This is the blog of JD Ellis.
I am a born again Christian. I was raised a Catholic, became disillusioned and strayed away from the faith for much of my life, before accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. My guide is the Bible, which I believe is the complete, inspired word of God. I use this blog as a reminder to myself, and others, that we are never to elevate the words of men to the same stage of truth as God’s word.
I was fooled myself for a short time by the false prophets of the internet. I was never fooled by their prophecies, because I believe the Bible is the full and total revelation by God to us in these days. But I found myself listening to all the doom and gloom messages, and I knew something was amiss. God doesn’t take pleasure in spreading fear. The news of the gospel is good news, it is not about fear and panic.
I became determined to sound the alarm so that others may not be harmed by the false doctrine.
All blessings in Christ,
JD Ellis
Endtime Delusion - 2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 
I heard that Doug Hagmann of Hagmann and Hagmann reports went to Catholic seminary. Is this true? Does anyone know if Doug Hagmann went to a Jesuit seminary and if so which one?
I read your comments or blogs rather on the various topics and just was wondering more on who you are and where you attend church, what are your beliefs, your thoughts on end time tribulation, wrath, rapture, stuff… that kind of thing. Like you, I don’t want to be following any false prophets or watchmen. I just need a little more of who you are than what is in the “about” statement, before I continue reading your articles. The whole test the spirit and be a good Berean comes to mind. Hope you don’t mind me asking.
Hi Kathy. I am Reformed in theology. I believe in the doctrines of grace, and that we are saved by divine election and through nothing we have done. I believe that righteousness is imputed to us by or through faith, which is the instrument of God’s grace to justify the sinner in his conscience before God.
That we are righteous before God by faith, means also that salvation is solely of the Lord. It is a free gift, and not of works. It is grounded in the truth of sovereign grace, for faith is not a new work on the basis of which man is righteous, but a work of grace in man, by which God imparts the blessings of salvation.
I am against the idea of modern-day prophecy, because I believe all God needs us to know to live full and powerful Christian lives has been left to us in the form of Scripture, which is complete and inerrant.
Bless you for asking,
JD Ellis
Hello JD:
With regard to the testing of spirits and identifying Internet-based false teachers and false prophets, here are some things I have learned:
1. The doctrines propounded by false teachers are often based on extra-biblical writings. Two such writings are the Book of Enoch and the so-called prophecy of the popes attributed to Saint Malachy.
2. The false teachers write books in which they attempt to pass off their theorizing about the contents of these extra-biblical documents as valid interpretations of the Bible. They always deny that they are adding to or subtracting from the closed book of book of Holy Scripture when that is in fact exactly what they are doing.
3. False teachers always claim to have found something either in the extra-biblical writings or the Bible itself that scholars and the faithful have missed or misunderstood for thousands of years. One can discover how, by reading their books or by going to their websites, the ways in which application of these heretofore hidden insights, codes, prophecies, etc. enable one to unlock the mysteries of the Bible. (This is more in the way of gnostic heresy than sound Biblical exegesis.)
4. False teachers do not like to be questioned or challenged about their teachings. They almost invariably respond to any question or challenge with anger and sarcasm directed at the questioner.
5. False prophets rely on extra-biblical dreams, visions, etc, delivered exclusively to themselves. The phrase, “I heard this in my spirit” is frequently used by the false prophets to convey the impression that they are passing on a direct revelation from God that one dare not question.
6. The false prophets on the Internet, at some point, will read an email, letter or have a guest on who supposedly confirms the truth of the original dream or vision.
7. False prophets always finesse their failed prophecies by saying something like, “God heard our prayers and He has postponed judgement for the moment.” Or, they will point to one current event or another and try to shoehorn it to fit their bogus prophecies.
8. Lastly, false prophets and false teachers know people are starving for the Word of God. Given that, they seduce people by drawing them in by first talking about topical subjects that are of interest to Christians, e.g. the situation in the Middle East, the gay agenda, abortion, and the increasingly anti-Christian culture. Once there person is drawn in, the false prophets and teachers very subtly shift the focus of the discussion away from the Bible itself and onto these extra-biblical writings, books of their own making, their dreams and visions, and the things that God has supposedly told them individually.
Thank you for the website and giving the opportunity to comment.
Bob
Thanks Bob. Very good insights and your list of characteristics of false prophets is very accurate and telling. Some of the false prophets fit every category you mention.
Blessings,
JD Ellis
Hello JD:
With regard the downgrade of theology in the modern church, I offer the following in support of your comments.
