Sermon presented by Bill Bradford on January 18, 2014 in the Brisbane, Queensland, Australia congregation.

Bible prophecy has gotten a bad name; not because it isn't true.  The Bible is true and God's prophetic utterances and the words that He gives are always true.  It's how it has been understood and how some people tend to use Bible prophecy.  I want to turn to 2 Peter 1:19 and today we're going to understand why it is so important to understand Bible prophecy and not only to understand it and how to apply it,  but understand why we even have it in the first place and what is it and what part of the Bible is Bible prophecy?  Just how important is this?  We're going to answer some of these questions and I will tell you beforehand some of these answers are going to be quite surprising to you and apart from the normal way of talking about prophecy and teaching prophecy than what you've heard.  Hopefully it will be quite helpful to you to put it all in the proper prospective.

2 Peter 1:19  We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.....Now the old King James says:  We have a more sure word of prophecy.  What Peter says here, although it's the way it's translated in New King James, we have the prophetic word confirmed; very interesting what you might mean by the prophetic word, we're going to define this as we go along.  It has been confirmed, it's been confirmed over and over again which Peter is then referring to the events that he himself personally experienced.  You can read the context of the chapter which he was one of the three who received the vision of the Transfiguration on the Mount with Jesus Himself and where Jesus was transfigured and he heard it himself, these were the words that were spoken: "This is My Beloved Son, hear you Him."  All of this was said and he heard this, meaning then, that who this Jesus is.  The fact that He came and you had all the prophecies and now it came to be and to culminate at the time of His first coming and there is so much more to it than that, because there is also His second coming which He is then saying is going to happen, certainly because the first coming took place.  One builds on the other.  He says:.....We have this prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns.......This is very interesting how prophecy then is somehow revealed and it shows the future, it shows what is going to happen and he speaks of it as a light shining in a dark place until the day dawns.  Then of course it becomes very clear.  You've seen sun up many times, all of us have and it's dark and gradually it gets lighter and lighter and becomes clear and all of a sudden the whole vista opens up to you where you can see clear in daylight what you didn't see before.  Now he's talking about prophecy here and how it does open up to you in a clarity which maybe at one time you didn't have, how it does open up more and more to you as time goes on.  He says..... Verse 20:  Knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation.......Apparently that could have been a problem.......Verse 21:  for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.  In other words they came from God.  It was not something generated strictly from the imagination of men as to what they thought it was going to be.  We do have a lot of people who try to predict the future and they don't know the future, they can't tell you what the future is, but God can and it's all been written down for us.  The problem is in the proper understanding of it.  The problem is the private interpretation, but why?  Why do people delve into prophecy to start with?  Further, why do they want to have a personal or private interpretation of prophecy that apparently no one else has?  That is what a private interpretation means.  Simple answer, they want to be considered a prophet, that's not too hard to figure out, they want to be considered a prophet, this is for personal gain.  God is the only one glorified and proven to be true and correct by the prophecies He gives and He does that.  That is one of the reasons He gives it and by the way we'll see that as we go along.  But the private interpretations have been the downfall of a lot of people.  It still is, we're still hearing private interpretations and specific events, occurrences that people speak about, prophecy about, claiming to have certain special and exoteric knowledge that they want to pass on to other people.  It's only for one reason and that is to establish themselves as someone important from God and you should recognize that too because it is very clear to them how important they are.  So he (sometimes it's a she, most of time it's a he) who say we're the ones, the special ones, the chosen ones and everything else, you know how it goes.

The second issue is end time prophecies.  People set dates.  Once again, this is to prove a person as prophet.  The only one, the special one who knows God's time.  Now this kind of thing shows how little people know about prophecy whenever they start setting dates or times when this or that is going to happen or that is going to happen.  It's written vague enough to where you don't know.  You can go to Daniel chapter 12 and especially it's about certain days and everything happening, try and figure it out.  Then come tell me.  Then I will say, maybe you shouldn't attend here anymore.  No, I couldn't quite do that, but then again I might.  It depends on how far your eyes kind of stands out from your head whenever you give me this kind of information.  I'd say, I think you'd better find another place to meet.  No, we're not in to that.  So the end time prophecies, I've got a whole section on that next week, on end time prophecies as opposed to prophecies, this is a very important distinction.

