Prophets are making a comeback in today’s world. The National Enquirer tabloid is full of them. Perhaps you’ve heard of Nostradamus, the sixteenth century French physician and chef of Jewish heritage. Born to a father forced to convert to Catholicism around 1501, Nostradamus became renowned on account of predictions that seemed to come true a short time after they were made. Emboldened by his success at predicting the near future, Nostradamus tried his hand at predicting major events over the following two thousand years or so. He laid out his predictions in a thousand four-line poems or quatrains, divided into ‘centuries’ of a hundred each. Many of his predictions were even attached to specific dates.

The most famous of Nostradamus’ dated predictions was his prediction for the year 1999:
The year 1999, seven months,
From the sky will come a great King of terror,
To resuscitate the great king of Angoulmois;
Before, after, Mars will reign by good luck.
This language is clearly ambiguous. Many looked for its fulfillment in terms of a meteor shower or some other heavenly event. Most of these also anticipated that some significant conflict would break out during the year, if not in the month of July itself. But the date came and went and nothing of the sort was observed.

In the mid-60s I was aware of another alleged prophet named Jean Dixon. She claimed to have insight into detailed future events. Two of her predictions seemed verifiable enough that I made note of them and watched for the fulfillment. One of these predictions was that the unpopular views of Barry Goldwater (anyone remember him?), a losing Republican candidate for the presidency in 1964, would be vindicated within the next decade. I’m not aware that that ever occurred. Another prediction of hers was that the scrapping of a miniature military missile project would prove to be a huge mistake by the end of the 1970s. That missile was never missed as far as I know. The concept of prophets is something we’re used to. The concept of successful prophets is another matter.

One of the first things you notice about the Book of Revelation is its claim to be a written prophecy (Revelation 1:3 and 22:10). For those who know the Bible, that recalls the Old Testament, where there are many examples of prophetic writings: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and Malachi among others. The Bible contains many models of what prophecy is like. As we examine these models, we gain a clearer understanding of how to read the prophecies of Revelation.

The exciting thing about the Book of Revelation is that it makes a number of predictions about the future. Many of these predictions are still unfulfilled. This raises the question as to how we can accurately understand prophecies that are yet unfulfilled. What can we learn about our future from Revelation? How can we avoid the interpretive mistakes of the past? The only safe way to interpret unfulfilled prophecy is to understand how prophecy was fulfilled in the past. The Bible contains many prophecies that were already fulfilled within the biblical context. As we study these fulfilled prophecies, we can learn how to handle the unfulfilled prophecies of Revelation in a responsible way.

So in this series of blogs we will observe how prophecy works throughout the Bible. We will look at how the language used to describe the future compares to the actual events which correspond to that language. In this series of blogs, we are not looking at Revelation itself, but discovering the broad biblical groundwork for how Revelation should be understood. As we look at the entire Biblical witness, we will see patterns of prophecy that continue in the book of Revelation.