Understanding Bible prophecy. The subject comes to us this
morning courtesy of some questions raised by one of you
concerning some confusing imagery in the book of Daniel. He
writes, "Prophecies and the interpretation of prophecies. Could
they be just a little more vague? Still, they are
fascinating..." Indeed, they are, and for some, they have become
immensely profitable as well. A cottage industry has grown up on
Christian television presenting prophecy "experts" who are ready
to interpret ambiguous passages both on the air, sustained by the
financial support of faithful viewers, and in their widely-sold
books and videos.
Probably the best-known of these folks is a fellow by the
name of Jack Van Impe who, along with his wife Rexella, operates
the Jack Van Impe Ministries World Outreach Center, located in
Rochester Hills, Michigan. On a typical show, Rexella begins by
reporting a recent news event, which ranges from a major headline
story to some obscure oddity. Van Impe then interprets the item
by quoting some biblical passage, often from Daniel or Revelation
or something similar, giving the occurrence a spin that relates
it to the coming Rapture or Armageddon or the Second Coming of
Christ or all of the above. His interpretations are always based
on biblical texts, so for the uninitiated, they sound most
authoritative. At the close of every program, Jack extends an
invitation to all to accept Jesus Christ and be born again, which
is promptly followed by Rexella asking viewers to purchase one of
their multitude of books, video tapes, or other media products.
Over the years, Van Impe has set many specific years and dates
for the return of Jesus, but he has had to continue to adjust his
prediction since many of these dates have come and gone. He is
currently predicting the second coming will occur in 2018.
The biggest problem I have with his approach is that, with
all these scripture texts he quotes, he takes them out of
context, and that is always dangerous. An example I have used
before: "Cain killed his brother Abel" - Genesis 4. "Go and do
likewise" - Luke 10. "What you are about to do, do quickly" -
John 13. All scripture, but, frankly, you can prove anything you
want using scripture if you are willing to use it incorrectly.
Remember this: a text without a context is a pretext. A text
without a context is a pretext. Keep that in mind as you listen
to Jack Van Impe or any other of these prophecy "experts."
I do not mean to pick on Van Impe because, quite frankly, he
is just carrying on a tradition that goes back centuries. Our
lesson from Deuteronomy has Moses addressing the Israelite people
as they wandered in the wilderness. They are worried about the
future and they want some answers. Moses is warning the people
about searching for those answers in inappropriate places. He
warns about following after folks who practice sorcery or
divination. "Sorcerer" in the Old Testament is related to the
word for clouds, perhaps referring to discerning events through
weather. It is used of those who engage in astrology, using the
positions of the stars and planets to foretell events.
Divination, another general term for predicting the future, often
involves some sort of holy man casting bones or arrows on the
ground, so that, depending on how they lie, he can know the
future. Moses says do not go there. Instead, "The LORD your God
will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own
brothers. You must listen to him."
Truth be told, there does seem to be something in all of us
that wants to know the future. Millions of people consult
horoscopes, Ouija Boards, fortune tellers, palm readers, attend
channeling seminars, or conduct seances. Ever been to Lily Dale?
Joan Cook of Broomfield, Colorado, was a counselor on the
Psychic Friends Network for six months. She said she is no
psychic, but at $24 an hour it was a great job. She was
recommended for the job by her teacher in a counseling class, who
said Cook would be free to do traditional counseling on the
network. But she quickly discovered that her callers did not
want basic, common-sense advice. They wanted supernatural
insights.
One night, Joan got a call from Tonya in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina. Tonya wanted to know whether her husband was
going to beat her. Cook tried to convince her to call 9-1-1.
She also gave Tonya the names of churches that might provide
counseling. The woman's reaction: "I called for a READING. I
want my READING!" So, Cook says, she concocted a tarot reading
to back up her recommendation. Only when Tonya was thoroughly
convinced the advice came from the cards and not just some
ordinary individual did she seem inclined to access the free
resources already available to her in her own community. And why
was Tonya's husband so angry? Tonya had racked up a $5,000 phone
bill talking to "psychic" counselors.(1)
Most folks do not go to that extent, but her desire to know
the future certainly resonates with us. So we turn to the Bible
- that's free. Where we get into difficulty in dealing with
biblical prophecy is in expecting it to give something it never
intended. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for prophet,
nabi, and in the New Testament, the Greek word, prophetes, mean
someone who announces or brings a message from God, one who
speaks by divine inspiration as the interpreter or spokesperson
for God. It might be a message of warning, of promise, or even a
prediction of future events. Biblical prophecy is much better
understood as FORTHtelling rather than FOREtelling though. The
modern equivalent would more be PREACHER than PREDICTOR.
