Wisdom-Trek / Creating a LegacyWelcome to Day 1336 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – Prophecy and Prophets – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1336 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is required that you also have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did, and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.


Mastering The Bible – Prophecy and ProphetsInsight Forty-Three: Most of the Material in the Prophetic Books Isn’t about Predicting the FutureAs we begin a new section in Dr. Heiser’s book, our focus now turns to the prophets of the Old Testament. In popular usage, Christian or otherwise, the word “prophet” is associated with foretelling the future. That’s understandable when it comes to the Bible, since both testaments have prophetic figures making predictive statements about what will come to pass in the future. Despite that truth, it doesn’t take long when reading the prophets to discern that most of what they do isn’t about predicting anything. More than anything else, prophets were actually preachers. Scholars like to say that a prophet spent more time “forth-telling” than “fore-telling.”


What did prophets preach about? Righteousness, mostly. To be more precise, prophets spent most of their ministry railing against the sin and idolatry of the people of Israel and Judah. They were constantly reminding the people of their covenant relationship to God—how they had been rescued from Egypt, delivered at the Red Sea, and given the Law so that they could live happy, productive lives in accord with the God who loved them.


Israel, as a nation, had publicly proclaimed at Sinai that they would obey God’s law (Exodus 24). Prophets were vocal reminders of that promise. In that respect, they were basically covenant enforcers. They demanded that the people honor their relationship to God. In essence, they were preachers.It’s because of this role that we have the modern expression about “speaking with a prophetic voice.” When you hear that phrase, it doesn’t concern predicting the future. Rather, the point is that some man or woman is bold enough to tell the truth when it’s unpopular or even dangerous. That’s what prophets did, and they paid dearly for it.


Modern Bible readers have largely lost the correct orientation for reading the prophets. Talk about the future and discerning “the signs of the times” is more titillating than having someone tell you about your sin. But that’s crucial for walking with God. Someone needs to tell the truth. Prophets didn’t do it because they enjoyed it. They knew their ministry wasn’t going to make them popular. They did it because God wanted to rescue people from judgment.


That alone is a lesson for us today. Most contemporary preaching is about making us feel good about ourselves. There is no warning. It’s more important to realize that God loves us and wants us to turn...