By Barry Rosenfeld
Part 1
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.’” (Acts 2:17)
The primary function of Bible prophets is to convey to the people, God’s will for them. The great 12th century Talmudic scholar and philosopher Maimonides included as one of his 13 basic principles of faith the belief that “G-d communicates to mankind through prophecy.” (Chabad.org) Although the basic understanding of God’s laws is laid down in the Torah and thus His plan for our lives, God uses prophets to make course corrections as needed. Although a prophet may be used to foretell the future, when this becomes necessary, other times he may serve to let us know where we are missing it and what this will lead to if we don’t get our act together. At other times God has used prophets to bring messages to individuals, in the Bible usually important individuals such as kings. Although a prophecy will never go against God’s laws nor add to them, it may convey a particular one-time instruction that may even run contrary to “a universal Torah command.” (Chabad.org)
It is interesting to note that although Daniel has prophetic visions that describe the coming kingdoms throughout history, he is not included in the section of the Bible devoted to the prophets and that the Talmud (compendium of rabbinic discussions of the Bible) does not even consider him as being a prophet. The Talmud (Megillah 3a) says that the prophets Chaggai, Zechariah and Malachi were superior to Daniel because they were prophets and he was not, but that Daniel was superior to them in that he saw visions and they did not. (chabad.org)
In the Bible there are some prophets that have a vision or a dream in which an angel speaks to them while others see the form of a man or may believe that God himself is conversing with them, while still others see nothing but receive a prophetic word. Daniel received visions and dreams through the Holy Spirit or ruach ha-kodesh. These visions of the future however, were never intended to be proclaimed to the people of his generation but to be written down for coming generations. (jewfaq.org) Thus he was placed in the section of the Bible referred to as the Writings or ketuvim, rather than the Prophets or neviim. (chabad.org) The prophets themselves are divided between the major and minor prophets depending on the quantity of their writings.
The quality of the revelation is much greater in prophecy than in ruach ha-kodesh. Yet there is a limit as to how great the revelation can be as God told Moses, (Exodus 33:20) “No man can see me and live.” This then makes Moses the greatest prophet since he saw God face to face. Yeshua is thus a prophet like Moses in that he sees His father (John 5:19), and is the one that God raised up as prophesied by Moses when he said: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15) Moses differs from the other prophets in that he sees God directly while the other prophets of the Bible receive their message through dreams and visions.
To be continued …
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Jerald Gainous says
Awesome Lesson! Thanks