Answer: The four horsemen of the apocalypse are described in Revelation chapter 6, verses 1-8. The four horsemen are symbolic descriptions of different events which will take place in the end times. The first horseman of the apocalypse is mentioned in Revelation 6:2, “I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.” This first horseman likely refers to the antichrist, who will be given authority and will conquer all who oppose him. The antichrist is the false imitator of the true Christ, as He will return on a white horse (Revelation 19:11-16).

The second horseman of the apocalypse is spoken of in Revelation 6:4, “Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.” The second horseman refers to terrible warfare that will break out in the end times. The third horseman is described in Revelation 6:5-6, “…and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!’” The third horseman of the apocalypse refers to a great famine that will take place, likely as a result of the wars from the second horseman. Food will be scarce, but luxuries such as wine and oil will still be readily available.

The fourth horseman is mentioned in Revelation 6:8, “I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.” The fourth horseman of the apocalypse is symbolic of death and devastation. It seems to be a combination of the previous horsemen. The fourth horseman of the apocalypse will bring further warfare and terrible famines along with awful plagues and diseases. What is most amazing, or perhaps terrifying, is that the four horsemen of the apocalypse are just “precursors” of even worse judgments that come later in the Tribulation (Revelation chapters 8-9 and 16).

At Matthew 24:45-47, Jesus asked the question, ‘Who really is the faithful and sensible slave who his master put over his house servants to give them provisions at the proper time?’ Then he went on to say that, this ‘slave’ would be ‘blest if he’s found doing that when his master arrives.’ And the reward for providing for the Lord’s house servants would be, ‘He will put him over all his possessions.’

In Greek, this slave is described as ‘pistos doulos kai phroinimos (faithful slave and prudent).’ However, prudent is no longer a common word in American English, so we have chosen a synonym, ‘sensible.’

The Slave’s Appointment

When does this arrival of the Master happen… when does he find the ‘faithful and sensible slave’ (the ‘doorkeeper’ in Mark and the ‘faithful house manager’ in Luke) giving ‘his house servants’ their ‘provisions?’ Well, in all three Gospel accounts his arrival is said to be ‘at an hour that you don’t think to be it.’ In fact, Mark 13:32 proceeds this prophecy with the words, ‘Nobody has known that day or the hour – neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, just the Father.’

So, this time when the ‘slaves’ are recognized and put in charge of the Master’s ‘possessions’ appears to happen at Jesus’ arrival (gr. elthon) to bring God’s Kingdom to the earth, not to the earlier period when he is near (gr. parousia). That this is the time of his arrival (following his being near or presence) is attested to in all three Gospel accounts.

Even the placement of this portion of the prophecy in Matthew’s account – after the ‘great time of difficulty’ and after Jesus’ coming – testifies that this later date is when his recognition of the ‘faithful and sensible slave’ occurs. And although someone once put a chapter break immediately following this prophecy, the next two parables (of the ten virgins and of the three slaves) appear to be a continuation of this same thought.

Who Really Is ‘the Faithful and Sensible Slave?’

While it’s a fact that many religions have claimed to be this faithful slave down through the centuries, their claims seem to be at best boastful, because the Lord obviously hasn’t arrived on earth, for his sign has yet to be seen in the sky (for this is when the text shows that the slave is appointed, not some earlier date). Yet, we could be living in the period that leads up to his coming, for we have in fact witnessed many of the signs of his nearness.

Now, from the context of the verses, it appears as though this faithful slave represents God’s chosen ones who are taking the lead in helping His other servants come to a correct understanding of His word and purposes, by providing them spiritual sustenance. However, those who are doing this aren’t called faithful and sensible until the time of Jesus’ ‘arrival.’ And that’s when those who have kept their lamps lit are invited to the ‘wedding banquet of the Lamb,’ and the faithful slaves are appointed over ‘cities,’ and over all the Lord’s ‘possessions.’

Is it possible that when Jesus spoke of the faithful slaves, he was just talking about all faithful Christians? No, the contexts of Jesus’ words are self-explanatory. Notice that he says this slave is (or these slaves are) found to be giving ‘his house servants’ their ‘provisions.’ So, the slave or slaves must represent those who are taking the lead in providing for the spiritual needs of other Christians.

The ‘Bad’ or ‘Evil’ Slave

Now, when Jesus was talking about the faithful and sensible slave (at Matthew 24:48-51), he mentioned another possible outcome. He warned of a change in attitude that comes when the Master’s arrival is later than expected. He said, ‘But if that bad slave should ever say in his heart, My master is taking his time with me, and starts to beat his fellow slaves, and eats and drinks with the local drunks, the master of that slave will come on a day he that doesn’t expect and on an hour that he doesn’t know. He will cut him down and assign him with the hypocrites. There he will cry and grind his teeth.’

So, notice that this bad slave was once a faithful slave, but he becomes discouraged during a long wait for the Lord’s arrival and falls into evil ways. And this has truly happened to leaders of religious groups who have been expecting him through the centuries (or just for the past hundred years or so) and allowed their ‘lamps to go out.’

So, those who feel that they comprise the ‘slave’ class today must be very careful not to become discouraged if the Lord’s arrival is later than they expect. They must always be awake, watching (even if that means sounding an occasional false alarm), and especially found supplying the provisions (solid ‘spiritual food’) to God’s servants. In addition, they must always deal very lovingly with their ‘fellow slaves’ to be found ‘faithful’ and to be put in charge of ‘everything that the Master owns.’

The ‘Doorkeeper’ of Mark’s Prophecy

In Mark the Thirteenth Chapter, we find the same account as in Matthew 24, 25, but with slightly different words and in an abbreviated form. Here Jesus says (Mark 13:32-37): ‘Nobody knows that day or hour… not the angels in heaven or the Son; just the Father. So, stay awake and keep watching, because you don’t know the time when he’s coming. It’s like a man, who, before leaving his house and traveling abroad, instructed each of his slaves to just go on doing their jobs; but he commanded his doorkeeper to stay awake. So, stay awake, because you don’t know when the Master of the house is coming – whether it’s late, or at midnight, or at rooster crowing, or early in the morning – so that when he suddenly arrives, he doesn’t find you sleeping. What I’m saying to you I’m saying to everyone: Stay awake!’

The point that Jesus was making here is that those who are in charge of his slaves should always be alert and watching for his arrival, and never allow themselves to fall asleep to this responsibility. In addition, Jesus’ final words on this subject, ‘What I’m saying to you I’m saying to everyone; Stay awake!,’ indicate that although the ‘watchmen’ or ‘door keepers’ have the primary responsibility of staying awake, each of his slaves share in that responsibility.

The Greek word that is translated as doorkeeper here is thyroro, from the words thyra (door) and ouros (keeper). This is the same word that Jesus used at John 10:3, where he spoke of himself as the ‘doorkeeper of the sheep.’ So, Jesus is also a faithful and sensible slave.

The Faithful, Sensible, House Manager of Luke’s Account

It is interesting to note, once again, the time when the slave is identified and when he receives his reward, in the parallel account in Luke. At Luke 12:40 we read that Jesus said: ‘You too, keep ready! Because, the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you don’t think is likely.’

Then he continues with the account at Luke 12:42-44, saying, ‘Who really is the faithful house manager, the sensible one who his master will put over his faithful friends to provide their food supplies on time? This slave will be blest if his master finds him doing that when he arrives! I tell you the truth; he will put him in charge of everything he owns.’

In Greek, this person is described as ho pistos oikonomos ho phronimos (the faithful house manager, the sensible). These words are found in a different setting than they are in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, for Luke puts Jesus speaking them at a different time than what is found in Matthew and Mark. However, Luke claims that the things he wrote in his Gospel were put in a chronological order, whereas Matthew was obviously following a theme of thought, and Mark seems to have just quoted (loosely, with a variation of descriptions) from Matthew’s account. So, we don’t know if Jesus gave the same illustration on more than one occasion, or if the words in Matthew (and Mark) were just written out of chronological order. However, they all appear to be quoting Jesus’ same illustration or parable.

And notice that in Luke’s account, more is added to Jesus’ prophecy. Luke 12:47, 48 says, ‘The slave who knows what his master expects and still doesn’t prepare [the food] or do what he wants, will be lashed with a whip many times. Now, the one who doesn’t understand and does things that he deserves a whipping for will be beaten with few. So, all those who are given much will have a lot expected of them. And those who are put in charge over much will have a lot asked from them.’

These additional words of Jesus emphasize the need for the ‘house managers’ to continue providing nourishing spiritual food of the deeper things of God’s Word, not just ‘Sunday sermons’ on ‘repenting over bad deeds, having faith in God, or learning about baptisms, [spiritual] appointments, the resurrection of the dead, or the judgments on this age’ (Hebrews 6:1, 2)… the ‘milk’ of the word of God.

Another question that is raised in the latter part of Luke’s account is: Who are those ‘who don’t understand’ and what will their outcome be? We will likely have to await future events to unravel the full meaning of this prophecy.

