Prophecies, Visions and Dreams: Empty Distractions

Our modern "prophets" who have visions and dreams don't seem to ubject them to much critical scrutiny. I suspect that most of these "prophecies" are simply irrelevant or superfluous or just plain meaningless. A dream about almost being scammed by an evil person doesn't require a dream to teach us not to trust everybody. Perhaps the individual could benefit from that kind of reminder but as a message to the body of Christ we have plenty of warning in scripture against evil seducers.

And what could possibly be the importance of the message that "God is going to save" a prominent public figure? If it were true why would it benefit us to know it in advance? If it happens Christians will certainly rejoice, but beyond that it's not a message we need to hear. And it's probably false but will we ever find out?

Many such "prophecies" are empty of meaning like this, either "messages" we don't need because we have better versions of them in the Bible, or messages we don't need because, well, we don't need them, they are utterly irrelevant to the life of the body of Christ. There are an awful lot of these "prophets" these days, prophesying empty nonsense which is at best a distraction from the Christian life we should be leading.

I just saw a video by Jonathan Cahn about a different prophecy than the one in The Harbinger. In this one he points out correspondences he's found between King Ahab and Bill Clinton. I gather there are more such correspondences than he described in this video that he'll get to in another video.

Again, even if these correspondences were true what would be the point of our knowing them? I defended Cahn's original discovery of correspondences between events in Isaiah 9 and events in New York City connected with the attack on the WTC. They were pretty uncanny corespondences and the message is clear: Israel didn't take God's warning of judgment through the destruction of their trees and bulidings and America didn't take God's warning in the attack on the WTC.

But I already knew the attack on the WTC was God's judgment, at least a warning of greater judgment to come, and it's qjuite apparent that the nation did not take it that way and did not repent, just as Israel didn't as reported in Isaiah 9. So now I'm thinking that despite the uncanniness of the correspondences they are ultimately meaningless. We know all we need to know from the scriptures and the prophetic imagery added nothing. And that earlier prophetic message was uncanny, in a way this current one probably isn't because this one has way too many variables, most of which probably show no similarities whatever. In any case, as with most of today's prophecies, this one hits me as empty, a distraction. God gave prophecies in the Bible to warn His people, or comfort them. We have the scripture which is ample warning and ample comfort in every possible situation. The prophecies, even if true, are redundant and unnecessary. That's not how God works

Cahn and other "prophets" nevertheless do often give sound biblical messages apart from their prophecies. It's a puzzle that they fall for their own visions.