This small book is devoted to an attempt to give answers to these and many other questions.

2.3. What is the difference between prophecy and prediction?

Prophecy, as already noted, is an expression of God's will in the world. In this respect, it does not directly refer to the physical, social, political, cultural, or any other such processes taking place in this world. The only thing that prophecy has to do with is the measure of good and evil that reign in the world, with the growth of sin and with the opposition to the holiness of the Church.

In contrast to prophecy, prediction, in whatever way it occurs, is connected with this world in all its manifestations. These can be global predictions about possible changes in the climate on earth, the development of the country's economy, etc. These can be particular predictions relating to the life of an individual – his health, successes or failures in various activities, etc. Prediction can have as its subject any processes of life, except for spiritual ones, since it does not take into account the phenomena of spiritual life.

Prophecy can also refer to the life of an individual or a group of people, but not as a consequence of the accumulated events and tendencies of a previous life – this is how predictions and forecasts are made – but as God's will for them.

Prediction tells us what a person or group of people might become in the future, while prophecy tells us what God wants them to be. It speaks of God's plan for a given person or group of people, a plan that is always inimitable and unique, just as each person and each nation is inimitable and unique in the eyes of God.

Prediction strives for objectivity and accuracy. In the normal case, to independence from the person who commits it.

In principle, prophecy cannot be objective, just as love cannot be objective. It is always personal, for it comes from God as the true Person. And it depends very much on the personality of the prophet, or rather, on how pure his heart is, how brightly the fire of God's love burns in him.

Prediction is almost always directed to the future. In principle, the present cannot be the subject of prediction; the past is extremely rare, in special cases.

Prophecy, as an expression of the will of God, is determined neither by the past nor by the future. It can also be about the present, which is its true object: God reveals Himself at the moment, He is present and acts always and everywhere, but mainly "here and now". Prophecy can also be about the past, for for the Lord there is no past, everything before Him is in the present. The first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis – the story of the creation of the world, the Fall, the antediluvian patriarchs, Noah and his covenant with God, the Tower of Babel – are also a prophecy, but about the past. There is no and cannot be any evidence, no monuments or documents about the creation of the world by God. We know this because it was revealed by the Lord God to Moses, it was the will of God to announce it to the world through His prophet.

Prophecy, unlike prediction, can refer not to time at all, but to eternity, to the Kingdom of Heaven. Numerous prophecies in the Old and New Testaments proclaim God's will for "a new heaven and a new earth" (Ne 65:17, 66:22, 2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1, etc.).

There is another important difference. A prediction, like a forecast, is, figuratively speaking, a "product of one-time consumption". Many people are interested, for example, in the weather forecast for the next summer - in connection with vacations and vacations. But who is interested in this forecast for the summer of 1998 today? A prediction in a certain area, even for a long period, after its completion is of some interest only to a small group of historians.

On the contrary, the will of God, as He revealed through the prophets to this world, is of lasting value. This topic was of great concern to the prophet Isaiah, to which he dedicated some of the most striking and enduring lines of his book, written as a dialogue between the prophet and the Lord: