If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it. (Deuteronomy 18:22, NRSV)
The last of John Hagee’s four blood moons faded in September 2015, and nothing happened.
Hagee is a pastor in my own backyard, San Antonio. In 2013, he published Four Blood Moons, tying a rare run of four lunar eclipses to a “world-shaking event” between April 2014 and October 2015. He never said what the event would be. So when the window closed, there was nothing to point to, and nothing for his followers to hold against him. No one needed to follow the plain reading of Deuteronomy 18:22, because Hagee’s vagueness meant the question couldn’t be asked. We live in an age when science and technology keep making real what our grandparents could only imagine, yet this is still how prophecy works in America: it is part of the air we breathe, and it rarely has to answer for a miss.
Two Kinds of Prophecy
Prophecy comes in two forms. The first is the predictive system, in which a reader studies a holy book and forecasts future events from it. The second is the prophetic office, in which an individual claims God speaks through them today. Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Warren Jeffs belong mainly to the second. Hagee, with his moons, belongs to the first. The two look different in practice, but the standard in Deuteronomy 18 applies to both: if the word does not come true, it was never God’s word. The burden of proof falls on the one who claims to speak for God. The passage also names the penalty for failing that test, which is death (v. 20). No one is proposing we revive it. But notice what happened once the penalty disappeared: the accountability went with it, and the authority stayed.
What the two forms share is a claim to know what God means or says, with no shared way to check it. Ambiguous texts create demand for an authoritative interpreter, and living prophets are the supply. The question is who gets to decide, and what happens when no one can say they’re wrong.
Claims That Can’t Be Checked
Let’s look at a verse that Christmas pageants lean on every year. Isaiah 7:14 reads:
“a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.”
I don’t get to use my seminary degrees much anymore, so humor me while I nerd out for a moment. The Hebrew word is almah, which means a young woman of marriageable age. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, rendered it parthenos, which leans toward “virgin.” Matthew builds on the Greek (Matthew 1:22-23).
In its own setting, though, the verse is a sign given to King Ahaz while Jerusalem is under attack. Isaiah says the child, Immanuel, will still be a small boy when the two kings threatening Ahaz lose their lands (7:15-16). Read that way, the sign concerns Ahaz’s crisis, and the child is born in Ahaz’s own time. Matthew reads the same child as Jesus. Jewish interpreters have long read the passage in its eighth-century setting, and Christians have long read it through Matthew. Both readings have serious defenders.
Choosing between them takes decisions the text never makes: whether Hebrew or Greek governs, whether a prophecy can be fulfilled twice, whether a New Testament writer may reread an older text. Readers bring those answers with them.
Any ancient text raises problems like this. The trouble starts with those who claim not to bring presuppositions to it. Dispensationalism has long advertised consistent literal reading as its signature, yet it depends on Daniel’s “seventy weeks,” where weeks become years and a two-thousand-year gap opens in the middle. In Revelation, readers must decide which images to decode and which to take at face value, and the text never says. That is judgment, presented as the text’s own voice.
Deuteronomy 18:22 is supposed to catch the misses, and it rarely does. When Christ didn’t return on October 22, 1844, as William Miller’s followers expected, some concluded the date was right and the event had been misunderstood. When Harold Camping’s Rapture failed to arrive on May 21, 2011, he recast the day as a spiritual judgment and moved the end to October.
Modern-day so-called prophets use the same exits. After the 2020 election, researchers found that more than 150 prophets had predicted a Trump victory, and only a handful admitted they were wrong.
Once a text can be read more than one way, competing readings are guaranteed. Deuteronomy’s test asks whether the word came true, but the answer depends on who gets to say what the word meant.
What Unverifiable Authority Does
If no shared method can check a prophetic claim, something else fills the gap. Usually it’s a person, and most often a man.
Start with power. An unauditable word can only be obeyed or rejected. Warren Jeffs led the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as God’s prophet, and his word could reassign wives, homes, and children. In August 2011, he was convicted of sexually assaulting two girls he had taken as “spiritual wives.” Inside the church, there was no appeal from a word that came from God. It took a Texas jury to end it.
