CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN 2

Welcome back to our Christmas countdown.

Let's talk prophecy.

Does that very phrase strike terror in your heart? For some Christians, it sure does. They either (1) envision Isaiah in the buff or John the Baptist eating locusts, (2) fear their lack of understanding regarding the odd creature-filled words of Daniel or John in the Revelation, (3) wonder, like songwriter Steve Taylor once did, why the modern prophetic types favor Brylcreem.

And yet, it is one of the most impressive aspects of Scripture that the Old and New Testaments are so strongly linked, thanks much to the prophetic work of old and new (including John, John and Jesus Himself).

If you were with us two weekends ago, I spoke of the prophecy of Micah 4:8 regarding "the tower of the flock" and the possible exact location of Jesus' birth in a shepherding watchtower wherein lambs that would eventually be taken to temple sacrifice were birthed. We can't make a certain link, but we can certainly see through this possibility that again Jesus' birth, life and death were foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. We can see why Peter established that prophets did not speak for themselves but were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Only Christianity carries such a prophetic component, and only Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies. So we should never celebrate His birth as a singular event set on a pinpoint of history. Rather, to extend the metaphor, let's lay that pin down and see how the birth of Christ was part of God's forward thrust throughout time, a time that continues into our own future, a future we cannot see off the end of that pin, but a future that will hold the line God has established from Jesus Christ the King right through His servants for all time.