By Neil Earle
Mention the phrase “missing key to prophecy” around long-time Worldwide Church of God members and something very definite is conjured up in their mind. We won’t “go there” as they say today but it is notable that from being almost obsessed with prophecy we have as a church moved almost the other way. Some have been so badly burned by misinterpretations and false assumptions that they have backed off the Old Testament subject altogether.
This is understandable but we mustn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The fact is that the Old Testament prophets have much to say us today, especially when we study them one by one and not weave them into some artificial and overly simplistic scheme. Here are three quick “takes” on the prophets that will help set some bearings for this brief study.
Gordon Fee and Doug Stuart describe the prophets as the “enforcers of the covenant,” i.e. they gave dire warnings of what would happen if ancient Israel tuned its back on the Law, the national constitution with God in the middle that set Israel apart among the nations. They were “forthtellers” as much as foretellers and they always saw the Law of God as calling them to the highest standards in the way they were to relate to each other (How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, page 184).
Walter Brueggemann states that prophecy, in this case Isaiah’s, has continuing power among the people of God. “It is news about what God has decided, decreed, and is doing that makes a decisive difference in the world. It is a summons to faith (Isaiah 7:9; 30:15) that insists that Yahweh be relied upon in very circumstance of life. The gospel to be received in faith is an offer of comfort (Isaiah 40:1) in the midst of every crisis…” Brueggemann is not embarrassed to trace the modern connection: “[Thus] it turns out that out time and place is much like their time and place. Believing people dare to imagine that the same Holy God who acted in that time and place still continues to disrupt and embrace even now” (Isaiah 1-39, page 7).
John F. Sawyer in Prophecy and the Biblical Prophets (pages 64-66) offers yet another perspective on this thrilling part of scripture: “The prophets are predicting God’s ultimate victory over injustice and oppression…The prophets prepare us for the unexpected…These colorful passages are statements of faith in God’s power to overcome evil. If God’s people are themselves guilty of injustice and oppression, then they are God’s enemies and will be defeated and destroyed with the same finality as were the Egyptians and the Amorites…The present age will come to an end; there is a complete break in history; and a new heaven and a new earth are brought into being (Isaiah 65, 66).
This possibility of new starts and fresh openings in history is a powerful prophetic theme—it means that every choice entails a future, that God takes human freedom seriously and we are held accountable for our choices. We can best illustrate these principles by a micro-survey of just one prophet, Amos, the Judean thunder bolt from the 700s BC.
The priests in the Temple and the elders of Israel were God’s ordinary messages. The prophets were “God’s megaphone,” His extraordinary messengers, sent into action when some things really needed to be said. Amos means “burden bearer.” He lived during the reigns of Jeroboam II (782-753 BC) of Israel and Uzziah of Judah (767-740 BC). Those were very significant reigns for the people of God in that they represented Israel’s last gasp of national glory, expansion and prosperity. Then, as now the nations of the Middle East were at each other’s throat. Then, as now, nations jockeyed for position. Then, as now wanton acts of cruelty and error were everyday occurrences. But then as now God revealed himself to be a God who hated cruelty and injustice.
The opening chapters of Amos contains a clever “circling hawk” style of presentation (Amos 1:1-2:1-8). Amos begins with five doom-laden oracles at Israel’s bitter enemies, then he turns the scalpel upon Israel itself. It was all very daring for Amos had to rebuke a nation at its second great peak of power. It was the Silver Age of Israel after Solomon’s Golden Era. (2 Kings 14:27-28). Wealth poured in from the conquered lands. There was a building boom attested to by the famous “houses of ivory” archaeologists have unearthed (Amos 3:15). It was a time of affluence and self-indulgence (Amos 6:1-8). It was a very religious time as well (Amos 5:21-24).
Let’s study these opening verse more carefully.
Amos 1:2-5 is a judgment on the Syrians, Israel’s neighbors to the north. In Amos words “they have threshed Gilead with sledges having iron teeth.” How gruesome! Threshing machines used for harvesting the crop were turned on hapless Israelite victims. Through Amos, God rebukes this extreme cruelty. Let the nations beware: God sees all, He knows all. He does not take cruelty lightly. Modern nations need to heed.
Amos 1:6-8 reveals God’s reason for punishing the Philistines, a traditional bitter foe of Israel. The people of Gaza had sold Israelites into slavery to the even crueler Edomites. “The saleable were sold; market forces alone mattered, to the exclusion of humanity,” writes J.A. Moyter in The New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Version. “No word could be more timely than this for our generation.”
