The first three songs on White-fella Dreaming are concerned with the Law of Moses – the first five books of the bible.
We now move onto the books of the Prophets, who interpreted that Law of Moses, often in a different way to that of the people who ran the church in their day.
The prophets had a problem.
King David had been told by God that one of his descendants would reign in Jerusalem forever. (You can read about that in 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 17)
So it seemed a pretty good bet that Jerusalem would never be conquered by any other country.
The problem the prophets had to deal with was that Jerusalem was invaded and defeated by Babylon on three separate occasions. The third time around, they destroyed the place and left it desolate.
So much for God’s promise to David.
So how could the people of Israel trust anything their Law said about the promises to Abraham, Moses and David?
Some of the prophets prophesied before the destruction of Jerusalem, some after.
But their message was the same.
As Moses had prophesied in the book of Deuteronomy (chapters 28-32), the people of Israel would reject God’s Laws and carry on just like everyone else
God would seek to turn them around, make them a holy, sanctified people by allowing other nations to defeat them. But this would be as a form of atonement. He would never break the promises he made to Abraham.
That was the message the prophets had to deliver.
They prophesied a terrible time of tribulation for Israel. It would be worse than what Babylon had perpetrated.
But just when it seemed that Israel would be destroyed, God would intervene in human history by sending a Messiah to save the Jews in Jerusalem and establish a kingdom of heaven on earth.
That was the message the prophets had to pass on to the people of Israel. The great tribulation of Israel (atonement) and the Day of the Lord, when a messiah would rescue them from destruction (redemption).