Isaiah 6:1-8

Context

Prophecy: Not Just Future-Telling

When confronted with the question of the purpose of the prophetic books in the Old Testament, it is commonly supposed that their primary purpose is future telling or the supernatural revelation of certain events before they happen. However, in reality the prophetic books actually engage in very little having to do with anything related to the future and in fact spend the vast majority of their time analyzing the past! In this way, the books of prophecy contain “divine interpretations of history,” as my mentor John Sailhamer used to say, and any talk of the future that they do engage in is most often presented as an outgrowth and consequence of the people of God’s failure to…