FALSE PROPHETS ARE PROSTITUTES
In one way or another, all Christian theology and religious practices are presumed to satisfy God’s covenant expectations of how righteous people should act. The thinking is that because Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant, and because they believe in Jesus, and because they participate in communion, they have done everything God expects. But they are double-minded in their thinking because they unilaterally change the terms of the everlasting covenant by practicing a religion that changes over time. Jews don’t change quite as much, but Judaism is still a religion in flux. This is more evidence of confusion about covenants.

Despite disagreement about which covenants apply to whom and when they apply, Christians and Jews are similar in that they both ultimately base their religious beliefs and practices on non-biblical writings that have their origins in the literal Bible. Jews have an Oral Torah and Christians have their Systematic Theology and writings of hundreds of theologians developed during twenty centuries of Christianity. And this list of theologians does not account for the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of pastors and authors who preach on Sundays and write books and journals.  Christians criticize Jews for their Oral Torah but conveniently ignore the fact that they have always taken their cues about religious belief and practice from oral and written interpretations of the Bible created by men — not God.

Writers from both religions created succinct doctrines from choice parts of the written Bible that they thought they understood. They then did their best to condense and interpret the rest of it to make it understandable enough that people could apply it to their lives. To accomplish this task, they had to ignore some scriptures and create new doctrines that explained mysterious scriptures they could not understand.

The result of all this creative thinking and writing is a giant mishmash of different, sometimes conflicting, religious beliefs and practices that makes up the world of religion. Another result is a prevailing view that covenants, both the Old/New Covenant and  the New Covenant apply to one group of people (i.e. either Jews or Christians) on a global, dispensational basis. Thus we find that all Jews believe that all Jews will enter into the New Covenant at some unknown future time (i.e. when the Messiah comes), while all Christians think that they are already New Covenant disciples because of their membership in a denomination that has all the right doctrines. They all miss the truth that covenant status applies to the condition of an individual’s heart — not on membership in a particular ethnic or religious group.

We conclude from this history that, despite their claims, both Christians and Jews ultimately derive their beliefs and practices from wrong, literal interpretations of the written Bible. Both started with the written word, of course, but they could not resist translating it according to their own understanding of what God meant. To restate that fact in Biblical language, the false prophets could not resist exercising deceptive, but believable, imaginations and visions of their own minds to create doctrines and rituals for idolatrous audiences who praised them for their intellectual interpretations of the literal Bible. No wonder God calls all of these writers lying scribes who have translated the law of God into lies while rejecting the spoken word of God.

Lies and confusion are the result of the multitude of human mediators who use the imaginations and visions of their own minds to interpret God’s literal words. Each one has his or her idea about how to interpret the Bible. Lacking the ability to hear God’s spoken voice that would enable them to understand the mysteries of the Bible, generations of religious leaders have fabricated doctrines that generations of religious people have found to be believable. This is how religions are created. No one understands that the literal Bible and God’s spoken word are not the same. And it happens because everyone tries to interpret the literal words of the Bible but no one listens for the spiritual meaning of scripture that only God can communicate reliably and consistently to people who listen to his voice.

Because God knows that this confusion leads to religion, he has clearly instructed his people many times to listen to his spoken voice. That is the only way they can receive spiritual truth reliably and consistently. That is the only way they can receive spiritual truth that is not distorted by human imagination. That is the only way they can receive spiritual truth that is pure and untainted by human motives.

But we see in Bible stories and in real life that generations of men, and some women, who are wise in their own minds have seized opportunities to make names for themselves and earn an income by feeding ignorant people evil, soulish food (i.e. words) that appears spiritual but is not. They make a business of mediating God’s word for religious consumers who are hungry to learn about God but lack the wisdom to discern good from evil.

STUDY TIP: See Religion is Commerce.

