Logic and the Trinity

Father and Son

Mt.20:23 – Father And Son – two persons.

Jn.3:16 – For Yahweh so loved the world that He gave, not Himself, but His Son.

Jn.3:17 – Yahweh sent His Son into the world. Did Yahweh send Himself?

Jn.5:37 – You have not heard or seen the Father (but they had seen and heard the Son) two different persons.

Jn.5:37 – There are TWO witnesses – (1) the Father and (2) the Son (two persons).

Jn.5:43 – Yahshua came in the Father’s name, but they did not receive him.

Jn.8:18 – There are TWO witnesses; the Father and the Son (two persons).

Jn.8:19 – You know neither me nor my Father (two persons).

Jn.10:29 – The Father is greater than all (others).

Jn.12:28 – Yahshua said, “Father, glorify thy Name.” A voice answered. Was it Yahshua answering himself? Are they One and the Same Person? Jn.14:1 – You believe in Yahweh, believe ALSO in me (two persons).

Jn.14:25 – My words are not mine, but His who sent me (two persons: sender/sent).

Jn.14:28 – My FATHER is greater than I – truly (two persons; Father & Son).

Jn.15:1 – I am the vine. My FATHER is the vine dresser; two different parties.

Jn.15:9 – The Father loved me, so I haved loved you (three parties; Father, Son & disciples).

Jn.15:10 – If you love me you will keep my commandments just as I have kept my Father’s commandments.

Jn.15:24 – They hated BOTH me AND my Father (two persons).

Jn.16:3 – You have not known the Father nor me (two parties; Father & Son).

Jn.16:28 – I came down from the Father and go to the Father. Did Yahshua go to himself?

Jn.16:32 – I am not alone, for the Father is with me (two persons).

Jn.17:1 – Yahshua prayed to the Father. Did he pray to himself?

Jn.17:3 – ETERNAL LIFE is knowing you, the ONLY TRUE EL, AND Yahshua Messiah whom you sent. Do we want eternal life? If so, believe in the Father and the Son (two persons).

Jn.17:4 – I glorified you on earth, and finished the work you gave me to do (the Boss & the workman). Jn.17:5 – Now Father, glorify me. Two parties; one is superior, one inferior).

Jn.17:11 – Father, keep my disciples, that they may be ONE AS WE ARE ONE. Comment: Yahshua and his Father were “one” just as the 12 Apostles should be “one;” that is, “one in purpose and doctrine.

Jn.17:18 – As YOU sent ME, so I send them into the world. Three parties: You, me, and them.

Jn.17:21 – That they may all be one in US; you and I. Us equals two or more persons.

Jn.17:22 – That the Apostles may be one as WE are ONE. Were the Apostles only one person, rather than 12 persons? Just as the Apostles were 12 individual persons, but with one goal, so the Heavenly Father and His Son were two individual persons with one goal.

Acts 2:24* – Here we have TWO persons: One ALIVE, one DEAD. Yahshua, being dead, could not raise himself. Who did? Yahweh raised him from the grave – from death (Acts 3:14,15).

Acts 2:27 – Yahshua’s soul was not left in hell; it too was raised from hell, from the grave, from the dead (vs.32). By whom? By the power of Yahweh (two persons are referred to here).

Rom.1:3 – Declared to be the Son of Yahweh, … by his resurrection from the dead (two persons).

Gal.1:1 – Yahweh (the Father) raised Yahshua (the Son) from the dead. Yahshua was subject to death, but his Father was not subject to death.

Eph.6:23 – Peace to all from Yahweh the Father AND from Yahshua. Two separate and distinct persons.

Ph.1:2 – Grace from Yahweh our Father AND from Yahshua Messiah. Two persons.

Col.1:1 – Paul an Apostle of Yahshua Messiah by the will of Yahweh (three persons: Paul, Yahweh, & Yahshua).

1 Th.1:1 – Peace from Yahweh the Father AND the Savior Yahshua (two persons; Father and Son).

2 Th.1:2 – Grace and peace from Yahweh the Father AND from Yahshua the Messiah (two persons).

1 Tim.1:1 – Paul, an Apostle of Yahshua by command of Yahweh AND Yahshua Messiah (Two persons).

1 Tim.1:2 – Grace, mercy and peace from Yahweh the Father, AND from Yahshua the Messiah.

2 Tim.1:2 – Grace and peace from Yahweh the Father AND from Yahshua our Savior.

Titus 1:1 – Paul, a servant of Yahweh, AND an Apostle of Yahshua.

Phil.3 – Grace to you, and peace (1) from Yahweh our Father AND (2) from Yahshua Messiah.

Heb.1:1 – Yahweh in times past spoke through the prophets, but in these last days spoke to us by His Son.

Ja.1:1 – James, a servant of (1) Yahweh, and (2) Yahshua.

1 Pe.1:3 – Blessed be the El and Father of our Savior, Yahshua.

2 Pe.1:2 – Grace to you through the knowledge of Yahweh, AND of Yahshua Messiah (two parties).

1 Jn.1:3 – Our fellowship is with the Father, AND with His Son Yahshua the Messiah.

1 Jn.2:1 – If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Yahshua the Messiah (Father Yahweh & advocate Yahshua (two persons). 2 Jn.9 – Whoever abides in the doctrine of Messiah has BOTH the Father AND the Son.

Jude 1 – Yahweh the Father, AND Yahshua Messiah (two persons).

Jude 4 – Some deny the only Yahweh, AND our Savior Yahshua the Messiah (two persons).

Rev.1:1* – The revelation which Yahweh gave to Himself. No. No. Yahweh did not give the revelation to himself, but to His Son Yahshua the Messiah.

Rev.1:4* – A salutation from two persons: (1) Him who is, who was, and is to come (the eternal Yahweh);

And from Yahshua Messiah the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, etc.(vs.5).

Rev.1:9* – The word of Yahweh and the testimony of Yahshua: Two persons.

Rev.2:8* – The words of him who died (Yahshua). It is impossible for the Father to die, therefore Yahshua is not one and the same person as the Father.

Rev.2:26 – He who overcomes, I (Yahshua) will give power over the nations, even as I myself received power from my Father (vs.27). Two persons: The lesser receives power from the other.

Rev.3:5 – Two persons: one of which will confess our names before the other. Who are these two? Father Yahweh and Son Yahshua.

Rev.3:12* – He who overcomes, I (Yahshua,Vs.11) will make him a pillar in the temple of MY ELOAH; and write on him the name of MY ELOAH; etc. Yahshua’s El was someone other than himself.

Rev.3:14 – The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of El’s creation. Two persons spoken of: (1) El the Creator, and (2) the one who was created – the True Witness (Yahshua).

Rev.3:21 – Overcomers will sit with me (Yahshua) in my throne, as I overcame and sit with my Father in His throne. Two thrones and two persons are spoken of: (1) the Father and His throne, and (2) the Son and his throne.

Rev.4:2-11 – He who sat upon the throne (Rev.4:2,3,9,10; 5:1,7; 19:4; 20:11; 21:5), was Yahweh, the Almighty El. Yahshua, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, the Lamb who was slain, and who opened the seven seals (Rev.5:2-10); was not Yahweh. He stood before the throne on which the Father (Yahweh) sat: two persons.

Rev.5:11-13 – Praises were given to (1) Him who sits on the throne, and (2) the Lamb who was slain.

Rev.6:16 – Hide us from (1) Him who sits on the throne, and (2) the wrath of the Lamb: Two persons.

Rev.7:9,10 – Salvation belongs to our El, and to the Lamb: Two persons.

Rev.7:17 – The Lamb, now on the throne, on his Father’s right hand (Heb.1:3), will be their shepherd; and Yahweh will wipe away all tears: Two persons.

Rev.11:15 – The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Yahweh, and of His Messiah: two persons.

Rev.12:17 – Those who keep the commandments of Yahweh (first person), and who bear testimony of Yahshua (second person).

Rev.14:1,4 – These have the Father’s Name written in their foreheads (Greek – Father and Son’s name), and are the firstfruits to Yahweh AND the Lamb.

Rev.14:12 – Those who keep the commandments of Yahweh AND the faith of Yahshua: two persons.

Rev.15:3* – Three separate persons are named here: Yahweh, the Lamb, and Moses. If Moss and Yahweh are not one and the same persons, why should we think the Lamb and Yahweh are one and the same person?

Rev.19:4-7 – Four parties are named here: Yahweh the Almighty, The Lamb (Yahshua, the bridegroom), the bride of Messiah, a great multitude.

Rev.20:6 – They will be priests (1) of Yahweh and (2) of the Messiah

Rev.21:9,10 – Three parties: Yahweh, the Lamb, and the bride.

Rev.21:22 – Two parties are named: Yahweh and the Lamb. These are the temple in the New Jerusalem.

Rev.22:1 – The river of life flows from the throne of Yahweh AND of the Lamb (two persons).

Rev.22:3 – No more curse will be there for the throne of Yahweh And of the Lamb will be in the city: two persons.

Conclusion of these thoughts

To create only ONE person from these two:

(1) Yahweh the Father (who sits on the throne), and

(2) Yahshua the Son (the Messiah, the Lamb);

Requires too much bending of terms, titles, names, logic, facts, and Scriptures. It is much better to accept the “sincere milk of the Word” (1 Pe.2:2), and “receive with meekness the engrafted Word” of Yahweh (Ja.1:21),

“…which is able to instruct you for salvation through faith in the Messiah Yahshua. For all Scripture given by inspiration of Yahweh is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of Yahweh may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim.3:16,17 KJV).

One good work which we should continually promote is FAITH; Faith in the following:

(1) Faith in the one Supreme Being who has LIVED ETERNALLY. His Name is Yahweh, the Creator of the heavens and the earh and all things in them.

(2) Faith in Yahweh’s Son; Yahshua the Messiah, who DIED to redeem sinners and arose again the third day. He was “declared to be the Son of Yahweh… by his resurrection from the dead (Rom.1:1-4).

Name of God and Jesus

Name of the Creator is יהוה , and His Son’s Name is יהושע

Most copyist (scribes) and translators/transliterators of the (”Qodesh [Hebrew meaning, 'set apart'], Holy, Sacred”) Scrolls (”Scriptures, Bible”) have SUBSTITUTED the Name of our Heavenly Father and Creator and the Name of His Son for the names/titles of idols/gods/goddesses used in pagan/devil worship.

These SUBSTITUTED names/titles for our Heavenly Father and Creator are: Jehovah (Jove, Jovis), LORD GOD (BAAL GAD), El and Elohim (PLURAL form) and Adonai (Adonis). The SUBSTITUTED names/titles for His Son are Jesus (jEZUS, ZEUS, heh-SOOS) and Christ[ian](Chrishna, KRSNA). The TRUE Name/Title of our Heavenly Father and Creator is YAHWEH Almighty and the TRUE Name/Title of His Son is YAHshua Anointed (Messiah).

The Truth regarding the falsehood of the trinity

The Arian controversy was a Christological dispute that began in Alexandria between the followers of Arius (the Arians) and the followers of St. Alexander of Alexandria (now known as homoousians). Alexander and his followers believed that the Son was of the same substance as the Father, co-eternal with him. The Arians believed that they were different and that the Son, though he may be the most perfect of creations, was only a creation. A third group (now known as homoiousians) tried to make a compromise position, saying that the Father and the Son were of similar substance.

Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being “born” or “created” and being “begotten”. Arians saw these as the same; followers of Alexander did not. Indeed, the exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were still unclear to speakers of other languages. Greek words like “essence” (ousia), “substance” (hypostasis), “nature” (physis), “person” (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The word homoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and because it had been condemned at the 264-268 Synods of Antioch.

Homoousians believed that to follow the Arian view destroyed the unity of the Godhead, and made the Son unequal to the Father, in contravention of the Scriptures (”The Father and I are one”, John 10:30). Arians, on the other hand, believed that since God the Father created the Son, he must have emanated from the Father, and thus be lesser than the Father, in that the Father is eternal, but the Son was created afterward and, thus, is not eternal. The Arians likewise appealed to Scripture, quoting verses such as John 14:28: “the Father is greater than I”. Homoousians countered the Arians’ argument, saying that the Father’s fatherhood, like all of his attributes, is eternal. Thus, the Father was always a father, and that the Son, therefore, always existed with him.

The Council declared that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and are co-eternal, basing the declaration in the claim that this was a formulation of traditional Christian belief handed down from the Apostles. This belief was expressed in the Nicene Creed.

Salvation why and how?

Before reading this article we would like to strongly suggest that you to have a Bible in front of you, either in print or on a website.  There are numerous Scriptures that are cited throughout this article, while only a few are quoted.  These Scriptures are all essential and have been selected to highlight the points being made.  After you’ve read a paragraph with referenced Scriptures, we encourage you to stop and look up the cited verses before continuing through the article.  This will allow you to full appreciate the essential truths being presented. Have you ever done something that you knew was wrong?  Perhaps as a child you stole a piece of candy or maybe you have told a lie.  Maybe you have done something even more severe.  Whatever it might be, you be confident that you are not alone, for many people have assuredly done the same.    In doing something such as stealing or lying, you have sinned.  The Illustrated Bible Dictionary explains that sin is done “either by omitting to do what God’s law requires or by doing what it forbids.”[1]  Unfortunately sin is something that we have all inherited from our father Adam. (Rom. 5:12)  It was not until after he sinned that he bore children.  Having become imperfect (sinful) by disobeying God, he was not able to produce children without sin.  Sin was passed on to all of Adam’s children, including each of us, and so we are deserving of death.  The apostle Paul, in writing to an early church in Rome, explained that “the wages of sin is death.”  (Rom. 6:23)  The source of this sin proves to be in our father Adam; for God explained to him that if he disobeyed he would die. Adam had the choice, he chose to disobey God, and so he brought death upon us all. (Gen. 3:11-19) When the apostle told those in Rome that “the wages of sin is death,” he did not stop there, leaving them without hope.  He reassured them, explaining that “the gift of God is everlasting life by Christ Jesus our Lord.”  God has promised to give his servants life that will not end.  But if we have all sinned and are deserving of death, how can this be? The words of Jesus Christ have been recorded within the Bible, where he explains that God took action to bring life to those deserving of death.  He said: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone believing into Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  (Joh. 3:16-17)   When Adam fell into sin, God did not intend to eternally condemn mankind to death.  He had a plan to restore mankind so that we would no longer die.  This plan would be accomplished through sending his son into the world.  When God sent his son into the world, he sent him as a human being. (Heb. 2:14) The difference between him and us though is that he was perfect, without sin.  (Heb. 4:15)   By him willfully offering his sinless life up as a ransom, he provided what was necessary to bring about the redemption of mankind. (Mat. 20:28)  He initiated the New Covenant by pour out his blood in death, through which God has forgiven our sins.  (Jer. 31:34; Mat. 26:28) How though can you benefit from this sacrifice?  Recall again John 3:16 where we read that it was by “believing into him” that people would receive life.  If we believe in him, we will also then believe in the one that sent him. (1Jo. 2:23) This belief is not simply a passive thought, where you merely acknowledge his existence.  We know from Scripture that even the demons, who are opposed to God and Jesus, do this. (Jam. 2:19)  The belief that is necessary and is truly considered faith is an active belief, where we have a true love for God and Jesus, where we practice our faith. (Jam. 2:14-25; 1Jo. 5:3) With a true, active faith, we have the promise of eternal life.  We are instructed to know the Father and the Son, and by doing so, in getting to know them through true faith, we will receive everlasting life. (Joh. 17:3)  But how can you do this?  You can come to truly understand the personalities of both God and Jesus by reading about them in the Bible.  You can come to see how they have dealt with others in the past and what they will do in the future to both those that serve them and those that choose to disobey.  You can develop a close, personal relationship through prayer.  In prayer you can express your personal thoughts and feelings; you can express your desire to repent of your former sinful course and to follow them.  (Mat. 6:9-13; Act. 26:20)  If you have not yet come to follow God and Christ, we invite you to do so.  God desires none to be destroyed, but he wishes for all to repent, including you.  (2Pet. 3:9)  By doing this, not only will you find a true peace today (Isa. 48:18), but you will have a confident outlook in this troubled world.  You will have an assurance, that if you endure to the end, not turning away from God, you will have everlasting life.  (Mat. 10:22; 24:13) [1] Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible, Herbert Lockyer, Sri., Editor, with F.F. Bruce and R.K. Harrison. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986), 994.

The Sign of the Cross

The cross was used by Pagans long before the Messiah was put to death on Calvary.
The cross is a symbol of the Babylonian Sun god and was also seen on the coins of Julius Caesar 100-40 BC. The cross was the emblem of Tammuz known as the mistletoe or Branch.
It is doubtful if Christ even died on the kind of cross commonly known. It is more likely that he was crucified on a stake – an upright pole or tree with its branches lopped off. But we will not argue about the type of cross on which the Messiah died; the point is, we Christians should not venerate the cross – any cross. Nor should we have crosses in our church buildings, or wear crosses around our necks or make signs of the cross on people’s foreheads. The following stunning comments are taken from pages 197-199 of Alexander Hyslop’s book
THE TWO BABYLONS     ISBN 0-7136 047 0     Published by S.W.Partridge & Co, 4,5,6 Soho Square, London, England.

“There is yet one more symbol of the Romish worship to be noticed, and that is the sign of the cross. In the Papal system, as is well known, the sign of the cross and the image of the cross are all in all. No prayer can be said, no worship engaged in, without the frequent use of the sign of the cross. The cross is looked upon as the grand charm, as the great refuge in every season of danger, in every hour of temptation as the infallible preservative from all the powers of darkness. The cross is adored with all the homage due only to the Most High; and for anyone to call it, in the hearing of a genuine Romanist, by the Scriptural term, ‘the accursed tree,’  is a mortal offence. To say that such superstitious feelings for the sign of the cross, such worship as Rome pays to a wooden or metal cross, ever grew out of the saying of Paul,
‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’(that is, in the doctrine of Christ crucified)   is a mere absurdity, a shallow subterfuge and pretence. The magic virtues attributed to the so-called sign of the cross, the worship bestowed on it, never came from such a source. The same sign of the cross that Rome now worships was used in the Babylonian Mysteries, was applied by Paganism to the same magic purposes, was honoured with the same honours. That which is now called the Christian cross was originally no Christian emblem at all, but was the mystic Tau of the Chaldeans and Egyptians – the true original form of the letter T – the initial of the name Tammuz … That mystic Tau was marked in baptism on the foreheads of those initiated in the Mysteries, and was used in every variety of way as a most sacred symbol … The mystic Tau, as a symbol of the great divinity, was called ‘the sign of life;’ it was used as an amulet over the heart; it was marked on the official garments of the priests, as on the official garments of the priests of Rome; it was born by kings in their hand, as a token of their dignity or divinely-conferred authority. The Vestal virgins of Pagan Rome wore it suspended from their necklaces, as the nuns do now. The Egyptians did the same, and many of the barbarous nations with whom they had intercourse, as the Egyptian monuments bear witness.

