“Remember this and stand firm,
recall it to mind, you transgressors,
remember the former things of old;
for I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east,
the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
I have purposed, and I will do it.” -Isaiah 46:8-11
[PRAYER]
All This Is True… Because It Rhymes
Back in 2014, one of the greatest movies of all time was released. Not only was it a technological masterpiece, but it was an extremely intelligent film, so much so that its brilliance is lost on most people who just think it’s a silly kid’s movie. That’s right, I’m talking about The Lego Movie, one of the greatest cinematic achievements of our modern age.
And this movie begins with an old man named Vitruvius who delivers a Prophecy. He says:
“One day, a talented Lass or Fellow; a special one, with face of yellow; will make the Piece of Resistance found, from its hiding refuge underground. And with a noble army at the helm, this Master Builder will thwart the Kragle, and save the realm. And be the greatest, most interesting, most important person of all times. All this is true… Because it rhymes.”
But of course, the antagonist, named The Evil Lord Business, rejects this prophecy and kicks Vitruvius off of a cliff and says to himself,
“Prophecy? What a bunch of hippy dippy baloney!”
And to be flat honest, I don’t blame Lord Business for being skeptical. We live in a day and age full of hippy dippy prophetic baloney. Sometimes it’s people pretending to be psychic and claiming to predict the future. Other times it’s so-called Biblical prophecy experts or numerologists who claim that the world is going to end on a certain day.
I have here an example of just this sort of thing. It’s an old self-published booklet from 1971 ominously titled “The Chinese Are Coming! Revised Edition.” It was put out by the so-called “Amazing Prophecy Center.” And it’s full of God-dishonoring racist nonsense that never came true, even after they issued this “revised” edition. It twists and distorts the words of the Bible to support irrational claims and predictions about a future where the Chinese will take over the world. It’s garbage.
Now we can laugh about this one, because it’s so clearly wrong and racist and whatnot. But brothers and sisters, there is more of this kind of nonsense out there than ever before. This kind of thing gets peoples’ attention. If all you do is preach the Word faithfully, that’s not all that exciting. But when you start predicting the future, all of a sudden people start listening. They will attend your lectures, buy your books, and donate BIG BUCKS to your ministry. Why? Because there is a lucrative MARKET for these kinds of false prophecies and predictions. 2 Timothy 4 says this:
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
And that time, brothers and sisters, is NOW. There are people all around the world, many of which claim to be Christians, who have wandered off from good teaching to seek out teachers who will tell them exciting lies. But if you are serious about honoring God, you will not be a lover of lies, but a lover of the TRUTH. And in order to do that, you need to know how to tell the difference between a true prophecy of God and one that some rando just made up out of his own head to grow his brand and sell you stuff.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
Declaring the end from the beginning
First things first: what is a PROPHECY? Well, in biblical terms, a prophecy is any word from God spoken by men. Whenever a human utters divinely inspired words, he or she is prophesying—at least, in this biblical sense.
Now normally, this only applies to NEW revelations from God. After all, I started this message by reading from Isaiah 46. Was I prophesying when I read that? Am I a prophet now? In a general sense, yes. All of us who are believers are “prophets” in that we study and share God’s word. It’s part of how we imitate Christ. But I wouldn’t go around calling myself a Prophet. In fact, I would argue that in this case, it was Isaiah who actually prophesied, and I’m just reading his prophecies.
Quick sidebar here: I believe that the Bible as we know it now is complete. That means that God has not revealed Himself through any new books or written revelations since the Book of Revelations was penned in A.D. 90. There are several other religions, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses who claim that God inspired fresh new books that either add to the Bible, or else replace what He said before. Don’t fall for it!
Also, be wary of anytime someone claims to “prophesy” about day-to-day matters. I’ve heard people tell me, “God spoke to me by a spirit of prophesy and revealed to me that you should do so-and-so.” If that were true—I mean, if it were 100% verifiably from God, then not only would I have to give total obedience to that word, we would all have had to write down whatever that person said and add it to our Bibles. I mean, if the Holy Spirit truly said it, then it’s God-breathed, and it passes the test as Scripture.