The reason human mediators have had such influence and success marketing their religious ideas is that no one trusts that God could, or would, explain Biblical mysteries to any average human who does not have religious credentials (e.g. training, titles, clothing, etc.). This thinking created a spiritual vacuum for entrepreneurial religious leaders who want to make names for themselves. Motivated by aspirations to god-likeness, personal glory and income, they claim to have callings that qualify them to insert themselves between men and God as his prophets (i.e. those who speak for God).

No doubt most, maybe all, false prophets sincerely believe that they understand what God means in the literal, written Bible and are convinced that, because of their wisdom and calling, they have a legitimate role and responsibility to communicate the truth to people who are not as wise as they are. But, sincere or not, they set themselves up as stumbling blocks for the people who choose to listen to false prophets instead of listening for God’s voice to explain the Bible to them personally. This explains why, ever since Moses delivered the law to Israel, people have stood at a distance from God and let human mediators like Moses report to them what God has said.

This practice of human mediators speaking for God seems legitimate, honorable and even spiritual because examples of spokesmen/prophets often appear in the Bible and because that is the way religion has always worked. Thus, religious leaders have always been accepted as legitimate, important parts of all cultures. Spokesmen/prophets satisfy the need that all people have for a king to protect them.

But religion is not what God really wants from his people. Actually God hates religion.

There are many reasons why God dislikes religion, but the main reason is that it violates what God has said about listening to his voice. That people should listen to his voice is important to God because it is in listening that God assesses the condition of man’s heart and equips people for Godly living by writing his laws on their hearts. People in whom God finds a clean, pure heart are anointed and sent to do the following:

• • • • Teach religious people that religion is sin.
      • Teach them to how to identify false prophets and encourage them to stop listening to false prophets.
      • Teach them how to hear God’s spoken voice.
      • Call them to come out of religion.

People with hard hearts do not listen to God’s voice. They are rebellious. If they do not listen, God cannot write his laws on their hearts and they will remain Old/First Covenant religionists instead of becoming New Covenant disciples. People who do listen, however, humble themselves and receive eternal life. They become intimate with God.

COMMENTARY ON INTIMACY, ADULTERY, PROSTITUTION AND SEX:

In Biblical language, God speaking and people listening is the perfect act of intimacy between himself and his people.  This is also true in the natural husband and wife relationship where conversation and sex happens face-to-face. Thus, it can be said that hearing God’s voice is the ultimate experience of intimacy with God. It must also be said that human intimacy is most profoundly achieved when people speak truth from their hearts to one another and listen to one another with their hearts. This is God’s idea of loving your neighbor as yourselves.

STUDY TIP: See this link for understanding of what it means to speak truth.

Sex is often considered to be intimacy, but this is true at only a human, fleshly level. It is possible to have sexual intimacy without heart-to-heart intimacy, and it is possible to have heart-to-heart intimacy without sex. Biblical references to intimacy are always about pure, heart-to-heart, one-to-one, intimacy between God and his people. Other biblical references to sex portray relationships between religious leaders and followers which are aberrant and immoral  from God’s perspective.

This principle of heart-to-heart intimacy is symbolically represented in mouth-to-mouth, face-to-face conversations like God had with Moses and in the sensual intimacy a king has with his lover in the Song of Solomon.

Intimacy with God is also graphically represented in scriptures about husbands, wives, brides and bridegrooms. We can also find symbolism in the contemporary practice of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation where an infusion of oxygen is necessary to revive someone who is not breathing. This imagery fits with the truth that man lives by every spoken word that comes from the mouth of God. Being intimate with God is life-giving.

Pictures of intimacy also instruct us about the symbolism of adultery, prostitution and the jealous anger that God, the faithful husband, feels when his wife (i.e., Old/Covenant religionists in Jewish and Christian communities) demonstrates her unfaithfulness to God when she listens to and follows the teachings of religious leaders. Symbolically speaking, the religious leader (i.e., false prophet) is a prostitute and the unfaithful wife is the adulterous wife (i.e., a church or synagogue). The wife should be listening only to God, but she sins by listening to a religious leader. This is why God symbolically refers to religious leaders as Serpents, Devils, Satan, Adversaries, Demons, Evil Spirits, and Anti-Christs, as a way of warning his people to not listen to them.