The Ten Virgins

The five wise virgins of Matthew 25 were only identified as such and rewarded after the Lord arrived. And they are thereafter invited to attend the Lord’s wedding banquet, because they are spiritually awake and ready! So, notice that they are invited after the master has taken his bride. The fact that the virgins are not the bride is confirmed in the Aramaic targums of Matthew’s text, which say that the bridegroom arrives with his bride. This outcome (of being invited inside the banquet) is quite different from that of the five ‘virgins’ who were less prepared (and notice that they weren’t killed, but they just weren’t allowed to enter the wedding banquet).

Notice that this sequence of events is exactly the same as that of an ancient Jewish wedding. For, first the groom would go to the bride’s home to accept her from her family (which is the wedding), then they both travel to meet their friends to celebrate the at the wedding banquet. So, the banquet is not the wedding, and the virgins who are invited are not the bride!

Also, note the similarities in Jesus’ words that lead up to another (parallel) account; the one of the faithful slave, as found at Luke 12:35, 36. It says there, ‘So, wrap on your sashes [for work], light your lamps, and act like men who are awaiting their master’s return from his wedding; so that when he arrives and knocks, they can open [the doors] to him right away.’

Obviously, there is enough similarity between these accounts to conclude safely that all these parables are discussing the same slaves or virgins and the same period in time.

So, to recap: Notice that the wedding has already occurred and that the slaves or virgins are awaiting the coming of the Lord and his bride so they can enter the wedding banquet.

In Jesus’ parable of the ten virgins, all have fallen (spiritually) asleep during a dark period, as they await the Lord’s arrival. But fully half of the group has retained enough ‘oil’ to keep their lamps from going out, and some are awake and watching at his arrival (not his nearness or parousia, but his arrival or elthon).

The clear indication from all of the above, is that those virgins who are considered ‘wise’ are the ones who keep looking for him and awaiting the Lord’s arrival. But ‘those who just don’t care’ have stopped looking, waiting, and being prepared to enter his wedding banquet.

However, the reward for the righteous (being appointed over all the Lord’s possessions), as the next parable shows, is received after they enter the wedding banquet. So, since no person or group of people can enter the wedding banquet unless they have proven themselves ready and faithful, and no one can really claim to be this ‘faithful and sensible slave’ until they are proclaimed such by the Lord Jesus after his arrival to bring God’s Kingdom to the earth. So, no it hasn’t happened yet!

Similarities to Revelation

There are also striking similarities between the story of the ten virgins and the account found at Revelation 19:7-9, which says, ‘Let’s rejoice, shout in joy, and glorify him, because it’s time for the Lamb’s wedding! His bride has prepared herself and she has been found as worthy to be dressed in bright, clean, fine linen. This fine linen represents the righteous actions of the Holy Ones. Then he told me, Write this: Those who are invited to the Lamb’s wedding reception are blest.’

So, notice that the blest are those who (like the virgins in Matthew 25) are not the bride, but those who are invited to attend the wedding banquet of the Lamb. So they appear to be the same as the virgins or faithful slaves of Jesus’ parable.

If you read the entire Revelation, you will see that the sequence of events exactly follows the order of Matthew 24 and 25. For after providing a warning to local congregations of that era (which likely portends messages to religious groups in our day), we read of the ride of the ‘four horsemen.’ Then unfaithful Christian religion is destroyed (Revelation 18), which seems to parallel ‘the great time of difficulty’ of Matthew’s prophecy, followed by ‘the Lamb’s wedding’ (Revelation 19), and then comes the Battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16 & 19).

The Three Slaves

The next parable in Matthew 25 (the one about the three slaves who were entrusted with the master’s belongings after he went away) seems once again, to apply particularly to Jesus prophecy of the ‘faithful and sensible slave.’ For notice the wording there (Matthew 25:21), ‘His master told him, You’ve done well, good and faithful slave! You were faithful over a few things, so I will appoint you over many things. Enjoy the favor of your master.’

However, in this parable there were three slaves, and two of them have been faithful in taking care of the (spiritual) treasures that the Lord gave them, while the third did nothing with it. And again, we notice that the first two slaves were rewarded upon the Lord’s ‘coming’ (gr. erchetai)… not his ‘nearness’ (gr. parousia). And their reward was being appointed over earthly cities (indicating that their life and their assignment is to be earthly).

And finally (in Matthew 25), immediately after the slaves have been rewarded or rejected, we read of the separating of the ‘sheep and goats.’ So, although those who are invited to the wedding banquet of the Lamb are clearly not the bride, they also seem to be different from those who are identified as the sheep in the last half of Matthew 25.

Conclusions

Although many religions teach that the Anointed (gr. Christon or Christs) are the Lamb’s Bride who will rule with Jesus in heaven, this conclusion doesn’t appear to be correct. For, being invited to the Lamb’s wedding banquet is clearly not the same as being invited to heaven to become the bride. Remember that in the parable of the virgins, the Lord first takes his bride, then he returns to select those who will enter his banquet.

So, this wedding banquet could well be an earthly affair, and those who are invited are the slaves who have proven alert, prepared, and faithful. And they will then be given earthly privileges and assigned as rulers ‘over cities’ according to their abilities and the amount of increase each has returned for the ‘coins’ that Jesus has entrusted to them.

It was also recently pointed out to us that the words of Jesus at John 15:15 prove that the faithful slave can’t be the ‘anointed,’ who surely include Jesus’ faithful Apostles, because there it is written that he said to them, ‘I’m not calling you slaves, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is doing. I’m calling you friends, because I’ve told you everything that I heard from my Father.’

Of course, these are just semantics, so we will not be dogmatic. However, it is interesting that rather than the anointed providing food for the sheep, notice how Luke quotes Jesus as seemingly saying that the faithful slave provides food for the anointed. For at Luke 12:42 we read: ‘Who really is the faithful manager of the house, the sensible one who his master puts over his faithful friends, to provide all their food at the right time?’

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Future history. Who can say with any assurance what is going to happen tomorrow? Popular psychics of recent years, of course, have tried, for there are big bucks to be made from a gullible public if you can hit some paltry percentage of your guesses. Tell ‘em what musician will be sleeping with what movie star next month, and the TV talk shows will throw significant amounts of cash at you and promote your latest book. Street corner gypsies will read your palm if you’ll grease theirs, telling you what they think you want to hear about your future. Or go uptown to the “young lions of the merchants of Tarshish,” excuse me, the financial prognosticators of Wall Street, where fortunes aren’t told, they’re made, by predicting what will happen to other people’s money-i.e., making educated guesses.

None of this is future history. There is no certainty that any of these predictions will come to pass, and their accuracy doesn’t correlate to how much money you pay for them. The vaunted Nostradamus made a tidy little sum publishing his cryptic quatrains-considered great entertainment by the cognoscenti of his day-but no one acted on them; no one changed the course of their life because of what they said. How could they? They’re vague to a fault, apparently the result of a great deal of effort to make them precisely that. The best you could do with them was to scan the events of the day trying to find something that sort of lined up. Occasionally, something did. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

But future history? No. Even if they’re right sometimes, you can’t trust Jeanne Dixon, Nostradamus, Madam Sabrina of 42^nd Street, or even your broker at Morgan Stanley to be as accurate as next Wednesday’s newspaper. (You can’t trust the newspaper either, but let’s not go there.) History, ideally, is a true account of events that took place in the past. You can trust it, learn from it, build your future upon it. Wise men study history so that they might avoid the mistakes of their forebears. They look at what they did right, and emulate them, and look at what they did wrong, and do something else. History is a stern schoolmaster. Those who ignore its lessons are doomed to repeat the class.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that we do ignore those lessons. We always have. Solomon nailed it: “That which has been will be; that which is done will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Oh, sure, we have technology the ancients couldn’t have dreamed of, computers, frozen pizza, and flush toilets, but human nature hasn’t changed one whit. Given the chance, we will chase after everything under heaven trying unsuccessfully to fill the void within us that only God can fill, just like Solomon said. We can look at history and try to figure out where we went wrong. We can peer ahead, hoping to avoid the disaster we suspect is lurking there. Or we can choose to live blithely in the present, willingly ignorant of both the past and the future. But we will never know peace until we come to terms with the One who holds the past and the future in the palm of His hand and calls it all now.

God knows how we’re built-after all, He built us. He’s aware that we have needs, and that the highest of these is the need to know Him. It’s just the way we’re wired. Yahshua, quoting Moses, put it like this: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) Perhaps that explains why the Word of God is replete with history-both past and future. God wants us to know Him, to have a relationship with Him, to understand who He is, what He’s doing, and what He plans to do in our future. Because we live within the constraints of time, He-who does not-must meet us within the framework of historical reality if He is to meet us at all.

Our relationship to God, time-wise, is like watching the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day. Not on TV, you understand, but freezing our toes off in person in Pasadena. We are on the ground; we can see the float right in front of us, and we have a clear memory of the marching band that just passed. If we listen very carefully, we can hear the klop klop of horses’ hooves on Colorado Boulevard, telling us something about the immediate future: there’s an equestrian unit coming. Beyond that, only our knowledge of Rose Parades of years past can give us a clue, and then only in the most general of terms, as to what’s coming in the more distant future. That is, unless we have the official Tournament of Roses program. With the written schedule in hand, we’ll know that after the horses and the float from that big insurance company, the Shriners in their funny hats and miniature automobiles will arrive. The program helps us appreciate the effort that went into putting on such a grand event, and, on a more practical level, will let us make sure we’re not stuck standing in line at a hot-chocolate vendor’s cart when the guys in the little cars show up.

