09/03/2024
OUR FIRM FOUNDATION - HOW STRONG IS IT
"THE SURE WORD OF PROPHECY"
Three Hebrew words in the Old Testament are translated “prophet” or “seer.” The first two terms occur less frequently than the third. The first term, ro’eh, appears only twelve times, and the second term, hozeh, appears eighteen times. These words are both “revelational” terms. They come from words that basically mean to see, look at, or behold. The prophet or seer, therefore, is one who can see things that others cannot. The prophet is one to whom God directly and uniquely reveals his word and his will—usually through dreams or visions.
The third term, nabbi’, appears 309 times in its noun form and almost 600 times in its verb forms. When we trace this term through the Old Testament, it becomes clear that nabbi’ refers primarily to one who speaks for someone else, someone who acts as a “mouth” for another (Exod. 7:1). Whenever God assigned a specific task to a prophet, the assignment always focused on speaking God’s message. Therefore, the basic meaning of the term nabbi’ is “to speak God’s message,” to be a “speaker for God,” “one who is a spokesman for God” (Deut. 18:18; Jer. 1:7; Isa. 1:20).
The nabbi’ was a divinely inspired preacher who faithfully spoke the
message God had revealed.
At least 26 percent of the Bible (8,067 verses) is prophecy. Of that total, 25 percent (2,037 verses) is yet-future/end-times prophecy. The numbers break down as follows:
31,103 total Bible verses (23,145 Old Testament; 7,958 New Testament)
8,067 total prophetic content (26 percent)
2,037 yet future (7 percent of the Bible and 25 percent of total prophetic content)
There are four main interpretation methods that people have used to study prophecy.
The Idealist View: Prophecy Is Allegory
This view is also sometimes referred to as the spiritual view. This is because it allegorizes or spiritualizes prophetic texts, particularly with regard to the book of Revelation.
The Preterist View: The Prophecies Already Happened
The basic claim of this view is that Bible prophecy is actually Bible history. The preterist view puts forth the notion that the book of Revelation presents a symbolic picture of first-century events rather than future events that will occur at the end of our current age.
The Historicist View: Prophecy Is Merely an Overview of History
This view first appeared around AD 300 and attempts to interpret Revelation simply as a symbolic representation of history of all that has taken place and will take place in church history from John’s time to the end. This view was popular during the Reformation era but has many problems, and there are as many as 50 versions of this view.
The Futurist View: Prophecy Understood Literally
This view teaches that the end-times prophetic events described in Revelation are yet future. It holds that these events and related passages in the Old Testament will occur literally in the future and are to be understood by the plain sense of the text. The book of Revelation clearly claims to be prophecy, and prophecy, by nature, has a future fulfillment.
The hundreds of prophecies in the Bible that have already been fulfilled were fulfilled literally, not figuratively. There is no indication anywhere in Scripture that God suggests we switch to a new method of understanding prophecy. A prophecy is given, then at a later time it is fulfilled, just as described. That is the clear nature and pattern of prophecy.
Eschatology is the study of “last things” or the “end times”; but implicit within that is a new beginning: the future Millennium and the Eternal State, and both involve people and the earth. The word “eschatology” is derived from the Greek word eschatos meaning
“last”. The popular model of eschatology is the dispensationalist (futurist) one. This view states that most of the events described in the book of Revelation are in the future. It interprets Scripture literally, wherever possible.
Dispensationalists believe that history is broken into eras or dispensations (Greek: oikonomia, meaning “administration” or “stewardship”):
1. Innocence (from Creation to the Fall of Adam & Eve, Genesis 1:1 to 3:7)
2. Conscience (from the Fall of Adam & Eve to Noah’s Flood, Genesis 3:8 to 8:22)
3. Human Government (from Noah’s Flood to Abraham, Genesis 9:1 to 11:32)
4. Promise or Patriarchal Rule (from Abraham to Moses, Genesis 12:1 to Exodus 19:35)
5. Law (from Moses to the Day of Pentecost, Exodus 20 to Acts 2:4)
6. Grace (from the Day of Pentecost to the Rapture (or Christ’s Second Coming), Acts 2:4 to Revelation 20:3)
The 7-year Tribulation prior to Christ’s Second Coming is sometimes
considered a separate dispensation. This is the 70th Week of Daniel,
which was put on hold when Christ was rejected by the Jews, circa 30 AD.
