Prophets - Deuteronomy 18

Chapter 18 is also short, just 22 verses but contains a very interesting topic. The first topic Moses covers here is the Levites and reiterates that they won’t have any inheritance of land and that they are to sustain themselves (and presumably their families) through the sacrifices offered, specifically the sacrifices of the first fruits, which is the offerings of the first born animal and produce.

The second and very interesting part has to do with prophets and the spiritual abilities of the people that are allowed. TB notes that at the time the Hebrews left Egypt, and really all the cultures around them, relied heavily on priestcraft as a dominant portion of their “spirituality”. TB points out that trying to decern the future has been a human focus since the dawn of time and really, it makes sense. I’m definitely guilty of this, especially right now, with the thing that happened in my family, I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to figure out why this happened, what could have been done to prevent it, what does it mean for the future, how is this all going to play out, and it is maddening. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus has been there every step of the way teaching me and trying to comfort me as much as I would allow, but I still get caught up in the “why” and “I hate it,” almost daily. I’ve never asked “why” before, never in everything that I’ve suffered my whole life, I’ve never asked “why” until now. I have been plagued with terror of the future and trying to figure out the why because if I can figure out the why, then maybe I can figure out what’s going to happen, and maybe that’s the point, I can’t. I can’t figure out what’s going to happen, so I need to just calm down, take what Jesus has taught me and trust Him. And man that is hard. I’ve always trusted in the future being better, but I don’t now and that’s the worst part I guess, what if my life is just like this forever? What if it’s just perpetually worse suffering until I die? Maybe that’s what will happen, I guess the question is, what will I do if it does? All this to say, I understand being obsessed with knowing the future.

Moses condemns all the fortune teller stuff at the time such as divination, “observer of times” enchanter, witch, wizard, charmer, necromancer, or “a consulter with familiar spirits,” and also to not allow their children to become sacrifices to idols. Anyone who does “the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee.” TB says that anyone doing this should be put to death, but that might be a different interpretation. I had a really good friend once ask me if I would go to the palm reader with her. She was having some family problems and wanted to go to this fortune teller for guidance and I was taken aback because I had never been asked to go to one of those before. I didn’t go with her and I don’t know if she ended up going without me but I thought about that a lot because I see the appeal and these people have to be right a lot of the time or else everyone would know that they were wrong and never go to them. So how are they right often enough to convince very smart people that they are legit? My guess is that Satan is very old, and he knows everything that has happened. So like if someone was going to ask a fortune teller what happened to a person they love then because it’s past tense, Satan would know and would have the ability to tell that person what happened, if he wanted to. Maybe it’s not even that complicated, maybe just giving vague enough answers is enough. Maybe it’s just playing off human emotions and giving hope where wanted is enough to make them want to believe that whatever they said is true. Of course Satan doesn’t know the specific future, maybe broad things generally but he is very old and probably very good at human psychology and manipulation. If he works through these people at all, then it would be that, is my guess. The overarching theme of all this is that God doesn’t work through mediums, He doesn’t allow the dead to talk to us through other people in mystical ways, even though there have been instances of dreams and stuff like that. But that isn’t someone advertising their gifts and asking for customers, that’s more like someone being a conduit and it’s a really weird experience. I’m not exactly sure how to categorize that into everything because it’s possible for Satan to give dreams to someone about someone else even if it’s unsolicited, probably for the purpose of manipulating someone’s testimony. I’m going to have to think about that.

Verse 15 is important because it says, “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.” This is important because when Jesus appears to the Nephites like 2,000 years later he says, “Behold, I am he of whom Moses spake, saying: A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me.” The IM notes that there are 4 other instances where scripture “refer to the prophet like unto Moses” and lists: Acts 3:22-23, 1 Nephi 22:21, 3 Nephi 20:23; JS-H 1:40. The IM continues that in all these instances they were referring to Jesus Christ. Additionally, Moses reminds them that they asked for a prophet because back at mount Horeb, God tried speaking to the people directly and they were too scared so they asked Moses to be the mediator between God and the people. But now Moses was old and knew that he wasn’t going to go with them to the promised land, so he knew that over time more prophets would come forward to lead the people, so he’s setting expectations for them so that they can know who is actually a prophet and who is not because the position of prophet among a religious people is the ultimate power for a person who is just there for the power and not for the good of the people.