Anyone who denigrates the importance of theology should consider what the great Puritan, William Ames, said about the subject. The very first sentence in Ames’s book, “The Marrow of Theology” is: “Theology is the doctrine or teaching [doctrina] of living to God.”
The import of this statement is clear and obvious: Its not possible to live rightly with respect to God absent a study of theology. How could it be otherwise? If you don’t know and understand the things God has revealed about himself in the Bible, however righteous you think you are, your beliefs are based on superstition, flights of fancy, and error.
With regard to the endtimes, no Christian can afford to give short shrift to the study of theology.
From Matthew 24:23,24: “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.”
If you don’t have a theology based on the Word of God how will you know you are not following a false Christ or a false prophet? How will you sift through the earthly predictions of imminent doom, calls to buy gold and silver now, so-called prophetic words, dreams, personalized “downloads” of alleged revelatory material and the like?
Ultimately, it comes down to this: unless you invest the time and energy needed to develop a sound theology, you will never know if someone is adding to or subtracting from the closed Word of God.
Thanks!
Thanks Bob. Theology is given such a low place of importance today that I think the result is the stunning number of Christians today who are completely unprepared to defend the faith, and unaware when they are hearing a false gospel. Simply living rightly according to God’s will, as you point out, requires us to develop sound theology. I have had people come on here and push the idea that all theology is man-centered, and thus should be rejected. So then the great achievements of the past, such as the Puritan understandings and the great statements of faith which emerged from the Reformation get discarded as useless. Ignorance breeds further ignorance, and to reject the past achievements of sound biblical theologians is folly.
Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment.
All blessings in Christ,
JD Ellis
The problem is that one of these days it is going to hit the fan really bad. So these guys make these claims and since christians are expecting hard times to come they tend to be believed. But then there prophecy does not happen. I’m sick of these Internet prophets but I do believe it will hit the fan eventually. Just look at how europe is being overrun by islam. Thanks for blogging all this stuff.
Thanks for the comments wildrover. The false prophets are assured to get the worst judgment of all on the final day. They only think they are getting away with their deception.
All blessings in Christ,
JD Ellis
Hello,
There are many Bible references to dreams and visions, e.g. Joel 2:28 :
And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
your young men shall see visions.
What will you telling to one of these, that they are false prophets as well ?
Or how you make distinction between real vision and fake ?
On the other side, there are more people than you may suspect that claim to have read the Bible hundreds of times and yet fail in such basic and relevant sound doctrine like for example the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of The Living God.
1 Thessalonians 5:20, 21,28 Despise not prophesyings.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen
The great deception in Bible interpretation tells us that prophecies remained idle and unfulfilled for over 2,000 years, until my generation came along. Then, simply because I am alive now and I think it would be so cool to personally witness the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, I therefore expect the vast majority of prophecies to unfold before my eyes. The truth is that the vast majority of prophecies, including virtually every prophecy written about in the Old Testament, has been fulfilled.
In reference to Joel Chapter 2, it is hard to mistake the clear statement by Peter that this was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. He comes right out and says: “THIS is what the prophet Joel spoke of,” when he is speaking in the upper room on the day the Holy Spirit descended on the 120 disciples in the form of tongues of fire. If you know of any modern day “prophets” who have a visible tongue of fire over their heads when they prophesy, please post video.
Hebrews Chapter One in the first verse tells us that God speaks to us now through the Son.
We are to govern our lives by following the inspired and inerrant word of God, not to try to guess who are “real” prophets and who are false. The final revelation from God is the revealing of the Son himself. He has no afterthoughts or postscripts or addendums to add now that the Son has completed the act of redemption and sits at his right hand. “It is finished.” We can choose to follow him, or insist on following man.
Blessings,
JD Ellis
Hi JD-
I found you just now as I was searching the internet for information
on false prophets. Since the election and inauguration, I’ve been
waiting to see if certain ones online would repent publicly and
humbly state their errors. Not one peep-they’ve moved on. I tried
to post a comment to this effect on a site, asking them to consider
never featuring these false “prophets” on their site again since they
all stated that they were hearing directly from God. My comment was
blocked. Reading your many excellent posts in the past hour, I now
understand why I was blocked. Thank you for taking the time to
write such detailed information for folks like me. It helped immensely!
My kids are grown now but when we homeschooled, we taught them
apologetics, history from a biblical perspective, creationism, and most importantly, the Holiness of God, sinfulness of man, and Christ crucified-we taught them TRUTH. Most of the stuff flying around online is false. Thanks again for speaking truth and shining a light in darkness.