I can’t help wondering why Christians don’t read the Old Testament more than they do. Of course, I guess I could raise the same question regarding the New Testament. Some Christians just don’t read their Bible enough, period. I realize well enough there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand but we can’t neglect a task just because it’s hard. I’ve always taken the approach with the Bible that when I find something that’s difficult to understand, something obscure, or something that doesn’t read right, I consider it like a stake in the ground that says Dig Here. Oftentimes, those are the very places where you get a breakthrough in understanding the Bible, if you just take the time to dig a little deeper.

It’s the things that we have to work for that often turn out to be of the greatest value. There are parts of the Bible that are hardly ever studied in any detail. Take the Minor Prophets as an example. The reason they are so poorly understood may be that no one has taken the time to explain where they fit in the overall scheme of things and what it is they’re talking about.

Unfortunately, many people pick up the Bible and read prophecy to find out what’s going to happen. They think of prophets in terms of someone like Nostradamus, and that misses the point of the Biblical prophets completely. If you study the prophets to ask why things happen then you will be far closer to the prophet’s intent. The difference between prophecy and simple predictions of the future—as seers and fortune-tellers make—is that prophecies contain moral content.