What Are You Looking For? Part 1: The Nicene Creed

Who Has Spoken Through the Prophets

Who Has Spoken Through the Prophets

            Imagine if you will, what would have happened if, after the Fall, God hadn’t really said much beyond what was necessary to reveal himself as God and Father.  Imagine if the bulk of the Old Testament had never been written.  The historical books still exist, and some of the Psalms, but none of the prophecies were ever given by the Holy Spirit or written down by men.  Because that’s how God works, how he revealed himself in Old Testament times.  He used men.  Men who were willing to be divinely inspired and who wrote only what the Holy Spirit told them to write.  But what if no men had been willing to be those empty vessels?  What if the Holy Spirit hadn’t spoken through them?

            Now imagine a little village in Israel.  A young girl is busy going about her day when this being stops her and tells her she is going to have a baby.  But not through a man.  And the baby  she’s going to have the Son of God.  What do you think her response would have been if there are no prophecies for her to recall.  If the prophecies about the Virgin Birth didn’t exist.

            Imagine that Son of God all grown up.  He starts teaching and healing people.  He starts proving he’s the Son of God.  But no one believes him.  The prophecies about him were never written.  Finally, the people kill him.  But he doesn’t stay dead.  They can’t understand what is happening.  So, like people of all time, when they can’t understand and when they can’t connect the dots, they just don’t believe.  They can’t.  The prophecies that would have given them a little light never came to be.

            Fortunately, that didn’t happen.  God knew when the time came for the plan of salvation to be carried out people would need all the help they could get to even begin to grasp what was happening.  So he spoke through the prophets.  He spoke to remind the people that they had covenanted with him way back on Mount Sinai with Moses that they would be his people and he would be their God.  He spoke to draw them back to their Father’s heart.  And he spoke of the new thing he would do in the fullness of time that would change everything.  And it’s a good thing he did.

            Even with the prophets and all they wrote, a whole lot of people in Jesus’ day still didn’t get it.  Even his own apostles didn’t get it very well, and they had spent three years exclusively in Jesus’ company.  But when he was arrested, they went into hiding.  Even though he had told them plainly he would rise in three days, they still ran.  Except for St. John.  I don’t know if he understood more, or if his love for Jesus and his mother was so great that, regardless of his fear and lack of understanding, he had to be there.  He couldn’t abandon his friend or his friend’s mom in their hour of need.

            It was only after the resurrection that they began to understand.  And Jesus had to connect the dots for them.  Because the Holy Spirit had spoken through the prophets, Jesus was able to walk the Apostles step by step through everything that he had done while he was physically here on earth and explain to them just what it all meant.

            In turn, the Apostles and disciples then took that and ran with it.  They explained to others.  First to the Jews, who knew the Scriptures (the Old Testament, remember the New hadn’t been written yet).  Step by step they explained how Jesus was the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53.  That he was the one who was pierced in Zechariah 12:10.  They explained, first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles how everything God had revealed to them over the centuries all fore-told and pre-figured the one event that changed the destiny of all of mankind; that changes our personal destiny if we let it.

            That’s why the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets.  To prepare the people, not just of that time, but of all time to hear “the voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” (John 1: 23 NABRE)  And having heard, to come to believe, know and love him who loves us most.  Jesus, the Holy Anointed One of the Father, Son of God and Son of Man.