Activating Our Spiritual Gifts II

Wednesday nights are going to be a highlighting of the values, the five primary values that we are lifting up in our cell ministry, our small group ministry at Northwest. If you don't know what those are, you might want to jot them down, because this is what's going to be the content of every Wednesday night in some order of rotation, and that is prayer, ministry in the gifts, in other words, ministry that flows out of the gifts and we'll be talking about that particular category tonight, leadership and the incredible opportunity and need for leadership, and by the way, if you look at it for a moment, every one of you here tonight has some deposit of leadership in your life. You may never have discovered that, and you may not believe me even as I speak to you, but there is something of leadership, and some of you have an incredible amount of leadership potential. My goal in these Wednesday nights will be to uncap some of that as we move forward. The fourth is worship. Two weeks from tonight, we will be spending the entire evening in directed, spirit-led, anointed worship, and you need to hear me say two weeks, because we were going to do it next week, and for a reason I'll tell you in a moment, we will not be meeting next Wednesday night. It's a real exciting reason. It's not because it's a snow day. The 2020 rule holds for snow too. We've been really pretty blessed this one, haven't we? And the fifth one, what would you think that would be? What's the other value of cells? Those of you who are in cell that I haven't brought up yet, the one that's kind of different from home groups or any other groups. Every cell is to be outreach or evangelistically oriented, and we'll be talking about that one Wednesday night a month as well. Now, tonight we're going to talk about spiritual gifts once again, because we're really just getting going, and I want to say, first of all, thank you for your feedback. Folks, please hear me. Your feedback is really important to me. I read every letter I get, and I respond to almost every letter I get that has any question or any issue that you raise. I covet that. I really appreciate that, and some of you help me to make sure that I'm still moving in the stream, and that's helpful, and some of you say, get in the stream, and that's helpful too, and whatever, but it's good to hear from you, and last week we started to talk about this whole thing of spiritual gifts, and let me just, because I was way late into that Discovery series right away, I didn't get a chance to give this to Karen, but let me just flash this up here to help you by means of review. Let me get these in the right order, Suzy, otherwise we'll be totally lost. We said last week, that's the first one, just to flash it up, that to each one a manifestation of the Spirit was given, and who did that include? Who was that, each one? I poked the person next to you, just say you. You have one, alright? Each one has a manifestation, and then we talked about these manifestation gifts, just that number one there, okay? Those nine gifts, and that comes from 1 Corinthians 12, 7 through 10, and we talked a little bit, and we used these handouts, and if you didn't get one last week, you didn't, well we have to fix you right up then. Mitch, are you feeling athletic here? Do you mind? Thank you. If you take this side, and Walt, I know you're athletic, you can take care of me. Anyone that needs one of those? Just put your hand up if you didn't get one, or if you left yours at home, and you feel... And we talked about these nine manifestation gifts, and we took a little bit of a survey, and I want you to do this tonight again. Mark on the back of that which gifts you have manifested through your life, and which ones have been manifested to you. In other words, you may have never had a gift of the Spirit operate. Maybe you never had a gift of prophecy flow in your life, but you've had prophetic words given. All right, put that down, and then finally, which do you desire? Wow, these things are going like hotcakes. We out? Who's hoarding them? Oh, good, okay. Well, we made 50, and I thought that would be enough to cover the ones that... That's okay. All right. Got a few? All right. And then the final category is what gifts would you want to see God manifesting? Now, interestingly, last week, several people received some manifestations, and some people flowed in a couple of manifestations. Folks, I know I'm in the shadows here, so I'm going to go back up in the platform, but the thing that one person or one or two people said to me was, well, what you shared last week was kind of basic, Jay, and I was expecting something deeper, and I said, I don't have anything deeper. I'm not very deep. I can't keep up with the Lord when he's shallow. So this is about as deep as I'm going to go in this stuff, but I have a hunch if we got the hundred of us or so that are here tonight this deep, we'd turn the place upside down. So let's just get this deep. Before we learn to dive off the 30-meter ledge, let's just try walking in the water a little bit and see how we do. So that's where we were last week, and this is worth reviewing real quickly. A couple of you said, yeah, these are the biggest sins. Never taught about it, never been given a forum or a place in which to develop it, fear and confusion, indifference, never really had a desire or