![\"Angel\"](\"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Angel.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cAnd afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.\u201d (Joel 2:28)<\/em><\/p>\n Prophecy plays a major role in the Bible. It shapes Jewish tradition, hopes and expectations and points to the Messianic era, playing a major role in events both from the past, present and future.<\/p>\n Throughout biblical history, the Lord God used His prophets to warn His people of what was to come. When we speak the word prophet there comes to mind such men as Samuel, Isaiah, and Daniel. Yet in fact the first prophet to be mentioned in the Bible is Abraham. We read in Genesis 20 that after Abimelek king of Gerar took Sarah, God spoke to him in a dream warning him not to touch her for \u201cshe is a married woman.\u201d (Genesis 20:3) After Abimilek pleaded with God not to destroy \u201can innocent nation,\u201d saying that he had not touched her and that Abraham had in fact said that she was his sister, God responded that He had kept him from touching her and told him to return her to Abraham for \u201che is a prophet,\u00a0and he will pray for you\u00a0and you will live.\u201d (20:7) It is interesting that God held Abimelek back from touching Sarah. We are reminded how in the story of the Exodus God hardened Pharaoh\u2019s heart so that the Hebrew children might go free. Possibly God knows the character of these men beforehand and brings about events in line with their character. With the story of Abimilek it also gave God the opportunity to enrich Abraham since the Bible tells us, \u201cThen Abimelek\u00a0brought sheep and cattle and male and female slaves and gave them to Abraham,\u00a0and he returned Sarah his wife to him.\u201d (20:14) He also gave Sarah a thousand shekels of silver for \u201cyour brother.\u201d (20:16)<\/p>\n There were possibly other prophets, which is navi<\/em> in Hebrew, before Abraham. Jude speaks of Enoch as being a prophet when he writes, \u201cNow Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, \u2018Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds that they have committed, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.\u2019\u201d (Jude 14, 15)<\/p>\n There were many prophets in the Bible following Abraham, with many different backgrounds. Moses was raised in Pharaoh\u2019s palace and thus received a princely education. The prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah were also priests. David began his lowly beginnings as a shepherd and then warrior, king and poet, as well as being a prophet. Amos kept cattle (Amos 1:1) while Elisha plowed fields (1 Kings 19:15-21) and Daniel held high government office in Babylon (Daniel 2:48), although the rabbis disagree as to whether or not Daniel was truly a prophet. But their background was not of importance. What was important is that God chose them to be his messenger. A prophet then is one chosen of God to be His messenger.<\/p>\n To be continued \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n By Barry Rosenfeld \u201cAnd afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.\u201d (Joel 2:28) Prophecy plays a major role in the Bible. It shapes Jewish tradition, hopes and expectations and points to the Messianic era, more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[381,625,125,407,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-2351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-biblical-spiritual","8":"tag-biblical-prophesy","9":"tag-israeli-news","10":"tag-news-from-jerusalem","11":"tag-prophets","12":"tag-visions","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2351"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2351\/revisions\/2354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thejerusalemgiftshop.com\/israelnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"