What is the Real Meaning of
Easter?

Prophecy as Law

When God promises a blessing (or when He threatens a curse) we know what God thinks is good or bad. If we respect God, we feel a moral obligation to pursue the good and eschew the bad.

David Chilton reminds us (Days of Vengeance, p. 27) of the words of B.B. Warfield: Prophecy is about Ethics, not just speculation about what will be handed to us on a silver platter in the future. The real purpose of prophecy is to cultivate obedient lives.

"We must try to keep fresh in our minds the great principle that all prophecy is ethical in its purpose, and that this ethical end controls not only what shall be revealed in general, but also the details of it, and the very form which it takes."

Benjamin B. Warfield, "The Prophecies of St. Paul," in Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), p. 470. 

In fact, every form of God's Word, whether poetry, question, parable, prophecy, or history is "law" for us, because it is a Word from our Sovereign -- even if it does not begin with the words "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not...."