I accept that there are at times future predictions. However, this is only one aspect of biblical prophecy, and not the sole definition of it. I like your use of the word “timeless.” And this is actually supported by the Amos 3:7 passage you quote. The phrase “future event” is not a very good translation here. Most use the phrase “the secret counsel” as to what the prophet receives from the Lord. While there are future predictions in prophecy, if you look through the vast majority of what the prophets wrote, you see that most of it is dealing with matters pertinent to the historical time they were living in (messages to rulers, woes against surrounding nations, etc.). The importance of this distinction is that prophecy is only at times about future prediction, which means that the core of what biblical prophecy was pertained to listening clearly to God’s voice.

However I beg to differ on the paragraph where you stated that prophecy had less to do with FUTURE but rather present concerns.

…”Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
2 Peter 1:20-21

This tells us that prophecy is given by the timeless Holy Spirit of God who holds the past, present and future.

God usually reveals prophecy as a future event to His prophets
(Amos 3:7).

In Acts 11:28 the prophet Agabus predicted a future famine which later occured in the reign of Claudius affecting the entire Roman world.

Similarly in Acts 21:10-11 same Agabus predicted Paul’s fate if the latter embarks on the journey to Jerusalem.

And some other scriptural reference as per prophecy being futuristic are seen in Isaiah 46:10, Revelation 22:6

I’d revise the below from your writings:

“It is important to clarify that prophecy in its classical form had little to do with predicting the future. Even after the transition to apocalyptic, the role of futuristic visions had less to do with some kind of mystical prediction and more to do with addressing the then present concerns of the community.

Blessings!

Olu Adeyemi

I appreciate your desire to go deeper into this concept. The first instance is 1 Samuel 19:20 where the phrase “group of the prophets” (להקת הנביאים; τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τῶν προφητῶν) uses the hapax legomenon להקת. So we don’t want to make too much of this phrase one way or the other. But when we coordinate this phrase with “sons of the prophets” (e.g., 2 Kings 2 בני־הנביאים; οἱ υἱοὶ τῶν προφητῶν) we can see that it was regular practice for master prophets to have groups of apprentices. Thus when we see Samuel apprenticed to Eli (1 Samuel 1-2) and the transfer of headship to Elisha (2 Kings 2), we can see that it was a regular pattern in the Old Testament for prophets to receive training from masters. As a counter-example, take the expression from Amos 7:14 where he says, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet.” The meaning here is not that his dad wasn’t a prophet, but that he didn’t receive the schooling expected of a trained prophet. This is what I mean by “school of the prophets.” I think it is completely biblical to use this language, since “sons of the prophets” seems to mean something like “disciples of the prophets.”