The third problem is that students of Bible prophecy look at events only.  They see prophecy in this way, past events, present events and then of course moving on to future events and whenever you do that you don't understand what prophecy is for.  There is something much bigger that's going on with prophecy than what singular events will tell you.  They are there for a reason too.  However, it's a much larger thing than that as we will see.  Prophecy is to show His people what God is doing and to help them understand where they are in God's great plan that He is carrying out and even if they want to know and everybody should want to know if they are in that plan, if they are a part of that plan, if they are a participant.  If you are, you should be an active participant in it.  But, it reveals God's will for you and it reveals God's will for all of mankind.  This is quite extraordinary when you understand prophecy in the right way as to what you will really understand when you get the scope of prophecy.  Prophecy, so much of the time is relegated to obscure events, events that are end time only, that's how they look at prophecy.  Only the last few years, that is occurrences that will take place just before the end of the age. As a result, there is an attempt to see the fulfillment of these prophecies as eminent, they can occur at any time and we tend to look at that, we look at events.  We get prophecy watchers, Germany watchers, beast watchers as I call them, world watchers, all these events that people are looking at and they also look at what is happening to our countries of modern Israel.  Then begin to say: This is going to happen real soon, just look at this.  I heard this a  long time ago, so you do not know.  There's another question and if I have the time I'll answer it and explore it for a few minutes with you.  What if you knew somehow, which you won't know, but what if you did?  Know that prophecy or that at the end time according to how the Bible speaks of the end of the age is fifty years away?  What if it were one hundred years?  What if you knew that?  I don't think you will know that.  That's not a part of God's plan for you to know that.  But, I'm just saying what difference would it make to you?  It would make a big difference to me and not the one that you'd think it would.  As a matter of fact, let's  cover this point right now before I go on.  If you don't experience it, who will?  Your children.  If they don't experience it, then who will?  Your children's children.  Oh it's going to happen, no question about it.   So that being the case, what would you do now?  It says a wise man lays up for his children and his children's children.  In other words, what you do now and everything you do now, look into the eyes of your children.  Look in their eyes, you don't have any children, o.k. but look into their eyes if you did have them.  Tell me why are you doing now, what you're doing?  You think about that for awhile because if you don't experience it, they will.  Somewhere along the line your prodigy, your flesh and blood is going to experience what we see here in the Bible. They're going to have to go thru it, if it's not you.  We tend to think that well, I think because of the background I have, the experience I have, where I come from and so on, it would be nice if it happened during my life.  We all want it to happen sooner, don't we?  Let's get this thing over with, o.k.?  But what if you're just the preparation for another generation?  What would you do?  Now a lot of people didn't do what was right when they came to that realization and did just the opposite.  Not only did they not prepare, they gave up on what they believed.  I think it's one of the greatest impetuses to not only stay with what you believe, but to reinforce it and to establish a community of people, God's people who are going to remain close to God in anticipation of what you know is going to happen.  Hence, we come to one of the ideas to why we have Bible prophecy to help you understand what's going to happen so you, whether you or your children, your grandchildren or great grandchildren, whatever, are themselves going to be prepared.  I realize there's a problem in that we tend to loose the truth within certain generations and it tends to get watered down and why does that have to be?  Somebody explain that to me.  I understand the fact of the matter, but explain to me why does it have to be?  Now once again, we reinforce the idea, why do we have Bible prophecy in the first place if it's not supposed to do something for us in this regard?  O.K. I think I made my point on that.  So it's something to consider everyone.