The rest of the chapter seems to be talking about “the prophet” that will be raised up later which is Jesus, the TB and the IM both took the opportunity to talk about how we can know if a certain person is a prophet. It’s such an interesting concept, having and being a prophet because there are the dual natures of the position. One side is incredibly powerful, so much so that they can call down fire from heaven in many cases, or prayers powerful enough to cause immediately beginning and ends of famine and drought, raise the dead, heal the sick, all that, incredibly powerful. The flip side of that though is that they have to be so humble that they only try to use that power to pursue the will of God. If a prophet tries to use that power to do something that is not God’s will, “even that prophet shall die” and the thing commanded won’t happen, so there’s not real risk of having something happen that is contrary to God’s will. But in that same vein in order to use that power, the prophet has to be so in tune with God’s will, and so humble that they wouldn’t even dare consider doing anything that He doesn’t want, but then you have to be so spiritually in tune to know what that thing is. It’s a very seemingly contradictory characteristic to have. How does one maintain pure power from God, because wielding that power comes with certain personality characteristics, you have to believe that what you ask for will happen. When Elijah called down that fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices for Baal, he had to know that when he did so, that fire was coming. That is confidence that almost always accompanies inflated ego, but in his case and in that of other prophets, he was confident enough to know that it would happen if he asked, but not so self-absorbed that he knew the will of God in that moment to ask for it. Like, does that make any sense, the seemingly contradictory nature of those two characteristics of the prophets? The amount of responsibility that a prophet of any time must feel to be in compliance with both God’s message and adequate humility must be crushing.

Interestingly, I haven’t thought about that aspect of our current prophets though. Maybe it’s because I know more about them personally that I’m like looking sideway, Is it because I know more about them as people because I live in their time as opposed to reading about their highlights hundreds or thousands of years later? Is it because there hasn’t been fire called down from heaven in quite some time that makes me think, meh. I’m going to have to think about this as well. I’m just going to end this with a quote from TB’s teaching on this that I thought was really good. He said, “Even God’s greatest prophets worried constantly about whether to tell the people what they believed God told them. They often had doubts about whether they were correct; they wondered whether or not what had actually entered their minds was indeed divine in origin. Or was it their imaginations working overtime, or even worse? God’s greatest prophets knew that being chose as His prophet didn’t mean THEY were incapable of being wrong, it only meant that GOD was incapable of being wrong. Therefore all of God’s prophets were by definition ‘reluctant’ prophets in every sense, in that they weren’t seeking to be a Prophet when God called them and they weren’t even sure they wanted the job when the Lord gave them the message. They were usually full of doubts about whether to actually deliver the Lord’s message to the people… while being a prophet is a great and honorable thing, it is fraught with danger and difficulty. It’s not something to be sought after. Telling someone what you believe to be a word from the Lord is no trivial thing, and the Bible’s prophets are the greatest example of that.”

One of the things that I think is hard is that we don’t know what’s going on in anyone else’s head except our own. We can hear people’s stories, we can talk and ask questions to others but we really don’t know the depths of what’s going on in someone else’s mind. What do they think about all the time, what does God say to them, what messages do they receive, what do they feel their purpose is, etc. I don’t want any positions of responsibility, I’m exhausted with life, and I’ve been crushed by responsibility since I could walk. I want to spend the rest of my life sitting in a rocking chair watching the sunset. On the other hand, I do want to do what God wants me to do, which is a new development. So the question remains, am I doing enough, am I doing the right thing, what else does He want from me? Are my effort substantially less than that of the prophets, again not so that I can become one, but because I want to know what the standard is and try to meet it. Lot’s to think about from this small chapter.