I keep reading the Adventist Today Blog, though I am constantly amazed at some of the material that Stephen Foster posts. For example he has an article entitled the Purpose of Prophecy. In it he writes:
If the first prophecy is some kind of prediction of what will happen then it is certainly not Gen. 3:15 all though that verse is frequently cited by ill informed people as being a messianic prophecy. It of course is not and is never referred to in the rest of the Bible in anyway to the Messiah. But as with much of the first chapters of Genesis people read into it what they want. But let us assume it presents a predictive prophecy, is it the first one? No it is not we read the following in Gen. 2:17
but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not 1eat, for in the day that you eat from it ayou will surely die.”
So what if it is meant to be Stephen's prototypical prophecy. Well that is open to question. It goes back to the old canard that the first use of a word in the Bible is supposed to be the key to understanding any and all uses of that word.
When ever I read Stephen I think how sad that there are so many Adventists who think so little and talk so much. They regurgitate their traditions and don't have a clue when their traditions are errant at all because as a tradition, they rarely question what they already believe. That is the biggest problem in Adventism and in religion in general.
"Prophecy is the God-inspired revelation of what He wants those who claim/believe Him to know. In the 66 books that comprise the canonical narrative, the first prophecy we come to is the one which encapsulates the entire remaining narrative writ large—Genesis 3:15. It is the prophecy describing God’s plan.
Is the first prophecy the prototypical prophecy? Does it reveal to us what prophecy is all about in terms of purpose? It tells us what will happen and why; but not how it will happen. Subsequent prophecies, particularly those of the prophet Isaiah, certainly do reveal, or detail, how. (Isaiah 7:14 comes to mind for example.)"
If the first prophecy is some kind of prediction of what will happen then it is certainly not Gen. 3:15 all though that verse is frequently cited by ill informed people as being a messianic prophecy. It of course is not and is never referred to in the rest of the Bible in anyway to the Messiah. But as with much of the first chapters of Genesis people read into it what they want. But let us assume it presents a predictive prophecy, is it the first one? No it is not we read the following in Gen. 2:17
but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not 1eat, for in the day that you eat from it ayou will surely die.”
So what if it is meant to be Stephen's prototypical prophecy. Well that is open to question. It goes back to the old canard that the first use of a word in the Bible is supposed to be the key to understanding any and all uses of that word.
When ever I read Stephen I think how sad that there are so many Adventists who think so little and talk so much. They regurgitate their traditions and don't have a clue when their traditions are errant at all because as a tradition, they rarely question what they already believe. That is the biggest problem in Adventism and in religion in general.
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