7. Kingdom (from the Second Coming to the End of the Millennium, Revelation 20:4-6) Dispensation (7) is followed by the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 20:6-22:21)— for all eternity.
Here is a good definition of dispensationalism:
The word [dispensational] means “administration” or “stewardship” Dispensationalism teaches that there are successive dispensations throughout history and each one involves a test or responsibility, which man fails, followed by God’s judgment. Thus, God’s grace
through Jesus Christ becomes the only basis of hope for mankind. The present dispensation is known as the “age of grace” or the “church age.” The previous dispensation was called law or Israel. There are two peoples of God, Israel and the church. However, God’s plan for Israel is not yet finished, and He will return to deal with them during the seven-year tribulation and the thousand-year millennium.
So in the coming posts, we will delve into the sure word of prophecy. We will adopt an eclectic approach of integrative interpretation than settle for one approach only. Let me reiterate that it may not be possible to exhaust all biblical prophecy because the whole bible can be viewed as prophetic.
Remember; All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and is inerrant in the original manuscripts. About 27% of the Bible is about prophecy (i.e., 8,352 verses out of 31,124 verses in the whole Bible) [House & Price, 2003], and up to 80% of those passages have
already been fulfilled [Hampson, 2022]. This means that at least 20% of those prophecies will be fulfilled in the future. There are 1,845 references to Christ’s Second Coming in the Old Testament, and 318 such references in the New Testament. Compare that to the 109 declarations in the Bible about His first coming [LaHaye, 2012]. In the Bible, the doctrine of salvation is mentioned the most in Scripture; then, Christ’s Second Coming; and in third place, we have the Tribulation, which is mentioned in more than 60 Scripture passages [LaHaye, 2011a; Hindson, 2021]. The apostle Paul mentioned the Second Coming 50 times, baptism 13 times, and communion twice.
The Bible was written by 40 authors, supernaturally inspired by God, over a period of 1500-2100 years. Moses wrote(he used the education he got in the Egyptian Palace to compile all the existing writings and oral tradition existing at that time: he was born in the family of a priest) the Pentateuch or Torah (“Law”), that is, the first 5 books of the Bible—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—in approximately 1400-1450 BC; and the last book of the Bible—Revelation—was written by the apostle John shortly before 100 AD; but, it’s possible that the book of Job was written around 2000 BC—even before the Pentateuch. Bible prophecy can be used to confirm that the God of the Bible is the one true God, by tracking the fulfilled prophecies.
Of course there are other writings that people will quote to you as prophetic. The documentation of ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophecy has been viewed roughly as three distinct groups: biblical prophecy and ancient Near Eastern prophecy, which have been the subject of comparison since the 1950s, plus the Greek oracle, not always designated as “prophecy” and usually not discussed in conjunction with the biblical and Near Eastern sources, even though
it could and should be seen as a part of the same landscape in geographical and phenomenological terms. This threefold construction arises from the classification of ancient phenomena according to source materials coming from different times and places, written in different ancient languages, and studied in different academic contexts.
The threefold breakdown of the source material into biblical, Near Eastern, and Greek reflects the current division of academic disciplines and the present state of communication between them. The canonized biblical text with its long and unbroken history of interpretation has a distinctive literary and historical character very different from the more or less haphazard variety of Near Eastern textual evidence. This is a myopic view in the sense that biblical prophecy developed in the near east but is significantly different from the Near East Fables.
So we will outline prophecy so you can see that God spake before the event and man saw the event happen as God spake so that God can stand out totally removed from all the other "gods".
