I think at some point the Jedi got confused about the difference between Prophecies and Visions.
Because Visions aren’t set in stone. They represent possibilities. The closer you are to the moment you’re seeing the more accurate it’s likely to be. When Anakin was still a kid he had a Vision of coming back to Tatooine as a Jedi and freeing all the slaves. That was a genuine possible future for him, but it was so far off and there were so many variables between the moment he saw and the moment he was in. Conversely, at the same age he had what I think of as smaller visions of the future, just seconds ahead and not taking his full attention. That’s his Podracing and Piloting foresight that Qui-Gon comments on. Neither of these things are prophecies, only visions with very different odds of coming to pass.
Prophecy, on the other hand, is set in stone. It’s much more mysterious to the audience, because we’ve never actually seen one given, but they exist and they do come to pass. These are the things that will happen no matter what anyone does. The true Will of the Force, whether that means an actual entity making decisions or natural reactions within an organized system I don’t pretend to know. Prophecy, and by extension Destiny, are immutable.
A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored.
There will come a perfect being who will be free of limits, they will lead the Sith to glory, then destroy them, and resurrect them stronger than ever before.
In the time of greatest despair there will come a savior, and he will be known as the Son of Suns.
These are Prophecies. They are the solidified expression of abstract Destiny. They do not represent all that is certain in the Force, only the things that have been put into words.
Destiny is nebulous. It’s something that can be felt within a person, but not seen or anticipated. It’s the weight of a being in the Force. This is what the Jedi Council senses from Anakin, and what their forbearers felt from Revan. Destiny will come to pass, no matter what form it takes.
Jolee Bindo explains it well with a tale about a man he once knew who was marked by Destiny. The man, Andor Vex, was aware that he was Destined to create great change, and this made him arrogant. When the moment of his Destiny arrived, captured and brought before a nasty war lord, he starts mouthing off at this temperamental war lord. “Release me! Don’t you know who I am!?” So of course the dude picks him up and chokes him, before tossing him into an energy intake shaft. Where he bounced around screaming on his way down to the ship’s reactor core. And something about him being in that shaft or the core caused a cascade of system failure throughout the vessel, killing the war lord and presumably his men. And it changed the political course of the sector for centuries. He was destined to kill that war lord. Didn’t matter how he did it. If he’d made better choices he might’ve done it the way he expected, heroic and noble. But he was an idiot who thought Destiny made him invincible.
All of this is to say, telling the future through the Force comes in different forms which have different rules. But the Jedi forgot the rules, and as a result they screwed up big time with every Prophecy and Vision they encountered in their final years. The Force was telling them. They had every possible warning. They were told point blank, multiple times, exactly what would happen to them. And every time they ignored it. Every. Single. Time.