sin and other blockages. What do you think the biggest or one or two of the biggest sins are that block the flow of the Spirit? All right, yeah, we had that one up here, and doubt and confusion certainly block the flow, and that is a sin. What else? Yeah, pride's a big one, isn't it? Pride that maybe you'll do it wrong and you'll look bad, so hey, I'll just not risk it, or pride that what? Yeah, and somebody might do it better than you do and those kind of things, and there may be sin of another kind. There may be moral sin or thought life sin or whatever that's keeping the Spirit of God from being, and we need to probably get into that at some point, but we won't do that tonight because I just want to keep moving into this one particular area, and that's what you need your other outline for. That's the area of the gift of prophecy, and I want to talk about this tonight because, oh, and just before I do that, on the bottom of that green sheet, did I, is there, are there three words, role, gift, and ministry? Let me tell you what that is. Every Christian functions in a different role now and then. What are some roles that the Bible calls you to play? Well, the role of praying for one another. Think of all those one anothers. One anothers are in the New Testament. About 33. 33 different one anothers. Honor one another. Care for one another. Submit to one another. Love one another. Forgive one another. So those are all roles that you're to play. Prayer. Sharing your goods and your life with others. Support. Being hospitable and caring to others. These are all different roles. Giving of your resources now and then as the Lord directs you. These are all roles that we play. Giftedness is when, and you might want to write this down, God enables you to do things in certain ways. Giftedness is when God enables you to do things in certain ways that transcend human capacities. God enables you to do things in certain ways that transcend human capacities, and I might add, or explanations. So when a person is spiritually gifted, what's happening in them and through them can't just be, well, they're neat people. When you have a prophetic gift that we're going to talk about tonight, you just can't look at it and say, well, they're just pretty neat people. That isn't it. It's not a personal thing. It's a God thing. When you're gifted, it's a God thing. So a role is something that we all kind of do as God puts us in situations. A gift is when God gives us enablement. A ministry is when you function in that giftedness over a period of time and have a proven, continuous demonstration of that gift. For example, and I don't want to draw unnecessary attention to individuals, but various ones of you have wonderful gifts that you flow in. Walt Spiker sitting back here, one of our super senior citizens, has a tremendous gift of service. If I need anything done of any kind, nothing is too humble for him to do. It's beyond human description. He never makes you feel like, well, it's an inconvenience, but I'll do it. No. If it's clean up the llama mess from the Christmas Eve service, do you know anything about that story? Apparently you didn't, and that's okay. You don't need to. But I mean, what would you ever, whatever you think. Jean Yannikos here has a number of gifts that the Lord's given her that she's developed in the ministries. She has a ministry of teaching. She has a ministry of the prophetic gift, which we'll talk about in a moment how that works. I could go around, Brother Jack Lightbody, he has a gift of giving, and he will give and give and give and give beyond just what humanly is natural. It's the gift that the Lord's put into him and so on. Others of you, and I'm not leaving anyone out, you have wonderful gifts. So, role, gift, ministry. Now let's talk tonight about the gift of prophecy. That's what you came to hear, and I want to talk about this. I'm not going to talk a real long time, because I want you to have the opportunity to listen to the Lord and maybe even move out in this gift a bit tonight. I'm going to start by asking you a question. What word would you use to categorize the mindset of a lot of Christians that you know? In this church, in the body of Christ at large, I'll use a word. In many of my personal exchanges, I'll walk away and I'll say to myself, they are really discouraged. They are really discouraged. They're under it. They're under circumstances. They're under attack. They're under difficulties. I'll walk away. I had a conversation not so long ago with someone who told me that they've been in a job situation now for four years and it's not changing, and it's just got them really down and discouraged. Kids who are rebelling and out of order. Family members who are in disagreement. Finances, and the whole financial thing puts people into webs of discouragement. Job career tensions that people come up with. Sometimes the church discourages people because it doesn't, I say it, we disappoint. So discouragement comes along and Satan lies to people about whether or not they're loved. Personal morality. You stumble over the same hang-up that you have. Whatever that might be for you. Some temptation that just keeps coming down. And you get discouraged. How many of you know someone that's discouraged? Every hand would probably go up. Don't put your hand up now, but are you discouraged tonight? I mean if we got down, just you and I