In reference to the adorning of some of these tribes, Wilkinson thus writes: ‘The girdle was sometimes highly ornamented; men as well as women wore earings; and they frequently had a small cross suspended to a necklace, or to the collar of their dress… “
There is hardly a Pagan tribe where the cross has not been found.
The cross was worshipped by the Pagan Celts
long before the incarnation and death of Christ. “It is a fact” says Maurice, “no less remarkable than well attested, that the Druids in their groves were accustomed to select the most stately and beautiful tree as an emblem of the Deity they adored, and having cut the side branches, they affixed two of the largest of them to the highest part of the trunk, in such a manner that those branches extended on each side like the arms of a man, and, together with the body presented the appearance of a HUGE CROSS, and on the bark in several places, was inscribed the letter Thau.”     It was worshipped in Mexico for ages before the Roman Catholic missionaries set foot there, large stone crosses being erected, probably to the “god of rain.”
The cross thus widely worshipped, or regarded as a sacred emblem, was the unequivocal symbol of Bacchus, the Babylonian Messiah, for he was represented with a head-band covered with crosses.” (end of quote – emphasis mine throughout)

In view of all these amazing facts, Stewarton Bible School advises all Christians to stop wearing or venerating the cross on which our Saviour was crucified. Who in their right mind would venerate a murder weapon used to kill a loved one? It is the same with the cross. We greatly rejoice that our Saviour died to bring about our salvation; but that ‘instrument of torture,’ which is what the cross was, is not something Christians should venerate.

Images / Pictures / Statues

The second commandment explicitly forbids the use of idols, images, pictures & statues in the worship of Yahweh. Pictures of the virgin Mary and Joseph or even pictures of Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles etc. are also included in this ban. These pictures and images are certainly not of Jesus Christ nor of his earthly followers. Sacred images, statues and pictures of the Saviour etc. should have no place in the homes or churches of believers who profess to keep the commandments of the Most High. Instead, churches could have texts of Scripture on their walls. Scripture texts are of course not compulsory, but they are infinitely better than images and statues of Mary or Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Asherah / Groves / Angel Gardens

The Bible condemns the pagan practice of worshipping in groves of dedicated trees or in front of religious shrines. The word Ashereh refers to a wooden pole or mast which stood at Canaanite places of worship (Exo 34:13).

“Originally is was, perhaps, the trunk of a tree with the branches chopped off, and was regarded as the wooden symbol of the goddess Asherah, who like Ashtoreth, was the type of fertility (Exo 34:13) It was erected beside the altar of Baal (Judges 6:25, 28)” (Westminster Dictionary of the Bible)

Temptations of Jesus

“He Was Tempted in All Points Like as We
Are, Yet Without Sin”
–Heb. 4:15–

It will be noticed that this statement is not that our Lord was tempted in all points like as the world is tempted, but like as we, his followers, are tempted. He was not tempted along the lines of depraved appetites for sinful things, received by heredity, from an earthly parentage; but being holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners, he was tempted along the same lines as his followers of this Gospel age–who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit; and who are judged not according to the infirmities of their flesh, but according to the spirit of their minds–according to their new wills, new hearts. Rom. 8:4; 2 Cor. 5:16; John 8:15

This is seen very clearly in connection with our Lord’s temptations in the wilderness, which immediately followed his consecration and baptism at Jordan. Matt. 4:1-11

(1) The first was Satan’s suggestion that he use the divine power which he had just received at Jordan, in ministering to his own wants, converting the stones into bread. This was not a temptation in any degree traceable to heredity or imperfection. Our Lord had been forty days without food, studying the divine plan, seeking to determine, under the enlightening influence of the holy Spirit, just received, what would be his proper course in life, to fulfil the great mission upon which he had come into the world, viz., the world’s redemption. The suggestion that he use the spiritual power conferred upon him, and which he realized was in his possession, to minister to the necessities of his flesh, would, at first thought, seem reasonable; but our Lord at once discerned that such a use of his spiritual gift would be wrong, would be a misuse of it, a use for which it was not intended, and hence he rejected the suggestion, saying, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” The Lord’s “brethren” sometimes have similar temptations of the Adversary, suggestions to use spiritual gifts for the furtherance of temporal interests. Suggestions of this kind are insidious, and are the channels through which God’s consecrated people not infrequently are led astray by the Adversary to greater and greater misuse of divine blessings.

(2) The Adversary suggested to our Lord fakir methods of introducing his mission to the people–that he leap from a pinnacle of the temple into the valley below in the sight of the multitude; so that their seeing him survive uninjured would be a proof to them of his superhuman power, which would lead them at once to accept him as the Messiah, and to cooperate with him in the work before him. But our Lord saw at once that such methods were wholly out of harmony with the divine arrangement, and even the misapplication of a scripture by the Adversary (apparently in favor of the wrong) did not swerve him from the principles of righteousness. He immediately replied to the effect that such a procedure on his part would be a tempting of divine providence, wholly unwarranted, and hence not to be considered for a moment. Where duty called or danger the Master did not hesitate, but realized the Father’s ability to keep every interest; but true confidence in God does not involve a reckless exposure to danger, without divine command, and merely for a show, and in a spirit of braggadocio.

The Lord’s brethren have temptations along this line also, and need to remember this lesson and example set before them by the Captain of our Salvation. We are not to rush unbidden into dangers, and esteem ourselves thus valiant soldiers of the cross. “Daredevil deeds” may not seem out of place to the children of the devil, but they are wholly improper in the children of God. The latter have a warfare which requires still greater courage. They are called upon to perform services which the world does not applaud, nor even appreciate, but often persecutes. They are called upon to endure ignominy, and the scoffs of the world; yea, and to have the uncircumcised of heart “say all manner of evil” against them falsely for Christ’s sake. In this respect the followers of the Captain of our Salvation pass along the same road, and walk in the footsteps of their Captain. And it requires greater courage to ignore the shame and ignominy of the world, in the disesteemed service of God, than to perform some great and wonderful feat, that would cause the natural man to wonder and admire.

One of the chief battles of those who walk this narrow way is against self-will; to bring their wills into fullest subjection to the Heavenly Father’s will, and to keep them there; to rule their own hearts, crushing out the rising ambitions which are natural even to a perfect manhood; quenching these kindling fires, and presenting their bodies and all earthly interests living sacrifices in the service of the Lord and his cause. These were the trials in which our Captain gained his victory and its laurels, and these also are the trials of his “brethren.” “Greater is he that ruleth his own spirit [bringing it into full subordination to the will of God] than he that taketh a city:” greater also is such than he who, with a false conception of faith, would leap from the pinnacle of a temple, or do some other foolhardy thing. True faith in God consists not in blind credulity and extravagant assumptions respecting his providential care: it consists, on the contrary, of a quiet confidence in all the exceeding great and precious promises which God has made, a confidence which enables the faithful to resist the various efforts of the world, the flesh and the devil, to distract his attention, and which follows carefully the lines of faith and obedience marked out for us in the divine Word.

(3) The third temptation of our Lord was to offer earthly dominion and speedy success in the establishment of his kingdom, without suffering and death, without the cross, upon condition of a compromise with the Adversary. The Adversary claimed, and his claim was not disputed, that he held control of the world, and that by his cooperation the Kingdom of Righteousness, which our Lord had come to institute, could be quickly established. Satan’s intimation was that he had become weary of leading the world into sin, blindness, superstition, ignorance, and that he therefore had a sympathy with our Lord’s mission, which was to help the poor, fallen race. What he wanted to retain, however, was a leading or controlling influence in the world; and hence the price of his turning the world over to a righteous course, the price of his cooperation with the Lord Jesus in a restitutionary blessing of the world, was, that the latter should recognize him, Satan, as the ruler of the world, in its reconstructed condition–that thus our Lord should do homage to him.

We are to remember that Satan’s rebellion against the divine rule was instigated by ambition to be himself a monarch– “as the Most High.” (Isa. 14:14) We recall that this was the primary motive of his successful attack upon our first parents in Eden–that he might alienate or separate them from God, and thus enslave them to himself. We can readily suppose that he would prefer to be monarch of happier subjects than the “groaning creation:” he would prefer subjects possessed of everlasting life. It would appear that even yet he does not recognize the fact that everlasting life and true happiness are impossible except in harmony with Divine law. Satan was therefore willing to become a reformer in all particulars except one–his ambition must be gratified–he must be no less the ruler amongst men; and was he not already “the Prince of this world”–and so acknowledged in Holy Writ? (John 14:30; 12:31; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4) Not that he had any divine commission to be “the prince of this world,” but that by getting possession of mankind, through ignorance, and through misrepresentation of the false as the true, of darkness as the light, of wrong as the right, he had so confused, bewildered, blinded the world that he easily held the position of master or “god of this world, who now worketh in the hearts of the children of disobedience” –the vast majority.

