Dear listeners, welcome to talk ten of our series of twelve. We noted the importance of prophecy in the last talk in terms of its place in the Old Testament and even of the Bible as a whole. Today we look at the five books of the major prophets. These are Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel, the twenty third to the twenty seventh books of the Old Testament. The distinction between the major and the minor prophets is not about the importance of the message. Every prophecy from God is important.

These books are called major or minor because of their relative lengths and traditional order. So let's begin with the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah records the prophetic ministry of Isaiah during the reigns of  Uzziah to Manasseh of the southern kingdom of Judah. That would be from about seven hundred and forty B.C. to six hundred and eighty one B.C. And within the book of Isaiah, there are three sections. The first section is from chapters one to thirty nine. And the prophecies address events in the lifetime of Isaiah.

The second section is from chapters forty to fifty five. And it looks forward to a future time when God will redeem His people after the fall of Judah, by Babylonian conquest. Now, what is notable here is that these events will occur after the lifetime of Isaiah. But within the lifetime of Isaiah, God had given Isaiah these four warnings that the nation of Judah would fall to Babylonian conquest. And these prophecies in the second section of Isaiah are messages or guidance and hope that God gave to Isaiah even before these events occurred.

Indeed, it was for the future generation of Israel, after Isaiah’s own time. The third section is from chapters fifty six to sixty six, and it looks even further into the future when God would fully restore His people and give them a glorious future where all His promises were fulfilled. A historical high point within the book of Isaiah was when God spoke through Isaiah to king Hezekiah that God would defeat the Assyrian invasion of Judah. Now, this was significant because at that time when the events played out, Assyria had just destroyed the northern kingdom.

Now God defeated Assyria and his huge army without the need for Hezekiah to send out his army. It marked the powerful sovereignty of God. But still, that is not the most outstanding feature in Isaiah. The most outstanding feature of Isaiah is that he foresaw both the first and second coming of the Messiah in his prophecies. It has four servant songs that foresaw how the Messiah would suffer and yet save God's people and would triumph gloriously. It is thus often considered the gospel of the Old Testament. That is to say, the book of Isaiah is often considered the gospel of the Old Testament.

It taught that God's Word never fails. Then we come to the next major prophet, the book of Jeremiah. The book of Jeremiah records the ministry of Jeremiah from six hundred and thirty nine B.C. to five hundred and eighty five B.C., nearly a hundred years after Isaiah’s time, he served in the reign of Josiah to Zedikiah. He prophesied that Judah will fall because of its sins by God's judgment, Judah being the southern kingdom of Israel at that time. He personally faced the tragic fall of the kingdom into exile. That is to say, he actually saw it happened, and was in the midst of that event. He saw also the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Babylon in 586B.C. He suffered much persecution, but stood firm in God. He was falsely accused as a traitor because he shared the revelation and council that God gave him that if Israel were to surrender to Babylon, it would reduce the pain and the violence that they would suffer. But the kings and the nation did not listen. So they faced a very violent and painful end. He foresaw that God will bring his people back to the promised land after seventy years in exile, and that God would thereafter make a new and better covenant with them.

And that is a foreshadowing of the New Testament of God's covenant through Christ with the church or with humankind for our salvation. Then we come to the book of Lamentations. The book of Lamentations was also written by Jeremiah as his witness of the fall of Jerusalem. He wept for the city and the nation and is even sometimes called the weeping prophet. Yet he held out hope in many of his prophecies in God's eventual restoration and salvation for the nation. So, in that sense, it tells us that some of the abbreviated ideas of the prophets and ministry may be over simplification. We need to look at the full content, two graphs, the scope of the message that God gave to the nation in the historical period.

Now the next major prophet, the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel records the ministry of the prophet Ezekiel. He prophesied from 593B.C. to 571B.C. so his work overlapped with that of Jeremiah in terms of time period. But while Jeremiah was based in Jerusalem until it fell, Ezekiel was among the exiles. And prophesied to them his message came true acted dramas and remarkable visions of God. In his visions. He saw the glory of God departing from Jerusalem, highlighting that God had set Himself apart from the nation because of their sin.

He saw God bringing a valley of dry bones back to life. That valley of dry bones represented Judah in exile. And it was saying that even in that serious state of a being under judgement and being expelled from the promised land. God was yet able to restore the nation if they would turn back to Him. And he also saw a vision of the glorious future temple, and that there was a river of God, or there would be a river of God that flowed from that temple that gave life. A further vision he shared was his vision of the future promised land where the Messiah lived among the twelve tribes.

So that is what we found in the book of Ezekiel. Then we come to the final major prophet. The fifth book, the book of Daniel. Daniel records the ministry of Daniel, who was among the young men exiled to Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem. He was trained to serve in the court of the Babylonian king. His ministry was form 605B.C. to 530B.C. So again, there is an overlap of time with Ezekiel and Jeremiah.  So his ministry therefore stretch from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, through Cyrus the great of Persia, who defeated Babylon and decreed that the Jews should resettle in Jerusalem to rebuild the temple until the reign of Darius. 

It showed how Daniel interpreted the dreams that God gave these kings concerning events in the future to their time. He received many visions from God of how empires would rise and fall. But most of all, he was given the vision that God would be sending his Messiah as a man to redeem His people. So that points again to Christ. So in our next talk, we will turn to the minor prophets.

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