Sketcher
Born Imperishable
Here are the OT verses by which prophesy is judged:Hey all,
A friendly atheist here with a quick question.
I was thinking today about prophecy and I seem to recall believing (may years ago now) that in order to be a true prophet of God, it had to be the case that every prophecy made, would come to pass.
Is that what you believe?
If that is the case, any time there is a "not yet accomplished" prophecy in the Bible, does that mean that you are withholding judgement on whether or not the speaker of the prophecy is actually a true prophet of God? Does this apply to Jesus and his pronouncement of future things?
"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." - Deuteronomy 13:1-5
"But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.' And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?'-- when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him." - Deuteronomy 18:20-22
The OT prophets that have end-of-the-world predictions were canonized, in part because they passed the first test. If it's in the Bible, I don't have a reason to doubt it as prophesy. Now, these verses are good for dealing with the kinds of people that just wanted to make names for themselves. Such people tend to make hasty prophesies, like the world will end in 5 years, or there will be a tsunami off the coast of California next year. If a prophet makes a short-term prophesy, that's an easy way to falsify his claims. You clearly can't use that as a metric with end-of-the-world predictions, since we can't expect those to come true until the end of the world.
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