What is Prophecy? is a study of what is prophecy in the Bible, and how that affects our understanding and true and false ministers of God.
What is Prophecy?
To begin with, we do not what it is without studying the use of the concept in the Bible. So God chose a nation, Israel, and he communicated with them by means of prophets. But in actuality, the place of the prophet is more expanded in the later days of Israel than at first.
In the beginning, God spoke to Israel through direct visions and men whom God called to teach them the ways of God. Within all of this, there was a very important focus on God’s ways of holiness, and Israel implementing them in their daily lives.
When Israel became dense, which is to say, they didn’t listen to God, then God began to judgment Israel. These judgments came in the form of prophecies of doom and gloom in which they were not so much fixed as they were threats. If Israel did not change their ways, then God would send other nations to enslave them and cause them problems.
The prophecies came true, all of them. Their nature was such that even when Israel repented, later on with time, they fell again. God brought the prophecy of doom to Israel at a later time. But we must not miss the point. God did not send the judgment immediately upon them because of their repentance.
Prophecy is essentially preaching
When we look at the content of prophecy, it is essentially just good preaching. In the time of Israel, it had an element of condemnation upon the sins of the people. God’s condemnation of sin is because sin harms us, sin is always bad for us, and sin will drag the judgment of God over us with time.
But not all of this is always brought out in a prophecy. Under the surface, it may be there, but it is not in a clear and focused way.
Today in the NT church, we have inherited the Bible, and especially the teachings of prophecy about the end times, so God has no need of more prophets to predict dire outcomes of our lives. We all read Revelation and know how things will end for the earth.
But the other element of prophecy, which is just exposition of God’s principles and the application of them to our daily lives is still very much active in prophecy today. But basically this is the very essence of biblical preaching also. So we should understand prophecy in the New Testament as just preaching.
More articles on False Prophet-Teacher
- Why so many Crises Today?
- What is Prophecy?
- What do false prophets want?
- The Fruit of a False Prophet Part 2
- Pastoral Covetousness OT
- Pastoral Covetousness NT
- Ministerial Requirement Not Covetous
- Good Shepherd Sacrifices
- Fruit of a False Prophet and the Bible
- FP: The Fruit of a False Prophet Obedience part 3
- FP: The Burden to Confront Sin
- FP: The Bad Fruit of a False Prophet part 2b
- FP: The Bad Fruit of a False Prophet part 2
- FP: Overview of the False Prophet
- FP: More Characteristics of False Prophets
- FP: Fruit of a False Prophet Willfulness part 4
- FP: Fruit of a False Prophet Repentance part 6
- FP: Fruit of a False Prophet other gods part 5
- FP: Fruit of a False Prophet Disobedience Part 8
- FP: False prophets worship other gods
What is Prophecy?
Why so many Crises Today? by Pastor David Cox is a post on how Satan uses today's crises (which are not real crises, but fake crises fabricated by Satan to deceive) to control and bring men under his dominion.
Excerpts
But Satan will now "have his reign" unhindered. How will he get almost all of earth's inhabitants to worship him? Through crises that supposedly there is no other way than Satan's way to "fix what is wrong". This analysis of what is a problem plus how to best fix that problem is the key to Satan's strategy. What we are seeing in our present generation is the preparation of this plan of Satan to take over the world...
The idea of God "creating evil" (Isaiah 45:7) is that God creates adversity. Things which go astray from man's best plans. No man plans to have cancer, but God does send adversity man's life (for example, Job). The book of Job points out how God proposed to Satan to try Job with sickness. It was for God's glory, because God begins everything with "Job is just", so Job had no spiritual problem in himself that caused this sickness and crisis of every kind on Job. Just the opposite. Job was just. God declares to us this fact...See Why are there so many Crises Today?
