Prophecy is one of the means for God to make known to men that which was known only to God. It is the means for a piece of information to travel from the level of mystery to the level of revelation.
The term 'spirit of prophecy' indicates that there is a common agent working through the ages among all prophets uttering prophecies recorded in the Scriptures. This helps us better understand that the revelations recorded in the Book of Revelation are rooted in and connected with the revelations given to such prophets during the Old Testament era as Isaiah or Ezekiel. We can affirm this to be the case by comparing the similarities or sameness of the exressions used by prophets of variant times.
In the Book of Isaiah, for example, he talks about two cities: faithful city vs. unfaithful city. Isaiah 1-2 According to Isaiah, Jerusalem used to be a faithful city (or the City of Righteousness or the City of Faithfulness) but she ended up becoming the city of harlot (or proostitute, which is symblic of a woman who broke faith with her husband).
In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John talks about the same imagery, but in a reverse order: once the unfaithful city (or the city of Great Prostitute - Rev 17;19:2) has become the Holy (or faithful) City.
This comparison reminded me of the novel by Charles Dickens, "A tale of two cities" (1859) where he described the life in two cities: London and Paris.
So which city are you living in? We are often told that a believer holds two citizenships: the citizenship here on earth, and the citizenship in the Kingdom (or City) of God. But why did the heavenly voice say to "his" people, "Come out of her" and what does this call mean to the people living in the electronic age?
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