Deuteronomy 4:25

"When thou shalt beget children, and children's children, and ye shall have been long in the land, and shall corrupt yourselves, and make a graven image in the form of anything, and shall do that which is evil in the sight of Jehovah thy God, to provoke him to anger; I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over the Jordan to possess it; ye shall not prolong your days upon it, but shall utterly be destroyed. And Jehovah will scatter you among the peoples, and ye shall be left few in number among the nations, whither Jehovah shall lead you away. And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But from thence ye shall seek Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt find him, when thou searchest after him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, in the latter days thou shalt return to Jehovah thy God, and hearken unto his voice: for Jehovah thy God is a merciful God; he will not fail thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them."

There is no reason whatever to see these verses as post-exilic. Many centuries prior to the Babylonian captivity of Israel, "Defeat and deportation were familiar concepts to Israel."[25] The same author pointed out that, "What is really significant here is that Yahweh, unlike secular kings, might even forgive disregard of a solemn treaty."[26] Of course, the Christian view of the passage makes it an accurate prophecy on the part of Moses of exactly what would happen (and what did happen) to Israel in the ages to come. No critical scholar could possibly allow such a thing, because even before he even looks at any of the evidence, he has already decided that there is no such thing as predictive prophecy. That this is actually true is specifically attested by the great German scholar Maier:

"The very selection of the critical method prefigures, and predetermines the results. The historical-critical method represents a prejudgment in the sense of an a priori decision concerning the outcome. Such a method cannot allow certain conclusions (such as the existence of predictive prophecy, parenthesis mine, J.B.C.), though they may be proved a thousand times! ... This is the helplessness into which a falsely selected method blunders."[27]

It actually happened exactly as Moses prophesied here. Israel became prosperous and they turned greedily after the licentiousness of the old Canaanite gods, the Baalim, with their shameful orgiastic, sexually oriented debaucheries, and it was not long until both the northern and southern Israels were corrupted. There is abundant evidence of all this in the minor prophets. As Dummelow said, "Prosperity sometimes acts like a narcotic and sends the soul to sleep."[28]

"Ye shall be few in number ..." (Deuteronomy 4:27). As found frequently throughout the Bible, the `remnant doctrine' appears right here in Deuteronomy. Phillips denied this, solely on the basis of his personal opinion, since no argument supporting the notion was even mentioned. And, of course, it was only a remnant that came back from Babylon. Phillips admitted that, "This passage clearly betrays knowledge of the exile in Babylon ..."[29] He means by this, of course, that the passage had to be written after the Babylon exile occurred. This is only the blindness of criticism. How can such men who have already been brain-washed so that they cannot believe in the supernatural, nor in God, nor in inspiration by the Holy Spirit, nor in anything whatever except the material things they can see or eat - how can such men hope to be of any help to Christians in their study of the Scriptures? Regardless of the blind arrogance of unbelievers, however, right here we have Moses' prediction of what would happen after Israel was seduced by the false gods of Canaan. This prophecy was written in 1400 B.C., and the exile took place about eight centuries later.

Alexander read this prophecy of Israel's return to Jehovah "in the latter days" (Deuteronomy 4:30) as a promise of their restoration "as a nation."[30] However, it is our conviction that the expression, "the latter days," identifies this as a prediction of the intended return of all men, both Jews and Gentiles alike, unto God in the institution of the N.T., the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ.