Deuteronomy

Prophets

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 59-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 059

Dictation Name: RR187AF59

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. There is therefore no condemnation for them which are in Christ Jesus. For as many as are led by the spirit of God they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but you have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we come into Thy presence knowing how much we need Thy grace. How evil the times in which we live. How great are the problems that confront us. We thank Thee therefore for Thy providence and for Thy love for us manifested in Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that our times are not in our hands but in Thine who doest all things well. Give us grace to walk in this faith, to know that Thou art able to undertake for us and that not all our fretfulness can accomplish one thing but Thy grace is sufficient for us. Teach us to rest in Thy sufficiency. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 18:15-22 and our subject: Prophets, the biblical type of prophets. Deuteronomy 18:15-22.

“The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;

16 According to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not.

17 And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken.

18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

21 And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?

22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.”

According to Acts 3:22 and Acts 7:37 and also 7:15-19 these verses in particular 15-18 are a prediction of Jesus Christ the great prophet of God so that the Christian interpretation of the great prophet has the validation of the Old and of the New Testaments. Now I say that because I’m going to digress a moment to tell you that in the last century and this in terms in evolutionary premises scholars have insisted that the verses fifteen through nineteen have no reference to Jesus Christ. Well the curious fact is is that throughout the Old Testament era the old Hebrew scholars felt that it referred to the coming messiah! In the New Testament the apostles preached in terms of this text saying ‘this is now fulfilled’. Only subsequently to evade the Christian interpretation the rabbis insisted it was not yet fulfilled. But now because they do not believe in the validity of predictive prophecy the scholars have insisted it has nothing to do with our Lord. But the old testament prophets, priests, scribes and teachers believed that it did and so too did the inspired apostles. This great prophet is described first as coming from the midst of Israel. He is one of them while more than one of them. Second this prophet is like Moses like unto me, Moses says in verse thirteen, he represents God and is a prophet of the law of God. Third unto Him ye shall hearken, obedience to the great prophet is required. Fourth this prophet meets the demand of Israel. At Mount Sinai they did not want the great closeness to God, the nearness of His presence and majesty, they wanted a mediator. God was at the time their mediator but the proximity of God was still too much for Israel.

The great prophet, Jesus Christ, would reveal God to them on more understandable and less threatening terms. Fifth this great prophet will speak the very word of God, in verse eighteen ‘ye shall speak unto them all that I shall command him’. Sixth, any who fail to hear him, to hearken, that is to hear and to obey, will be judged by God. The test is obedience to this prophet, let me say parenthetically it’s too bad we don’t use the word hearken in everyday speech anymore; it’s a good word for mothers to use. What it means is to hear me and obey me! That’s what hearken hearken means! It’s an excellent expression but we don’t believe very much in obedience today apparently so we’ve dropped hearken in this generation. Then seventh the reference is to Horab or Sinai, to the giving of the law, so that the prophet comes as a greater Moses to reinforce the revelation given through Moses. To understand Jesus Christ we have to see that he comes to reinforce the work of Moses as the greater prophet. In verses twenty to twenty two we have other prophets cited. These are men who God calls to His service but it also refers to false prophets with a pretended message from God. In Jeremiah 29 we have a reference to one such false prophet, Hananiah, a true prophet could predict good or bad but the main thrust of false prophets was and is to please men. The message of false prophets was not God’s moral law nor the Messiah but the expectations for deliverance by ungodly men. Think of the implications of that for all those who are preaching today pre-tribulation rapturism. Is that pleasing to people? You’re not going to go through any tribulation; God’s going to rapture you out of all of it. That’s false prophecy. God makes clear that the prophet is not an expert to be consulted but a servant messenger from God who must be obeyed, hearken he says. God sends His prophets to recall men to His covenant and law so that the true prophets words are God-centered not man centered.

