By Ashley Church.
We’ve just had a big cyclone here in New Zealand and we were fixated on every aspect of its arrival, progress and eventual departure – constantly checking apps, following the news for updates, watching the maps, and trying to work out what was coming and whether we needed to prepare any differently.
That’s just common sense. When people think a storm is coming, they want forewarning and enough information to prepare and adjust so as not to be caught out.
But what if you checked your weather app and discovered that the storm that you were preparing for had already passed and you hadn’t even noticed?
That’s very much the position we find ourselves in today, with Bible prophecy.
Millions of people treat prophecy like a spiritual weather forecast – waiting for, studying, debating, and preparing themselves for a succession of events which have already taken place. It’s like looking out a car window waiting for a storm to come when the real storm is already in our rear vision mirror. Not in some distant ancient past, and not in some vague symbolic sense, but in very recent history – publicly, dramatically, and in plain sight. And, even now, we still don’t recognise those prophecies for what they really are: a summary of the history and destiny of Israel, Jerusalem, and the Jewish people.
As such, the biggest mistake most Christians make about prophecy is assuming it is mainly about us, when in fact it is mainly about Israel.
If this claim confuses you – you’re not alone. For centuries, Christians have ignored the plain meaning of scripture – altering its meaning so as to be about us while persecuting the people about whom the books of the Bible were mostly written. More recently, we’ve misappropriated specific scriptures and tried to force them to mean things about OUR future rather than the recent past of Gods own people.
That doesn’t mean that there is nothing still to come, in prophecy – there is. But the major time-defined prophecies in Daniel and Revelation – the ones that come with actual time periods, actual durations, and actual sequences – almost all of those are behind us and were fulfilled in highly visible events in very recent Jewish history.
That changes the whole discussion and explains why there is so much confusion around the meaning of Bible prophecy. If you start in the wrong place, you end up asking the wrong questions. If you assume the Church is the primary focus, you start looking for fulfilments in the wrong story and spend years preparing for storms that have already passed.
If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard this before it’s because no one has ever told you. This information hasn’t existed in any book or any Prophecy Interpretation system – until now.
But if so much Bible prophecy has already been fulfilled – why does it matter now?
It matters because an accurate prediction tells us something about the forecaster.
Before the storm, a forecast is a warning. After the storm, it is proof. It tells you that the forecaster knew what he was talking about and that, next time he speaks, you would be wise to listen.
The same is true of Prophecy. The ‘time defined’ prophecies in the Books of Daniel and Revelation (those ones that include time periods like time, times and half a time, 2,300 mornings and evenings, etc) aren’t there to allow us to know the future in advance – they’re there to show that God spoke into history before it happened. And only now, after the events that they describe have taken place can we understand their meaning – confirming the reliability of the text and the authority of the Author.
But if that’s true – if those events have already happened – why did I bother writing a book about it?
Because understanding what has already happened is the key to understanding what lies ahead. There is still a great deal of prophecy yet to be fulfilled – but it isn’t in the form of the tidy charts and templated events that Prophecy writers have been telling you with such certainty and confidence.
Instead, those events have already been fulfilled in the very recent history of the Jews and Jerusalem and the events ahead – the things still to come – will take a very different course to what any of us have been told to expect. And they all involve Israel.
The Jewish story is not some side issue in God’s purposes. It is central. Israel is not a prophetic curiosity – it is the centre of gravity. And the extraordinary hostility that has been directed toward the Jews is not random feature of modern politics – it is the central theme of a story that has been playing out for over 2,500 years.
That matters because it tells us that God has already acted publicly in the story of Israel and Jerusalem exactly as He said He would. And it matters because once you know which prophetic clocks have already finished, you are finally in a position to understand the parts of the story that still lie ahead.
While Christians watch the signs anxiously – waiting for a coming storm that has already passed – the people for whom those signs are actually intended are back in their land, just as prophecy said they would be, fighting for their lives in the midst of a whole new storm….
