Two Kinds of Death

Deut. 18:18-20
But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken?
When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that [is] the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, [but] the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

A false prophet, one who speaks for another god while pretending that the prophecy is from the True God, will die as a consequence of his falseness. The tense used for “die” indicates a completed action, something so sure that it has already happened.

And yet, the next verse asks, how do we know if a prophet is false or not? Obviously, we don’t have a dead prophet on the floor as our proof. The proof is that the prophecy shall not come to pass. The last verse tells us to not fear the false prophet. If the prophet is physically dead, this seems a little silly. Why fear a dead person?

There are two kinds of death. We think of physical death first, but that isn’t the case here. The false prophet becomes spiritually dead. As a prophet of God, the spirit of God was upon him, giving him the words God wanted him to speak. When the prophet speaks for another god, the True God immediately removes His spirit from upon him, resulting in spiritual death. There is no need to fear the spiritually dead prophet.