of friends, you might become famous. The
only friend you need is Jesus. None of
those friends on Facebook spoke to me about Jesus.
When the false prophets come to church
everyone wants to talk to them. For
example, everyone in the church wants to talk to the prophet (maybe called Elijah)
but he won’t have the courage to them those coming to him to go to Jesus,
instead he will say, “I will pray and God will take care of it”. The false prophets use the name of God but
what they are doing is not from God. Don’t
be foolish to think that because someone uses the name of Jesus, that they are
from Jesus. Jesus warned us that those
that come in my name are not all from me.
Why do we prefer prophets rather than Word
of God? The Word of God is life and truth but
prophets are not life and not always truth.
Why give our heart, soul and mind to prophecies? Jesus said, “follow Me”. There is only one way to heaven but we focus
on prophecies and put aside Jesus. Satan
uses that gift more and more because it is our weakness. We don’t want prayers or preachings, just
prophecies.
When was the last time your heart felt that
you need to hear from a prophet about a situation? We change them to be magicians – they give
solution to our problem. I had someone
calling on my phone and it looks like it comes from Australia but it’s from
another country and they don’t explain what they are doing but they tell me it’s
about business. Some people could be
trapped. When we talk about money it’s
easy to fall into a trap. False prophets
come to your ears to hear something you like (like the phone call) to buy your
soul.
In Africa, they don’t talk about the Word
of God but healings. Prophets only talk
about healings, becoming wealthy, being happy.
If your marriage is not good, see the prophet. Prophets are the ones standing up in the
church, if you want God to bless you, come and see me. They pass a handkerchief above your head and whatever
you ask for, you will get it.
Apostle (someone Odon knows), he will do
miracles and people say amen using his name.
If you want to disturb someone, steal their phone. I’ve seen someone leave their handbag behind
but not their phone, they must go back for their phone. If you ask to see someone’s phone, they won’t
let you because there are secrets held on the phone (even between married
couples). Those are the type of things I
am using as example about false prophets.
A phone can be destroyed, it’s not confidential
(the phone provider can see it and even keep a copy), and when you send a
message, they can block the message and it won’t reach the destination. Satan uses the false prophets to come in our
lives like spiritual phone provider and controls all the situations between God
and ourselves. At some point the false
prophet will interrupt your communication with God and you won’t be able to
talk any time to God without first talking to the prophet. I’ve seen women do all things for the prophet
but not the husband. E.g. the prophet
says o be at church at 6am, she will be there but if her husband asks her to do
something, she doesn’t.
We can spend hours listening to prophets
but not even one hour to pray to God. We
can’t even be there without falling asleep.
Whenever we leave Jesus to be by Himself, we fall asleep. When Jesus
wakes us up, we will wake up for 2 seconds but fall back asleep. When you are tired and your faith is dying
and things are tough in your life, satan knows this is the right time to attack,
“because they love God, let me send a prophet”.
A prophet will tell you what you are going
through and tell you, “God has told me this and that will happen”. When Jesus left the earth, He said He will
leave us the Holy Spirit to find consolation but today we find consolation in human
beings. We forget about the Holy Spirit. When I feel sad, the Holy Spirit comforts me
because I know that human beings can’t take away my sadness. I need someone who can comfort me. My solution should be Jesus, not human beings. God can use human beings to bring solution
but we must pray to God first.
Satan knows we love those who bring nice
messages. One day my phone went
dead. I had all my contacts in that
phone. Everything was in that
phone. How will I get back those messages? I went to Vodafone and they fixed everything
and it all came back to normal. Who is
that person who knows you inside out? Is
it Jesus or the prophet? Many Christians
will go astray.
I encourage you to love Jesus and the Word
of God. Whenever you face a challenge,
talk to Jesus rather than giving your faith to a prophet. Look at the prophets in the Bible, people
never went to see prophets but rather prophets went to see the people and the
prophets didn’t give prophecy every day.
Today, prophets must give a message every day you see them and it’s only
about your physical life, they don’t talk about spiritual things.
Prophets today won’t tell you about your
sin and to repent but tell you it’s ok.
One day you will stand in front of God and He will tell you, “I warned
you about false prophets, why did you get mislead”. God has given us intelligence to not be
deceived.
Three friends were together walking and one
was in trouble. The second one said, “drink
alcohol and you will forget the problem”.
He drank until he was drunk and he lost his mind and instead of taking
the problem away, it created greater problems.
The Holy Spirit is the only one we were
given to guide us and teach us of the things that will come. Our target is to go to heaven. Do we pray only for our physical problems or
to prepare our eternal lives? Take your life seriously. You must carry your own cross. It might be heavy but accept to carry
it. A prophet might give a message but
ask God to confirm it.
Pray for God to help us to be awake and to
see God every time. Pray God to keep our
eyes open. Sleep can take you far away in your dreams and many false prophets
can take you far away from God.
