How to spot a FALSE prophet !!!

I want to be bold here and tell you a little truth. Any person who stands up to you and says “I am a prophet” is actually not a prophet. It does not take much to find such people, even a simple search on the internet will give you a long list of people who call themselves prophets. I know that some say that a prophet is tested by the fulfillment of the prophecies that are provided. But not all prophecy is given to be fulfilled, sometimes it is given as a warning to stop a disaster, therefore the aim would be to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecy. So I would like to think that we can identify prophets as a man or woman who gives prophecies, but refuses to be given a title of 'prophet'.

I have spent time researching ancient documents and studying the lives of prophets, and in all of those documents I did not find one of the most famous prophets mention that they were a prophet. I was amazed that I had never noticed it before, actually in cases where it is suggested to them that they are a prophet, they actually deny it! But this denial has led skeptics to claim that they were indeed not prophets, I say on the other hand, that it proves that they were a prophet. The secrets are within the personality of prophets, which can reveal to us about their denials.

“I was no prophet” Amos

“I am no more than a man” Mohammad

“I do not wish to attribute to myself such a loftly title” Nostradamus

The clue about why a prophet denies his ability is all there in the ancient scripts, and it can simply be put as humility. All prophets maintain a deep spiritual relationship with God, and to maintain and keep that relationship there must be humility. This is because the prophet understands that the prophecies being uttered, are merely being passed on, in a way a prophet can be seen as God's mailman. Quite often the life of a prophet has been a humble life, but if it has been the opposite of humble, God brings him into humility. This journey into humility is oft littered with disasters or grief, in a sense breaking a person down so that God can build him back up.

But if a broken person is humble, then why would God feel the need to re-build him? It is because a prophet must have confidence. Imagine a prophet going around and saying “it is the end of the world tomorrow” and facing people who challenge the prophecy to his face or question it, a broken man would crumble in such a situation, yet a man re-built into confidence will not waiver.

I will openly admit that it is a strange combination of personality traits to be brought together, but a prophet must be confident and humble simultaneously. Dispite the fact that prophets refuse to admit openly that they are prophets, within their own private relationship that exists in-between them and God, the prophet will know that he is a prophet.

I believe that this is the last challenge that prophets learn to overcome, how to remain humble whilst walking the path of a prophet. He knows that he is a prophet, or why else would he provide prophecies? He has confidence in what God tells him because of the strength that exists in their relationship, a relationship maintained by humility. Yet this humble relationship will give him strength to stand against the odds if it is needed.

Mohammad (570-632 A.D.)

Mohammad is mainly recognized by most to be the founder of the religion of Islam, and is considered by Muslims to be a prophet, that he was a messenger from God just like the other prophets such as Noah, Moses, Enoch.  He was born in the city of Mecca (Saudi Arabia), but he became an orphan and was raised by his uncle, a man named Abu Talib.  At one point he worked as a merchant, and at another point as a shepherd and he got married at the age of 25 to an older woman.  During his whole life it is said that he had thirteen wives / concubines.  But he was unhappy with his life in Mecca and went away and became a hermit in a cave in the surrounding mountains.  At the age of 40 he received his first vision from God, which is communicated to him through the angel Gabrielle, and three years later he started preaching about these visions to the public.

At the time the the Arabs believed in many gods, and Mohammad was teaching that there is only one God, the Living Everlasting God.  Nevertheless, he gained some supporters, but mainly hostility from Meccan tribes which forced him to escape persecution and flee to Abyssinia (Medina/Yathrib).  In Medina, Mohammad managed to unite the tribes, and in 622 with over 10,000 followers he returned to conquer Mecca, several years later in 630 he succeeded.  In 632 after his first and final pilgrimage, he fell ill and died.

The revelations that he received during his lifetime became the verses of the Quran, and were combined into a single book after his death.  These verses are considered to be the Word of God by Muslims.  Although Mohammad is believed to be the author of the Quran, he is only mentioned in it by name  four times, which has meant that sources for information about his life have to be found elsewhere.

The earliest surviving biography of his life by Ibn Ishaq was written 150 years after Mohammad's death.  Although scholars generally believe the early biographies to be accurate, it is not ascertainable.  In early days, both Christians and Jews saw Mohammad as a false prophet, saying that prophets do not arrive with swords and chariots.  And Mohammad after all, was involved in several battles during his lifetime.

It is however recorded that when Mohammad was twelve that he was travelling in a caravan to Syria, he met a Christian monk called Bahira, and that the monk gave Mohammad a copy of the Old testament and put forward the idea that he should become a prophet to the Arabs.

It is this record that confuses me most, was Mohammad converted to a Christian as a child?  With biographies of his life only being written about him hundreds of years after his actual existence, how do we know the he wished to create a  belief that was separate to Christianity.  Apparently it is also recorded that when they took Mecca, that he instructed all his soldiers not to destroy any images of Jesus or Mary.  In fact Mary is mentioned more often in the Quran than in the Bible!

My point is that, we cannot know for sure where his beliefs came from for sure, and maybe we will never know, but the idea that Mohammad was converted to Christianity is intriguing to say the least.  Yet those texts given to him by the monk became part of the Quran, recording the existence of Adam, Noah, Moses, Abraham and more.

False Prophecies of Merlin?

As I continue my research into the Mirabilis liber which was published in 1522, I wish to talk about a set of prophecies that appear in the book under the author name of St Gregory the Great.  But the document can be linked to an earlier publication that was attributed to that of Merlin, hence a conclusion that the collector of the Mirabilis liber chose to either disguise the name for some purpose... or simply had presumed incorrectly.

So why would prophecies from the source of Merlin be false?  As discussed previously, the character of 'Merlin' originates from a welsh person from the 6th century called Myrddin Wyllt, who had made a mess of his own prophecies and was driven to madness and lived in the wild as a crazed man.  Therefore any written prophecies said to originate from this source must have been faked or copied from elsewhere.  Yet as I studied the prophecies, they actually foretold things that have happened; 

"born of a tree a bird"

(seems to predict the invention of the plane)

[the plane] "shall wander around all those deserts killing the evil beasts"

(seems to predict planes hitting enemies, possibly the Iraq wars)

"truly even the Indies shall share in it, and know that the sea shall rise greatly and miraculously"

(seems to predict the devastating tsunami on 26th Dec 2004)