On False Prophets

The Big Bolz Boondoggle

Years ago I saw Shawn Bolz speak at a conference. The leaders of the conference, who were not associated with Bethel, were people I trusted. I still trust them. I think they were deceived. I know enough about their character to believe they would never intentionally platform a false prophet. But Shawn Bolz… man, that guy was good. I certainly believed in his prophetic gift. In my desire to see God moving with power in the church today, I was taken in by a grifter. I’ve become more careful over the years. I have long said that the charismatic movement has within it great power and great danger. Those always go together. In the case of Shawn Bolz, that danger is now apparent. If we are wise, we will receive it as a cautionary tale.

Who is Shawn Bolz? He was a young “prophet” who emerged from Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bethel is a very large charismatic congregation. Among its leaders are Bill Johnson, Kris Vallotton, and Danny Silk. If you attend a church with contemporary worship, you have likely sung songs produced by Bethel Music. Bolz gained a platform within this context. Like many figures in the independent charismatic world, he started his own ministry, eventually styling himself as a kind of pastor to celebrities in Southern California. His schtick got weirder and weirder, wandering into territory around UFOs and other topics far outside the normal realm of prophetic ministry. As I observed his public transformation on Facebook, I began to realize he was a grifter. It didn’t take a five-hour video from Mike Winger to make that clear, though I’m glad Winger exposed him definitively. Real prophecy is born out of love. Its purpose is to draw people to God. It isn’t fortune-telling, and it isn’t meant for self-promotion.

Christ Warning the Disciples of False Prophets. Hans Leonhard Schäufelein, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Among the accusations made against Bolz is the charge that he engaged in “hot-reading.” This is a practice in which a “prophet” discloses information about another person (the mark), information someone wouldn’t normally know and that a stranger certainly wouldn’t have at hand. “I’m seeing a vision of a woman with red hair holding a hammer, with carpenter tools all around her.” And the mark might respond, “My mother’s maiden name was Carpenter! And she had red hair!” Another example might be something like, “I’m seeing a vision of King Solomon building the temple, and I feel as if the Lord is telling me you have a Solomon anointing…. Does that mean anything to you?” “Oh yes,” the mark responds. “I own a construction company.” Or, the “prophet” might say, “I don’t know why, but I’m seeing a peach tree in my mind.” Having spent ten minutes on Facebook, he/she knows that this person grew up on Peachtree Lane. The key seems to be making oblique references with which the mark will be familiar enough to make the desired connections. People at gatherings focused on prophecy generally believe in prophecy (as I do). They are eager for God to speak to them. Sometimes God does speak to them, but sometimes people who style themselves as prophets are lying. Discernment is critical.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Bolz does have a prophetic gift. I commend to your reading this article by Jack Deere. In it, he recounts his experience with Paul Cain, another controversial prophetic figure. Deere writes that Cain did have a very powerful prophetic gifting, but that he was also corrupt and very skilled at hiding his corruption. He concludes the article by stating,

But I am sure about two things.

He had the greatest prophetic gift I’ve ever seen.

He was the most abusive person I’ve ever known.

I’ve seen this happen in other people, though not to this extent. Because they have real gifts of prophecy or healing, they gain a platform that includes notoriety, status, and often money. The pressure to produce miracles night after night on demand, however, becomes too much. After all, miracles are not our doing. They are God’s. God may, for whatever reason, decide to withhold his miracles from us. What happens, then, when the Man or Woman of God walks out on stage but God deems it right to withhold his power? Randy Clark relates a conversation that took place when he was shadowing John Wimber in 1984:

The instruction given to me was to watch and listen, and at the end of the meeting I was to ask John any questions from what was observed. One night at a church in Houston, almost every person John prayed for was healed. The following night nobody was healed. At the end of the second night, I said, “John, I have a question,” to which John responded, “Let me tell you what your question is. You want to know why everyone was healed last night and no one was healed tonight, don't you?” I responded, “Yes.” John asked, “You don't get it, do you? Last night, when everyone I prayed for was healed, I didn't go to bed thinking I was some great healer, that I was somebody. And tonight when I go to bed I am not going to be thinking I am a great failure. I didn't have any more faith last night than I did tonight, and I don't have any more sin in my life tonight than I did last night. Tomorrow I will get up and pray for the sick again. All I did both nights was to stick my fat hand out and say, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’”

I didn’t know Wimber. I wasn’t a part of the charismatic movement in those days. He seems, however, to have been a person of integrity who was content to allow God to be God. I do know Randy Clark and have learned a great deal from him, including the fact that the will of God in the working of miracles is mysterious. We don’t know why God chooses to move visibly and powerfully at some times and not at others, but we keep praying. Allowing for God’s sovereignty, however, means we cannot guarantee miracles. We cannot guarantee prophecy, healing, tongues, or anything of the sort. “The wind (Greek: pneuma, Spirit) blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8, NRSV).

Bethel’s leadership has issued a mea culpa regarding Bolz. I commend it to your reading. They understand that Bolz’s behavior hurt people and that they could have stopped it sooner. They admit they failed to act with appropriate diligence when allegations came forward about hot-reading and other kinds of immoral behavior, including sexual harassment. They acknowledge they allowed exploitation and manipulation to continue long after they could have, if not stopped it, at least slowed it down.

An apology is a good first step. Acknowledging we have done wrong is an essential condition of repentance. True repentance, however, means changing course: what we do in the future won’t be the same as what we did in the past. The real demonstration of repentance will be in the practices they implement to make sure this doesn’t happen again. This isn’t the first time false prophecy has come out of Bethel. What will be different in the days ahead? Shawn Bolz won’t be the last bad actor to claim the prophetic mantle. How will places like Bethel that move in prophetic ministry prevent people like Bolz from gaining a platform? What has the broader church learned from this debacle?

False prophecy is nothing new, and none of this is surprising to God. Peter teaches us,

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive opinions. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Even so, many will follow their licentious ways, and because of these teachers the way of truth will be maligned. And in their greed they will exploit you with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced against them long ago, has not been idle, and their destruction is not asleep (2 Peter 2:1-3).

Their destruction is not asleep. Yet we can help to prevent their destruction, and their destruction of other people, by holding them accountable when we know something is wrong. It is a weighty thing to speak in the name of the Lord. We should do so with only the greatest humility, and with the fear of judgment. Correspondingly, we must test the spirits as Scripture instructs: “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” (1 John 4:1). Prophecy is a gift of the Spirit; so is discernment. We cannot have one without the other. Beware those who speak in God’s name without proclaiming God’s truth.

(I’ve written a follow-up to this post here.)