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The Nature of Prophets and Prophecy in the Bible and Mormonism

Since one of the gravest charges leveled at Joseph Smith in the video is that he is disqualified from being in the same league as biblical prophets, then it seems only appropriate to explore the nature of prophets and prophecy in the Bible and LDS thought.

The video notes that Deuteronomy 18:20-22 is the standard test for determining a false prophet from a true prophet. Kramer informs us that “Deuteronomy 18:21 asks the question, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’… The next verse answers this question. ‘If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.’”

This seems simple enough, and we are meant to think so. After all, the verses appear to be remarkably straightforward: if X, in the name of Yahweh, utters a predication of future events and the event comes to pass, then X is a true prophet. If X utters a prediction in the name of Yahweh and the event does not come to pass, then X is a false prophet and must be summarily executed for false prophecy and taking Yahweh’s name in vain. Or, as Kramer defines it,

a prophet is someone who claims God is speaking through them. So how can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord? The answer is the test of a prophet. Here’s how it works. Since only God knows the future people can test a prophet by how accurately he predicts the future. If even one of his predictions does not take place or come true that prophet fails the test. And if a prophet fails than God commands the people to put him to death and to not be afraid of him.

While most individuals may think that this is indeed a rather logical, straightforward test, a more careful look reveals that Kramer’s simplistic characterization of Deuteronomy 18 is unwarranted, and thus his misrepresentation of the nature of prophets in both the biblical and LDS traditions is not warranted. In fact things are much more complicated than Kramer would like us to think.

First, it should be noted that Deuteronomy 18 does not present one, but two tests of a prophet. The first is that of his prophetic call, and the second pertains to that of his prophetic accuracy. Verse 15 shows that the first test is that of one being called of God. This differentiates between prophets called of Yahweh and pagan oracles. The verse is the direct continuation of verse 14, indicating that Israel is to turn to prophets for the services that pagans seek from diviners and magicians. Since prophets are raised up by God, who will put His word in their mouths, they are His agents, and by turning to them one turns to God. As with many prophets, in the LDS view Joseph Smith was call by God because he saw, in vision, God the Father and His Son (cf. Ezekiel 1), was forgiven of his sins (cf. Isaiah 6) and, in later life, understood that this vision was the beginning of his call as a prophet of God.

As for the rest of the deuteronomic test, it would be unwise to absolutize the passage in the way that The Bible vs. Joseph Smith and other critics do. Instead, the scholarly view is that one is to understand the passage to mean that, unless significant historical contingencies interrupt, whether stated or not in the prophecy itself, the oracle should come to pass. This is a key factor that must be considered.

For example, in Micah 3:12, the prophet predicts the inevitable downfall of Jerusalem. This passage provides the only unambiguous instance in the Hebrew Bible of a prophetic message being specifically referred to in another prophetic collection, for it is discussed in Jeremiah 26:18-19. Jerusalem, however, had not fallen; but this does not mean that Micah was dismissed or condemned as a false prophet on the grounds that his prophecy had not been fulfilled, as Kramer’s reading would require. Rather, the claim is made that Hezekiah’s repentance had led Yahweh to change his mind and spare the city, and such a claim cannot readily be refuted. With his commitment to biblical inerrancy and sufficiency, Kramer is certainly in no position to dispute it.

Indeed, many of the prophecies in the Bible are, either implicitly or explicitly, contingent upon other circumstances. Furthermore, applying the all-or-nothing hermeneutic of Kramer, one will have to dismiss, not just Micah, but other prophets and even angels of God! For instance, in one biblical account we read:

There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren, having borne no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Although you are barren, having borne no children, you shall conceive and bear a son. Now be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, or to eat anything unclean, for you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor is to come on his head, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.’ Then the woman came and told her husband, ‘A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like that of an angel* of God, most awe-inspiring; I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name; but he said to me, ‘You shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth to the day of his death’” (Judges 13:2-7, New Revised Standard Version).

Notice how the angel of the Lord prophecies, without any conditions attached, that Samson would be a Nazarite, free his people from bondage, and would refrain from alcoholic beverages and unclean foods. And yet not a single one of these were fulfilled, as we read subsequently in the Book of Judges. What are we to make of this? Obviously prophecies are, by their nature, contingent upon historical events and individuals, as stated above.

Another good example of a prophecy that failed miserably, applying Kramer’s standards, is that of 2 Samuel 7:5-17. Here we read that the prophet Nathan unequivocally prophesied to David that through his son, Solomon, the Davidic Empire would be established “forever,” that the children of Israel would dwell in the promised land “and move no more,” and that the “children of wickedness” would no longer affect them. These things are quite clearly stated. No conditions are attached to these clear promises, yet this clearly did not prove successful.

