PREDICTIONS AND PROPHECIES
Text: Luke 2:1 – 20
Do you know the difference between a prediction and a prophecy? If you don’t, my prayer is that you will before I finish this sermon.
We hear predictions every day. If you watched the news this morning, you probably heard a weatherman predict the weather for today and the rest of this week. If you follow politics around election time, there is no shortage of experts that are making predictions about the outcome of the election. Environmentalists make predictions about the impact of ecological disasters like the oil spill will make on the environment over the next decade.
I can make predictions. I can predict that we will have a bad winter this season. I can predict that cars will no longer use gasoline by the year 2025. I can predict that a world leader will pass away over the next year.
Some predictions are easier to make than others. I can predict that someone I know will be in the hospital next year, and be reasonably certain that my prediction will come true. How can I say that? Because I am basing my prediction on what has happened in the past. I cannot remember very many years over my entire lifetime in which someone that I knew wasn’t in the hospital. Therefore, I can guess with some degree of confidence that someone I know will be in the hospital next year.
It is a little more difficult to predict the name of the President of the United States at the end of this century. I could base my prediction on popular names given to children today, or just take a stab at it. But it would be very difficult to predict that because it doesn’t depend much on past events, and because it is so far ahead in the future.
A political philosopher once said this about making predictions: “Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens.” (Hannah Arendt) What this person is saying is that predictions are just best guesses based upon the best information that you have available at the time. That’s why Tony Cavalier can say that we are going to have 6 inches of snow tomorrow and we end up with nothing. He was basing his prediction on the weather patterns he saw yesterday, but a lot can change between now and then.
Prophecies are very different, but before you can understand what a prophecy is, you must understand a few things about God. First of all, God exists outside of time. The Bible says that God created time on the first day of creation. “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Genesis 1:3 – 5) This means that God stands outside of the timeline and can see any point of history that He wants to, past, present, or future. Think of it like this: Time is a 500 page novel. Page 1 is the beginning of time, and page 500 is the end of time. You and I are the characters in the novel. For us, time moves forward as the story goes from one page to the next. God is holding that novel in His hands. If He wants to, He can turn to page 25 and see what happens there. If He wants to, He can turn to page 448 and see what happens there. God is not a character in the story; He is the author, and He knows everything about the story. He knows who the characters are, how the story progresses, and how the story will end. We are in the story, and we must wait for the story to play out to find out how it will all end.
God is also sovereign. This means that He is in complete control of everything that happens, just like an author is in complete control of how His story develops. God created everything perfect, including humans. But part of mankind’s perfection was God’s gift of a free will. God gave us the privilege to make our own decisions. This was not a mistake on God’s part, but a part of His perfect will. We may decide that we are going to get married, or move to a different state. We can decide if we will live for Him or reject Him. But since God does not live in time like we do, He was able to view your life from beginning to end thousands of years before you were even born. Before God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He knew that you would be here in this service today. He knows when you will die, He knows what you will have for supper on Tuesday of next week, and He knows if you will give your life to Him. God does not force you to do any of those things, but because He can see all of time all at once, He already knows what choices you will make and how it will affect your life and the lives of the people around you.
What does all this have to do with prophecy? As a matter of fact, it has everything to do with prophecy. As I said earlier, a prediction is just a best guess based upon the best information that you have available at the time. It’s a guess because we exist in time, and we don’t know for sure how things will turn out. We have to wait until it happens to see if our prediction was accurate. A prophecy, however, is a divine revelation from God. In a prophecy, God tells a person what is going to happen in the future. It’s not a guess because God already knows what will happen. God is telling us on page 42 what is going to happen on page 378. If God didn’t tell us, we would have no way of knowing for sure. But since He is the author of the story, we can be confident that what He tells us will come to pass.
Let me share some prophecies from God’s Word with you. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden. He gave them one commandment: they could eat the fruit of any of the trees of the Garden except for one – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God told them that if they ate the fruit of that tree they would surely die. We don’t know how long they were there…it may have been days, years, or centuries. But the day came when satan came and tempted them to take the fruit of the forbidden tree and take a bite. Adam and Eve were created perfect, each with a free will given to them by God, and they used it to disobey God’s commandment. God sadly told Adam and Eve about the consequences of their choice, and gave mankind its first prophecy. In Genesis 3:14 and 15, God tells the serpent, “And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This is a prophecy that one day, satan would be defeated by one who was a descendant of the woman, a prophecy that was fulfilled by Christ when He defeated satan on the cross at Calvary. This wasn’t a prediction – it was a prophecy. The Bible describes Jesus as a Lamb slain from the foundations of the world. This means that God knew even before He created Adam and Eve that they would sin and need a savior. How did God know this? Remember, He doesn’t exist in time. He simply turned to the end of the novel to see how it ended and let Adam and Eve know a little bit about it.
