The Purpose of Prophecy Part #2

A Better Solution
An unbridgeable gulf lies between what humans can see in the future and what God can see. In Isaiah 42, God declares, “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them” (v. 9). The Bible teaches that God has the power to see into the future with perfect clarity. It's nothing like the capricious people you see on television, straining to see through their foggy understanding of world events and hoping that maybe a few of their predications come true. No. It has nothing to do with Tarot cards and tea leaves.

In The Time Machine, author H.G. Wells toyed with the idea of how changing one little feather in the past can alter all of history. Everything you do somehow affects every other molecule in the universe. It is a mind-boggling chain reaction that would require a powerful intellect to grasp.

For instance, Miciah the prophet warned Ahab the king that the wicked leader would die in a battle. The king tried to stay out of harm's way. “I can prevent the prophecy from happening,” he believed, only to have a stray arrow find a crack in his armor. By trying to avoid prophecy, Ahab helped make it come true. It is an almighty God who could know such a thing, who can declare exactly what will happen before it happens — taking in every subtle variation of wind and the twitching of a soldier's arm.

That's why God's prophecy, found in the Bible, has so much more to offer than human prognosticating. If you don't want to feel helpless, know that God knows your future. That also means He has a plan for you, even if we don't completely know what that is. It's a very secure feeling to be in the hands of someone who loved you so much that He sent His Son to die for you, isn't it? “From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). God can see the future infinitely better than we can see today. It's no problem for Him.

The Purpose of Prophecy
Yet I often get asked why prophecy can be so hard to understand. For one, I think God wants us to dig for truth, partly because you appreciate gold when you dig for it more than if it's dropped in your lap. But more than that, God protects His message. Virtually all of the apocalyptic prophets, such as Ezekiel, Daniel, John the apostle, wrote as captives under a foreign power. Many of these prophecies addressed the destruction of those powers. Revelation talks about the fall of Rome, and Daniel details the fall of Babylon and Persia.

The more we understand what these symbols represent, the easier it becomes to unlock the prophecies. God enfolded some prophetic truths in symbols to hide the messages from the enemy. Still, the honest searcher can discover the greater message. “Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand” (Mark 4:11, 12).

But don't worry if you don't understand the mysterious symbols at first. In John 16:4, Jesus says, “These things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you.” Dr. Leslie Harding wrote, “The better part of prophecy is better understood after it is fulfilled.” We often want to study the prophecies so we can know the future—yet prophecy is best understood after it is fulfilled. Only rarely in the Bible does anybody benefit from prophecy in advance, as when Egypt prepared for the famine revealed through the prophetic dreams that Joseph interpreted. Most souls didn't take advantage of the prophecies of Jesus' first coming. But others, like us, get the benefit after it is fulfilled. You sit back, take it in, and say, “Ah ha! He is God. There is a big plan. It is not all just an accident.”