Against Prophetic False Messianism

Extraordinarily rarely, a prophetic charism will predict a particular event (as when a Christian prophet warned the Church to prepare for a famine under Claudius (see Acts 11) or when Jesus thrice warned his disciples of his coming passion and death). Now and then, a gift of prophecy or knowledge can enable a person to know something they cannot know by natural means.

But these are extremely rare things and people who spend their lives running around looking for magic oracles are wasting their time. Indeed, fascination with such stuff has managed to turn not a few Christians into people who are blind as bats to the real function of the prophetic office: making us see what should be plain as the nose on our face.

Real prophets spend their time reminding people that 2+2=4 and that we are to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God.

As Uncle Screwtape reminds us:

The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions; is it righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking “Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?” they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions they do ask are, of course, unanswerable; for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which they now invoke the future to help them to make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend them to the action we have decided on. And great work has already been done. Once they knew that some changes were for the better, and others for the worse, and others again indifferent. We have largely removed this knowledge. For the descriptive adjective “unchanged” we have substituted the emotional adjective “stagnant”. We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain–not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is

A mark of a false prophet is that he promises to decode the secret message of the book of Revelation, or work out the anagram of Trump’s name to spell out the Hidden History of Our Time, or unravel the complicated formula that shows COVID is a Deep State Plot, or work out the way Pope Francis is foretold in the Oracles of St. Malachy, all while turning a blind eye to the bleeding obvious, as that voting for a 34 time felon and rapist who mocks the disabled and is guilty of fraud and defamation is visible-from-space stupid. Avoid all such twaddle, especially as the election approaches. Do what is righteous, prudent, and possible. Vote Dem at every level–local, state, and federal. Ignore the false prophets who falsely curse in the Name of God. Commend your best efforts to God and ask him to bless them. Then let the chips fall where He wills.