05.02.01 - Prophecy as Miracle
(1) Prophecy as Miracle
Prophecy is a species of miracle because it belongs to the supernatural, and like miracle is bound up with revelation and forms an essential part of it.
Generally it is that form of teaching in the Old Testament which grows and expands with divine revelation and attains perfection and completeness in Jesus Christ and the New Testament. It has two main factors (i) a teaching and instructing element, declaring and interpreting the mind and will of God to men; (2) the prediction of future events and their fulfilment. It is this latter element to foreknow and foretell future events, events unseen and in calculable to the minds of men, and which as much transcends the ordinary means of knowledge, and implies the intervention of the all-seeing and all knowing God, as does the act of healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, and raising the dead by a word that is debated. To predict a future event long enough before it comes to pass is regarded as evidence of superhuman knowledge, and so a proof of divine revelation or of supernatural communication. And because in Old Testament prophecy the super natural element is concerned with divine and spiritual truths, and the gracious purposes of God in redemption, the knowledge is a communication from God and an integral portion of divine revelation. It is the predictive element which has fallen into disrepute, and which to-day is largely rejected, and by some placed on a level with heathen divination, and which it is said tends to rob prophecy of all historical and ethical importance, and to curse it with barrenness.
Prophecy, we are told, is moral and ethical, rather than doctrinal and spiritual, and was a moral present-day message to the people whom the Prophets addressed, rather than a divine revelation concerning things to come, or things concerning Christ and salvation, or His Church and Kingdom in the world. Prophecy, as already indicated, had a declaratory, national, and moral purpose, a message for the people of that time, but not for that time only; but in its ethical and moral teaching had regard to principles of good and evil, truth and falsehood, God and His enemies, that belong to the whole of time. “ Prophecy,” says Dr. Arnold, “ is God’s voice speaking to us respecting the issue, in all time, of that great struggle which is the real interest of human life, the struggle between good and evil.” 1 Because it concerns “truth and falsehood,” “good and evil, “ God and His enemies,” as such it must concern all time, because the facts and principles arc for the whole of time. Thus it is Paul tells us we are “ built on the foundation of the prophets,” “Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner Stone” Prophecy thus appeals to all peoples and to all time, and so in the opinion of some is even a more important witness to the truth of Divine revelation than miracles as such.