THE NATURE OF PROPHECY THE BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE IN PREVIEW The purpose of prophecy is primarily of a moral and salvific nature. God warns the disobedient of coming disaster. He encourages the oppressed with glimpses of future prosperity. He informs men about their present situation and stirs them toward the right course of action. Our conclusion is that prophecy is a divine summons from God for His people (in a time of apostasy, lethargy, or persecution) to fully enter into the covenant relationship with Him, through repentance.
The fundamental characteristics of prophecy are these: 1. All the promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional. 2. God does not destroy free choice by predicting real future events, rather He enhances it by predicting possible future events. God places alternative routes before His people; Possible futures are continually forecast, and God allows man to exercise his free choice by letting him choose one. 3. Promises come true because men make choices. They do not come true just because they are predicted (Roger Lucas, An unpublished manuscript). Do you see the spiritual significance? God illustrates by means of prophecy what events would transpire if a certain course of action continues and what would transpire if that course was changed somewhat like the classic movie, Its a Wonderful Life. Two alternatives Blessing and Judgment are usually presented. Which of the two comes to pass depends on whether the hearers of that prophetic word repent in response to it. Every message of Judgment and Hope has attached to it either an implied or expressed unless; an if you do [or do not] turn to me. This conditional aspect of prophecy is well illustrated in Jonah 3 and is put into a formal principle in Jeremiah 18:7-10: If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in My sight and does not obey Me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. Zechariah summed up in one sentence the message of all the prophets who had preceded him: The former prophets proclaimed, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Return now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds (Zech 1:4). Israels history through the OT exhibits an oscillatory pattern. Prosperity, apostasy, decline, repentance, restoration this is the cycle we find in Judges, Kings, and Chronicles. The principle governing the pattern is, If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Truly, the mouth of the Lord has spoken (Isaiah 1:19,20). We view Israels history in its various fortunes as a reflection of the truth of Deuteronomy 28. This passage sets out the two ways that lie before the young nation. If the people will hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, they will be blessed richly materially, nationally, spiritually (vss. 1-14 KJV). If, however, they are unfaithful to the covenant provisions, terrible curses will come upon them, until Israel is a byword among the nations (vss. 15-68). Over and over again the prophets speak to a sinful nation in terms of these blessings and curses (Wm. G. Johnsson, 70 Weeks, Leviticus, Nature of Prophecy, pp. 270-271). In every way throughout the history of the world, God has been actively working for the salvation of the human family. The continual pleading of His Spirit, the death of His Son, and His frequent intervention in the course of human events do not exhaust the list. God is also continually warning and guiding His covenant people by prophecy. The whole Bible is an historical record of this and the divine purpose is there revealed, to bring sin and suffering to a speedy end. It also records mans reluctance to cooperate with God. It demonstrates the tension between the divine will of God and the free will of man. It is an expression of the age long struggle between man and God. God works for the salvation of the human race but the human will resists. The free human will is continually opposed to the divine will and thus it ever impedes the plans and purposes of God. Yet no blockade can thwart every step of God. The divine purpose, as revealed in prophecy, will eventually prevail. The sovereignty of God stands supreme. The impact of free choice on the divine purpose has been firmly illustrated in Scripture: As obstacles arise, detours are taken and the natural long term result of mans free will (in response to the promises and threatenings of God) is that the prophetic view of the future continually develops, unfolds, and changes. In harmony with this position, this book substantiates the details of the following hypothesis taken from the SDA Bible Commentary, Vol 7 p. 729: At any one of various critical points in the history of this world, divine justice could have proclaimed, it is done! and Christ might have come to inaugurate His righteous reign. Long ago He might have brought to fruition His plans for the redemption of this world. As God offered Israel the opportunity to prepare the way for His eternal kingdom upon the earth, when they settled the Promised Land and again when they returned from their exile in Babylon, so He gave the church of apostolic times the privilege of completing the gospel commission. Another such opportunity came with the great second advent awakening of the 19th century. But in each instance Gods chosen people failed to take advantage of the opportunity thus graciously accorded them. Prophecy is a wonderful combination of [conditionality] and [foreknowledge]. Enough of Gods purpose is revealed to act powerfully upon the heart and conscience of those to whom the heavenly message is sent, but not enough to make fatalists of them, to paralyze human effort, or to coerce the human will: enough to prove the message to have been a true word from Him to whom alone the unknown future is fully known, but not enough to enable man to foresee with certainty when and how that purpose is to be realized (Sir Isaac Newton, cited by Desmond Ford in Crisis, Vol 1, p. 25). A study of Bible prophecy, as it functioned throughout sacred history, is an encounter with the divine mind at every age. The effect is powerful. The cumulative revelations of the divine purpose provide a greater understanding than ever before [in history] of the nearness of the advent. It enables us to grasp the significance of closing events in the struggle between good and evil. It empowers us to discern the right path to follow when faced with doubts and subtle deception. It reveals great insights into the plans and purposes of God, the future, and the importance of our place in the flow of salvation history. It gives us comfort and hope for we see Him through the written expression of His will.
We have adopted the grammatical-historical method of exegesis as our primary principle of Biblical interpretation. The aim of the grammatico-historical method is to determine the meaning required of Scripture by the laws of grammar and the facts of history. The grammatical meaning is the simple, direct, plain, ordinary, and literal sense of the phrases, clauses, and sentences. The historical meaning is that sense which is demanded by a careful consideration of the time and circumstances in which the author wrote. It is the specific meaning which an authors words require when the historical context and background are taken into account. Thus, the grand object of grammatical and historical interpretation is to ascertain the specific usage of words as employed by an individual writer as prevalent in a particular age. (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward An Exegetical Theology, p. 88).
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