The Covenants Is the Basis for Prophecy - Research Paper Example

Task The Covenants Is the Basis for Prophecy A covenant is a binding ment by God through which he establishes a responsibility- based relationship either with an individual, the human race in general, with Himself and a nation or between Himself and a specific family.1 Some of the covenants that God made in the Old Testament were unconditional while others were unconditional on the part of God, whereby He committed Himself to fulfill His part of the covenant, despite the failure of the other party to accomplish what was expected of them. As can be seen in the Scriptures, it is God’s desire to establish a covenant relationship with his people as he did with the children of Israel.2 Some of these covenants were intertwined with one another in nature for example where God told Eve at the garden of Aden that her seed would be the Messiah, which was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. A study of the scriptures shows that Joseph and Mary were David’s descendants even though their family lineages are different. The fulfillment of the conditions of the covenant by man was very crucial since, fulfillment led to blessedness while failure to fulfill or obey led to discipline or curse. The prophetic message or utterance entails forth telling, which is the explanation of current occurrences and foretelling, which entails what will happen in the future. God’s relationship with the children of Israel through covenants necessitated the prophetic utterance of the Old Testament prophets, correcting them when they strayed and encouraging them when they felt discouraged. In the book of the major prophet Jeremiah, the results of violating the covenants are very well documented, denoting the very great relationship between the covenants and prophecy in the Old Testament.3 Words, prophecies, wars and blessings are all shown to take place in accordance to what God has said many years earlier. It is in the book of Jeremiah where the chosen people of God are taken into captivity, with Jeremiah earning the tag “the weeping prophet” as he weeps continually , warning of impending judgment to a people and Kings who disbelieve and even have him thrown into prison. The exile into Babylon was a very distressful happening but one that could have been avoided had the chosen race heeded prophetic utterance, where God had warned that one of the consequences of disobedience would be exile to other nations. Though the prophets were speaking with their own voices, they were giving forth Gods mind and counsel to the children of Israel. God Some of the covenants that God established with His people include the one that He made at Aden as narrated in Genesis 1:28 -30 where God gave man the responsibility to procreate and fill the earth, with a promise to bless him.4 Man was also given the responsibility of taking care of the garden of Aden, having dominion over the animals and taking care not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which was at the centre of the garden. After man rebelled and ate of the tree of knowledge and evil, God made the Adamic covenant too, because the relationship between God and man changed since man had not kept his part of the bargain. 5 The serpent was cursed, God made the first promise of a redeemer, who would come through the lineage of Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac Jacob Judah and David. The woman was placed under the headship of man and would from then on suffer pain at childbirth. Man also suffered the loss of the garden of Aden where life was easy and henceforth got into a life of hard work due to the resultant cursing of the ground for his sake. He would from that time on suffer sorrow and have a shortened lifespan and also suffer the pain of death. God later made covenant with Noah after the flood which had been occasioned by man’s rebellion, leading to the destruction of the whole world with water except Noah and his family. God promised never again to harm his people with water, setting a bow in the sky to act as a reminder to man of God’s covenant. 6He also gave the rule that no one was permitted to shed anyone’s blood and gave man to avenge any blood that was shed. God also reestablished the relationship between man and animals, with man who had only eaten from the plants, now being allowed to eat meat. God also made a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 and 15 and 18 whereby He made him a promise to make Abraham into a great nation, give Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan and that He would make Abraham a blessing to all people in the world. God was going to make the nation of Israel the medium through which all nations of the world would be blessed. Through the covenant with Abraham, God reaffirmed His promise of a messiah, just as he had done at the garden of Aden. The covenant with Abraham was reaffirmed to Isaac his son in Genesis 26:1-5 when God told Isaac not to go down to Egypt but to stay in the land of promise. It was also reaffirmed to Jacob, Isaacs’s son in Genesis 28:10-15 where God told Jacob, ‘I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have said’. God also made a covenant with Moses in Exodus 19:6-5 where He promised to bless the children of Israel on the condition that they obeyed His commandments and laws. God instructs His chosen race Israel on the ways to live as His chosen race through this covenant, thereby connecting this covenant with the one He had made to Abraham. God also made a covenant with King David, promising to establish the throne of David for ever, as long as King David was obedient as his part of the covenant, as is narrated in 2 Samuel 7:5-16and which has been