TYPES OF PROPHECY: CONDITIONAL

(Message by Tanny Keng)

1. Types Of Prophecy

a) Prophecy is the word of God.  Prophets are servants of God, called and appointed by God to pass His message.

b) There are two major types of prophecy:  

i) Conditional prophecy.

ii) Unconditional prophecy.

2. Conditional Prophecy

a) Conditional prophecy is when the prophecy fulfillment is dependent on the compliance of those to whom the promise is made, with the conditions on which it is given. A prophecy in which the prediction is predicated upon a condition.

3. Examples Of Conditional prophecy

a) God giving rain in due season

Leviticus 26:3-4 

3 ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, 4 then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

i) God giving rain to the land of Israel depended on the children of Israel walking in God statues and keeping His commandments. Thus, if the children of Israel walked in God statues and kept his commandments, it rained in due season but if they did not….

Leviticus 26:14-16

14 ‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, 15 and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, 16 I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

b) Healing of the land

2 Chronicles 7:14 

14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

c) Jonah prophecy

Jonah 3:2-4

2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach to it the message that I tell you.” 3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, a three-day journey in extent. 4 And Jonah began to enter the city on the first day’s walk. Then he cried out and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

i) When the city of Nineveh repented, God repented His judgment.

Jonah 3:5, 10

5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.

10 Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.

ii) Since what Jonah prophesied did not occur, is Jonah a God’s prophet or not?

@1. Jonah was and is God’s prophet.

d) A prophet is not judged by whether what s/he prophesies happens or not since we have conditional and unconditional prophecy.

e) The saying and teaching that when God declares something, it is will absolutely come to pass is a wrong; there are conditional and unconditional God declarations. If you are one of those people who has believed that a true prophet of God is defined by the fact that his prophecies always come to pass, you should change that mind-set. 

f) For conditional prophecy, God has given the following general rule:

Jeremiah 18:7-10.

7 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, 8 if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. 9 And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, 10 if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.  

The End ...