This is a sample chapter from my Systematic Theology project "Theology for Thriving". ๐MORE TO THE STORY notes are not part of the main text of the book, but additional resources, charts, or other materials from Biblical Theology class resources.
1 Peter 1.6-13 [6] In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, [7] so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. [8] Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, [9] for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. [10] Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, [11] inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory. [12] It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in regard to the things that have now been announced to you through those who brought you good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven— things into which angels long to look! [13] Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.
๐️ Key Concept: Prophecy
When we hear the word “prophecy,” our minds often jump to fortune-tellers gazing into crystal balls, making cryptic predictions about the future. We think of Nostradamus, psychic hotlines, and newspaper horoscopes. In a religious context, this often translates into an obsession with decoding biblical books like Daniel and Revelation to create a detailed roadmap of the end times. But this modern caricature misses the mark of what the Bible means by prophecy, and in doing so, it robs us of one of the most powerful tools for our spiritual map-making.
The key concept of Prophecy comes from the Greek prophฤteia, which means "to speak forth" or "to speak on behalf of another." A prophet is not primarily a foreteller, but a forth-teller. They are men and women who, through deep attentiveness to God and the world, are able to discern the patterns of history and speak a word of truth on God's behalf into the present moment. Their role is to diagnose the spiritual health of the community and offer a path back to thriving.
This isn't to say that prophecy never involves foretelling. The biblical prophets certainly spoke about future events, but almost never as a fixed, unchangeable blueprint. Prophetic foretelling is not a movie trailer of what will happen, but an invitation to a "choose your own adventure" story of what could happen. It reveals the natural consequences of our current trajectory and invites us to change course. As we saw with the metaphor of God as the Potter in Jeremiah 18, God’s providential plan is responsive to our choices. A prophetic warning of disaster is always an invitation to repent and co-author a new, more hopeful chapter with God.
The primary work of the prophet, however, is forthtelling. They act as spiritual physicians, offering a three-part analysis of their society:
Diagnosis (Words of Condemnation): The prophet identifies the core spiritual sickness that is preventing the community from thriving. As Isaiah 1 shows, this often involves a searing critique of the people’s behavior.
Treatment (Words of Prescription): The prophet offers a clear path to healing. This isn't just about feeling sorry; it's about active change. In Isaiah 58, God rejects superficial religious observance and prescribes the true worship: "to loose the bonds of injustice... to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house."
Prognosis (Words of Hope): The prophet always grounds this call to change in a vision of hope, reminding the people of God's ultimate desire for their flourishing. For Isaiah, this hope is centered on the coming of a Messiah who will establish a kingdom of peace and justice (Isaiah 11).
This prophetic diagnosis almost always centers on a failure to live out the Great Commandments. The root sickness is Idolatry, a failure to love God as the ultimate source of meaning and value. When we worship something other than the God of Love— whether it be the nation, wealth, or our own ego— our moral compass breaks. This inevitably leads to the primary symptom: Injustice, the failure to love our neighbors, as we demean and use and dispose of them. Finally, these habits of disordered love corrupt our inner lives, leading to Impurity, the failure to love ourselves as God loves us, which prevents God's own life from flowing through us.
๐ Scriptural Reflection: 1 Peter 1:6-13
The first letter of Peter, written to Christians facing "various trials," provides a profound meditation on the existential function of prophecy. It shows us that prophecy isn't for satisfying our curiosity about the future, but for grounding our hope in the present so we can live with courage and purpose. The author acknowledges the reality of suffering but reframes it as a refiner's fire, a process that tests the genuineness of our faith to prepare us for the "glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."
This future hope, he explains, is the very thing the ancient prophets were searching for. He paints a beautiful picture of them making "careful search and inquiry," trying to understand the timeline and the person that "the Spirit of Christ within them indicated." They saw glimpses of the story— both the "sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory"— but they knew they were not serving themselves. They were serving a future generation: Us. Their prophetic work was a gift, passed down through time, to give us a firm foundation for our hope.
This prophetic inheritance is not meant to lull us into passive waiting. Its purpose is the exact opposite. "Therefore," the author concludes, "prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you." The prophetic vision of our ultimate salvation is the fuel for our present mission. It gives us the "indescribable and glorious joy" that allows us to endure hardship, and the clear-headed focus to live lives of disciplined love. Prophecy, in this sense, is the ultimate tool for resilience, allowing us to see our small, often painful stories as part of a grand, unfolding drama that ends in triumphant grace.