over a cup of coffee at Denae's, would you say, you know what, I'm having a tough time. I'm discouraged about my loneliness. I'm discouraged about my lack of friendship. I'm discouraged about the fact that I'm in this going nowhere job. I'm discouraged about the fact that I don't know what God's will for my life is. And in fact that's become the preoccupying. Now all of us may have an area here or there that's not lined up. And I've got my own little areas that just don't fit. But see the prevailing mindset, that's the word I use, is not discouraging my life. And that's the important thing. What's the prevailing mindset in your life? And in the body of Christ, and in this body unfortunately, a lot of it seems to me to be discouraging. And I'm here to say tonight that God knew that we'd be in a battle. How many of you know God knew that this life that we're in was going to be a battle? And it wasn't going to be a piece of cake. We weren't just going to stride on through life. The image that you get if you watch some of the teaching on TV now and then is that once you perceive Christ, it all just falls into place and everything's glorious. How many of you found that to be true? If you have, would you please come up here and tell us how you did it? Because for me it just has been an ongoing... So lingering all along the way is this propensity to be discouraged. So God knew that and he gave to the body of Christ the gift of prophecy so that we would not fall prey to discouragement. And let's begin by looking carefully here at 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Turn your Bible please to 1 Corinthians 14. And this is the very famous chapter. If you're new to these kinds of things, this is one of the top two or three chapters in all the Bible about the manifestation gifts. The gifts of prophecy in tongues. It's a paragraph titled in my Bible. Here it is. If we'll put it up please, Karen. This is in the NIV. If you don't have that translation, it's okay. But that's where I draw from. So here's how it goes. Follow the way of love and eagerly desire. And if you have your Bible open, I'd circle the word desire. Spiritual gifts. It's right. It's appropriate to desire spiritual gifts. Especially, everyone say that, especially the gift of prophecy. So let's stop right now and say the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul says to you, you should desire the gift of prophecy. So I want to say to everyone in the room tonight, desire this gift. When we work through this evening, I pray when you walk out here tonight, even if the gift doesn't manifest in you, that you'll go home tonight and say, Lord, I desire that gift. I desire that gift of prophecy. How can I say that? Maybe it's not God's will. Well, maybe it's not, but Paul said you should desire it. So it is his will that you should desire it. Whether or not he'll give you that gift, I don't know. But I want you to know this. What could be more exciting than having this many people with the gift of prophecy moving about their cells and their small group networks and their relationships and the body of Christ dispensing what? Prophetic encouragement, as we're going to see. Look what it says. For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him. He utters mysteries with his spirit. A little pause here. How many of you have been hung up at some time in your journey of faith over the issue of the gift of tongues? And those of you who weren't hung up were probably born and raised in a Pentecostal church and you thought it was natural. The rest of us said, what in the world is that? Where did that come from and what is that all about? And unfortunately, the devil has used the gift of tongues, one of the manifestation gifts, one of the nine, to derail the central concern of God. And he's made that, as most of you know, a point of contention. How many of you came out of a church where tongues were just, I mean, they were forbidden? I mean, it was a battle cry. Some said, no way, that's died in the age of the apostles. And others said, well, gee, that's strange because I have it. So how is this working out? And some of us have been greatly blessed and enlarged by the gift of tongues and others of us still don't have it and wonder why we don't and so on. That'll be another night. That's not tonight. Paul is saying, if you have that gift, you speak to God. You don't really benefit anyone else. Let's go on. But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. Say those three words with me. Strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. Say them again. Strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. Now, how many believe that strengthening, encouragement, and comfort is a need in the body of Christ? So, can we clearly establish that the purpose of prophecy is to bring forth strengthening, encouragement, and in some cases, comfort for our brothers and sisters. Now, look on. I should have put this on and I didn't, so I apologize for that. If you'd known my day, you'd be amazed that I'm standing here. Verse 4, he who speaks in a tongue edifies himself. Is there anything wrong with edifying yourself? Absolutely not. How many of you would like to be able to edify yourself more? When you speak in a tongue, a tongue being your language, Holy Spirit-given language of praise and adoration to God, the Bible says you edify yourself. And folks, one of