Think carefully about my proposal before you apply it, because this is just an opinion piece. If you make a practice of accepting messengers who refuse to let you check their employee badges, you run a great risk of getting the spiritual equivalent of a letter bomb. If you are in a leadership position in the church, and any prophets refuse to disclose the burden of their message to you before they present it to your congregation, they may be false prophets. You and the other authorities in the church may be corrupt or off track, but you are still ordained of God. For example, Jeremiah thought that Zedekiah s foreign policy was wrong, but he submitted to Zedekiah in his role as king.
True prophets work within the parameters that they are given.
Any prophets who say that entire portions of the church are apostate without exception or qualification may be false prophets, because they have set themselves against the Word of God and a promise from our Lord s own lips. False prophets want you to believe that the church leadership is corrupt, so that they can escape scrutiny. True prophets would have arrived earlier, so that you could have tested them and evaluated their message. The false prophet s denunciations encourage pride, paranoia, and elitism, none of which are fruits of the Spirit. False prophets call you to circle the wagons, a true prophet calls you to reach out.