Public revelation and prophetic tests

You may belong to a faith that rests on a later messenger from God. If you are one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, you trust that Jehovah guides his people through the Governing Body, and that Bible prophecy pointed to 1914. If you are a Latter-day Saint, you believe God called Joseph Smith as a prophet. If you are a Muslim, you believe Muhammad was the final prophet, foretold, as the Qur’an says, in the Torah and the Gospel (Qur’an 7:157). Witnesses and Latter-day Saints accept these texts as Scripture. Muslims believe that God revealed the Torah to Moses, but do not necessarily accept the present Hebrew Bible as an independent authority. If you are Muslim, read the passages below as the Christian case from earlier texts, not as a standard you have already accepted.

Testing someone you love and trust can feel like disloyalty. The Bible treats it as the opposite. “Test all things. Hold fast to what is good,” Paul writes (1 Thessalonians 5:21). John says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Luke praises the Jews of Berea because they examined the Scriptures every day to see whether what Paul told them was true (Acts 17:11). They tested an apostle, and they were commended for it.

So Christians do not get to exempt themselves. Whatever test applies to a later prophet applies first to Jesus and the apostles.

The tests come from the Torah and the prophets.

• Agreement. A new message is measured against what God has already made known. Isaiah’s rule is “To the law and to the testimony!” If a message does not fit what God has said, the fault is in the message (Isaiah 8:20).
• Direction. Does the message lead people toward the one God, or away from him, toward another god or another gospel? (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)
• Fulfillment. When the prophet predicts something in God’s name, does it happen? (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)

None of these asks how sincere the prophet was, how strongly his followers felt, or how fast the movement grew. Those things are real, but they are true of many movements that contradict one another. What a prophet said, where it leads, and whether it came true are things anyone can check, believer or not.

The most surprising test is in Deuteronomy 13. Moses imagines a prophet whose sign or wonder actually happens, and who then says, “Let us follow other gods.” The answer is firm: “you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you” (Deuteronomy 13:1-3). A real sign does not prove a message. It can be the test.

Paul makes the same point about messengers. “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a curse!” (Galatians 1:8). He also warns that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

So grant, for the sake of argument, everything a movement reports: a healing, a vision, an angel, a book of great beauty, a sincere answer to prayer. The test still asks what the message says, and where it leads. This applies to private experience as well. A warm inner confirmation is precious to the person who receives it. Sincere people of many faiths report the same experience for messages that contradict one another, so it cannot be the deciding test on its own.

Deuteronomy 18 gives the plainest test: “When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the message does not come to pass or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

This test applies to any movement that has tied its authority to dates. The Watch Tower Society teaches that Bible chronology shows Christ began ruling invisibly in heaven in 1914, and that this is a key to understanding the present time. Before 1914, the Society’s publications expected that year to bring the end of the present world, not an invisible enthronement. Later publications raised hopes around 1925 and 1975. The Society describes its changes of teaching as “increasing light,” like the path of the righteous in Proverbs 4:18 that grows brighter.

You may find that explanation persuasive. Do not take anyone’s word against it, including this page’s: read what was published before each date, compare it with what happened, and set both beside Deuteronomy 18, the test Moses gave.

One objection is that this is circular: Christians choose their own Scriptures as the standard and then judge everyone else by them.

Two things answer that. First, the standard is shared with Witnesses and Latter-day Saints, who accept the Bible. Muslims accept that God revealed the Torah to Moses, but not necessarily that the present text can judge a later prophet independently of the Qur’an. For Muslim readers, this is a Christian argument from earlier texts, not an agreed test.

Second, Christianity puts itself under the same test. Paul stakes everything on a public event: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Corinthians 15:17). That claim can be checked, and the evidence for what happened after Jesus’ crucifixion is open to anyone. Christians also face hard questions of their own under Deuteronomy 18, such as what Jesus meant when he said “this generation will not pass away” before the things he described (Mark 13:30), and Christians owe answers to them.

Christians hold that the tests point to a final word in Jesus, set out in the apostolic gospel is final. You can weigh that claim by the same rules.