The peculiar temptation of Satan’s suggestion therefore was, that it seemed to offer a new solution of the question of the recovery of man out of his condition of sin. And more than this, it seemed to imply at least a partial repentance on the part of Satan, and the possibility of his recovery to a course of righteousness, provided he could be guaranteed the continued success of his ambition to be a ruler over subjects more happy and more prosperous than it was possible for them to be while kept under his delusions and enslaved by sin, which was the only way in which he could retain man’s loyalty: because in proportion as mankind rejects sin and appreciates holiness, in that proportion it becomes desirous to serve and to worship God.

Our Lord Jesus did not long hesitate. He had absolute confidence that the Father’s wisdom had adopted the best and only adequate plan. Therefore he not only did not confer with flesh and blood, but neither would he bargain with the Adversary for cooperation in the work of the world’s uplift.

Here also we see one of the special besetments of the Adversary against the Lord’s “brethren.” He succeeded in tempting the nominal Church, early in her career, to abandon the way of the cross, the narrow way of separateness from the world, and to enter into a league with the civil power, and thus gradually to become influential in the world’s politics. By cooperation with “the princes of this world,” fostered and aided by the Adversary secretly, she sought to establish the reign of Christ on earth, through a representative, a pope, for whom it was claimed that he was Christ’s vicegerent. We have seen what baneful influences resulted: how this counterfeit Kingdom of Christ became really a kingdom of the devil, for his work it did. We have seen the result in the “dark ages,” and that the Lord denominates the system “Antichrist.”

And although the Reformation started in boldly, we find that the Adversary again presented the same temptation before the Reformers, and we see that they resisted it only in part, that they were willing to compromise the truth for the sake of the protection and aid of “the kingdoms of this world,” and in the hope that the kingdoms of this world would in some manner become the Kingdom of our Lord. But we see that the combination of the Church and the world influence, as represented in Protestantism, while less baneful in its results than Papacy’s combination, is nevertheless very injurious, and a great hindrance to all who come under its influence. We see that the constant conflict of the “brethren” is to overcome this temptation of the Adversary, and to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free–not of the world, but separate from it.

Moreover, we find that although the same temptation comes to all the “brethren,” it comes in slightly modified form from time to time, and that the great Adversary very cunningly, in every instance, attempts to do with us as with the Lord, viz., to present himself as a leader along the lines of reform which he advocates–appearing to be in hearty sympathy with the work of blessing the world. His latest temptation along this line comes in the form of the suggested “social uplift,” which he is successfully bringing before the minds of many of the “brethren.” He suggests now, that however necessary it once was to walk the “narrow way,” the way of the cross, it is no longer necessary so to do; but that now we have reached the place where the whole matter may be easily and quickly accomplished, and the world in general lifted up to a high plane of social, intellectual, moral and religious standing. But the plans which he suggests always involve combination with him: in the present instance it is the suggestion that all who would be co-workers in the social uplift shall join in social and political movements, which shall bring about the desired end. And he has become so bold and so confident of the support of the majority that he no longer pretends to favor reform along the line of individual conversion from sin and salvation from condemnation, and reconciliation with the Father, through a personal faith in and consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ: his proposition is a social uplift, which shall ignore individual responsibilities and sins, and merely regard social conditions and make society outwardly “clean.” He would have us disregard the Lord’s teaching, to the effect that only those who come unto the Father through him are “sons of God,” and his “brethren:” instead, he would have us believe that all men are brethren, and that God is the Father of all humanity, that none are “children of wrath,” and that it is criminally unchristian and uncharitable to believe our Lord’s words that some are of their “father, the devil.” He would thus, without always so saying in specific terms, have us ignore and deny man’s fall into sin, and ignore and deny the ransom from sin, and all the work of atonement; under the specious, deceptive watchword, “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man,” and the Golden Rule.

This temptation of the Adversary before the “brethren” today is deceiving many, and probably will yet deceive all except “the very elect.” (Matt. 24:24) These very elect “brethren,” are those who follow closely in the Master’s footsteps, and who, instead of hearkening to the Adversary’s suggestions, hearken to the Word of the Lord. These very elect “brethren,” instead of leaning to their own understandings, and to Satan’s sophistries, have faith in the superior wisdom of Jehovah and his divine plan of the ages. Hence these are all “taught of God,” and know thereby that the work of the present age is the selection of the “brethren” of Christ, and their testing, and finally their glorification with the Lord in the Kingdom, as the seed of Abraham, to bless the world; and that in the next age will come God’s “due time” for the world’s uplift, mental, moral and physical. Hence the very elect cannot be deceived by any of the specious arguments or sophistries of their wily foe. Moreover, the “brethren” are not ignorant of his devices, for they were forewarned along this line, and they are looking unto Jesus, who not only is the Author of their faith, through the sacrifice of himself, but also is to be the finisher of it, when he shall grant them a part in the first resurrection, and make them partakers of his excellent glory and divine nature.

Such are the points of temptation to the “brethren,” and such were the points of temptation to their Captain. He was “tempted in all points like as we are” tempted; and he knows how to succor those who are tempted, and who are willing to receive the succor which he gives, in the way in which he gives it–through the teachings of his Word and its exceeding great and precious promises. The weaknesses which come to us through heredity were no part of our Lord’s temptation. He did not have a drunkard’s appetite; he did not have a murderer’s passion, nor a thief’s avarice; he was holy, harmless, separate from sinners. Nor do his “brethren” have these besetments, as their temptations. Those who have become his “brethren” through faith, and consecration, and begetting of the holy Spirit of adoption, have lost the disposition which seeks to do injury to others, and have received instead the new mind, the mind of Christ, the spirit of Christ, the spirit of a sound mind, the holy Spirit– the spirit of love; which seeks first of all the Father’s will, and secondly, seeks to do good unto all men, as it has opportunity, especially to the household of faith. Gal. 6:10

And though there remains in the flesh of these “new creatures,” possessed of the new mind or new will, a weakness of heredity, a tendency toward passion or strife, so that they may need continually to keep on guard against these, and may occasionally be overtaken in a fault, contrary to their wills, nevertheless these unintentional weaknesses are not counted unto them as sins, nor as the acts of the “new creature,” but merely as defects which belong to the old nature, which, so long as the new nature opposes them, are reckoned as covered by the merit of the ransom–the great sin-offering made by the Captain of our Salvation. It is the “new creature” alone that is being tried, tested, fitted, polished and prepared for joint-heirship with Christ in his Kingdom, and not the body of flesh, which, of such, is reckoned dead.

Future History

Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Future history. Who can say with any assurance what is going to happen tomorrow? Popular psychics of recent years, of course, have tried, for there are big bucks to be made from a gullible public if you can hit some paltry percentage of your guesses. Tell ’em what musician will be sleeping with what movie star next month, and the TV talk shows will throw significant amounts of cash at you and promote your latest book. Street corner gypsies will read your palm if you’ll grease theirs, telling you what they think you want to hear about your future. Or go uptown to the “young lions of the merchants of Tarshish,” excuse me, the financial prognosticators of Wall Street, where fortunes aren’t told, they’re made, by predicting what will happen to other people’s money—i.e., making educated guesses.

None of this is future history. There is no certainty that any of these predictions will come to pass, and their accuracy doesn’t correlate to how much money you pay for them. The vaunted Nostradamus made a tidy little sum publishing his cryptic quatrains—considered great entertainment by the cognoscenti of his day—but no one acted on them; no one changed the course of their life because of what they said. How could they? They’re vague to a fault, apparently the result of a great deal of effort to make them precisely that. The best you could do with them was to scan the events of the day trying to find something that sort of lined up. Occasionally, something did. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

But future history? No. Even if they’re right sometimes, you can’t trust Jeanne Dixon, Nostradamus, Madam Sabrina of 42^nd Street, or even your broker at Morgan Stanley to be as accurate as next Wednesday’s newspaper. (You can’t trust the newspaper either, but let’s not go there.) History, ideally, is a true account of events that took place in the past. You can trust it, learn from it, build your future upon it. Wise men study history so that they might avoid the mistakes of their forebears. They look at what they did right, and emulate them, and look at what they did wrong, and do something else. History is a stern schoolmaster. Those who ignore its lessons are doomed to repeat the class.

But if history teaches us anything, it’s that we do ignore those lessons. We always have. Solomon nailed it: “That which has been will be; that which is done will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) Oh, sure, we have technology the ancients couldn’t have dreamed of, computers, frozen pizza, and flush toilets, but human nature hasn’t changed one whit. Given the chance, we will chase after everything under heaven trying unsuccessfully to fill the void within us that only God can fill, just like Solomon said. We can look at history and try to figure out where we went wrong. We can peer ahead, hoping to avoid the disaster we suspect is lurking there. Or we can choose to live blithely in the present, willingly ignorant of both the past and the future. But we will never know peace until we come to terms with the One who holds the past and the future in the palm of His hand and calls it all now.

God knows how we’re built—after all, He built us. He’s aware that we have needs, and that the highest of these is the need to know Him. It’s just the way we’re wired. Yahshua, quoting Moses, put it like this: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4) Perhaps that explains why the Word of God is replete with history—both past and future. God wants us to know Him, to have a relationship with Him, to understand who He is, what He’s doing, and what He plans to do in our future. Because we live within the constraints of time, He—who does not—must meet us within the framework of historical reality if He is to meet us at all.

