Main Purpose of Prophecy

The prophet is the recipient of God's word, and the prophet proclaims that. We often talk about, in prophecy, two kinds of prophecy: foretelling and forth-telling. Foretelling is what many people think of when we talk about prophecy, and that is predicting the future, and we say, he's a "prophet" — he predicts the future. But in fact, forth-telling, which is proclaiming God's word, is really the essence of prophecy. Sometimes it's foretelling; sometimes it's telling the future, what's going to happen; but it's always forth-telling. It's always proclaiming God's message and calling God's people to respond.