False prophecies

(Book excerpt)

False Prophecies
In Ezekiel 13, Jehovah addresses the false prophets of Israel
directly, through the prophet.

The first kind of prophet mentioned here is the one who
masquerades as a traditional prophet of Jehovah, but who invents his messages
order to please his audience.  Such
prophets do not tackle the difficult or unpleasant topics (13:5), but instead
behave as “jackals in the ruins,” that is, they look to disaster as an
opportunity to enrich themselves.  These
prophets have benefited a great deal by soothing the anxieties of the people,
telling them what they want to hear.  But
in doing so, they actually increase the misery of the people, by encouraging
them not to repent.

A great curse comes on those who claim to proclaim the word
of God in order to enrich themselves. 
This angers God greatly.  Those
who do this always distort that word and appeal to man’s sinful desires, since
these tactics will always be more profitable than telling people the
uncomfortable truth about sin and repentance. 
God uses the example of a city that is under siege, when  the wall is breached and the enemy starts to
come into the gap.  This is the point at
which the best and bravest of the city must rush to the gap to defend the city
and heal the breach.  Once they have
repulsed the enemy, they can  rebuild the
wall with a temporary barrier.  The
prophets of Israel
were supposed to warn Israel
of danger, and that is just what men like Ezekiel and Jeremiah were doing, at
great cost to themselves. These false prophets, however, were simply keeping
themselves safe by telling people what they wanted to hear instead of the
truth.

Ezekiel extends the analogy with the discussion of
“untempered mortar” or possibly “whitewash.” 
The idea here is a wall that is built to look good superficially, but
isn’t really solid.  The word of the
false prophets is like that untempered mortar that people think is a solid
wall, and trust, but when the time of trial comes that wall collapses and ruins
them.

Those who claim to teach God’s word are asking people to
trust them with some of the most important issues in life.  A teacher is claiming to have true
information about what kind of behavior and belief pleases God and what kind of
choices will lead to life or death.  One
who teaches those truths had better be very sure that he actually teaches the
word of God.  Otherwise God’s wrath will
undoubtedly be upon him for misleading people and profiting from the disaster
that follows.  Imagine how angry you
would be if you paid a man a great deal of money to build a house for you, but
after it was built and the man paid, you discovered that his work was shoddy
and only looked good, and the house started to fall apart the first time the
wind blew.  Your money was wasted and
your life very nearly lost as a result. 
Yet people entrust the far more important matters of the truth of God’s
word to liars and charlatans all the time. 
The damage will not be as immediately evident as the damage done by a
deceitful builder, but will in the end be far worse.

The result, God says, is that these evil prophets will be
utterly excluded from God’s people (verse 9). 
They have deluded the people into thinking they have peace when they do
not.  God will expose these prophets’
falsehood by destroying their shoddy work so that all can see what frauds they
are.  The Babylonians will destroy the
temple just as the true prophets have foretold, and one result of this will be
that everyone will know the false prophets are liars and charlatans.

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book on the book of Ezekiel.  You can preorder a copy of the book on my Kickstarter page.  By backing this project for $10 or more, you will receive a signed copy of the book when it is published in a month or so.)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *