ninesixteen

Recently we have been reading through the minor prophets. While Christians tend to treat these as individual books, I have recently been taught to see them as both individual books and as a single book (The Book of The Twelve). One of the most interesting things we saw in this study was the transgression in thought. First, we noticed that each prophet transgresses in thought from a Sin Charge (Amos, for example, does so in chapters 1 and 2) to a Just Punishment (Amos 3-8a) and finally a Hope of Restoration (Amos 8b-9). However, the greater transgression we noticed was that the Book of Twelve as a whole follows this same pattern. The first few books (Hosea and Joel) deal with a sin charge, the middle group turns its focus to a just punishment (Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah) and the last few turn their focus toward a hope of restoration (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi). This change in tone was found to be so important in the early church that when the canonization (brought into a collection) of the New Testament called for the structure of the Old to be formed, Christians moved The Book of The Twelve from its place in the Hebrew Bible and placed it at the end of the Old Testament. This shift was because the Patristic fathers (early Church Fathers beginning with the disciples of the disciples and ending at some point around the 500’s) could not deny that this message of hope and restoration is a proclamation of the coming of the Christ.

My purpose for this discussion is that as I watched the tone of voice change, I could not dismiss that the life of every Christian is found in The Book of The Twelve. I know there was a time in which I was blind to my own sins and by the grace of God, He sent a message to my heart and when I heard this, I was forced to recognize the coming of a just punishment. Still, like the prophets, I now live in a state of hope and restoration. My question to anyone who finds this is simple: are you willing to wrestle with the claims of the prophets and ask has God revealed sin in your life, and if so, are you now living in a time of coming punishment or the hope and restoration found in Christ Jesus?