the number one things that I will say to some of you who live in a discouraged kind of rut, discover how the Holy Spirit's fullness in your life can lead you to that release of the gift of tongues because all of a sudden you have an instant edifier. It's kind of like you can take this power pill of edification and find yourself getting stronger as you go along. Does that work for anybody else or just Jean and me? No, many others, right? And I have to say, the more you learn to be comfortable speaking in your prayer language, in your tongue, and the more you're able to do that throughout the day, the stronger you become. And it's great to walk into an adversarial situation, speaking as Mark Jepperd would say, letting his motor run, and realize that you have this source of strength flowing in you. It's the strengthening of God. It's that gift that he gives to you. All right, now verse 5 and to verse 4. But he who prophesies edifies the church. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues. Folks, right there is enough reason for me to say to every person hearing me tonight, God wants you to have the gift of tongues. Paul said, I want every one of you to have it. But I would rather, or in some translations say, I would even more desire that you prophesy. By the way, just to get this clear, those of you who are English or language majors, prophesy, S-Y, is the verb. Prophecy, C-Y, is the noun. And they often get confused. You don't prophecy, you prophesy. You receive a prophecy, you don't receive a prophesy. I'm going to get myself all tongue-tied. But that's, well, anyhow, that's important. Okay, so let's take a sheet, let's just fill in the blanks real quickly. And I won't need to take this on much longer. We'll begin to see what the Lord might want to do tonight. Remember that the importance of the spoken word in the purposes of God's kingdom. Folks, make no mistake, our words have great power. How many of you have found that your life has been shaped by someone's words? Your self-image? Your hope? Many times your desire to go on? I mean, our words are powerful. And even more so when they're combined with faith. There's power in our words. Prophecy involves the human will and faith, but does not necessarily involve the human intellect. So what is the definition, Roman Rule 1 there, what is the definition of the gift of prophecy? Well, the Hebrew word from which we get the word prophecy, nabah, means to flow forth, to spring forth, or to tumble. So prophecy, as defined by Paul, is speaking God's word unto the body of Christ for edification, exhortation, and comfort. Now, this is very important. Notice that prophecy is not foretelling the future. And this is confusing. Some people say, well, I thought a prophet said, hey, this is what's going to happen. I mean, didn't they do that in the Old Testament? Didn't prophets come along and say, thus saith the Lord, in 24 hours grain will be as abundant as the dirt? And you make up whatever prophecy. And didn't prophets in the Old Testament foretell the future? Isn't that true? Yes. Well, what's the difference? Well, the Old Testament office of prophet was different from the New Testament gift of prophecy. The gift of prophecy was given for what three reasons? Strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. What were they? Strengthening, encouragement, and comfort. And so when you move in the gift of prophecy, it's not about telling the future. It's about encouraging, strengthening, and comforting. But I have to say to you folks, what's most needed in the body of Christ isn't for someone to tell me what's going to happen in the stock market in the six months, or when is the Antichrist going to come, or whatever other prophetic future event. That's not what's needed. What's needed right now is strength, comfort, and encouragement. What the gift of prophecy is not, Roman rule two. Well, it's not the office of a prophet. We won't get into that too much tonight. But in Ephesians 4, the Bible says that there's five offices established. Apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. Those are given to equip the church for the work of ministry. So the office of the prophet in the New Testament is one who may on occasion foretell the future, but also, and here's what I think is important, who also is very gifted at helping others learn to prophesy. And remember, role, gift, ministry. A person who moves in the gift of prophecy and over, and over, and over, and over again effectively takes on the ministry of a prophet. How many of you know a prophet? Name me a few prophets that you know. Jack? Gene. Gene Yannikos has a prophet's ministry mantle. Bless him. Yes, Debbie. Mahesh Shavda. Yes, he has a prophetic ministry. No question about it. Anyone else? Rick Joyner. OK. How many of you remember Immanuel Canestresi? Yes. He very clearly had a prophetic ministry. He had the office of a prophet. But more and more we're seeing in this day prophets are being raised up. And there's whole seminars, I could send you to, called the School of the Prophets because it's believed that as the times get closer and closer to the end, God will raise up more and more prophets. Why? Because the body of Christ needs to be strengthened, encouraged, saved again, and comforted. I don't want you to miss those three words. All right? A prophetic office always predicts the future. The gift of prophecy