Patrick McDonald

May 9

An Open Letter on Prophetic Clarity - by Patrick McDonald

Fusion family,

I made a few comments this past Sunday May 5th about God raising up new prophetic voices and the rise of false prophets and what I would call a false prophetic voice in the earth. I feel the need to elaborate on these comments as well as bring some clarification.

Fusion is called to be a powerful Apostolic house, meaning a church that is training and releasing believers into the supernatural ministry of Jesus Christ, as well as training and equipping leaders into fivefold ministry

Firstly, I am excited about what the Lord is doing among us at Fusion in general and in regards to the prophetic in particular. I personally feel, “ and I think I too have the Spirit” to quote the Apostle Paul, that Fusion is called to be a powerful Apostolic house, meaning a church that is training and releasing believers into the supernatural ministry of Jesus Christ, as well as training and equipping leaders into fivefold ministry roles and functions based on Ephesians chapter 4. This high calling can be accomplished by emphasizing the importance of Biblically grounded theological teaching, activation of spiritual gifts and ministries, and overall Christ-centered discipleship that matures sons and daughters into their powerful identities in Jesus, so that they can be like Him and manifest His nature and power everywhere they go!

A Prophetic Word to Fusion

In order to accomplish these things a strong prophetic emphasis and bent is needed because we simply can’t afford to move without hearing Him speak and being permeated with his heart for us as well as for the world around us! This is where the prophetic piece comes in! The Lord is stirring the waters more and more among us and the waters will continue to get deeper and deeper! In fact, I feel the Lord saying this to us even now,

“Sons and daughters of Fusion have I not said in times past that My mighty hand would move among you through powerful demonstrations of my Spirit? Have I not also said I would raise up nation shakers among you and send them out? Yes, for surely I have placed a sending mandate and mantle upon you. I will begin to move and I will begin to cause My hand to overshadow you in the coming days and seasons to protect you from EVERY fiery dart of the wicked one! As you will begin to step out in faith and open your mouth I will begin to pour forth through your lips mysteries and the secrets of the hearts of men. Move by faith and I will move in power. Move by faith and I will respond with my anointing. Move by faith and I will respond with radical manifestations of My grace and love among you.

You are called to be a prophetic company, you are called to birth prophetic community. In order for there to be a prophetic community there must be a common unity! Will you hunger and thirst for My living and active prophetic voice among you? Will you hunger and thirst for the yearnings and the groanings of my Spirit? Will you hunger and thirst for the rivers of living water that I desire to flow forth out of your inner man to touch and restore those in need? My Beloved ones as you worship Me with full abandon I will release these things into your hands and I will manifest My fullness among you. As you worship like never before I will release strategic, pinpoint, intercession among you, for surely you have been called a house of worship and a house of prayer. You will truly rise into a mighty and strong pillar in the community and in this nation and I will give to you the authority and the prophetic anointing to touch your region, your nation, and the nations for My glory.

Partner with me in this season and you will begin to see true and lasting revival break out among you firstly, in your hearts, next your communities, and lastly in this nation. I’m calling Fusion Church to carry My heart prophetically to a whole new level in this time. I’m holding nothing back from this House. Worshiping with true abandon in unwavering unity is the key that will release all power and substance of heaven among you and I will bless you with unusual glory!”

Worshiping with true abandon in unwavering unity is the key that will release all power and substance of heaven among you and I will bless you with unusual glory!”

A Perspective on False Prophets and False Prophecy

Now, in regards to my comments on false prophecy and prophets arising allow me to say this, In order for there to be something false arising there must be something real! The false confirms the existence of the true and genuine. That being said, let’s talk about false prophets for a moment and what I would call the false prophetic voice arising in the earth. Let me clarify something right at the beginning so there is no confusion! Throughout the rest of this article when I use the word false as it pertains to prophets, prophecy, or the false prophetic voice arising in the earth, I am NOT talking about a believer functioning in the 1st Corinthians chapter 12 gift of prophecy making a honest mistake or being inaccurate while prophesying! Neither am I talking about a Ephesians Chapter 4 Prophet prophesying and making a mistake or being inaccurate. Contrary to popular belief prophesying inaccurately in and of itself does not make one a false prophet. Let’s go ahead and prove that false with scripture right now.

Clarifying Scriptures

Here are two scriptures that trip people up on this subject.