realized in Jesus Christ whose lineage is Davidic. There was also the covenant that is referred as the Palestinian covenant which was partly conditional. The covenant is to be found in Deuteronomy 28 – 30. Some of the conditions of the covenant were that the Jews would be dispersed to other nations as a punishment if they rebelled against God’s ordinances. God would enable them to repent in the future and would restore them for His name’s sake.7 However far they would be dispersed, God would gather them and bring them back to their land. The Lord would gather them back into their land as a nation and would punish the people who would oppress them and who were their enemies. God also promised their future prosperity and that; He would bless them and prosper them more than He had blessed their forefathers. This meant that the dwelling of the Israelites in Palestine and their success was subject to their obedience to what God had stated in His covenant. The Old Testament Prophets were often referred to as watchmen as can be noted in Ezekiel 3:17-21, 33:2-9. This referred to their capability to see what others could not see and were also referred to as seers. Their basic duties were to work as spiritual watchmen for the people and to tell them about the mind and counsel of God during the time of their reigns. They would warn against enemies, and also confront the society pertaining to sin and God’s judgment.8 Because they were God ordained they also had the ability to give predictions about the future accurately. In the Old Testament, there have existed three classes of prophets who began at the time of Moses with the first group being the premoniachal prophets whose prophecy can be seen beginning in Deuteronomy 18:17-19. These prophets were to be from the nation of Israel, were to prophesy only in Yahweh’s name, prophecy accurately with the prophecy coinciding with prior revelation , had to be worshippers of the true God and not idols and the prophecy was supposed to come to pass accurately as predicted.9 The other group, the pre- classical prophets were those that appeared when Israel started to be ruled by Kings. During their reign, the King held civil authority while the Prophet had the Spiritual authority or in other words, had God’s authority to hold the reigning king to account pertaining to the way that they were ruling the nation. They ministered to the Kings, anointed them or confronted them if their ways were contrary to the will of God. This was evident when the prophet Nathan confronted King David when the latter committed adultery with Bathsheba or when the prophets Elijah and Elisha confronted King Ahab when he led the nation of Israel into Baal worship.10 Prophet Samuel was also a classical example when he anointed both King David and Saul. They also instructed and guided the Kings during times of war, advising them on the plans of God that would bring victory. There were also the Major Prophets, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel who wrote their prophecies to reach the people to whom God sent them. In the category of these writing prophets were the Minor Prophets who included Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, Haggai, Zecharriah, Joel and Malachi. All these prophets gave or wrote their prophecies based on the covenants as God had established them with His people, basing their prophecies upon what God had said. The prophets, who were the connection between God and man, always passed on the message from God that He always desired to interact or fellowship with His people but on condition that they obeyed His commandments. They conveyed the message for example if for example the people had sinned, that the way out of sin was through repentance other than which there would follow judgment. Some of the prophetic utterances and messages of judgment can for example be found in Deuteronomy 28 with the first 14 verses talking about obedience and blessing and the lest of the verses speaking about disobedience and curses. The Old Testament prophets in the day dwelt with warning against the worship of idols, false worship whereby they warned about going through a ritualistic form of worship where the heart was not in it and, social injustice where people treated one another unfairly.11 Old covenants thus are seen as having been the basis of old Testament prophecy where the divine success of the Hebrew nation, or Gods chosen people depended on their obedience to what he said to them through His prophet Bibliography Blenkinsopp, Joseph. A History of Prophecy in Israel. Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Dietrich, Horst & Perdue, Leo G. Old Testament Theology, Volume 2. Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Dolphin, Lambert. The Main Covenants of Yahweh, 2005. Accessed October 31, 2012. http://ldolphin.org/Maincov.html. Elazar, Daniel. Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations & Jewish Expressions. New Jersey: Transaction Publisher, 1998. Greathouse, William. Wholeness in Christ. Toward a Biblical Theology of Holiness. Kansas MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1998. Horton, Michael. God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 2006. John, Bright. Covenant and Promise. London, UK: SCM Press, 1997. Van Gemeren, Willem, A. New International Dictionary of Theology and Exegesis. Vol 2. Cumbria UK: Paternoster, 1996. Van Gemeren, Willem, A. Interpreting the Prophetic Word. Grand Rapids MI: Acadamie Books, 1990. Wright, Chris. A Christian Approach to Old Testament Prophecy Concerning Israel. Jerusalem Past and Present in the Purposes of God. Cambridge: Tyndale House, 1992. Wright, N.T.. The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991. Read More