Heeding the voice of the prophets

Preface

I remember how I once took up reading the prophetic books of the Old Testament – of course, in the Synodal translation. I was young, and in the Church I was a baby, but I loved to read, and the ancient texts attracted rather than frightened me, a student of philology. But here... "For they do not thresh the blacks with a toothed roller, and they do not roll the wheels of threshing on cumin; but with a folder they knock out the shrnukha, and cumin ~ with a stick. Grain, bread is threshed, but not broken; and they drive threshing wheels and their horses over it, but they do not grind it. And this comes from the Lord of hosts: marvelous are His judgments, great is His wisdom!" (Isaiah 28:27-29)

It was impossible to endure this for a long time. Whether it was an indistinct translation, ignorance of some important realities of the time, or my own immaturity – I did not know what prevented me from reading the Old Testament prophets, but I could read them in a row only in the form of penance for the pacification of soul and body. I discovered a whole world in the Gospel, I enjoyed the poetry of the Psalms and the Song of Songs, I warmly sympathized with the sufferings of Job, but I did not understand the prophets at all (only the Pauline epistles were worse). No, there were islands—the calling of Isaiah in the temple, the prophecy of a new heaven and a new earth where the lion would graze with the lamb—clear, distinct, inviting, but they towered like cliffs in a stormy sea of incomprehensible images and unnecessary details.

And then I came across a book by Fr. Alexander Men (at that time they were still brought from abroad): "Heralds of the Kingdom of God." I read it avidly, with delight; I got to know them better, but most importantly, I really fell in love with these people and wanted to read their books. And now I understand what I lacked then: a guide who would take me by the hand and show me what is important, what is secondary, who would teach me the language of these people. In part, Fr. Alexander became such a guide, but he only outlined some basic milestones, he introduced me to this world, and then I had to look for other guides.

One such guide is in front of you, and for someone it will be the first. This book is structured on a different principle than Fr. Alexander's: it is based not on personalities, but on phenomena. What is prophecy? Forecasts and predictions are so popular today, from scientific and technical futurology to applied astrology, but this is not at all what Bible prophecy is about. I. Y. Grits begins with this main question: "Prediction tells what a person or a group of people may become in the future, while prophecy announces what God wants them to be." In other words, it is an exit into a different system of coordinates, an attempt, no matter how audacious it sounds, to look at the world through the eyes of God.

And if so, then you need to learn to read prophecies. Grits defines his task as follows: "to instill the skill of meaningful and thoughtful reading of prophetic books." But there is also a super task: "to help the reader fall in love with these books." It would be difficult to say more precisely: to help and to love. Without this, it is unlikely that anything will work; You can memorize a lot of facts, master all conceivable methods, but you will not get anything necessary and important either for the mind or for the heart.

I hope that the book will achieve its goal. It does not heap a multitude of secondary facts and controversial theories on the reader's head (which is the sin of many biblical studies), but it does not fall into preachy pathos—in fact, it is difficult to maintain such a balance. The book, indeed, helps the reader to understand, evaluate, get used to it. Calmly, concretely, unobtrusively.

It speaks of the word of God, but it does not lose sight of the human aspect of prophecy, moreover, it constantly emphasizes its dual nature. After all, a prophet is not a medium who, falling into a trance, enters into a mystical connection with the other world and broadcasts what the spirits tell him. No, the prophet remains a man, with all the fullness of consciousness and will, and his speech combines the Word of God and the human word.

The prophets carried their message in many ways; They even perceived it differently - some heard the voice, others had visions. And today psychologists say that people can be "auditory" and "visual", and we find the same thing in the Bible. Prophets could be at the temple, or they could be at the royal court, they could also be independent. Some of them left their books, others we learn about only from the stories of biblical narrators. In this variety of personal experience is the most important testimony to the human side of Scripture, which is so often overlooked by the modern "too godly" reader.

It is especially worth noting how much attention the book pays to the freedom of human will. It would seem, what does it have to do with it? God declares what He wants; People can only be silent. But the Lord does not simply dictate, but rather calls and proposes: "Behold, I have today offered vie6e life and good, death and evil" (Deuteronomy 30:15). A person is free to accept or reject His will, and even sin will not necessarily be punished – there is a place for both repentance and forgiveness. Prophecy is communication. As Grits writes about this, "the voice of God never drowns out the voice of man."

This is the communication between God and the prophet, whom God calls to Himself, entrusts him with a message, and, for example, the book of Jonah shows us how difficult it can be for the prophet himself to accept it. But it is also a communion between God and His people, who do not just passively listen to His will, but respond to it with their faith and their works, with their whole lives. Therefore, prophecy, if I may say so, is the nerve of sacred history, just as the law is its skeleton.

We call prophecy the most important bridge between the Old and New Testaments. In fact, the Evangelists constantly emphasize that in the life of Jesus Christ the prophecies of former times were fulfilled; moreover, this is what their logic, their plan is based on. And what does "come true" mean? After all, this is not a weather forecast that can be checked by a thermometer. The book discusses this in detail as well. It is impossible to prove anything here, but it can be shown, and it will depend on the person whether or not to accept what has been shown to you. Hence the amazing connection between "tomorrow" and "at the end times": sometimes it is difficult to separate one from the other. And there is no need to do this, because prophecy is just a look at "tomorrow", and even "today", just "from the end times".