“If a prophet or someone who gets messages while dreaming arises among you and he gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes about as he predicted when he said, ‘Let’s follow other gods, which you have not known; and let us serve them,’ you are not to listen to what that prophet or dreamer says. For Adonai your God is testing you, in order to find out whether you really do love Adonai your God with all your heart and being.”-Deuteronomy 13:2-4
Alrighty, from today we are going to dive into detailed instructions about what to watch out for when it comes to false prophets.
From verse 2, we’re given two characteristics of the type of person we’re to regard as a false prophet.
FIRST, this person will make a prophesy and that prophesy will come true.
SECOND, this person while claiming allegiance to the true God of Israel will tell the people that HASHEM Himself told him that Israel should bow down to other gods.
It is these conditions combined that make for a false prophet.
Again, the formula is as follows:
SIGNS & WONDERS + COMMAND TO FOLLOW OTHER GODS=FALSE PROPHET
This is actually the perfect opportunity to review a common title used to speak of God that we’ll find in the Hebrew Scriptures.
The common title I’m referring to is EL.
This may surprise you but the title “EL” actually originated from the Canaanite mystery religions.
EL indicates the chief god or highest god who stood above and ruled over all the other lesser gods and goddesses.
In those days, it was common that a prophet representing EL (in whatever ancient culture) would proclaim to the people that EL has made a decision to add another god or goddess to their worship of him.
Now here’s the thing.
Since all of those lesser gods and goddesses were under the authority of EL (the chief god), such an action was in no way perceived as being a betrayal of or an abandoning of the worship of their highest god EL.
Got it?
All that was going on was that one of the countless numbers of lesser gods who was already under the authority of EL would now be added to the mix of the people’s worship practices.
Or to put it another way, the people would be following other gods in addition to EL.
This was the pagan mindset that HASHEM had to drill out of the Israelites because they were so comfortable with that idea.
Finally, I want to make it clear, that the Lord absolutely did speak to His people in days of old through His prophets and through other folks who had visions.
Scripturally speaking, there seems to be two different categories of people through which the Lord spoke.
The first was for lack of a better term what you could call a professional prophet.
A professional prophet sometimes went through an officiating process whereby he was ordained as a prophet.
When this happened he was recognized by the community and given support.
It’s not like some dude would suddenly show up out of nowhere and suddenly proclaim himself a prophet.
Again, we’re talking about a recognized position here with an official ordination process attached to it.
On the other hand, the person who received visions from the Lord was not considered a professional.
He could be just a common citizen (a layperson) or even a religious authority who from time to time received divine revelations from the Lord in a dream or visions.
Having said that though, a prophet might also receive words from the Lord via dreams or visions.
To summarize, lumping both categories together, God is simply saying don’t listen to ANYONE no matter how accurate their prophesies or visions are…
…if they also in any way promote the idea of adding other gods to their worship of Him.
I’m done.
Interesting post but watch the language.