Note how different it is to say “I get the sense that God is leading me to do so and so” or “I think God might be nudging me in this way or that.” That’s fine. But even then, we need to be careful, because there are times when we THINK God is leading us, but really he is not. It happens a lot more than you might think. Now let me be clear here: I don’t doubt that God sometimes leads His people by His Spirit, or moves our hearts to understand things in a supernatural way. He does do those things, and I’m grateful for it. But we need to be careful.
When theologian R.C. Sproul was trying to decide which post-graduate seminary program to attend, he asked a bunch of people to pray for him. And after a few weeks, he had four different people come to him privately claiming that God had divinely revealed to them which school he was meant to attend. The problem was, all four people claimed that God was leading him to a different school. And in the end, Dr. Sproul ended up attending a FIFTH school that they hadn’t even mentioned. So yeah. Divine nudging is real, but be wary, and seek out wisdom before you go around claiming to have fresh revelations from the Holy Spirit.
But getting back to my main topic, there is another, more general meaning for the word “prophesy.” In its most basic sense, a prophecy is a prediction. It’s a confident statement about what will happen in the future. A prophesy is not a guess, or a forecast, or a prognosis. It’s a statement of fact about the future, and in order to be true, requires 100% firm knowledge of the future.
It also needs to be clear. Some people have tried to get around this requirement by offering up “prophecies” so vague, so fuzzy, and so ambiguous, that people can interpret them in whatever ways they want. Nostradamus is the most famous example of this kind of fraud, but you can find the same kinds of cheap scam prophecies in horoscopes, tarot cards, psychic readings, fortune tellers, and the like.
But God’s prophecies are different. Each one has a specific intended meaning, and while some of them have become hard to understand due to the passage of time, Biblical prophecies are by and large clear, unambiguous, and extremely specific. Unlike human “predictions” that veer all over the place and take a bunch of wild swings in the dark, the prophecies in the Bible all point toward a common end.
And most importantly, they’re all true. Every single prophecy in Scripture has either come true already, or else will absolutely come true in the near future. There’s not a single time when God said something would happen, and then it didn’t come to pass. God has never made a prediction that turned out to be false. People who claim to be psychics or oracles will always tell you that predicting the future can be a fuzzy, inexact process. But not for God. His track record is a perfect 100%—always has been, always will be.
So what’s the difference? How is God able to prophesy in ways that humans can’t?
Well, think of it like this: Yesterday, we talked about how from our perspective, the present is fluid and ever-changing, but the past is set in stone and can never be changed. And that is true, but only from our perspective. From God’s perspective, the present and the future are set in stone as well. Since God is outside of the flow of time, He sees the end from the beginning. He never guesses, because He already KNOWS what the future holds! He knew from the foundation of the world. And He doesn’t just predict, he COMMANDS everything to happen exactly as he purposed it.
Look again at our text from Isaiah 46:
I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning
and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
Only God could say something like this. Since He is not time-bound as we are, He can see everything we can’t. We can only see the present and the past, but to Him, they are the same thing. He is the beginning and the end, and he sees the end from before the beginning. And since He is in perfect control of everything, He ensures that everything happens exactly as it does because it is part of His perfect plan.
Past-Tense Prophecies
Which is why it makes sense that so often the prophecies in the Bible are written in past tense instead of present tense. Have you ever noticed that lots of Biblical prophecies are written in the past tense rather than future tense?
Look with me for a moment at Isaiah 53:3-6:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Did you hear that? This is a clear prophesy about the sacrificial death of Christ Jesus our savior, which from Isaiah’s perspective was over 700 years in the future. But it’s almost entirely in PAST tense.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never read any other book whose prophecies were delivered in past tense. I mean, if I were going to try to convince you that something was going to happen, wouldn’t it make more sense to give you my so-called predictions in future tense? Of course it would. That’s how my brain works as a human being.
But God is so far above us that he sometimes speaks to us in a mode called the ‘prophetic perfect’ tense. According to my old Hebrew professor Mark Futato, “sometimes [biblical] authors will consider a future situation to be so certain that they speak of it as already accomplished in the past.” And according to one Commentary on Exodus, in these kinds of ‘prophetic perfect’ statements, “the future is described as having already occurred because God’s will inherently and ineluctably possesses the power of realization so that the time factor is inconsequential.”