Another prophecy that you may be interested in is found in the book of Isaiah. Seven hundred years before Christ was born, God let Isaiah in on part of the story later on in the novel. He revealed that the Savior of the world would be born to a virgin. He told Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14) The Gospels tell us that Jesus was born centuries later to a virgin by the name of Mary. This wasn’t a prediction by Isaiah – it was a divine revelation by God given to Isaiah. God already knew what would happen, and He shared some of that information with Isaiah.
God also shared part of His story with Micah the prophet. To Micah, God revealed that the Savior would be born in the city of Bethlehem. In Micah 5:2, God says, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” Did you catch the last part of that verse? His goings forth had been from of old, from everlasting. God was saying that before history began, He knew how it would all turn out. Of course, this prophecy was fulfilled when Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem so he could be taxed. The Gospels tell us that while they were there, Mary went into labor and delivered the Christ child.
I could go on and on. There are literally dozens of prophecies in God’s Word. Isaiah also was given a prophecy about the death of Christ that was so accurate and detailed that many preachers use it as a text at Easter over the resurrection story given in the Gospels. Zechariah also was given revelations that Christ would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, His disciples would scatter when He was arrested, and that He would be crucified. Zechariah also received a prophecy that Christ would enter into Jerusalem before His crucifixion by riding on the back of a donkey, and Daniel was told by God the date of the very day that Christ would do this 600 years before it happened. In every case, the prophecy was fulfilled centuries later, not because someone had made a good prediction, but because someone was told directly by God what would happen. God knows everything, so it should not surprise us that these prophesies came true.
So what does all that mean to us today? So what if a bunch of prophesies that were given to people hundreds and thousands of years ago came to pass? What’s the big deal? Well, we need to realize that all these prophesies that I have shared with you were concerning Christ’s first coming. They were literally fulfilled 2000 years ago when He was born in Bethlehem to the virgin Mary. They were fulfilled when He rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey a week before He was crucified. Still more were fulfilled when Jesus died on that cross and became the Savior of the entire world.
But you should know that there are other prophesies in God’s Word that have yet to be fulfilled. Prophesies about Christ’s second coming. The apostles stood on the Mount of Olives as Jesus ascended up into Heaven on a cloud. I can imagine that they stood there looking up into the sky with their mouths open until they couldn’t see Him any longer. They must have stood there like that for a while, because God had to send two angels to them to move them into action. God told the angels to tell the apostles, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11) This wasn’t a prediction by the apostles or even a prediction by the angels. God send them a direct revelation and told them a little bit about the end of the story, and just like before, since God is the author of the story, we can be confident that one day, this prophecy will be fulfilled.
According to the Bible, the second coming of Christ will take place in two parts. The first part is what we call the rapture. The Bible prophesies that one day Jesus will return to take all the believers living and dead to Heaven with Him. Jesus will not touch down on the earth, but we will be caught up and meet Him in the air. Listen to what the Bible says: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13 – 18) The apostle Paul wasn’t making a prediction here – he was given this information directly by God, the same God that told the Old Testament prophets bits and pieces of His story back then. Once again, God is the author of the story, and He knows that this will happen. He is just sharing part of the end of the story with us.
The second part of His coming will take place seven years after the rapture. This is the event that we usually mean when we talk about the second coming of Christ. The apostle John was given a revelation from God 1900 years ago. Here is what God showed him about the second coming of Christ. “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS. And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.” (Revelation 19:11 – 21)
When Christ came the first time, He came as a humble servant born to a poor virgin in Bethlehem. But when He comes again, He will come in power in glory and as a conquering King. When He came the first time, He came as a Savior. When He comes the second time, He will come as a Judge.
Remember, these are prophesies, not predictions. They were given to us by God Himself. Just like all the prophesies about His first coming were fulfilled, all the prophesies about His second coming will be fulfilled as well. God already knows how the story will end, and He has shared some of it with us.
The challenge that stands before us today is the same challenge that has faced all of mankind throughout the ages. The reason that God shared part of the ending of the story with mankind is so that we could be prepared for it. He told the Old Testament prophets that a Savior was coming so that they could relay the message that God would forgive them for their sins. They looked forward to His first coming, and when He did, their sins were all forgiven. Today, He is our Savior, and He is willing to forgive anyone that wants to ask Him to. He is our Christmas gift from God. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God gave you the free will to decide whether you will call upon Him or reject Him.
He has given us the prophecies about His second coming to warn us that there will be a punishment for those that reject Him. The Bible says that He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” These prophesies will be fulfilled sometime in our future. Maybe 50 years from now, maybe 200 years from now, or maybe today. We don’t know when. God has decided not to share that part of the story with us. He expects us get ready now, while we know that we have the time. This Christmas season, please take a moment to thank God for the first coming of Christ, and another moment to prepare for His second coming if you haven’t already. Let Him become your Savior today. Don’t wait until He comes the second time to be your Judge.
Now…do you know the difference between a prediction and a prophecy?
