Ezekiel 13:13-23

The Lord would demonstrate beyond doubt that their prophecies were lies. The comfort the false prophets had claimed to give would be shown to be absolutely worthless.

Some of these false prophets were women and they had mingled true religion with magic practices. This is in fact a common failing throughout history and throughout the world. We have a tendency to mix true faith with rubbish that we find in our society. We may think this applies only to "primitive" societies, where the people think magic things have power, but in so called "civilised" societies we do the same. We can do it by mixing the gospel with "spirituality", or by adopting practices that society has.

The effect of the false prophets was to cause more death than was necessary, and the death of innocent people. So the Lord would be against them.

Does this mean we should have nothing to do with anything in society around us? Definitely not. The final verses of this chapter give us the clue to how to decide what is good and what is not. Anything that is godly will encourage people to turn from evil ways, and turn towards the ways of the Lord. The objective of all prophecy that is from God is to encourage people to live in obedience to the Lord.