never does. It's not the purpose of it. Prophecy is not intended for guidance. Now, here's where we're going to touch on a couple of areas that are very important. Prophecy is not intended for guidance. One of the ways that I have found people get hung up in prophetic ministry is they're looking for someone to tell them, thus saith the Lord, go buy this property because you'll become wealthy. Or thus saith the Lord, leave that man. He's not good for you. Or thus saith the Lord, marry that woman. She's the right one for you. That's personal guidance. And I won't go as far as to say that God would never speak that, but I will say this, never make a decision based on someone telling you, thus saith the Lord. It may be, in my experience, has always been a confirmation of something God's already told me, but I have never made a decision in 30-some years of being a Christian because someone said, well, the Lord has told me to tell you, go do this. My response to them is always what? Well, I'm glad he told you that, but until he tells me that, I'm not doing it. Because prophecy was not given to guide you. It's given to strengthen, encourage, comfort. All right? Another thing, prophecy is not regular preaching. The folks that you know that come from more dispensational backgrounds will tell you, well, you know, John MacArthur, people like that will come on the radio and say, well, prophecy is just when you learn to preach really well. That's prophetic ministry. That's prophecy. That's taking God's word and announcing it for today. Friends, I don't believe that's the prophecy that I see described here in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. I think it's a stretch. I think what preaching is, the word karuso in Greek means to proclaim with authority. It's different from prophecy. And finally, the possessor of the gift controls the flow of prophecy. In other words, you know, it isn't like you're walking along, oh, all of a sudden you just go hyper and then it just starts flowing out of you. It doesn't happen that way. In fact, it says, is it verse 32? I didn't check this, so I don't know. Yes, it is. The spirit of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets. Just write that down there. Oh, I put it on the sheet. No wonder I'm doing it. I just don't know my day. Okay. Roman numeral three, the purpose of prophecy, well, the gift, we've already touched on this, is primarily given to edify the church. You see, the reason why Paul said, I'd rather have you prophesy than speak in tongues, is because he sees the discouragement. He says, what I need is many more of you out there circulating with words of prophetic encouragement. Just imagine tonight, when we move into ministry in a few moments, what might happen if God gives you a word for the group that you're in, or God gives you a word for this entire group that might lift you to a plane of encouragement, of strength, and of comfort. All right? Roman numeral four, what are the limitations of the gift? Well, 1 Corinthians 13, 9 says, we don't really always prophesy completely. In other words, it isn't always the full picture. And maybe Gene will come in a little bit later, but I know sometimes the frustration, when you have the prophetic gift, you see it, but it's just not perfectly clear, and you say, Lord, show me the rest of the picture, because I want to know how that's going to get played out. Letter B, it's exercised in proportion to faith. I want you to underline that. Underline proportion to faith. If we took the time to look up Romans 12, what we would find is, one of the reasons why the gift isn't released in our body the way it should be, is because we don't have the faith to take the steps to start. And tonight, I'm going to put you in a position where you can say, Lord, I'm available to be used, if you want to use me. Now, are they playing that music in the hall, or is it just, you know, in the gym? That's good. I'm glad they're playing. I'm listening. If it's kids, they can do whatever they want, as long as the walls stay up on this hall. Praise the Lord. All right. So, in proportion to your faith, in other words, you've got to have the faith. Folks, sometimes you may say, well, I'm not sure if this is the right thing, but I believe this is what the Lord is saying, and it's okay to say prophecy. The more confidence you have, the more times you exercise the gift, the more you are able to step up and say, thus sayeth the Lord. But when you're learning, it sometimes haltingly comes out, and it's broken sometimes, and that's okay. And you may even miss it. And in fact, Roman numeral 5 says, prophecy is to be judged by those who are present. So, in other words, there may come a time when someone has a word that doesn't seem just right to you. It may be a word. And how many have been in a meeting where someone's prophecy was real harsh and negative? Well, boy, that's difficult, isn't it? Because then you're suddenly paralyzed, like, well, now what do I do? Because this is a person that seems to be, I mean, well, everyone respects them, and now they have a word that's really like putting a lot of, oh, and a lot of woundedness out there. Well, Paul says, don't panic. Just judge that word. You go back and run it through the filter of your own heart and decide, is that from the Lord or not? And it is the role, by the way, of those in authority. Let me tell you