Prophecy is history prewritten. It is the heralding of what will happen before it happens. The biblical prophets were both forth-tellers and foretellers. First, they were forth-tellers. They spoke forth or preached God’s Word or message to the people of their own day and time. Second, they were foretellers. They foretold or predicted the future for those who would live in subsequent days and times. It is safe to say, therefore, that the biblical prophet possessed both insight and foresight.

According to Deuteronomy 18:19-22, the true test of a prophet was whether or not his predictions came true. If they did, he was a true prophet of God. He served as God’s mouthpiece, a spokesman for God whose mouth had been filled by the Spirit with the very words of God. If his predictions did not come true, however, he was a false prophet, a charlatan who was to be put to death by the people of God for presuming to put words into the mouth of God.

The Apostle Peter explained how the prophets of old spoke only those words that the Holy Spirit breathed into them (2 Peter 1:21). It wasn’t their opinions that they preached, but the oracles of God (1 Peter 4:11). Consequently, they were required, under penalty of death, to be 100 percent accurate in all of their prophesying.

Neither Nostradamus—whose vague and pliable prognostications lend themselves to multiple interpretations—nor modern-day prognosticators—who are often wrong, but never in doubt—would have fared well or lasted long in ancient Israel. It is doubtful that the likes of Jean Dixon or Edgar Cayce—whose prolific predictions proved on the whole to be about as precise as a dart-throwing monkey’s—would have survived a single day without being stoned to death in biblical times.

In biblical times, unlike today, it was a serious thing to profess to be a prophet of God. Making such a claim meant imperiling your life every time you uttered a prophetic word. There was no margin for error. One mistake and your prophetic career came to an abrupt end.

It has been estimated that two-thirds of the Bible is prophetic either in type, symbol or direct statement. Interestingly, none of the so-called holy books and sacred writings of the world’s other religions contain a single line of prophecy. How do we explain this abundance of prophecy in the Holy Bible and absence of it in all other “holy books”?

I believe the answer to the above question is obvious. If the uninspired (at least divinely uninspired) authors of the world’s other “holy books” had attempted to predict the future their predictions would have proven untrue. As a result, they would have been exposed as frauds, their writings as fictitious, and their teachings as false. To have any hope of perpetrating their religious ruse upon the masses these false prophets had to steer clear of prophecy, abdicating its lofty sphere to God’s true seers.

The Bible teaches that only God can predict the future. In Isaiah 46:8-10, the Lord declares, “Remember this…I am God, and there is no other, I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done.” Since it is by His divine providence that the future unfolds, it is God alone who can foretell the future (Isaiah 44:6-7).

How about the gods of the world’s other religions? According to the Bible, they are all proven false by their powerlessness to predetermine and their inability to predict future events (Isaiah 41:21-23; 45:20-22). To worship them, nonexistent entities invented in the imaginative minds of men, rather than the one and only true God, who alone determines and declares what the future holds, is the height of folly.

Not only is the God of the Bible proven to be the one and only true God by the fact that He alone predicts the future, but the Bible is proven to be the Word of God by the fact that it alone contains prophecy. Prophecy’s peculiarity to the Bible proves that the Holy Bible is the world’s only holy book. All other “holy books” are exposed as unholy frauds by the absence of prophecy from their pages.

Why do the critics of the Christian faith always concentrate their efforts on trying to destroy the credibility of the Bible, in particularly the credibility of the Bible’s prophetic texts? Is it not because prophecy attests to the Bible’s utter reliability and absolute truthfulness? Think about it; Christianity’s critics may attempt to explain away: (1) Israel’s miraculous crossing of the Red Sea as a mere wading through the shallow waters of the Reed Sea (2) The manna in the wilderness as a common sap that oozed from a desert plant (3) The fire that fell on Elijah’s Mount Carmel sacrifice as a chance bolt of lightening (4) The resurrection of our Lord as nothing more than the hallucinations of His disciples, and (5) The Apostle Paul’s miraculous conversion on Damascus Road as a sunstroke. Nevertheless, if the Bible predicts the future and its predictions come true, the critics of Christianity are silenced. They are left with nothing to say.

Many people argue that we shouldn’t bother with the study of prophecy. They insist that it’s too difficult to understand. How can anyone see to the bottom of it, they ask, when its waters have been so muddied by so many competing theories. Besides, we don’t have to be prophecy wonks to live committed Christian lives. So why should we even bother with the study of prophecy?

