Some people in order to lend to their ideas the appearance of divine authority adopt the same device as Zoroaster and Mohammed.
Mani did this having discovered a cave through which there ran a stream of water, he laid up in it a store of provisions, and retired there for a year, giving out that he was on a visit to heaven. In this retirement he produced his book a work the ingenuity of which has been greatly praised.
This is common nowadays in the Jewish world. People do not claim to visit heaven physically but they do claim to have gone there in spirit and to bring back their particular configuration of confused ideas. [Instead of trying to nullify the laws of the Torah they make them irrelevant or secondary to their new revelations.]
The particular problem with this is that in the Law of Moses it is stated there will never be a new Law from God. Sinai was a one time event. [Prophecy is not to bring new teachings nor new interpretations of the Torah]. [Deuteronomy 29:29]
Nowadays it is easier to claim divine revelation since one does not have to go into a cave for a year to do so. But one has to make sure that his disciples are the ones that claim it openly, not himself. It is fairly easy in the West but harder in India where people are used to charlatans and give them tests to see if they are real. In the West all one needs is one or two gullible disciples to get the ball rolling.
Besides all that, a prophecy to add or subtract any commandment in the Torah gives the prophet the category of a false prophet [Deuteronomy 13].
Mani did this having discovered a cave through which there ran a stream of water, he laid up in it a store of provisions, and retired there for a year, giving out that he was on a visit to heaven. In this retirement he produced his book a work the ingenuity of which has been greatly praised.
This is common nowadays in the Jewish world. People do not claim to visit heaven physically but they do claim to have gone there in spirit and to bring back their particular configuration of confused ideas. [Instead of trying to nullify the laws of the Torah they make them irrelevant or secondary to their new revelations.]
The particular problem with this is that in the Law of Moses it is stated there will never be a new Law from God. Sinai was a one time event. [Prophecy is not to bring new teachings nor new interpretations of the Torah]. [Deuteronomy 29:29]
Nowadays it is easier to claim divine revelation since one does not have to go into a cave for a year to do so. But one has to make sure that his disciples are the ones that claim it openly, not himself. It is fairly easy in the West but harder in India where people are used to charlatans and give them tests to see if they are real. In the West all one needs is one or two gullible disciples to get the ball rolling.
Besides all that, a prophecy to add or subtract any commandment in the Torah gives the prophet the category of a false prophet [Deuteronomy 13].
