The Mountain Range & The Prophetic Perspective

When I was cutting my teeth on the prophetic books in seminary, one of the really helpful things I was taught was that the way prophets looked at the future was the way we may look at a mountain range with distant mountains and nearer mountains in the one mountain range, all of them looking like one mountain.

For example, to the north of our home in Pasadena was Mount Wilson. From where we stood on East Orange Grove Boulevard, it looked like one mountain. But in fact, if you started hiking, or driving, you quickly found that it was not merely one mountain, but a series of ever-higher ridges with valleys in between, about five of them.

We called that the “prophetic perspective.” From where Isaiah stood, God granted him to see the Mount Wilson of the future. Some of the nearer ridges of Sennacherib’s comings and goings he knew were very near, and when they would happen (e.g., Isa. 37:29). But beyond that there were other events he saw on Mount Wilson with no clear idea about how distant they were.