Prophecy Songs of Praise

"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son,

"and they will call him Immanuel."

"But to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given.

"And the government will be on his shoulders."

These are words that become so familiar at this time of year.

An integral part of the Christmas story.

And yet, they were written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus.

They're the words of prophets, people of faith who believed God

had given them a message to bring to the world.

Today is Advent Sunday and I love this time of year,

a time of waiting and anticipation,

when we look forward to celebrating the event the prophets spoke about -

God sending his son, our saviour, into the world.

And so I'll be exploring those prophetic words

that foretold the birth of Jesus so many centuries ago

and discovering what prophecy can mean today.

We've also wonderful hymns from all around the UK

to celebrate the Advent season.

The Christmas story is surely one of the most loved in the world,

an account of extraordinary events,

of angels and stars and kings and shepherds and wise men.

And at its heart, a little baby lying in a manger.

But perhaps what is most remarkable

is that many of the details in the story of Jesus' birth

were predicted centuries earlier by the prophets,

so the full story of Jesus doesn't begin with his birth,

but with the ancient scriptures of the Old Testament.

One of the things I love about the Bible

is that it contains such a huge variety of literature.

It's full of fantastic stories, history, poetry, songs and proverbs.

And a huge chunk of it is prophecy.

The prophets brought God's message to the people around them

at that time, but they also spoke of a great hope for the future.

It's a hope realised in a baby laid in a manger

and celebrated in many of our favourite Advent hymns.

The Bible is full of prophecies and actually,

particularly the Christmas story is full of prophecies.

Things like the fact that Jesus would be born from a virgin,

that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem,

that they would try to kill him and all the children around him.

And then details of his life, about where he would grow up,

how he would be treated by his family.

Details about the crucifixion of Jesus.

Unbelievable details about just what crucifixion would feel like and look like.

But also, Jesus' resurrection.

All of that is predicted in the Old Testament,

700-odd years before those events.

So prophecy is a great gift to the church because it helps us

to know God's got a big plan for the universe, he knows what's going to take place.

And those prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus give us great confidence

that God will keep his promises that are yet to be fulfilled in the rest of the Bible.

Prophecy is when God speaks through a messenger

and they are able to tell what God wants to say to his people.

Many people look at the prophecies in the Old Testament

and think they should find details of modern life in there,

from barcodes to the European economic crisis to 9/11.

And that's not how it works.

It's not that God has put a message into a kind of time capsule

that we dig up and it would only make sense to us now.

Prophecy is not just all about foretelling,

it's forthtelling, it's God explaining what he wants his people to do and how he wants them to live.

But why would the people of that generation need to know

that something was going to happen 700 years later?

How you view the future affects how you live in the present, actually.

If you think the future is terrible, you don't invest into it.

People talk about us being a credit card generation.

We store up great debts into the future because we know it's all going to be bad.

But for me, knowing that God is one day going to sort out

the future means that I want to work now to bring justice and peace.

And it shows that the Bible is not really separatable into New Testament and Old Testament.

It's one book.

God makes promises in the Old Testament that he fulfils in the New Testament.

Who were the Old Testament prophets? What sort of characters?

They were an amazing group of people.

They were made up of all sorts of different groups of people.

Some of the prophets did write down their prophecies

and some didn't, people like Moses and Deborah in the Old Testament.

But even what God asked them to do was not just speak a message,

but to live it out.

A lot of the Old Testament prophecies were made during really dark and difficult times.

In the Book of Isaiah,

the nation of Israel feels like just a tiny little nation surrounded

by these military superpowers and getting bashed about by them.

And for God to say, look, it does feel really dark now, but the light is coming

and you might feel alone, but actually I'm going to come,

I'm going to live amongst you as a man, I'm coming, Emmanuel, God with us.

It gave the people great hope, and even in some of our Advent hymns that we like to sing,

My favourite is O Come, Emmanuel.