Now I want to come back to this subject.  You need to understand if we're going to understand end time events.  You need to understand it in the whole context of prophecy.  If you understand prophecy in the way it was written and you understand the will of God as revealed in the prophecies, you will be making that kind of a mistake.  This is the approach we're going to make in the seminar next week and hopefully people will come away with a lot better grasp of what Bible prophecy is all about.  Let's understand several things first.  How does God prophesy?  This is important.  This will give you an idea about His purpose for prophecy and what we are supposed to learn.  God is able to predict the future basically in two ways and as we discuss them, you'll see there's probably a combination of both to some extent. 

One:  God directly causes it to happen or He sets in motion what will eventuate.  Now that's one point.  That's not two points by the way I have another one after that.  All right, we'll come back to that in a moment.  Secondly, to some extent it's related to the first and that this is an understanding of cause and effect.  Now God can foretell events because He knows enough about the nature of things or that certain things are going to happen and He will work in conjunction with the natural order of things with His intervention.  He has the right to step in and cause certain things to happen.  He sets up kings, he tells us in the book of Daniel for one.  He's the one behind that and I say the devil sets up, yes with God's permission.  This is how it works.  The devil operates, but he operates under a license.  Here, he's got a license to operate to a certain point and then it expires.  So if he says, I want this person to be over this particular empire or whatever it is.  God says, hmm, and  they have a discussion about it and God gives him permission, sure go ahead and set it up.  He's got to receive permission for this.  So in that sense God is in control, but God is permitting the devil to work out events on this earth, in the way that the devil does, being the god of this world and he has set in motion himself certain things to happen because of what he has said, what he has taught people to believe, the deception and so on and things are going to happen in a certain way and he wants things to go his way.  God says you can try this for awhile.  But overall it's going to come to an end.  Now the devil is hoping against hope that doesn't work that way.  He's hoping he's going to win and prove that he's right all along and he has always been right in what he  has come up with, his way of life, his philosophy, his way of get or self  importance and how he's promoted this to people.  He is so sure he's right so everything he does is to prove that God, all the other angels, anything else he wants, to prove himself to be right.  Well you're going to show that he's not right and he has caused more suffering and misery and he's going to be the one who causes mankind to come to his end which God will not permit.  For that very reason, he doesn't care what happens in the meantime, but he's going to prove he's right.  That's his object. 

Now God then however, has His plan.  He works in conjunction with what is happening down here and He establishes His will.  Now we'll read that in a moment.  I want to take these one at a time and not get too far ahead of myself on one or the other.  God can plan and He can know and predict the future through cause and effect.  In other words, He knows what's going to happen because He knows enough.  I think I can demonstrate this in Deuteronomy 31 beginning with verse 24.  Here is Moses, this is Moses' song by the way.

Deuteronomy 31:24  So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were finished.....O.K. He's finished. Verse 25 that Moses commanded the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord saying:......O.K. now he's addressing the Levites here.  Now why is he addressing the Levites?  Well, the Levites were responsible for teaching and to pass on God's word and His truth.  Verse 26  "Take this Book of the Law and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there as a witness against you;.....Now this is interesting, Moses is telling the Levites this. Verse 27 "For I know your rebellion and your stiff neck.  If today while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the Lord, then how much more after my death?......Now do you think Moses is prophesying here?  In one sense he is, more predicting than prophesying, he is just simply saying that this is what's going to happen and I know this is going to happen and I will tell you this, he didn't need any special revelation to know that it was going to work out this way.  He's looking at an end of 120 years of life, he's seen enough, he's seen them enough that he just knows what they're going to do. Verse 28  "Gather to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing.......I want them to hear this too.  Bring the elders, bring the officers......and call heaven and earth to witness against them. Verse 29  For I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt......O.K. that's pretty tough stuff now.......and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands." Verse 30  Then Moses spoke in the hearing of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song until they were ended.