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. Deut 18:20-22 ESV

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. Deut 13:1-5 ESV

A couple things need to be addressed here, Firstly if you study the Old Testament you will find that the Spirit of God mostly fell on prophets, priests, and kings. This is important to understand because in the New Testament we are commanded as new covenant believers to judge prophecy according to the Apostle Paul.

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. 1 Cor 14:29 NASB 95

Do not quench the Spirit, do not utterly reject prophecies, but examine everything; hold firmly to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil. 1 Thess 5:19-22 NASB

To put it simply, in the Old Covenant the only way people could judge prophecies was if they came to pass because nobody back then had the indwelling Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, to help them discern internally what was truth and error. So the attitude was basically them just waiting it out to see whether the words would come to fulfillment or not. In the Old Covenant you were supposed to get stoned to death for being inaccurate in prophecy. In the New Covenant we don’t live under those types of consequences.

In the New Covenant we are commanded to judge and test prophecy because we now have the indwelling Holy Spirit. If we are called to examine everything and hold fast to that which is good, that implies there could be something not good or inaccurate. We get to still hold onto the good! Making a mistake in prophecy doesn’t make you a false prophet, it makes you a prophetic believer who needs more practice prophesying!

In the Old Testament, hearing God speak was a VERY intense experience. His voice came from the outside and was obvious to the hearer.

Making a mistake in prophecy doesn’t make you a false prophet, it makes you a prophetic believer who needs more practice prophesying!

The prophets before Christ heard exactly what God wanted to communicate. In the New Covenant, God lives inside of us and we share the same internal space with him. We have many things going on inside of us all the time. Our own internal dialogue, various thoughts about a million different things, a bunch of lies we believe that we are healing from, and the voice of God trying to clear all the debris and rise to the surface of our conscious awareness. On this side of the cross we have to interpret God’s voice and get a more general sense of what He’s trying to say to us because most of the time we don’t seem to hear him word for word. We are simply not under the same scrutiny as our Old Covenant counterparts.

Prophets in the Old Covenant were the voice of God to Israel but in the New Covenant we as God’s children who make up his body on earth hear his voice together in community. As Dan Mccollam says, “The Old Testament prophet hears God for us the New Testament prophet hears God with us.”

A Matter of the Heart

The bottom line is this, being a false prophet is a heart issue. False prophets lead you away from Jesus and toward anything else, including themselves. It’s all about themselves, money, or something other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Being a false prophet is a big deal and not a light thing. There are different types of false prophets. Those who practice the occult in any way shape or form, especially when it comes to knowing the future or speaking for spirits or “god”, are obviously false prophetic voices being inspired by the enemy through a spirit of divination or witchcraft.

The second, more deceiving and less obvious type of false prophet, is one who is truly called as a real prophet of the Lord. They have a genuine gift and call from Jesus, but they either get deeply hurt along the way or their motives in ministry change drastically. They can get puffed up in pride and think they know more than everyone else. They almost always are highly gifted prophetically, but have no accountability in their life.They have no one they answer to for their gifting and character and they are usually not teachable. They may be accurate with their gifts and on the outside say all the right things, yet, they are often master manipulators with a lot of charisma. They also may know the Word very well, so on the outside it can seem as if they check all the boxes when it comes to looking like the real deal. We should pray for these people and try to help them if we can of course. No one sets out to become a voice of the enemy. It happens progressively over time through much hurt and undealt with pain. These types of people usually are very divisive. They cause division and release chaos with their gifting in the local church because they are in pain and also won’t receive correction.

No one sets out to become a voice of the enemy. It happens progressively over time through much hurt and undealt with pain.

Many times these people will have tremendous encounters with the Lord or angels and will, over time, believe they don’t need to submit to authority because they are more gifted and more “anonted” than their leadership. Most of what I'm saying here can be completely avoided if the person will just receive healing from the Lord , remain in community, and choose to deal with their pain and disappointments. If you continue down that corrupted path, you can most certainly build a cult-like following of your own and end up becoming a legitimate false prophet.

In every case, whether the person is involved in the occult/psychic realm of the demonic, or a once true prophet of the Lord who has been wounded and given themselves over to demonic influences, they share the same main trait: leading you away from the Lord Jesus toward idols of some kind whether that be other religions, or “gods'' or spirits. In the case of the once true voice genuinely called by Jesus, they will lead you toward themselves in a codependent relationship of control and manipulation, causing you to think you need them to hear God’s voice. The end is the same for both of these types of individuals - destruction if they don’t repent and get healed.