But while we’re down on the ground, watching life moment to moment, there is someone above us who sees the entire parade route from start to finish in one eye-gulp. This guy, from his lofty perch in the gondola of the Fuji blimp, witnesses every float, marching band, equestrian team, and even the fellows in the little cars-all at the same time. The entire parade is present tense to him.

All of this has a direct parallel in the parade of life-the march of human history. We live our lives one day at a time, trying to learn from the past and wondering what the future will hold. All the while, there is a God in heaven who sees the whole thing, end to end. This same God has given us His “parade program,” the Bible, so we’ll remember what’s past and have an idea what’s coming. Some of us have been watching the parade so long, we think it goes on forever, but the program states quite plainly that it does not. It had a beginning, and it will have an end. We can hear the music of the last marching band as it makes its way toward us. We can see the last float coming up the street. The end is almost here.

Look again at your program. See all those ads? Yes, I know. Most everybody ignores them. But they tell us something important: there is life outside the parade. The event happens on New Year’s Day, but we still have the whole year ahead of us, 364 more days to work and play, to laugh and love, to walk hand in hand with our Father, wide-eyed in awe at his greatness. The parade we’re watching is the whole of human history, but it’s only the first day. When the last float passes, when the music fades, it will merely mark the end of the beginning. Eternity lies before us.

As I hinted earlier, revealing what will happen is one of the few tools God has to prove his deity to us without forcing us to worship him, and that is something He doesn’t want to do. That may come as a surprise, but it makes perfect sense. What’s the one thing the Creator lacks within himself? Companionship, fellowship. Let’s face it-it would be really hard to take God to court and try Him by a jury of his peers. He has no peers. Who knows how many eternities God thought about this before he started, but at some point He decided to do something about it. He started out by creating angels. (That’s a guess, of course; SF3.) These wonderful creatures were built to last forever, and they served God in the spirit realm. I believe that although they had the capacity for loyalty, they did not have the capacity for love, not really.

Eventually, one of their number, the most splendiferous angel of them all, became filled with pride, grew jealous of God, and rebelled, drawing away a third of the angelic host with him. Thus Ezekiel reports of Satan: “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty…. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you…. You became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God… Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor….” (Ezekiel 28:12,15,17)

Isaiah describes it like this: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’” (Isaiah 14:12-14) “I will be like the Most High?” God was looking for companionship, not competition. This wasn’t exactly what He had in mind. Then John describes how Satan got his following: “His [the Dragon's] tail drew a third of the stars of heaven [a metaphor for angels] and threw them to the earth.” (Revelation 12:4)

I’m pretty sure none of this surprised God. It did, however, prove that angelic beings weren’t going to fill the bill as God’s companions. Instead, He would create an order of beings that, while lower than the angels, were made in His own “image and likeness”- beings with the capacity for love, not just loyalty. Their relationship with God would be different from the angels’ because their nature would be different.

But that would require some infrastructure. God converted some of His energy into matter-something that had never been done before (SF8)-and built a universe, complete with galaxies, solar systems, and planets, so His companions would have a nice place to live. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that man is the end product of God’s creative process, the only reason He made the cosmos. This is not some arrogant religious-whacko theory akin to the “earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe” nonsense that almost got Galileo burned at the stake. But think about it. Does God need galaxies? What good do super-novae or quasars do Him? He lived quite nicely forever without them. We, on the other hand, need the heavier elements formed in stars for our very existence, for we are physical beings as well as spiritual, made quite literally of “the dust of the earth.” The wonders of creation are not so much an indicator of God’s greatness as they are a measure of his love.

And that, God’s love, is the key to companionship. The capacity to love is to some extent what gives us “the image and likeness” of God, for God is love. You see, love is the one thing that cannot be forced, even by an omnipotent deity, because if it is, it’s no longer love but something else. In that, it’s fundamentally different from obedience, loyalty, or even worship. It can’t be compelled, bought, stolen, held for ransom, or even manufactured; it can only be earned. It can’t be sold or bartered; it can only be given away. And here’s the rub: the capacity to love requires the capacity not to love. If the object of God’s affection cannot reject Him, then accepting Him is a meaningless concept.

That brings us back to God’s little paradox. How can he have a loving relationship with us-His would-be companions-if he leaves us no choice but to accept and reciprocate his love? If we have no choice, our love is nothing more than obedience; but if we do have a choice, our obedience demonstrates our love.

So He gave us a choice, a very simple way to demonstrate our trust, our love for Him, in the Garden of Eden. He said, “Do anything you want, but don’t eat fruit from this one tree, kids.” Then God left us alone for ten minutes-or ten thousand years; it doesn’t really matter-and we rejected His love. We woofed down the forbidden fruit like Oliver Twist with a bowl full of Fruit Loops. That didn’t surprise Him either, but I’m sure it saddened Him. Knowing what was going to happen, He already had a remedy ready, an antidote for the poison we had so eagerly consumed: He would divest Himself of His glory, enter our history as a mortal man, and offer Himself up as a sacrifice. And through this sacrifice, we could again become God’s companions, readmitted to His fellowship, just like Adam was before he chose to walk out on God.

But the remedy-the redeemer-didn’t just waltz into the Garden that afternoon and make everything swell again. It would be some time before He physically made his appearance. God wanted to reestablish a bond of trust with his companions first. So what was the first thing He did? He uttered prophecies to all the participants in the first sin:

“Yahweh said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel….’” By tempting the first humans to doubt Yahweh’s word, Satan had made himself God’s mortal enemy. So Yahweh informs him that a descendant of these same humans-and specifically of the woman-would ultimately be his undoing.

“To the woman He said: ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you….’” Yahweh had created the man and the woman as equal partners. But the woman would, due to her key role in the first sin, henceforth be “ruled” by her husband, and women from that day forward would be frustrated in their desire to wield the authority that men held. “Women’s rights activists” must blame Eve, not Adam-and certainly not Yahweh-for the injustice they find in the world.

But the man didn’t get off Scot free. “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ (Genesis 3:14-20) The close, intimate fellowship that Adam had enjoyed with his Creator had been broken. His sin had separated him from his God, and as a result he had become mortal-his body would now grow old and die.

Three players, three predictions. Prophecy Principle Number One: pay attention to the object of the prophecy. God said something different to the serpent, to Adam, and to Eve. Determining who the prophecy is about will keep us from jumping to erroneous conclusions-sometimes. It’s not always this easy to tell who the subject is. For example, in the passages about Satan quoted above, Isaiah had begun by speaking out against the King of Babylon; in Ezekiel’s tirade, the prophet was hammering the prince of Tyre. In each case God shifted the subject in mid-prophecy. Earthly kings were used as metaphors for Satan. We need to stay on our toes.

Only God knows the future, because He alone exists independent of time. And He, from the very beginning, has shown a willingness to tell us what’s coming. Why, then, don’t most of us know what to expect? Why do we worry, fret, plan, and scheme? Why do we hedge our bets-compromise with a world system we know is flawed and corrupt? It’s because we don’t appreciate, deep down inside, that our Creator God actually is in control.

A few examples will serve to demonstrate that a solid faith backed with a knowledge of prophecy could give us a degree of peace most of us never experience. “He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.’ But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.” (Luke 18:31-34) If we knew what God had planned, if we really understood where we stood in Yahweh’s grand scheme, we wouldn’t sweat the small stuff. We could cheerfully declare with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

On a practical level, correctly applying Biblical prophecies to our lives can save us from unnecessary pain. Yahshua warned Jerusalem, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44) By the time Titus besieged the city in 70 A.D., thousands of Christians, familiar with this prophecy, had already left town. Those who stayed died or were enslaved.

As if to make my point for me, Paul writes, “Now all these things [i.e., Israel's misfortunes in the wilderness] happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” (I Corinthians 10:11) If we study to learn the mindset of God and familiarize ourselves with his prophetic plan, we will be in a position to live according to His will in a sinful world, avoiding the coming wrath: we too can get out of Jerusalem before the Romans show up-if we know what God has predicted.

The study of prophecies that have already been fulfilled can go a long way toward correcting the misconception that this world is out of God’s control. Beyond that, they will tell us a great deal about how Yahweh intends to bring about His prophecies that have not yet come to pass (which, after all, is the subject of this book). Prophecy Principle Number Two: Yahweh doesn’t change. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Thus if we can determine how His prophecies were fulfilled in the past, we will be in a better position to predict how they will be fulfilled in the future. Though “His ways are higher than our ways,” though His judgments are unsearchable and His methods “past finding out,” the fact remains that He went to a great deal of trouble to see to it that we had information, and lots of it, that described our future. It’s there for a reason. It’s there because He loves us. When He said we’re supposed to “comfort one another with these words,” what words was He talking about? They were words of prophecy!

