A number of times in the 'Holy Bible' canon, the LORD is identified as a false prophet. One such case concerns something the LORD allegedly said Elijah would do in the sunset days of his prophetic ministry.
The eighteenth chapter of the first book of Kings tells of a duel between the prophet Elijah and 450 prophets of Baal. According to the text, Elijah won this duel hands- down, and immediately slew the four- hundred- fifty unsuccessful prophets of Baal who had accepted his challenge; whereupon the sitting queen of Samaria (Jezebel) promised to likewise slay Elijah within twenty- four hours.
At this word from Jezebel, Elijah ran for his life from Samaria to the land of Judah, and (when safely out of Jezebel’s jurisdiction) ironically, “...requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers [1 Kings 19:4].” This prayer request, according to the second chapter of the second book of Kings, was denied: Elijah was not allowed to die; he allegedly “went up by a whirlwind into heaven” alive, instead. He left some business undone when he went, however.
The text of 1 Kings 19 says that, after fleeing to the wilderness in the land of Judah, Elijah further escaped to mount Hore: where he had a conversation with “a still small voice.” “15 And the LORD said unto him, Go, return on thy way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria: 16 And Jehu the son of Nimshi shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room [1 Kings 19:15 & 16].”
Of the three items in the LORD’s to- do itinerary presented to Elijah in the fifteenth and sixteenth verses of First Kings 19: one is a command (verse 15); two are prognostications (verse 16). The command to “anoint Hazael to be king over Syria” is unequivocal. It is simply stated as a command without any qualifying verbage. Nonetheless, Elijah did not do so [though Elijah's replacement Elisha did (sort of); and that at the king of Syria's incidental request concerning another matter entirely– not because he was commissioned by Elijah or the LORD to so cover for Elijah's refusal to do it].
In verse sixteen of 1 Kings 19, the LORD prognosticates Elijah will do two more things: anoint Jehu the son of Nimshi king over Israel; and anoint Elisha of Abel-meholah as his replacement. [If these were not prognostications, there would be no need of the word “shalt” in either of the two declarative statements in verse 16. The language here would have simply followed the precedent set by the command to anoint Hazael (in verse 15) which came as a simple statement of command without any such equivocation.]
Of these two prognostications, only the latter was done by Elijah. He did not anoint Jehu “king over Israel.” Thus, the disobedient nature of Elijah (at least in the latter end of his ministry) is unquestionable, according to the ‘Holy Bible'. (He did not anoint Hazael, after all.) My guess is that Elijah finally got sick- and- tired of being threatened with death and destruction by the LORD– in the words and by the persons of his contemporaries– simply for doing what was required of him by the same LORD. He's not the only one.
Job cursed the day he was born, and wished for death and outer darkness because of such shenanigans by the LORD, as recorded in chapter three of the book of Job; and requested that he might be hidden in the grave (in the thirteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the same book) instead of returning to his mother's womb to be reborn as he expected to be, according to the next- to- last verse of the first chapter of Job. Moses likewise despaired of life and the land of the living, though perhaps for perverse reasons.
In Exodus 32, after Moses had come down from the mount and discovered that the noise of war (verse 17) and singing (verse 18) he and Joshua heard as they descended the mount was the cacauphony of half- a- million people worshipping and playing (verse 6) in a naked orgy (verse 25) around his own effigy (in the form of a golden calf) under Aaron's priestly leadership: Moses went back up the mountain, and said to the LORD: “Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written [verse 32].”
Likewise, Jonah despaired of life after being made a false prophet by the LORD he served, saying, “I do well to be angry, even unto death [Jonah 4:9].” [The preaching Jonah had been sent to Nineveh to deliver came in the form of a prognostication: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4) This prognostication did not materialize thanks to Nineveh’s repentance upon hearing Jonah’s message. Thus Jonah became a false prophet. (Deuteronomy 18:22)]
At any rate, the prognostications the LORD allegedly spoke, in a still small voice, over Elijah's final days as a prophet are reminiscent of the way in which He allegedly prognosticated falsely Edom’s cooperation with the children of Israel’s return to the land of promise: inasmuch as this latter was indicated as prognostication by the word “shall,” which “shalt” is a form of.
In the second chapter of Deuteronomy, Moses says the LORD told him, “Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir; and they shall be afraid of you:... 6 Ye shall buy meat of them for money, that ye may eat; and ye shall also buy water of them for money, that ye may drink [Deuteronomy 2:4 - 6].” It is nonetheless recorded of this event (in Numbers 20:21, et. al.) that “Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel turned away from him.”
While Elijah did not necessarily give voice to the LORD’s false prognostication concerning his presumed anointing of Jehu over Israel, Jonah and Moses both gave utterance to false prognostications they received of the LORD, which categorizes them both as false prophets: by the LORD’s criteria.
Ezekiel says the LORD told him: “And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel [Ezekiel 14:9].” In so saying, the LORD credits Himself with being the inspiration of all false prophets, and of being “the tempter [Matthew 4:3, et. al.]” and “the accuser of our brethren [Revelation 12:10, et. al.].”
If the prophet is false because he was deceived by the LORD: isn't the LORD the false prophet? What do RICO statutes say of such things?