Discerning of Spirits, a gift for our time

I was reading Jeremiah 23 the other day and it has a lot to say about prophets speaking things the Lord has not said and prophesying out of their own minds and imaginations. I would encourage you to read that chapter for yourself and meditate on it. I believe strongly that the Lord is wanting to release a higher level of the gift of discerning of spirits among his body in these days.

One of the operations of this gift involves accurately discerning the source of prophetic revelation. This is the specific gift of the Holy Spirit that will help us to sort through what we hear prophetically, whether it comes from the Holy Spirit, our flesh, or a demonic influence of some kind. The truth is, the Lord doesn’t want his people to listen to every voice out there. It is vital that we have our own intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit so we can hear God clearly for ourselves and we don’t overly rely on our favorite prophets or teachers or charismatic leaders. God is bringing a course correction in this area as well in His body as a whole. We have all been guilty in this regard at some time or another. The Lord is inviting us to new levels of discernment, as well as new levels of revelation that truly reveal Christ in us, through us, and among us. There is a return to the crucified life that he wants to impart afresh into us as well as a strong emphasis again on the identity of the believer and the importance of intimacy with Jesus being the first priority of our lives. A true call back to first love is on His heart.

In saying all I've shared here I am in no way suggesting we go around accusing people of being false prophets! I’m not endorsing name calling or being nasty, and I’m certainly not saying that discerning of spirits is the gift of suspicion and that we should go around being overly critical of others while calling it prophetic. That attitude is not prophetic it is pathetic and when we choose to think and act that way we are submitting to a spirit of stupid to put it bluntly! I’m simply encouraging us to ask the Lord for an upgrade in our discernment, not check our brains out at the door when we listen to our preferred teachers and preachers, or read their books, and to seek the Lord in a fresh way as never before.

Questions to Apply Truth

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves that will help us determine whether what we are hearing from anyone at any given point in time is beneficial for us or if it’s worth setting aside. These questions will point us in the right direction whether what we are hearing is totally of another spirit, simply not beneficial for our spiritual growth, or just getting us off course by emphasizing too much what only matters a little comparatively to Jesus and the cross shaped life.

Does what I'm hearing line up with scripture in a general sense?

Does what I’m hearing align with the heart and nature of God as revealed specifically in the new covenant?

Does what I’m hearing inspire me to live righteously and despise darkness or does it make me feel that it’s ok to compromise the truth of God’s word?

Does what I’m hearing inspire me to walk with the Lord in a deeper, more intimate way?

Does what I’m hearing give me faith or does it cause me to doubt and feel discouraged?

Does what I’m hearing cause me to have a dismal outlook on life, people, and specifically the end times?

Does what I’m hearing ultimately leave me in awe of Jesus and want more of him or is it leading me to idolize something or someone other than him?

These are all great questions we can ask when we hear any speaker or teaching, when we read any book, or receive any prophetic word either from the Lord to give or a personal prophecy that we receive from someone else. These types of thoughts and questions will lead us down the right path of exercising our spiritual senses, discerning good from evil and separating the holy from the unholy.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Hebrews 5:14 NASB

A Final Encouragement

My friends, if we have any level of prophetic gifting, we MUST grow in the local church and submit ourselves to accountability with trusted leaders. It is not an option, it is a must for the new covenant prophetic person. I would be the first to encourage you to prophesy your heart out! Please! We need the prophetic in the church and world now more than ever but do it in the safety of community where it can be pastored and nurtured in a safe environment.

It is absolutely imperative that Jesus centered prophetic voices both male and female begin to arise in this hour in the church globally. The Lord has already been raising them up and will continue to do so. He is raising up prophetic believers who won’t quit on intimacy with Jesus, get wounded, and wander down the path of falsehood. He is raising up prophetic believers who thrive in community and lay their lives down for the church. He is raising up prophetic believers who serve with their giftings instead of always seeking to be honored and noticed by men. He is raising up lovers who are truly being transformed into the image of Christ in thought, word and deed.

He is calling us all higher. He is longing to pour out realms and depths of heavenly revelation in an unprecedented way among us. He is calling us to give our fresh yes to Him so He can truly do exceedingly, abundantly, more than all we can ask or think.

In humility and love,