In fact, Yahweh works both sides of the street, vindicating the words of His true prophets by bringing their prognostications to pass while confounding the false prophets who presume to speak their own mind in His name. “Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and He who formed you from the womb: ‘I am Yahweh, who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone, who spreads abroad the earth by Myself, who frustrates the signs of the babblers, and drives diviners mad, who turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolishness; who confirms the word of His servant, and performs the counsel of His messengers.” (Isaiah 44:24-26)

John put it like this: “For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” (Revelation 22:18-19)

Okay, got it. (1) Don’t attribute false doctrine to Yahweh (which, by the way, is the real meaning of the Third Commandment), (2) don’t ascribe deity to false gods, (3) don’t add to or subtract from His revelation, and (4) don’t deny the truth of God’s Word-or you’re toast. Now you know why I’m so careful about putting the real thing in a bold font. My ramblings may help you understand what God meant, but don’t confuse them with Scripture.

Consider what else Moses said: “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29) Moses realized that Yahweh didn’t tell us everything-our feeble minds couldn’t handle the strain. We’re on a “need to know” basis: what He did tell us, He told us for a reason. “All the words of this law” boils down to this, if I’m not mistaken: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one! You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Deuteronomy 6:4, Leviticus 19:1 Yahshua insisted that all of the Law and the Prophets hung upon these two interrelated concepts. Did you catch the connection? God reveals things to us so that we might love Him, or more to the point, return His love.

Being called as a prophet of God had its downside, besides the obvious problem of getting stoned-in the literal sense-if you announced something that God didn’t actually reveal. The sad fact was that God’s message was often unpopular, especially among the ruling elite. And since they often didn’t know the One who’d sent the bad news, they attacked the messenger instead. Some things never change. Yahshua Himself pointed this out to the scribes and Pharisees of His day in his own meek and gentle way: “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:33-36; see also Luke 11:49-51) He sure had a way with words. Murder had been a time-honored way of silencing the truth from the first generation onward: The Zechariah He speaks of here is not the prophet, but the father of John the Baptist. Yahshua’s prediction, by the way, was fulfilled within that generation-less than forty years later-when Titus tore Jerusalem apart, stone by stone.

Prophets as a class had it rough. Jeremiah preached for forty years. Nobody listened. They finally threw him into a cesspool. Isaiah had a long and illustrious career, capped, legend has it, by getting himself sawn in two. But occupational hazards notwithstanding, God’s messengers felt compelled to tell the truth, regardless of the consequences. Amos put it like this: “Surely Yahweh does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? Yahweh has spoken! Who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7- Later, Peter and John, when told to shut up and go home, remarked, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you [religious leaders] more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)

For all their dedication and courage, the prophets’ role was temporary, like our program for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Between every line they wrote was the understanding that the day would come when the light of reality would make their words seem pale by comparison, like a candle outdoors on a brilliant summer’s day. That doesn’t lessen the significance of their service, however, for without their words, many of us would not survive to see God’s bright tomorrow. Paul said it best: “Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13:8-13)

None of the spiritual gifts are designed to last beyond our mortal bodies. But love is. Prophecies will fail? Yes. They were meant to guide us in this life, not beyond. Besides, the shocking truth is, God doesn’t always keep his word. Before you stone me, let me point out that there are several times in scripture where God clearly didn’t do what he told His prophet He’d do, and the reason was always the same: mercy. Prophecy Principle Number Three: God’s wrath is always tempered by his love; He postpones judgment till the last possible moment because He does not desire any of us to perish. He alone knows when our sin has reached the point of no return. Compare Genesis 15:15-16-”Now as for you [Abraham], you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”-to Numbers 21:23-24, some four hundred years later: “So Sihon [king of the Amorites] gathered all his people together and went out against Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. Then Israel defeated him with the edge of the sword, and took possession of his land.”

Because of his mercy, God didn’t wipe out a rebellious nation of Israel and start over with Moses, as He threatened to do. And He didn’t destroy Nineveh in forty days, as He proclaimed He would through Jonah. Instead, he showed mercy, patience, love-in the first case because the prophet interceded for the people, and in the second case because the people repented-buying their city another century of life.

We have no idea how deep the river of God’s mercy runs. But here’s another hint. Ever wonder why the oldest man in the Bible, Methuselah, lived so long? He was the grandfather of Noah, and he died (at the extremely ripe old age of 969) the same year as the flood. This kind of “coincidence” begs us to dig beneath the surface to figure out what God may have been up to. Clue number one: he was the son of Enoch, a godly man with an intriguing story of his own-the second man listed in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. We’ll look at his story a little later. Could it be that Enoch named his baby boy something prophetically significant? At first glance, it seems not. Methuselah (Heb. Methuwselach) comes from two words, math meaning man, i.e., adult, and shelach meaning dart or spear. Not much help. But if we look at the primitive roots for those two words, we discover something provocative. Math is from mathay, meaning “to extend,” as in, “a man’s years are extended beyond those of a child.” Shelach, “spear,” comes from shalach, “to send away or cast out, hence, to forsake.” Some Hebrew scholars suggest that his name could be rendered, “when he dies (that is, at the extension of his years), it shall be sent.” Was Enoch saying his son’s life would personify the extension of man’s time on earth before they were cast out? Pretty thin, you say. Perhaps, but the guy did live longer than anyone else, before or since. I’ve come to distrust coincidences. I’ll put my money on God’s mercy any day.

Luke records this story about Yahshua: “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of Yahweh is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh.’ Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:16-21)

The quote was from the prophet Isaiah, but Yahshua had stopped and closed the book in mid-sentence. Isaiah had gone on to say: “…and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that He may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:2-3) Why didn’t Yahshua quote the whole thing? Because only the first part was being fulfilled there and then-during His first-century advent. By quoting this portion of the passage, He had claimed to be the promised Messiah (”He has anointed Me…”) but by cutting it short, He was saying, in effect, “I’m not going to do all these things at this time.” He was demonstrating Prophecy Principle Number Four: peaks and valleys-the concept of split fulfillment.

Where I live, the terrain is quite hilly. There are places where you can stand and see four or five ridges, one right after the other. But you can’t see what’s between them. The only way to tell how deep or wide the valleys are is to go down into them, to “live through them.” Prophecy is often like that. The seer is shown a series of mountaintops, but he can’t tell whether they’re all clumped together or whether there are deep valleys of time in between them. In this case, Isaiah saw two groups of events that would take place a couple of thousand years apart, but he didn’t know their fulfillment would be separate. He saw everything but the timing. When Christ came the first time-laying aside His glory-He brought us the good news of His salvation, healing and freeing us from the bonds of sin. But when He returns, He will have assumed His glory once again, wreaking righteous vengeance on those who have chosen to reject Him and comforting those, especially among the Jews, who have accepted His gift of love.

The principle of peaks and valleys caused a great deal of confusion in Yahshua’s day. Even His disciples thought, at first, that He had come to overthrow Rome and set up His kingdom on earth. But it should not be a source of confusion for us today. With the benefit of hindsight, we can know what they did not: we need not assume that a prophetic passage will be fulfilled all at once. God, rather, will do things in His own sweet time, and in His own inimitable fashion.

To clarify the principle, let’s look at one more example, the prophecies concerning the downfall of Babylon. This was no mean city. About fifty miles south of present-day Baghdad, it was originally founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah. It was the premier city of the post-deluvian world, rising and declining in successive waves, as great cities often do. In 626 B.C., Nabopolassar the Chaldean threw off the yoke of Assyria (there are a bunch of Biblical prophecies predicting that, too) and rebuilt the city. His son Nebuchadnezzar II became its greatest monarch, dispensing God’s judgment upon an apostate and rebellious Judah in 586. Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, interpreted by the Jewish captive Daniel, pinpointed Babylon as the first of four great gentile world powers.

But before Nebuchadnezzar had drawn his first breath, Babylon’s fall had already been predicted by the prophets of Israel. Isaiah, writing over 150 years before the fall of Jerusalem, had said: “Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not regard silver; and as for gold, they will not delight in it. Also their bows will dash the young men to pieces, and they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye will not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation; nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there. But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. The hyenas will howl in their citadels, and jackals in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.” (Isaiah 13:17-22)

He went on to say, “‘For I will rise up against them,’ says Yahweh of hosts, ‘and cut off from Babylon the name and remnant, and offspring and posterity,’ says Yahweh. ‘I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and marshes of muddy water; I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,’ says Yahweh of hosts.” (Isaiah 14:22-23) Another prophet predicted: “‘They shall not take from you [Babylon] a stone for a corner nor a stone for a foundation, but you shall be desolate forever,’ says Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 51:26)

So between the two of them, God predicted that the city of Babylon-then approaching its glory days-would be destroyed as completely as Sodom and Gomorrah had been, never to be inhabited again, even by wandering Bedouins. It would be both a home for desert creatures and a swamp-seemingly a glaring contradiction.

