Hundredfold Ministries, Int'l

In this chapter I want to examine God's prophetic messages to us in both the Old and New Testament. There always seem to be people on the scene who have a “new word” for the church. The Church of Jesus Christ must be able to test these new words. How? As always, we must first test them by measuring them against Scripture. If they are consistent with the Word of God, then we can continue our examination of them. But if they do not have a foundation in Scripture, we should reject them and not waste any more time or energy dealing with them. Part of that testing requires that God's church have a clear focus on His prophetic words to His people through the ages. Scripture declares the mind of God beyond time. He, in His word, has given us clear guidelines which we must know and follow to stay free from modern day prophetic error.

I believe if we study and come to understand the common threads in the messages delivered by the prophets in Scripture throughout the ages, we will be far less likely to fall into error.

Old Testament Prophetic Emphases

God always had His hand and covering upon the people of Israel. Joseph's descendants remained slaves in Egypt until the time of Moses. During that time different nations worshipped different pagan gods. The Egyptians were no different. The Jews, as slaves in Egypt, were exposed to these pagan rituals and a multitude of gods. The Israelites had to be turned from a nation of slaves in the midst of pagan gods into a monotheistic, God-fearing, disciplined, sanctified nation prepared to receive the Messiah. God used His prophets mightily in this process.

An examination of the books of prophecy in Scripture has led me to conclude that there are five general areas of prophetic messages. They are:

1) Monotheism,

2) The Conditional Covenant,

3) Morality,

4) Messianic Prophecy, and

5) Eschatological (end-time) Prophecy. 10

1. Monotheism

When God delivered the Israelites from Egypt and set about making them into a coherent people, He began to teach them to worship the One True God, Yahweh. In God's first conversation with Moses, He began by telling him that “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Ex 3:6 NIV). “I am who I am.” (Ex 3:14 NIV). In other words, God began the Mosaic period by teaching the Israelites He was and is their one and only true God.

God reinforced this idea at every turn for the Israelites. He was continually calling them to worship Him and no other. Note the first several verses in the Ten Commandments:

Every time the Israelites encountered a hardship, God took that opportunity to teach them to trust Him. This was especially true during the forty year period the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. He wanted them to come to realize beyond a shadow of a doubt that they could have complete faith in Him and trust Him with their very lives. God showed the Israelites over and over again that He was the Lord of nature and the Master of men. This Lordship extended over all creation and over all nations.

2. The Conditional Covenant

Throughout Scripture as God's word to His people, He continually affirms His promise to be their God if they would obey Him. These promises by God to His people are called conditional covenants. We see these conditional covenants very clearly in the Old Testament. Let us examine examples of these covenants in Exodus and Jeremiah:

Thus, God repeatedly warned the nation of Israel to depart from sin and urged them to partake of the holy life. As part of this personal and collective responsibility, or conditional covenant, God taught the Israelites to care for themselves, the poor, the stranger, and those in their society who were generally unprotected by a strong male family member. God made provision for food by requiring the landowners to leave the gleanings from the harvest for the poor to eat. This was the food provided for Ruth and Naomi in the Book of Ruth. Conversely, God made it clear that it was a sin not to help the fatherless and widows who could not provide for themselves. Contrary to our generally held belief that God destroyed Sodom only because of sexual sin, we read in Ezekiel:

3. Morality

God is absolutely holy. He is a God of justice, love and holiness. Man, after the fall of Adam and Eve, was and is sinful. Sin is what divides man from God. God had to begin to show His chosen people their sin in order to set the stage for man's redemption through Jesus.

Throughout the period of time encompassed in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God gave the Israelites very specific laws, commands, regulations, and rules by which to conduct their worship of Him as well as all aspects of their daily personal and collective lives. These are commonly referred to as the Mosaic laws. God was interested in everything the Israelites did from who was to be selected as the high priest to how to tend to sores on their bodies.

God continually taught the Jews to be obedient to His commands and laws. As the Israelites seemingly absorbed these laws and rules, God gave them more of His direction through His prophets. He used the prophets repeatedly to appoint leaders over the nation of Israel, to direct their movements and their battles with encountered enemies, and to establish them in the land He was giving them.

As part of this prophetic teaching and guiding, God tried to impart to His people an awareness of sin, both corporate sin and individual sin. He wanted His people to understand their responsibility to Him and the consequences of their disobedience to His laws and directions.

Hence we see in Scripture the prophets educating the people as to what God's demands were (and still are). They include seeking God, observing God's commandments and laws, pursuing social justice, and practicing the virtues which lead to personal and corporate holiness. The prophets made it clear that forms of external worship were (and are) not enough. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (I Sam 16:7 NIV).

4. Messianic Prophecy

In addition to God's repeated directives to the nation of Israel to worship only Him and to obey His laws and commands, He also planted in them, through His prophets, an understanding that He would someday send to them a Messiah who would redeem them and the world. Through salvation in His son, Jesus Christ, God made a way for a new life of divine forgiveness, virtue, holiness, a true knowledge of God, peace, joy, and eternal life in His presence.