Then there’s violence. If a reading is God’s own, disagreement becomes rebellion against heaven. In 1534, Anabaptists took over the German city of Münster and declared it the New Jerusalem. Their leader, Jan van Leiden, crowned himself king, ruled by revelation, and had dissenters executed. In 1993, David Koresh’s reading of Revelation’s seven seals shaped a standoff near Waco, Texas, that ended with seventy-six people dead as the nation watched the Branch Davidian compound burn on live television.
Finally, hierarchy. A prophetic reading sorts people into those who accept it and are saved and those who reject it and are lost. The prophet sits at the top of the pyramid, insiders who know the truth sit beneath, and everyone else sits at the bottom, seen as a threat to every tier above. Even inside these movements the line is policed: after the failed 2020 predictions, prophets who apologized reported accusations, curses, and death threats.
In fairness, none of this is unique to religion. Secular ideologies can build the same machinery. But prophecy adds a feature they lack: the person who disagrees isn’t merely mistaken; they are at odds with God.
The Strongest Defense, and Why It Falls Short
The strongest defense of prophecy points to those who confronted power. Nathan faced King David over Bathsheba and Uriah. Amos told the powerful that their worship meant nothing while the poor were trampled. Jeremiah warned Jerusalem’s kings and priests to their faces. At its best, prophecy is the original check on power, and the tradition didn’t end with the biblical narratives. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Amos in demanding that justice roll down like waters. Malcolm X indicted American racism with a moral force many still call prophetic. Defenders add that a few false prophets don’t discredit the true ones.
The trouble is how these figures earned their authority. Nathan, Amos, and Jeremiah were vindicated after the fact, by history and by the communities that preserved their words. A congregation living under a prophet today can’t wait for history. King rested his case on evidence anyone could check: the Constitution, scripture, and the injustices the nightly news put on display. His prophetic voice worked like a mirror, reflecting the nation’s oppression back at it. My personal hero, Malcolm X, is instructive in another way. After years of preaching Elijah Muhammad’s message, he learned of evidence about Muhammad’s private life, lost his faith in him, and left publicly. He tested a prophet’s claim against evidence, which is exactly what an unverifiable office forbids.
The structure that lets Amos challenge a king also lets Jeffs command a congregation. Nothing in the words “thus says the Lord” tells them apart; only outside accountability does. The defense that a few false prophets don’t discredit the true ones assumes we can tell them apart in advance, and unverifiable authority removes that ability. The problem isn’t a few bad prophets. It’s the system’s design, where abuse is possible and hard to detect.
Authority That Can Be Questioned
Most of what we trust has a way of being wrong in public. A scientist’s result gets replicated or it doesn’t. A physician’s diagnosis can be reviewed by another physician. A court’s ruling can be appealed. None of these systems is perfect, but each has a path available where others can say “prove it.” Prophecy is a dead end. It asks for trust first and offers no way to withdraw it.
That is my point, and it applies to the rapture-obsessed chart-maker and the Trump-victory-proclaiming prophet alike. Ambiguous texts invite an authoritative interpreter, and an authority nobody can check will drift toward power, enforce its readings against dissent, and sort people into the saved and the lost.
The harm doesn’t require bad intentions. You can be entirely sincere and believe you’re doing work to save souls. Because the system is designed to prevent accountability, even the most well-intentioned person or institution can still wreak havoc.
Notice what the Bible’s own test asks. Deuteronomy 18:22 puts the burden of proof on the one who claims to speak for God, and it ends with a line easy to read past: “do not be frightened by it.” The text invites suspicion. It treats the person who questions a prophet as a reader doing their job, not an enemy of heaven.
Here’s my advice to anyone still active in a religious community. A word that doesn’t come true was never God’s word, and the one who spoke it owes the community an answer. Anyone who claims divine authority, whether with a chart, a vision, or a pulpit, should be held accountable to their words and actions.
The right to raise a question is not an act of hostility. Many believers hold their convictions humbly and welcome questions. The problem is that the believers who are most certain of their beliefs are also the ones who are most threatened by those who would question them. If your belief system cannot stand up against honest questions and accountability, the problem isn’t the person asking questions; it’s your belief system.