Here isyet another prophetic logical fallacy (#5) in the series I’ve been doing on “prophets or posers?”:

“I’m a prophet or have the gift of prophecy because a spiritual gifts inventory told me I was; therefore, I probably see reality for what it truly is most of the time.”

Counterpoint: If Hitler had taken a spiritual gifts inventory, it would have suggested that he had spiritual gifts as well – perhaps even prophecy.

I like spiritual gift inventories and occasionally use them in leadership development and discipleship. However, we have to take them with a grain of salt. They’re not designed to measure the strength of your gift (as fueled by both your character and the power of God), nor can they measure whether one truly is a believer or not. So any effort to boost our own authority through an appeal to spiritual gift inventories is dubious.

A possible corollary to this fallacy could also be, “I’m a prophet because my spouse tells me that I am or must be one.” I’m not going to dive into this one, but I’ve heard several spouses over the years herald their partner as a prophet. Sometimes I’ve agreed with them from my vantage point, but others times not so much. Spouses sometimes can react in funky ways when their partner is a lightning rod in conflict or debate or any kind of “truth war.” It’s not uncommon for spouses to build their partner up or make them all good (i.e. the prophet role) and demonize the opposition as carnal, apostate, mean, or maybe even evil. Emotionally secure spouses can be a great source of confirmation as to whether their wife or husband might be functioning prophetically, but the spouse who gets lost in conflict is probably not a reliable source for perspective of one’s position.

A good test of this fallacy is to give a spiritual gifts inventory to someone blatantly hostile to Jesus Christ and see what happens

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