There is a lot of information out there about Bible prophecy in books and on the Internet. Unfortunately, much of that information is wrong and people put too much faith in so-called “experts” to get their information. Any person can use a piece of scripture to defend their argument on a topic, but a person who truly knows what is going to happen can account for virtually all of scripture to defend their entire End Times point of view.
Learning Bible prophecy is a lot like putting a puzzle together. There is prophecy throughout the Bible and the objective is to put the pieces together to get a clear picture of the future. There are pieces like the Book of Revelation and Matthew 24 that can help us form the outer edge of the puzzle. The difficult part is to utilize verses embedded in the Book of Isaiah, Zechariah, Malachi, Jeremiah, etc to fill in the detail of the End Times puzzle.
- People tend to have different ideas of what the future is going to be like since there are so many puzzle pieces available. For instance, some people believe in the Pre-Tribulation Rapture based on a certain way they attempt to put certain pieces of the puzzle together while another group of people will disagree about the timing of the Rapture because they attempt to put certain pieces of the puzzle together in a different way.
What makes learning Bible prophecy the ultimate puzzle is that there are so many ways you can put verses together without it being obvious whether the pieces fit or not. When you put together a toy puzzle you can quickly see whether pieces belong together based on how well they fit physically together. It is not so obvious in Bible prophecy since there is a lot of nuisance involved and there are almost countless combinations that you can try to piece certain verses together.
- The more verses you are able to account for the closer you become to completing the puzzle. The closer you come to completing the puzzle the more accurate your description of the future becomes because you are able to identify what verse explain certain future events and, more importantly, which verses are not relevant to explain certain future events.
A major reason why I believe there is a lot of wrong information out there about Bible prophecy is that so-called “experts” often present people with a potential, partial solution to the puzzle and claim that what they present is a completely accurate depiction of the future (like they’ve solved the entire puzzle). An “expert” should be honest with people and include a caveat that warns people that their position on issues can change because there is still more to learn about.
- Daniel 12:4 says “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased”. This verse suggests that gaining knowledge is an ongoing process which involves constant study of the Bible. The more time people spend studying the Bible to see how pieces of the ultimate puzzle can potentially be put together the more they will learn.
I want to be capable of accounting for every prophetic verse in the Bible to defend my view of the End Times. I feel I am capable of accounting for many of the prophetic verses in the Bible, but not all the verses just yet. I’m working feverishly at the moment to account for these verses, and I feel that I’ve made great progress over the past few days (I’ve learned more about these verses I’m studying in the past four days than I’ve tried to learn about these verses in the past four years). However, until I can account for every prophetic verse it is possible that my position on some End Times concepts can change.