Isn’t that amazing? What he’s saying is that from God’s perspective, everything can be said in past tense because it’s all complete. It is fulfilled. It is finished. God never talks about what MIGHT happen, nor what is LIKELY to happen. No, He only ever reveals what WILL happen, what MUST happen, because He has declared by His perfect power that it WILL happen. And because it will happen, He speaks of it as if it has already happened.
Jesus as the SOURCE and SUBJECT of prophecy
Remember earlier how I said that all the prophecies of Scripture point toward a common end? Well, allow me to introduce you to Jesus Christ, who I believe is both the greatest prophet of all time as well as the ultimate fulfillment of Scriptural prophecy.
Let’s start with my first claim, that Jesus is the greatest prophet of all time. In Deuteronomy 18, Moses prophesies about a prophet who was to come:
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.” Duet 18:15-19
Hopefully by now it should be obvious by now that Jesus is this promised prophet, the one to whom we must listen. It’s easy to see when you read the Gospels. Many people in Jesus’ lifetime recognized Him as a prophet. Jesus even referred to Himself as a prophet in Mark 6:4. And the words He spoke were not human words, but the words of God Himself. He was, without a doubt, the greatest prophet who ever lived. Greater than Moses. Greater than Isaiah. Greater than Jeremiah. Greater than John the Baptist. He was the ultimate prophet just as He was—and is—the ultimate human being, son of Man and son of God.
But that’s not all! The Bible is God’s book, not only because He wrote it, but also because it is all about Him. Jesus is not only the greatest prophet ever, and the source of all true prophecy, but He is also the One to whom all the prophecies are ultimately pointing. If you know how to look, you can see Jesus on almost every page of sacred Scripture. The whole story of the Bible is about Him. For example…
Genesis 3 and the fall? Points to Jesus, the promised Seed who will defeat Satan and redeem the world. Abraham and Isaac? Points to Jesus as the one and only Son whom the Father must put to death as a sacrifice. The Red Sea parting? Points to Jesus as the one who would save His people and bring them out of slavery into freedom. The priesthood? Points to Jesus as the One who can mediate between God and man. The bronze serpent in the wilderness? Points to Jesus and the free salvation he offers. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant? They point to Jesus as the true Lamb of God upon whom our sin was laid. The rock that Moses struck in the wilderness? Points to Jesus’ pierced side, out of which flowed blood and water to meet the deepest needs of His people.
And there’s more! The Tabernacle, the Kingship, the Exile, the return to the promised land—I could go on and on, but hopefully you see the point. The Bible is all about Jesus! He is the source and subject of all Biblical prophecy, the foundation and cornerstone that holds up the whole of creation. Amen?
Application: False Prophets and False Prophecies
Before I close, I just want to say a quick word about false prophets. I already told you that there are plenty of men and women today who are making false prophetic claims about the world ending on a certain date or a Chinese military invasion or some other nonsense. So how are we to know whether someone is speaking a true word from God, and how are we to respond as Christians to false prophets?
Well thankfully, Deuteronomy 18 has an answer for us. This is what it says:
And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. Duet 18:20-22
So, if someone ever says “God said so-and-so,” and what they said was false, then it wasn’t from God, because God doesn’t make mistakes. Period. It’s like a litmus test. If there is any falsehood in a so-called “prophecy,” then that prophecy wasn’t from God. I want you all to remember this as a helpful tool that you can use as you live your lives. Don’t just believe people who just CLAIM to have a word from God—test it and see if it really is from God, or if it is a word spoken presumptuously.
Now, let me be 100% clear. If we were ancient Israelites, we would have been commanded to put any false prophets in our midst to death. That is NOT what we are to do today, so put down your pitchforks. Instead, it says, “You need not be afraid of him.” In other words, you don’t need to worry about it. Let God sort it out. Avoid false prophets, but don’t attack them. Instead, pray for them. Pray that God would change their hearts and forgive them for sinning in such a wicked way. And as for you and me? Let’s continue to speak God’s Word to one another from the Bible, because that is the kind of prophet you and I are called to be.
Let’s pray.
[PRAYER]
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