Our relationship to God, time-wise, is like watching the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day. Not on TV, you understand, but freezing our toes off in person in Pasadena. We are on the ground; we can see the float right in front of us, and we have a clear memory of the marching band that just passed. If we listen very carefully, we can hear the klop klop of horses’ hooves on Colorado Boulevard, telling us something about the immediate future: there’s an equestrian unit coming. Beyond that, only our knowledge of Rose Parades of years past can give us a clue, and then only in the most general of terms, as to what’s coming in the more distant future. That is, unless we have the official Tournament of Roses program. With the written schedule in hand, we’ll know that after the horses and the float from that big insurance company, the Shriners in their funny hats and miniature automobiles will arrive. The program helps us appreciate the effort that went into putting on such a grand event, and, on a more practical level, will let us make sure we’re not stuck standing in line at a hot-chocolate vendor’s cart when the guys in the little cars show up.

But while we’re down on the ground, watching life moment to moment, there is someone above us who sees the entire parade route from start to finish in one eye-gulp. This guy, from his lofty perch in the gondola of the Fuji blimp, witnesses every float, marching band, equestrian team, and even the fellows in the little cars—all at the same time. The entire parade is present tense to him.

All of this has a direct parallel in the parade of life—the march of human history. We live our lives one day at a time, trying to learn from the past and wondering what the future will hold. All the while, there is a God in heaven who sees the whole thing, end to end. This same God has given us His “parade program,” the Bible, so we’ll remember what’s past and have an idea what’s coming. Some of us have been watching the parade so long, we think it goes on forever, but the program states quite plainly that it does not. It had a beginning, and it will have an end. We can hear the music of the last marching band as it makes its way toward us. We can see the last float coming up the street. The end is almost here.

Look again at your program. See all those ads? Yes, I know. Most everybody ignores them. But they tell us something important: there is life outside the parade. The event happens on New Year’s Day, but we still have the whole year ahead of us, 364 more days to work and play, to laugh and love, to walk hand in hand with our Father, wide-eyed in awe at his greatness. The parade we’re watching is the whole of human history, but it’s only the first day. When the last float passes, when the music fades, it will merely mark the end of the beginning. Eternity lies before us.

So two things are apparent. First, God alone is in a position to know the future, because He alone exists outside of the bounds of time. Even his self-revealed name, Yahweh, means “I am,” i.e., “the self-existent one.” Second, He has chosen to reveal something of our future to us. (It’s not His future, mind you—all time is present to God.)

As I hinted earlier, revealing what will happen is one of the few tools God has to prove his deity to us without forcing us to worship him, and that is something He doesn’t want to do. That may come as a surprise, but it makes perfect sense. What’s the one thing the Creator lacks within himself? Companionship, fellowship. Let’s face it—it would be really hard to take God to court and try Him by a jury of his peers. He has no peers. Who knows how many eternities God thought about this before he started, but at some point He decided to do something about it. He started out by creating angels. (That’s a guess, of course; SF3.) These wonderful creatures were built to last forever, and they served God in the spirit realm. I believe that although they had the capacity for loyalty, they did not have the capacity for love, not really.

Eventually, one of their number, the most splendiferous angel of them all, became filled with pride, grew jealous of God, and rebelled, drawing away a third of the angelic host with him. Thus Ezekiel reports of Satan: “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty…. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you…. You became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God… Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor….”  (Ezekiel 28:12,15,17)

Isaiah describes it like this: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’”  (Isaiah 14:12-14) “I will be like the Most High?” God was looking for companionship, not competition. This wasn’t exactly what He had in mind. Then John describes how Satan got his following: “His [the Dragon’s] tail drew a third of the stars of heaven [a metaphor for angels] and threw them to the earth.” (Revelation 12:4)

I’m pretty sure none of this surprised God. It did, however, prove that angelic beings weren’t going to fill the bill as God’s companions. Instead, He would create an order of beings that, while lower than the angels, were made in His own “image and likeness”— beings with the capacity for love, not just loyalty. Their relationship with God would be different from the angels’ because their nature would be different.

But that would require some infrastructure. God converted some of His energy into matter—something that had never been done before (SF8)—and built a universe, complete with galaxies, solar systems, and planets, so His companions would have a nice place to live. Call me crazy, but I firmly believe that man is the end product of God’s creative process, the only reason He made the cosmos. This is not some arrogant religious-whacko theory akin to the “earth-is-the-center-of-the-universe” nonsense that almost got Galileo burned at the stake. But think about it. Does God need galaxies? What good do super-novae or quasars do Him? He lived quite nicely forever without them. We, on the other hand, need the heavier elements formed in stars for our very existence, for we are physical beings as well as spiritual, made quite literally of “the dust of the earth.” The wonders of creation are not so much an indicator of God’s greatness as they are a measure of his love.

And that, God’s love, is the key to companionship. The capacity to love is to some extent what gives us “the image and likeness” of God, for God is love. You see, love is the one thing that cannot be forced, even by an omnipotent deity, because if it is, it’s no longer love but something else. In that, it’s fundamentally different from obedience, loyalty, or even worship. It can’t be compelled, bought, stolen, held for ransom, or even manufactured; it can only be earned. It can’t be sold or bartered; it can only be given away. And here’s the rub: the capacity to love requires the capacity not to love. If the object of God’s affection cannot reject Him, then accepting Him is a meaningless concept.

That brings us back to God’s little paradox. How can he have a loving relationship with us—His would-be companions—if he leaves us no choice but to accept and reciprocate his love? If we have no choice, our love is nothing more than obedience; but if we do have a choice, our obedience demonstrates our love.

So He gave us a choice, a very simple way to demonstrate our trust, our love for Him, in the Garden of Eden. He said, “Do anything you want, but don’t eat fruit from this one tree, kids.” Then God left us alone for ten minutes—or ten thousand years; it doesn’t really matter—and we rejected His love. We woofed down the forbidden fruit like Oliver Twist with a bowl full of Fruit Loops. That didn’t surprise Him either, but I’m sure it saddened Him. Knowing what was going to happen, He already had a remedy ready, an antidote for the poison we had so eagerly consumed: He would divest Himself of His glory, enter our history as a mortal man, and offer Himself up as a sacrifice. And through this sacrifice, we could again become God’s companions, readmitted to His fellowship, just like Adam was before he chose to walk out on God.

But the remedy—the redeemer—didn’t just waltz into the Garden that afternoon and make everything swell again. It would be some time before He physically made his appearance. God wanted to reestablish a bond of trust with his companions first. So what was the first thing He did? He uttered prophecies to all the participants in the first sin:

“Yahweh said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel….’” By tempting the first humans to doubt Yahweh’s word, Satan had made himself God’s mortal enemy. So Yahweh informs him that a descendant of these same humans—and specifically of the woman—would ultimately be his undoing.

“To the woman He said: ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you….’” Yahweh had created the man and the woman as equal partners. But the woman would, due to her key role in the first sin, henceforth be “ruled” by her husband, and women from that day forward would be frustrated in their desire to wield the authority that men held. “Women’s rights activists” must blame Eve, not Adam—and certainly not Yahweh—for the injustice they find in the world.

But the man didn’t get off Scot free. “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’ (Genesis 3:14-20) The close, intimate fellowship that Adam had enjoyed with his Creator had been broken. His sin had separated him from his God, and as a result he had become mortal—his body would now grow old and die.

Three players, three predictions. Prophecy Principle Number One: pay attention to the object of the prophecy. God said something different to the serpent, to Adam, and to Eve. Determining who the prophecy is about will keep us from jumping to erroneous conclusions—sometimes. It’s not always this easy to tell who the subject is. For example, in the passages about Satan quoted above, Isaiah had begun by speaking out against the King of Babylon; in Ezekiel’s tirade, the prophet was hammering the prince of Tyre. In each case God shifted the subject in mid-prophecy. Earthly kings were used as metaphors for Satan. We need to stay on our toes.

Only God knows the future, because He alone exists independent of time. And He, from the very beginning, has shown a willingness to tell us what’s coming. Why, then, don’t most of us know what to expect? Why do we worry, fret, plan, and scheme? Why do we hedge our bets—compromise with a world system we know is flawed and corrupt? It’s because we don’t appreciate, deep down inside, that our Creator God actually is in control.

A few examples will serve to demonstrate that a solid faith backed with a knowledge of prophecy could give us a degree of peace most of us never experience. “He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.’ But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.” (Luke 18:31-34) If we knew what God had planned, if we really understood where we stood in Yahweh’s grand scheme, we wouldn’t sweat the small stuff. We could cheerfully declare with Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

On a practical level, correctly applying Biblical prophecies to our lives can save us from unnecessary pain. Yahshua warned Jerusalem, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19:41-44) By the time Titus besieged the city in 70 A.D., thousands of Christians, familiar with this prophecy, had already left town. Those who stayed died or were enslaved.

As if to make my point for me, Paul writes, “Now all these things [i.e., Israel’s misfortunes in the wilderness] happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” (I Corinthians 10:11) If we study to learn the mindset of God and familiarize ourselves with his prophetic plan, we will be in a position to live according to His will in a sinful world, avoiding the coming wrath: we too can get out of Jerusalem before the Romans show up—if we know what God has predicted.

The study of prophecies that have already been fulfilled can go a long way toward correcting the misconception that this world is out of God’s control. Beyond that, they will tell us a great deal about how Yahweh intends to bring about His prophecies that have not yet come to pass (which, after all, is the subject of this book). Prophecy Principle Number Two: Yahweh doesn’t change. He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Thus if we can determine how His prophecies were fulfilled in the past, we will be in a better position to predict how they will be fulfilled in the future. Though “His ways are higher than our ways,” though His judgments are unsearchable and His methods “past finding out,” the fact remains that He went to a great deal of trouble to see to it that we had information, and lots of it, that described our future. It’s there for a reason. It’s there because He loves us. When He said we’re supposed to “comfort one another with these words,” what words was He talking about? They were words of prophecy!

