I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 18-20.
There are several things in today’s passage which I want to highlight. I am not sure if my thoughts on them are connected, we will see together as I write them out. God forbids sacrificing children. Connected directly with that are the practices of fortune telling, witchcraft, casting spells, and speaking with the dead. When I read the prohibition against sacrificing children I think of the segments of modern society who treat abortion as a sacrament. However, I had never noticed the connection between sacrificing babies and the other things mentioned here. Now that I noticed the connection made here it strikes me that I believe the same connection is made throughout the Old Testament. Further, it seems to me that many of those who promote abortion today believe in witchcraft, divination, and speaking with the dead (and vice versa).
Moses tells us that God will raise up prophets from time to time and that God will personally deal with anyone who refuses to listen to the messages those prophets deliver. Most importantly, Moses tells us how to recognize such a prophet. If the prophet speaks in God’s name and what they say does not happen, or come true, they spoke without God’s authority. We need to pay close attention to this, whether we are listening to such a prophet or we believe that we have been given a prophetic word from God. There are numerous examples of men throughout my lifetime who sought to increase the clout of their ministry by making dire predictions. A few of them were men who, until that point, I had held in high esteem as men of God. When their predictions failed to come true, I dismissed them as spokesmen for God. In each case, I believe they saw troubling things going on in our society and that those things would lead to disaster. I believe they were correct in this part, but, in order to get people to change, they spoke a message on God’s behalf which God had not given them. I believe that they were correct that the things they observed in our society will lead to disaster. At the time, I believed (and was proven correct) that it would take longer for that disaster to come than they predicted. It seems to me that they made their prediction in order to cause their listeners to view these problems with greater urgency, but, by doing so, they exceeded the authority which God had given them.