F,f, f or f

I wrote a Post today saying that Israel-prophecies in the Old Testament are either future, figurative, fulfilled or failed.

 

Dispensationalists see them as future; others see them as fulfilled figuratively in Christ and the Church - but I see them as literally fulfilled already in Israel - without any need to relegate their fulfilment to the future, and without any need to make them figurative of Christ and the Church.

 

The Messianic prophecies included specific details of circumstances which were to exist in Israel at the time when Messiah would come.

 

For example, Malachi prophesied that Messiah would suddenly come to His Temple; His coming would be preceded by a messenger; the result of their ministries would be that the sons of Levi would be purified and that they and all the nation would again offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness as the nation had done so prior to Malachi's time.

 

The fulfilment of that prophecy was literally possible only up until AD70 when the Temple was destroyed and Levitical genealogies were forever lost.  The details of Malachi's prophecy couldn't be fulfilled after that. Therefore Messiah had to have come before then, or the Scripture failed.

 

If we instead see it as future, then it requires a future return to Judaism. But even that couldn't fulfil the details of the prophecy because Malachi was referring to that Temple, not to some future temple, and because the Levitical genealogies required to authenticate the priesthood and offerings have been forever lost.

As soon as a person sees it as future or figurative without regard to its historically fulfilled aspect literally in Israel, we lose it as a proof-text for Jesus. And that is the most valuable point in the prophecy.