Examples of God’s contingent foreknowledge are part and parcel of the biblical text. 1 Samuel 23:1-4 records one of the clearest instances; David’s free-will decision, based on the contingencies that God gives him, prevents the occurrence of a harmful event foreseen by God.

Many critics will appeal to texts such as Malachi 3:6 to claim the effect that God does not change his mind, and, furthermore, such texts that speak of God changing His mind (e.g., Gen 6:6) are to be relegated as mere “anthropomorphisms.” Notwithstanding, such an approach is based on pure eisegesis. The context of Malachi 3:6 specifies that God’s exchangeability refers only to His unchanging willingness to forgive if the sinner repents, not that God cannot change His mind about previous decisions or about contingencies that arise in accordance with man’s free-will decisions (cf. Jeremiah 18:7-10).

Other passages which indicate that God “does not change” (e.g., Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29; Psalm 110:4; James 1:17) refer only to God’s inability to lie, take back an oath He made, tempt one to sin, or reverse decisions based on a capricious whim, since these would be adverse to His divine character.

Exodus 32-33 is a very potent example of (1) God changing his mind and (2) God’s personal nature. Let us look at it in point by point format:

God determines to destroy all of Israel for worshipping the golden calf.

Moses pleads with God to relent, reiterating the promise to Abraham and the potential mockery from Egypt.

God rescinds His threat to destroy all of Israel, yet punishes the leading perpetrators.

Moses spends 40 days prostrate and fasting to appease God for Israel’s sin.

Although temporarily appeased, God refuses to go with the Israelites through the desert, because they are so “stiff-necked” he “might destroy them on the way.”

Moses pleads again with God to change His mind.

God changes His mind and decides to go with them.

God then remarks on the intimate relationship He has with Moses as the basis of His decision to change His mind.

God confirms this intimate relationship by showing Moses part of His actual appearance.

These, and other texts, refute Kramer’s all-or-nothing, absolutistic approach to the test in Deuteronomy 18.

Jewish Readings of Deuteronomy 18

The Jewish Study Bible, an indispensable resource in studying the Old Testament, offers important commentary on the meaning and application of Deuteronomy 18:

The prophet’s oracles do not originate from other deities, from dead spirits, from skilled manipulation of objects, or from the prophet’s own reflections. God instead affirms, I will put My words in his mouth. The prophet reiterates the word of Israel’s God. That metaphorical promise is reused in the call narrative of Jeremiah {Jer. 1:9} and then dramatically enacted in Ezekiel’s call, where the metaphor is taken literally {Ezek. 2:9-3:3}. 20: Having established an Israelite model of prophecy, the law provides two criteria to distinguish true from false prophecy. The first is that the prophet should speak exclusively on behalf of God, and report only God’s words. Breach of that rule is a capital offense {Jer. 28:12-17}. 21-23: The second criterion makes the fulfillment of a prophet’s oracle the measure of its truth. That approach attempts to solve a critical problem: If two prophets each claim to speak on behalf of God yet make mutually exclusive claims – {1 Kings 22:6, 17; Jer. 27:8 versus 28:2} – how may one decide which prophet speaks the truth? The solution offered is not free from difficulty. If a false prophet is distinguished by the failure of his oracle to come true, then making a decision in the present about which prophet to obey becomes impossible. Nor can this criterion easily be reconciled with 13.3, which concedes that the oracles of false prophets might come true. Finally, the prophets frequently threatened judgment hoping to bring about repentance {Jer. Ch 7; 26:1-6} If the prophet succeeds, and the people repent and thereby avert doom {Jonah chs 3-4}, one would assume the prophet to be authentic, since he has accomplished God’s goal of repentance. Yet according to the criteria here {but contrast Jer. 28.9} the prophet who accomplished repentance is nonetheless a false prophet, since the judgment oracle that was proclaimed remains unfulfilled. These texts, with their questions and differences of opinion on such issues, reflect the vigorous debate that took place in Israel about prophecy.

We thus discover from the investigation of the Jewish Study Bible authors that, contrary to Kramer’s fundamentalist, do-or-die reading of Deuteronomy 18, there is much more complexity and subtlety to the nature of biblical prophets and prophecies. Of paramount importance is the fact that the uttered prophecy is contingent upon cultural, personal, historic or theological circumstances that may change the course of the fulfillment of the prophecies. As the above commentary suggests, let us turn our attention to the evidence for this view as presented in the case of Jonah and Nineveh.

