Of Mullets and Methocostals

Discerning the spirits

Last week I watched Waco: The Aftermath. It’s a miniseries that focuses on David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the fallout from the 1993 disaster that occurred when the FBI launched a tear gas attack on Mount Carmel, their compound in Waco. The compound caught fire, and seventy-six Branch Davidians died, including twenty-five children. The narrative of the miniseries connects the events at the Mount Carmel compound to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that occurred on April 19, 1995, two years to the day after those events. It even attempts to draw a line between these two disasters and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This last connection may be a stretch. I don’t know. But the first two events, those in Waco and Oklahoma City, were clearly related.

Vernon Howell, a.k.a. David Koresh

In the miniseries, Keean Johnson, sporting a mullet that would make Billy Ray Cyrus blush, plays a relatively convincing Vernon Howell, a.k.a. David Koresh. Howell was a false prophet. He believed that he was God’s final prophet and the true, authoritative interpreter of the Bible, particularly the Revelation to John. The ongoing efforts of law enforcement to take control of the Mount Carmel compound and arrest Koresh seemed to corroborate his prophecies. The siege by the federal government only strengthened the convictions of the true believers inside. The result was a devastating and unnecessary loss of life.

When this disaster in Waco went down, I was in my twenties. I stared at my television in disbelief. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so gullible as to follow this bemulleted con man. Some thirty years later, I’m more understanding, if not sympathetic. We human beings are desperate for significance. We want to know why we’re here and why we matter. When someone can make us believe that he or she is speaking God’s words directly into our lives, that person can exert tremendous power over us. Vernon Howell was a false prophet, but one who was uncommonly skilled in his vocation.

The fact of false prophecy, however, doesn’t rule out real prophecy, any more than someone pretending to be a doctor or a lawyer rules out legitimate doctors and lawyers. Scripture teaches us about a long line of prophets, from Moses to Isaiah to Anna to John the Baptist. These prophets pointed forward to Jesus, who was himself a prophet, though much more than a prophet. Old and New Testament prophecy shows us God’s work and plan of salvation across the ages.

Some people believe that gifts such as prophecy, healings, and tongues ceased with the death of the last apostle. They are called cessationists. I’m not a cessationist. I’m a continuationist. This means I believe that God is still giving all the gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12:8-11:

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

Likewise, I believe God is still giving the gifts described in Romans 12:6-8:

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Another way of putting this is to say that I have a strong sense of divine agency. That’s a fancy way of saying that God does things. Radical, right?

Among the gifts Paul mentions is one I want to highlight: discernment of spirits. In my charismatic and Methocostal orbit, we talk a lot about prophecy, but not so much about discernment. Yet discernment is every bit as important as prophecy, because we must differentiate those who speak by the Spirit of God from those who speak by some other spirit. 1 John 4:1 teaches us, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” If we cannot exercise discernment, we cannot follow God. We will be led astray.

Lest we think this is a matter only for us strange charismatic types, consider how often the rhetoric of prophecy is used in political and ideological discourse. “That speech was prophetic!” we say. And perhaps it was, or maybe we just agreed with it. It checked the right boxes. “She is a prophet for our time!” we proclaim. And she may well be. But we should also ask ourselves if we perceive prophecy in her words because she’s saying the same things we are, challenging the systems we want challenged, criticizing all the people of whom we’re critical. Is she a prophet, or is she heartfelt and passionate about all the right things?

The crucial question is this: does this person speak on God’s behalf? Answering this question requires discernment. So we test the spirits. We read Scripture. We consult our community, particularly people we know to be discerning. We pray and listen. In time, with God’s help, we may learn to differentiate those who speak God’s words from those who speak by some other spirit.

In most cases when we hear a genuine prophet, we’ll be uncomfortable. We’ll squirm in our seats or suddenly become interested in our shoes. Prophets may speak words of blessing over us, as Zechariah does when he is filled with the Holy Spirit in that famous passage called the Benedictus:

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
   for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
   in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us (Luke 1:68-71).

But at other times, prophecy is likely to smack us on the back of the head:

Thus says the Lord:
For three transgressions of Judah,
   and for four, I will not revoke the punishment;
because they have rejected the law of the Lord,
   and have not kept his statutes,
but they have been led astray by the same lies
   after which their ancestors walked.
So I will send a fire on Judah,
   and it shall devour the strongholds of Jerusalem (Amos 2:4-5).

This is why God says to Ezekiel, “See, I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads. Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not fear them or be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezek 3:8-10). When you say what people don’t want to hear, they will come against you.

Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, prophets are downright weird. They do things like eat scrolls and make axe heads float. To turn to Ezekiel again, God instructs him: “You shall eat it as a barley-cake, baking it in their sight on human dung. The Lord said, ‘Thus shall the people of Israel eat their bread, unclean, among the nations to which I will drive them’” (Ezek 4:12-13). Fun times. Historical side note: Ezekiel didn’t get invited to parties. Most of the prophetic people I know aren’t that weird. But they’re a little weird (I say with love).

People across the political spectrum claim to speak “prophetically,” though prophets who wade into politics should be careful. There were many who prophesied that Trump would be president after 2020, and this did not come to pass. Some repented and apologized. Others doubled down and explained why they weren’t wrong. “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?” On the left it’s common for preachers and other orators to describe a particular vision of social justice as prophetic. But is it? If you’re going to make that claim, you’d better be right. False prophecy is serious business. God doesn’t like it.

All this is to say, to the extent that we talk about prophecy, we should also talk about discernment. No matter how convincing the speech, no matter how passionate the delivery, no matter how exquisite the mullet, there is only one criterion of prophetic speech: Is this a message from God? If so, I want to know. If not, I’ll stick with my magic 8-ball.