Astrology v Prophecy and the Wonder of Christmas

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, that period when we wait again for Jesus’s birth and also think about the promised second coming of Christ and what that is going to mean for us.

In general human beings aren’t at great at waiting – are we? I’m not just talking about waiting until we can go down on Christmas morning and open our presents– although the younger we are the more unbearable this is – but about the waiting that we all have to do to see how our lives will pan out; waiting for exam results, with all their implications for our future; waiting to see if Mr. or Mrs. Right will come into our lives; waiting to see whether a career decision will pay off several years down the line; even the waiting for the results of medical tests something I am all too familiar with.

Ever since time began, we human beings seem to have had an insatiable desire and impatience to know what the future holds for us. We find it hard to just wait and see how the future will unfold and throughout history we have gone to extraordinary lengths to try and circumvent that process, many of which are recorded in the Bible.

Deuteronomy, for example, records various forms of divination – i.e. ways of foretelling the future by signs or omens or other supernatural means – that were common at the time. Probably the best known of these is the practice of astrology - which literally means divining the heavens. Astrology is generally thought to have been developed in Babylonian times, passed on to the Romans and the Greeks and, of course, features in the Christmas story in the form of the wise men who followed as star.

Other forms of divination in the Old Testament include nephomancy – the rather poetic sounding study of clouds – and the less poetic practice of necromancy i.e. divination by communicating with the dead through mediums and other means. All these practices were carried out by different peoples over many centuries including the Israelites.

Waiting

In many ways it is hardly surprising, the history of the Israelites has always been one of waiting; waiting for forty years for entry into the Promised Land; waiting for liberation from their oppressors and to return to Jerusalem and waiting for the promised Messiah who it was said would come and redeem God’s chosen people. God’s great promises probably only increased the Israelites’ desire to know the future.

It was into this context of waiting that one of the greatest of the prophets spoke: Isaiah whose name literally means ‘The Lord is Salvation’, and a third of whose recorded prophecies are devoted to the birth, death and his second coming of Christ.

Many of these we remember at this time of year, in services and in Christmas cards; passages such as Isaiah 7:4 ‘ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.’ And the unforgettable Isaiah 9:6:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

What wonderful words so full of promise but which are so familiar to us that it is easy to lose the sense of wonder that Isaiah’s prophecies were made 700 years before the birth of Christ. Isaiah’s prophecies about Jesus’s birth, life and ministry, death and resurrection are so detailed and accurate, but in the Christmas rush we tend to lose sight of the sense of wonder at these glimpse of the future provided by God.

There are actually 322 prophecies concerning Jesus in the Old Testament going all the way back to Genesis, which seems to indicate that our creator understands our desire to know what the future has in store for us, but he is also pretty clear that we have to just trust in him.

There’s a passage in Deuteronomy 18, in which Moses tells the wayward people of God;

The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. (v 14 – 15).

In other words, God knows what we need and will choose what he will reveal to us and how he will reveal it - and we must just trust in him. This is what is meant by revelation.

Glimpses of the future

Undoubtedly the world is far more mysterious place than we can ever comprehend. Every day as science as uncovers more information about our universe, which our sense of certainty about the world we live in is challenged. Physicists are now even questioning our understanding of the nature of time but God is clear that there are some things that are meant to lie beyond our reach or knowledge. Like a loving parent, God protects us by telling us that some things are off limits - and trying to predict or understand the future is one of these.

I doubt very much that the daily horoscopes in most newspapers or magazines are in danger of accurately predicting the future (sorry to burst any bubbles but my late godfather was once the editor of a tabloid and would occasionally give his teenage daughter the section to write). But God does tell us that any attempts to divine the future are forbidden for our own good.

But as we celebrate Advent, we are in a different position to the peoples of Old Testament eras in that we have already seen the fulfilment of God’s prophecies about the Messiah.

In Luke 4, we are told how, after being tested in the wilderness, Jesus went to his home town of Nazareth and on the Sabbath he went into the synagogue. He stood up to read and was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling it he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him and he uttered the immortal words, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

We are blessed to have seen the truth of this amazing prophecy made 700 years before Christ’s birth. We know that God has redeemed his people and that all the promise of Christ is ours.

At this time of Advent, we too find ourselves in a time of waiting, not just to celebrate Jesus’s birth, but also waiting for him to come again and to make all things new.

But unlike those who lived before Christ came into the world, we have the wonderful reassurance that what God chooses to reveal to us of our future through is prophets does, and will, come to pass.

We can be sure that Christ will come again and will usher in this Kingdom of freedom, comfort and joy– in which all grieving, mourning and despair will be wiped way. And we can have full confidence that this prediction is a certainty.

May I wish you a truly blessed Christmas.

Kate Nicholas’s best-selling book Sea Changed – which was shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017 – is available at Waterstones and Christian booksellers throughout the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide.