Is God The Author Of Deception And Falsehood?
There is a want of fair dealing with Bible language manifested by all the enemies of our religion. The unbelievers of our time will find it very difficult for them to sustain the reputation of moral honesty and, at the same time, retain many of the old, worn out objections which they have urged against the Bible. They should remember that while the light of scientific investigation is exposing the old, unscientific and unscriptural tenets of the creeds of our forefathers, and making it [pg 070] hard for candid, sensible men to defend them, it is also shedding light upon Bible truth to such an extent that unbelievers are finding it equally difficult to retain their silly objections to the Bible. They have asserted from 1st Kings 32, that God kept false as well as true prophets. This charge is not only without foundation in fact, but also false and contemptible. The four hundred prophets mentioned in the sixth verse of that chapter are emphatically denominated “Ahab's prophets,” notwithstanding they professed to be the Lord's prophets. This wicked King of Israel had those wicked, false prophets in his service. The address of Micaiah to the two kings in verses 19-23 is a mere parable showing what, in the providence of God, would shortly take place, and the divine permission for the agents, spoken of, to act. Micaiah did not tell the mad and impious Ahab that his prophets were all liars; but he represents the whole by a parable, and, in language equally strong and inoffensive, he says that which amounts to the same thing. Unbelievers of the schools of modern spiritualism and Bostonian infidelity, both say that God inspired prophets with false messages, and violated his own word.
The charge of inspiring prophets with false messages is founded, pretendingly, upon 1st Kings 22: 22, 23, Jeremiah 4: 10, and Ezekiel 14: 9. To answer this, it is only necessary to know that it is an idiom of the original languages to express, in the imperative active, that which is simply permitted. Thus, when the devils begged permission to enter into the herd of swine, Jesus said, “Go”—Mat. 8: 31.
And so we are to understand, John 13: 27, where Jesus says to Judas Iscariot, “What thou dost, do quickly.” No man is thoroughly posted as a Bible scholar who is honest in making the above charge. It is either ignorance or dishonesty that causes men to thus oppose the record. As we are not justifiable in saying that Jesus commanded his own betrayal, so we are not justifiable in saying God commanded lying. Correct principles of interpretation do not justify the unbeliever in any such blasphemy. When an evil spirit offered himself to be a lying spirit in the mouth of a wicked prophet—false [pg 071] prophet—God said, “Go forth and do so,” which only signifies permission, not command. In Jeremiah 4: 10, where the prophet complains that God had deceived them, saying, “They should have peace, when the sword reached to the soul,” we are to understand that God permitted the false prophets to deceive him, prophesying peace to the people, as appears from the history (Ezekiel 14: 9). I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, that is, permitted him to be deceived, and permitted him to deceive the people, as the legitimate result of their own wickedness, and a just judgment upon them for their rejection of the testimony of his true prophets. There is nothing strange about all this; for as sure as there is a God, so sure it is that he permits wicked lying men to be deceived in our own day. He has done this in all ages of the world. In fact, it belongs to his ordained plan to permit, or suffer, men, individually or collectively, to fall in their own deceptions and wickedness. This he threatened in the above case, as you may see in the fifth verse of Ezekiel 14, in these words, “I will take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols; because they have chosen to themselves false Gods, I will suffer them to be deceived with false prophets; and I will stretch out my hand upon him, and I will destroy him from the midst of my people.” Destroy whom? Ans.—The false prophet.
When the prophet of God mistook the promise of God, who told him, when he commissioned him, that he would be with him, by which he understood that he would be saved from all evils, he said, “Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.” This prophet was now a derision, the people mocking him, and in his passion and weakness he breaks forth in the above language. It was simply his own mistake, or misunderstanding of God's promise. God had not promised him that he should not meet with scorn and opposition and persecution, but simply that they should not prevail against him, as we may learn from the latter part of the first chapter. The second objection, that the Lord violated his promise, is also founded in ignorance or dishonesty; it is based upon the statements found in [pg 072] Joshua 13: 1, and Judges 2: 20, 21, compared with Genesis 15: 18 and 18: 19, 20. In Joshua 13, it is said that there remained very much land yet unconquered, which they had not taken possession of, notwithstanding the Lord had promised to be with them, and to give them all the land remaining yet in the possession of their enemies.
In Judges 2: 20, it is said that the people did not perform their part of the covenant, and this is given as the reason why the Lord had not driven out any more of the nations before them.
The covenant with Abraham was in consideration of his past faith and obedience; yet it was suspended upon the future obedience of his posterity. See Deut. 7: 12, 13 and 11: 22 to 24; and Judges 2 to 20. The Lord gives the following as the reason why he had not given them a complete fulfillment of the covenant upon his part, “Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not harkened to my voice, I also will not henceforth drive out any of the nations which Joshua left when he died.” There are none so blind as those who will not see. When we find a promise from the Lord, and it is in the positive form, that is, when its terms are not rested upon an expressed condition, we are authorized to supply the condition which involves the moral element in the divine government, viz: obedience upon the part of man, or men, as the case may be. See Ezekiel 33: 13.