Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning by Kaiser Jr. Walter C. & Silva Moises

Author:Kaiser Jr., Walter C. & Silva, Moises [Silva, Moises]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Array
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

What about the Future?

The Meaning of Prophecy

WALTER C. KAISER JR.

The topic of prophecy all too frequently produces one of two extremes in readers and interpreters: a wholesale avoidance and a general apathy toward the subject (usually due to the excesses observed in its use by some), or the creation of a hobbyhorse. Both responses are inadequate and in need of the balance that is presented in the biblical text.

Prophecy is a much larger biblical genre than most people think. Many connect the word prophecy with the idea of futurology. But the bulk of prophecy in both the Earlier Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings), the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor prophets), along with the New Testament prophets, actually involved God’s messengers speaking the word of God to a contemporary culture that needed to be challenged to cease its resistance to the word of God and to change its ways. As such, these prophets were “forth-tellers.”

The aspect of prophecy that is more difficult to interpret is the portion that deals with foretelling. The number of predictions about the future in the Bible is so large in both Testaments that it carries with it a silent rebuke for any who have been hesitant to enter into the study of this subject.

According to the calculations of J. Barton Payne, there are 8,352 verses with predictive material in them out of 31,124 verses in the whole Bible —a staggering 27 percent of the Bible deals with predictions about the future. Payne calculated that the Old Testament contained 6,641 verses on the future (out of 23,210 total, or 28.6 percent), while the New Testament has 1,711 (out of 7,914 verses, or 21.6 percent). Altogether, these 8,352 verses discuss 737 separate prophetic topics! The only books without any predictive material are Ruth and Song of Songs in the Old Testament and Philemon and 3 John in the New Testament. The other sixty-two books of the Bible are all represented in one or more of the 737 prophetic topics gathered by Payne.1

The Old Testament books with the highest percentage of future prophecies are Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, with 65, 60, and 59 percent of their total verses, respectively, containing prophetic material. In the New Testament, the top three are Revelation, Matthew, and Luke, with 63, 26, and 23 percent of their total corpus respectively.

It thus is clear that prophecy about the future cannot be passed off lightly if we are to do justice to presenting the whole Bible as God gave it. Any declaration of the whole counsel of God needs to interact with these prophetic themes on a fairly wide scale, given the fact that so much of the content of the Bible is concerned with this topic.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BIBLICAL PROPHECY

Biblical prophecy has its own unique set of distinctive features and characteristics that at once set it off from every other imitation. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Robert B. Girdlestone enumerated the following six characteristics:

1. Biblical prophecy

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