This means that a true prophet is not a welcome person. He calls attention to the apostasy of men from God’s covenant and law. This fact therefore creates a market for false prophets who speak encouraging words where judgment is required. In Isaiah 30:9-11 we see a description of the false prophet’s methods. And if you read the Old Testament carefully you’ll find that false prophets were far, far more common than true ones. What are they? Isaiah says this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord which say to the seers ‘see not’ and to the prophets ‘prophesy not unto us, write things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits’. Get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the holy one of Israel to cease from us. That was the gist of their message, give us smooth things, get out of our way. If you’re going to speak for God and it’s going to be evil, stop talking. The goal of false prophets is to supplant the word of God with the words of men. Antinomianism demands false prophets because it resents the law word of God. Verses 21-22 tell us that because a false prophet seeks, as Isaiah 30:11 makes clear, the death of God, God requires the death of the false prophet. The goal of the false prophet is to destroy the foundations of covenantal society and hence his death penalty. The false prophet might claim to speak in the Lord’s name or in the name of some other god, in either case he claims to be a prophet. God gives a test for the prophetic word. First, does he speak God’s word? Is he faithful to the law word given at Mount Sinai. Second, if his prophecy is predicted does it come to pass? Is his a true or a false prophecy.

Now this test applies to only those claiming to be prophets. A man may predict an election return, an economic development; he can be right or wrong. But if his statements do not presume to carry divine authority, if he does not claim to be a prophet he is simply a man trying to see certain consequences, not a true or a false prophet. The kind of prophet from God that Moses here refers to is not a trained professional. Elijah’s school of the prophets was a ministerial training center, the word prophet as we’ve seen can mean a preacher who speaks for God but it means in our text someone whose calling is directly from God to proclaim God’s word. In the first sense all who speak for God are prophets. The puritans called the clergy and their training schools, schools for prophets. But in the restricted sense prophets are an Old and New Testament phenomenon. God’s law made a place for professional teachers and scholars but His prophets were not professionals nor a part of an institutional organization. It is clear from the Old Testament that prophets were disliked as a disruptive force because they told the truth. The true prophet both preached covenant loyalty and predicted in terms of God’s orders. Now the priesthood had as its purpose stability and order in the religious life of the covenant people. The civil government had as its purpose to provide justice. The prophets were God’s special servants rebuking both church and state in terms of the law word of God. The function of the prophets was to recall the people to the covenant and its law. They were outsiders, they were not a trained group of people, they were not people who were respected or had the proper credentials. But they were men sent by God who saw a dissolving covenant and they sought to recall the people to that bond. They spoke of the judgment God inflicts on covenant breakers. For them true worship was totally related to the covenant and its law.

In Clément’s [sp?] words and Clement is not an orthodox scholar, but nonetheless he openly says that prophet declared that for the covenant of God and I quote:

“No worship could please Him which was not expressive of obedience to His covenant law.” Unquote.

Now that from a man who does not show any interest in faith in the law. Nonetheless he sees it as basic to worship. All men are tenants on God’s earth, His covenant and it’s law, obedience, the tithe, faithfulness in all things, all this and more were and are the conditions of men’s tenancy on God’s earth. According to Clements! Prophesy was a theocratic, a God-centered office. It was God’s way of keeping the covenant people aware of the transcendental and supernatural frame of reference to man’s life. Men could not settle into an institutional word and world and forget God. The holy spirit of course is closely and essentially related to prophesy and the prophets are men through whom the holy spirit speaks. Jesus Christ as the great prophet fulfills this purpose. Christ being very God of very God and very man of very man, we cannot with success absorb him into an existential realm. The Unitarians try to give a rational Christ to people’s but it was an uncomfortable task so they after time totally dropped all mention of Christ, they could not exist with His name, they could not co-exist with it. Christ is so obviously supernatural, the supernatural cannot with any success be separated from Him. As the prophet to the end of time He compels men to reckon with Him, history is theocratic, God centered, not man centered. Justice is not something invented by man but the revelation of God’s nature. It is an inevitable necessity but Jesus Christ is the Lord of the last judgment. As the prophetic voice to all men and nations of God’s government and God’s justice He is also therefore the judge over all.

