The Prophets God’s Spokesmen (Part 2)

Sometimes the prophets would look back on past faithfulness and remind the twelve tribes about the lessons learned to prepare them for a path forward. Ezekiel places the fault of the captivity at the feet of the shepherds (leaders) of the people in chapter thirty-four of his book but offers hope going forward through life brought to the valley of dry bones in chapter thirty-seven. In his day, Joshua admonished the people to choose between the mistakes of the past and the prosperous path God had laid out for them (Josh. 24:14-15).

Prophets would often have a partially hidden portion of their prophecy that would foreshadow the Christ and His kingdom within the message that applied directly to their contemporaries. Isaiah is the best-known example with his four messages about God’s servant (Isa. 42:1-7, 49:1-13, 50:4-11, 52:13-53:12) or the dualistic prophecy about an important child being born (Isa. 9:6). Also Jeremiah foretells the New Covenant and Zechariah mentions the triumphal entry and price for Jesus’ betrayal (Jer. 31:31-34, Zech. 9:9, 11:12-13). They did not fully understand the reach that their message would ultimately have, whereas we can appreciate our all-knowing God and His plan of salvation He conceived before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:10-12).

We do not need special individuals to fill these prophetic roles today because we have the completed word of God revealing the entirety of what we need to obey Him (1 Cor. 13:10). Revelation of God’s will has been fully accomplished, but God’s prophets lived in a time when that job was not yet finished. This means that when we proclaim God’s truth to the world we are similar to the prophets. However, we should not expect a new prophet in the future to show up and declare some previously unknown but all-important truth that “changes everything!”

-Ross Haffner