Times and Seasons

When listening to popular preachers and faux prophets expound on the “times and seasons,” things quickly become. Every week, the church enters a new “prophetic season,” and each new shift in the “spirit realm” brings its own set of rules to the game. This next year, month, or day we will enter a season of deliverance, testing, burden, reward, loss, promotion, or demotion. If we fail to keep up, we will be left standing without a chair when the music stops.

Monthly Prognosticators

At the start of every month and year, the “Monthly Prognosticators” of the Charismatic World issue pronouncements about the next period and what God intends to do in it. It seems we are constantly entering one new “season” or another in which God does something new that, apparently, He did not do in any previous month or year.

In the Year 2023

Not only are Christians resorting to occult practices, but many are turning the Bible into a tool of divination. In the 1970s, numerous church leaders warned that occult ideas were infiltrating the church from the so-called ‘New Age Movement.’ While I took these warnings seriously, little did I expect to see Christians openly practicing divination within the church, and with nary a peep of protest from church leaders.

Rudimentary Deception

The popular practice of forecasting the future and diving God’s plans from the calendar is not biblical. Paul chides the Galatians for returning to “bondage under the weak and beggarly rudiments,” especially epitomized in calendrical observations. Since they live in the era of fulfillment, resorting to outmoded rituals is akin to reverting to slavery. Did not God send Jesus to redeem us “that we might receive the adoption of sons”?

Rudimentary Things

Today, following the Hebrew calendar and using it to decipher God’s will is all the rage. Apparently, God works on the clock and whatever He is doing in the present “season” is dictated by the calendar. And many “prophets” now divine the future from Hebrew month names, year numbers, and increasingly, even from the Gregorian calendar.