From the mockery that you begin your post with (those faces are laughing at me, right?), it is hard to tell if you intend a real argument with the point about the “Deuteronomical license to kill.” Are you saying that these verse can have no modern application because the law enjoining the execution of false prophets is not enforcible now? With no better indication, I will assume that this is your intention and respond accordingly.
To make one precision at the outset, I should note that “
license to kill” does not accurately describe this provision in the Deuteronomic code; rather the text is about an
obligation to kill. To refrain from slaying a false prophet under the Old Law was a transgression, for the whole law carries imperative force and the present text says quite pointedly: “So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.”(13:4)
Now, one does not need to believe the Deut 13:1-4 should or even can be enforced to the letter in the New Covenant to see that it carries theological implications that do retain their validity. I do not assume that the Law is now in effect and take up a torch (or a stone in those days). In fact, because the judicial precepts of the law were fulfilled by Christ on the cross, it is not only unnecessary, but mortally sinful to enforce them today, since that would amount to a denial of the work of the cross.
But we don’t have to practice the Old Law to learn from it. What my argument
does assume is that
the Law is holy. That is, however uncomfortable this may make us feel, Israel had a real obligation to execute false prophets according to the standard of Deut 13:1-4; this was a fair and enforceable provision that protected them from evil as God prepared Israel for the messiah to come. What this means is that
Deut 13:1-4 gives a correct account of how one can know a false prophet. For if it were otherwise, the Law would be providing an unjust standard, contrary to its own holiness, and would not live up to its purpose in protecting Israel from evil.
The key word here is “go after.”
“Go after” translates the Hebrew
halakh, which in its broadest connotation just means “walk.” But it also has a specifically cultic meaning which operates in this context. It refers to walking as a metaphor for living one’s whole life according to the Torah, “to walk with the Lord,” “to walk in his ways,” and so forth. That is why the Israelites spoke of the way in which a person or group interpreted and obeyed the Law as thier "
halakhah,” which means “walking.”
This cultic meaning of
halakh figures in the present text because God compares the *halakhah *of the false prophet to the
halakhah of the Lord. Hence he says, “You shall walk (
halakh) after the Lord your God” (13:4) rather than “go after” a false prophet. This implies that the contrast between the hearing of a false prophet and following the true God is a contrast between two totally different, separate ways of life. Those ways can be distinguished by the comparing the identity of the god professed by the prophet to the God who has indeed revealed himself to Israel. One does not need to enforce the stoning of false prophets to understand the transcendent character of this teaching. Your emphasis on that relatively accidental aspect of the text is a pure distraction.
[Note: One does not actually need to advert to Hebrew to see this in the English text, because in the early modern English of the King James Bible, as in Shakespeare, “go” and “walk” mean the same thing. Thus, from the English alone, you can compare “go after” and “walk after” directly]
At no place in the King Follet speculations does Joseph Smith remotely suggest that we should “go after,” i.e.worship, other Gods.
KFD does talk about worship. In fact, for Smith, his claims about God’s nature pertain directly to the propriety of authentic worship and to the identity of God himself, as he is worshipped. He says:
When we begin to learn in this way, we begin to learn the only true God, and what kind of a being we have got to worship.
Note the force of “have got.” Smith places imperative necessity on worshipping “the only true God.” Further, he sees that understanding “what kind of being” God is necessary to worship him properly. Thus, if we are wrong about the kind of God we must worship, we are also wrong about which individual God we worship. (Individuality, after all, is predicated upon nature: I cannot say which individual man a person is, unless I have first established that he is indeed a man.) Thus Smith says we “have got” to worship an exalted man because that is part of knowing the true God. Can the text really be read otherwise? If Smith turned out to be incorrect on that, then by his own reasoning, he would have taught error about who is the true God, and which god deserves worship. That is sufficient to bring Deut 13:1-4 to bear on his case.
(continued)
That sounds more like Pagan Roman mythology to me than what I’ve known and come to respect as Catholicism. Or like a Catholic lady once who told me that she didn’t believe in Christ, but only believed in Christ’s mother. 
I guess every religion has its oddballs.
Knock yourself out. But since my parents are missionaries in the Congo, I strongly object to any argument that suggests that Deuteronomy requires the murder of Mormon missionaries. I don’t think that’s what Soren was trying to say, or even that he was aware that it implied that. Please connect the dots. (1) If, as most of you assume, Joseph Smith’s KFD is representative of LDS doctrine, and (2) Deuteronomy’s “kill folks that take you after false gods” applies to the KFD, then aren’t you essentially saying that Deuteronomy requires the murder of Mormon missionaries?