๐ What are common ways of understanding Biblical Prophecy?
How we read prophecy shapes how we live. Throughout history, Christians have developed three main approaches to interpreting these often-difficult texts.
The first is the Futurist view, which reads prophecy as a literal, predictive roadmap of events that will happen in the distant future. This approach is common in "end times" literature, which tries to match biblical symbols with current events, usually treating the Book of Revelation like a cryptic newspaper. The problem with this model is that it has been 100% wrong, 100% of the time. For centuries, every generation has tried to map prophecy onto its own world, confidently identifying the Antichrist or predicting the date of Jesus's return, only to be proven wrong. While this approach can bring temporary fame and wealth to those who promote it, it turns the Bible into a crystal ball and distracts us from the actual work of love and justice in the here and now.
The second is the Historicist view, which sees prophecy as being entirely fulfilled in the past. In this model, the prophecies of Daniel were fulfilled by the Greek empire, and the prophecies of Jesus were fulfilled by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. While this approach is historically valuable and recognizes that prophecies spoke to their original contexts, it can easily make them into irrelevant historical relics with nothing to say to us today. We definitely need to learn how prophecy has been fulfilled in the past, but we equally need to learn to discern the same prophetic patterns in the present.
A third and more fruitful approach is the Perennialist view. This model reads prophecy as revealing timeless patterns of divine action that repeat and expand throughout history. It recognizes that a prophecy can have a real, historical fulfillment in its own time, while also pointing toward a greater, future fulfillment. The ultimate pattern is the Christward trajectory.
We can see this in the concept of the Messiah. In King David's time, the messianic hope was for a local king who would save Israel. Later, the prophet Isaiah saw a messianic pattern in Cyrus, the pagan emperor of Persia, expanding the hope to an imperial scale. The later prophets universalized it further, envisioning a Messiah who would bring justice and liberation to all nations. In Jesus, this pattern becomes embodied in a universal Savior who takes on the sin and death of the entire world. And this pattern will find its final fulfillment in the Cosmic Christ who, at the end of history, will heal and reconcile all things.
๐MORE TO THE STORY: Check out a deeper dive on how to interpret prophecy in this Primer on the End of the World.
๐ What patterns of History are revealed in Scripture?
When we read the prophetic library of the Hebrew Prophets with this perennialist lens, a coherent and recurring pattern of history emerges. The story begins with God’s people turning away from their covenant of love, leading to a period of social decay and injustice. This results in a time of judgment and exile, a "great tribulation" marked by wars, plagues, and persecution. Yet, God always preserves a faithful remnant and promises to send a Messiah who will come on "the Day of the LORD" to rescue his people and judge the forces of evil. This will culminate in the resurrection of the dead and the establishment of a New Heaven and a New Earth, a restored creation where the Messiah will reign forever in peace.
The New Testament authors see themselves living within this same pattern, in the "last days" between Christ's first and second coming. They anticipate a "lawless one" and "anti-Christ" who will lead a great rebellion, but who will be definitively defeated when Christ returns in glory. At this final moment, with the sound of a trumpet, the dead will be raised, and all believers, living and dead, will be gathered to Christ. At this judgment, everything that is not of love will be consumed by God’s refining fire, and creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay. The ultimate end of the story is the universal reconciliation of all things, when every knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth will bow to Christ, and God will be "all in all." While the timing of this final act is a mystery known only to the Father, the pattern gives us a framework for understanding our own moment in history.
So, across both the Old and New Testaments, we find a similar cyclical pattern of History:
God's People are called into a Covenant relationship with God with high hopes and high standards
God's People fall into idolatry, injustice, and impurity
God allows his people to experience destruction from within and from outside forces
God's People cry out for help, and God rescues them, ultimately in the person of the Messiah
The cycle begins ever anew, often with a slight improvement from the last cycle, until we reach the End of the Story.
