I’ve studied Bible prophecy for 37 years, and in that time I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with those claiming to be “prophecy experts”…
One by one, the most influential people, the biggest names in Bible prophecy, have proved themselves to me and to many others to be painfully wrong and mistaken. They get entrenched in some kind of prophetic political correctness and refuse to budge from it for fear of denying their faith and of going against the grain of current interpretation. Even the big-wigs, those with international names and a list of formal qualifications a mile long, say and write things which can be shown to be wrong by anyone with discernment, an open mind and an open Bible.
Perhaps it’s understandable, though frustrating, that the most common words and phrases emitted by such people for decades include the following: the stage is being set; it looks like; probably; just about to happen; fulfillment; on the horizon.
Of course, interpreting Bible prophecy can be a tricky pass-time, but it doesn’t have to be. The mistake so many make is in attempting to force their faulty ideas into present-day events and future ones.
Whenever I write on Bible prophecy I get fewer views than I do on any other subject. I see the reason for that to be the fact that people are so numbed to it all by all the many false predictions made in over-confidence, the ridiculous non-Biblical event and date-setting, and sometimes the hands grasping for money which “we badly need to continue this vital ministry”. Ha! I can write here and reach people all around the world, without spending or asking for a penny…why can’t the experts?
Why does it matter? It matters because there are huge numbers of people in the West who see that the world must indeed be headed towards what has been foretold in the Bible, or at least towards some sort of date with destiny, but who are either badly misinformed or uninformed, and fail to ” search the scriptures”. There are millions of others who have no knowledge at all of what is down the road for planet earth, and need to be warned with correct information.
So don’t get me wrong-I’m not mocking the idea of the Second Coming. In fact I’m convinced in my own mind that it certainly is coming…soon. But what does “soon” mean in this context? Does it mean next year, next decade, or in another thousand years or so?
And what gives me the right to find fault with the experts? Who am I and where did I learn my theology and get my ordination? The answer to that is simple: God has not commissioned those self-proclaimed experts to pass on the message while forbidding the rest of us from figuring it all out for ourselves. As Vernon McGee said, God put the cookies on the bottom shelf so that everyone could reach them. The experts are no more “right” than we can be if we simply look into Scripture and look at our world.
As in the dark days when the Bible could only be read in Latin and interpreted by the “experts” in the Church, so now we have such people and their admirers in the Christian media claiming to be the proper proponents of truth while the rest of us…. the ignorant masses… need to pay attention to them and believe every word they say. That’s not God’s truth. We have every right, as believers, to test what we hear and to hunt down the truth for ourselves. In fact we’re obligated to do so. I’ve done plenty of it over the years, and I’ve concluded that there are no experts that I fully trust now. Test everything, I say. Either they’re in it for the money or the prestige, or because they don’t want to have to go out and get a proper job. Or perhaps they’re just plain wrong.
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