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Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• Unconditional Prophecy. The actual list of unconditional prophecies is not long, but they occupy the most pivotal spots in the history of redemption.

• These promises are unilateral in that they do not depend in any sense for their fulfillment on any mortal’s obedience or pledge to maintain them.

• Typically they are found in a covenantal structure.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• The unconditional covenant in Genesis 15, in which God ceremonially passed between the pieces laid out for the covenant ceremony, is significant.

• In such ceremonies usually the sacrificial animals were cut in half and placed opposite each other to form an aisle so that the ones who were making the covenant could pass through this aisle.

• Should any persons passing down this aisle fail to keep the oath they had sworn to maintain, their lives would be forfeited, just as the animal’s lives that had formed the aisle had been lost (cf. Jer. 34:13).

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• With this background we can now see why Genesis 15:9-21 is so significant for the Abrahamic covenant.

• There God, pictured as a smoking torch, passed between the cut-up animals and promised his covenant to Abraham, but Abraham himself did not pass through.

• This is what made the covenant unilateral, one-sided, and therefore unconditional on the part of God.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• Other unconditional covenants are: God’s covenant with the seasons (Gen. 8:21-22); God’s promise of a dynasty, kingdom, and a dominion for David and his descendant(s) (2 Sam. 7:8-16); God’s promise of the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34); and God’s promise of the new heavens and the new earth (Isa. 65:17-19; 66:22-24).

• These promises pertain to our salvation through the seed of Abraham and David and the New Covenant, along with God’s work of maintaining the seasons and restoring the new heavens and new earth.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• Conditional Prophecy. The majority of prophecies in the OT are conditional.

• Almost all of these predictions rest on Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28-32.

• These two texts give a number of specific consequences that will result from either obedience or disobedience to God’s word.

• The sixteen writing prophets of the OT quote from or allude to these two texts hundreds of times.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• The most distinctive characteristic of these prophecies is that each one has either an expressed or, more frequently, an implied “if” or “unless” connected to it.

• Thus, in the case of Jonah there was no explicit promise that if the people repented, they would be spared the calamity that Jonah had threatened would fall on them in forty days. However, only the assumption that Jonah knew that such a reprieve was possible in the event of an unexpected repentance can explain his deep reluctance to proclaim this divine declaration of judgment.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• If the end was that close, why would Jonah not have enjoyed announcing his enemy’s sudden demise?

• Jonah must have known and counted on the fact that all bets on Nineveh’s destruction were off in the event that the people suddenly decided to repent of their sins.

• So it is with every other declaration of blessing or judgment.

Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Principles for Interpreting Prophecy

• Unconditional Prophecies Must Be Distinguished From Conditional And Sequential Ones

• Jeremiah 18:7-10 identifies explicitly the often-implicit conditional by putting it in the form of a general principle:

• If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or a kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
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