How Many Meanings Do Old Testament Prophecies Have?

Walter Kaiser wrote an article titled "The Promises of God and the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit; Joel 2:20-32 and Acts 2:16-21". What did Kaiser have to say? Kaiser began by noting that there are three really difficult questions that have to be answered if we're going to understand prophecy.

1. Did the prophets understand how long the time lapse would be between the prophecies and the fulfillment of the prophecies? Did the prophets and their original audience expect the prophecies to be fulfilled in the immediate future or did they have a feeling that they were looking into the far distant future?

2. Did the prophets understand what they wrote? Did they grasp only the part of their message that addressed their immediate situation? Did they have some feel for the Messianic and eschatological themes running through their messages? When you try to understand a prophecy the most important question is what did the first audience hear?

3. How were the prophet's words fulfilled? Did a given prophecy have only one fulfillment? Were prophecies partly fulfilled at one time and completely fulfilled later? Did some prophecies have a double fulfillment or a continual, ongoing fulfillment?

Kaiser further argued that the prophets knew that they spoke accurately, but without full comprehension of what they said. Kaiser pointed to 1 Peter 1:10-12. There Peter claimed that the prophets were aware of five things: 1) The Messiah would come; 2) The Messiah would suffer for us; 3) The Messiah would have triumphant kingly glory; 4) The Messiah would suffer first, then have glory later; 5) The New Testament Christians would have a share in the things written to Israel.

Kaiser's own position is that each Old Testament prophecy only had one single meaning, not double or multiple meanings. At the same time the prophecy's meaning could embrace a long period of time including protracted events. It could include characteristics that belong to several periods of time, or several historical characters in the Messianic line. Sometimes the prophets pointed forward to the last person in a long line of people who all shared similar characteristics; however, this is quite different from having multiple fulfillments of the prophecies.

These questions and assumptions by Kaiser should cause the readers to at least question their current views toward Old Testament prophecies. Whether the reader agrees with Kaiser or not is not as burdensome as other weightier doctrines; however, because all truth is God's truth, we Christians do not want to believe any untruth. This is why these matters should be discussed, examined, and submitted to if true.