Prophecy - Perspective

I wrote the first “Perspective” for the March 1963 “Berean News.” I dug back in my “archives” and reread my first column. It was titled “The Third World Power?” Note the question mark.

In that first article, I wrote about the European Common Market. There were then just six members in it. There were five other nations trying to join. I speculated how four of them would probably become members within a year. I also expressed doubt that England (the fifth) would ever become a member.

Why did I write about all this? As I explained in that column, Bible students had been predicting for years that Europe would again be united in some way. The ten toes of Daniel’s image and the ten horns of John’s beast were said to represent ten nations or kingdoms of Europe. The reunification of these ten nations was then considered by some, to be one of the most significant events just prior the Lord’s return.

The title of my first column referred to the possibility of a reunited Europe becoming the third world power. The United States and the U.S.S.R. were, of course, then the two world powers. I also gave the history of the Common Market and statistics to show its potential economic and political power. Good thing I ended the title with a question mark. I was not dogmatic about any of this, but merely presented it all as possibilities of prophetic fulfillment. The tone of my writing, however, did leave the impression that I expected it to happen. I sure was wrong. England has been in the Common Market for a long time now. There are presently more than ten nations in it. And the U.S.S.R. no longer exists.

The real point of my first column was that we should pay more attention to Bible prophecies. And while I still think that is true, my view on the purpose of prophecies has changed somewhat. I no longer think that the main purpose of prophecies is to predict the future. I recently read a quote from Isaac Newton, which I would like to share with you. By the way, Isaac Newton was not only one of the greatest scientists who ever lived (if not the greatest), but he also was quite a Bible scholar, who studied the Bible daily. He wrote over a million words of Biblical commentary. The quote, which follows, is taken from his “Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John:”

“The folly of Interpreters has been to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness, they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, (not the Interpreters) by then manifested thereby to the world.”

That first column of mine was not the only time I have been wrong about how I expected prophecy to be fulfilled. I am not alone. Christian history is filled with prophetic interpretations that turned out to be wrong. (Remember all the recent predictions about the year 2000?) And all too often proponents of a particular interpretation (especially chronological ones) have refused to admit their errors long after such errors were apparent to almost every one else. This has sometimes hurt the witness of Christianity, and it certainly has kept many Christians from studying prophecy at all.

It seems that most of us fall into one of two extremes. Either we tend to avoid studying prophecies at all because we feel overwhelmed by them and have seen too much confusion and antagonism generated by them, or we become hooked by prophecies to the extent that they are all we study. We then become an “expert” who propounds a particular theory and sets about to convince all others of the rightness of our viewpoint and the errors of any others. We need a balance. We should not avoid the study of Biblical prophecy. We need to study all that is in the Bible if we are to be true students of it. We should not, however, be carried away and become predictors or dogmatic interpreters. Prophecies need to be kept in proper perspective.

L. Urbaniak

Oh, wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord!

The lamp that our Father above

So kindly has lighted to teach us the way

That leads to the arms of His love!

Its warnings, its counsels, are faithful and just,

Its judgments are perfect and pure;

And we know that when time and the world pass away,

God’s Word shall forever endure.

Fanny Crosby