We have a tremendous lesson in 1 Kings 13.1-34 about obeying a direct command from Yehovah and not listening to anyone who comes along later and tells us something contrary to what the Lord had said. We have an unnamed prophet from Judah who was sent to Jeroboam regarding the impending destruction of the altar at Bethel, which featured a golden calf. The prophet says that a son of David will come along named Josiah (350 years later-2 Kings 23.15) and sacrifice the high priests of the high places on that altar, and human bones shall be burned on it also. He gave Jeroboam a sign that these things will come to pass. Jeroboam tries to seize him, but his hand turns leprous. Jeroboam then asks the prophet to pray to the Lord to heal him, which he does.
Then Jeroboam said to the prophet, “Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” But the prophet refuses, saying, “If you were to give half your house I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, ‘You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, nor return by the way which you came.'” So he went another way.
However, there was an old prophet who was living in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the deeds which the prophet had done that day. The old prophet wanted to know which way he went, and the sons told him. So he wanted them to saddle his donkey, and he rode away and went after the prophet. He found him sitting under an oak, and asked him to come home with him and eat bread. The prophet refused because he had a command not to eat or drink in that place.
The old prophet said to him, “I also am a prophet like you, and an angel (concealing the fact that this “angel” was his sons) spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, “Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water,’ ” but he lied to him. So, the prophet went back with the old prophet, and ate bread in his house and drank water. As they were sitting down at the table, the word of the Lord came to the old prophet and he said to the prophet from Judah, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the command of the Lord, and have not observed the command which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water”, your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers.’ “
So after he had eaten bread and drank, he went on his way and a lion met him on the way (this area was infested with lions-2 Kings 2.24) and killed him, and his body was thrown on the road, with the donkey standing unharmed next to him. His body was not eaten, nor the donkey killed, to show that this was from the Lord. The old prophet saw his body with the donkey unharmed (a miracle in itself), and took the body and laid it on the donkey and brought it back to the city of the old prophet to bury him. He gave instructions to his sons to bury him in the same grave with the prophet from Judah. Josiah would come across their bones during his reform, and he was told that it was the grave of the prophet who foretold what Josiah was doing hundreds of years earlier (2 Kings 23.17-18).
Spiritually, here is the lesson we can glean from this incident. When we receive a direct command from God as found in the Torah and the Scriptures, we must not be turned away by the word of someone else, no matter who they are. The Lord is not going to contradict himself. If he told you to do something in his word, then he must be the one to tell you the situation has changed by his word. He does not do it through someone else. We should not be deceived. 1 Thes 5.19-22 says we are to examine everything and to hold fast to what is good. Acts 17.10-11 says that “the Bereans were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message (from Paul) with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Isa 8.20 says we are to go to the word of God, and if one says things that are contrary to that word of God, it is because they have no light. Nehemiah was told to go into the Temple to hide from people who wanted to kill him, but he knew this was not from the Lord because the Temple was only reserved for the priests. He realized that his enemies wanted an evil report so they could accuse him, and get rid of Nehemiah (Neh 6.10-13). It was a setup. A true prophecy or word from the Lord cannot be annulled by another prophet, unless one hears directly from the Lord that it has been annulled (Deut 13.1-5, 18.21-22; Matt 7.15; Luke 24.27).
This is the problem today. People ignore what the Lord has said in his word, and listen to the word of false prophets who say the exact opposite. They will say, “God told me” or “the Lord has shown me,” that the law has been done away with, and then tell you it is permissible to do the exact opposite of what the word of God says. This is why people think Sunday has replaced the seventh-day Sabbath, why people think they can keep the festivals outside of Jerusalem and the Temple, or you can eat pork, catfish, shrimp and lobster today. Yehovah is very explicit in his word what a Torah-based faith in Yeshua looks like, no matter what a pope, church father, a pastor, rabbi, or bible teacher tells you to the contrary. This what is called “Replacement Theology.” The Lord put his commands in writing and you must have another command in writing from the Lord that tells you otherwise, and that the Torah has been done away with. If not, then the previous written command still stands true. That is why many pervert the Scriptures to make them say what they want to hear.
Peter warned about this very thing in 2 Pet 3.14-17 when he says, “Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace spotless and blameless (we can’t do this in and of ourselves, this is free gift), and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given him wrote to you, as in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as also the rest of the Scriptures (the only Scriptures at the time this was written was the Tanak, or “old” testament), to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard lest being carried away by the error of unprincipled (Greek “athesmos” Strong’s #113, meaning one who breaks through the restraints of the law, or no restraint of the Torah) men, you fall from your own steadfastness.” This is the lesson of the prophet from Judah who listened to the word of the old prophet who distorted the word he had from the Lord, leading to his own destruction.
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