Tendai Ruben Mbofana
There is a most dangerous misunderstanding in contemporary Christianity.
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It is the assumption that whenever someone predicts an event and that event later happens, the person who made the prediction must therefore be a genuine prophet of God.
But that is not what the Bible teaches.
A prophecy coming to pass may certainly be significant, but fulfilment alone is not the biblical test of whether the prophet is truly speaking for God.
We are called to test the message, examine its fruit and, most importantly, discern the spirit and purpose behind it.
This is particularly important when we consider the growing popularity of prophetic ministries in which dramatic predictions of deaths, disasters, accidents, political events and other tragedies are made publicly.
When the predicted event eventually occurs, the prophet is celebrated as having demonstrated supernatural accuracy.
But what if the real question is not whether the prophet knew what would happen, but what he did with that knowledge?
Suppose God genuinely reveals to a prophet that a catastrophe is about to happen and that lives are going to be lost.
Why would God reveal such information?
Biblically, divine revelation normally serves a purpose.
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream so that Egypt could prepare for the coming famine.
Eli encouraged Hannah in her distress, assuring her that God would grant the petition she had brought before Him.
Jonah was sent to Nineveh with a warning that gave the people an opportunity to repent.
Biblical prophecy could warn, correct, encourage, strengthen, protect and call people back to God.
It was never merely a demonstration of supernatural intelligence.
That raises an uncomfortable question about prophets who claim to foresee disasters but apparently do nothing to prevent them.
If a prophet knows that people are going to die, yet simply keeps quiet, allows the tragedy to unfold and then releases a recording afterwards to prove that he predicted it, what exactly was accomplished?
The tragedy was not prevented.
Lives were not saved.
Families were not spared grief.
The warning served no apparent protective purpose.
Instead, the prophecy becomes evidence used to establish the prophet’s credentials.
That should concern every Christian.
If God reveals something in order that His people may pray, repent, prepare or act, deliberately withholding that information for the sake of personal fame, influence or admiration would fundamentally undermine God’s purpose.
It would turn prophecy from a ministry of service into a platform for self-glorification.
And this is precisely why we cannot simply say, “But the prophecy came true.”
The Bible itself warns us that supernatural signs and predictions are not exclusive evidence of God’s involvement.
In Acts 16, a slave girl possessed by a spirit of divination accurately identified Paul and Silas as servants of the Most High God.
Her declaration was factually correct, but the spirit behind it was not the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, Pharaoh’s magicians were able to reproduce some of the miraculous signs performed by Moses.
The lesson is profound.
Accuracy does not automatically equal divine authority.
Jesus gave perhaps the most frightening warning of all in Matthew 7:22–23.
He spoke of people who would come before Him claiming, “Lord, Lord,” and reminding Him that they had prophesied in His name and performed mighty works.
Yet Jesus would tell them, “I never knew you.”
Think about that.
They had prophesied.
They had apparently performed supernatural works.
They even did so in Jesus’ name.
Yet He rejected them.
Therefore, Christianity cannot reduce the test of a prophet to whether his prediction came true.
We must ask: Does this person point people to Christ or to himself?
Does the prophecy produce repentance, prayer and righteousness, or does it produce celebrity, fear and personal adulation?
Does the prophet genuinely seek the welfare of people, or does he seem more interested in proving how powerful and accurate he is?
There is another uncomfortable possibility we must confront.
Some prophetic pronouncements may be deliberately vague, selectively remembered, retrofitted to events after they occur or even based on information that can be obtained through ordinary means.
Others may simply be coincidences.
Human beings are remarkably good at remembering the predictions that came true while forgetting the countless ones that did not.
Therefore, the church must recover biblical discernment.
We should not be impressed merely because somebody predicted a death, accident, election result or disaster.
We should ask what the prophecy was supposed to accomplish and whether the prophet’s conduct reflects the character of the God he claims to represent.
A genuine messenger of God does not need human tragedy to prove his prophetic credentials.
If God reveals danger, the purpose should be to save, warn, correct, prepare or draw people closer to Him—not to sit back and wait for disaster so that, afterwards, everyone can applaud the prophet for being right.
Ultimately, prophecy is not about the prophet.
It is about God.
And whenever the messenger becomes more important than the God who supposedly sent him, something has gone terribly wrong.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com