The Test for a Latter-day Prophet

A Protestant minister I know through written communications recently forwarded me an email wherein he attacked the Prophet Joseph Smith saying he was a false prophet because of certain Biblical scriptures which he claims are to be used to test latter-days prophets.

After checking the web, I found the following information on this so-called test.

A number of Protestants preach that because prayer is fallible, one should not rely on personal prayer to determine whether a prophet is called of God or not.

The Bible never says to test a prophet by prayer, but by his message. Deuteronomy 13 warns that a prophet must teach correctly about God. Chapter 18 tells us the prophet's prophecies must come to pass. Paul tells us in Galatians 1:8-9 that even angels can appear with a wrong message. We are to compare the message with the teachings of the apostles. (How Do we Test a Prophet?) (bold added)

Millions of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pray to receive a "testimony" of the truthfulness of the Church and believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. They base this knowledge largely on a Book of Mormon passage, Moroni 10:4, that if you ask sincerely ask God "if these things are not true he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost."

Mormons reason that the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, the LDS Church, and Joseph Smith can be "tested" according to Moroni 10:4. In fact, verse five indicates by this test, "ye may know the truth of all things." The problem with a subjective test of this sort is that many religions have followers that are sincere and pray. The Moslems pray five times a day facing Mecca and they have a sincere testimony that Mohammed was a true prophet and the Koran the word of God. Likewise, Jehovah's Witnesses believe in prayer and their "anointed" followers are convinced that they have the testimony of God's Spirit that their organization is true.

The Bible makes it clear that there are other spirits besides the Holy Spirit who can be very “seducing” and even teach “doctrines” (1 Timothy 4:1). This is why 1 John 4:1 warns: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try [Greek dokimazo “test] the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” Testing the spirits is necessary because of “many false prophets” in the world. What is the test for a prophets? … The test for a prophet is found in Deuteronomy 18:20-22. This scripture teaches that a prophet must be tested by checking his prophecies. Also, Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” This is not telling us to examine a prophet’s good works. Many false prophets have led moral lives. The fruit of a fig tree is its figs. The fruit of a prophet is his prophecies. One false prophecy (even if some true prophecies are given) and that person is a false prophet. It does not matter how sincere he or his followers are. It does not matter how often his followers pray or what feelings they seem to receive in answer to their prayers. He is a false prophet. (Joseph Smith and the BiblicalTest of a Prophet) (bold added)

These anti-Mormons insist the Bible does not, according to their reasoning, advocate use of personal prayer to get an answer from God, claiming instead that the converts in the Bible resorted to testing by reason and logic, by comparing the prophetic teachings of the Apostles and the disciples with the Old Testament, since there was no New Testament Bible at that time. Yet, in a letter to me, a Protestant minister said:

 “Third, there is a higher standard for Christian prophets and apostles under the new covenant than there was for Old Testament prophets. Men such as Abraham, Moses, and David did not have the benefit of being able to look back at the teaching and examples found throughout the Old Testament.” (Communication from an online Protestant Evangelist to Dennis Doddridge, bold added)

 This very disparity that some Protestants admit between the Old and the New Testament prophets, that the Old Testament prophets did not have the benefit to “look back,” is flawed. First, it implies that New Testament prophets looked back to earlier teachings as their source for inspiration rather than through revelation. And second, the Old Testament prophets did not even have that, so they get away with having a lower “standard.” Third, according to these Protestant apologists, the converts in Paul’s days were thus left to compare the new enlightened teachings they were hearing from the Disciples of Christ to the lower standard Old Testament scriptures without the benefit of personal prayer. That must been hard!

Presumptuous Prophets

But let us examine this scripture in Deuteronomy:

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. (Deut. 18:20-22, bold added)

Hmmm. Note this passage does not anywhere say the prophet is false, but only that his prophecy was spoken presumptuously. Dictionaries define “presumptuous” to mean:

Too confident especially in a way that is rude: done or made without permission, right, or good reason; taking liberties; (of a person or their behavior) failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or appropriate. (Merriam and Google Dictionaries, bold added).

“Presumptuously,” in the above quoted verse comes from the Hebrew word “zadon” meaning “pride, presumptuous.” (Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Robert Young, LL.D.). It does not mean “false.” Hebrew words denoting “false” are kazab, shav, and sheger.

There is a big difference between a prophet who spoke in error being declared a false prophet, and a prophecy that is an error. We can reject the error, but still respect the prophet, though we will not be “afraid” of him.

7 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 8 Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.

9 And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.

10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?

11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.

12 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. (Numbers 20:7-12, bold, italics added)

Moses failed to give God credit for bringing forth the water, saying that he and Aaron did it. This was presumptuous of Moses to do that. The Lord then punished him saying “therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land.” Does this single presumptuous act by Moses mean he is a false prophet? Shall we therefore take all of his laws and prophecies and dump them into the trash? Heaven forbid.

32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

33 For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.

35 And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

36  What?  came the word of God out from you?  or came it unto you only?

37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. (1 Cor. 14:32-37, bold added).

11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. (1 Tim. 2:11,12, bold added)

Dear reader, I used to be a Protestant (Assembly of God and Pentecostal persuasions). Our preacher back then was a wonderful, vivacious young woman named Mabel. She could work up the congregation until they were jumping out of their seats, running up and down the aisles, and “speaking in tongues.” But, she was a woman, and not a man. Not only did she not keep silence in the church, she was the loudest one! Quite frankly I do not know of a single Protestant sect that observes the above commandment of the Lord as Paul preached. And yet none of them feels they are accursed.

