‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
7th teaching
8.30.2012
“the Prophecies of Holy
Scripture”
PART III of the Divine Attributes
of Holy Scripture
VI. The Prophecies
of the Bible
Our topic tonight is a ginormous one.
It’s huge. There are thousands of books written about the prophecies of
Scripture. There have been men who devoted their lives to studying its
prophecies. There have been millions of sermons taught on this very subject.
So I don’t presume to give you much
more than an overview of prophecy tonight. And we’ll hit a few basic points
about prophecy.
Now the last time this college group
met for a study, I wasn’t here. Actually Pastor Rich, my father-in-law, taught
that study and he taught the subject of prophecy. He’s an extraordinarily busy
man and I’m trying to get a hold of his notes so I can post them for all of us
to look at.
But since I wasn’t there, and since I
think many of us missed that study, we’re going to look at prophecy again. And
again this is an overview of prophecy.
Five things I want to talk
about tonight:
1. What is prophecy?
2. What is a prophet?
3. What kind of
prophecies are there?
4. What does it mean
for us?
1.
What is Prophecy?
II
Peter 1:19, “And so we have the
prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a
dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts…”
Understanding biblical prophecies is
very important for a biblical understanding. The Bible becomes absurd if you
disregard all of its prophecies. Peter the apostle calls the Bible the
prophetic word. This is an incredible truth.
How prophetic is the Bible? Someone
counted. An author named J. Barton Payne counted 1,239 Old Testament prophecies
and 578 New Testament ones. That’s a grand total of 1,817 individual prophecies
which have either been fulfilled in history or are waiting to be fulfilled.
This author also said that these 1,817 prophecies involve 8,352 of the Bible’s
verses. Since there’s about 31,000 verses in the Bible, we can see that about
26%, or a little over a quarter of the Bible is prophetic. One in every four
verses! That’s a lot!
The Bible is full of prophecy,
prophetic utterances, prophetic books, prophetic people, prophetic shadows and
types and allegories and pictures and predictions. Needless to say the
prophetic nature of the Bible is an important characteristic to understand if
we’re to understand the Bible.
Now prophecy is a very mystical
sounding word that gets thrown around a lot. Really, prophecy has been misused
hundreds of times in our day alone. So just what is prophecy?
When in doubt, ask Webster. Webster’s
Dictionary says this:
Prophecy. Noun.
1: an inspired utterance
of a prophet… 2: the function or vocation of a
prophet; specifically: the inspired declaration of divine will
and purpose… 3: a prediction of something to come…
I also looked up the definition of prophecy in Noah Webster’s 1828
Dictionary of the English Language. I think this definition is more revealing
than the modern one.
1. A foretelling; prediction; a
declaration of something to come. As God only knows future events with
certainty, no being but God or some person informed by him, can utter a real
prophecy. The prophecies recorded in Scripture, when fulfilled, afford most
convincing evidence of the divine original of the Scriptures, as those who
uttered the prophecies could not have foreknown the events predicted without
supernatural instruction. 2 Pet.1.
2…
3. Preaching; public interpretation of
Scripture; exhortation or instruction. Prov.31.
As an old school
definition, this one is closer to the truth. Prophecy is a foretelling of the
future, and not only that, but it’s been said that prophecy is not only
foretelling but forth-telling truth. Hence the definition that preaching the
word of God publicly, or telling-forth the truths of God, is a form of
prophecy.
Tonight, though,
our focus is going to be on prophecy as foretelling things to come.
This isn’t far off
from the Bible’s own usage of the word prophecy. The apostle Peter used the
Greek word propheteia
(prawf-ay-tee-ah), which simply means prediction.
So what is biblical
prophecy? A foretelling and a forth-telling of divine truth, often a prediction
of future events.
2.
What is a prophet?
Hebrews
1:1, “God… at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the
fathers by the prophets…”
So that’s all fine and dandy. Now we know what
prophecy is. But how do we get prophecies? Well prophecies, true ones, came
from God. He gave them to people in various ways: through signs, dreams,
visions, voices, etc.
