hi I'm Jeffrey and right now we're going to look at a large portion of Scripture known as the prophets now if you're familiar with the Bible you know that it's a collection of many smaller documents called books that are arranged into two very large sections there's the Old Testament that looks at the relationship between the ancient nation of Israel and their God and then there's the New Testament that looks at the Ministry and teaching of Jesus and also what his close followers did and taught after him the prophets falls into that first group the Old Testament and when we when we look at the books of prophecy it's important for us to understand what a prophet is and what prophecy tends to be about a prophet is a spokesperson on God's behalf this is someone who speaks up for God to the people and they could be speaking to an entire nation or they could be speaking to an individual there's a pretty broad scope of things of a prophet can do and they show up through out of the Bible although only certain books are called the prophets both in ancient times and today prophets show up through out of the books of the Bible we find them in Genesis we find prophecy in Revelation which is the last book of the Bible all through the Old and New Testaments we find people who are prophesying and when people prophesy that brings us to another question what is prophecy about we often think of prophecy as something pertaining to the future there is a prophecy of a chosen one that is going to come and we do have prophecies about the future in the Bible but the biblical prophets are often bringing the past present and future together in their messages they talk about the past because they're bringing up how Israel's relationship with God has gone thus far they'll often talk about God's works on Israel's behalf the book of Exodus is really key to understanding prophecy because that's when God rescues the people of Israel from the gods of Egypt and makes them his own people and when he does that they enter into an agreement that's known as the law this is where the people of Israel agree to only worship this God and no others and that brings us into the present that most prophets talk about when the prophets are describing the events of their time they're usually calling out people being disloyal to God or disregarding God's laws regarding how to how to treat other people and so prophets will bring up how the nation of Israel has been disloyal to God how they're worshipping other gods or how they're oppressing the poor and marginalized in in their cultures prophets will also talk about this oppression and suffering either the oppression that the innocent people in Israel are are experiencing or the suffering that the people of Israel are experiencing as a result of breaking God's laws and so it's really interesting to see how the past and the present tie into prophecy and then of course we do have prophecies about the future God makes promises in the Bible and the prophets assure the people that those promises will come to pass both the good ones and the bad ones and then there's a promise of future peace and justice most of the prophets anticipate a time when the disloyalty to God and oppression and suffering will come to an end and God will make the world right again that's a very very common theme that shows up in prophecy and we'll look at some of the major themes that happen in the books of prophecy in just a moment but before we do let's talk about the books themselves so we have a group of books that are known as the prophets but that hasn't included the same books over the centuries in fact the prophets can roughly be broken down into two general groupings there's the groupings that we would call the nevian or the prophets of the scriptures in Jesus time this is a section of the Tanakh which is the Hebrew Bible that is still used in the Jewish faith today and this section is called the nevian which just means it's and so when Jesus or the Apostles are talking about the prophets they're referring to the books that I have in red here and that's Joshua judges first and second Samuel 1st and 2nd kings Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and then a book known as the 12 now in a modern English Bible that's going to look a little bit different and we'll talk about that later but as far as the early church would have been concerned the the Apostles and Jesus you had 8 books that were known as the prophets and there might be a little bit of a question that you're thinking about when you see books like Joshua and judges and Kings in here you might think how is that prophecy because we often think of prophecy as a series of visions or or Oracle's that are that are pertaining to the future again like we talked about here but that's not always the case these books are known as prophetic history and the reason they're considered prophecy is they're telling the people in a post exile Israel so Jews that have already lost Jerusalem and have needed to deal with not being an independent nation anymore they're being dominated by other world empires these books called the former prophets tell the story of why Israel doesn't have their land anymore how did they get into this into this state of exile and then the prophets that follow Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and the twelve these are referred to as the latter prophets and they anticipate the Messiah and a full restoration which is some of what we talked about over here that's that that's that future of peace and justice that God promises to bring about so although we may not think of the stories of Joshua in the Battle of Jericho or David and Goliath as prophecy they were still