The false prophets before Hananiah and ever since are anti-judgment because they are anti-God! Our Lord the great prophet does not let us forget that, for all covenant breakers judgment is the governing and overruling fact of history. Man’s goal however is history without judgment, history as an experiment, not as a test. An experiment has no good nor evil, it is supposedly a scientific thing. It can succeed or fail and this is why both the Marxists and the non-Marxists speak of their social planning as a social experiment. They are removing it from the realm of morality, they are saying there is no good nor evil in what we are doing, it is an experiment and it succeeds or fails, so somebody gets hurt but you can’t have an omelet without breaking some eggs. But history without judgment does not exist. History without judgment does not exist because God made heaven and earth and all things therein, history is the continuing test and judgment. History concludes therefore, not in the city of men, the new tower of Babal, but in the victorious city of God and the last judgment. The mission of the prophets and of our Lord is to recall men to God and to His justice or law. Men however prefer their will to justice and therefore they hate prophets but this only aggravates their judgment. To repeat again, the word prophet means first one who proclaims God’s word and second, one who predicts the future. By means of God’s word we can all be prophets in both senses. We declare and we believe God’s word and we predicted that the wages of sin are always death. This is what every parent tells his child as a prophet of God. You do this and this will follow. That’s prophetic teaching and we are called in Christ to priest, prophets and kings. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee for this Thy word. Thou knowest oh Lord that the calling Thou hast given us to be Thy voice in this evil generation is less now perhaps now than ever. Teach us to be faithful in our

family life and wherever we are to rule as kings in Christ, as priest to dedicate all things to Him, and as prophets to apply Thy law word in every sphere of life and thought. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No and they haven’t been very popular when they have appeared. Calvin of course is one such example. Years ago in the University of California library I saw a book that showed all the abuse that Calvin was subjected to. Pictures of him making his nose to be a snake and his ears toads and so on so he was made, his face was a collection of reptiles put together, to present a human face. He was a kindly gently person but the vem towards him because he spoke faithfully and clearly was enormous, the same was true of John Knox. I don’t know whether you recall, Otto, when we were in Edinborough in ’87 one publication I picked up said that Scotland needed to rid itself of the curse of John Knox. So a prophet long after his death is unpopular. And of course any parent who is a prophet to his or her child knows that (laughs) it does not go over well at times. Yes?

[Question] Well the political sphere has taken over prophesy.

[Rushdoony] Which sphere?

[Same person] Political sphere.

[Rushdoony] Yes, politicians are prophets of the tower of Babal, false prophets of course. But they keep promising us everything and I must say these false prophets, the politicians, have it made. Nobody seems to remember all their false prophesies. We’ll see if with the help of Rush Limbaugh the American people will remember the promise of this administration to reduce the deficit. I’m not sure but I hope so. Yes?

[Question] It always seemed to me curious why prophets were often given access to the monarchs. The modern inclination would be to ostracize them and deny them access.

[Rushdoony] Yes that’s a very good question. The prophets of the Old Testament often had access to monarchs. Very often however it was because they stood at the side of a road when the king [laughs] was going by and stopped him and proclaimed the word of God to him. But at least they usually were not killed on the spot although some were. And in Hebrews we’re told that some were sawn asunder. Well, there was some residual respect for the covenant and they knew that the people had enough of a bad conscience that they did not act as contemptually of a prophet as some nowadays will. The word prophet in fact was turned into a word of contempt by the people because they resented them so, they were the bad news boys, always proclaiming something. Why didn’t they ever say something nice, wasn’t there anything nice about God? Well not when they were astray. So it became such a byword for a time for anyone who had bad news, oh, so you’re a prophet, that was the adjective [??]. And Amos said no, I’m not a prophet, I’m just a fig picker from [unknown] but I do have the word of God for you. So God proclaimed his truth through people who were not part of the respectable establishment and Amos made it clear how unrespectable he was. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well he’s a very gracious man, where did you see Father [unknown]?

[Same person talks]

[Rushdoony] Oh, well he was a very fine man and I am sorry that he is no longer in [unknown] I’ve heard that he’s passed away. Well if there are no further questions or comments let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, make us strong and faithful and unwavering prophets to our children and our children’s children. That to the end of time they may be Thine. Make us a witness to Thy law that the wages of sin have not changed, that they are still death for men and for nations. Give us grace day by day to be Thy faithful servants and now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.