These men, and women too (God ain’t
sexist), who received and uttered prophecies of God are known as prophets. But
let’s not jump the gun? What the hey is a prophet? Is it a name? Is it a term?
Is it descriptive?
Well, actually it’s an office, kind of
like a job. We would say that to be a prophet was a specific calling.
The writer of Hebrews in the passage
we just read (Hebrews 1:1) used the Greek word prophetes (prawf-ay-tays), which means a forteller or inspired
speaker. That is, a prophet was one who foretold God-revealed truths.
The original Hebrew word used some 200
plus times throughout the Old Testament is nabiy
(naw-bee). It means simply an inspired man. That word inspired brings our
minds back to the topic inspiration, how God communicated His word to the human
authors is like how God communicated prophecies to His prophets.
Other words used to describe these
Communicators with God, these prophets, are found throughout Scripture. And
some biblical persons we don’t often consider to be prophets were in fact
called prophets.
Enoch the seventh descendant of Adam,
in Genesis 5, walked with God and
was not, for God took him. Enoch was caught up by God to heaven before he died.
And this man, whoever he was, was a prophet according to Jude 14.
Abraham was a pagan whom God called
out of His land to become the father of the Jewish nation, but he was directly
called a prophet by God himself in Genesis
20:7.
Moses was raised in Egypt and went on
to deliver Israel from bondage and become their lawgiver, but he is also called
a prophet, Deu 34:10.
Other prophets were Aaron the brother
of Moses and the first high priest (Exo
7:1); Abel as in Cain and Abel, that Abel, was a prophet (Luke 11:50-51); Amos was a prophet who
wrote the book of Amos, though the guy was a sheepbreeder before God called him
to prophesy; Barnabas was a missionary; Daniel was a politician and statesman;
David was a king and poet; Deborah was a woman prophetess; Ezekiel was a priest
and on and on.
A prophet could come from any
background, any walk of life, any education, any profession. If God wanted to
use that man or that woman, the prophet in question had only to respond to that
call of God.
I think we automatically get a very
outrageous view of these men and women in our minds whenever we think of them.
We think of prophets like Daniel who had to be thrown into the lion’s den.
These guys and gals had to have a kind of superfaith, right? And we almost
consider them to be superheroes.
But they weren’t. James writes that “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours…”
Yet Elijah called down fire from heaven, worked miracles, prayed against the
rain and it didn’t rain for three and a half years.
Consider again that they were ordinary
human beings like you and I, with ordinary jobs like you and I. Okay, none of
us are politicians or kings, but you get the point. My point is that God can
call anyone. Not to a prophet’s life, but to a specific calling. And when that
calling comes, will you respond as the prophet Samuel did when we heard the
call of God, saying ‘Here I am’?
Sure it seems like we’re made of
weaker stuff than they were, but they messed up just like we do. They were
human just like us. And look what God did and can do with a life that will
simply respond to His call.
(split)
The Bible, as we’ve been studying, is unlike any
other book. It has many unique qualities: the length of its writing, the
subject matter, its authors, its inspiration. The Bible is a book that is a
collection of books.
But this is not the same thing as any
collection of books. Let’s say you’re an avid reader of fiction and you have a
pretty good collection of books by Doctor Seuss. In fact, let’s say it’s not
just a good collection. It’s a
complete collection. I mean you’ve got Fox
in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham, Oh the Thinks you can Think and so on.
You’ve got all the books he ever wrote, his full collection.
But not one of those books is truly
united with the other. They don’t have unity. There’s no really common theme
running through them. Nothing ties them all together except for Doctor Seuss’
talent. In fact, you’ll notice that they don’t even refer to each other. You
don’t need to read Fox in Socks to
get the history of the Lorax, and
there’s nothing in that story about Sneetches which can tell you why the Cat in
the Hat showed up on the doorstep of that house in his own book. There is zero
relation.
