Advent Apologetics: How Does Prophetic Fulfillment Work?

When a true prophet says something about the future, at some point, it must be fulfilled. This raises the question of how the concept of fulfillment works.

In cases of non-symbolic prophecy, it is often easy to identify the fulfillment, as when Jesus said he would rise from the dead.

The concept of fulfillment is not always so straightforward, however. One reason is that—as we noted in Answer 5—a symbol can have more than one meaning and thus be fulfilled in more than one way. In Revelation, the beast’s seven heads are fulfilled both by there being seven mountains (17:9) and in the persons of seven kings (17:10).

Further—as we noted in Answer 4—we need to take account both of the literal sense of a text and of its spiritual senses, which can point to additional fulfillments.

In the book of Hosea, God declares, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt, I called my son” (11:1). In its original context, the meaning of this text is clear: it refers back to the Exodus event, centuries earlier, when God used Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. That’s the literal sense of the text.

But there is also a spiritual sense of which the prophet Hosea may not have been conscious. This is brought out by Matthew, who recognized that when the Holy Family returned from their flight to Egypt, God also brought his son, Jesus, from that land. Thus, Matthew writes: “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’” (Matt. 2:15).

The literal sense of Hosea 11:1 thus refers to one event, which is part of Old Testament history, while there is also a spiritual sense that applies to Christ in the New Testament.

This is not the only time this happens. For example, in the time of King Ahaz (732-716 B.C.), Syria had forged a military alliance with the northern kingdom of Israel that threatened to conquer Ahaz in Jerusalem (Isa. 7:1-2). God sent Isaiah to assure Ahaz that the alliance would not succeed (vv. 3-9) and told him to name a sign for God to give him as proof (vv. 10-11).

Ahaz refused to name a sign (v. 12), so God declared: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. . . . For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted” (vv. 14-16).

For this sign to be meaningful to Ahaz, it would have to be fulfilled in his own day—indeed, very quickly. It therefore points, on the primary, literal level, to a child conceived at that time (perhaps Ahaz’s son, the future King Hezekiah).

This was as obvious to the evangelist Matthew as it is to us, but, like the other New Testament authors, Matthew recognized the biblical text as having multiple dimensions, and so he recognized that the prophecy also pointed to Christ, who was “Immanuel,” or, in Hebrew, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).

This shows us several things:

A prophecy can have more than one fulfillment.

It may have a fulfillment shortly after it was given and another fulfillment centuries later.

If we know about a New Testament fulfillment, we should not assume that this was its only one. There may have been another, earlier fulfillment in the Old Testament.

In fact, the Old Testament fulfillment may have been meant in the literal sense of the text, while the New Testament fulfillment is to be found in the spiritual sense of the text.

At times, the biblical authors’ understanding of fulfillment can be very broad. Thus, Isaiah 6:9-10 speaks of the Israelites of his day as being spiritually hard of hearing and uncomprehending of Isaiah’s message. The Israelites of Jesus’ day were similarly unresponsive, and in Matthew 13:14-15, the evangelist says this “fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah.”

It appears that the New Testament authors could potentially see any later events that echoed an earlier prophetic text as in some sense fulfilling it. This points us toward a broad understanding of the concept of fulfillment.

Finally, we should note that God sometimes fulfilled prophecies in ways that would have been surprising to the ancient audience. When this happens, the fulfillment can be much greater than what was expected. The fact that the Messiah would be a divine and suffering savior who would die to save the world—not a merely human military leader who would expel the hated Romans—is one example.  From 20 Answers: Bible Prophecy