Thank you Bro. Burk!
I will read through the prophecy.pdf later tonight. I just glanced at it and also noticed you state in your post that "The chief function of prophecy is not to predict the future...". I thought that was the exact reason for prophecy. I would even go so far as to say that in many cases, prophecy in the Bible even leads people to act in the future.
One quick example comes to mind:
Mathew 1:18-25.
First, it was prophesied to Joseph that Mary would have a boy and that happened. Second, Joseph was foretold to call his name Jesus, which he then acted upon, and did name the boy Jesus. Third, this whole process was done in this way to fulfill a previous prophecy, "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet...".
So my conclusion:
ALL of this was indeed done to predict the future. Why? So those prophesied to would know beforehand; so they would know it was of God; so they would know what to do and how to act. Would this event have unfolded the same way and would Joseph have made the same decisions if God had not intervened by sending His angel to give foreknowledge and direction? We will never really know. But, I believe God does things for very specific reasons. The only logical conclusion that I can draw is that God did this to make sure it happened in this exact way; to fulfill a previous prophecy. I think if you look individually at all the fulfilled prophecies in the Old Testament, you will see this same theme: Tell people what will happen, so they know how to act. Why would Prophecy in the New Testament be any different?
But still, even you say that prophecy is "not to predict the future, but to
bear testimony...". I assume what you mean is that once the event takes place, we can look at the prophecy and see how the event fulfilled it.
Which brings me back to my original point:
How specifically did the event fulfill the hard to understand scriptures in Revelation?
Do you believe this question is relevant? Or, do you just accept that it already happened, so there is no need to understand how the event and the prophesies matched up in 70AD?
Thanks again,
Mark Andrews