Now this is true of very many
collections of books. A collection of Hemingway will be full of stories which
are unrelated. True some collections may share the same world, Oz or
Middle-earth or Wonderland, but these don’t have a common theme, even, that
ties them all together.
But it is exactly the opposite for the
Bible. The Bible is a collection of books which do unite together, which do have
a common theme running through them, a single thread of a storyline from the
beginning to the end, and they do
refer to each other book in the Bible constantly. The Bible is one work
comprised of a collection of works.
The point is: this is seen in the
concept of prophecy. Prophecies many times in the Bible work beyond the book in
which they were told. A prophecy in Matthew may not come true till Revelation,
or a prophecy from Isaiah is reflected upon at its fulfillment in Acts, or even
a prophecy from Leviticus finds its completion in I Samuel.
Prophecy shows us just how truly
united the Bible is, because prophecy helps trace the threads of storyline from
its start to finish. This is a great way to understand the Bible. It is not a
book of quotations out of which we may pick and choose any verse for our
comfort, although we can do that. But primarily, it is a single narrative of
the history of man and the coming of the Savior.
*Where have we left off?
3.
What kind of prophecies are there?
For the sake of time, let me give you just three:
three different kinds of prophecies in the Bible and some examples of them.
1. Historically fulfilled prophecies
These are
prophecies which have already been literally fulfilled.
Can anyone think of some examples? Let’s
think of one example per person.
Turn to I Samuel 2:30-35. This prophecy about the destruction of Eli’s
priestly house was soon fulfilled some years later. Look at I Samuel 4:12-18. The prophecy that
Eli’s two sons would both die on the same day came true.
2. Unfulfilled prophecies
What are some examples?
A prime example of unfulfilled prophecy is the
entire book of Revelation. Most of Revelation is written concerning future
events that have not yet come to pass: the rise and rule of the Antichrist, the
battle of Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, the 2nd Coming of
Jesus Christ.
3. Messianic prophecies
Probably the most important kind of prophecy, messianic
prophecies are called messianic because they center around the Messiah, the
Savior, Jesus Christ; around His life, character, ministry, nature, personality,
birth, ascendance, deity and death.
Jesus Christ, in speaking to the Jews, said: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you
think you have eternal life; but these Scriptures testify of Me”
(paraphrase). That’s in John 5:39.
Now if Christ considered it to be true, and if indeed it is true, that the
whole of Bible, not just the New Testament but the Old Testament, testifies or
tells of Jesus, then certainly we should see that in prophecy, since prophecy
forms a quarter of the entire Bible.
In actuality, there are tons of prophecies about
Christ throughout the Bible. Remember how we talked about the unity of the
Bible’s storyline? It all centers around Christ.
For an example, let’s look at the first prophecy
ever spoken in history. This is recorded for us in Genesis 3:14-15.
This is called the protoevangelium, which is Latin for first gospel. What we just read is a prophecy given at the very
outset of human history which prophecies about the Seed of the Woman crushing
the head of the serpent. From the context we know that the serpent is Satan,
and from the rest of Scripture, we know that the Seed of the Woman, was the
Virgin born Messiah. So here we have a prophecy concerning the Messiah’s
victory over the serpent, Satan.
This was fulfilled at the cross. Hebrews 2:14 says that Christ through
death destroyed he that had the power of death, that is, the devil.
A truly great prophecy concerning the specific
death of crucifixion which Christ would undergo for our sins is prophesied in Psalm 22:16. “…Dogs have surrounded Me; the congregation of the wicked has enclosed
Me, they pierced My hands and Mu feet…”
*Before we move on to the last point, let’s consider some
guidelines for interpreting biblical prophecy.
I think we can all agree that there is
some confusion concerning biblical prophecy. You need only check out the books
written on the subject of biblical prophecy. You’ll find that there are all
kinds of very different views on any number of prophecies.