Jonah was called of God to proclaim the downfall of the great Assyrian capital of Nineveh, and that the city would be destroyed in 40 days (Jonah 3:4). Period. No loopholes or conditions were given for the prophecy. No explicit escape clause was provided wherein the people could escape the imminent doom through repentance and Yahweh would change His mind and stay His hand. However, that is exactly what the people did and that is exactly how Yahweh reacted. Jonah 3:5 reports that the people “believed God, and proclaimed a fast” and repented of their wickedness. In response God did not destroy Nineveh and its inhabitants, despite what Jonah had earlier prophesied. Jonah in turn was incensed (Jonah 4:1) that God would back down from His previous decree, and the rest of the book of Jonah is spent in accounting for God’s justification of the whole affair. Thus, to summarize:

Jonah, a prophet, proclaimed that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days with no qualifiers or loopholes.

The people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness and turned to God.

God, who had previously declared the seemingly sealed fate of Nineveh, was turned to mercy with the repentance of the people.

God, therefore, spared Nineveh from destruction, thus overturning Jonah’s earlier prophecy.

Jonah, perhaps because the failure of his prophecy made him look bad in the eyes of the people, becomes enraged that God would alter his decrees.

We can thus see from this example that the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament were contingent upon the circumstances and development of the events foretold in the prophecy. It would seem that prophecy in the Old Testament was highly conditional, and not as straightforward as Kramer would have us believe.

If we apply Kramer’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 18 to the example above, then Jonah becomes a false prophet who merits death. After all, he made a prophecy in the name of the Lord that didn’t come to pass. In Kramer’s reading, this is enough to make him a false prophet. Is Kramer willing to allow such a thing? Is he willing to concede that, based on his own standard, Jonah, as well as other Old Testament prophets for that matter, are false prophets? I suspect not, given his general inclinations to uphold the Bible as God’s infallible word. But the whole episode of Jonah once again goes to demonstrate that the Bible’s standard of a true or false prophecy is much more than just whether or not the words of the prognosticator who proclaimed the prophecy were fulfilled or not.

LDS Readings of Deuteronomy 18

John Tvedtnes provides some excellent points in his analysis of Deuteronomy 18, including the insight that “the Deuteronomy passage does not say that a man is a false prophet because his prophecy failed, only that the failed prophecy is false. This being the case, it is incorrect to conclude, as most critics do, that one false prophecy (even if some true prophecies are given) makes Joseph Smith a false prophet.” After expanding on the conditional nature of prophecy in the Old Testament and how the critics’ standards condemn biblical prophets just as they condemn Joseph Smith, Tvedtnes explores how the Latter-day Saints regard prophets and the nature of prophecy. He quotes Joseph Smith as saying “a prophet [is] a prophet only when he was acting as such”. The Saints reject the idea of prophetic infallibility or inerrancy. While the Saints acknowledge that the President of the Church, his counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are “prophets, seers, and revelators”, they do not believe that every word and every pronouncement made by these inspired men are revelations from God or official Church doctrine. President Joseph Fielding Smith, for example, insisted that

it makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside. My words, and the teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them. Let us have this matter clear. We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man’s doctrine. You cannot accept the books written by the authorities of the Church as standards in doctrine, only in so far as they accord with the revealed word in the standard works.

Michael R. Ash, in a wonderful volume published in 2008, explored this theme and concluded that the Saints, as well as critics of the Church, need to be careful in not applying an impossible standard of perfection to biblical or modern prophets. After all, Ash notes, prophets are human beings just like you or me, and thus are prone to the same foibles and follies that all other human beings are subject to. Furthermore, we need not assume that prophets are not allowed to have their own opinions, speculations and personal beliefs that may not necessarily be the revealed word of the Lord, but merely their own views.

Thus, although the Saints wholeheartedly sustain and support their prophets and apostles, they do not expect them to be infallible or perfect. This allows a comfortable balance in Mormon leaders between prophetic decree and revealed doctrine with reasonable doctrinal or scriptural commentary and expounding for the Saints’ edification and guidance.

Returning to Tvedtnes, we are informed that,

there are several basic problems with the various published (and unpublished) criticisms of Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling. But two of these appear to drive all the rest. The first is the predetermined view of the critics that the Bible contains all the revelation God ever gave to man or ever will give. This means that there can no longer be any prophets. By this reasoning, Joseph Smith is a priori a “false prophet.” The second problem is a natural consequence of the first: Since Joseph Smith must be a false prophet, all the evidence is interpreted in a manner to support that view.

Such prejudiced attitudes make any attempt at a relatively objective non-Mormon exploration into the prophecies of Joseph Smith unlikely, which is truly unfortunate if not unsurprising. Notwithstanding, there are answers to the allegations that Kramer and other critics of Joseph Smith raise, answers which Kramer, not surprisingly, uniformly omits from his presentation in the video.

In short, the approach to Deuteronomy 18 taken by Kramer in The Bible vs. Joseph Smith is rather myopic, and is one that reflects a poor biblical hermeneutic. Keep in mind Kramer’s claim that if even a single prophecy doesn’t come to pass, then the one who uttered it is a false prophet. (A condition, we have seen, that actually isn’t reflected in Deuteronomy 18.) This puts multiple biblical prophets in a bad light, since they cannot escape Kramer’s rigid, all-or-nothing reading of Deuteronomy 18. Is Kramer willing to risk the authenticity of the prophets of the Old Testament by applying his standard to them as well? If not, then he has constructed a double standard to differentiate biblical prophets with Joseph Smith and has fallen prey to a classic logical fallacy.

This Generation

Kramer spends some time on attacking Joseph Smith’s allegedly failed prophecy that a temple would be built in Independence, Missouri in “this generation”:

Joseph Smith made his own predictions about the future, so he too can be tested. Recorded in Mormon scripture is a revelation given through Joseph Smith the prophet that was given in 1832, that a temple shall be built in Missouri. Joseph Smith predicted that the “…temple shall be reared in this generation. For the verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord,…” Just over a year later, the Mormons were forced to leave the area, and eventually the entire state of Missouri [picture shown of Exodus from Nauvoo] where the temple was prophesied to be built.

The video then shows black and white footage of the conspicuously empty Temple Lot where ground was dedicated for building the temple. The conclusion is inevitable, as Paul Trask “a former follower of Joseph Smith” wraps up the whole affair by pointing out that the Temple Lot is a “completely bare piece of ground with nothing but grass growing on it. And we’re certainly very far removed from the 1830s when that prophecy was given. So certainly this has to be counted as one of many failed prophesies by Joseph Smith.”

As we have discussed before, prophecy in a biblical context is by nature conditional. The fulfillment of prophecy is contingent upon the circumstances of those involved in the prophecy and the timetable or other variables given that play a factor in the fulfillment of the prophecy. A true prophet may therefore utter a true prophecy that may not necessarily come to pass because the conditions of the prophecy, whether or not those conditions were stipulated in the initial prophecy, direct the fulfillment to take a different course. And yet, even if the contingencies associate with the prophecies ensure that the prophecy doesn’t come to pass, that doesn’t make the one who uttered the prophecy a de facto false prophet.

We have already drawn attention to Jonah and Nineveh. Jonah is still a true prophet even if his prophecy didn’t come to pass. Why so? Because conditions arose that altered the course of the prophecy and the ultimate outcome of the oracle. So it very well could be with Joseph Smith prophesying that a temple would be built in his generation. It may have been a legitimate prophesy that was expected to be fulfilled in the lifetime of the first generation of Latter-day Saints. As the movie points out, albeit in an attempt to bring further condemnation on Mormonism, Elder Orson Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles fully expected the temple to be built in his generation. However, even if Elder Pratt did think such a thing, and there is no reason to doubt that he did, such only reflects Elder Pratt’s expectations and hopes. We have already noted that LDS prophets and apostles are entitled to their own opinions and views that may not necessarily be a reflection of the official stance of the Church. Furthermore, Orson Pratt clearly did not draw the conclusion that Kramer does, since he did not attack Joseph Smith or leave the Church—Pratt obviously understood something about the biblical and LDS understanding of prophecy that eludes Kramer. An author less self-assured than Kramer might suspect he had missed something.

It therefore seems to me that we could have a modern day example of Jonah and Nineveh with Joseph Smith and Missouri. The prophecy was uttered in full legitimacy, but conditions turned into such that the Lord altered his course or his purposes to fulfill his will. In the case of Jonah the inhabitants of the city of Nineveh repented of their sins and destruction was avoided, even though there was no stipulated condition in the initial prophecy. With Joseph Smith the Saints of Missouri were driven from the state by wild and ferocious mobs and thus any possible construction of the temple was barred.

It should be noted also that this is not the only possible interpretation of the Independence Temple matter. The FAIR Wiki offers a response to this supposedly failed prophecy that is both reasonable and defendable. In short, the article argues that instead of being a prophecy the revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 84:2-5 was a commandment; in this case the word “shall” was being used as a directive, not a prediction, as in the “thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments. The article also discusses the meaning of the word “generation” and how it applies to a 19th century American context. And finally the article discusses the double standard employed by critics such as Kramer when one considers the prophecy given by Jesus in Matthew 24/Luke 21. It essentially argues that “Joseph Smith’s revelation in D&C 84 may appear on the surface to be a failed prophecy, but a more informed reading reveals that it may not have been a prophecy, and if it is, its fulfillment is still in the future.”

Whatever the explanation may be, there is more to the revelation given in D&C 84 than Kramer wants to allow. Because of his narrow reading of Deuteronomy 18 and his uninformed understanding of the nature of biblical prophecy, Kramer hastily concludes that D&C 84 is simply a failed prophecy. This conclusion, however, doesn’t square with all the possible explanations.

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