Some Basics About Prophecy
Before jumping head-long into these articles I would like to take a little time to discuss a few simple principles about bible prophecy. Like a good newspaper reporter we will ask the five “W’s” – Who, What, Where, When and Why.
Let’s start with “Who.”
Well we pretty much know who wrote the prophecies. And I’m not talking about the prophets who wrote them down, I’m talking about the source – God himself. These are not guesses or predictions by seers or psychics. These are the word of God. Of course, the prophecies are often given in images so we must depend on the human writer to try to explain what he has seen. This is often the source of much misunderstanding when it comes to interpreting their writings.
For centuries some prophets like Ezekiel could not be understood when it came to end-time battles with strange chariots and flying beasts that shoot fire from their tails and such. Until the 20th century such weapons could not even be imagined, but today’s readers are easily able to decipher these as modern tanks and attack helicopters etc.
In the past it might have been thought that the visions given to the prophets were just as they were described and that they had some hidden meaning disguised in the imagery. But now most people believe the prophets were given a true “newsreel footage” of the future but they did not understand the technology and were forced to use descriptions based on the words and technology of their own times.
The prophets also often labored under an additional burden. Many of them wrote their books while in captivity (i.e. Daniel in Babylon and John in Patmos) and their texts were no doubt read and approved )or not) by their captors to ensure they were not disparaging the King or his empire, and predictions that a king would be overthrown and the name of the conqueror might cause quite an uproar, so such writings would have to be cloaked in mystery – just enough to fool the guards but simple enough for a believer to be able to figure it out – if he could understand the clues.
These “clues” are defined in the article on Prophecy Code.
But back to the Who once more, this time I want to define exactly “who” the prophecy is written for – in other words, who is supposed to read and heed it. I believe that all prophecy is written for God’s people – his church. In the Old Testament this would be Israel and the Jews. In the New Testament it would be “spiritual Israel” or the Christians. I know of no prophecy or any books in the bible that were written for any other religions or nations. Yes, we are told to bring the gospel to the whole world but Revelation of Jesus Christ was written by Jesus (through John) for the new Christians, not for any other religion, including Judaism.
Now for the “What.”
In the most simplest terms, we might ask “What is prophecy?” This is a different question than “What is the purpose of the prophecy?” I will cover that in the “Why” God sends us prophecies in just a bit. For our purposes, we can all agree that prophecy is how God tells us what will happen at some future date, for reasons that we will look into later. More than one-third of the bible is prophecy, so it is obviously a very important tool used by God for his people. The purpose will be made clear in a minute.
Now for the “Where.”
This is often a hotly contested topic depending on the prophecy. Sometimes it is obvious and sometimes it isn’t. Naturally it is very important that we know where the prophecy is to take place, otherwise we might not recognize it. I have only one trick in this regard. We have already determined that the “who” is God’s people – his church. So it stands to reason that the “where” is “wherever God’s people are.”
Not to get too specific, but I wouldn’t expect prophecy to happen in Australia, or Japan, or South America etc. We have to remember that when the bible talks about the world it is usually referring to the biblical world, the world empires are usually those who have at one time controlled the holy land – where God’s people are (or were). And we must remember that the “holy land“ was transferred from the Jews in Jerusalem to the Christians in Rome after the time of Christ. If God were going to give us a “future history” lesson, it would most likely follow the church – from Israel to spiritual Israel – the Christian church. And I would assume that if God were to refer to his new church he would more than likely be talking about the majority of his new people – the largest group of Christians on the planet. Whatever and wherever they may be.
Let’s look now at the “Why.”
This is perhaps the most important question we can ask: “Why is God giving us this prophecy?” Well, on that point there is good news and bad news – literally. Sometimes such as the prophecy of the first coming of the messiah, it is good news. Other times such as with Sodom and Gomorrah, it is decidedly bad news.
Now we already know that God sends these prophecies to his people, for his people and about his people. I consider there are three types of prophecies in the bible. Announcements such as the first or second coming of Christ so that we might be prepared., warnings that his people have gone or will go astray and if they do not repent and change their ways they will be punished, sometimes severely, and finally and simply, proof. Proof that the bible prophecies were written by an all-knowing being who knows the past, present and future and to prove it he gives us the history of the world – before it happens! This is His way of proving to skeptics that he IS GOD.
