Fear of reading the prophetic books of the Old Testament is a long-standing and enduring "tradition" of the Orthodox Church. It is not difficult to notice it and it is quite easy to give it a negative assessment. It is much more difficult to determine the causes of such a phenomenon. In our opinion, they are not at all hidden in the illiteracy of the church people and the insufficient training of the clergy, although these phenomena are often encountered. The source of this kind of fear lies much deeper: in the loss, or, to put it more cautiously, in the significant weakening of the prophetic tradition itself, which is always the "nervous system" of the ecclesiastical organism.

The prophetic word, the most important in the life of the early Christian Church, ceased to play a decisive role in the ecclesiastical consciousness of the following centuries. Moreover, in modern church life, the attitude towards the prophetic word is often suspicious, it is perceived as something not quite Orthodox. The consequence (and probably one of the reasons for this) is often a misunderstanding of the books of the Old Testament prophets and their falling out of modern church life. This applies not only to the Old Testament, but, to a certain extent, to the New. As an example, we can point to the rather negative attitude of church people to the study of the Revelation of John the Theologian. For many centuries now, this unique prophetic book in the entire corpus of the New Testament has been excluded from the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church.

On the other hand, sometimes even Christian believers who reverently treat the Holy Scriptures, in particular, the prophetic books of the Old Testament, are full of doubts about the admissibility of analyzing their text, about the spiritual possibility of conducting the study itself.

The inspiring basis for this kind of inquiry is the words of the Lord Jesus Himself, which sound like a command addressed to all His disciples, and, therefore, to us: "Search the Scriptures, for you think by them to have eternal life; but they bear witness of Me" (John 5:39). Of course, the word "Scriptures" at that time meant the entire corpus of the Old Testament books.

Quite rarely is this famous Gospel verse perceived as a New Testament commandment coming from the Son of God Himself. In reality, it is a commandment given to all of us.

The author's many years of experience in teaching the course "Introduction to the Old Testament" in various biblical and theological educational institutions shows that immersion in the subject and spirit of the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament occurs with great difficulty. On the one hand, students do not have any particular problems with understanding the structure, content, main themes of the books of the Old Testament and their connection with the New Testament. On the other hand, without special training, it is very difficult to understand the language and basic concepts of the Old Testament, to understand the purpose and correlation of its individual parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Scriptures. And the main thing is to understand their spirit and meaning.

This work is aimed at helping everyone who wants to fulfill the commandment of the Lord, to instill the skill of meaningful and thoughtful reading of the prophetic books. The main goal of this work is the desire to help the reader fall in love with these books. For "reading without love," in the words of the famous Swiss writer Hermann Hesse, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, "is one of the gravest sins against reason."

Therefore, we recommend considering this small book as a textbook for studying the prophetic books of the Holy Scriptures, i.e. reading it with only the revealed text of the Bible in front of you. Most of the quotations from the Holy Scriptures are given from the text of the so-called Synodal translation. In some cases, the translation belongs to the author.

2. Prophecy

2.1. Prediction and forecast

The future has always been the object of close attention of people, regardless of their origin, cultural or intellectual level, occupation, political and other views. Perhaps this interest is to some extent determined by the fact that the answer to the question "What does the coming day have in store for me?" is associated with the search for the meaning of life.

For many modern people, prophecy is synonymous with divination, prediction of the future. In everyday consciousness, there are two approaches to the problem of the future: passive and active.

The first approach can be characterized by the phrase "come what may". This approach only partially looks passive, since it does not necessarily imply indifference to the problem of the future. However, people of this type are more or less characterized by a fear of the future, which is sometimes so great that it paralyzes all activity.