Recognize the False Prophets

28 July 2026  Jeremiah 14:17-22

“Both prophet and priest ply their trade in a land they do not know.”

(Jeremiah 14:18)

Jeremiah tried to intercede with God for the people, pleading that the people had been misled by prohets and priests whom they had a reason to trust: “Ah! Lord God, it is the prophets who say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword; famine shall not befall you. Indeed, I will give you lasting peace in this place’” (14:13). But God wasn’t having any of that: “These prophets utter lies in my name; I did not send them; I gave them no command, nor did I speak to them…. Both prophet and priest ply their trade in a land they know not” (14:14,18).

The implication is that even if there were false prophets and slacker priests, the people should have known better. The people should have been able to recognize idolatry and apostasy when they heard it.

The decision to create the New Testament, which reached its final form before the end of the first century A.D., is the spiritual heritage of the Pharisees. The Church has depended on it every bit as much as Judah the Hammer did.

During the soul searching of the Exile, Jewish leaders reflected that in fact the people were not able either to recognize or resist bad advice. That is why the Exile became the occasion to write the scriptures down, and to study them carefully. Synagogues as “minor sanctuaries” began to appear during the Babylonian Captivity in private homes, and after the Exile was over, during the 3rd century B.C., actual synagogue buildings began to appear. Jewish leaders were determined that the people would become able to recognize bad advice when they heard it.

In the second century B.C. the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to stamp out Judaism, making study of the Torah and Sabbath observance capital offences. This led to a successful Jewish revolt led by Judas Maccabeus (“Judah the Hammer”) and the formation of a new group of laymen who were determined to live as close to the teaching of the Hebrew Scriptures as possible. They became trusted leaders who taught and encouraged the people to pay close attention to the Torah, and were called in Hebrew the Perushim, “separated ones.” A Latin synonym is Sanctus – “holy one.” By the first century A.D. they were called the Pharisees.

There is little doubt that the Pharisees were heroes. They resisted the persecution of Antiochus IV, and taught the people how to recognize the creeping paganism of the subsequent Roman era when they saw it. Their devotion to Holy Scripture was intense, and their influence with the people was so great that Roman officials came to realize that they could not govern Judea without them. When the Romans finally crushed the Jewish revolts of A.D. 66-70 and 132-136, destroying the Temple, the priesthood and the whole Jewish sacrificial system, it was the Pharisees who reconstituted Judaism around devotion to Holy Scripture. Judaism today is largely the religion of the Pharisees.

It is customary for Christians to regard the Pharisees as great villains, but it is not nearly so simple as that. Some Pharisees, and those allied with the Pharisees, were followers of Jesus, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea (cf. John 19:38-42). The great Pharisaic teacher Gamaliel recognized that the Christian movement might very well have been sent from God (cf. Acts 5:33-39), and Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle, called himself “a Pharisee descended from Pharisees” (cf. Acts 23:6). The trial of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament went on all one night, which can only have happened if there were people, like Joseph and Nicodemus, who were taking Jesus’ side (cf. Luke 22:63-66). The decision to create the New Testament, which reached its final form before the end of the first century A.D., is the spiritual heritage of the Pharisees. The Church has depended on it every bit as much as Judah the Hammer did.

We have the New Testament and the Church today, have kept them across the centuries, and have achieved things like civil rights and human rights, and the abolition of slavery, because of the determination of faithful laypeople to study Holy Scripture and live as close to it as possible.

The next great thing will happen the same way. Laymen and women, pay attention.