A religious leader can be rightly called a prostitute because he/she is selling something that looks like intimacy with God but is really only a physical act (i.e. flesh.) Listening to a religious leader (i.e., a tree of knowledge of good and evil) is not real intimacy because religious leaders do not really speak for God. We know this is true because religious leaders satisfy most/all of the characteristics of false prophets.

Real intimacy exists only when God speaks to someone directly, or through anointed true prophets, angels, messiahs, high priests, witnesses and warriors who have definite characteristics by which they are identified, represent Jesus’ personal qualities, and fulfill Jesus’ ministry functions in their lives.

STUDY TIP: See this link for JESUS’ PERSONAL QUALITIES AND MINISTRY FUNCTIONS.

Religious prostitutes speak out of the evil imaginations of their minds — not out of the overflow of clean, pure hearts. They are easily identified as prostitutes because the things they do (including receiving money for their religious services and products) fit the description of a false prophet.

By participating in commercial religion, the religious leader is selling God’s word which is free.

Teachers, and the religious organizations they represent, are God’s enemies because they have enticed God’s wife (i.e. the church or synagogue) to be intimate with them through the power of the tongue.  In their zealous passion to expand their religious kingdoms, they have broken the Tenth Commandment: They covet and seduce God’s wife and his servants and unjustly enslave them into their own kingdoms for selfish purposes.

STUDY TIP: See Song of Solomon for deeper understanding of symbolic intimacy.

STUDY TIP: With the symbolism of a mouth-to-mouth encounter with God in mind, we can begin to understand why God is jealous of false prophets (i.e. religious leaders) who compete with him for the affections (i.e. hearts and minds) of his people. In God’s view, the relationship between a false prophet and someone who listens to a false prophet is the equivalent of intimacy. The false prophet has usurped God’s rightful role as husband to his wife, and the wife has rejected God in favor of the false prophet.

STUDY TIP: See this link for an understanding of kingdoms.

Biblical references to sex all relate to the issue of listening to God’s spoken voice. God uses the imagery of unconventional human sexual activity to symbolically represent the sin of listening to false prophets instead of listening to God’s spoken voice. Here are the principles:

• • • • • Intimate sexual activity between husband and wife is equated with true intimacy that results when people listen to God’s spoken voice.
        • Unacceptable sexual activity (e.g. adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, prostitution, etc.) is equated with false intimacy that results when religious people listen to the voices of false prophets and follow religious laws.

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For example, prostitution and adultery are not conventional sexual activities. They imitate intimacy, but they lack true intimacy because only the body — not the heart — is involved. Therefore, God symbolically uses prostitution and adultery to symbolize the sin of religion where the body (i.e. flesh) is involved but not the heart.

Another example is homosexuality which is outside the norms of moral acceptability in many cultures. Sex between husband and wife is the norm in most cultures. The intimacy of listening to God’s spoken voice is the norm in the kingdom of God. Religion deviates from the norm because religion involves religious laws and the teaching of religious leaders. Religion deviates from the norm because it depends on human teachers. Religion does not depend on God writing his laws on hearts. Homosexuality symbolically represents the false intimacy in the relationship between human religious teachers and the religious people who listen to them and obey their teaching. The ideal for an intimate, heart-to-heart relationship is God to man. Homosexuality (i.e. man-to-man and woman-to-woman) deviates from the norm. Thus God symbolically uses homosexuality to represent missing the mark (i.e. sin) of the ideal relationship with God where he speaks and people listen with their hearts.

Biblical references to homosexuality should not be used to establish cultural norms or laws. Cultural laws are designed and policed by people — not by God.

Individuals and societies create and enforce laws to control physical, human activity. Laws and customs against adultery, prostitution and homosexuality are often features of man-made laws. The only laws that concern God are his spiritual laws written on the heart. The Bible uses homosexuality symbolically to represent the religious practice of listening to false prophets because that is forbidden in the Kingdom of God.

