How do we know the prophets weren't lying? How do we know that they actually were
prophets and they weren't just saying, you know, like making it up?
So, in a variety of ways. Number one, the prophets that are honored
as prophets in scripture made true predictions
that go beyond random chants. And in fact, making true predictions was one
of the criteria for identifying prophets.
At one point in the book of Deuteronomy,
God is talking to the Israelites about how they're not to use the ancient
equivalent of mediums to conjure up the
dead, mediums and sorcerers, and that's not how they're going to get their
information. They're going to get their information
instead when God raises up a prophet, like Moses, and
announces his word to them. And then there's a discussion of, well,
suppose you say "How will we know when a prophet is of the Lord,
when he's really giving us God's word?" And God gives them two tests. The first
test is a doctrinal test.
So one of the things that God has revealed is that you're not to worship
any other gods. You're Israelites, He's made a covenant
with you, you're only going to worship the God of Israel.
And so if a prophet, someone holding himself out to be a prophet,
says "Let's go worship other gods," well that's in conflict with what God has
already revealed, and so you know He's not giving you the
word of God, he's just giving you his own ideas.
He's got false religious ideas and so you don't
listen to that guy. The second test dealt with "Well, how do
you know he's not just making it up? How do you know he's
saying something that's doctrinally orthodox but
it's just his imagination or he's hoaxing or something like that?"
And the answer there is: a prophet would appoint a sign,
meaning he would make a prediction that couldn't
be expected naturally to come true. Now if you
make certain predictions like
"We're gonna have the sun rise tomorrow," or "It's gonna
rain during the rainy season," those are predictions anybody could make. So in
order for it to constitute a sign from God, it would need to be a
prediction that goes well beyond what reason would allow you to predict,
and even beyond what random chance would allow you to predict.
And the prophets that did that got a reputation for making predictions
that they couldn't have naturally known, and
that would point to them at being in touch with a supernatural
source of information. And if they then passed the doctrinal
test, so they weren't teaching you something
in conflict with what God had already revealed,
that would serve as evidence that they were indeed genuine prophets of God.
So that's how people, at the time that the prophets were ministering,
would recognize a genuine prophet. We also have later confirmation
of this, because Jesus is proved to be the Son of God and the
messiah by his resurrection from the dead,
which we have very good evidence for apologetically,
and Jesus regarded these figures as genuine prophets.
And so since we can trust Jesus, we can trust those prophets.