Friday, September 8
Prophecy Personalized
OPINION
Key Text: 2 Peter 1:20, 21
Whether or not one decides to
accept the traditional interpreta-
tions of prophecy which we have
inherited, I would like to offer an
alternative method of gaining
meaning and value from study in
this area. Prophecy has been dem-
onstrated to have had a signifi-
cant purpose in confirming faith
for believers, when viewed retro-
spectively. However, throughout
the ages, the effectiveness of
using prophecy for precisely defin-
ing the future is questionable. Ob-
viously, the numerous Jewish
scholars who researched the Scrip-
tures with “high-powered micro-
scopes” did not successfully ascer-
tain the encrypted message of the
arrival of the Messiah. And our
own church’s derivation was from
a group that, through intense
scrutiny, arrived at an incorrect
interpretation, or at least one
that required some significant re-
vision. With historical “failures”
by dedicated Biblical scholars,
what hope does this leave for the
common person to gain a value
from the pursuit of prophetic
knowledge? Was it wasted time
for these men and women of ear-
lier days? And does this imply
that we would be wasting our
time by reading any of the as-yet-
unfulfilled prophecies?
One possibility that exists is
that prophecy is given as a tool
for helping us to search, but that
the process of searching is more
valuable than arriving at the
destination. Just as in higher edu-
cation, the purpose is not to dis-
cover the answers to all of the
questions in the universe, but
rather to learn how to analyze, re-
search, and logically think
through a question when it is
posed to us. It is the PROCESS
that has perhaps the major value
in our lives, not the individual
facts that were ingested along the
way.
I would like to suggest the fol-
lowing as a meaningful way to
benefit from the study of proph-
ecy. Rather than setting your ob-
jective to be the determination of
the conclusive interpretation of a
passage, humbly acknowledge
your limitations. Then proceed
with constructing a model that
(perhaps imperfectly) parallels
the story. Apply that model to
yourself, your church, and the
world around you. Allow those re-
sulting analogies to give you in-
sight into truths that you prob-
ably already knew, but which you
needed to approach from a new
direction in order to be awakened
to their relevance. The next time
you approach the text, construct
another model from an entirely
different perspective, and once
again apply that model to your ex-
perience. As with poetry, value is
extracted via numerous interpreta-
tions. Perhaps the author has the
only “true” interpretation, yet ex-
perience and learning are dis-
pensed to those who read and re-
spond from their own particular
vantage point.
by Brian Christenson
Brian Christenson is a systems consultant at Wright State University in
Dayton, Ohio.
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