Pat Robertson Warns '700 Club' Viewers to Beware of False Prophets
Pat Robertson, known for making a few curious prophecies and predictions of his own, told viewers during Tuesday's broadcast of "The 700 Club" to be careful of false prophets and that people offer an erroneous "word from the Lord" all the time.
During the "Bring It On" segment on CBN’s "The 700 Club" broadcast Tuesday, the hosts shared a viewer's question on how to discern false prophets who relay an erroneous "word from the Lord."
"One of my mom's friends says she's a prophetess," producer and co-host Kristi Watts said, reading the question sent in by the viewer. "She started giving me a word, but unfortunately she was way off. I was polite, but how could someone who says she's hearing from God be so wrong?"
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Watts and Robertson, reacting simultaneously, said, "This happens all the time!"
Robertson went on to respond by characterizing the suggestion that the individual is really hearing from God as "baloney."
"If God is gonna speak to you, He can speak to you," Robertson said, adding that there are people who "really do have a prophetic word, but they are few and far between."
Robertson then related an anecdote about John Wesley supposedly dismissing a woman who approached him with a word from the Lord about "bedding down with a whore."
"Let the Lord speak to you himself," Robertson said before immediately calling for the next viewer question.
Before doing so, Watts reminded viewers that the Bible says, "we prophesy in part" and "to test the spirit."
Media Matters, a media watchdog group, quickly posed the question of whether Robertson himself is also on the receiving end of God's messages.
The group, which provided a video excerpt of Tuesday's "The 700 Club" on its website, used as an example a January 2007 prediction by Robertson in which the former televangelist declared that "evil people are going to try and do evil things to us and to others."
Robertson claimed that he had received an apparent "word from God" during his "prayer retreat" that "very serious terrorist attacks" from "the evil people" on the United States would result in a "mass killing" during the "second half of 2007." A video of Robertson's predictions can be seen on YouTube. In the 2007 broadcast, Robertson notes that "the Lord didn't say nuclear," but that he believed "it would be something like that."
When the prediction failed to come to pass, The Associated Press reported that Robertson said, "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed and God in His mercy spared us."
Media Matters also made note of an AP report in May of 2006 in which Robertson claimed storms and a "tsunami" would hit the U.S. coastline. He then claimed partial vindication when heavy rains hit New England.
During a March 2006 broadcast, the CBN Network founder predicted, "before the end of this year there will be another vacancy" on the Supreme Court. The prediction did not prove accurate.
Media Matters lists various other prophecies and predictions Robertson, 81, has made that have failed to materialize.
As noted in a National Geographic May 2011 article, "Decades before Harold Camping's May 21, 2011, prediction, TV evangelist Pat Robertson had preached that, sometime in the 1980s, Jesus would return to Earth."
So far, both Camping, who has tentatively readjusted his Rapture date to Oct. 21, and Robertson have been wrong.