So he's telling them straight up I know what you're going to do.  Moses was uttering a prediction.  How did he know it would happen?  Did it happen?  Yes it did happen.  It was terrible to think that here that they're being warned but they probably had the best intentions and to give them credit, the generation after Moses kind of stayed rather strong as we're told in the book of Judges.  Then the next generation, it was just gone, and then God had to periodically re-establish His truth which He did through prophets and then through a kingship of David.  Even then had problems after David and then with Solomon after that.  So he's giving a prediction here.   Now here's the point.  Can God in His greater wisdom and foresight look into the future and say certain things that will happen.  He was a lot smarter than Moses.  Yes He can, He knows the past and He knows the present and based on what He has seen, He can say with certainty what is exactly going to happen.  So God says He does speak confidently about a captivity as a matter of punishment, national punishment, national chastisement for the fact that they have departed from God.  Both captivities on upon a lot of Israel and Judah, I'm talking about the initial captivities from when they were in the land that God had promised Abraham before and then in the end time captivity also.  He can prophesy both.  Now he speaks in terms of what he will bring upon them and so on.  He speaks in those terms.  Now in one sense you might say God's doing this.  Well, in one sense it's the natural order of things.  You have an antagonism on the part of the devil toward God's people that He choose, a long time ago way back in the book of Genesis.  He'll do everything he can to get rid of them, to wipe them out, try to get them away from God, sin against God and when he gets them to do that, then of course they're not going to be under God's protection and they will be punished in some way or another, this captivity that it speaks of here, a national captivity, a national punishment that he's going to talk about.  Some people try to say, well this is not really going to happen in this way.  It's a captivity in a different way.  Don't be so sure.  God can do whatever He wants to do.  People who think the first one was never going to happen.  It happened. 

That's what empires do.  The great empires that were predicted, prophesied to occur, God said this is what they're going to do when they started doing it.  Moving whole nations, moving whole cities, moving whole populations, get them out of there so we can control them.  That happened.  Will it happen again?   Well, some people say, well it's going to be a different kind of a captivity.  We're going to be in debt.  That's interesting.  He describes it much worse than that actually.  So we're going to be what He says, we're going to say how's that all going to happen?  O.K.  I tend to take what He says, not with a grain of salt, but I take it literally.  O.K.  I don't think I have a lot of choice on that.  How does He know?  There's such a thing as cause and effect.  Let me demonstrate this.  In other words He knows what's going to happen.  He can tell what's going to happen.  This doesn't mean He will not have some involvement in it to some extent, to either lessen the effect or cause certain things to  happen to enhance the effect.  He can do that. But all things according to the natural order of things that He is able to predict, prophesies as it were to say of, assuredly this is going to happen.

Now two proverbs. They are right together. Let me show you just a little principle here that demonstrates the point.

Proverbs 13:18  Poverty and shame will come to him who disdains correction.  But he who regards reproof will be honored.

We have something that happens, we have an attitude of a person.  Richard gave a sermonette on this.  He's not going to take what his father has to say.  He distains correction, he comes to poverty and shame.  You have cause and effect.  You might say it's quite simple.  The book of Proverbs is full of this.  You do one thing, this is going to happen. Verse 20:  He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.  Has this happened?  Too many times.  So does God know what He's talking about?  The book of Proverbs in one sense is prophetic utterances.  They say if you do this, this will happen.  Human wisdom, or rather is it God inspiring and who observe what men do in conjunction with the knowledge of God and God's laws, who these are people who wrote the book of Proverbs simply know how things would happen.  This is knowledge God gave them.  So they were able to make certain predictions based upon how they know things simply will happen.  Now you know what young people do.  They will say, I think I'll try and beat the odds, it won't quite happen to me.  They're wrong, it always happens.  You're not going to get away with anything. 

