| End-Time Prophecy Presumption |
by David A. DePra |
| Human beings tend to have a preoccupation with wanting to |
| know the future. Somehow we think that knowing the future makes |
| it easier to face. This is certainly so with regard to the future of |
| the world. Christians believe they know the world's future. In fact, |
| many Christians believe they understand, step by step, what is |
| going to take place in the next few years. |
| Just ask yourself: What is going to happen leading up to the |
| return of Christ? You know. You've heard it so often, through so |
| many different sources, that you might even be able to create |
| a time-line on paper by memory. The Beast, false prophet, the |
| one world government, the mark of the beast, etc., would all be |
| on this time chart. And at the end of the time-line would, of |
| course, be the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. |
| You probably know this end-time scenerio so well that you |
| are practically incapable of considering an alternative. This HAS |
| to be right, doesn't it? Here it is, right in the Bible! We know this |
| is the way it's going to happen! |
| In these waning days of the century, Christians have become |
| somewhat fanatical about these prophetic claims. One book |
| after another is appearing on the scene affirming that "at last" we |
| are seeing what we SAID we would see. Y2K is going to result in |
| a one world government. The Anti-Christ is already alive on |
| earth today. WE are the last generation. World events prove it. |
| Assuming Facts from Your Conclusion |
| Have you ever, on a day-to-day, elementary level, drew a |
| conclusion about someone or something, and then made the |
| mistake of allowing your conclusion to interpret the facts for you? |
| We probably all have. We decide we know. And then we look |
| at the facts, interpreting them based on what we think we know. |
| This is nothing more than a definition of bias. It is a definition of |
| being presumptious. And when we do this, we can be totally |
| certain we are right, yet be completely wrong. |
| People did this with the Lockness Monster. In the twenties, a |
| man presented a photo of what appeared to be the neck and |
| head of a dinosaur-like sea creature. From that time forward, |
| people went out looking for this creature. Some of them found |
| him. Some of them even swore that the monster popped up out |
| of the water and looked right at them. There were literally |
| hundreds of sightings, some pretty convincing. |
| It was only recently that the man who took this picture admitted |
| that it was a fake. There was no monster in the lake. But even |
| still, today we have people who see the monster. A little ripple |
| on the lake, or some animal which is swimming there is often |
| interpreted as the monster. Some people see it there because |
| they believe it's there. It MUST be the monster. |
| If we think we have this end-time prophecy thing figured out we |
| are in danger of making the same mistake. If we think we know |
| every event, each step of the way, which is going to lead up to |
| the Second Coming, we will probably tend to make any world |
| event fit into the scheme. It will mean what we make it mean. But |
| it may, in fact, mean nothing of the kind. We could be interpreting |
| our facts through our conclusion -- a wrong conclusion. |
| There are some constants about Bible prophecy which we |
| need to remember. One of them is that Bible prophecy is rarely |
| understood until it is fulfilled. God gives a prophecy and people |
| believe it. But they usually have no idea what He means. It is |
| only when the prophecy comes to pass that people grasp what |
| God really meant. |
| We see this all through the Bible. It begins when God promises |
| a Saviour to Adam and Eve, and continues through the gospels |
| and the epistles. Even the Bible itself tells us that the prophets |
| of old did not grasp the facts and reality of what they were |
| saying. "But," many of us would claim, "We are different. We |
| understand fully the Book of Revelation. And we now |
| understand the related prophecies in the Old and New |
| Testaments. It has been given to us to understand things which |
| no other generation has ever understood." |
| In a word, this claim is simply not true. We don't understand |
| what we think we understand. But because we insist we do |
| understand, and because it sells books, we have already |
| established our conclusions about the end time. Now, as |
| world events unfold before us, we interpret these world events |
| according to our ill-fated conclusion. And it is going to end in |
| dissappointment at best, or deception at the worst. It just isn't |
| going to happen the way we think it is going to happen. |
| There is a danger here. If we have already set our agenda, |
| and have already decided how things must happen, then we are |
| not going to have discernment if God does things another way. |
| We won't believe another way is even possible. And as a |
| result, the Coming of our Lord will be in a way which we do not |
| expect. |
| Don't misunderstand. No one is saying that the prophecies of |
| the Bible are untrue. No. They are all true. All of them will be |
| fulfilled to the full. Rather, it is our interpretation of them that is |
| faulty. And we need to see the distinction. |
| God has many prophecies in the Bible about many issues. |
| And His consistant pattern has always been, "I am telling you what |
| is going to happen. But you will have to see it happen before you |
| really grasp what I mean." May God see to it that we learn this |
| lesson from His Word and take heed to it. * |