I mentioned how psychics and prognosticators can achieve fame and fortune by guessing correctly some of the time. God’s prophets were held to a slightly stiffer standard: “‘But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”  (Deuteronomy 18:20-22) The flip side of this truth was stated by Jeremiah: “When the word of the prophet comes to pass, the prophet will be known as one whom Yahweh has truly sent.” (Jeremiah 28:9)

In fact, Yahweh works both sides of the street, vindicating the words of His true prophets by bringing their prognostications to pass while confounding the false prophets who presume to speak their own mind in His name. “Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and He who formed you from the womb: ‘I am Yahweh, who makes all things, who stretches out the heavens all alone, who spreads abroad the earth by Myself, who frustrates the signs of the babblers, and drives diviners mad, who turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolishness; who confirms the word of His servant, and performs the counsel of His messengers.” (Isaiah 44:24-26)

John put it like this: “For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”  (Revelation 22:18-19)

Okay, got it. (1) Don’t attribute false doctrine to Yahweh (which, by the way, is the real meaning of the Third Commandment), (2) don’t ascribe deity to false gods, (3) don’t add to or subtract from His revelation, and (4) don’t deny the truth of God’s Word—or you’re toast. Now you know why I’m so careful about putting the real thing in a bold font. My ramblings may help you understand what God meant, but don’t confuse them with Scripture.

Consider what else Moses said: “The secret things belong to Yahweh our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29) Moses realized that Yahweh didn’t tell us everything—our feeble minds couldn’t handle the strain. We’re on a “need to know” basis: what He did tell us, He told us for a reason. “All the words of this law” boils down to this, if I’m not mistaken: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one! You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength…You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Deuteronomy 6:4, Leviticus 19:18) Yahshua insisted that all of the Law and the Prophets hung upon these two interrelated concepts. Did you catch the connection? God reveals things to us so that we might love Him, or more to the point, return His love.

Being called as a prophet of God had its downside, besides the obvious problem of getting stoned—in the literal sense—if you announced something that God didn’t actually reveal. The sad fact was that God’s message was often unpopular, especially among the ruling elite. And since they often didn’t know the One who’d sent the bad news, they attacked the messenger instead. Some things never change. Yahshua Himself pointed this out to the scribes and Pharisees of His day in his own meek and gentle way: “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.”  (Matthew 23:33-36; see also Luke 11:49-51) He sure had a way with words. Murder had been a time-honored way of silencing the truth from the first generation onward: The Zechariah He speaks of here is not the prophet, but the father of John the Baptist. Yahshua’s prediction, by the way, was fulfilled within that generation—less than forty years later—when Titus tore Jerusalem apart, stone by stone.

Prophets as a class had it rough. Jeremiah preached for forty years. Nobody listened. They finally threw him into a cesspool. Isaiah had a long and illustrious career, capped, legend has it, by getting himself sawn in two. But occupational hazards notwithstanding, God’s messengers felt compelled to tell the truth, regardless of the consequences. Amos put it like this: “Surely Yahweh does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? Yahweh has spoken! Who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7-8)  Later, Peter and John, when told to shut up and go home, remarked, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you [religious leaders] more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)

For all their dedication and courage, the prophets’ role was temporary, like our program for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Between every line they wrote was the understanding that the day would come when the light of reality would make their words seem pale by comparison, like a candle outdoors on a brilliant summer’s day. That doesn’t lessen the significance of their service, however, for without their words, many of us would not survive to see God’s bright tomorrow. Paul said it best: “Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.  (I Corinthians 13:8-13)

None of the spiritual gifts are designed to last beyond our mortal bodies. But love is. Prophecies will fail? Yes. They were meant to guide us in this life, not beyond. Besides, the shocking truth is, God doesn’t always keep his word. Before you stone me, let me point out that there are several times in scripture where God clearly didn’t do what he told His prophet He’d do, and the reason was always the same: mercy. Prophecy Principle Number Three: God’s wrath is always tempered by his love; He postpones judgment till the last possible moment because He does not desire any of us to perish. He alone knows when our sin has reached the point of no return. Compare Genesis 15:15-16—“Now as for you [Abraham], you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”—to Numbers 21:23-24, some four hundred years later: “So Sihon [king of the Amorites] gathered all his people together and went out against Israel in the wilderness, and he came to Jahaz and fought against Israel. Then Israel defeated him with the edge of the sword, and took possession of his land.”

Because of his mercy, God didn’t wipe out a rebellious nation of Israel and start over with Moses, as He threatened to do. And He didn’t destroy Nineveh in forty days, as He proclaimed He would through Jonah. Instead, he showed mercy, patience, love—in the first case because the prophet interceded for the people, and in the second case because the people repented—buying their city another century of life.

We have no idea how deep the river of God’s mercy runs. But here’s another hint. Ever wonder why the oldest man in the Bible, Methuselah, lived so long? He was the grandfather of Noah, and he died (at the extremely ripe old age of 969) the same year as the flood. This kind of “coincidence” begs us to dig beneath the surface to figure out what God may have been up to. Clue number one: he was the son of Enoch, a godly man with an intriguing story of his own—the second man listed in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11. We’ll look at his story a little later. Could it be that Enoch named his baby boy something prophetically significant? At first glance, it seems not. Methuselah (Heb. Methuwselach) comes from two words, math meaning man, i.e., adult, and shelach meaning dart or spear. Not much help. But if we look at the primitive roots for those two words, we discover something provocative. Math is from mathay, meaning “to extend,” as in, “a man’s years are extended beyond those of a child.” Shelach, “spear,” comes from shalach, “to send away or cast out, hence, to forsake.” Some Hebrew scholars suggest that his name could be rendered, “when he dies (that is, at the extension of his years), it shall be sent.” Was Enoch saying his son’s life would personify the extension of man’s time on earth before they were cast out? Pretty thin, you say. Perhaps, but the guy did live longer than anyone else, before or since. I’ve come to distrust coincidences. I’ll put my money on God’s mercy any day.

Alright, then. Let’s get down to cases. I’d like to examine several Old Testament prophecies and their fulfillments, with an eye toward comprehending the ones that are still ahead of us.

Luke records this story about Yahshua: “So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of Yahweh is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of Yahweh.’ Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’” (Luke 4:16-21)

The quote was from the prophet Isaiah, but Yahshua had stopped and closed the book in mid-sentence. Isaiah had gone on to say: “…and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that He may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:2-3) Why didn’t Yahshua quote the whole thing? Because only the first part was being fulfilled there and then—during His first-century advent. By quoting this portion of the passage, He had claimed to be the promised Messiah (“He has anointed Me…”) but by cutting it short, He was saying, in effect, “I’m not going to do all these things at this time.” He was demonstrating Prophecy Principle Number Four: peaks and valleys—the concept of split fulfillment.

Where I live, the terrain is quite hilly. There are places where you can stand and see four or five ridges, one right after the other. But you can’t see what’s between them. The only way to tell how deep or wide the valleys are is to go down into them, to “live through them.” Prophecy is often like that. The seer is shown a series of mountaintops, but he can’t tell whether they’re all clumped together or whether there are deep valleys of time in between them. In this case, Isaiah saw two groups of events that would take place a couple of thousand years apart, but he didn’t know their fulfillment would be separate. He saw everything but the timing. When Christ came the first time—laying aside His glory—He brought us the good news of His salvation, healing and freeing us from the bonds of sin. But when He returns, He will have assumed His glory once again, wreaking righteous vengeance on those who have chosen to reject Him and comforting those, especially among the Jews, who have accepted His gift of love.

The principle of peaks and valleys caused a great deal of confusion in Yahshua’s day. Even His disciples thought, at first, that He had come to overthrow Rome and set up His kingdom on earth. But it should not be a source of confusion for us today. With the benefit of hindsight, we can know what they did not: we need not assume that a prophetic passage will be fulfilled all at once. God, rather, will do things in His own sweet time, and in His own inimitable fashion.

To clarify the principle, let’s look at one more example, the prophecies concerning the downfall of Babylon. This was no mean city. About fifty miles south of present-day Baghdad, it was originally founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah. It was the premier city of the post-deluvian world, rising and declining in successive waves, as great cities often do. In 626 B.C., Nabopolassar the Chaldean threw off the yoke of Assyria (there are a bunch of Biblical prophecies predicting that, too) and rebuilt the city. His son Nebuchadnezzar II became its greatest monarch, dispensing God’s judgment upon an apostate and rebellious Judah in 586. Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, interpreted by the Jewish captive Daniel, pinpointed Babylon as the first of four great gentile world powers.

But before Nebuchadnezzar had drawn his first breath, Babylon’s fall had already been predicted by the prophets of Israel. Isaiah, writing over 150 years before the fall of Jerusalem, had said: “Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, who will not regard silver; and as for gold, they will not delight in it. Also their bows will dash the young men to pieces, and they will have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye will not spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation; nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there. But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, And their houses will be full of owls; Ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. The hyenas will howl in their citadels, and jackals in their pleasant palaces. Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged.” (Isaiah 13:17-22)

He went on to say, “‘For I will rise up against them,’ says Yahweh of hosts, ‘and cut off from Babylon the name and remnant, and offspring and posterity,’ says Yahweh. ‘I will also make it a possession for the porcupine, and marshes of muddy water; I will sweep it with the broom of destruction,’ says Yahweh of hosts.” (Isaiah 14:22-23) Another prophet predicted: “‘They shall not take from you [Babylon] a stone for a corner nor a stone for a foundation, but you shall be desolate forever,’ says Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 51:26)

So between the two of them, God predicted that the city of Babylon—then approaching its glory days—would be destroyed as completely as Sodom and Gomorrah had been, never to be inhabited again, even by wandering Bedouins. It would be both a home for desert creatures and a swamp—seemingly a glaring contradiction.

