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".

But no less important, prophecy did not stop when the last book of the Old Testament was put to an end. The New Testament is also full of prophecies belonging to the same tradition as the prophecies of the Old Testament, and they are already being fulfilled in our lives. This is another reason why it is impossible to understand and appreciate the New Testament correctly if you do not know the Old. Maybe we are simply confused by the Slavic word ("we do not accept old and torn banknotes")? In fact, this covenant is not old, it is old, ancient, the first. He is the foundation; You don't live in the foundation, but without it, the walls can't stand.

The tradition of Bible prophecy has never been interrupted in the Church. We see it in the decisive opposition of the saints to the powers that be, and in the feat of foolishness, and in many other things. Of course, it was not without unhealthy mysticism and profanation, but, as you know, the existing fakes only prove that the original exists. Perhaps it was this prophetic spirit, which never faded away either in Old Testament Israel or in the New Testament Church, that did not allow it to degenerate into a self-sufficient spiritual department with its own routine and once and for all established answers to all questions.

By the way, prophets can be true and false, as well as interpretations of prophecies, as well as almost everything in this world. Therefore, in order to understand prophecies, we need not so much facts and theories as a special, prayerful and thoughtful attitude. And Grits gradually tries to bring the reader into this state; after all, the book was born not from scientific studies and not from church sermons, but from the experience of prayerful reading of the Scriptures and reflection on them. Such reading is still not widespread in Russia, but I would like to believe that it has a great future.

Grits writes about the upbringing of the prophet: "The main thing in this school was not memorizing the commandments, but gaining experience and the skill of constantly fulfilling them." In fact, this is why this book was published.

Andrey Desnitsky

1. Introduction

The revival of church life taking place in our time is interconnected with the growing interest and attention of believers in the reading of the Holy Scriptures and, in particular, the prophetic books. However, it is very difficult for modern people to enter the world of these books. The real world surrounding our contemporaries is so far from the era of the ancient prophets that in order to understand the context of the prophetic books, special knowledge is needed, introducing the reader to the historical, cultural, stylistic and lexical space of the prophetic books. Without such knowledge, the reader either has an inadequate understanding of the prophetic word, or a feeling of fear arises and, accordingly, an unwillingness to continue reading at all.