Jesus Was No False Prophet

No, Jesus was and is a true prophet. He says he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). Moses prophesied that a prophet like himself would one day be raised up (Deut. 18:15-19) and, following the Resurrection, both Peter (Acts 3:22) and Stephen (Acts 7:37) testify that Jesus fulfilled Moses’ prophecy.

A key way Jesus demonstrated that he was a true prophet was in telling the Pharisees that no sign would be given them except the sign of Jonah (Matt. 12:38-40). He demonstrated this first by rising from the dead, as Jonah was three days in a “great fish,” likely a whale (Jonah 2:1). But the other aspect of the sign of Jonah was getting the Gentiles to repent and turn to God. For Jonah, it was getting the people of the great city of Nineveh—then in Assyria; today part of Iraq—to repent, at least for a while.

With Jesus, we see something much more dramatic. Jesus commissioned his apostles to make disciples of “all nations,” i.e., “Gentiles” (Matt. 28:19). We see that accomplished in a significant way through the Catholic Church he founded. Catholic means universal, which is appropriate, since with God’s fundamental support the Church has made disciples throughout the world.

Jesus is the Incarnate Word, the God-man (see John 1:1-3, 14). He thus cannot help but be a true prophet and indeed the greatest ever. For further reading on this subject, I recommend Dr. Brant Pitre’s The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ.