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Prophecy

             For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. (I Thessalonians 4:16-17)

             Who told of this from the beginning, so we could know, or beforehand, so we could say, ‘He was right’? No one told of this, no one foretold it, no one heard any words from you. (Isaiah 41:26)

 

            Prophecy. It can be exciting or frightening to read, depending on  your perspective. I used to love to read it, but I tend to avoid it now. It’s not that I don’t believe it will happen or don’t want it to happen. I think it’s more that it’s so easy to get so caught up in it that I  don’t want to deal with here and now. I’ve known people who “can’t wait” to go be with the Lord, not so much because they love the Lord, but because they don’t want to deal with things in their life. It’s the same with prophecy. I think we should be careful about using God as our means to escape what God has given us, and I suspect we all do it.

            But if prophecy is not designed to be a spiritual pep rally, what is it for? It’s for the same things that the rest of Scripture is. It is designed to reconnect us with God and to separate us from evil. One part of the reconnection is as proof of God’s existence. I didn’t find the verse I wanted, but Isaiah returned to the theme several times. God gave advanced notice of things that later happened. God goes so far as to say that if a prophet turns out to be wrong, the Israelites were to stone him. God forewarned the Israelites that they would spend centuries in Egypt. He gave promises about the Messiah, telling when and where He would be born and how He would be treated. He told of the fall of Israel and its return to nationhood. He told of impending punishments and future blessings, often in detail. The verse in I Thessalonians promises future blessings, but notice that the blessing isn’t a victory, wealth, power, or fame – it is being with the Lord forever. 

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