Protocol for Conditional Prophecy
If You Want to Be Able to Claim in Retrospect that Your Prophecy Was Conditional - Do These Things
John Edwards
In the Bible, whenever a prophecy was conditional - it was usually: known to the prophet, stated in the prophecy and understood by the people - and all of that before the event, not after.
Is it legitimate therefore to confer conditional status to a prophecy in retrospect or with hindsight, after the event - simply because the prophecy didn't appear to come to pass - as some are doing?
Perhaps some may try to claim a precedent for that, from the occasion when God changed His plan as a result of King Hezekiah's response - after a different plan had already been prophesied.
The background is that God had sent Isaiah to tell King Hezekiah that he would die. The king turned his face toward the wall and wept. Then the Lord sent Isaiah back to King Hezekiah a second time with the message, "I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years." And then God used the prophet to minister healing to the king.
So yes there was a change of plans due to the king's response - but notice that God sent the prophet back to the king to announce the change and the reason for it - before the event, not after.
And notice that the prophet himself was instrumental in bringing about the ultimate outcome through ministering healing to the king.
So the final outcome neither embarrassed the prophet, nor surprised the king, nor surprised anyone else who heard about it.
"Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets".
Therefore a precedent cannot be substantiated in this case for conferring conditional status on a prophecy retrospectively.
There is no precedent that a prophecy ever failed due to a third party's failure to comply with some condition.
For example, there is no precedent of a prophet being sent on an errand to anoint a person with oil and proclaim him future king, and it not happen.
"God is not a man, that he should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?"
It is claimed by some that God gave promises to Israel yet the nation failed to receive them.
But in those cases the terms of the prophecies against Israel were always framed using unmistakably conditional terminology from start to finish. In such instances the prophets gave careful attention to wording, like a law suit. There was never any ambiguity at any time as to the conditional status of the prophecies.
The prophetic warnings spoken to Israel are not examples of purely predictive pronouncements per se.
Therefore a precedent cannot be substantiated in these cases for conferring conditional status on a prophecy retrospectively.
It is often claimed that the destruction of Nineveh did not eventuate - although it had been prophesied.
But a closer reading of the case reveals that Jonah knew right from the start that God was likely to show mercy on Nineveh. If that was not the case, what use could it have served to go there and preach repentance?
When God told Jonah that Nineveh's judgment would fall due within 40 days except they repent, Jonah's comment about it later was, "I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, and slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil."
Evidently then Jonah didn't flee because he was afraid of the Ninevites - but because he didn't want one of Israel's traditional enemies to be spared. And God did indeed spare Nineveh, just like Jonah expected from the very start.
Prior to Nineveh, Jonah's prophesying had inspired many military victories in Israel. But never before had he been told to go and preach repentance to a Gentile city. Jonah therefore understood right from the start that the intended purpose for his mission to Nineveh was in order to procure a change of outcome.
So Jonah's purpose and message right from the very start was only ever conditional. Jonah knew it, and Nineveh knew it.
Being conditional was therefore not a status that somebody conferred to Jonah's sermons only in hindsight after the judgment was averted. His warning was always understood to be only conditional by everyone concerned, right from the very start.
Therefore a precedent cannot be substantiated in this case for conferring conditional status on a prophecy retrospectively.
None of the above cases give authority for what's being bandied around today as an explanation for apparently failed predictive prophecy.
In the Bible, if a prophecy was conditional, it was intended and worded as conditional right from the start, never only with the benefit of hindsight.
Two types of prophecy include:
A plain predictive proclamation or
A conditional prophecy - which is often similar to a law suit
The wording and intention of the two types of prophecy are not the same.
And if the integrity of words is to mean anything at all, the two are not interchangeable - especially not after the event.
In law there is an established doctrine regarding when words and actions establish contract and when they do not. Even in our social lives, there is an understood difference between a promise and a proposal.
In prophecy there is similarly a distinction made between what is predictive and what is conditional - and the status can't be changed in retrospect, or else the integrity of words means nothing.
Therefore there is due process that must be followed if we want to be able to claim that our prophecy was conditional. The due process is that we must always be able to substantiate by the clear wording of the prophecy that the prophecy was intended to be understood as conditional since before the event, not after.
