Seers

--PROPHETS, SEERS or MEDIUMS?

There have always been people in this world who receive messages from the "other side"--the Eternal Spirit World. They're called Seers or Prophets if they hear from God and His good spirits. Those that hear from the "Dark Side" are usually called mediums or familiar spirits! Both sides of the spiritual realm communicate with men. The dark side though… however fascinating it might be… is limited in its real knowledge of the future and compared to God's messages deceptive in nature. Therefore we need to consider the source of such predictions, as well as the fruit of the messengers. Are they not only preaching the Word, but also living it and obeying it by actively preaching the Gospel for example!

Prophesying, does not necessarily and usually equate predicting the future, but simply means "oracling" God's Words on any subject, whether it be on "how to live and love" or "what's going to happen in the future."
Sometimes prophets start off on the right track as true prophets, but get deceived later on. See the story of the young and the old prophet. (in the Book of Kings) So their early prophecies are in tune, but later ones might not!
Very often the prophets themselves didn't know what their prophecies meant and didn’t interpret them right or even wrongly! Yet the Bible says that "the Counsel of the Lord shall stand!"

1 Samuel 9:9 Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.

(SEE ALSO: 1John 4:1, Matthew 7:20)

INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY

GOD LOVES A MYSTERY!

We cannot be completely dogmatic and always exact to the nth degree in the application or interpretation or even the categorisation of many of the prophetic Scriptures. Often the Prophets saw distant events like ranges of mountains one after the other in which only the mountaintops and peaks were outstanding, whereas the valleys were somewhat obscure. Also, if you've ever noticed as you view mountains at a distance, you cannot always distinguish between the ranges, and sometimes two or three ranges can look like one range from a distance.

The Prophets looked into the future and saw the coming events like a row of mountaintops. You can see them all at once, like you look at a whole scene at once, but actually, as you travel along you don't get to them all at once. As you drive closer and closer, all you can see is the one range right in front of you, it looks like only one mountain range.--But when you journey up that mountain and get to the top, some of those mountains that you thought were the same range turn out to be another 20 or 30 miles away! So in the Scriptures these events are kind of mixed up sometimes, just the way the Prophets saw them!

Neither is prophecy of any private interpretation, that means that you can not get dogmatic about interpretation, when it seems to mean something but the Word doesn’t specifically say that it is so! We can only be dogmatic when the Word specifically states so! But not when it is not clear yet!
It is very important not to get dogmatic in interpretation of Bible prophecies! You will find in this Encyclopedia that we tried to stay away from being absolute in our opinions and statements, but rather say "IT SEEMS LIKE THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS!" or "IT PROBABLY MEANS THIS," in some cases when a verse can be interpreted two or more ways! But the Bible is very clear on what it means, and only time will tell how the several details will develop. SO TRY NOT TO BE DOGMATIC! Time and history might prove you wrong!

We have tried to give a fairly common view and interpretaion on the Holy scriptures, interpretations that are upheld by most main stream Christians! Except perhaps for some like the "Pre Tribulation Rapture" Theory that this encyclopedia does not support!

Also we take the preponderance of the scriptures into account. If four verses say that "a horn" is a king and one verse indicates that it means something else, then you take the preponderance of the scriptures into account!

MORE ON INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY