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In order to understand the message of a prophetic book, what are two important things to consider?
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We need to know the time when the prophet was speaking. Also who the prophet was speaking to (the audience).
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The word God gave the prophet addressed something in the prophet’s immediate circumstances. That’s why we must understand the culture or the situation a prophet was addressing before his message can make sense to us.
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In order to understand the message of a prophetic book the two important things to consider are when did they minister and to whom did they speak?
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The time and culture are important factors to consider in order to understand the prophetic message.
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In order to understand the message of a prophetic book, we must first understand to whom the prophet was addressing his message (audience), and the context of the message (time/culture). All prophesies were addressed to specific people to address a specific problem. When we remove those two factors from the message, we take it out of context, and therefore misinterpret it. These books show us how God worked in the past so that we can see that he is working in our lives now, but they do not reveal what he is doing in our lives now, because these events were part of our history, not our present.