Mission Accomplished, Part I: Prophecy Predicted or Prophecy Fulfilled

There’s a common misconception about what Old Testament prophets do and how their message was understood in the New Testament. Simply stated, prophets were preachers, not predictors. They came with a message, often one that involved some sort of dire warning if their words were not heeded. But they also came with words of comfort and a promise for better things ahead. The prophets themselves were often eccentric characters who did weird things like laying on their side for over 400 days (Ezek 4:4-8) or marrying a harlot (Hos 1:2) to get their message across.

One of the unfortunate consequences of the way the Christian Bible is laid out, is that the context takes some work. The events into which the prophets were speaking are spelled out half a testament earlier in 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. If you’re reading canonically—that is, reading straight through from Genesis to Malachi—by the time you get to Amos, you will have read fifteen other OT books since reading about the pertinent events in 2 Chronicles (seventeen books since 2 Kings). As a result, many readers make the false assumption that the words of the prophets only had a future audience, rather than a present audience.

Part of the confusion for Christian readers is that the New Testament looks back to the Old Testament and sees Jesus as the fulfillment of not only the prophets, but all of the Old Testament. Eighty-six times NT writers comment how the OT has been “fulfilled.” Since the OT has been fulfilled, that must mean the OT predicted certain things to come to fruition at some point down the road, right? Not quite.

There’s a big difference between predicting an event, and an event being fulfilled. A meteorologist offers a daily prediction of the weather forecast. Investors try to predict how the market will respond to unemployment rates. A major league hitter predicts he’s going to see a fastball on a 2-0 count.

However, OT texts rarely make predictions, at least not long-term predictions. For example, Isaiah predicted that a young woman would conceive and give birth to a son who would be called Immanuel as a sign to King Ahaz that he should trust the Lord in the midst of political turmoil. In fact, that prediction was realized in short order with the birth of Isaiah’s son, whose name was Maher-shalal-hash-baz, recognized a few verses later as Immanuel (Isa 8:8, 10). This son would be a reminder to Ahaz that in the midst of those tumultuous times, God would be with the people of Judah.

So what does it mean that the OT is fulfilled in the NT? First, we have to recognize that the overarching theme of the OT is not about discovering the hidden mysteries of embedded messianic secrets, but the revelation of God’s plan to bring all of humanity into covenant relationship with himself. When that plan reaches its culmination, we could say it’s been fulfilled. Or, put another way: mission accomplished.

When Mary, Joseph and Jesus fled to Egypt, Matthew wrote, “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’.” (Matt 1:15). Matthew is not saying that Hosea 11:1 predicted that Jesus be taken to Egypt by his parents, and then called back to Judea following Herod’s death. In fact, Hosea 11 is explicitly about how God rescued Israel from Egyptian bondage, yet they rebelled and even sacrificed to idols. It would be theologically unwise to equate idolatrous Israel with holy Jesus! What Matthew is saying is that the plan to deal with Israel’s rebellion has been fulfilled: Mission accomplished!

At every turn in the NT, the authors saw God’s rescue plan fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection and Jesus. The details were not predicted, at least not in unmistakable clarity. Nonetheless, with 20/20 hindsight the apostles could look at the person of Jesus and confidently proclaim: Mission accomplished.