For example, the Millennial Kingdom
which is prophesied in the book of Revelation… Will it last a literal thousand
years? Will it be future? Is the Kingdom happening already? Will it be
physical, literally Christ ruling from a geographical location on earth? Or is
it spiritual, the rule of Christ in the kingdom of His present-day church? Will
it happen before the tribulation or after it?
All these various views exist. There’s
tremendous confusion concerning biblical prophecy, but let me say this: I don’t
think we’ll completely know what is going to happen specifically besides what
is clearly and literally true in the prophecies. I think when prophecies are
fulfilled, man is always surprised.
When the priests of Jesus’ day read
the Scriptures concerning the coming of their Messiah and then saw that very
Messiah before them in the person of Jesus, many didn’t recognize Him. They
were surprised to realize, if at all, that He was the fulfillment of so many
prophecies they had poured over and studied. And yet, He was the only
fulfillment there literally could be.
So, what are some guidelines for
interpreting biblical prophecy, so we can avoid as much confusion as possible?
a. Interpret Literally
b. Be aware of figurative or poetic language
c. Consider the context
d. Reality duality and partiality
These are just a few quick guidelines.
Firstly, interpret the prophecy literally.
To understand these guidelines quickly and easily,
let’s think about a letter. Think about a letter I wrote you. If I were to
write you a letter concerning our future rendezvous at the LA Zoo, how would
you interpret that letter? Literally. You would understand it exactly as it
appears to mean.
You wouldn’t interpret where I said ‘Let’s go to
the zoo’ as ‘Let’s get tattoes’ or ‘Let’s vote democrat’. Of course not. You
certainly wouldn’t read into the letter your own meaning. If you’re angry with
your parents, you wouldn’t read where I said ‘We can see the monkeys’ as
meaning ‘We should lock up your parents’, rather, as you always do without
thinking, you would look at the words for the intended meaning of the author.
Now we do this really all the time. When you read the news or an article or a
book, you investigate the literal meaning of the words. Otherwise it would make
no sense.
Take the opening lines of the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville. It says ‘Call me Ishmael’. Now what does that
mean? It means that there is a person who desires that the reader or a
character in the story call him by the name Ishmael. It does not mean that there is trouble in the
Middle-east. It does not mean that
the name of the Antichrist will be Ishmael. It means what it means, literally.
If our language was not for the most part literal,
there could be no meaning. And this is easy, then, to apply to Scripture. When
the apostle writes that the Kingdom will last for a thousand years, we suppose
automatically that he means a thousand years.
Now secondly, we should be aware of figurative or
poetic language.
The Bible is full of poetic language in its
prophecies. These things can be figurative, metaphorical or symbolic of other
things.
Going back to our letter. Let’s say that in my
letter I wrote to you the sentence ‘and we can see the king of the jungle’. Now
you know because you’re familiar with this phrase that we won’t expect to see a
literal royal dignitary who lives in the jungle. You know that we intend to see
a lion. King of the Jungle is a phrase, a figure of speech. King here is meant
as a symbol of the lion’s dominance over other jungle animals.
And so you would interpret the symbol as a symbol
with a literal meaning. This can be tricky with the Bible. How are we to
interpret things like Nebuchadnezzar’s statue or the four horsemen of the
apocalypse or the beast out of the sea? Well, something that is very handy for
interpreting symbols or figures is context.
You knew the king of the jungle meant the lion
because of our cultural context in which the phrase has that meaning.
This brings us thirdly to context.
You must use context in interpreting anything and
everything. No man is an island. So too, no verse is an island. Each word must
be interpreted in light of its sentence in light of its verse in light of its
chapter in light of its book in light of the Bible as a whole.
Sounds tough? It isn’t really. Your mind
automatically does this too through the process of memory. You remembered
hearing about the king of the jungle before and so you knew I meant a lion.
Another example: let’s say that in my letter I
write to you ‘We’ll chill with the chill-guys’. Now that cannot be interpreted
literally. What the hey is a chill-guy. Well, when you read that, you remember
that phrase came from the last time we went to the zoo with my little brother,
who called the penguins ‘chill-guys’. AND what’s more, you know again from the
context of our culture that ‘chill with’ in our day means ‘hang out with’.