The key, besides God’s omniscience of course, is the principle of peaks and valleys, split fulfillment. This is how the history unfolded. Half a century after the fall of Judah, as the Persians under Cyrus pondered ways to breach the formidable walls of the city, a couple of Babylonian deserters wandered into their camp. They pointed out that one of the things that made the place siege-proof was that the Euphrates ran under the wall. Perhaps the Persians could too. Cyrus conferred with his counselor, Chrysantas, who opined that if they could divert the river, they could waltz in and take the place without firing a shot, more or less. The course of the river had tended to shift from time to time anyway, wandering off and losing itself in marshes to the west of the city. Why not divert the Euphrates with a huge trench? Cyrus did just that, and on October 13, 539 B.C., he took Babylon while its overconfident regent drank himself under the table, celebrating, no doubt, the fact that nobody would ever get over his wall—the strongest city wall on earth at the time. (That story is recorded in Daniel 5.) Interestingly, though the Persian commander, Cyrus, was credited with conquering the city, Daniel says that his ally, Darius the Mede (a.k.a. the Gobryas mentioned in contemporary inscriptions as the man who defeated Babylon without a battle), took control of the kingdom, just as Isaiah had predicted.

But the prophecies were a long way from being fulfilled. Xerxes (a.k.a. Ahasuerus, the Persian king whose queen was Esther) sacked the place in 478 B.C. while quelling the rebellion of Bel-shimmani and Shamath-eriba. Alexander the Great took it from the Persians in 331 and planned to restore it to its former glory, but he died before he could do much, at the ripe old age of 33. Coincidence? If you say so.

The infighting among Alexander’s generals following his death eventually landed Babylon in the hands of the Seleucids, who took one look at the estimate for rebuilding the crumbling ruin and opted for a brand new capital city instead, Seleucia, forty miles north on the Tigris River—effectively doing for Babylon what Interstate 40 did for Route 66. Incredibly, they didn’t use any of its massive stones that had been quarried at such great expense; apparently the marsh that had inundated much of the city made them too hard to haul away. Babylonian bricks have been found elsewhere, but not its stones. Jeremiah was right.

Eventually, the ever-fickle Euphrates played its part again and changed course, leaving the city high and dry. By the time of Caesar Augustus it was virtually uninhabited; Strabo lamented, “The great city has become a desert.” It was used as a walled hunting preserve by the Persians, and a few die-hards struggled to keep the temple of Bel going until about A.D. 75. But even this wouldn’t last; the once mighty seat of Chaldean power was swallowed by the desert, awaiting the archeologist’s spade. Just like Sodom and Gomorrah.

These days, Babylon is of interest only to historians and megalomaniacs. Saddam Hussein, who would have died happy if he could have gone down in history as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, actually rebuilt a palace on its original Babylonian foundation between 1982 and 1989. But nobody lives there—nobody was even allowed in to see it for over a decade after the first Gulf War.

Bottom line? As unlikely as the prophecies sounded when Isaiah and Jeremiah (and Ezekiel, Habakkuk, etc.) penned them, they came to pass exactly as God had said they would. The “peaks” they saw were spread out over seven hundred years, but it all came to pass. “But what,” you may ask, “ever happened to ‘Her time is near to come, and her days will not be prolonged’…? Seven centuries sure sounds like ‘prolonged’ to me.” Forget the infrastructure for a minute. If you consider that the government of Babylon under the Chaldeans lasted a mere forty-seven years after they destroyed Jerusalem, you’ll have to admit that its demise was rapid indeed.

All of this brings up another point. Prophecy Principle Number Five: Backup. God doesn’t put all his eggs in one basket, and, to scramble my metaphor, He always backs up his files.

The famous portrait of George Washington that hangs in the White House, the one that served as a prototype for the engraving on our one dollar bill, was painted by Gilbert Stuart. Most people don’t realize that Stuart painted three portraits of the first President from life, and he kept an unfinished one for himself to use as a model for future work—much to Martha’s chagrin. Whenever he needed money, he’d crank out another Gilbert Stuart “original” of Washington. He painted over sixty of ’em before he was through. Different backgrounds, different costumes, but always the same half-smiling tight-jawed face. Likewise, God has painted many portraits of things to come—different details, varying points of view, but all based on the same reality.

Peter said, “…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 they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (II Peter 1:20-21) We can therefore expect any significant prophetic event to be examined in several different passages, often by several different prophets. God does not ask us to take any man’s word for anything. Rather, his Holy Spirit instructs different men to reveal different things about the same future event. Only when we examine each facet of the diamond do we gain a full appreciation for its beauty. This redundancy—this system of back-ups—also goes a long way toward ensuring that God’s Word survives our sometimes woefully inadequate (and sometimes flat-out wrong) translations.

We’ve looked briefly at Babylon, which was taken to task by Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, Zechariah, and the Sons of Korah. Similar seven-lane highways could be followed to Nineveh, Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Phoenicia, Damascus, Ethiopia, Arabia, Elam, and yes, Israel—especially Israel. Daniel in the Old Testament and John in the New Testament apparently saw some of the same events, though with radically different imagery. This kind of redundancy is ubiquitous in scriptural prophecy.

In similar fashion, a prophet of God was often given the same information more than once. We see Joseph dreaming about his brothers’ sheaves bowing down to his, and later the sun, moon and eleven stars bowing down to him. (Gee, I wonder what that could mean.) Joseph recognized the “Sesame Street Factor” at once when he heard about Pharaoh’s dreams: “Then Joseph said to Pharaoh, ‘The dreams of Pharaoh are one; God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do….’ The dream was repeated to Pharaoh twice because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.” (Genesis 41:25, 32) In the same way, Daniel was given several very different visions, many years apart, describing the times of the gentiles. God clearly doesn’t mind repeating himself if it helps us understand what He’s trying to tell us. We can expect the same rule to apply when we look at prophecies as yet unfulfilled.

Related to this concept is Prophecy Principle Number Six: God often reveals different aspects of a future event separately. When the police interview the witnesses to a crime, they expect to hear slightly divergent descriptions of the scene. One witness says the bad guy was wearing blue jeans. Another says he had on a red shirt and a baseball cap. One says he saw the perp waving a gun; another says he saw the guy throw something black into the bushes. This kind of testimony is complementary, not contradictory. It has the ring of truth. As a matter of fact, if the accounts are identical they smell to investigators like collusion, an attempt to hide the real story. In the same way, Biblical prophets are merely telling us what they saw at the scene of the crime. They never claim to have told us everything; on the contrary, they themselves often seem unaware of the significance of what they’ve witnessed.

It’s like the old story of the four blind men and the elephant. The first one grabs the tail and says the pachyderm is like a rope with a frayed end. The second hugs a leg and concludes that the thing is some sort of tree. The third feels the trunk, and pronounces the animal to be a species of large snake. And the fourth feels his way down the elephant’s side and announces that the beast is a mighty wall. Though they seem to be in complete disagreement, they’re actually all correct, but nobody’s got the full picture. Prophecy is like that.

I suppose the best example of this principle is the body of prophecies concerning the Messiah. There are several hundred of them in the Old Testament. Where did the prophets say He would hail from? Micah said he would come from Bethlehem Ephrathah—David’s home town, a few miles south of Jerusalem. Hosea, on the other hand, predicted that he would be “called out of Egypt.” Isaiah, not to be outdone, referred to Him as a “shoot [netzer] out of the stem of Jesse”—the same word being the origin of the name of the Galilean town of Nazareth, where Yahshua grew up; thus Matthew points out that He was expected to be a Nazarene. The three prophecies are seemingly contradictory, yet they all fit the human history of Yahshua like a glove (and, by the way, nobody else that we know of).

How about Messiah’s mission? Isaiah says, “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief… He was despised, and we did not esteem Him…. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. (Isaiah 53:3, 7-8) This is one of many predictions of a Messiah who would suffer and die. If words mean anything at all, there is no way to make these verses apply to the nation of Israel and the trials they’ve endured, though the Jews have been trying valiantly to do that very thing for the last two thousand years. But Isaiah’s prophecy fits the life and death of Yahshua so well that to explain them away or ignore them is nothing short of intellectual suicide.

It’s far easier for the Jews, of course, to take the “reigning Messiah” passages literally. The same prophet says, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will perform this.” (Isaiah 9:6-7) When Isaiah talks out of this side of his mouth, everybody responds, “Yea, verily! Bring it on!” But we’re looking at two advents of the same Messiah, two sides of the same coin. You can’t spend one side and keep the other. And so it is with as-yet-unfulfilled prophecy. We must be prepared to deal with seemingly contradictory evidence.

This leads us to Prophecy Principle Number Seven, the “That’s Impossible” factor. God sometimes progressively narrows the field through successive revelations until literal fulfillment is virtually impossible; and only then does He bring it to pass. Yahweh delights in doing what can’t be done: you know, raising the dead, parting the Red sea, making the sun stand still, stuff like that; you can almost hear Him chuckling, “If this were easy, any god could do it.”

