Around the year 1600 AD William Perkins wrote a little booklet about the end of the world. He gave it this title: “A Fruitful Dialogue Concerning the End of the World.” As the title says, the book contains a dialogue between two men. One was a Christian who had been taken in by some of the end times prophecies he had heard. The other was a Christian who knew the teaching of Scripture and did not fall for such end-times prophecies. Although Perkins’ wrote this over 400 years ago, it is still quite relevant today simply because people still get sucked in by crazy end times prophecies.
At one point in the dialogue the Christian gives the man some insight on how to judge if such a “prophet” is true or false. Here’s what Perkins wrote about judging such “prophets.” I’ve abbreviated it for length and readability.
The sufficiency or insufficiency of a prophet may be perceived by these marks:
(1) If he maintains heresies and does not embrace the Christian religion.
(2) If his judgment is rash and inconsistent in other matters.
(3) If he is given to covetousness, or pride, for then he may be suspected, that he speaks by his prophecies to win either some gain or some glory to himself.
(4) If his complexion and the temperature of his body is strange, for then he may be thought to have some disease which hinders the reasonable part. He may have the weakness of the brain, the frenzy, or some such like. And it is certain that in all such Satan has great power and does trouble them with dreams and visions and many strong fantasies and terrors of mind.
(5) If he despises other men’s judgments and counsels and sticks to his own opinion…
(6) Lastly, if the prophet is a young man, not an old… if babbling and talkative, not silent with wisdom; if unruly and disordered,… suspicion may be gathered that the prophecy is an illusion of Satan.
Secondly, if it is against the Word of God or any circumstance of it….
Thirdly, if the prophecy is uttered in ambiguous words or in speeches which are insolent and strange, not understood by people who hear them and are never used in the Scriptures or of the church, it is likely to be some sleight. For the Spirit of God speaks plainly…
Fourthly, if the end of the prophecy is God’s glory and the profit of God’s church, it is to be regarded; but if the drift of it is to put some men into a foolish fear, to make disquietness in the church and commonwealth; if it is a platform to bring some to promotion, it is not to be regarded…
Fifthly, if it concerns some private men and some private family. It is to be supposed that the prophecies which come from God’s Spirit are commonly general and tend to the profit of the whole church.
If it is false in any one little point or in any circumstance, account it of no value. For those prophecies which are of God are in no jot false; for God is truth itself.
By these notes and many others, we may judge of the prophecies of Merlin, of the prophecies of those that term themselves Elias, of Anabaptistical revelations, of dreams of these lying tales of the second coming of Christ….
Shane Lems Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) Hammond, WI, 54015
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