Has Bible Prophecy Failed?
After decades of failed prophetic expectations, it is time for believers to reexamine many popular ideas about the “last days.”
Fifty years ago, I was
influenced greatly by the bestseller, ‘The Late Great Planet Earth.’ In
it, I read how last-day prophecies were being fulfilled before my eyes. All the
“signs” pointed to me as a member of the “last generation” that would live before
the return of Jesus. The Antichrist, Armageddon, and the Millennium were all just
around the corner.
The
arguments were appealing. I mean, who is not thrilled by the thought of
witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy firsthand? And at first glance, quite compelling.
Supposedly,
the “last days” commenced with the founding of the modern state of Israel in
1948. And according to Jesus, the “generation”
that saw that event would witness the concluding events of the age, or so the
theory goes. And in the popular interpretive scheme, a “biblical generation” is
defined as “forty years” in length.
This was a life-changing perspective, to know that within my lifetime I
would see the rise of a ten-nation confederacy and the Antichrist, the start of
the “Great Tribulation,” the invasion of Israel by “Rosh, Gog, and Magog,” the
“mark of the beast,” the “false prophet,” and of course, the
return of the “Son of Man on the clouds of heaven.” Mathematics may not
be my strength, but by simply adding 40 years to 1948 I came up with a date of
1988 for the arrival of Jesus, and so did many other unsuspecting Christians.
By the late 1980s, expectations were running so high the Prophecy
Industry began to produce books and pamphlets with titles like ‘88 reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.’ And since 1970, the
view represented by ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ has become the
dominant interpretation of the “end-times,” and to this very day, Dispensationalism
continues to drive the Prophecy Industry.
So, here we are in 2022, two
“biblical generations” have passed since the founding of Israel. Rather than
morph into a ten-nation revived Roman Empire, the former European Common Market
became the European Union headquartered in Brussels with 27-member states. Rather
than evolve into “Gog and Magog” and attack Israel from the north, the
former Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, one of the most pivotal
events since the Second World War, and one NONE of the prophecy
“experts” saw coming. 1988 came and went with NO tribulation, NO
Antichrist, NO “mark of the Beast,” NO “false
prophet,” and NO “rapture” or second coming.
I admit it. At times I can be a
bit slow and hesitate to buck the popular view. Still, by around 1991 or 1992 I
was beginning to smell a prophetic rat. Things no longer jibed. So, what went
wrong? Has Bible prophecy failed?
According to the leaders of the
Prophecy Industry, things are still proceeding according to plan, only, perhaps,
they have found it necessary to make a slight adjustment or two in their arithmetic. Maybe they forgot to carry the ‘2’ or convert
forty 365-day years into 360-day years. They still peg the start of the “last
days” to 1948, but rather than admit error, they have redefined a “biblical
generation.” Now, it is anywhere from forty to eighty, and even up to one-hundred
and twenty years long. All very convenient, all very self-serving, and all very
dishonest. It seems, that whenever an interpretation fails, one simply only needs to
redefine terms and recalculate dates.
But to put it another way - When has the Prophecy Industry ever got one right? According to Deuteronomy, if a prophet gets one prediction wrong, he is a false prophet. Whether that warning is still applicable under the New Covenant, it does not bode well for today’s prophecy “experts,” nor does common sense or logic.
But the failure of the Prophecy
Industry does not mean that Bible prophecy has failed. It can just as well indicate
that many of the prophecy “experts” are completely wrong, that there is
something fundamentally wrong in their methods and assumptions. In fact, by
far, this is the likeliest explanation for their multiple failures.
It would take days, even weeks,
to examine all the predictions, assumptions, and interpretive nuances of the
Prophecy Industry, so I will point out just three errors common to every version of
this interpretive school. For that matter, the Prophecy Industry cannot survive
if Christians begin to question these assumptions, for it is dependent on
promoting heightened prophetic expectations among Christians.
First, in the Bible, the “last
days” commenced with the outpouring of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost,
following the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. “In the last
days, declares God, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.” This
may be counterintuitive; nevertheless, the “last days” have been
underway since the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. That period did NOT
begin in 1948.
Second, according to Christ’s
repeated warning, no one except “God alone,” period, end-of-discussion, knows
the timing of that day. He alone knows the “day,” the “hour,” and the “season”
of the “coming of the Son of Man.” The idea that we can approximate the
date of his return by adding a certain number of years to 1948 is incompatible
with the teachings of the New Testament.
Third, Israel is NOT
the determining factor or the key to understanding end-times prophecy. Jesus was
explicit. The “end” will only come when the church has completed its
primary task – to preach “this gospel of the kingdom to all nations.”
In the apostolic tradition,
there is one Lord, one gospel, one salvation, one covenant, one covenant people
of God, and one’s ethnicity has no bearing on one’s inclusion in it. In Christ,
no longer can there be “Jew or Gentile.”
Sooner or later, the prophecy
“experts” must all explain away Christ’s warning did not really mean what it
obviously does mean. Most often, they claim we cannot know the “precise day or
hour,” but Jesus did not say we could not know the general “season.”
Putting
aside the false logic (‘argumentum e silentio’), Jesus said
that very thing. “It is NOT for you to know the season”
or ‘kairos.’ By Dispensationalist logic, because Christ did not
include the week, month, year, decade, or century in his warning, we can know
the week, month, year, decade, and century of his coming, just not the exact
day and hour– (Mark 13:33).
Just prior to his ascension, Jesus told his disciples that “it is not for you to know times [plural] or seasons [plural], which the Father hath set within His own authority.” And the plural terms “times” and “seasons” cover just about any way one might delimit time – (Mark 13:33, Acts 1:7).
Church history is replete with
examples of men who have predicted the timing of Christ’s return. And while
their methods and conclusions have varied, one thing they all have in common is
that ALL of them without exception failed. And so far, today’s
Prophecy Industry is NO exception to the rule. Like all their
predecessors, the “experts” have chosen NOT to heed the clear and
repeated warning of Jesus.
In
none of this am I claiming that Christ’s return is not imminent, nor that it
will not occur before the present generation comes to an end. For all I know, he may
arrive “on the clouds”
tomorrow, and that is why we must always be ready for his “sudden” return.
And that is the point. I do NOT
know, you do NOT know, and most certainly today’s self-appointed
prophecy “experts” do NOT know when the “end” will come,
or whether we are members of the “last generation.”
Since we cannot calculate the
time of the “end,” is it important to study Bible prophecy? Yes!
Absolutely! Among other things, prophetic passages teach us what is coming and
what to expect (e.g., the “apostasy,” deceivers, the
resurrection), and how to be prepared for every eventuality so that his “arrival”
does not overtake us “like a thief in the night.”
What I am “suggesting” - “shouting
from the rooftops” - is that it is high time for us to reexamine the many
popular claims and fads about the “last days” propagated by the Prophecy
Industry over the last several decades. Bible prophecy has NOT failed, but the so-called "experts" have, and miserably so.