Sometimes the two go together. For example, back in the
early '90's, as our nation found itself embroiled with an
adversary in the Middle East, an old sermon of mine includes the
following:
What will happen to Saddam Hussein?...As proud and
arrogant a man as he is, there is an old, old story of
which he should take note. It seems some little frogs
had just had a harrowing experience down at the swampy
meadow, and they came hopping home to report their
adventure. "Oh Father," said one of the little frogs,
all out of breath, "we have just seen the most terrible
monster in all the world. It was enormous with horns
on its head and a long tail and hoofs..." "Why child,
that was no monster. That was only an ox. He isn't so
big! If I really put my mind to it I could make myself
big as an ox. Just watch me." So the old frog huffed
and puffed and blew himself up. "Was he as big as I am
now?" he asked. "Oh, Father, much bigger," cried the
little frogs. Again the father frog huffed and puffed
and blew himself up, and asked his children if the ox
could be as big as that. "Bigger, Father, a great deal
bigger," came the chorus of little frogs. "If you blew
yourself up until you burst you could not be as big as
the monster we saw in the swampy meadow." Provoked by
such disparagement of his powers the old frog made one
more attempt. He blew and blew and swelled and swelled
until something went POP. The old frog had burst. As
scripture says, "Pride goeth before destruction."
Saddam, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.(2)
Was I going out on much of a limb in "prophesying" problems
for Saddam? Not really. No more than anyone in recent years who
warned of the dangers to New Orleans in the event of a serious
hurricane. Some things are pretty predictable.
Notice something I did NOT do in that sermon. I did not say
that Saddam Hussein was the Antichrist referred to in I John or
the Beast of Revelation nor any other such thing. And this is
where some of our "experts" get into trouble. They take these
current individuals or events, overlay them on the biblical
material and draw conclusions that are simply not warranted.
People are doing that with Katrina. For example, this was
on the internet on September 1st: "A national talk-radio host
believes the severity of Hurricane Katrina is clear evidence that
civilization is now in the "End Times" described in the Bible.
"I don't think there's any doubt," George Noory said this morning
on his "Coast to Coast AM" program. "I think we're in it. I
really do." While Noory explained he did not mean an imminent
end to all life on earth, he referred to the book of Revelation
in the New Testament, saying current events are "the beginning of
the end."(3)
Actually, he was not even referring to Revelation, he was
thinking of some words from Luke's gospel: "There will be signs
in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in
anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea."(4)
Somehow or other, after every major calamity that the world has
encountered - hurricane, earthquake, flood, fire, tsunami -
someone has said, whether on the radio or not, that this is the
beginning of the end. And so far, everyone of them has been
wrong, just like all those who have predicted dates and hours for
the Rapture or the Second Coming. And remember the lesson: "You
may say to yourselves, 'How can we know when a message has not
been spoken by the LORD?' If what a prophet proclaims in the
name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a
message the LORD has NOT spoken."
Speaking of Revelation, we cannot talk about biblical
prophecy without dealing with this last book in the New
Testament. This one, in particular, has been a goldmine for the
so-called "experts" and a challenge to virtually everyone else.
Anytime I ask a group what they might like to do for a Bible
study, the hands-down request winner is Revelation. In one of
the books in my library interpreting Revelation (and I have a lot
of them), the author writes,
I have before me the prospectus of a Bible School's
correspondence course on "Revelation Revealed" in which
it is stated that it requires 175 keys to unlock the
mysteries of the book of Revelation. "They are the 175
symbols used by the angel in signifying the book of
Revelation to John." There are 81 actors, according to
this prospectus, in the Revelation drama; and there are
1440 Thought Units advanced or suggested in the book.
Those who enroll for this course and pay the required
fees are supplied with a chart which will give "a
mental picture of about what time in history any part
of Revelation occurred, and what parts of Revelation
are doubled and how many times doubled." The course of
study also emphasizes certain "startling things in
Revelation," among which are the following: How the
church looks to dead people; The souls of the dead
conversing and what they wear; Two hundred million
flying machines described; When the Devil became a
member of the church; When and how the Devil was turned
out of the church; The Devil's son, grandson, and whole
Devil family. There is a list of 35 similarly striking
and suggestive titles of subjects which are developed
in this course of study. Not all of the dispensational
mishandling of the book of Revelation has been so
eloquently ignorant as the sample here quoted; and yet
the "lunatic fringe" of thinking on the times and
seasons and last things of history has always revelled
in the Revelation.(5)
The truth is the book of Revelation is not that difficult to
understand if you have some basic background. It is written in a
unique style called "apocalyptic" which is unfamiliar in our day,
but was much better known during the period between the Old and
New Testaments. In fact, one of the better known apocalyptic
works, the book of Daniel, grew directly out of that era. More
about that in a minute. Apocalyptic writing, with all its wild
imagery - ten-horned, seven-headed beasts, dragons, wild animals,
and so on - functioned as a kind of pictorial narrative about God
and justice and answers the inevitable question, namely, "If
there is a good God who is in control of things, why doesn't God
do something about all the present evil?" The apocalyptic
writer's response: God WILL - the story is not over yet. The
book of Revelation that we find in our Bibles dealt with a
specific situation being faced by the people to whom it was
addressed who were suffering persecution under Emperor Domitian
at the end of the first century for refusing to participate in
Emperor worship. It was meant to comfort and encourage.
