The following is excerpted from an article I wrote in November 1997 to illustrate how a prophetic word often means far more to the person or people who recieve it than to those who overhear, because like an iceberg that is only 1/9th visible above the water, there’s always more to the story. In this article, I outlined the available background information on a relatively familiar city in the New Testament, then consider a prophetic word given the church in that city. In the present context, the same factors are of interest in a consideration of story, where depth of meaning is compounded when one appreciates the rest of the story. Read on…
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February 23rd, 2005 at 9:44 am
That was fun in a very Paul Harvey way! I loved that story, and not I didn’t guess it.
Is the word, “Oracle” basically the same meaning here as what? “Prophetic Word”? I find that very interesting. Did John use that word? Why or why not?
February 23rd, 2005 at 11:50 am
And now, “Page two!”
Yes “Oracle” refers here to a prophetic word. John doesn’t call it that exactly, but in context as part of Apocalyptic literature in which John is basically taking dictation of a letter to each of seven churches, I think it very fitting to call it a prophetic message rather than the more common descriptor of them each being “letters.” Of course, they are that — but they’re much more than that.
As to why John doesn’t call them that, it would really only be speculation… you’d have to know what he understood them to be, unless you take his calling the whole book a “Revelation” and a “Prophecy” (depending on your translation I imagine) in 1:1-3 to include these individual messages to the churches, which is probably valid… i.e., within the whole revelation, or prophecy, there are these individual ones directed to specific churches. Actually, calling them “letters” may be a greater assumption, based merely on the fact that they were written down… John doesn’t call them letters either.
Gratia Vobis et Pax,