It's an interesting mix because it's a very dark song, it's very sombre, it's in a minor key,

it reminds me of a grunge record made by Nirvana or somebody.

And yet the words, you know, "Come, come, Emmanuel, come, God,

"Come into this world of darkness."

That seems to really capture some of the ways the prophets worked.

Into this difficult time, God makes a promise of hope and help to his people.

We may remember the prophets of the Bible mostly by what they said

and what they wrote down, but above all,

these were men and women of action for God.

Even if what they said was unpopular and sometimes controversial.

At Advent, we prepare for the coming of Jesus,

who often drew opposition himself through his bold words and actions.

Asha Rogers volunteers for the Christian charity SPEAK.

As an organisation, they campaign and pray on issues of global justice

and so sympathise with the recent protest outside St Paul's Cathedral.

'I think SPEAK is about living with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

'And about trying to develop a faith and theology which seeks to integrate the two.'

Prophecy is kind of about holding up a mirror to society

and saying, this is what you look like. God's not happy about that.

So in a way, you could be seen as a modern-day prophet?

I guess so, if you kind of look at it from that way, yeah.

And I think we've got a prophetic message about the kind of society

and the kind of world God wants to see.

The people who started it were really passionate about creating

a movement of young people across the nation, really,

who were going to be equipped to bring about social,

political and spiritual transformation in their generation.

I'm not actually camping here.

But SPEAK as an organisation has signed the petition of Christian solidarity for the protest.

And as an organisation, we really support the right to peaceful protest.

Quite a lot of our campaigns really object to corporate greed

so the actual principle of the camp, we're really in support of.

One campaign we did last year in particular was all about the arms trade.

We made an enormous cardboard tank,

which I was quite impressed at, it was a good creative effort.

And then gave it as a present to the Government.

So we have another campaign that we've done.

We got cloth squares

and we got people to write down their prayers and their campaign messages

so we could make a big skirt and then we had too many.

We made a big dress, which is actually a marquee

and it can fit 300 people inside.

So we take it on tour to different places.

I do believe change is possible.

And I think at the heart of my understanding of the kingdom of God

is that God is the one who holds all things together

and he's given us this promise that he is never going to leave us

and that he will bring everything to restoration.

And the amazing thing about that is he gives us

an active invitation to be part of that.

I think SPEAK's real uniqueness is in being hopefully a prophetic voice to the church,

but also we want to disciple the church into really understanding justice issues

and really seeing that as something that is not separate from faith, but it's really at the heart of it.

'Gerald Coates is founder of Pioneer,

'one of the new church networks which has over half a million members in the UK.

'He believes prophecy is part of his ministry today.'

I've never been one for titles,

so I don't go round calling myself a prophet,

but yet, I've always wanted to speak on God's behalf.

Over many years,

I discovered I was praying with people

at the end of meetings or in my home,

and then they would say to me, "How did you know all of that?

"How did you know I was struggling with this? Had doubts about that?"

And of course I didn't know, and I'm suddenly aware there is someone else at work here.

This HAS to be God.

If you look in the Old Testament, which is the first part of the Bible,

there are hundreds of prophecies,

particularly about the most important person in the Bible, Jesus Christ, the Son of God -

celebrating his birth this Christmas.

Gerald, how would you define prophecy?

Summing up prophecy in 10 or 20 words is impossible,

because you have to go back to a God who speaks, in Creation,

through scripture, through prophets,

through his Son, and today, in words and in actions.

What do you mean about God speaking to you?

Do you actually hear his voice?

It is something you see, something you feel,

and you just know this is the voice of God.

We can see a film and be spoken to, because we get the message.

We hear a piece of music - "That music really spoke to me," and so on.

So God speaks in all sorts of ways.

Prophetic words and actions are just another way God speaks.

Let me give you an example.

I was in an event and I'd just bought myself

a little microphone lapel badge. It probably cost me 75p.

