Monday, August 1, 2022

Micah the False Prophet

According to one of the most disingenuous and dimmest critics of the Church (some, myself included, call him the Ralph Wiggum of anti-Mormonism):

 

Joseph Smith is unquestionably a False Prophet according to the Biblical Criteria. Remember, you only have to fail one of these four tests to qualify as a False Prophet.


Of course, this critic is guilty of eisegesis and misrepresentation of all 4 tests of a prophet, but let us focus on the test focusing on fulfillment of prophecy. If he were to be consistent (which would be a novelty for him), then he would have to conclude that Micah was a false prophet.

 

In Mic 3:12, we read the following prophecy:

 

Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.

 

That this was a failed prediction is confirmed by none other than the prophet Jeremiah who offers an apologetic for its non-fulfillment (like how LDS apologists offer an apologetic for purportedly unfulfilled prophecies of Joseph Smith):

 

Micah the Morasthite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and spake to all the people of Judah, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest. Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? did he not fear the Lord, and besought the Lord, and the Lord repented him of the evil which he had pronounced against them? Thus might we procure great evil against our souls. (Jer 26:18-19)

 

Consider also the following from commentaries:

  

The quotation of Micah 3:12 in Jeremiah 26:18 introduces a new element with which to assess the authenticity of Jeremiah. The destruction of Jerusalem, prophesied by Micah, had moved Hezekiah and the people to turn to the Lord, causing his repentance (v. 19). (Benedetta Rossi, “Jeremiah,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary for the Twenty-First Century, ed. John J. Collins, Gina Hens-Piazza, Barbara Reid, and Donal Senior [3d ed.; London: T&T Clark, 2022], 915)


12. cp. Jer 2617-19. The people of Jeremiah’s time, angered by his prophecies of disaster, wished to put him to death. Some of the elders reminded them that, when Micah denounced a like judgment, Hezekiah, instead of killing him, repented at his words, and so averted the disaster. This implies that the religious minds of that time recognized how true prophecy is always conditional, and how the fulfilment of its predictions is conditional on the attitude men take to them. (J.R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible [London: Macmillan and Co., 1909], 581)


[Mic 3:12] provides the only unambiguous instance of the Hebrew Bible of a prophetic message being specifically referred to in another prophetic collection, for it is discussed in Jer. 26:18-19. Jerusalem 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. 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. For those accepted as being within the true prophetic succession ideological support could be provided, and non-fulfilment of a particular prophecy was not an insuperable barrier for those who were so accepted. (Richard J. Coggins, “Prophecy—True and False,” in  Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages: Essays in Honor of R. Norman Whybray on his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Heather A. McKay and David J. A. Clines [Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 162; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993], 90)

 

If this critic were to be consistent, they would have to conclude thusly:

Micah is unquestionably a False Prophet according to the Biblical Criteria. Remember, you only have to fail one of these four tests to qualify as a False Prophet. Micah clearly failed the test concerning the fulfillment of prophecy.

Or maybe, just maybe, Fred is basing his arguments on eisegesis and lousy research (the only consistent thing about the Ralph Wiggum of anti-Mormonism is being consistently deceptive and ignorant).


Further Reading: