Week 10 Deuteronomy
Moses is talking about prophets in chapter 18. So far not much has been said in the bible about prophets.
So far. I flip back to the table of contents. I see that prophets in the bible are kind of like those little rubber alligators I buy in a dollar store and put in water in my bathtub at bedtime and in the morning the gator fills half the tub. Books written by prophets will eventually take up 379-pages. They’ll expand like alligators. But not so much in Deuteronomy.
That said, Moses does bring up a prophet-issue in 18. And it’s a pragmatic, fully modern question. If a guy comes along and says he’s a prophet how do I know whether to believe him?
Moses lays out a testable, reliability-rule: if a prophet forecasts something and it comes true, then you’ll know he’s legitimate.
Okay, so now I know.
But actually now I don’t know.
And I don’t know because I read Deuteronomy 13 yesterday and remembered that Moses was talking about prophets and he said that if a prophet predicts something that does come true (which means he is a true prophet) and then he also tells me to worship another god (which I know is not true) then he’s not legitimate and his forecast – as true and convincing as it was – doesn’t mean he’s legit.
So I tell myself: proceed with caution. One day’s reading is just one day’s reading.
Note: see Deuteronomy 18:14-22 and 13:1-11