December 1: Prophecy is More Than Prediction

“And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.” (Isaiah 6:3-4 KJV)

The prophet Isaiah saw this vision around 750BC, a little less than three thousand years ago, when he was called by God to be a prophet. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each Gospel mentions Isaiah by name, writing that Isaiah’s prophecies were fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus two thousand years ago.

We repeat isolated parts of Isaiah’s prophecies over and over again – thousands of times if we’re in a choir rehearsing “For Unto Us a Child is Born” – until the words seem to thin out and lose their color. But the idea of prophecy is still exciting. I’ve read dozens of fantastic stories that have prophecies of a “Chosen One,” so much that it’s become a trope. (I mean, in Star Wars, what does “he will bring balance to the Force” even mean, really? And did that prophecy even change anyone?)

Reading Isaiah is real prophecy, and the first way you can tell is because it is so different from our pale imitations. His words aren’t a magic spell or a persuasive speech. They were a prediction of the past, and, yes, are a glorious prediction of the future — but they are much more than mere fortune telling.

Isaiah doesn’t read like a prophecy I would have written, in which I predict the lottery numbers or anticipate the Nobel Prize. In fact, Isaiah can be really hard to read because it doesn’t always seem to benefit me immediately at all, and in fact, seems to hurt more than it helps.

It takes work to even hear what Isaiah says. He speaks from the distant past in a foreign place, then jumps around in tone from judgment to comfort. If Isaiah just spoke of the future, like the Chosen One prophecies in the stories I’d write, he’d be a lot easier to understand.

But Isaiah says more than that, because the God he speaks of is beyond us, beyond space, and beyond time. God was speaking then, and God is speaking now, with the same words. If you sense that, if you think it might be true, even if you aren’t sure, stick around, and keep listening. I can’t promise easy – I can promise good, true, and beautiful, and that comes only with time.

We don’t need to lower expectations of what prophecy can do, but raise them and transform them. Isaiah doesn’t predict “the future.” Isaiah predicts several futures, some of which are now in the past, some still to come. His prophecies don’t “come true,” they are fulfilled. They show us who God was, is, and always will be.

A fulfilled prophecy shows the glory of God, and the glory of God is inseparable from God Himself – so it shows that God is with us. That’s what the name “Immanuel” literally means, and also why Handel’s music is so glorious. (This is from Fr. Stephen Freeman in his blog https://glory2godforallthings.com/2019/03/25/the-mystery-upborne-fulfilled-3/)

From his calling in Chapter 6, Isaiah looks to the fullness of God’s glory and the nearness of God in good and bad. We hear that the whole earth is full in 6:3, the whole earth will be full as the waters cover the sea in 11:10, and the face of the earth will be full of fruit of blessing in 27:6. It is this fulness that is fulfilled in Jesus. And what this means isn’t immediately apparent. Working that out step by step will take 24 days.

These prophecies aren’t information, but they are catalysts. These words are meant to change you, to transform your choices and actions – even your soul. And the one thing I can tell is that, if personal change is real, it won’t be exactly what you expect. Then it wouldn’t be change. To understand, you have to work through it, taking the journey step by step.

So here’s the map: through each day of December, we will step through the scriptures from Isaiah 6 to Isaiah 12. We will hear three familiar, exhilarating prophecies in Isaiah 7, 9, and 11. We will also hear the words of judgment in the chapters connecting those high points.

The one modern writer who gets prophecy right is J.R.R. Tolkien, because he was steeped in the words of Isaiah and the other prophets. Tolkien understood how prophecy really works, and how it subverts our expectation of how we think it should work. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 2, Chapter 7, Galadriel’s prophetic Mirror works like Isaiah, reflecting the past, present, and future all at once. As the Lady herself says:

“What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which is it that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell.”

Leave these words free to work, like the Mirror. Isaiah 6 is the first step, and our main section follows, from Isaiah 7 through Isaiah 12. Our path steps into the past tomorrow to see the “things that were,” and will continue until we reach a glorious song of “things that yet may be” on Christmas Eve.