Instead of designing and enforcing laws that govern all kinds of human activity, God governs his kingdom (i.e. heart) through his spiritual laws. His strategy is this: People who have his spiritual laws written on their hearts will always behave appropriately toward other people in all kinds of social settings.

Self-righteous religious people claim that their man-made laws are legitimate and appropriate because they are based on the literal words of the Bible. They do not understand Biblical symbolism and they wrongly apply the literal words of the Bible to justify themselves and force people into compliance with their personal, cultural laws.

STUDY TIP: See these links for understanding of different types of human laws: Cultural, moral laws; Civil laws; Institutional laws; Household laws; Religious laws.

The “first the natural and then the spiritual”  principle informs us that God uses the example of human homosexuality to symbolically represent a spiritual truth. Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality and bestiality, therefore, are just another way of making the point that God does not want his people to listen to false prophets. He is not commenting on human sexual practices.

In Biblical language, God’s bride is held captive by religious leaders who keep his people as slaves to religious sin that is based on a literal understanding of the Bible — not on the symbolic, spiritual meaning that is only available to people who listen to God’s voice. Being equally guilty of unfaithfulness, both the leaders and followers invite God’s punishment. God takes vengeance on those leaders and their followers because he is a jealous God who is angered when an individual or an organization deceives his people and turns their hearts to idolatry and adultery. He is jealous as a husband is jealous when his wife commits adultery.

Because people have chosen to become intimate with false prophets and practice religion instead of listening to his voice, God employs a strategy that people will find quite unbelievable and unlike God: He punishes them with more religion, sends them into spiritual exile (i.e. separation from him), and blinds their eyes and hardens their hearts so that they cannot interpret the Biblical symbolism that would lead them to knowledge of the truth.

This kind of discipline is counter-intuitive to man’s ways. But God knows what he is doing and knows that this strategy works because he has been doing it since he exiled Adam and Eve. God’s attitude is that religious leaders have control over the hearts and minds of his people whom he considers to be his bride (a term that represents the quality of intimacy he has with them). With this control, they have captivated his people as slaves and harlots. This situation arouses God’s jealous anger so that, after a period of enforced captivity (i.e. exile to religion), he is compelled to rescue and redeem his flock so that they will worship him only. At the same time, he is provoked to punish any religion that oppresses his bride and deceives it to follow other gods (i.e. religious leaders). The story of Hosea allegorically represents these relational dynamics between God and his people.

The story of Hosea is only one of many in the Bible that show how God demonstrates his love for his people by redeeming and rescuing them from bondage to religion. These stories are parables of conversion from Old/First Covenant religion to New Covenant discipleship. Here is a very brief outline of the rescue and redemption process:

It all begins when parents teach their children to practice the sin of Old/First Covenant religion: ♦ Listen to false prophets. ♦ Worship idols and follow their parents’ religious traditions in high places. ♦ Do not listen to God’s voice. God exiles them to captivity  to religion as a disciplinary measure for breaking his covenant because, in God’s view, practicing religion is sin. After they realize that religion has enslaved, oppressed, and deceived them, they cry out to him for deliverance from religion (i.e. salvation). God sends true prophets to warn them to repent for participating in Old/First Covenant religious practices. Eventually, they repent for their sin of choosing religion and return to God with all their heart. After they prove that they are done with religion by repenting and resting from all of their religious works, God remembers his covenant (i.e. New Covenant) with them. God hears their cries, saves (i.e. delivers) them from slavery to religion, forgives their sins, has mercy on them and restores them to New Covenant relationship with him.

We see in this pattern that God’s goal has always been to bring his people back to intimacy with him (i.e. they listen to his voice). But if they want to  worship idols, he lets them do that until they figure out that those idols do not really speak for God.

In contemporary language, we could say that God teaches his people a lesson by letting them have what they want — even though what they want is not good for them. This pattern is first represented in the Garden of Eden when Eve and Adam made the choice to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is all part of the process by which the law leads people to faith.