Old Testament Prophets

This is the third in a series on the gift of prophecy in the Bible.

and lesson three is entitled the old testament prophets so this lesson explores old testament descriptions of prophets which will help us understand how the gift of prophecy actually works the old testament prophets both men and women were people like us human beings prone to things like fear anger and discouragement nevertheless God used these frail human beings to provide something like a spiritual global positioning system that provided divine guidance for the immediate situation and also for the future.

So thinking of analogies to the gift of prophecy, the GPS system seems somewhat apropos that there is a North Star.

There is a satellite in a specific place.

And out of our relationship to the location of that satellite, it can calculate our exact location and also guide us in terms of which way to go.

Abraham, of course, was sent out without a GPS.

He says, go, and you have no idea where you're going and where you're going to end up.

But I'll be with you on that way.

And so the scriptures... and the products of the gift of prophecy are like a GPS system that call us back to the place where we should be.

As you're reading the Bible, you keep hearing the word recalculating.

You realize, uh-oh, I think maybe I can do a course correction here.

So the Bible and the prophetic gift kind of work in that way.

Last week we reviewed the story of Elijah who did some amazing things in behalf of Israel.

Yet there's another side to that story.

Read James 5 and verses 17 and 18.

Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.

Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest.

All right, so the question to ponder here is, how does this text summarize Elijah's ministry in a nutshell? Or maybe it makes this comment, he had a nature like ours.

And the lesson suggests that this word homoio pathes, This like nature suggests particularly emotional makeup, that Elijah had an emotional makeup like us, like a typical human being.

So what do we learn from the Elijah story? Can you see evidence of his emotional makeup in the story we just told of Mount Carmel? As you think about that story, what in that story gives us a clue of his emotional makeup? Bobby Joe?

Dr. Pauline, can I ask a question before that's answered? So when that term is used that he had a similar nature to us, that rings a bell where Jesus is said to be our high priest and have a similar nature to us and can empathize.

Is it the same kind of phrasing used? And in that way, is Elijah like a precursor of Christ in some ways that he's going to take on that role of a Jesus, and I don't know how to say it, but you understand how in the Old Testament there were certain characters that have Christ-like characteristics, and we start to see what God wants us to understand about himself.

Is Elijah one of those?

I am very glad at this moment to see that Daniel is here with us, and I'm going to pass that question on to him if he could just do a quick research into the Greek But I know there's in Hebrews, man of like passions as we are.

as well as this reference to Elijah, this reference to Jesus.