I was surprised that the first thing that jumped out at me when I reflected on this series was how much the religious and political authorities resisted the message of the prophets. Admittedly, at the invitation of some of our readers, I was reading their comments, focusing on what they said to our current political […]
Except for a very few small sects, prophecy as an office in which a person received a message directly from God disappeared from Christianity for 2000 years. The institutional Church used canon, creed, educated theologians, and consecrated authority to discern what God was doing and evaluate individual spiritual thoughts and experiences. Then suddenly in the […]
Prophecy moves in a very interesting direction in the New Testament. A good third of the Old Testament, 17 books in all, are records of prophetic visions. There is only one in the New. That seems strange when the main character is portrayed as a prophet. Jesus is executed by the religious and political authorities […]
Looking at the other prophetic books individually doesn’t help much in trying to figure out what we should be doing in the 21st Century. Jonah is obviously another fictional story like those in Daniel, written to encourage people to obey God even when the situation seems hopeless. We get the point, but are hardly inspired […]
The Old Testament prophets try to explain how their God can be supreme while other nations, who worship different gods, continually defeat and control the Israelites. Their attempts sometimes produce inconsistent pictures of God. In one paragraph, he brings judgment on all the people because everyone sins; in the next, he is saves them because […]
When I started this series exploring what Old Testament prophets have to say about the present political situation, I was afraid that I might force the issue. It turns out there’s no danger of that as the current administration does something every week that the prophet I’m studying directly attacks. For instance, this week I […]
Although Hosea proclaimed judgment against God’s people at around the same time as Amos, he certainly offered more hope. In fact, his ideas lay the groundwork for Jesus’ ministry. Hosea links divine judgment much more to Israel’s seeking security from alliances with the political empires of the day. One of his images is of her […]
Let’s start with Amos. We know very little about his life. He shows up at Bethel in the northern kingdom of Israel, proclaiming God‘s judgment right before Assyria crushes her. Because he is from Judah, the king’s priest tells him to go home where he belongs. Amos responds that he is just an ordinary shepherd […]
In this series, I plan to examine the teachings of individual prophets, paying special attention to what they say about our present political situation. I think it’s safe to say that few of us know much about the prophets. I often even forget the names of all the minor ones. Yet 16 of the 39 […]
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