Prophesies

The Old Testament is full of prophecies.  God chose to speak to His people through the voice of other people.  And this is true in the NT, as well.  The NT is written by mere men with their own styles and their own way of writing and expressing themselves.  Yet, God is directing the writing, inspiring ("God-breathed") the writers to say what He wants said.  This, of course, is what is happening throughout the OT, too.  In fact, we see that in the OT there are many cases where God is not only directing these writers as to what to say, He is telling of the future events to come.  We will mention a few of these here as examples of future prophecy.

The book of Nahum, a book not familiar to most people, is written to warn the people of God that calamity was coming at the hands of the Assyrians.  We might remind ourselves here that God is always in control.  He is in control of the rise of nations and the fall of nations.  And we might prefer that He always supports the good nation and brings down the bad.  But what we see happening, as recorded in Nahum, for example, is that God will sometimes use a bad, evil nation to punish His people for their transgressions.

Another example of a book that prophesies doom on His people is the book of Habakkuk.  Again, this is a book, often described as a Minor Prophet because of its short length, that is not so well known.  But in this book of the OT, prophecy is being made of the coming power of Babylon.  The term "Chaldeans" is used in some places, which is the same as the Babylonians.  God is warning His people that they are about to face the terror of the Babylonians. 

In both of these cases we see that the prophecies came true.  The Assyrian Empire was huge and the captors vicious.  Following that, the Babylonian Empire conquered much of the known world including God's people, the Israelites. 

There are many things that we can learn from this.  One is that when God speaks, even through His prophets, it always comes true.  Another is that God is, in fact, in total control.  And we can apply these warnings to ourselves; that is, we need to draw closer to God to avoid the punishments that can come....as individuals and as a nation.  We learn that God will only put up with just so much rejection from His people.  His is very patient....more than patient...but there are limits.

We need to pray that God will give our country, and our world, leaders that will help us get back closer to following Him and His ways.  And we can approach Him for His help so that HE will be praised.....not for our benefit....but for HIS.  He wants to be praised....and He deserves to be praised.  Let us praise God!

Thanks for reading.  May you receive all of God's blessings!