Amos continued. The expression “for three, even for four” suggests that any three atrocities would have been sufficient to bring God’s judgement but the fourth puts the matter beyond all dispute. This is why Tyre is condemned (verses 9-10). They broke the treaty of peace between Solomon and Hiram 250 years earlier. 250 years! Time passing matters little to the God of Israel. He expects international treaties and obligations to be honored. Does that relate to our situation today?
Verses 11and 12 address the Edomites, a nation inexcusably cruel since they were brothers to Israel and Judah. God condemns Edom’s “unchecked fury” toward his bother Jacob, a fury maintained at fever pitch. The point here is that one does not need to go on a wild goose chase trying to search the exact national origins of these particular groups. The timeless spiritual and moral point is the important thing. God hates cruelty and does not overlook it. He sees. He knows. He will judge. The actual historical pinpointing of the fulfillment of these prophecies is far less important than their eternally valid moral and theological significance: “What is so striking about the prophetic examples is their moral content.”
The theme continues in the burdens against Ammon and Moab (1:13-15; 2:1-3) Israel’s neighbors just across the Jordan-Dead Sea area. Atrocities such as the bayoneting of pregnant women and debasing the king of Edom’s corpse are recorded in heaven. “Whenever crimes against humanity are committed in violation of conscience, for whatever reason,” summarizes Moyter, “the Lord is the criminal’s implacable.” Murder and mayhem is the stuff of our nightly news and that is precisely God’s point through Amos: the nightly newscasts are merely footnotes to God’s intention to judge. In reality, nobody gets away with a thing. The God of Amos is the Judge of the nations. Let them tremble at that but let the obedient and the quiet in the land take courage—God’s justice does not linger forever.
But what of prosperous Judah and imperial Israel? What words of condemnation does God have for Jeroboam II and his affluent, religious society? The answer may surprise you.
Judah, to the south of Israel, has rejected the Law of the lord. They have Solomon’s temple, they have a functioning priesthood, they host the national rites and ceremonies but…familiarity has bred contempt. Idol worship is creeping in, an offense to the God who liberated them (Amos 2:1-5). Then Amos turns dramatically upon Israel. So far his hearers in the northern kingdom have been cheering him on. “Good, Amos, yes, tell it like it is. Blast those Edomites, rebuke those self-righteous Judaeans.” Then Amos strikes:
“For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed” (verse 6-7).
Imagine the Israelite reaction: “What? You can’t be serious, Amos! After the bayoneting of pregnant women and mutilating a corpse this seems so anticlimactic. ‘Trampling down the poor’—Amos, give us a break. Surely you can’t be serious. How does that rank with terrorism and atrocity?”
But Israel had missed a great point about the character of Yahweh and the kind of nation he had expected them to become. Breuggeman spells it out nicely:
“Everyone is on the make. Everyone seeks self-advancement, and no one cares any more for the public good. When there is such self-serving and self-seeking, moreover, the needy of society predictably disappear from the screen of public awareness. Widows and orphans are the litmus test of justice and righteousness…The large theological issues of life with Yahweh boil down to the concreteness of policy toward widows and orphans” (Isaiah 1-39, pages 21-22).
Abraham Lincoln once said that God must love the common man cause he made a lot of them. Being poor has been called the worlds’ second oldest profession. And over and over again in their Law Israel was advised to pay attention to the needs of the less fortunate in their community (Leviticus 19:15). The pagans committed atrocities but Israel simply swept the poor out of public view. Today the United States and Canada are two of the richest nations on earth yet 12,000,000 American children live in poverty and food banks have tripled in Canada in recent years. But it all seems so invisible. The poor can make few demands on the rich and powerful, therefore they are a test of how much society lives by the Great Commandments.
Ah, the Great Commandments. At last we get down to what may be the missing key to prophecy. The greatest prophet who ever lived stated that the whole duty of people before God boiled down just two things: Love God with all your hearts and love your neighbor as yourself. Remember? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40).
So, in the end, it is how we treat each other. That is what determines the fate of nations and individuals. That is where Ammon and Israel, Judah and Edom had failed. They were not as concerned about others as they were about self. That mental posture is the essential preparation for cruelty. How we treat other less fortunate than ourselves, this determines the fate of ancient Israel and modern Canada. The prophetic messages hang on the need to make restitution, to soften our hearts, to be biased towards widows and orphans. Or, in Sawyer’s words: “The God who demands justice and righteousness in Israel is none other than the God who created heaven and earth and all mankind. In the words of the proverb; ‘He who mocks the poor insults his maker’ (Proverbs 17:5; 19:17). An assault on even the humblest part of creation is an assault on the creator himself” (page 51). This may well be the missing key to prophecy. Amos has it right: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24).