The key, besides God’s omniscience of course, is the principle of peaks and valleys, split fulfillment. This is how the history unfolded. Half a century after the fall of Judah, as the Persians under Cyrus pondered ways to breach the formidable walls of the city, a couple of Babylonian deserters wandered into their camp. They pointed out that one of the things that made the place siege-proof was that the Euphrates ran under the wall. Perhaps the Persians could too. Cyrus conferred with his counselor, Chrysantas, who opined that if they could divert the river, they could waltz in and take the place without firing a shot, more or less. The course of the river had tended to shift from time to time anyway, wandering off and losing itself in marshes to the west of the city. Why not divert the Euphrates with a huge trench? Cyrus did just that, and on October 13, 539 B.C., he took Babylon while its overconfident regent drank himself under the table, celebrating, no doubt, the fact that nobody would ever get over his wall-the strongest city wall on earth at the time. (That story is recorded in Daniel 5.) Interestingly, though the Persian commander, Cyrus, was credited with conquering the city, Daniel says that his ally, Darius the Mede (a.k.a. the Gobryas mentioned in contemporary inscriptions as the man who defeated Babylon without a battle), took control of the kingdom, just as Isaiah had predicted.

But the prophecies were a long way from being fulfilled. Xerxes (a.k.a. Ahasuerus, the Persian king whose queen was Esther) sacked the place in 478 B.C. while quelling the rebellion of Bel-shimmani and Shamath-eriba. Alexander the Great took it from the Persians in 331 and planned to restore it to its former glory, but he died before he could do much, at the ripe old age of 33. Coincidence? If you say so.

The infighting among Alexander’s generals following his death eventually landed Babylon in the hands of the Seleucids, who took one look at the estimate for rebuilding the crumbling ruin and opted for a brand new capital city instead, Seleucia, forty miles north on the Tigris River-effectively doing for Babylon what Interstate 40 did for Route 66. Incredibly, they didn’t use any of its massive stones that had been quarried at such great expense; apparently the marsh that had inundated much of the city made them too hard to haul away. Babylonian bricks have been found elsewhere, but not its stones. Jeremiah was right.

Eventually, the ever-fickle Euphrates played its part again and changed course, leaving the city high and dry. By the time of Caesar Augustus it was virtually uninhabited; Strabo lamented, “The great city has become a desert.” It was used as a walled hunting preserve by the Persians, and a few die-hards struggled to keep the temple of Bel going until about A.D. 75. But even this wouldn’t last; the once mighty seat of Chaldean power was swallowed by the desert, awaiting the archeologist’s spade. Just like Sodom and Gomorrah.

These days, Babylon is of interest only to historians and megalomaniacs. Saddam Hussein, who would have died happy if he could have gone down in history as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, actually rebuilt a palace on its original Babylonian foundation between 1982 and 1989. But nobody lives there-nobody was even allowed in to see it for over a decade after the first Gulf War.

Bottom line? As unlikely as the prophecies sounded when Isaiah and Jeremiah (and Ezekiel, Habakkuk, etc.) penned them, they came to pass exactly as God had said they would. The “peaks” they saw were spread out over seven hundred years, but it all came to pass. “But what,” you may ask, “ever happened to ‘Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged’…? Seven centuries sure sounds like ‘prolonged’ to me.” Forget the infrastructure for a minute. If you consider that the government of Babylon under the Chaldeans lasted a mere forty-seven years after they destroyed Jerusalem, you’ll have to admit that its demise was rapid indeed.

The famous portrait of George Washington that hangs in the White House, the one that served as a prototype for the engraving on our one dollar bill, was painted by Gilbert Stuart. Most people don’t realize that Stuart painted three portraits of the first President from life, and he kept an unfinished one for himself to use as a model for future work-much to Martha’s chagrin. Whenever he needed money, he’d crank out another Gilbert Stuart “original” of Washington. He painted over sixty of ‘em before he was through. Different backgrounds, different costumes, but always the same half-smiling tight-jawed face. Likewise, God has painted many portraits of things to come-different details, varying points of view, but all based on the same reality.

Peter said, “…No prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (II Peter 1:20-21) We can therefore expect any significant prophetic event to be examined in several different passages, often by several different prophets. God does not ask us to take any man’s word for anything. Rather, his Holy Spirit instructs different men to reveal different things about the same future event. Only when we examine each facet of the diamond do we gain a full appreciation for its beauty. This redundancy-this system of back-ups-also goes a long way toward ensuring that God’s Word survives our sometimes woefully inadequate (and sometimes flat-out wrong) translations.

We’ve looked briefly at Babylon, which was taken to task by Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, Zechariah, and the Sons of Korah. Similar seven-lane highways could be followed to Nineveh, Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Phoenicia, Damascus, Ethiopia, Arabia, Elam, and yes, Israel-especially Israel. Daniel in the Old Testament and John in the New Testament apparently saw some of the same events, though with radically different imagery. This kind of redundancy is ubiquitous in scriptural prophecy.

In similar fashion, a prophet of God was often given the same information more than once. We see Joseph dreaming about his brothers’ sheaves bowing down to his, and later the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down to him. (Gee, I wonder what that could mean.) Joseph recognized the “Sesame Street Factor” at once when he heard about Pharaoh’s dreams: “Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do….’ The dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.” (Genesis 41:25, 32) In the same way, Daniel was given several very different visions, many years apart, describing the times of the gentiles. God clearly doesn’t mind repeating himself if it helps us understand what He’s trying to tell us. We can expect the same rule to apply when we look at prophecies as yet unfulfilled.

Related to this concept is Prophecy Principle Number Six: God often reveals different aspects of a future event separately. When the police interview the witnesses to a crime, they expect to hear slightly divergent descriptions of the scene. One witness says the bad guy was wearing blue jeans. Another says he had on a red shirt and a baseball cap. One says he saw the perp waving a gun; another says he saw the guy throw something black into the bushes. This kind of testimony is complementary, not contradictory. It has the ring of truth. As a matter of fact, if the accounts are identical they smell to investigators like collusion, an attempt to hide the real story. In the same way, Biblical prophets are merely telling us what they saw at the scene of the crime. They never claim to have told us everything; on the contrary, they themselves often seem unaware of the significance of what they’ve witnessed.

It’s like the old story of the four blind men and the elephant. The first one grabs the tail and says the pachyderm is like a rope with a frayed end. The second hugs a leg and concludes that the thing is some sort of tree. The third feels the trunk, and pronounces the animal to be a species of large snake. And the fourth feels his way down the elephant’s side and announces that the beast is a mighty wall. Though they seem to be in complete disagreement, they’re actually all correct, but nobody’s got the full picture. Prophecy is like that.

I suppose the best example of this principle is the body of prophecies concerning the Messiah. There are several hundred of them in the Old Testament. Where did the prophets say He would hail from? Micah said he would come from Bethlehem Ephrathah-David’s home town, a few miles south of Jerusalem. Hosea, on the other hand, predicted that he would be “called out of Egypt.” Isaiah, not to be outdone, referred to Him as a “shoot [netzer] out of the stem of Jesse”-the same word being the origin of the name of the Galilean town of Nazareth, where Yahshua grew up; thus Matthew points out that He was expected to be a Nazarene. The three prophecies are seemingly contradictory, yet they all fit the human history of Yahshua like a glove (and, by the way, nobody else that we know of).

How about Messiah’s mission? Isaiah says, “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… He was despised, and we did not esteem Him…. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. (Isaiah 53:3, 7- This is one of many predictions of a Messiah who would suffer and die. If words mean anything at all, there is no way to make these verses apply to the nation of Israel and the trials they’ve endured, though the Jews have been trying valiantly to do that very thing for the last two thousand years. But Isaiah’s prophecy fits the life and death of Yahshua so well that to explain them away or ignore them is nothing short of intellectual suicide.

It’s far easier for the Jews, of course, to take the “reigning Messiah” passages literally. The same prophet says, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will perform this.” (Isaiah 9:6-7) When Isaiah talks out of this side of his mouth, everybody responds, “Yea, verily! Bring it on!” But we’re looking at two advents of the same Messiah, two sides of the same coin. You can’t spend one side and keep the other. And so it is with as-yet-unfulfilled prophecy. We must be prepared to deal with seemingly contradictory evidence.

This leads us to Prophecy Principle Number Seven, the “That’s Impossible” factor. God sometimes progressively narrows the field through successive revelations until literal fulfillment is virtually impossible; and only then does He bring it to pass. Yahweh delights in doing what can’t be done: you know, raising the dead, parting the Red sea, making the sun stand still, stuff like that; you can almost hear Him chuckling, “If this were easy, any god could do it.”

Figuring out these conundrums usually requires some digging, but the gems we can find are beautiful indeed. At issue here are faith and information. If we see an apparent contradiction in scripture, we need to have faith that God doesn’t make stupid blunders; No, it’s us-we just don’t have enough information yet.

My favorite Scriptural “impossibility” is the lineage of the Messiah. It begins in the Garden of Eden. In the Genesis 3 passage quoted above, God began by intimating that sin would eventually be overcome via the human race, the “seed of the woman.” That rules out orangutans and amoebas. After the flood, Noah narrowed it down to one of his three sons, Shem: “And [Noah] said: “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem….” (Genesis 9:26-27) Later, God told Abraham, a descendent of Shem, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3) The line passed through Abraham’s son Isaac (not his half-brother Ishmael): “Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.” (Genesis 17:19) Then his son Jacob, the second-born of twins, was given the nod: “And Yahweh said to [Rebekah]: ‘Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.’” (Genesis 25:23)

The patriarch Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, identified Judah-the fourth of his twelve sons-as bearer of the Messianic line: “Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [‘he to whom it-i.e., the scepter-belongs'] comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.” (Genesis 49:8-10)

Let’s pause and take a breath. So far, God has narrowed the field five times (not including the de facto cut at the flood) effectively eliminating millions of people from consideration as Messiah’s ancestor. Note that the prophecies are getting more specific and detailed as time progresses. Note also that not once did God choose the chronological firstborn son to carry the Messianic torch (though listed second, Japheth was Shem’s older brother-see Genesis 10:21), as would have been expected by the people involved, reminding us that manmade traditions don’t mean a whole lot to Yahweh.

