Why Study End Times Prophesy?
Since the Garden of Eden, there has always been evil in this world, and yet at one point the wickedness of men had become so great that the Bible tells us God regretted making mankind, deciding to flood the Earth and start over with Noah and his family. Some people say that wickedness has always existed and today is no different from years past, but I disagree. I have seen in my lifetime the growth of wickedness as described in the Bible as an increase in lawlessness or rebellion. Yes, evil has always existed, but it was not socially celebrated as it is today. What occurred in shadows is celebrated publicly, and the sophistry of today’s social norms would have quickly been silenced in a younger world.
I’ve been accused more than once of focusing so much on what I am against people sometimes wonder what I’m for, and I have to admit it’s often easier for me to see what’s wrong when I look at our world today. It saddens me, and I wonder if that’s how Jeremiah felt as he looked upon the nation that he loved living in a way that was so counter to God’s desires when he wrote the Book of Jeremiah. I imagine Daniel and his companions as youth just prior to the Babylonian exile, listening to adult society publicly ridiculing Jeremiah while privately wondering if he was a prophet or a deluded fool. I also imagine they did not question Jeremiah’s book of Lamentations written after the destruction of Jerusalem and known as a book of comfort. Daniel referred to it in the ninth chapter of his own contribution to Scripture.
27% of the Bible is prophecy. The part of it that has been fulfilled gives us greater faith in that which has not. The book of Daniel is a great example of this. We can can have confidence from the many fulfilled prophecies in the book of Daniel that the unfulfilled prophecies will also come to pass. Why would we study only a portion of the Bible? If more than a quarter of the Bible is prophecy, then God obviously thought it was important for us to have that.
I cannot ignore Bible prophecy as it’s foundational to how God revealed to me who Jesus is. I asked God to show me on Good Friday as I was reading a chapter per day from the book of Psalms. The chapter I opened up that day was Psalm 22, written 1000 years before Jesus clearly describing His crucifixion. I had been raised to believe in God and in Jesus as the Son of God, but I had also been discouraged from reading the Old Testament as something that didn’t apply to me as a Christian, who was saved by the New Covenant in the New Testament. Yet it was the Old Testament that revealed the truth of the New Covenant.
- So why study prophecy in Scripture?
- How should it change the way we live as Christians?
- Why any significant time exploring it?
Perhaps the most neglected book in the Bible, the Book of Revelation, falls into this category. And yet we see God’s promise in chapter 1 that a blessing is received by anyone who reads it, or even anyone who hears it being read. We can also see from how the book of revelation ends: no one is permitted to add or subtract anything from the prophecies in that book. It is a gift. It is a mystery. It is a blessing, and a warning.
One of the misconceptions about “the end times” is that it’s the end of all things. That’s simply not true. Yes, it’s the end of the world as we know it, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s the beginning of a new world, a world that is beyond our comprehension. It’s the end of the world as we know it, because the world as we know it is flawed. The World is filled with rebellion, disease, and disorder. But the New World will be perfect, designed to please God and fulfill the deep desires in each of us.
Imagine that you and I are on a raft, about to hit heavy rapids: white water, and rocks that are both exciting and scary, legitimately life-threatening. A casual conversation around the things that await us at the end of our white water rafting trip would probably not be appropriate at that moment. Conversation would instead be focused around the upcoming dangers and which obstacle to avoid. Well, we are about to hit the Rapids. We need to stay focused. Yes, there will be a great resting place after we get through them, but we can’t go into this unprepared.
Transitions are often painful, like the process of physical conditioning or giving birth to a child, but the rewards outweigh the pain. As a guy, I will never know what birth pains are like, but that is what the End times are compared to in the Bible. In Gethsemane, Jesus prepared Himself for the pain He was about to endure. He was under great stress, so much so that He sweat blood. It is this spiritual and emotional preparation that I know I need, and which I believe others need as well. No one looks forward to the labor pains, and we need to understand that this new world is worth everything we about to go through!
So why study, prophecy? There’s a blessing in it for you: There’s a vision beyond the labor pains, a world that surpasses the one we live in now, and there are obstacles to avoid in our journey. So stay alert! Stay sober, and prepare your heart and mind.
So why do I write about this? To be true to my calling: to be a mirror of His light to this world, a finger that points toward heaven, and a voice in the wilderness proclaiming: “Prepare ye the Way of the Lord!” Whether people listen or fail to listen is all on them.
copyright ©2023 Mitchell Malloy (http://mitchellmalloyblogspot.com/)
