Prophecy

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And so we have the prophetic word confirmed,
which you do well to heed
as a light that shines in a dark place,
until the day dawns
and the morning star rises in your hearts;

Knowing this first,
that no prophecy of Scripture
is of any private interpretation,

For prophecy never came by the will of man,
but holy men of God spoke
as the were moved by the Holy Spirit.

Prophecy is a field of wide interpretation, with many strange variations. This is true primarily because the methods used in interpreting the Bible are not consistent with the conservative practice of using a literal, or plain, interpretation. Where the Bible does not mean what it says, but must be spiritualized, there is no way to determine whether a man's interpretation is valid or not. For more on Bible interpretation, see the article entitled Bible Interpretation.

Among conservatives, however, there is broad agreement on almost every point of prophecy. Where there is a literal method of interpretation, the Bible means just what it says, so that there is not a lot of room for differences of opinion. There are, of course, areas where the Bible is vague, at least as far as our present understanding is concerned. However, even in those places, there is a general consensus on most points because of our understanding of other portions of Scripture.

The purpose of this page is not to present higher and lower arguments for every view taken by every group in theology, but is to simply state the conservative position clearly so that the reader will have a basic understanding of the general framework and structure of those events yet to unfold upon the world stage, as understood by those who employ a normal interpretation of the Bible.

There are several things that should be noted before getting into the actual framework of the prophetic Scriptures. Many people, for example, have a wrong view of just what prophecy is. When a prophet wrote or uttered his prophecy, he was not saying that at some point in time God would intervene in natural occurrences and cause certain things to come to pass, although, where this is true, the prophets would specifically say so. God's bringing Gog and Magog out the uttermost parts of the north in Ezekiel is a case in point (Ezek 38:4, 19-23; 39:1-4, 6-7). Nevertheless, in most of prophecy, the prophets simply declared that at some point in time certain objective circumstances would obtain. That is, allowing for the natural evolution of political events, a certain nation would rise to prominence and do certain things or act in certain ways. Prophecy was not the process of saying, necessarily, that God would cause things to happen, but merely that they would happen. Daniel's prophecies of the rise and fall of world empires are examples of this.

In the passage above, some understanding may be gained of the process by which the prophets recorded their messages. The word that is translated moved has as its essence the tugging at a ship by the action of the wind in its sail. When the sail is turned so that it catches the wind, it moves the ship inexorably. So were the prophets moved by the Holy Spirit, who came upon them and caused them to see, understand and record the things that He desired to impart to man.

We tend to view the fulfilment of prophecy as miraculous, when it is actually the prophecy itself that is miraculous. Often, there is nothing miraculous about the fulfillment of prophecy, but the prophets' recording of future things accurately certainly is miraculous.