Prophets and the biblical standard

This morning in my daily Bible reading I read Deuteronomy 13 which says something to the effect of if you have a prophet come to you who shows miraculous signs and wonders, and those signs and wonders come true, but he teaches you a different God than the one you have been taught (this is Moses talking) than you should avoid him. In fact, later on in the passage it says that you should actually kill him (see verse 5).

Yeah, that’s a bit much for me. I’m so thankful we don’t have to live under the Old Testament law and kill our false prophets. The principle though, I think is an important one. If an Old Testament prophet who taught a different God was to be killed, then surely, we as New Testament Christians should at the least, avoid prophets who teach a different God.

Moses taught quite a bit about God in Deuteronomy. He used this book, in fact, as a final time to tell his people—the people he had shepherded for more than 40 years—more about who God was, and what He wanted from them. Here are a couple of the main points he makes about God:

There is, and always has been, only one God (and Lord):

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:”(Deut 6:4)

Also: “Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else.” (Deut 4:39)

That one God, has been God eternally:

“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.” (Deut 33:27, see also Genesis 21:33)

Compare that to what LDS prophets have taught from the time of Joseph Smith, that God was once a man (see King Follet Discourses), and also that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are different, and in essence three gods. (See Joseph Smith history in the Pearl of Great Price).

I’m pretty sure that there’s a rationalization for what the LDS prophets (all of them) have taught. The guys at FARMS at the least have surely come up with some explanation of why Moses didn’t really mean what he clearly said. In the end though, it seems to me that the Bible is pretty clear about who God is, and there’s no room left to argue those points.I'd be interested though to hear what a LDS person thought--seriously. If this particular point were serious enough in the Old Testament that a false prophet was killed, surely it's serious to us living in the New Testament.

What Makes a Prophet?

me leafing . . . er reading on my computer

I was leafing (do you leaf on the computer?) . . . errr, paging, errr reading through this months Ensign online and came across an article by President Monson entitled Priesthood Power, http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/priesthood-power?lang=eng. I’m not really going to talk about this article right now, but a statement he made at the beginning of the article about not wanting to offend anyone really got me thinking about what, biblically speaking, a prophet is/was. (It made me think because a lot of the Old Testament prophets were quite offensive even though that's not really what this blog is turning out to be about.)

The Old Testament is full of examples of prophets throughout many generations and so it’s hard to characterize exactly what one might look like (would he wear a suit and a tie, or jeans and a beard?), but there are some characteristics that Biblical Prophets shared. These are what I want to look at because I believe that these are traits that modern prophets also ought to share.

The first thing I thought of when thinking about Old Testament prophets was that they were nobodies whow many times came out of nowhere. John the Baptist for example, came out of the wilderness. (Luke 1:80) Amos was a herdsman (Amos 1) Elisha was tilling in his field (a farmer) when Elijah came and got him. (1 Kings 19:19). Saul was actually hiding when Samuel came to anoint him. (1 Samuel 10, note Saul wasn’t a prophet per se, but God did use him to prophecy in the beginning of God’s dealings with him, later though he tried to do things in his own strength without God so God rejected him as king and his prophesying seems to have been a temporary thing). David we know was a sheepherder and the youngest of his father’s sons, and his family wasn’t particularly significant either. (1 Samuel 16) and I think if we study the other prophets (the ones that we know their history) we’ll find the same thing: they were insignificant men who God reached down and pulled up and made into significant men.

And, that’s really the main thing we see in scripture that defines them: God called them, and what’s more they knew that God had called them. Isaiah describes how God called him in the first chapter of his book.

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. . . Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. (Isaiah 6:1, 5)

Similar things happened to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and many of the other prophets in the Old Testament. They knew directly and without a doubt that God had called them, and sent them out with a specific message. Here are some more examples:

“The words of Jeremiah. . . To whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah . . Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying. . .  I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:1-5) “ Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. . . .The word of the LORD came expressly unto Ezekiel. . . and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.” (Ezekiel 1: 1-3) “The word of the LORD that came unto Hosea” (Hosea 1:1) “The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.” (Joel 1) “The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD” (Obediah 1) “Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah” (Jonah 1).

Lastly, Old Testament prophets weren’t in any way perfect, or sin free. In some ways this seems like it’d be obvious, but in the LDS church at least, I grew up thinking that prophets were right up there pretty darn close to God, meaning that while they probably did some little tiny sin from time to time, they certainly wouldn’t fall into any big sin. Biblical prophets though, struggled with some pretty big sins from time to time. We talked about David, and it’s super easy to see that David messed up big time with Bathsheba, (2 Samuel 11) but there’s also evidence that David was a bad father (2 Samuel 13-18), and he did a census of Israel that God had not wanted, making Israel suffer really bad consequences because of it. (2 Samuel 24)

We see too in scripture how Abraham didn’t always trust God like he should, and instead ran ahead of God rather than wait and trust Him (by sinning). And, I’m sure as we look at the other prophets we can find instances where they didn’t do everything just right. (Elijah ran away from Jezebel because he didn’t really trust that God could save his life).

But, the biblical expectation isn’t that they were perfect. Instead, it’s that they trusted God, and that when they did mess up they put their trust in God and in His forgiveness.That's why God could honestly say that David was a man after His own heart even though David messed up so big. (1 Samuel 13)

In fact, as I was studying to put this together I realized that the one thing that ties all the prophets together above everything else was that God had given them a message (which they then spoke out), and that really, no more and no less, is what made them prophets.

Follow the Prophets. . . except when they're wrong!

The other day, in my daily devotional reading I got caught up in reading the tale of the destruction of Israel that’s recounted in Jeremiah 52, and continued in the book of Lamentations. To tell the tale though, you really need to read the entire book of Jeremiah and hear how again and again and again Jeremiah was called to go to the kings of Israel and predict the destruction of Israel. (I had done that in the past days before this incident).

To remind you of this tragic story I’ll attempt to recap a bit what happened. After several evil kings, Zedekiah became the king of Israel and continued in his rebellion against the Lord. In his eleventh year as king, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon came against Israel and besieged it. For two years his army literally camped out outside the walls of Jerusalem, allowing no one in or out. Not surprisingly after a bit the people ran out of food. Lamentations, which is Jeremiah’s lament about all this, tells us more about this sad, hard situation and includes the detail that the ladies of the city even resorted to eating their own children! (Lamentation 2:20)

If you haven’t read it before, I’d highly suggest you read Lamentations, which is were Jeremiah literally weeps over the utter destruction of his people, and their subsequent dehumanization and humiliation. (Zed, for his part had his sons put to death in front of him, and then was blinded, and taken to Babylon where he lived as a captive for the rest of his life—see Jeremiah 52).

As I mentioned before I was absolutely gripped by this story, even though it’s not a unfamiliar story to me. And, then in the midst of this story I found the cause of the problems that Jerusalem faced very clearly spelled out:

 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment. (Lamentations 2:14)

  For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her, (Lamentations 4:13)

 You see, Jeremiah wasn’t the only prophet in this time period, but instead there were a whole bunch of prophets, and these prophets, every single one of them, made false prophecies which led the people astray. Early on in Jeremiah’s ministry, for instance, he went face-to-face with false prophets, and the Lord had him do it by wearing a yoke and telling the people that they should go into captivity and that if they did they’d be safe. Hananiah, who was also a prophet came against Jeremiah and said that wasn’t true, but that the Lord was saying the people would be set free (see Jeremiah 28).

And, this leads to my point, I, when I was LDS, was taught that a prophet would never, ever lead the people astray, (See http://lds.org/manual/gospel-principles/chapter-9-prophets-of-god?lang=eng&query=prophets+leading+people+astray) and yet in Old Testament times (and in the New too I suspect) prophets did just that—they led the people astray. In fact, in the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah puts the blame for Jerusalem’s destruction, and the people’s being led into captivity squarely at the feet of the false prophets.

And, yet there were some Israelites that were wise enough to ignore the false prophets, and believe the true ones (Jeremiah). How did they know? How could they discern? I think the answer lies in the biblical truth that they knew God’s Word—in their case it was a matter of knowing the Pentateuch (or the first five books of Moses, often called the Law in the Bible). Remember Moses had admonished the people that they should put his words on their door posts, and on the wall as they went in and out of their houses, as well as teach them to their children, and more! (Deuteronomy 6)  and some followed this commandment. These were the ones, I believe, who knew that what Jeremiah was saying had to be true. Because you see, what was happening in the government of the time so obviously was NOT what God wanted, that to anyone familiar with His Word, it would have been clear that they weren’t OK—not at all.

In a more contemporary example, many people were duped by Harold Camping, and spent a lot of time and money trying to convince the rest of us that what he predicted was true—that he was a true prophet, and that the world was going to end last Saturday. It didn’t of course, and those of us who knew God’s Word weren’t fooled by him. That’s because there is always, always safety in knowing what God has said—it, and it alone won’t lead us astray. Prophets on the other hand can and will, as is well documented in Zedekiah's story and several others in God's Word. 

 Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.(1 Cor. 10:11-12)

 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. (Romans 15:4)