I was reading prophetic “stuff” in the blogosphere as I so often do and came across an interesting post about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. (It’s the Mormon church for those who aren’t familiar.)

The post, entitled “Joseph Smith is a false prophet” said Joseph Smith was a false prophet. To that I agreed wholeheartedly. However, I disagreed with one statement, and it’s a doosey. The author said that because Joseph Smith’s prophecies didn’t come to pass, that made him a false prophet. In fact, he said if even one in the list of ridiculous prophetic utterances from Smith’s lips failed to occur, that was enough to brand hima false prophet.

Look, Smith was a false prophet alright, but missing the mark in prophetic ministry doesn’t make one a false prophet. No prophet is perfect. If prophets were 100 percent right 100 percent of the time, people would follow prophets instead of following Jesus. It’s true that the “does it come to pass” test was the primary way to judge prophecy in the Old Testament. But we’re in a different time now.

Old or new, false prophets are those who set out to lead other astray. More on this in another post.