I Kings 22:18-21

Please turn with me to I Kings 22, verse 18. God's prophet Micaiah's first words to Ahab, the king of Israel, are precisely those of the other prophets, but Ahab sees that his words are a mere mocking imitation of the court prophets who tell him what he wants to hear.

The vision Micaiah saw was illustrating that the seductive influence of false prophets would be part of God's judgment on Ahab. The imagery is that of a council of war, with the heavenly King sitting on His throne surrounded by His army, making plans to defeat Ahab in battle.

So Micaiah is predicting that that is what he will do because that is what God told him he would do. And that would prove that Micaiah had God's Spirit and Zedekiah did not. In verse 23, Micaiah claimed that Zedekiah and his colleagues had a lying spirit, and Zedekiah responds that he had been influenced by the Spirit of the Lord, who cannot have been speaking to both him and Micaiah. Whether or not God sent an angel in disguise, He used the system of false prophets to ensnare Ahab in his sin. The lying spirit symbolized the way of life for these prophets who told the king only what he wanted to hear, and all will become clear, Micaiah claims, when the disaster that he is predicting eventually falls and Zedekiah is forced to hide in the city in someone's home.

I Kings 22:19-23

That was not happy news to Ahab. We do not need to go any further. We just need to see this little view into the councils of heaven where God had drawn into His government spirit beings, even enemies of His, to counsel Him on how some portion of His governance of the earth would be handled.

God then gave the assignment to a spirit being who went out and convinced the false prophets that this was the way to go. Now, did the false prophets see a ghost? Did something cause them to have a dream? There is no indication of that. The indication is to me (at least because so many of them were involved—four hundred) that the spirit somehow stirred up the spirit that was in the men and put the thoughts into their minds and made them think it was theirs. When they all came up with the same answer, surely it must have been right. But alas, they were unanimously wrong, being led by a lying spirit.