From: press2@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (barry.o.olson)
Subject: Re: Perfect Prophets?
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 03:03:38 GMT
Keywords: unscientific, false prophecies, misuse of rhetoric

In article <1992Aug13.145252.22423@cbnews.cb.att.com>, wcsa@cbnews.cb.att.com (willard.smith) writes:
> 
> I posted a moderately sized essay a few days ago which examined the

[summary of articles deleted]
> 
> To this Barry adds that perhaps if an OT prophet seems to have made a
> false prophecy, then it is probably because something got left out (by
> mistake).  Yes that is a possibility, but the same can be said of all
> historical persons (including Joseph Smith) up through the 20th Century.

There is a problem with this. Determining untouched original ot
documents is quite a problem. We have libraries burned, cities sacked
and destroyed, stories given orally long before committed to hard
copy and other problems I can't think of right now. I cannot honestly
determine what is true and what is altered. The ot points to Yahweh
and his people and what direction he intends for them in a general
sense. I am forced to pick and choose.
The whole milieu is so distant as to be practically unrecoverable.
But then comes along a contemporary prophet(as he claims)that we can
test some of his prophecies against. But the followers cry foul, it's
not fair and a double standard. That might be true, but it's the bane
and misfortune of this prophet to come at a time when documentation is
made easy especially with the printing press. Now we have something to
go on.
Deut. 18:20-22 is something hard and fast that(in your case, on the
surface things look ok, but deeper in presents problems)makes a lot
of sense and a good measure for those who are more childlike:-)

> There isn't a single historian that I know of that believes that all
> important revelant documents for any modern historical person have been
> collected, examined, or that even the ones currently identified are

I don't see how you can extropolate this [given] into the problems
faced by the age of the ot documents.
The problem is compounded even more so.

> well understood. Even more disturbing, this argument introduces an
> uncontrolled exception to the Deut 18:20 rule. For example:
> 
>    If my prophet appears to break the rule,
>      then it is because I claim that not all relevant material is available,

I could honestly feel embarrassed if I did have a modern prophet to
follow, see above paragraph.
As I said, I must take the ancient prophets with a dash of sauce because
of their ancientness of time
> 
>    BUT if your prophet appears to break the rule,
>      then he's definitely false because I will claim that all relevant
>      material is available.

Your prophet is easier to check on *because* of his modern entry on
the scene. But I can empathize with why the ancient prophets can get
away with breaking their own rule(deut again), and Joseph must be held
to stricter standards, so I want to go into that alittle. I must bring
up the "different dispensations" paragraph again from a previous article
which I will post seperately with a summary line:ot and nt dispensations.
We can come back to this later, if you like, remind me.

barry--