Also, there’s an interesting prophetic twist about Judah’s scepter-the symbol of royal authority. Israel’s first king, Saul, was from the tribe of Benjamin, not Judah. But once David succeeded him, 640 years after the prophecy was spoken, the throne of promise was never occupied by a king from any Jewish tribe other than Judah. The wording of the prophecy was precise: he didn’t say that no other tribe would hold the scepter, only that it wouldn’t ever depart from Judah. (Herod’s clan, the first kings since the Babylonian captivity, don’t count. They were not, properly speaking, Jewish, but were Idumaeans-descendants of Esau-and were placed and maintained in power by a foreign gentile government.) Yahshua the Messiah was a Jew, of the tribe of Judah. He could trace his lineage all the way back. Technically, his claim to the throne of David is what ultimately got Him crucified. But within a generation of His death, the genealogical records of the Jews were up in smoke with the rest of Jerusalem. This means that after A.D. 70, and certainly after A.D. 135 when the Romans came back and finished the job, no Jew could prove-or even demonstrate-his lineage. From that time on, it was impossible to present a legitimate, verifiable Messianic claim.

Okay, back to the prophecies. King David was the next to be pinpointed as someone in the Messianic line. Nathan the prophet came to him and said, “Yahweh tells you [David] that He will make you a house [a royal dynasty]. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be My son.” Now here’s the kicker: “If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.” (II Samuel 7:11-16)

Sufficiently confused? You should be. Is God referring to David’s son Solomon, or to the ultimate King, the Messiah? The answer is yes. Prophecy Principle Number Eight: there can be both near and far fulfillments for a single prophecy. It’s maddeningly hard to sort out sometimes, but God likes to put interrelated truths into the Biblical Blender and hit frappe. Let’s look at the details here. David’s physical son will reign in his stead: that’s obviously Solomon. God says He will establish his-Solomon’s-throne forever. That statement will soon get us into trouble, but let’s skip over it for now. The phrase “If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him…” makes no sense. Solomon did commit iniquity, but most certainly did not receive the “blows of the sons of men.” Rather, God’s mercy stayed with him, as the passage clearly predicts. So is the prophet talking about the Messiah? Christ committed no iniquity. What’s going on here?

The key is in the little word “If.” The Hebrew word ‘asher is a primitive and rarely used relative pronoun that can mean almost anything: when, who, which, what, if, how, because, in order that, etc. Strong’s notes that “As it is indeclinable, it is often accompanied by the personal pronoun expletively, used to show the connection.” Right. So the phrase really means, “If-or when-He is associated with iniquity….” The prophet is predicting the suffering of Christ! Then he finishes up by saying David’s house, kingdom, and throne will be established forever.

Everything rolls along nicely until we get to the last few years of the kingdom of Judah. God has finally had enough, and allows Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, to haul the flower of Judean society off into captivity. The king that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was Jehoiachin, also known as Jeconiah, or simply Coniah. Jeremiah prophesied, “As I live,” says Yahweh, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear-the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the Chaldeans. So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return. Is this man Coniah a despised, broken idol-a vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they cast out, he and his descendants, and cast into a land which they do not know? (Jeremiah 22:24-2 The prophet says that both Jeconiah and his descendents are cast out. The inference is that neither he nor anyone in his line will ever prosper on the throne of David-and certainly not in the land of Israel.

Nathan just got through telling us that Solomon’s throne will be established forever. But Solomon’s royal line ran right through Jeconiah, who is toast, prophetically speaking. Oops. Now the only way the Messiah can ever reign is if he legally occupies the throne of Solomon through the line of Jeconiah-all of whose descendents have been disqualified. And He still has to be a physical descendant of David-we aren’t allowed to “spiritualize” any of this away. This whole Messiah thing isn’t looking too promising. Has God blown it?

There are two genealogies of Yahshua in the New Testament. The first is in Matthew, and sure enough, there’s Jeconiah, ugly as sin, right between Josiah and Shealtiel. This lineage runs through Joseph, the legal father of Yahshua. But Yahshua was born of a virgin; the prophets predicted it, and the gospels reported it. Mary’s genealogy, recorded in Luke, proves that Yahshua was indeed a descendent of David, but not of Solomon. Mary’s line went through David’s son Nathan (named, no doubt, in honor of the prophet). Thus while it looked for a moment like the coming of Messiah was impossible, the careful examination of prophecy points to one man, to the exclusion of all others: Yahshua of Nazareth.

By the way, there are a few big American denominations who have officially rejected the doctrine of the virgin birth as just too weird. Sorry, folks: no virgin birth, no salvation. Don’t blame me. Blame Jeconiah.

Yahweh Himself, though, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. More to the point, He is consistent in his methods and modes of revelation. So if we can figure out what He’s done in the past, we can be confident about what He has told us concerning the future. And because God exists outside the bounds of time as we know it, He is not limited to simple, one-time solutions; He can-and does-split up the fulfillments of His prophecies over many years and many events. A partial fulfillment is like a down payment, demonstrating God’s intention to make good on His promises when the time is right. God has also been known to fulfill prophecies more than once-a near fulfillment foreshadowing a more distant one.

Not only are the fulfillments often split up, but so are the prophecies themselves. They are almost never given as complete, independent proclamations, but are rather doled out one piece of the puzzle at a time. They’re invariably repeated elsewhere in scripture, often in a different manner, from a different perspective, by a different prophet, with different imagery. Whether a later prophecy adds information to an earlier one, or a different metaphor is used to present the same truth, there is almost always some degree of redundancy in scripture. Truth is built up “line by line, precept upon precept.” Prophecy, in this respect, is no different from any major doctrine.

The fascinating thing about it is that the body of revelation was brought to us by scores of writers over a span of at least fifteen hundred years, and yet there are no real contradictions in any of it. To me, that proves what Peter said, that the Holy Spirit is behind it all. God seems to delight in predicting the “impossible,” only to create a solution so unlikely it’s sublimely ridiculous. I must confess to having a degree of impatience with people who insist Christianity requires an unacceptable “leap of faith,” as if you have to check your brain at the door in order to buy into it. I have found, rather, that it takes far more faith not to believe-to assume that the hundreds of prophecies that have already been fulfilled came about by accident, or luck, or blind coincidence-without the direct intervention of an omnipotent deity.

God knows exactly what He’s doing. The prophet Isaiah threw down the gauntlet, challenging false prophets to predict what would happen, and why: “Gather together and come, you fugitives from surrounding nations. What fools they are who carry around their wooden idols and pray to gods that cannot save! Consult together, argue your case, and state your proofs that idol worship pays. Who made these things known long ago? What idol ever told you they would happen? Was it not I, Yahweh? For there is no other God but me-a just God and a Savior-no, not one!” (Isaiah 45:20-21, New Living Translation) If we understand what Yahweh has told us through His prophets, coming to trust in Him does not require a “leap of faith,” but merely a step out of the shadows into the light.

Date setters keep trying and they also keep failing

by Todd Strandberg

One logical question all Christians should ask themselves is: “When is Jesus Christ going to return?” When I read my Bible, I run across words like, “For ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh” (Mat 25:13). I also read, “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (Mat 24:42). I understand that to mean, “You’re not going to know until I come for you.”

Other people throughout history have read the same words of Jesus and have come up with different interpretations of what He intended. They’ve somehow managed to get around all restrictions against precise date setting. On a number of occasions, by doing so, they created pure havoc. The following is a list of some past failed attempts at date settings and some dates yet to come.

53 AD
Even before all the books of the Bible were written, there was talk that Christ’s return had already taken place. The Thessalonians panicked on Paul when they heard a rumor that the day of the Lord was at hand, and they had missed the rapture.

500
A Roman priest living in the second century predicted Christ would return in 500 AD, based on the dimensions of Noah’s ark.

1000
This year goes down as one of the most heightened periods of hysteria over the return of Christ. All members of society seemed affected by the prediction that Jesus was coming back at the start of the new millennium. None of the events required by the Bible were transpiring at that time; the magic of the number 1000 was the sole reason for the expectation. During concluding months of 999 AD, everyone was on his best behavior; worldly goods were sold and given to the poor; swarms of pilgrims headed east to meet the Lord at Jerusalem; buildings went unrepaired; crops were left unplanted; and criminals were set free from jails. When the year 999 AD turned into 1000 AD, nothing happened.

1033
This year was cited as the beginning of the millennium because it marked 1,000 years since Christ’s crucifixion.

1186
The “Letter of Toledo” warned everyone to hide in the caves and mountains. The world was reportedly to be destroyed with only a few spared.

