Welcome to talk nine of our series of twelve. Today we are looking into the matter of prophecy in the Old Testament. The Old Testament category of prophecy follows after the wisdom books. It consists of seventeen books, the twenty third to the thirty ninth. It is divided into the major prophets, which consists of five books from the twenty third to the twenty seventh, and the minor prophets which consists of twelve books from the twenty eight to the thirty ninth. The five books of the major prophets are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel.

The twelve books of the minor prophets are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament. Before we deal with the books of prophecy, we need first to understand the nature of prophecy and the role of the prophets in the Old Testament. Although the books named above are categorised as prophecy or the prophets, Old Testament prophets and prophecies are spread throughout the Old Testament. In other words, they are not confined only to the prophetic books. The fundamental meaning of prophecy is that it is a message from God Himself which is given to a person of His choice to speak to a person or group He wants to address.

So each prophecy is a specific message from God to a specific recipient in relation to specific issues. So it is not generalized theories, ideas and so forth. But it is a specific message from God to a specific recipient in relation to specific issues. The content of the message is God given. It may be political, military, economic, societal, moral, spiritual, covenantal, or personal, essentially anything whatsoever that God wants to address. It may be for one person, for something in the person's life. It may be for a particular segment of society, such as national leaders, the priesthood, or some such grouping of people. It may be for a whole nation on national matters. It may be for proclamation to all humankind to hear and to respond. In other words, it can be as broad as that the party that's being addressed is the whole of humanity. Collectively, all the prophecies in the Bible as they are correlated and systematized, bring out deeper and wider levels of meaning and truths that carry deeper and wider meaning and application beyond the immediate matter addressed by each prophecy. Now, in an important way, the entire Old Testament, and in fact, the entire Bible is prophecy. For the Bible is itself a library of books that were written and collected together in history that God has written by His spirit to address His people and humankind.

Thus prophecy in the Bible and in the Old Testament is not confined to the books classified as prophecy as I have earlier indicated. The Law is prophetic because the entire Old Testament law was given by God to Moses to speak to the nation of Israel as His people. It is the basis of His national covenant with them; Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The forefathers of Israel as a nation, are also referred to as prophets because God spoke with them and God spoke through them of the nation.

So even the law can be considered a prophecy. The history books can likewise be related to prophecies, because the history books record both the lives and the prophecies of many prophets, some very prominent, such as Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Some are totally anonymous and spoke only one message, but you find that their prophecies that are messages from God and their lives as prophets raised and used by God. We find all of that in the history books. So history in the Old Testament contains many prophets and many prophecies.

The book of Psalms, a wisdom book includes very many prophecies of what God would do in the future, especially in pointing to Jesus, the Messiah, David is a major contributor of these prophecies, something we noted when we touched on the Psalms. And in a broader way, each book in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament foreshadows in some way, Christ as the coming Messiah. So prophecy is found in the wisdom books. So our emphasis, therefore, is that Old Testament prophecy is not confined to the books of prophecy. Rather, it is found in every category of books in the Old Testament. And this underpins the fact that the Old Testament and the Bible as a whole is a message from God. It is His revelation of Himself and of reality, and of why and how He has come to save humankind from sin. However, the books classified as prophecy are distinguished from the other Old Testament books on the basis that each book records the messages and events that God sent a particular prophet to be addressed in His name, and typically the name of the prophet becomes the name of the book. So that distinguishes the prophetic books from the other Old Testament books. While all books are prophetic in some way, the books of Old Testament prophecy record the prophecy and ministry of a prophet, each book being named after the prophet and his message, or more accurately the message that God sent the prophet to deliver. So we will present the books of prophecy or the prophets over the next two talks. In talk ten, the next session, we will cover the major prophets. In talk eleven, we will cover the minor prophets.

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