[soc.religion.christian] False prophets

gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) (08/30/90)

The moderator writes:
[I'm not sure why you find it odd to think of testing a prophet's
words.  Both the OT and NT refer to the possibility of false prophets,
and talk about testing them.  See e.g. Deut 8:20ff and I John 4:1ff.
--clh]

Yes, but, in the Old Testament at least, you only got one strike.  The
penalty for making a false prediction, and thus being a false prophet,
was death.

The point is that if a prophet makes mistakes, he is discredited
completely, and should not be considered to be a real prophet.
--
Fred Gilham    gilham@csl.sri.com
The emotional quality of what we moderns call our thought produces an
extreme violence of conviction combined with extreme incoherence in
our arguments.  --Jacques Ellul

David.Anderson@cs.cmu.edu (09/02/90)

Lynn, here.

> Excerpts from netnews.soc.religion.christian: 30-Aug-90 False prophets
> Fred Gilham@csl.sri.com (725)

> The point is that if a prophet makes mistakes, he is discredited
> completely, and should not be considered to be a real prophet.

Very interesting--so a prophet can't repent? What about Jonah? (Or is he
strictly an allegorical figure?)

kutz@cis.ohio-state.edu (Kenneth J. Kutz) (09/14/90)

In article <Sep.9.01.40.31.1990.9883@athos.rutgers.edu>, rjb@akgua.att.com (Robert J Brown) writes:
> [There has been some question about whether a prophet can make 
> mistakes in his predictions and still be a prophet.  Jonah was
> mentioned, in that he resisted God.  But doing that still isn't
> an error in his prophecy.  --clh]

> The bottom line is Jonah said (in his prophetic role) "Yet 40 days
> and Nineveh will be overthrown" (KJV).  It did not happen.  Nineveh
> repented from the King on down to the cows.  By the Torah definition
> of Prophet isn't Jonah a false prophet ?

Did Jonah speak truth?  The Hebrew word for "overthrown" in the Old
Testament can literally mean overturned.  In other words, moving in
one direction and then, phhhhhhhhttt, spin around and be overturned
in the other direction.  The same word is used in the Old Testament of
a plate being overturned.  After Jonah made this proclamation, here
is the account of what happened:

"By the decree of the king and his nobles:" ... "let man and beast be
covered with sackcloth.  Let everyone call urgently on God.  Let them
----->----->----->-----+ give up their evil ways and their violence..."
 R E P E N T A N C E   | ..."When God saw what they did AND HOW THEY
-----<-----<-----<-----+ TURNED FROM THEIR EVIL WAYS, he had compassion
on them and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened."

So we must ask, was Nineveh overturned within 40 days?  Absolutely.
The US will receive its overturning.  I pray that it will be the kind
that Ninevah experienced.

(I don't have a concordance at work, but there is a passage in the Old
Testament where the Lord explains that if a nation repents between a
proclamation to being overturned and the spoken date, he will be
merciful to that nation.  Either way, the nation is still overturned.
One is brought about by repentance, the other by judgement.)

-- 
  Kenneth J. Kutz		  Internet 	kutz@andy.bgsu.edu         
  Systems Programmer		  BITNET   	KUTZ@ANDY
  University Computer Services    UUCP     	...!osu-cis!bgsuvax!kutz   
  Bowling Green State Univ.       US Mail   238 Math Science, BG OH 43403

farkas@qual.eng.sun.com (Frank Farkas) (09/17/90)

[The discussion here is about the criteria for defining a false
prophet.  It was said to be that his prophecies come true.  Jonah is
given as an example: he told the Ninevites that they would be
destroyed.  They repented, and were not destroyed.  Does that make him
a false prophet?  Many but not all respondents think there was an
implicit "if you don't repent".  --clh]

I guess that I am confused with the various responses. There was nothing in 
the prophesy which said that they were not going to be destroyed if they 
don't  repent. The prohesy said that they will be destroyed in 40 days, 
period. this is the reason why Jonah went outside of the city and waited
patiently for the word of God to come true.

The issue is not if Jonah was a true or a false prophet, but our defination
of a prophet. The problem is that the man made definations are not perfect.
And when we apply them to prophets in the Bible, they fall apart. Normally,
the man made definations are used to try to descredit modern day prophets,
by those who no longer believe that there are any more revelations.

Let me give you another example, which is much less controversial than the
case with Jonah.

2 Kings 20:1
============
"....Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, 
and not live."

2 Kings 20:5
============
"Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, thus saith the 
Lord, the God of David thy Father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy 
tears: behold I will heal thee:..."

Please explain the above Bible quotes in view of any man made defination
of a prophet. The only thing one can say is that the prophet is the one
who will tell those things which God told him to tell.

The fact is that the only way to know if a person is a true prophet of God 
is that the Holy Ghost has to bear its witness to that truth. There are no
simple guide lines.

With brotherly love,

		Frank

geoff@uunet.uu.net (Geoff Allen) (09/18/90)

rjb@akgua.att.com (Robert J Brown) asks if Jonah qualifies as a false
prophet because his prophecy that:
>>"Yet 40 days and Nineveh will be overthrown" (KJV).  
appears not to have come true.

And timh@linus.uucp (Tim Hoogasian) writes:
>IF - nineveh did not repent of its wickedness.  you've missed a VERY
>big 'if'...

