Occult Practices and Prophets

(Deuteronomy 18:9 - 18:22)
"When you enter the land that Jehovah your god is giving to you, do not follow the abominable customs of the people living there.  No one of you should commit to the flames his son or daughter as a human sacrifice.  Do not allow any of your people to practice divination or fortune telling, to interpret omens or cast spells, to engage in sorcery, become a psychic medium, or evoke and consult the spirits of the dead.  Anyone who engages in such practices makes themselves detestable to Jehovah.  It is because the people in these nations engage in such practices that Jehovah your god will drive them out before you.   You must be blameless before Jehovah your god!   While the people you are about to displace consult with soothsayers and sorcerers, Jehovah your god does not give you leave to do so.

Moses continued, "Jehovah your god will raise up a prophet like me from among your brethren.  And it is to him that you must listen.  For this is what you yourselves asked of Jehovah your god when you were assembled before the holy mountain in Sinai.  There you said, 'Spare us from hearing the voice of Jehovah our god or looking at his blazing fire anymore, lest we perish.'  Jehovah told me, 'What they say is correct.  I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites.  I will put my words into his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command of him.  I will take issue with anyone who does not heed the words that he will speak in my name.  But anyone who claims to speak in my name without my authorization or who speaks in the name of other gods should be put to death.'

"You may asked yourself, 'How can we know when a prophecy is one that comes from Jehovah?'  If a prophet claiming to speak in Jehovah's name predicts something that does not come to pass or come true, then you will know that his prophecy did not come from Jehovah.  That prophet has spoken on his own and should not be shown any consideration.”

Notes
1. Jehovah condemns all occult practices, but does not discredit them.  Instead the Levite priests of Jehovah claim exclusivity in dealing with the spirit world and assert that authentic prophecy is derived only from Jehovah.  This prerogative of the priesthood would be claimed by the Christian church as well.  Anyone, who, bypassing the church, claimed to commune directly with the divine, would be severely punished -- in the most famous case, that of Joan of Arc, being burned at the stake.

2. The abominable customs of the native populations of Canaan is the justification Jehovah uses to expel them and settle his own people, the Israelites, on their land.  The Israelites were exhorted to eschew these practices, human sacrifice, occultism, sorcery, as well as idol worship, but, in reality, Jehovah's demands were not complied with by future generations of Israelites.

3. Moses offers a guide as to who is a genuine prophet and who is a false prophet.  It is not terribly helpful, even if it is simple and straight forward: prophecies that come true are from Jehovah; those that do not come true are not from Jehovah.  Apparently other gods cannot inspire prophets to make accurate predictions.  Therefore, accurate prophets are always genuine prophets, that is, Jehovah-inspired prophets.  But Moses offers nary a clue as to how one can discern a true prophet from a false one without waiting to find out whether the prophecies are accurate or not.  Couldn’t a clever false prophet confine himself to making predictions about events in the distant future and thus never be exposed as a charlatan?  There are, in fact, many Old Testament prophets who made prophesies about future historical events that quite unambiguously did not come to pass.  (One example would be Obadiah, a minor prophet who forecast the doom of Israel’s neighbor Edom; sorry, but Edom simply didn’t receive its prophesied comeuppance.)  Are they to be reviled as false prophets and their books removed from the Bible?