8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. (Gal.1:8, 9).

What then? Shall we say that Paul spoke presumptuously? Is he therefore a false prophet? Heaven forbid.

One might argue that we LDS Christians allow women to speak in the Churches. Well, we have living prophets, the Protestants have only dead ones they must adhere to. They do not have the privilege of changing or updating scriptural cultural mandates of earlier day prophets without usurping the authority of those prophets, thereby becoming prophets themselves – the very thing that they say we should not have in these days. But our living prophets today with authority of God say that Paul’s edict might have been appropriate in the cultures of his day, but now it is not suitable for God’s purposes.

There is another item of interest that should be brought up here. In less than 200 years since the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored, there is in all probability well over 100,000 pages of manuscripts, documents, Church articles, magazines, journals, and so on, written by the Church leaders, or those in authority. That would equal over 500 pages per year, and we can see that 100,000 pages is a low figure! This wealth of documents has given anti-Mormons a lot of data to find fault with. It would be impossible, given the mortal nature of man, not to find contradictions and error.

By contrast, the Bible is less than 1,500 pages covering thousands of years. That would be less than one page per year. Shall we assume that the prophets of olden times stayed mute, and had nothing to say about anything? That whatever and whenever they did say something, it was miraculously transcribed and preserved for us today? One page might read in five minutes. In 12 hours per day, we have over 262,000 minutes in a year. Nothing was said all that time but 5 minutes?

The truth is, if we had everything written down by the prophets and disciples that they taught and wrote over only 1,000 of the 4,000 years between Adam and Jesus, even at the rate of only 50 pages per day instead of 500, the Bible would be 50,000 pages in size. And there would be more errors, discrepancies, contradictions and so on to discover, many more than now.

Some have argued that today, we have 25,000 manuscript copies of the Bible from the first few centuries, and that number proves the Bible is true*. That is not logical.

Every year, several New Testament manuscripts handwritten in the original Greek format are discovered. The latest substantial find was in 2008, when 47 new manuscripts were discovered in Albania; at least 17 of them unknown to Western scholars. When comparing one manuscript to another, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two copies agree completely throughout. There has been an estimate of 400,000 variations among all these manuscripts (from the 2nd to 15th century) which is more than there are words in the New Testament. (Wikipedia.org).

 Still, the figure of 25,000 is meaningless. If I ran off 25,000 copies of the Bible today with a printing press, they would be nearly identical, except for perhaps an ink smudge or something. Will that number prove the Bible is true? In those first few centuries, the “printing press” was a small army of monks and individuals with writing skills and a lot of time! All things considered, they did a remarkable job.

Conclusion. The reason why anti-Mormons can devote their lives to finding fault with Christ’s true Church to discover some weaknesses, sins and errors by its members and leaders is because they (1) have a desire to do so, (2) there is such a vast wealth of material to dig into perchance to find faults lying here and there.

Did Joseph Smith or other prophets ever err, sin, or do anything less than absolute perfection? Of course they did and do – the same as in olden times. Joseph Smith admitted sinning or doing wrong a number of times, and some of them are recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants. In D&C 132 we find that despite he having his exaltation sealed upon him (D&C 132:49), his wife Emma was counselled to “forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses” (D&C 132:56), and that God will require a “sacrifice … for his trespasses” (D&C 132:60). What were those trespasses? I am not Joseph’s judge, God is. And I am quite happy that they will work it out and not depend on my input. It is none of my business. Suffice it to say, that Joseph will pay for them, be forgiven, and then exalted.

Despite any errors and sins on the part of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Paul, Moses, or any other prophet of God, they were still true prophets of God nonetheless. Are there any false prophets out there in the world? Yes, of course. But we need not be afraid of their false prophecies.

Should we pray for inspiration to know whether these things that are taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are true or not, or shall we rely on Protestant wisdom of scholars, ancient manuscript copies of the original Bible books, and one's ability to reason?

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa. 55:8,9).

John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26, bold added).

1 THIS know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. … 7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (2 Tim. 3:1-7, bold added)

I think those three verses say quite a bit. God's ways and thoughts are not like mortals. Mortals will have a difficult, if not an impossible, time trying to reason out what God is doing and what He means, without personal inspiration.

God says He will give us the Holy Ghost to teach us all things, such as whether Joseph Smith was a prophet. So the prophet Moroni joins with John and Jesus in advocating personal revelation. But, beware. In the last days will come those who rely on scholarly learning and a consensus of the abundance of ancient copies of the original books in the Bible for their testimonies rather than direct revelation from the Holy Ghost, in essence false prophets. We needn't be afraid of them.
What is the correct way to test a latter-day Prophet? Personal revelation with research and study. The following is good advice of the Lord to Oliver Cowdery. While these verses refer to translating the Book of Mormon, it can also apply to gaining a testimony.
Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.
8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. (D&C 9:7,8 bold added)
Dennis Doddridge

Notes:
* I would cite an example from a Protestant writer's book claiming this argument, but the book says it is not permitted to quote from it. Nevertheless, I have heard this position before from others.
Update: 03Jun15, 18Dec16: fixed a few typos and minor changes, and added my name to the end of the article. "with research and study" added.
04Jun15: Added the D&C9 verses at the end of the article, and the lead-in to it beginning with "The following...."