Indeed.  Repentance seems to be able to override a prophecy.

I was sent some e-mail asking if Isaiah qualified as a false prophet,
since his prophecy to Hezekiah in II Kings 20:1 didn't come true. 
Isaiah said (as translated by the NIV committee):

	This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you
	will die; you will not recover.

Not only did Isaiah prophecy that Hezekiah would die (not too tough to
do, I can predict that for everyone reading this), but he also
prophesized that Hezekiah would die of his present illness.

But what happened?

	Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD....
						(II Kings 20:2)

The passage further records that Isaiah was told by God to turn around
and return to Hezekiah and tell him that his prayers and tears were
heard and he would not only recover, but would also live another 15
years.

So it would appear, based on these two events (Hezekiah and Ninevah)
that one can one can reverse a prophecy against oneself through
repentance and prayer.

--
Geoff Allen         \  Since we live by the Spirit, 
uunet!pmafire!geoff  \  let us keep in step with the Spirit.
bigtex!pmafire!geoff  \                    --  Gal. 5:25 (NIV)

[This discussion seems to me to be approaching the point of silliness.
It seems fairly clear that the situation of people repenting when
faced with a prophecy against them is an explicit exception to the
requirement that a prophet's words will always come true.  "At one
moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will
pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning
which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about
the disaster that I intended to bring on it."  Jer 18:7-8 (NRSV)
Presumably this is going to be reflected in what the prophet who is
conveying God's words says.

--clh]

gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) (09/20/90)

Frank Farkas writes:
----------------------------------------
I guess that I am confused with the various responses. There was
nothing in the prophesy which said that they were not going to be
destroyed if they don't repent. The prohesy said that they will be
destroyed in 40 days, period. this is the reason why Jonah went
outside of the city and waited patiently for the word of God to come
true.

The issue is not if Jonah was a true or a false prophet, but our
defination of a prophet. The problem is that the man made definations
are not perfect.  And when we apply them to prophets in the Bible,
they fall apart. Normally, the man made definations are used to try to
descredit modern day prophets, by those who no longer believe that
there are any more revelations.
----------------------------------------

This seems to me to be clutching at straws.  It is obvious in both the
case of Jonah and the case of Isaiah's prophecy to Hezekiah that the
prophet was speaking the word of God.  The issue in these passages is
not the criteria for being a prophet, rather it is the mercy of God
who is willing to ``change his mind'' in the face of repentence or
prayer.

The true issue at hand is rather that of how we know if someone claims
to have a revelation from God really has such a revelation.  The bible
(e.g. the inspired scriptures....or do they consist of man-made
definitions?) talks about prophets as if a mistake discredited them.
I don't think we have any question of a mistake in the above examples.
(In fact Jonah didn't want to speak the word of God because he knew
that if he spoke it, it wouldn't come true.  He knew what God's intent
was.)

There are lots of people out there who claim to have a direct line to
God.  Some of them are in mental institutions, others are on TV,
others write books and start new religions (there's a line from a
musical I saw once that goes, ``I'll bet there are a million pigeons
looking for a new religion.'')  I've had enough bad experiences with
this kind of thing that I don't want to have anything to do with it if
I can avoid it.

Of course Christ was another who made such a claim.  So why am I
convinced by him (in the face of my innate skepticism)?  Because 1) He
doesn't sound like someone who was running a scam, and 2) He backed up
his claims and statements by being resurrected (in a historically
verifiable manner!).  On this basis, I follow him.  I take the
scriptures as true because they witness to him.  I reject other
scriptures because they do not fit in with the scriptures that witness
to Christ; they either contradict them, or miss the point, or
whatever.  I reject founders of other religions because they do not
have the credentials of Christ.

For example, I have been somewhat involved in a group that claims to
be ``the Lord's recovery'' of his church.  The leader of this group
sued another group of Christians who published a book about him that
attempted to discredit him.  To me, this was a blatant refusal to walk
in the steps of Christ.  Not only that, an earlier leader in the group
this person was part of had been kicked out of his church, but refused
to fight over the issue.  He was later reinstated.  So this current
leader did not even follow the example of someone he professed to be
the disciple of.

It seems to me that I can look at this person's life and make a
judgement about his claims to be speaking for God.  I think the bible
asks us to do this.  We are to reject false prophets.  (For example,
Revelation 2.2 says, ``I know your works, your toil, and your patient
endurance, and how you cannot bear evil men, but have tested those who
call themselves apostles but are not, and have found them to be
false.'')  So we are to test people claiming to speak for God.  We
aren't to be credulous simpletons, ``tossed about by every wind of
doctrine.''

One of the things that bothers me about the more speculative heresies
is that they make true Christianity seem less credible.  Not only is
there a sort of guilt by association (``Oh, you're one of
THOSE....''), but the epistemological question arises--``They claim to
have the truth, and so do you, so how can you decide which one is
right?'' (usually followed by ``It's all a matter of
interpretation.'')  What has happened is that people have come to
believe that it's not even possible to come to the truth any more.
This is the damage, above and beyond that done to the people that
actually get involved, that these kinds of teachings do.
--
Fred Gilham    gilham@csl.sri.com
The emotional quality of what we moderns call our thought produces an
extreme violence of conviction combined with extreme incoherence in
our arguments.  --Jacques Ellul