Now this brings up a very interesting point to help us understand some of these things.  You have the same powers God has, now not to the same extent, but you can prognosticate.  Doctors do this all the time, they give a prognosis; Mr. & Mrs. so and so, here's how it's all going to go.  How do you know?  He's seen it all before, that's why he's the doctor.  He can say here's how it's going to happen.  Can't things change that?  Well, yes this can change it, or that can change it, or sadly it's such a disease, but nothing will change it or he'll tell you that there's nothing we can do.  Some of us have had this experience, some of our loved ones for instance has had it happen.  So, my father did this all the time.  I referred to this before.  He said if you do it this way son, you're going to have to do it all over again.  Was he a prophet?  No, but he was uncanny right almost all of the time based on his experience.  He could see the way I was going to do something was not going to work out, it was going to be wrong.  I could do it this way, certain things are going to happen.  How did he know?  He was older than me, he knew, he'd seen this before so he was able to make a prediction (short term prediction) but a prediction non the less and he always said this because whatever you did, especially growing up on a farm, that there would be an effect.  There would be a result and if you didn't do things right, this would always happen.  Now my brother and I being the type persons we were, we'd always try and take short cuts, we'd always try to do things so fast and get out of work so we could go to the swimming hole or play ball or something, but do anything but work, so we would.  Then we would come back and do twice or three or four times the amount of work that we did before, just to straighten out and Dad always knew, he'd come back and look at what we did and he would say, you did it this way didn't you?  You didn't do it the way I told you to do it, did you?  So what are we going to say, we got caught.  Well, he knew and he always knew.  Now you can do this, you can project the future and in some limited way, you can have insight in the way things will generally go.  Not as much insight as God of course, we all know that.  But humans were created this godly attribute or characteristic or ability is another way of putting it.  Animals were never endowed with this, they can't tell the future.  You can put a cow on a truck, head it towards the abattoir, they have no idea what's going to happen.  They probably don't even know what's happening when they're in the race heading toward being swallowed, the final shot that knock them over unless they sense something through instinct.  They can't tell the future, they only know there's not enough food in the pack, there's no water in the pack and they cast about looking for food or water.  They don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or the following day.

You can project, you can try and figure things out, you have an imagination, you can project into the future and you can understand the way things are, that things keep going a certain way  There's going to be the results.  You can project into eternity, yes you can.  You were made this way.  This is one of the endowments of God, a very important thing.  So we ask then, how can God know?  God knows.  He knows better than us.  It's important then that we listen to what He says because He is 100% accurate. Now as we get older, we may be not as accurate and we're only short term anyway.  God can predict down into the future.  That might give you a little bit of an inkling as to how He can say there is going to be a beast power, this is what they're going to do and there are going to be two people, one a religious leader and one a civil leader who is going to be at the head of this and here's what they're going to do.  You might say, wow, you mean He doesn't cause that to happen.  He knows it's going to happen.  He simply knows what people will do.  He knows how it's going to play out.  He can think through from A to B all the way to Z and A to the first power, B, He can go through the whole  thing again. Where does He want to go?  He's got the capacity and the ability to work through the whole thing logically and reasonably because He knows the way things are and say, here is how it's going to turn out.  Now I want to go back to the point to some extent He knows, that is he will be orchestrating and working out His plan.  Now which brings us to the next point.