There was somebody speaking, he's quite well known,

and I really felt God say, "I'm going to use this guy in television,

"and I want you to give him your lapel microphone badge

"as a sign that he's going to be involved with the media."

And so I went to him and I told him why I was giving him this badge

and I would be praying that he would be a success in mainstream media

and will be able to speak for God.

And then I received a phone call a few days later

and his car had been stolen, his wallet, his cards and his jacket.

Everything had gone except for his briefcase,

which he opened up and there inside was the little lapel microphone badge.

The guy's name is Steve Chalke, and within months,

he'd signed a major contract with a major television company,

and so much has come out of that he's now in and out of Downing Street,

and raised huge sums of money for charities, because of the profile he had.

Those sort of things, they raise the sense of the presence of God and God's care for me

in a way that few other things can.

# Said the night wind to the little lamb

-# Do you see what I see?

-Do you see what I see?

# Way up in the sky, little lamb

-# Do you see what I see?

-Do you see what I see?

# A star, a star, dancing in the night

# With a tail as big as a kite

# With a tail as big as a kite

# Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy

# Do you hear what I hear?

# Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy

# Do you hear what I hear?

# A song, a song, high above the tree

# With a voice as big as the sea

# With a voice as big as the sea

# Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king

-# Do you know what I know?

-# Do you know what I know?

# In your palace warm, mighty king

-# Do you know what I know?

-# Do you know what I know?

-# A child

-# (A child shivers in the cold)

# Let us bring him silver and gold

# Let us bring him silver and gold

# Said the king to the people everywhere

# Listen to what I say

# Pray for peace, people everywhere

# Listen to what I say

# The child, the child, sleeping in the night

# He will bring us goodness and light

# He will bring us goodness and light. #

"The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

"They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,

"upon them hath the light shined."

Light - at this time of year, it seems that everywhere,

there are glimmers of light piercing through the darkness,

from the most extravagant decorations

to the smallest candle flame.

It's such a powerful symbol.

Jesus called himself the Light of the World, and centuries before,

the prophets used the language of light to express their hope.

Is there prophecy still to be fulfilled?

Yes, lots of the prophecies made in the Bible are yet to be fulfilled.

For example, one talks about a time

when the lion and the lamb can lie down together.

Zoo-keepers are not obeying that prophetic word yet,

because it's not true yet. There will come a time

when God will get rid of all injustice, all disease,

all evil, all brokenness - in fact, at the end of the Bible, it says,

God will come and wipe away every tear.

There's a lot of tears in the world right now,

so we're still waiting for these promises to be fulfilled.

It's interesting, because Advent not only looks back

to the first coming of Jesus - it looks forward

to the time when Jesus will come again,

and we call this the Second Coming

and it won't be that he will be born in a stable,

and we'll wonder if we've missed it. He will come again, on the clouds,

appearing to us, so that every knee shall bow,

everyone will see him as he truly is, the King of Heaven.

When that comes, then this new phase of history begins,

when the lion can lie down with the lamb,

and every tear will be wiped away.

Heavenly Father, who spoke through the prophets long ago,

help us to hear Your voice today.

Give us the strength to stand up for truth and for justice in Your name.

And at this time of Advent,

remind us of the one the prophets were waiting for,

Your son, Jesus Christ, Light of the World, Prince of Peace.

Amen.

I know there's so much more to explore about prophecy, but for me,

the more I discover, the more wondrous

the story of that first Christmas becomes.

And as we go into Advent, looking forward to all that's ahead,

we leave you with an adaptation of Mary's words of praise

when she found out that she was to have a son,

and he would be the fulfilment of all the prophets had predicted.

Next week, Sally explores the significance of the birth of Jesus,

when God came to share our humanity,

with readings by Julian Rhind-Tutt

and seasonal hymns from All Saints Church, Cheltenham,

plus music from Libera, Mary-Jess

and Only Men Aloud.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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