If this was the case, then you know exactly what I
mean because of the context of our previous experiences and the context of our
culture.
So too, with the Bible, each verse, specifically
prophecy, must be interpreted in context of what has come before. Prophecies
often make reference to older prophecies and older narratives, just as
‘chilling with the chill-guys’ would make reference to our older experiences.
Also, we must keep in mind the specific cultural
context of the biblical times, how they spoke, what they did during their
lives, what phrases were specific to their mindset? All these things must be
taken into consideration.
Finally, and briefly, let me make note of the
duality and partiality of some prophecies. What this means is that some
prophecies may be partially fulfilled and still be in waiting for their final
fulfillment. This is why studies in the Bible can often involve what is called
types, or shadows or foreshadows: these are things which give a picture of things
to come, which may partially fulfill prophecies while pointing to future
fulfillments.
Here’s an example of a dual prophecy: turn to Hosea 11:1. God speaking of Israel,
calls the nation of people His son. Remember how God led Jacob to Egypt and
they became a numerous enslaved people, and then He delivered them, called them
out of Egypt?
Now turn to Matthew
2:13-15. What turns out to be a messianic prophecy was originally a
statement about Israel. Thus Israel as the son of God was a foreshadow of the
true Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom God called out of Egypt.
As long as you’re aware of a lot of these
guidelines, I’m certain you can avoid some of the more confusion
interpretations for some biblical prophecies.
4.
What does it mean for us?
Finally, what does all this mean for us?
Well in looking at prophecies that have already
been fulfilled, we can see how accurate and how literal the fulfillments were.
Jeremiah
28:9 says “As for the prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the
prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom the LORD has truly
sent.”
Deuteronomy
18:21-22 says “And if you say in your heart ‘How shall we
know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ —when a prophet speaks in the
name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the
things which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously;
you shall not be afraid of him.”
The biblical test for divine prophecy, to know that
the prophet was a prophet of God, was to see if the prophecy came to pass. A
prophet had to be 100% accurate in order to be accepted as a prophet of God.
Charlie Campbell, a modern-day apologist and
author, has on his website the following quote:
Fulfilled prophecy is
something that sets the Bible apart from all other religious books. There are
26 other books that people of faith believe are divinely inspired. And none of these writings
contain any specific fulfilled prophecies. There are no fulfilled prophecies in
the Qur'an, the Hindu Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, the sayings of Buddha and
Confucius, or in the Book of Mormon. The Bible on the other hand is filled with
fulfilled prophecy. In fact, 27% of the Bible spoke prophetically at the time
it was written. And the authors of the Bible did not just predict a couple of
vague things like Jeane Dixon or Nostradamus. The Old Testament alone contains
hundreds of very specific prophecies that have already come to pass. The fact
that these prophecies were literally fulfilled gives us the intellectual basis
for believing that future, unfulfilled prophecies regarding the rapture of the
church, the thousand year reign of Christ on earth, etc. will also be literally
fulfilled.
You have tremendous basis for your belief in this
book being the Word of God, and tremendous basis for proving to others that
this book is the Word of God, because of prophecy. Prophecy as it has been
fulfilled in the Scripture and in history, is one of the strongest proofs that
this book is what it claims to be.
The Bible demanded 100% accurate prophecies of any
man claiming to be a prophet. The result in our day is that we have a book full
of accurate prophecies which have been fulfilled through history.
So always remember, SPAM: statistics, prophecy,
archaeology and manuscripts.
These are four pillars of proof for the Bible’s
divine origin.
Statistics: the Bible is cohesive and uniform
throughout, despite multiple factors that should statistically decrease its
unity and consistency: such as its multiple authors, the length of its writing,
etc.
Prophecy: which we just looked at.
Archaeology: which would be the historical artifact
evidence for the persons and places of the Bible existing.
Manuscripts: the huge amount of accurate copies of
the Bible.
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