False Prophets Lead You Away From the Truth

7 July 2026  Hosea 8:4-7,11-13

“A workman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.” (Hosea 8:5)

All of the prophets of Israel and Judah failed. Every single one. They never persuaded the people or their kings that the golden calves they had set up in the temples at Dan and Bethel, or the altars to Baal in Jerusalem, were an abomination to God. The people and their kings never believed that their kingdoms would be overthrown – and they were. The Northern Kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C., and the Southern Kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The prophets couldn’t prevent it.

The kings had their compliant media – false prophets who shared their cultural disdain for working-class Bible-bangers like Amos and Hosea. A mark of false prophets, then as now, is that they create permission structures for people to disregard genuine prophetic voices for reasons based on class.

So why were the prophets such flops? There are a great many reasons, but one of them certainly was the gaping social gulf separating the kings from the prophets. The vast majority of the prophets were working-class laymen.

A few – like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel – were rather well to do, but all of the rest of the prophets worked for a living, and their opposition to foreign altars and images, which all the kings of Israel and most of the kings of Judah insisted on setting up, was considered banal, uncultured, and ridiculously out of date. Hosea was as far removed in time from Moses, the Ten Commandments and the Golden Calf as Michelangelo is removed from us, and King Jeroboam II was no more inclined to consult the standards of five centuries earlier than many people today are. Not only that, but to King Jeroboam, Hosea was the most déclassé trailer-park trash – he married a prostitute, Gomer, who was serially unfaithful, and when she went back to being a prostitute, Hosea (under orders from God, he said) begged her to come back. Neither Jeroboam, nor any of his successors, made the connection between Gomer and Israel – how Israel had been serially unfaithful to God, how God pursued the harlot Israel and begged her to return. The endless blustering of Hosea (along with Amos, Micah and Jonah) was regarded as uncultured and tiresome, like the people today who criticize the ubiquitous Pride Flag, Planned Parenthood, and Hamas. Too much NASCAR, moonshine, and barbecue, the gated community set still say. Ignore them all.

The prophets would never shut up about the kings and their compromises, and how that would lead to confusion, dilution, and and destruction –  an end which Hosea lived to see; he was still around in 722 B.C. when the Assyrians captured Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom, and crushed it. The kings had their compliant media – false prophets who shared their cultural disdain for working-class Bible-bangers like Amos and Hosea. A mark of false prophets, then as now, is that they create permission structures for people to disregard genuine prophetic voices for reasons based on class.

The earliest Church was made up of largely working-class people – shop-keepers, weavers, freedmen and slaves. Prominent members, like those attracted by the Apostle Paul, were people who, according to  sociologists, had “high status inconsistency” – their achieved wealth and status was greater than their inherited social class; think “new money” vs. “old money.” By the second and third centuries Christianity was known for breaking barriers, demoting considerations of class status, particularly during times of epidemic disease, and Christianity was growing. The emperors and the “old money” still didn’t get it, however, which is one of the reasons why the Church survived and thrived while the Roman Empire fell.

False prophets decide whether to pay attention to you based on where, or whether, you went to college, and what tax bracket you’re in. The people and their kings kept making this mistake, wondering “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46), and “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55). Not a reliable test for Truth. Never has been.