“How Prophecy Works” is an excerpt from Chapter I of my book Breakthrough Analysis of Daniel’s Prophecies.
So how does prophecy work?
In Christianity, the sphere is often used to symbolize eternity because there are an infinite number of circles on its surface and because each of these circles has no beginning and no end, indicating the timelessness of the Eternal NOW.
In the Bible, one reads:
“That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been;” Ecclesiastes 3:15 (to;)
Perhaps the relationship between eternity and this Ecclesiastes’ now might be symbolized thusly:
When a prophet’s thought is so spiritualized that he or she can glimpse an idea in the eternal NOW, the prophet must then translate the timelessness of eternity into language that humans can understand, a language wrapped in the concepts of the past, present, and future. In the process, the timeless sphere may appear to break apart into a broken sphere. This so-called “broken sphere” in human experience would seem to fall out onto a timeline and be symbolized thusly in contrast below the sphere:
The question in the state of thinking in the broken sphere then arises: Why did God postpone the coming of the Messiah for over a thousand years and the Second Coming of Christ after that?
The word postpone implies time, but in eternity, in the forever NOW, there is no time. Thus, the question seems to come from a mortal trap of judging the immortal by mortal terms.
So, to the question again: How does prophecy work? When one’s thought is so spiritual that it is living in “eternal life” (Romans 2:7), in “the mind of the Spirit” (Romans 8:27), in the forever NOW, one sees things as God sees them. Then when that one translates the language of Spirit into a form that humans can understand, the ideas appear to be on a timeline of past, present, and future.
Different levels of thought during the process of translating spiritual ideas into human conception see different things. For example, different prophets saw various things translated into human language about Messiah the Prince: Micah (5:2), that he was going to be born in Bethlehem; Isaiah (7:14), that he was going to be born of a virgin; David (Psalms 22), that he was going to be crucified, prophesied hundreds of years before the Romans even started using that fatal torture; Daniel (9:24-27), that he was going to begin his mission in A.D. 27 and be “cut off,” or put to death, three-and-a-half years later. (This last prophecy will be covered in detail in Chapter XII herein.)
If one is able to trace a prophecy written for human comprehension back in the eternal NOW, into the language of the Spirit, one should not expect to take what one sees in the infinite NOW and translate it back into the original prophecy. Remember, what the original prophet of that prophecy may have seen, someone else may not. Each prophet seems to see something different in the infinite NOW—a different aspect, even on the same topic. Each unique individual has a unique experience with the Spirit and therefore has a unique relationship with Spirit. And also remember that Paul wrote, “some” are given the gift of prophecy (Ephesians 4:11).