Bible Challenge Day 69: The True Prophets (Deuteronomy 18)

Last week someone asked the question, how could people know which leader to follow? We were talking about First Corinthians, so the question was about Paul. How could those earliest Christians in Corinth know to listen to Paul and not to Paul’s opponents? The question is just as relevant today: given all the voices clamoring for our attention, who should we heed?

Deuteronomy asks the same question. There is a promise that God will raise up a prophet like Moses (18:15). In the Acts of the Apostles, that gets applied to Jesus (3:22; 7:37). But Deuteronomy seems to be speaking about prophets more generally, and gives two criteria for recognizing them. If prophets speak in the name of another God, they are false (18:20). And if prophets predict something that does not come true, then, too, they are false (18:22).

But that second is not always a good standard. Jonah is commissioned by God and (eventually!!) says what he was supposed to say: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:4). But the people of Nineveh repented, “God changed his mind” (3:9—itself an interesting thing to think about!), and the prediction did not come true. Still, Jonah was a prophet. Apparently the criteria are more fluid than it initially seems.

Still I think they can be translated into language that makes them applicable today. We should only follow those who speak in the name of God. God can do and say surprising things, but on balance this seems to me to look backwards. The standard we have for judging whether someone speaks in the name of God is Scripture and tradition. Religious leaders seeking our attention should be recognizably in conversation Christians of the past.

Predicting the future is a more difficult criterion, if only because we cannot know until after the fact if the prediction comes true. But we can think of this as the forward looking criterion. Religious leaders today need to offer a compelling vision of the future if they claim to speak in the name of God.

That is all still pretty nebulous. I guess God gives us enough freedom that we have to take the responsibility of judging for ourselves even when it is hard. But Deuteronomy 18 can help. . . .

Fr. Harvey