God makes it happen, the second way that He prophesies.  Why?  Well God is not just in the business of making certain (Not legible).  As I said before this is the way we tend to look at it.  God makes it happen because God has a plan and He knows exactly where He's going and He's going to work out His plan respective of what anybody else does, even what the devil does, He's going to work out His plan.  Let's go to Isaiah 46:8  Remember this, and show yourselves men; recall to mind, O you transgressors. Verse 9:  Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is none like Me ........Now He's saying this in the context  to people who take silver and gold and make idols, they carry them around and they can't speak and yet they bow down and worship them and they pay more attention to this and the whole system that they set up rather than God Himself.  So God is saying this to Israel.........Verse 10:  Declaring the end from the beginning,......We're not talking about  events here, we're talking about what He is saying from the very start, why He did what He did at the beginning, Genesis the first chapter all the way to Revelation 22.......and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand.....counsel here means plan, check it out, a simple things like Strong's Concordance will tell you plan.......And I will do all My pleasure,' Verse 11:  Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country......This is a specific prophecy here that He's referencing but He has also made elsewhere about Cyrus, who King of the Persians would come and destroy Babylon who would be the ones who take the Jews whom Isaiah is prophesying to in Jerusalem captivity.  He's saying it's going to be somebody who is going to do My will and He says this 200 years before it's going to happen and He prophesies about another empire that's going to take place. He's doing this to tell the Israelites through the prophet Isaiah that I'm God, you do whatever you want to do, set up your idols, sacrifice your children, do whatever you want and they did and they completely departed from God and God's laws  They killed these prophets and His messengers and God says I'm going to tell you before it happens, this is what is going to happen.  I'm going to send someone from the East.  Now you're going to have to tie this in with other specific prophesies that tells you who that person is, who is the bird of prey?  A man who executes My counsel.  He does step in, He does intervene and he does say that certain things are going to happen according to His counsel........Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass, I have purposed it; I will also do it.  So, how does He prophecy?  He does it.  He brings it about......Verse 12:  Listen to Me, you stubborn-hearted, who are far from righteousness: Verse 13:  I will bring My righteousness near, it shall not be  far off; My salvation shall not linger.  And I will place salvation in Zion, for Israel My glory.  Now, what He's doing here in that last statement is in one sense summing up what He is eventually going to do.  It covers the whole gamete of prophecy verses what I'm saying here now is a part, only a part of what eventually is going to take place.  Now we have to consider one fact that we cannot be prophecy buffs trying to know what is going to happen next or when the tribulation will begin or some other such thing; when this is going to happen, when that's going to happen.  The best question to ask is, do I know God's great plan, do I know His counsel, now where am I on the continuum of what God is doing, where am I in that time line?  Do I know?  You have to look at it that way and that will tell you a lot more because that is what He reveals. 

How many people will give up because of all the great end time events did not happen when they thought they should?  How many people will come into the church for temporal reasons thinking they were going to be saved from tribulation by going to a place of safety?  You still hear this over and over again.  I'm not discounting prophesies, I'm just saying there are reasons why people look at prophesy and say this is going to happen and why they make certain changes in their lives to escape all of these things and God says there's got to be more to it than that.  How many then don't even believe God anymore because things didn't turn out they way they expected to which shows there's some wrong reasons why people came into the church to start with.  There was some other expectation that did not eventuate.  The wrong approach to prophecy could hurt you bad, really badly.  The right approach can be one of the greatest forms of faith that you can have.  God is God and He will do what He says and have confidence in that. 

Now, there is another form of prophesying that we find in the new testament.  I want to cover this part.  I Corinthians 14:3  But He who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.  ......Now the word prophesy there is exactly what it means. Propheteia.  I used to use, I used to pronounce Greek words down in Melbourne.  Melbourne you understand is known for its great population and the second generation Greeks and sometimes first generation Greeks would fit in the congregation and I would try to pronounce these Greek words and they would say we never heard of these words before.  Well it was because I was never pronouncing them correctly and I would listen to them speaking Greek and I would find out that I was so far off it wasn't funny, but anyway take my word for it, the word means exactly what it says, prophesy, Propheteia, that's the way it looks to me in a book anyway.  But it says here:  But He who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.  Verse 4:  He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church......  Very interesting idea, isn't it?  Verse 5:  I wish you all spoke with tongues......Now it's cease after awhile.......but even more that you prophesied; for he who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, unless indeed he interprets, that the church may receive edification........So this speaking in tongues is what gives a lot of show the way some people did it and it was for a purpose, a temporary purpose back then.  Prophesying, that's different.  Now what does He mean?  How might this work in the New Testament?  When you speak to others, that is prophesying in this way; you are holding out to others what they could be.  For instance, if you gave a message on, say the mind of Christ.  For instance, you gave a sermon on that.  You would be holding out to the person to whom you are speaking, the direction they have to go, that would be directional.  It would imply the future.  Certainly it would because you're not there yet.  O.K.  we assume that.  That is what they would be like or what they could become.  This is entirely the future.  So whenever you speak to a person to edify them, or to exhort them, you want to move them toward their future to acquire and to be something that they are not yet.  Everybody move on that.  Therefore prophesying.  You're speaking of the future to people.  All edification is about the future.  All edification or exhortation is prophesying in that sense.  You're not there yet, but you work toward that end to become as Christ in the example that I just mentioned. 

