Prophecy

Update below 12/24/08

As an advent activity last year I decided to cover prophecy scriptures about Jesus, and their fulfillments, with my kids.  You can read about that here.  It didn't seem to have the impact that I was looking for so I wasn't going to do it again this Christmas, but have changed my mind.  I will tell you why.

A little while back (can't remember what we were reading), my son had a lightbulb go off in his head during Bible reading.  He said, "you mean the Bible not only tells us things that happened, but things that are going to happen, too?!?"  I thought I had explained that last Christmas with the prophecy scriptures.  Oh well, now that he understands this he thinks it's really cool.

I also got to thinking about the method I used last year.  I printed out the scriptures on red and green paper and cut them out with fancy scrapbook scissors and each day that we read them, I let the kids tape them on the fridge in a long string.  We alternated the red and green papers.  Well, since I was the one that did all the work, I was the one that learned!  None of the information stuck in my son's head.

So this year I am reading to him, but having him do a little notebooking.  I had him title his page, "Prophecy" and he is making a list.  We have one through nine so far (we do these on week days).  I have him write the basic synopsis of the prophecy (I usually help him think of it) and the scripture reference and then I ask him if it has been fulfilled or not.  This gets him to thinking of the fulfillment and usually he'll tell me what the story is for the fulfillment, sometimes I'll read the fulfillment, as well.

Now since I decided to do this again this year, I just pulled up my references from last year and figured I would go down the list.  But what most often happens when I open up the Bible, is I get led other places (I'm also more knowledgeable than I was last year).  So our list this year will vary a bit from last year (I got most of the references last year from a book, can't remember the title).  I will list them as we do them, in case we veer off our course again.

Here is what we have so far - 

virgin birth - Isaiah 7:14

despised and rejected - Isaiah 53:2-3

stone of stumbling - Isaiah 8:14-15

born in Bethlehem - Micah 5:2 (At this point I decided to try to keep them in chronological order)

out of Egypt - Hosea 11:1 (This one was neat because I could show my son that many verses have more than one meaning.  This one refers back to Israel's exodus from Egypt, but also forward to Christ.)

betrayed - Psalm 41:9 (Again, this one refers to Ahithophel betraying David, but also Judas betraying Jesus.)

suffering - Psalm 22

beaten and killed - Isaiah 53:4-9

no bone to be broken - Psalm 34:20 & John 19:31-36

as a lamb without spot - Exodus 12:5, John 1:29-41, I Peter 1:19 and we talked about Matthew 4

rises from the dead - Psalm 16:10 & John 20:1-18

bring salvation to the whole world - Isaiah 49:6

returning one day - Acts 1:11  (This is where I'm glad I didn't list all the verses at the beginning because this verse didn't come to me until I opened up my Bible to read--I was going to read from I Thessalonians.)

fights enemies - Isaiah 63:1-6

reign on the throne of David forever - Luke 1:32-33

Well, this is our completed list.  I am much happier this year with the retention and interest level of my son.  This makes me want to do a similar study of the verses that give detail about the family of the Messiah, starting in Genesis 3:15 (some call this the scarlet thread).  I think that for now we will get back to our character study of God.