1420
The Taborites of Czechoslovakia predicted every city would be annihilated by fire. Only five mountain strongholds would be saved.

1524-1526
Muntzer, a leader of German peasants, announced that the return of Christ was near. After Muntzer and his men destroyed the high and mighty, the Lord would supposedly return. This belief led to an uneven battle against government troops. He was strategically outnumbered. Muntzer claimed to have had a vision from God in which the Lord promised that He would catch the cannonballs of the enemy in the sleeves of His cloak. The prediction within the vision turned out to be false when Muntzer and his followers were mowed down by cannon fire.

1534
A repeat of the Muntzer affair occurred a few years later. This time, Jan Matthys took over the city of Munster. The city was to be the only one spared from destruction. The inhabitants of Munster, chased out by Matthys and his men, regrouped and lay siege to the city. Within a year, everyone in the city was dead.

1650-1660
The Fifth Monarchy Men looked for Jesus to establish a theocracy. They took up arms and tried to seize England by force. The movement died when the British monarchy was restored in 1660.

1666
For the citizens of London, 1666 was not a banner year. A bubonic plague outbreak killed 100,000 and the Great Fire of London struck the same year. The world seemed at an end to most Londoners. The fact that the year ended with the Beast’s number—666–didn’t help matters.

1809
Mary Bateman, who specialized in fortune telling, had a magic chicken that laid eggs with end-time messages on them. One message said that Christ was coming. The uproar she created ended when an unannounced visitor caught her forcing an egg into the hen’s oviduct. Mary later was hanged for poisoning a wealthy client. History does not record whether the offended chicken attended the hanging.

1814
Spiritualist Joanna Southcott made the startling claim that she, by virgin birth, would produce the second Jesus Christ. Her abdomen began to swell and so did the crowds of people around her. The time for the birth came and passed; she died soon after. An autopsy revealed she had experienced a false pregnancy.

1836
John Wesley wrote that “the time, times and half a time” of Revelation 12:14 were 1058­1836, “when Christ should come” (A. M. Morris, The Prophecies Unveiled, p. 361).

1843-1844
William Miller was the founder of an end-times movement that was so prominent it received its own name, Millerism. From his studies of the Bible, Miller determined that the second coming would happen sometime between 1843-1844. A spectacular meteor shower in 1833 gave the movement a good push forward. The buildup of anticipation continued until March 21, 1844, when Miller’s one-year timetable ran out. Some followers set another date–Oct 22, 1844. This too failed, collapsing the movement. One follower described the days after the failed predictions: “The world made merry over the old Prophet’s predicament. The taunts and jeers of the ’scoffers’ were well-nigh unbearable.”

1859
Rev. Thomas Parker, a Massachusetts minister, looked for the millennium to start about 1859.

1881
Someone called Mother Shipton had, 400 years earlier, claimed that the world would end in 1881. A controversy hangs over the Shipton writings as to whether or not publishers doctored the text. If the date was wrong, should it matter anyway?

1910
The revisit of Halley’s comet was, for many, an indication of the Lord’s second coming. The earth actually passed through the gaseous tail of the comet. One enterprising man sold comet pills to people for protection against the effects of the toxic gases.

1914
Charles Russell, after being exposed to the teachings of William Miller, founded his own organization that evolved into the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1914, Russell predicted the return of Jesus Christ.

1918
In 1918, new math didn’t help the Witnesses from striking out again.

1925
The Witnesses had no better luck in 1925. They already possessed the title of “Most Wrong Predictions.” They would expand upon it in the years to come.

1941
Once again, Jehovah’s Witnesses beleived that Armageddon was due. Before the end of 1941, the end of all things was predicted.

1967
When the city of Jerusalem was reclaimed by the Jews in 1967, prophecy watchers declared that the “Time of the Gentiles” had come to an end.

1970
The True Light Church of Christ made its claim to fame by incorrectly forecasting the return of Jesus. A number of church members had quit their livelihoods ahead of the promised advent.

1973
A comet that turned out to be a visual disappointment nonetheless compelled one preacher to announce that it would be a sign of the Lord’s return.

1975
The Jehovah’s Witnesses were back at it in 1975. The failure of the forecast did not affect the growth of the movement. The Watchtower magazine, a major Witness periodical, has over 13 million subscribers.

1977
We all remember the killer bee scare of the late 1970’s. One prophecy prognosticator linked the bees to Revelation 9:3-12. After 20 years of progression, the bees are still in Texas. I’m beginning to think of them as the killer snails.

1981
One author boldly declared that the rapture would occur before December 31, 1981, based on Christian prophecy, astronomy, and a dash of ecological fatalism. He pegged the date to Jesus’ promised return to earth a generation after Israel’s rebirth. He also made references to the “Jupiter Effect,” a planetary alignment occurring every 179 years that supposedly could lead to earthquakes and nuclear plant meltdowns.

1982
It was all going to end in 1982, when the planets lined up and created magnetic forces that would bring Armageddon to the earth.

1982
A group called the Tara Centers placed full-page advertisements in many major newspapers for the weekend of April 24-25, 1982, announcing: “The Christ is Now Here!” They predicted that He was to make himself known “within the next two months.” After the date passed, they said that the delay was only because the “consciousness of the human race was not quite right…” Boy, all these years and we’re still not ready.

1984
The Jehovah’s Witnesses made sure, in 1984, that no one else would be able to top their record of most wrong doomsday predictions. The Witnesses’ record currently holds at nine. The years are: 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1984. Lately, the JWs are claiming they’re out of the prediction business, but it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. They’ll be back.

1987
The Harmonic Convergence was planned for August 16-17, 1987, and several New Age events were also to occur at that time. The second coming of the serpent god of peace and the Hopi dance awakening were two examples.

1988
The book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988, came out only a few months before the event was to take place. What little time the book had, it used effectively. By the time the predicted dates, September 11-13, rolled around, whole churches were caught up in the excitement the book generated. I personally had friends who were measuring themselves for wings. In the dorm where we lived, my friends were also openly confronting all of the unsaved. It became my job to defuse situations. In one case, an accosted sinner was contemplating dispensary action against my now-distant friends. Finally, the days of destiny dawned and then set. No Jesus. The environment was not the same as Miller’s 1844 failure. To my surprise, the taunting by the unsaved was very brief. I took it that people have very little understanding of the Bible, so they had nothing to taunt my friends with. I made one other interesting observation. Although the time for the rapture had been predicted to fall within a three-day window, September 11-13, my friends gave up hope on the morning of the 12th. I pointed out that they still had two days left, but they had been spooked, nonetheless

1989
After the passing of the deadline in 88 Reasons, the author, Edgar Whisenant, came out with a new book called 89 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1989. This book sold only a fraction of the number of copies his prior release had sold.

1991
A group in Australia predicted Jesus would return through the Sydney Harbor at 9 a.m., March 31, 1991.

1991
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan proclaimed the Gulf War would be “the War of Armageddon … the final War.”

1991
Menachem Schneerson, a Russian-born rabbi, called for the Messiah to come by September 9, 1991, the start of the Jewish New Year.

1992
A Korean group called Mission for the Coming Days had the Korea Church an uproar in the fall of 1992. They foresaw October 28, 1992 as the date for the rapture. Numerology was the basis for the date. Several camera shots that left ghostly images on pictures were thought to be a supernatural confirmation of the date.

1993
If the year 2000 is the end of the 6,000-year cycle, then the rapture must take place in 1993, because you would need seven years of the tribulation. This was the thinking of a number of prophecy writers.

1994
In the book, 1994: The Year of Destiny , F. M. Riley foretold of God’s plan to rapture His people. The name of his ministry is “The Last Call,” and he operates out of Missouri.

1994
Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church in Los Angeles caused quite a stir when he announced he had received a vision from God that warned of apocalyptic event on June 9, 1994. Hinkle, quoting God, said, “On Thursday June the 9th, I will rip the evil out of this world.” At the time, I knew Hinkle’s vision didn’t match up with Scripture. From a proper reading of Bible prophecy, the only thing that God could possibly rip from the earth would be the Christian Church, and I don’t think God would refer to the Church as “evil.” Some people tried to interpret Hinkle’s unscriptural vision to mean that God would the rip evil out of our hearts when He raptured us. Well, the date came and went with no heart surgery or rapture.

1994
Harold Camping, in his book Are You Ready?, predicted the Lord would return in September 1994. The book was full of numerology that added up to 1994 as the date of Christ’s return.

1994
After promising they would not make anymore end time predictions, the Jehovah’s Witnesses fell off the wagon and proclaimed 1994 as the conclusion of an 80-year generation; the year 1914 was the starting point.

1996
This year had a special month, according to one author who foresaw September as the time for our Lord’s return. The Church Age will last 2,000 years from the time of Christ’s birth in 4 BC.

1996
California psychic Sheldon Nidle predicted the end would come with the convergence of 16 million space ships and a host of angels upon the earth on December 17, 1996. Nidle explained the passing of the date by claiming the angels placed us in a holographic projection to preserve us and give us a second chance.

1997
In regard to 1997, I received several e-mail messages that pointed to this as the year when Jesus would return for His church. Two of the more widely known time frames were Monte Judah’s prediction that the tribulation would begin in February/March and another prediction based on numerology and the Psalms that targeted May 14 as the date of the rapture.