Unfortunately many people will deny these prophesies even after they have happened, just as most present Jews still deny the hundreds of prophecies that clearly pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. We must make every effort to avoid doing the same thin with other, end-time prophecies. We must look to see if what we are reading has happened yet, as we know it will. God has promised it so we know it will happen, but perhaps it already has and we have missed it.
Some prophecies, such as Revelation are a combination of all three of these.
Now what about the “When”?
There are only two categories to this question: “Already“ or “Not yet.” The bible contains a lot of fulfilled prophecies such as Noah and the flood, Jeremiah and the Babylonian captivity and parts of Daniel I’m sure we would all agree.
Then there is the so-called “end-time prophecies, scheduled to occur just before the second coming of Christ which most agree is not far off now. It is here where we find the greatest amount of disagreement among believers. There are some (like myself) that believe much of the book of Revelation has already come to pass while others say that not a word of it has happened yet. While some prophesies are obviously about the tribulation – a 7-year period rules by the antichrist just before Christ returns, others are less clear and open to interpretation.
Finally, “How” will the prophecy be fulfilled?
There are usually three possible answers to this question – God, nature and man. In some cases like Sodom and Gomorrah, it is all God. Parts of Revelation are clearly nature gone haywire such as earthquakes and such, perhaps directed by an angry God.
Then there are events that are clearly all about mankind. The beast-kingdoms of Daniel describe one empire being defeated by another (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece etc.) – clearly just about mankind in general.
Interestingly, some of the seals of Revelation that were once thought only possible by God are now considered to be catastrophes of nature. Some are even being predicted by scientists.
Other Considerations.
There are a few other things to consider when it comes to prophecy. Let’s take a look:
K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
I used to teach this rule of composition to my photography students. When it comes to taking pictures, simpler is better. A busy, cluttered photo can detract from the true meaning of the photo – the thing that the photographer is trying to get across in his photograph. This rule also applies to journalism, especially news reporters. The stories they write need to be clear and easy to understand, not mystical or misleading.
So should we apply this rule to bible prophecy? I believe so. We know the authors were not trying to write mystery novels with all sorts of surprise twists and turns. They are reporting stories that were given to them in visions. In all probability they were seeing actual scenes and not the literal strange images that they often describe. They didn’t know exactly what they were seeing in the visions of end-time wars. Tanks and helicopters could not be properly described in the language of his time so they did the best they could. Today we can understand these verses with much more accuracy than even just a hundred years ago.
But back to the KISS principle, we really have to apply it not to the prophets but to the true author – God himself. How do you think he would want to tell a story? Would it be a relatively simple story with a consistent theme and which flowed logically from scene to scene or would it be a psychedelic series of random images meant to totally confuse the viewer (the prophet) and be even more unintelligible to his readers (us)? Does God want to make it difficult to get into the kingdom of heaven? No, he wants everyone possible to be there.
So what can we take away from all this? Simple is better. Look for continuity. Try not to take prophetic stories too far off course, especially if the prophecy is the “future history” type as described earlier. If he is describing a series of historical (or even future) events, we would expect that it would be continuos and that it will stay on topic without huge gaps in the story. We would not expect a chronicle of the Civil War to suddenly jump to the attack on Pearl Harbor and so we should not expect a prophetic story to do that either. Not that it’s not possible, especially as some stories will jump to end time events that will mirror ancient events, but we should always try to look for the simple story, and wit prophecy all we have to do is look in our history books to see if the prophecy is following actual history. Once we identify an historical match-up we need to try to follow it logically through time. Too often people will take every verse completely out of the context of the previous verses. They will read a coded word and take it literally and then use their imagination to take the story to a completely different realm. Time and location are abandoned. History is forgotten.
The big problem with this breach of logic is that most often, the interpreter can simply claim that this part of the prophecy has yet to be fulfilled, therefore they can develop their own story line based on current events and can thereby claim all sorts of future scenarios. This is obvious by the preponderance of different interpretations of the same prophecy by many different and biblically informed people.
So we need to keep the KISS principle in mind as we unravel prophecy. Simpler is better. Try to stay on topic. Don’t go astray. Use the prophetic symbols properly. And most importantly, look to history to see if the prophecy has already been fulfilled. This is our proof that the true author is God. He wants us to see that he knew a long time ago what would happen in the world. If we don’t see it we miss out on the whole purpose of the prophecy – to prove God is real and he is with us and his word is true.