considered part of prophetic books back in the time when the New Testament was being written now there's a second way that we might think of the group of books called the prophets and that is the way the books are ordered in the modern Christian Bible so the modern Christian Bible begins the same way as the Hebrew Bible with Genesis Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy that's the Torah but after the Torah the order of the books of the Bible differs from the Hebrew Bible we tend to group or Christians tend to group the books by what we call genre and so we have a lot of these books like Joshua judges Samuel and kings they're grouped into history along with books like Ruth and Ezra and Nehemiah they're not considered part of the prophecy group of books instead in the modern Christian Bible we tend to group those toward the end of the New Testament and those begin with Isaiah so we still have Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel and then instead of grouping all of these books together into the twelve we break them out into what we call the Minor Prophets so we have Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah and Malachi and then in addition to that we throw in a few more into this section of the Bible so we have lamentations between Jeremiah and Ezekiel if you're reading in a Catholic or Orthodox Bible then you'll also have the book of Baruch in there and then Christians also throw Daniel in there between Ezekiel and the minor prophets Isaiah Jeremiah and Ezekiel and sometimes Daniel are referred to as the major prophets so we what whereas the Jews have the the former prophets and the latter prophets Christians have major prophets and minor prophets just a little bit of Bible trivia for you in in terms of how those books are ordered so when we talk about the prophets nowadays we're usually talking about these books but when someone in the New Testament is talking about the prophets they're likely referring to these books that you have in red it's a little bit confusing but it's also pretty interesting to see how the language we use about the books of the Bible has changed the books of the Bible haven't changed so much but the we've grouped them over the years has changed a little bit now now that we know which books are the profits let's look at some of the general themes that flow throughout these books I'm going to hit on six of them and if you can keep these in mind then they'll help you understand each of the individual books and how they fit together so major themes include Israel's land this is a huge theme throughout the Old Testament and it's the question of what happened why did Israel lose the land why aren't they an independent nation in in the land that they believe God promised to their ancestors and so keep an eye on this in Joshua Israel gains the land by the end of kings they lose it and then the rest of the Old Testament is pretty much discussing why did they lose the land and will they ever get it back we have two themes which are almost this Court case or these court cases that Israel's God brings up one is between Israel's God and the other nations these other nations are behaving violently and oppressively and God doesn't like that and so he has these grievances against those nations but then plot twist there's another case that God has and it's against his own nation Israel oftentimes Israel will behave like these other nations instead of reflecting the character of their God like they're supposed to they're not keeping those laws they're not keeping the Torah and so God doesn't like that either which brings us to the fourth theme that's going to come up a lot in the prophets and that is God's coming judgment you'll hear about God's judgment on both Israel and the surrounding nations for the ways that they have been oppressing those around them and for the ways that Israel has turned away from their God to serve other gods but it doesn't end there we also have two more really key themes to understanding the prophets one is the theme of Israel restored there is a promise that someday a messiah so someone who comes from the line of David who's introduced to us in the book of Samuel will will come back and rule Israel and start establishing this kingdom of peace and justice but it's not just a restored Israel the prophets also anticipate Eden restored Eden if you're familiar with the beginning of the Bible is this beautiful paradise it's a it's a garden in which God and humans begin their relationship together in peace and the prophets anticipate a time when once again God in all of humanity will be at peace with one another and on the same page once again and that will be a time of worldwide peace and justice that the followers of God anticipate so if you understand these and then you have a good idea of where these books of the Bible are going or what what their general messages are so that's a high level overview of the prophets if you want to learn more there are a few things you can do one you can check out a still of what I have written on the whiteboard behind me at overview Bible calm I've got a link to that in the description below if you want to know more about these individual books and about the Bible in general you should check out my book it's the beginner's guide to the Bible and it'll give you a high level overview of each book of the Bible and you'll have a working understanding of what the Bible is where it came from and what it's for and if you like these videos then you should subscribe to the YouTube channel this way I can notify you just as soon as the next one goes live again I'm Jeffrey with overview Bible thanks for watching I hope this was helpful