1997
When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed their peace pact on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, some saw the events as the beginning of tribulation. With the signing of the peace agreement, Daniel’s 1,260-day countdown was underway. By adding 1,260 days to September 1993, you arrive at February 24, 1997.

1997
Stan Johnson of the Prophecy Club saw a “90 percent” chance that the tribulation would start September 12, 1997. He based his conclusion on several end-time signs: that would be Jesus’ 2,000th birthday and it would also be the Day of Atonement, although it wouldn’t be what is currently the Jewish Day of Atonement. Further supporting evidence came from Romanian pastor Dumitru Duduman. In several heavenly visions, Dumitru claimed to have seen the Book of Life. In one of his earlier visions, there were several pages yet to be completed. In his last vision, he noticed the Book of Life only had one page left. Doing some rough calculating, Johnson and friends figured the latest time frame for the completion of the book would have to be September 1997.

1998
Numerology: Because 666 times three equals 1998, some people point to this year as being prophetically significant. Someone called me long distance just so he could pass on to me this earth-shattering news.

1998
A Taiwanese cult operating out of Garland, Texas predicted Christ would return on March 31 of 1998. The group’s leader, Heng-ming Chen, announced God would return and then invite the cult members aboard a UFO.The group abandoned their prediction when a precursor event failed to take place. The cult’s leader had said that God would appear on every channel 18 of every TV in the world. Maybe God realized at the last minute, the Playboy Network was channel 18 on several cable systems, and He didn’t want to have Christians watching a porn channel.

1998
On April 30, 1998, Israel was to turn 50 and many believed this birthday would mark the beginning of the tribulation. The reasoning behind this date has to do with God’s age requirement for the priesthood, which is between 30-50.

1998
1998 Marilyn Agee, in her book, The End of the Age, had her sights set on May 31, 1998. This date was to conclude the 6,000-year cycle from the time of Adam. Agee looked for the rapture to take place on Pentecost, which is also known as “the Feast of Weeks.” Another indicator of this date was the fact that the Holy Spirit did not descend upon the apostles until 50 days after Christ’s resurrection. Israel was born in 1948; add the 50 days as years and you come up withAfter her May 31 rapture date failed, Agee, unable to face up to her error, continued her date setting by using various Scripture references to point to June 7, 14, 21 and about 10 other dates.

1999
Well, you can’t call Marilyn Agee a quitter. After bombing out badly several time in 1998, Marilyn set a new date for the rapture: May 21 or 22 of this year.

1999
TV newscaster-turned-psychic Charles Criswell King had said in 1968 that the world as we know it would cease to exist on August 18, 1999.

1999
Philip Berg, a rabbi at the Kabbalah Learning Center in New York, proclaimed that the end might arrive on September 11, 1999, when “a ball of fire will descend . . . destroying almost all of mankind, all vegetation, all forms of life.”

2000
Numerology: If you divide 2,000 by 3, you will get the devil’s number: 666.66666666666667.

2000
The names of the people and organizations that called for the return of Christ at the turn of the century is too long to be listed here. I would say that if there were a day on which Christ could not return, it must have been January 1, 2000. To come at an unknown time means to come at an unknown time. I think January 2, 2000 would have been a more likely day for Him to call His Church home–right after the big let down.

2000
On May 5, 2000, all of the planets were supposed to have been in alignment. This was said to cause the earth to suffer earthquakes, volcanic eruption, and various other nasty stuff. A similar alignment occurred in 1982 and nothing happened. People failed to realize that the other nine planets only exert a very tiny gravitational pull on the earth. If you were to add up the gravitational force from the rest of the planets, the total would only amount to a fraction of the tug the moon has on the earth.

2000
According to Michael Rood, the end times have a prophetically complicated connection to Israel’s spring barley harvest. The Day of the Lord began on May 5, 2000. Rood’s fall feast calendar called for the Russian Gog-Magog invasion of Israel to take place at sundown on October 28, 2000.

2000-2001
Dr. Dale SumburËru looked for March 22, 1997 to be “the date when all the dramatic events leading through the tribulation to the return of Christ should begin” The actual date of Christ’s return could be somewhere between July 2000 and March 2001. Dr. SumburËru is more general about the timing of Christ’s second coming than most writers. He states, “The day the Lord returns is currently unknown because He said [Jesus] these days are cut short and it is not yet clear by how much and in what manner they are cut short. If the above assumptions are not correct, my margin of error would be in weeks, or perhaps months.”

2002
Priests from Cuba’s Afro-Caribbean Yoruba religion predicted a dramatic year of tragedy and crisis for the world in 2002, ranging from coups and war to disease and flooding.

2004
This date for Jesus’ return is based upon psalmology, numerology, the biblical 360 days per year, Jewish holidays, and “biblical astronomy.” To figure out this date, you’ll need a calculator, a slide rule, and plenty of scratch paper.

2011-2018
For the past several decades, Jack Van Impe has hinted at nearly every year as being the time for the rapture. Normally, he has only gone out one or two years from the current calendar year. However, Jack’s latest projection for the rapture goes out several years. His new math uses 51 years as the length of a generation. If you add 51 years to 1967, the year Israel recaptured Jerusalem, you get 2018. Once you subtract the seven-year tribulation period, you arrive at 2011.

2012
New Age writers cite Mayan and Aztec calendars that predict the end of the age on December 21, 2012.

2060
Sir Isaac Newton, Britain’s greatest scientist, spent 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060.

These past few weeks, I found my self a little lethargic and not having the energy or inclination to sit down and research anything. Even my Bible reading has been neglected. Some life issues have intruded and Ive been dealing, accepting, working out, moving on from the various decisions made.

The reality of my mortality and humanness came to roost.

Over the months and years, I have come to appreciated the reality of life on earth as a worshipper of the true God and found it to be harder than I thought. The words of Jesus ring daily in my ears that sometimes we can only do tasks in Gods strength not our own, because it THAT hard.

I was talking with co admin Sidgi, and the subject of “truth” came up. I was contemplating the idea of starting an on line Bible study course, when we both realized that the www.cfmin.wordpress.com in its self and in entirety covered the major doctrinal issues of the Bible.

Do we claim to have the absolute truth? No we most certainly don’t. But we do believe that the presentation here of scriptural understanding is in line with Gods word the Bible. Yes it differs with mainstream American Christianity regarding doctrinal teachings such as the trinity, hell, once saved always saved etc, but by virtue of that fact alone, we have had to dig deep and justify the stance we take using the Bible as our sole source of revelation. We have not mad any attempt to justify a proposed hypothesis postulated by one of us, instead we have taken each scripture or subject and examined it in conjunction with the rest of the Bible to ascertain our understanding.

You will notice, that CFM has steered clear of future dates and proposed time scales for the beginning of the great tribulation and the battle of Armageddon from the book of Revelation. Why? Simply because we do not know the time or the date and because too many religions have posted specific dates and those days came and went with no change.

The Bible makes it very clear that the Creator, made the unreserved offer that ALL who accept Jesus as the mediator between God and man, can draw close to God and learn about him and have promise of eternal life if they worship him in Spirit and truth. The Bible also makes clear that God is sifting mens hearts and drawing those he sees as righteously inclined toward him. The choice of course is always ours as to which path we choose.

While we at CFM take the time to promote Gods word, we accept no accolade of being chosen by God to do this work. We do it because of a desire to promote the Bible as the book of life, and to encourage all to come into a close relationship with the Creator.

Our Christian Ministry is to live our lives learning about him, raising our families to have faith in Gods blessings and promises and to be counted worthy in his eyes. If God wants a specific task done for the honor of his name, we believe he will motivate those available in the location at the time who have a willing spirit to do his will.

Some of you who read articles on this site will find a different understanding of the Bible as to what is promoted from your pastor. We ask only that you pick up the Bible and compare scripture for scripture and then meditate of the subject under scrutiny.

That’s what we did.

Cfm admin

The Christian and His Emotions

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”–1 Corinthians 10:13

God has not promised
Skies always blue;
Flower-strewn pathways
All your life through.

Being a Christian does not mean freedom from conflicts. Trials are a part of the development of Christian character. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 5:3, 4, “we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.”

Trials, for the Christian, not only develop character; they also give a depth of sympathetic understanding with others likewise afflicted. This sympathy not only enables the Christian to be helpful to others in the present life but, even more importantly, gives him the compassion to deal with the human race when they are raised from the grave in the promised resurrection of all.

In this regard, their experiences are like those of Christ Jesus, their Lord and Master. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15, 16).

The spiritual mind must learn how to deal with STRESS. The hectic pace of life, especially in a technological age, creates great pressures. Some seek escape in the drug culture, others succumb to deep depressions. These stresses contribute to high divorce rates and the increasing violence so evident in today’s society. The Christian must learn now to channel these pressures productively, learning that the only final solution is full and complete trust in God, his goodness, and his personal watch care over his children.

Only too frequently stress gives way to ANGER. Anger is born of frustration in not achieving one’s own goals and is thus a form of self-love. The Christian needs to learn now to control his temper and modify his own desires with a consider