Apocalyptic language is symbolic, not literal. Think
poetry, not photography. If you get too tied to a literal
reading, don't be surprised if you get to heaven and find
yourself walking on streets of gold but that you have turned
Jesus into a sheep. The words were for inspiration, not
information. The cryptic language that our generation might find
so confusing was merely to avoid unnecessary risk - monster
beasts represent monstrous people, and those who heard these
words first would have had no difficulty in interpreting them.
The message of Revelation to that embattled group of first
century believers was simply keep the faith; despite all that
might lead you to believe otherwise, the Emperor is not
ultimately the victor, God is. Those words have comforted the
hearts of who knows how many persecuted people down through the
centuries. Hans Lilje, a Bishop in the church in Germany during
the time of the Nazis, said he never really appreciated the book
of Revelation until Hitler came. Perhaps that is why we have so
many wacky interpretations of Revelation in our land: we have
never had the kind of persecution that those to whom it was
addressed underwent, and thus have no clue about how it really
speaks. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Back again to the book of Daniel which prompted this
exercise this morning. You Bible scholars know that Daniel is
divided into two parts and, even though the name of Antiochus
Epiphanes never appears in either one, he IS the focus of
attention. Antiochus Epiphanes was a Syrian King who came to
power about 175 BC. Antiochus sought to force Greek culture,
manners, and religion on the Jews. In 168 BC he dared to occupy
Jerusalem, enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple where only the
High Priest was allowed to go, desecrate the sanctuary by
sacrificing pigs on the altar, and dedicated the Temple itself to
Jupiter Olympius whose statue he had erected there. That
prompted a three-year revolt which ended up winning Jewish
independence.
Chapters one through six of Daniel are stories of the
triumph of faithfulness of a young man named Daniel and his
friends during the time of the exile under Nebuchadnezzar,
stories we all learned in Sunday School - Daniel in the lion's
den; Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego in the fiery furnace; the
story of the handwriting on the wall, and so on. Chapters seven
through twelve are written in the apocalyptic "code" (just like
Revelation) to foreshadow the eventual downfall of an evil regime
headed by...guess who. For those Jews who might have been
tempted to deny their heritage for the sake of safety, for those
who were feeling anxious about what the future might hold, these
were words to keep hope alive.
The other day I was in my car and driving along when I saw
the marquee of a local church that said, "Simply Teach the Bible
Simply." That sounds good, until you run into material like we
have been discussing today. Perhaps it is providential that
today is Theological Education Sunday in Presbyterian Churches.
For more of what we encounter in scripture than most folks are
aware, we need help to understand it, and the help for the future
will come from those young men and women who are currently
struggling their way through seminary. Pray for them.
Understanding Bible prophecy. Yes, we would dearly love to
know the future, but, remember these things as you look for it in
the pages of scripture:
- a text without a context is a pretext;
- be skeptical of making unwarranted conclusions based on
overlaying biblical material with 21st century events and
individuals;
- FORTHtelling more than FOREtelling;
- and finally the words of the lesson - "You may say to
yourselves, 'How can we know when a message has not been
spoken by the LORD?' If what a prophet proclaims in the name
of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a
message the LORD has not spoken."
Understanding Bible prophecy. Tomorrow's headlines today?
No. What we do find, from beginning to end, is a living, loving
Lord who controls it all, and in these troubled times, that is
good news indeed.
He's got you and me, brother, in his hand;
He's got you and me, sister, in his hand;
He's got everybody everywhere in his hand;
He's got the whole world in his hand.
Amen!
1. "Christ the Prophet," http://my.execpc.com/~crnrstn/sermons/deuteronomy_181422.htm
2. From an unpublished sermon entitled, "And Now, the Latest News," preached at St. Paul
Presbyterian Church, Greensboro, NC, 1/24/93
3. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46090
4. Luke 21:25
5. Donald Richardson, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, (Atlanta : John Knox Press, 1964), pp. 13-14
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