NOPE!! Another Christian prooftext taken out of context!!
Back up to verse 9, and read it in context. Prophecy is clearly being offered as a routine alternative to the Canaanites' various fortune-telling practices. And this is Moses telling them what to do when they enter the land, i.e. starting a few days after his death. Not about something that would happen over a millennium later.
When you enter the land, don't do horrible things like those nations do -- no putting kids through fire, or sorcery, or divination ... or inquiring of the dead ... God finds all that despicable. Just have faith in God. Those people would use all sorts of diviners and sorcerers, but that's not what God set up for you: [when you have a question about the future], God will send you a prophet from your brethren, just like I was, and listen to him. [And not to a soothsayer, augur, or whatnot.]
If you look at any of the classical Jewish lists of commandments (such as Maimonides), the commandments here are counted as:
- Do not put kids through fire
- Do not inquire of the dead
- Do not fortune-tell by these various other Canaanite ways
- Do follow the guidance of a prophet.
None of these were one-time commandments; they are constant ones.
As Rabbi Tuvia Singer has pointed out; there is no commandment "go listen to the Messiah", nor does there need to be. There's already a commandment to listen to any appropriate prophecy (which applied to Moses, Nathan, Ido, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). Nor is there a commandment "go accept a Messiah when he arrives" because we believe it will be so blazingly obvious, it would be like a command "believe that your right hand is your right hand."