something very sincerely. If I turn this whole platform over to a prophetic ministry and I don't agree with them, and I feel something, my spirit is checked, I will, depending on the gravity of the situation, either correct it right there on the spot, or if I feel like, well, you kind of missed it, I'll tell them afterwards. And in some cases, if they don't receive that, they don't come back. There are some people that we've not had back here who've had prophetic ministry because I believe they were really out of, just out of step with the Spirit. But that's the minority. We're looking for the majority, which is in your cell groups. Just think, Paul, just think, if two or three of you in each of your cell groups was moving in the gift of prophecy, do you think that cell group would grow? Do you think people would want to get up away from the tube on a Thursday night or a Sunday night to come to your group if they knew that they were going to receive a prophetic word? I have people that come two and three hours early to a meeting just to get a word when a prophet comes into town. And I want you to know, God wants that same anointing released in the body. He doesn't want it just to be a few guys with, you know, a lot of degrees beside their names and a lot of books and stuff. He wants that. Paul said, I want all of you to be able to prophesy. So how many of you are ready to go? How many of you are still afraid? I am a little bit. I'm like, well, because I don't really understand it. Well, this is school. Wednesday night is, we're in class, and it's not pass-fail. Everyone's going to pass. Some are just going to go, you know, we're going to have the remedial class. We're over here in a minute. Just kidding. We're all going to just kind of grow together in this just a little bit. Before I do that, let me take a couple of questions. Take some questions on prophecy. And Gene, I'm going to invite you to come if you'd like to add to this for a moment or just give an insight from your history and your experience. That would be wonderful. Yes, please. Yes. Where are you now? Section three. Yes, the gift is primarily given to edify the church. It is not directed to unbelievers. Okay? Well, by definition, remember, I would say this, and this careful study of 1 Corinthians 14 will tell you that sometimes unbelievers will come into a setting where prophecy is being given. He may be affected by that. So I would say never is not appropriate. Did I say never? Okay. It is not primarily directed. In fact, if I might direct you to 1 Corinthians 14, verse 24. It says, if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secret of his heart will be laid bare. Have you ever been in a meeting where someone's been prophesying and a non-Christian comes under huge conviction because basically this person's reading their mail? Yeah, that's a pretty powerful moment. But the general purpose of this, again, see the word exhortation is what could confuse us. Doesn't it say in one of your translations edification, exhortation, and consolation? I think that might be the King James. The word exhortation is one we're translating encouragement. That's the primary meaning. But also to be exhorted is also to be moved along, is to be challenged to take the next step. So there's sort of an edge to that if you understand that word. Any other questions? Marky? Oh, I thought you assumed I knew what Deuteronomy 18.22 was. Yeah, well, I'm sorry. I've forgotten that. I had that right on the tip of my tongue. Deuteronomy 18.22 says what? Yeah, in other words, the issue is in the Old Testament, if a prophet missed it, I think does it say he's supposed to be stoned? We still do that. Haven't you seen that big pile of stones? Didn't you wonder what that was for? We still do that. Yeah, I think that's fine. Any other questions? Yes, Chris. Good? Good. That's very important. I hope you heard that. I have seen many people receive prophetic words of encouragement and even really revealing kind of words from the Lord, and it didn't happen in their lives. And this kind of gets back, Marky, I wasn't giving just a flip answer actually. It gets back to faith has to be mixed with the word. And one of the things that we have done here at North Way is we've said, God, if your prophetic word is to take place, we've got to mix faith with that. The Lord told us in our first prayer meetings that we were gathering years ago, he said, I will send you all the people that you will care for. That was a word of encouragement to us. That meant that God was controlling the flow of people. Our mission was to care for them in the full sense of discipling them. But I know this, if we don't put faith to that and if we don't put the application of our word, God, it just doesn't happen. So it's very important that you apply faith to those words and you say, Lord, you spoke this word over my life or I heard this word to my heart, Lord. Now I'm counting on you to bring it to pass. Believe the word. And Margie, I think the principle that's being outlined in Deuteronomy are those prophets who were prophesying for their own gain, were prophesying falsely in the name of God when in fact it wasn't the Lord and they were judged then by the priest and those in authority. And it was not just like, well, you missed one and ought to win. It was like a demonstration of a rebellious spirit that caused them to be put to death. O