• Bible,  Theology

    The Prophets Were Preachers Not Prognosticators

    Recently someone asked me if I thought there were still Old Testament prophecies that needed to be fulfilled. The question is a familiar one that I was asked many times when I served as an ordained minister and lead pastor for 10 years. It’s a sincere inquiry, revealing a desire to be discerning of the times, faithful to Scripture, and seeing how the Bible may be speaking to our world today. Unfortunately, the question also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the biblical prophets and their prophecies. The biblical prophets were primarily preachers, not prognosticators. They were concerned about their immediate context — their time and place in history, not the…