Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 37
Gary discusses common misunderstandings of Bible prophecy based on over-literal interpretations and misreadings of the Old Testament.
There is a long history of forcing prophetic texts from Scripture to fit current events, and there is also a long history of abject failure. For example, John Gill (1697-1771) interpreted the locusts as the main competing religions of his day: “And their faces were as the faces of men; which may be expressive of the affable carriage of Mahomet [Muhammad], and his followers, especially to the Christians, and of his great pretensions to holiness and religion, and of the plausible and insinuating ways, and artful methods, used by him, to gain upon men; and being applied to the clergy of the church of Rome, may denote their show of humanity, and their pretended great concern for the welfare of the souls of men, their flatteries, good words, and fair speeches, with which they deceive the simple and unwary.”
The biblical approach is to study how locusts are depicted in the Old Testament and pay attention to the time element in Revelation (e.g., 1:1, 3; 22:10). Sometimes locusts are literal (Ex. 10:4, 12-15) and sometimes symbolic of armies (Judges 6:5; 7:12; Joel 2:4-5). Audience relevance precludes any claim that they are or will be helicopters or millions of drones, otherwise the Bible’s revelation was irrelevant for God’s people who first received it, and such irrelevance has continued for thousands of years, and will continue to be because technology is always changing. If, for example, atomic weapons are what’s described in Zechariah 14:12 and 2 Peter 3:12, how were these descriptions to be understood by people who first read these accounts?
John Walvoord’s book Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis went through numerous updated editions since it was first published in 1974 with the latest edition’s title changed to Armageddon, Oil, and Terror: What the Bible Says about the Future (2007). Why was the title changed? Because current events changed.
Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times
Commentators, theologians, preachers, and social media pundits have a lot to say about Bible prophecy. In Prophecy Wars, Gary DeMar takes a hard look at some of Christendom’s most popular end-times misconceptions and compares these theories to a plain reading of many well-known but often misinterpreted Bible texts. There is a mountain of scholarship that shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in great detail just as He said it would be before the generation of His day passed away.
Buy NowGary discusses common misunderstandings of Bible prophecy based on over-literal interpretations and misreadings of the Old Testament. The New Testament is the best commentary on the OT, but the OT also helps us better understand the NT. We can’t selectively claim that certain parts of the OT are still future just because we don’t like the fulfillment.
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