1 Samuel 3:1  This is very interesting.  Here was young Samuel at the tabernacle in Shiloh......Then the boy Samuel ministered to the Lord before Eli.  And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no widespread revelation........Very interesting.  Well, there had been before.  Now at this point there wasn't and God was about to begin to use prophets that He was going to send Israel starting with the first great prophet Samuel.  The priesthood were not doing their job.  Israel, and especially the priesthood themselves, Eli and his sons were corrupt.  Eli allowed his sons to be corrupt.  So where is God's involvement to teach the nation and to show them what they should be doing and to give them some guidance to what they should do and where they should go; they had enemies around, who's going to show them what to do?  No revelation, the old King James says vision.  No vision.  If you're going to use that word the way we use it today, where's the future, did they see it?  They don't see it.  They needed God to tell them what it is and they would be who they were, God should have been involved in their lives all the time and the word of the Lord coming to them through, say high priests for instance, Eli for example.  Now God is going to move things along here.  He said I'm going to send them prophets.  So He did.  Now they didn't like the prophets either. 

Hebrews 1:1  God will speak to you.  God will speak to you of the future.  God calls a person.  Are you being called?  O.K.  God calls you, it is about your future because your mind is opened as to what God will want from you, what God would have you be and what God would have you become and what you have to do to get there.  It's about your future.  He's giving you a vision and you're either going to march according to that tune to what you see and what you comprehend or you're going to dismiss it and say I'll live in the present, I don't have to worry about it, things do happen, it is what it is.  We say that all the time now, where did that come from?  It is what it is.  God says I'll tell you what is, what is.  This is the way it's going to be and here's what I'm holding out to you.

God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,  Verse 2:  has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds......This is entirely futuristic.  God envisions the future.  You might say well God lives in the future.  In a sense He sees and He understands things as He knows there going to be because He has the power to bring it about.  Guess what?  You have a chance to be a part of that.  You can branch out on your own and try and make a future for yourself in some very short term way.  It's not the best idea. 

So prophecy then has to do with the future.  In an Old Testament sense of course and in the New Testament sense.  So every sermon we give I would hope for you is futuristic.  That is, it helps you to see and understand where you are.  Now the whole thing, let me conclude with this one point and I hope by next weekend this will be firmly established.  What part does prophecy actually play?  What part does it have?  Do we really understand what it is?  Now you've heard it say, been said 30% of the Bible is prophecy.  You've heard that?  You've heard that.  You believe that?  You don't want to commit do you because you already heard that I was going to give you a different answer.  Right?  Well about 60%.  How about 90%?  Let me explain something to you.  The Bible is 100% prophecy.  All right, can we grasp this point?  It's 100% prophecy.  When God starts something in Genesis chapter 1, verse 1, it's all about the future.  O.K. I'll leave you with that one.  Everything in the Bible leads to one basic theme, one basic idea all the way through.  He doesn't deviate, He doesn't change, God knows exactly where He's going and He gives us so when you understand prophecy, you should understand it in this way and don't get bogged down in narrow little bits and pieces of vague prophecies.  We can talk about them, but we do so after you understand the whole scope of prophecies and what God's plan and what God's purpose is.  You already know what this is, you just probably haven't thought about it in that way before and it is quite far reaching and exciting and it holds out some tremendous hope for us as we go forward in a darkened world.  We wait for the time that the dawn will appear and will light up the whole future for us and that is indeed what is going to happen.