
God’s word is rich with prophetic revelation, declarations of things that will come to pass at a time after they were spoken. Have you ever stopped to consider that God exists, past, present and future, they are alike to Him. God is timeless and so when He speaks there is both relevance for the present and prophetic revelation of what is to come. We must be careful not to read the old testament prophesies as mere words because as we read we also see in a historic sense those words taking place. If you imagine for a moment what it was like for the children of Israel when they entered the promised land, or when the exiles returned from captivity in Babylon, how they must have felt living and experiencing God’s promises first hand. There is a lot of prophetic scripture that has already been fulfilled, especially in relation to God’s salvation and His Messiah (Jesus Christ) who He promised to send. We might consider how the prophet declared ‘in the last days I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh’ and compare it with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. We have such a tremendous witness in the fulfilled prophetic words that we can have absolute confidence in the words that have yet to take place. Jesus said, I will come again, a tremendous word of promise! In many places we read not only of the suffering servant (we see this as Jesus in His life, death and resurrection) but also we read of the conquering King coming in His glory (a promise we have yet to see). We can find so much encouragement in the prophetic nature of scripture because even the simplest of statements can be loaded with so much intention. Jesus for example declaring I will build My church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it, a declaration a promise and a prediction (prophetic). It may seem easy to look back at historic events and align them with the prophetic words that were given before they took place but for those living in a period before a prophecy came to pass the imagery and specific detail at times can be hard to discern or understand. This is why the religious leaders in Jesus’ day completely missed so much of God’s prophetic promise being fulfilled by His being there with them. The same can be said of prophetic words concerning the end of days. Revelation and other verses can be challenging to fully interpret, over the years there have been many and varied teachings on the subject. One thing is for sure, God’s word will come to pass, His prophetic revelation will be fulfilled and those who look back on it will be able to understand how the details of His word applied to the events of which they speak. I love the fact that God’s word, this prophetic word is alive and we are living it out in our days just as much as our forebears did in the Old Testament.
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