NEW TESTAMENT PROPHECIES

WHAT ARE PROPHECIES?

The Bible is a unique book filled with prophecies foretelling the future. Most of these prophecies were visions granted by God to individual prophets, who then recorded what they saw (e.g., Is 1:1, Ez 1:1). Why would God feel the need to tell people what He is going to do before He does it? Jesus answered this question regarding the purpose of biblical prophecies in John 14:29 when he said, “Now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens, you may believe.” God’s purpose in giving us the Bible is helping His people discern between truth and lies, between His work and the work of His enemy the devil. As the Creator, God has the power to prophesy and fulfill, not necessarily by peeking at the future, but by creating the reality He desires. Because the devil has no such power, God asks us to use biblical prophecies and their fulfillment to discern when, where, and how He is working (Dt 18:21-22). When God fulfills His prophecies, He is asking us to believe in that fulfillment and choose to follow and obey Him.

Yet, in carrying out His work, God has to contend with an enemy who is attempting to foil His plans and oppose Him at every turn. In other words, God is faced with a dilemma: God can carry out His work without prophesying in advance, God can speak plainly through the prophets about what He will do and just fulfill the prophecies by force despite the opposition, or God can speak figuratively about the future to hide His true intentions and fulfill in secret, only proclaiming the fulfillment after it has come. Although the Bible certainly contains examples of prophecies that were fulfilled literally as written (e.g., the virgin birth promised in Is 7:14), many of the visions God gave to the prophets were given as parables and written in symbolic or figurative language (Hos 12:10). This was certainly true for the prophet Daniel. According to Daniel 12:8-9, Daniel could not understand his own visions of the future and asked about their meaning. He was told, “Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time.” Those prophecies were not for the people living in the time of Daniel and so God did not even reveal their true meaning to Daniel himself. The true meaning of such figurative prophecies is only revealed in the future when their fulfillment has come and the devil can no longer interfere. This is the case for both the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, but what are these prophecies about?

In the Old Testament, after the kingdom of Israel broke their covenant with God (Hos 6:7), God began sending prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel to call for the repentance of God’s people and to prophesy about how God would re-create His kingdom in the future. They prophesied a coming Messiah who would shine the light of true understanding of God and His words into the hearts of those willing to listen (Is 9). They prophesied a suffering servant of God who would be pierced on our behalf for our transgressions (Is 53). They prophesied a future gathering of God’s people as His new kingdom, as well as a righteous king who would rule over that coming kingdom (Jer 23). Not only that, but God promised the Son of Man would come to preach the words of God’s open scroll to the rebellious house of Israel (Ez 2-3). In other words, after God’s previous kingdom had gone astray, God promised to establish a new kingdom through those who believed in a promised revelation that would be delivered by God’s anointed messenger. When that promised anointed one Jesus Christ appeared, his teachings revealed the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies and newly established the kingdom of heaven (i.e., Jesus’s Church) through those who believed.

Before Jesus was crucified according to prophecy to pay our debt of sin, He promised that although he had come into the world as the light of the world, night was coming (Jn 9:4-5). Jesus knew that the devil would not just sit idly by and ignore Jesus’s victory in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on this earth; he knew Satan would attack the growing church and work to sow his lies in the hearts of Jesus’s followers (Mt 13:24-25). Jesus urged his followers to remain true to God and His word despite the heavy persecution that would surely come because of their beliefs. Jesus also prayed to God that all of his followers would remain united as one just as he and the Father were one (Jn 17:20-22).

Although the disciples were faithful to the point of death in holding to the one “Way” (Acts 9:2, Acts 24:14), the devil’s lies began to influence the growing church (Gal 1:6, 1 Cor 15:12). These lies were tares sown among the good grain in Jesus’s field (Mt 13:25) in a process that has continued to this day. As more and more disagreements arose regarding how to understand the scriptures, the one “Way” of the early church became many ways, many denominations all vying for the hearts of believers. Sometimes this continual division of Jesus’s church has even turned violent with members of one group of Christians persecuting and systematically murdering other groups of Christians. Is this current state of affairs really the will of God? No! God wants us to be one. To this end, God promised in the New Testament through His son Jesus and others about how He will re-establish His kingdom on this earth in the last days by revealing the fullness of His word through another promised messenger. Here, we will briefly discuss this kingdom, revelation, and messenger promised in the New Testament.