๐ How can we read the patterns of prophecy as a trajectory?
To be a prophet in our own time is to learn to read these perennial patterns and apply them with wisdom and courage. This means seeing history not as a random series of events, but as a story with a plot, a narrative, with a moral arc. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
This is the Christward trajectory of history. When viewed over the scale of centuries and millennia, the trend line of human history is clearly moving toward greater Christ-likeness: Toward greater compassion, empathy, and an expanding circle of love and justice. Think about moral realities that were almost universally accepted in 100 CE or 1500 CE— things like slavery, the subjugation of women, and casual brutality— that we now rightly recognize as monstrous. We are, by God’s grace, evolving morally, even if slowly.
However, this is NOT a smooth, uninterrupted climb. It is often a journey of three steps forward and two steps back. In the short term, on the scale of years and decades, we see horrifying setbacks, periods where it seems the arc is bending backward toward darkness. This is where the prophet’s work is most crucial. Like the prophets of old, our task is to offer a clear-eyed analysis of our present moment:
What is our diagnosis? Where have we fallen into idolatry, injustice, and impurity?
What is our treatment? What specific acts of love and repentance are we being called to?
What is our prognosis? What vision of hope, rooted in the final victory of Christ, can we hold up to inspire our community to join God in bending the arc of history toward love?
Prophecy, then, is our invitation to become co-writers with God. It gives us the wisdom to understand the story so far, and the courage to improvise our own part faithfully, so that we can help bring God’s great drama to its intended, glorious conclusion.
๐MORE TO THE STORY: See this chart on how to read the Bible and History as a Trajectory toward Christ.
๐ Topical Scriptures
Here are some Scripture passages which explore and elaborate on the themes of this chapter. As you look them up and study them, think about how they relate to the Key Concept and Guiding Questions.
Isaiah 1:16-20
This is a classic prophetic call to action, perfectly illustrating the "choose your own adventure" nature of prophecy. Look for how God lays out two distinct paths and their consequences, inviting the people to co-author a future of healing and restoration through their repentance and righteous action.
Isaiah 11:1-9
This is the great prophetic vision of the Messianic age, the ultimate prognosis of peace and justice toward which all history is bending. Notice how the reign of the Messiah results not just in social justice for the poor, but in the healing of the entire created order, showing the cosmic scope of the story we are invited to help write.
Isaiah 58:6-12
Here, the prophet provides the prescription for true faithfulness, contrasting empty religious rituals with the active work of justice and mercy. This passage maps out the practical, ethical work of the prophet: to loose the bonds of injustice and become "the repairer of the breach," actively participating in God's healing of the world.
Isaiah 65:17-25
This passage offers a breathtaking vision of the New Heavens and New Earth, the ultimate fulfillment of the prophetic hope. It paints a picture of the final chapter we are helping to write, a restored world of joy, longevity, and peace where the memory of former troubles has passed away.
Jeremiah 18:1-11
This is the foundational metaphor of God as the divine Potter who shapes nations like clay. Notice how it powerfully illustrates God's responsive providence, showing that prophetic warnings are not fixed decrees but loving invitations for a nation to turn and co-create a better future with God.
Amos 5:14-24
The prophet Amos delivers a searing diagnosis of Israel's injustice, condemning their corrupt religious festivals. Look for his clear prescription for healing: to "hate evil and love good" and to "let justice roll down like waters," showing that true worship is the active pursuit of a just society.
Wisdom 11:21-12:2
This passage frames God's providential care in terms of both overwhelming power and tender mercy. Look for how God's Love for all of creation leads to a patient and gradual correction of sinners, giving them opportunities for repentance so they can turn from wickedness and believe.
Matthew 24:3-14
Jesus reveals the perennial pattern of "birth pangs"— such as wars, famines, and persecutions— that precede moments of judgment and new creation. This is not a timetable for prediction, but a call for his followers to endure and participate in God's mission by proclaiming the good news to all nations.
Romans 12:1-21
Paul translates the prophetic task into the life of the believer, urging us to be transformed in our minds so we can discern God's will. Look for how this inner renewal leads directly to the practical, prophetic work of building a community of genuine love, overcoming evil with good.
2 Timothy 3:1-17
This passage offers a prophetic diagnosis of the "last days" but immediately provides the treatment for living faithfully within them. It frames the inspired Scriptures as the essential tool that equips God's people for "every good work," making us competent co-writers in a difficult chapter of history.
1 Peter 1:10-13
This text explicitly frames prophecy as a historical relay race, where the ancient prophets were serving a future generation—us. It shows that their inquiry into God's plan was not for their own sake but to provide the foundation of hope that prepares our minds for action in the present.
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