The Book of Isaiah contains several very moving passages proclaiming the coming of the Savior:

5. Eschatological Prophecy

Finally, Scripture encompasses eschatology. Eschatology is the branch of theology dealing with questions of the future or of the end-times. This future includes what will ultimately happen to every believer, to the church of Jesus Christ, and to the world. It includes the final destiny of Satan and his followers. Since God is eternal and the Bible indicates that we, too, are eternal beings, a considerable amount of biblical prophecy involves eschatology. We deal more with the subject of eschatology in Part IV.

Gods Prophetic Words About the Non-Jewish Nations

We see also in the Old Testament the word of God concerning the nations who were not in covenant with Him. It is quite extraordinary that God made it absolutely clear that He would ultimately send His vengeance upon the enemies of Israel, even after He had used those very nations as instruments to carry out His punishment against Israel for its disobedience.

The prophet Habakkuk speaks very clearly of this reality. God tells Habakkuk that He is raising up the Babylonians to sweep down on Israel and take the Israelites captive because they have been so disobedient to His word. He explains to Habakkuk that, despite the victory of the Babylonians woe to them because He will, at the appointed time, destroy them. It is with this understanding that Habakkuk prays his very beautiful prayer:

New Testament

Now that we have examined, however briefly, the thrust of God's prophetic word to His people in the Old Testament, let us examine the New Testament.

First, the overwhelming difference we see between the two is that our Messiah has come. John the Baptist ended the line of prophets proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. During John's lifetime God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live on this earth as a man, to be crucified on the cross, to be buried, and then to be resurrected from the dead and taken up to heaven. Thus, Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah. Once Jesus came, there was no longer any need to prophecy about the coming of the Messiah. He had come in the person of Jesus Christ.

In addition to this fulfillment of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies, the New Testament does bring a shift in focus. The scriptural emphasis of the New Testament is on personal salvation, sin in the church body and in the individual, and rules about the orderly conduct of the church. This new thrust points in the direction of personal and corporate holiness, a need to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, and the need to prepare for the end-times. (See Romans, chapter six).

The Consistencies Between the Old and New Testament

Aside from this closure on the Messianic prophecies, and a shift in focus, the essential nature of the rest of the prophetic messages as set forth in the Old Testament continues into the New Testament. Let us go back and examine the various aspects we reviewed in our Old Testament analysis.

In the Old Testament God is consistently teaching His people that He is the one, true God. While there is not the same intensity of this teaching in the New Testament, it is certainly a recurring theme. Note the riot in Ephesus that Paul caused when he discredited the goddess Artemis by preaching the worship of the one true God. (Acts 19:23-41).

What about God's urging us to trust Him, have faith in Him, and to follow Him in obedience to His word? Still the same, isn't it?

What about God's admonitions against disobedience, sin, lack of personal integrity, and so on? This is certainly a continuing theme in Paul's writings, isn't it?

What about God's admonition about our responsibility toward the poor? We certainly have many New Testament scriptural directives and examples which require us to share with those who have less than we have, don't we?

What about how we are to conduct our corporate worship and life? Even though the Messiah had come and we became the Church of Jesus Christ, Paul certainly continued this theme, didn't he?

How about God's word toward those who turn their backs on Him? Do we have any doubt, based upon New Testament Scripture, that their end will be hell? Is this much different than what God promised would happen through the early prophets to those who oppressed God's chosen people?

Finally, how do we know that God is still interested in these same things He was concerned about in the early days of Israel? Let us look at the Book of Revelation. This book is the definitive Scripture concerning the very end of time and the return of Jesus Christ to this earth. Yet even in Revelation, Jesus' second coming begins with the sin of the churches being exposed. Chapters two and three are an analysis of seven churches of that day and what God approves and disapproves about each one. Not very different from God's exposure of the sins of Israel by the prophets, is it?

Thus, we see that from the very early beginning of time to the very end of time as we know it, the issues God has been concerned with have not really changed. “I the Lord do not change.” (Mal 3:6 NIV). The desires of God's heart are that we, His people, worship Him alone, obey His commands and directives to us, sin not, and that we become part of His great army to accomplish His purposes in our generation.

Conclusion

The reason I have included this analysis in this book is to make this point: If any prophets in your realm of influence are speaking the “word of the Lord” which does not lead and direct the hearers in a manner consistent with God's word of both the Old and New Testaments, they are speaking in error. If you keep in mind this basic analysis, and test all prophetic words against it, you will be able to much more readily discern error. This is especially true when you hear that God is doing a “new thing.”

Most unfortunately, we are in a church era in which the prophetic word does not always fall squarely within scriptural bounds. For example, I have heard in the past few years of churches that believe that God's “new thing” is to convert every believer into a prophet. This is supposedly necessary to herald in the last generation, most of whom will be apostles. What happens to this “prophetic `new thing'” under our analysis? It doesn't pass the test, does it? Any extension of the boundaries of Scripture through a “prophetic word” should be rejected. God changes not, neither does His word to us!
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10.We deal with the eschatological prophecy of the book of Revelation, Ezekiel and Daniel in chapter twenty-two.