Conditional prophecy is often legal in its terminology.
That's because whenever God spoke to an individual or a nation, He always spoke in reference to covenant. Therefore conditional prophecy is intrinsically covenantal in nature. It's as good as a legal document. What document would be admissible in a court of law if its terms of reference was ambiguous?
Similarly if we fail to uphold the integrity of the meaning of the words in a prophecy by claiming the right to change the prophecy's meaning after the event - then not even the prophet himself can ever really be certain of the true meaning of his own prophecy, let alone the people being sure of what he means - in which case prophecy loses its usefulness entirely.
Further Evidence
Further evidence that conditional prophecy is intrinsically covenantal and legal in nature, and that the wording of a prophecy is important - is the following verse:
"the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."
Testimony is a legal term.
The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of [the legal, covenantal case stated by] Jesus.
That indicates the jurisprudence of prophecy. Prophecy is Jesus' testimony, Jesus' appeal to covenant, Jesus' testimonial witness.
Jesus called His disciples, "my witnesses" - another legal term.
Our evangelism is legal, is testimonial, in essence: He told them, "This Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached unto all nations for a testimony".
In another place He said, "...for a testimony against them..."
Jesus has given us "...the keys to the kingdom of heaven..." Keys represent legal access.
"Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose so ever sins ye retain, they are retained."
"Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven; and whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven" - that's judicial terminology.
Given the legal, covenantal, testimonial nature of conditional prophecy, we understand therefore that there is a protocol that ought to be followed from the outset if we want to be able to claim with integrity, that a prophecy was conditional.
That protocol is that the conditional nature of the prophecy ought to have been intentionally and unambiguously expressed by the very wording of the prophecy, and that before the event, not after.
There is a difference between a pure predictive prophetic proclamation and a conditional prophetic suit. The difference is in the intention - and the intention ought to have been reflected by the wording.
Two clues as to whether a prophecy can be justifiably understood to have been conditional or whether it was plainly predictive - are its intention and its wording.
The intention is usually expressed by the wording.
So if a prophecy was intended to have been conditional - that status ought to have been reflected by the wording.
Being conditional is not a status that we can assign to a prophecy afterwards simply because it didn't come to pass.
Even though words express the intent and the intent is expressed by the words, and there's nothing ambiguous about it - sometimes the real heart of the prophecy - its intent - goes even deeper than the words.
When we hear a prophecy, our primary focus ought always be to ask ourselves: What is the response from me that this prophecy is drawing? rather than to debate over words and their possible predictive implications alone.
Even though a prophecy's wording and its predictive implications are an intrinsic and inseparable part of the prophecy's meaning and correct application - it is our heart's response to the intent of the prophecy that we are most accountable for.
The role of a prophet is broader than prediction.
Other words that are used in connection with the prophet's ministry include: edify, exhort, comfort, admonish, warn, teach, preach, oracle, vision, to see, prophesy, write, act, go, the song of the Lord, heal, and work miracles.
Moses didn't do much predicting. 95% of his ministry consisted in issuing commandments and sometimes warnings - and yet he was known as a prophet.
Therefore it is possible for a prophet to prophesy without necessarily including the element of prediction in his prophecies all of the time. Prophecy means to forth-tell, not only to foretell.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit may will that we prophetically proclaim an outcome ahead of time - but most of the time a prophet's function will not include the element of prediction.
Therefore when God gives us a revelation, it is up to us to know in our spirit what to do with it. Is God inspiring us to boldly proclaim a certain outcome? or is God showing us something but stopping short of declaring a certain outcome? It's up to us to ensure we don't go beyond what God has given us in our spirit by what we say.
When God shows you something for someone, sometimes God may simply want you to:
pray about it privately
or He may want you to share it with the concerned party without actually going so far as to pronounce a certain outcome
He may have shown you the vision so He can use you simply to exhort the person to aspire to God's call
or you may channel your prophetic intuition into a relevant teaching ministry
or you may even be used to issue warnings including consequences
and usually only on rare occasions He may inspire you to proclaim an actual outcome
These functions may not seem as spectacular or as supernatural as prediction, but they are none-the-less prophetic.