As we have already pointed out, two-thirds of the Bible is prophecy either in type, symbol or direct statement. Furthermore, about one-fourth of the Bible is predictive prophecy that remains to be fulfilled. In light of this, one cannot help but question the wisdom of advocating the snubbing of so wide a swath of Holy Writ. Moreover, it’s hard to see how we can obey the Scriptural admonition—“Study to show [yourselves] approved unto God, [workmen] that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”—if we refuse to study at least a fourth of the Bible.

In my denomination (Southern Baptist), we have always prided ourselves on being a people of the Book. If we are to neglect the study of predictive prophecy, however, we’ll have to start calling ourselves a people of three-fourths of the Book. Along with necessitating the modification of our beloved Baptist’s motto, ignoring prophecy will also result in our forfeiture of a guaranteed blessing. The Bible promises a blessing to everyone who reads and hears its prophetic texts (Revelation 1:3). Although a blessing awaits all who study the Scripture, the only study within Scripture that guarantees us a blessing is the study of prophecy.

Unfortunately, it’s not just people in our pews who argue against the study of prophecy, but also pastors in our pulpits. Some pastors claim to have given up on the study of prophecy in order to focus on evangelism. They maintain that they would rather win the lost than arguments on eschatology. While this sounds pious, noble and good, it is fatally flawed in at least three ways.

First, the true minister of God is one who declares the whole Word of God. In Acts 20:27, the Apostle Paul declares himself to be a proven minister of God by the fact that he never hesitated to proclaim to others “the whole counsel of God.” The true minister of God does not pick and choose what parts of the Bible to preach and teach. Instead, he preaches the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. Any pastor who refuses to preach and teach on prophecy is withholding from his congregation a great deal of the divine counsel. How, then, can such a pastor be a true minister of God?

Second, in His parable of the faithful and wise servant (Matthew 24:45-51), our Lord explains how those put in charge of the Master’s house have the responsibility of feeding His household “meat in due season.” This parable is an obvious reference to the responsibility of pastors (those put in charge of the Master’s house) to preach and teach to the church (the Master’s household) those portions of Scripture (meat in due season) that are most relevant to the day and time within which the church finds itself. It is only by faithfully discharging this trust that pastors enable their congregations to become like “the sons of Issachar”—men and women who have “understanding of the times” and know what they “ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

Perhaps, it was with our Lord’s parable of the faithful and wise servant in mind that the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther wrote: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

Along with proving themselves derelict in their divinely appointed duties and keeping their congregations ignorant of the times within which they live, pastors who flinch at preaching and teaching those prophetic portions of Scripture most pertinent to their day are disgracefully disloyal to Christ.

Finally, the Bible teaches that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10). The purpose of prophecy is to testify of Jesus so that men might believe in Him. When a couple of His disciples kept stumbling over their doubts on the Road to Emmaus, our Lord helped them to hop the hurdles of unbelief by explaining to them how He personally fulfilled what the prophets had predicted (Luke 24:25-27). A little later, in the same chapter, our Lord does the same thing for the rest of His disciples (Luke 24:44-46). He helps them to put their doubts to bed once and for all by showing them in the Scriptures how He personally fulfilled all that was “written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Him.”

Notice, it was prophecy that finally led Jesus’ disciples to a fixed and firm faith in Him. This explains Jesus’ words in John 14:29, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, you might believe.” Truly, the purpose of prophecy, especially fulfilled prophecy, is to produce faith in Christ.

The Apostle Peter says an extraordinary thing in 2 Peter 1:19. He claims that the testimony of eye-witnesses like himself is not the most persuasive evidence that the Christian has in presenting his case for Christ to a lost and dying world. Instead, Peter says that our best evidence and most persuasive argument is “the more sure word [testimony] of prophecy.” Nothing, according to Peter, is more powerful in persuading men to place their faith in Christ than prophecy.

Any pastor who claims to be ignoring the study of prophecy in order to devote himself to evangelism is foolishly disarming himself of the most powerful weapon he could ever wield in the battle for men’s souls. It is therefore the serious student of prophecy, not the neglecter of it, who is most devoted and best equipped to “go forth…bearing [the] precious seed” of the Gospel and to return “rejoicing bringing [with him] sheaves” of souls for God’s eternal garner (Psalm 126:6).

It is truly inconceivable to me how any Christian could advocate the abandonment of a study of Scripture that proves the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God, proves the God of the Bible to be the one and only true God, and proves Jesus Christ to be the one and only Savior of the world. If you ask me, few studies, if any, are more important and profitable to the serious student of God’s Word than the study of prophecy.