Figuring out these conundrums usually requires some digging, but the gems we can find are beautiful indeed. At issue here are faith and information. If we see an apparent contradiction in scripture, we need to have faith that God doesn’t make stupid blunders; No, it’s us—we just don’t have enough information yet.

My favorite Scriptural “impossibility” is the lineage of the Messiah. It begins in the Garden of Eden. In the Genesis 3 passage quoted above, God began by intimating that sin would eventually be overcome via the human race, the “seed of the woman.” That rules out orangutans and amoebas. After the flood, Noah narrowed it down to one of his three sons, Shem: “And [Noah] said: “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem….” (Genesis 9:26-27) Later, God told Abraham, a descendent of Shem, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3) The line passed through Abraham’s son Isaac (not his half-brother Ishmael): “Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him.” (Genesis 17:19) Then his son Jacob, the second-born of twins, was given the nod: “And Yahweh said to [Rebekah]: ‘Two nations are in your womb, two peoples shall be separated from your body; one people shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.’” (Genesis 25:23)

The patriarch Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, identified Judah—the fourth of his twelve sons—as bearer of the Messianic line: “Judah, you are he whom your brothers  shall praise; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh [‘he to whom it—i.e., the scepter—belongs’] comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.” (Genesis 49:8-10)

Let’s pause and take a breath. So far, God has narrowed the field five times (not including the de facto cut at the flood) effectively eliminating millions of people from consideration as Messiah’s ancestor. Note that the prophecies are getting more specific and detailed as time progresses. Note also that not once did God choose the chronological firstborn son to carry the Messianic torch (though listed second, Japheth was Shem’s older brother—see Genesis 10:21), as would have been expected by the people involved, reminding us that manmade traditions don’t mean a whole lot to Yahweh.

Also, there’s an interesting prophetic twist about Judah’s scepter—the symbol of royal authority. Israel’s first king, Saul, was from the tribe of Benjamin, not Judah. But once David succeeded him, 640 years after the prophecy was spoken, the throne of promise was never occupied by a king from any Jewish tribe other than Judah. The wording of the prophecy was precise: he didn’t say that no other tribe would hold the scepter, only that it wouldn’t ever depart from Judah. (Herod’s clan, the first kings since the Babylonian captivity, don’t count. They were not, properly speaking, Jewish, but were Idumaeans—descendants of Esau—and were placed and maintained in power by a foreign gentile government.) Yahshua the Messiah was a Jew, of the tribe of Judah. He could trace his lineage all the way back. Technically, his claim to the throne of David is what ultimately got Him crucified. But within a generation of His death, the genealogical records of the Jews were up in smoke with the rest of Jerusalem. This means that after A.D. 70, and certainly after A.D. 135 when the Romans came back and finished the job, no Jew could prove—or even demonstrate—his lineage. From that time on, it was impossible to present a legitimate, verifiable Messianic claim.

Okay, back to the prophecies. King David was the next to be pinpointed as someone in the Messianic line. Nathan the prophet came to him and said, “Yahweh tells you [David] that He will make you a house [a royal dynasty]. When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be My son.” Now here’s the kicker: “If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.” (II Samuel 7:11-16)

Sufficiently confused? You should be. Is God referring to David’s son Solomon, or to the ultimate King, the Messiah? The answer is yes. Prophecy Principle Number Eight: there can be both near and far fulfillments for a single prophecy. It’s maddeningly hard to sort out sometimes, but God likes to put interrelated truths into the Biblical Blender and hit frappe. Let’s look at the details here. David’s physical son will reign in his stead: that’s obviously Solomon. God says He will establish his—Solomon’s—throne forever. That statement will soon get us into trouble, but let’s skip over it for now. The phrase “If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him…” makes no sense. Solomon did commit iniquity, but most certainly did not receive the “blows of the sons of men.” Rather, God’s mercy stayed with him, as the passage clearly predicts. So is the prophet talking about the Messiah? Christ committed no iniquity. What’s going on here?

The key is in the little word “If.” The Hebrew word ‘asher is a primitive and rarely used relative pronoun that can mean almost anything: when, who, which, what, if, how, because, in order that, etc. Strong’s notes that “As it is indeclinable, it is often accompanied by the personal pronoun expletively, used to show the connection.” Right. So the phrase really means, “If—or when—He is associated with iniquity….” The prophet is predicting the suffering of Christ! Then he finishes up by saying David’s house, kingdom, and throne will be established forever.

Everything rolls along nicely until we get to the last few years of the kingdom of Judah. God has finally had enough, and allows Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, to haul the flower of Judean society off into captivity. The king that broke the camel’s back, so to speak, was Jehoiachin, also known as Jeconiah, or simply Coniah. Jeremiah prophesied, “As I live,” says Yahweh, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off; and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear—the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the Chaldeans. So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return. Is this man Coniah a despised, broken idol—a vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they cast out, he and his descendants, and cast into a land which they do not know? (Jeremiah 22:24-28) The prophet says that both Jeconiah and his descendents are cast out. The inference is that neither he nor anyone in his line will ever prosper on the throne of David—and certainly not in the land of Israel.

Nathan just got through telling us that Solomon’s throne will be established forever. But Solomon’s royal line ran right through Jeconiah, who is toast, prophetically speaking. Oops. Now the only way the Messiah can ever reign is if he legally occupies the throne of Solomon through the line of Jeconiah—all of whose descendents have been disqualified. And He still has to be a physical descendant of David—we aren’t allowed to “spiritualize” any of this away. This whole Messiah thing isn’t looking too promising. Has God blown it?

There are two genealogies of Yahshua in the New Testament. The first is in Matthew, and sure enough, there’s Jeconiah, ugly as sin, right between Josiah and Shealtiel. This lineage runs through Joseph, the legal father of Yahshua. But Yahshua was born of a virgin; the prophets predicted it, and the gospels reported it. Mary’s genealogy, recorded in Luke, proves that Yahshua was indeed a descendent of David, but not of Solomon. Mary’s line went through David’s son Nathan (named, no doubt, in honor of the prophet). Thus while it looked for a moment like the coming of Messiah was impossible, the careful examination of prophecy points to one man, to the exclusion of all others: Yahshua of Nazareth.

By the way, there are a few big American denominations who have officially rejected the doctrine of the virgin birth as just too weird. Sorry, folks: no virgin birth, no salvation. Don’t blame me. Blame Jeconiah.

Let’s recap, then. Making sense of Biblical prophecy requires us to determine the context and the subject of the passage in question. Applying Prophecy A to Subject B is known in theological circles as “stupid.” We need to be especially careful not to confuse Israel with the Church; they’re two different things—notwithstanding the confusion that inevitably arises when God uses Israel as a metaphor for all of His redeemed. Just as a carpenter uses a hammer and a saw to get the job done, Yahweh employs both Israel and the Church, but in different roles.

Yahweh Himself, though, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. More to the point, He is consistent in his methods and modes of revelation. So if we can figure out what He’s done in the past, we can be confident about what He has told us concerning the future. And because God exists outside the bounds of time as we know it, He is not limited to simple, one-time solutions; He can—and does—split up the fulfillments of His prophecies over many years and many events. A partial fulfillment is like a down payment, demonstrating God’s intention to make good on His promises when the time is right. God has also been known to fulfill prophecies more than once—a near fulfillment foreshadowing a more distant one.

Not only are the fulfillments often split up, but so are the prophecies themselves. They are almost never given as complete, independent proclamations, but are rather doled out one piece of the puzzle at a time. They’re invariably repeated elsewhere in scripture, often in a different manner, from a different perspective, by a different prophet, with different imagery. Whether a later prophecy adds information to an earlier one, or a different metaphor is used to present the same truth, there is almost always some degree of redundancy in scripture. Truth is built up “line by line, precept upon precept.” Prophecy, in this respect, is no different from any major doctrine.

The fascinating thing about it is that the body of revelation was brought to us by scores of writers over a span of at least fifteen hundred years, and yet there are no real contradictions in any of it. To me, that proves what Peter said, that the Holy Spirit is behind it all. God seems to delight in predicting the “impossible,” only to create a solution so unlikely it’s sublimely ridiculous. I must confess to having a degree of impatience with people who insist Christianity requires an unacceptable “leap of faith,” as if you have to check your brain at the door in order to buy into it. I have found, rather, that it takes far more faith not to believe—to assume that the hundreds of prophecies that have already been fulfilled came about by accident, or luck, or blind coincidence—without the direct intervention of an omnipotent deity.

God knows exactly what He’s doing. The prophet Isaiah threw down the gauntlet, challenging false prophets to predict what would happen, and why: “Gather together and come, you fugitives from surrounding nations. What fools they are who carry around their wooden idols and pray to gods that cannot save! Consult together, argue your case, and state your proofs that idol worship pays. Who made these things known long ago? What idol ever told you they would happen? Was it not I, Yahweh? For there is no other God but me—a just God and a Savior—no, not one!” (Isaiah 45:20-21, New Living Translation) If we understand what Yahweh has told us through His prophets, coming to trust in Him does not require a “leap of faith,” but merely a step out of the shadows into the light.

http://futurehistory.yadayahweh.com/Future_History_02_Future_History.Prophecy

Who was the Serpent in Genesis 3?

By Hal Flemings
March 1993

Early in the Bible narrative, a most incredible account occurs. We are told that a serpent carried on a conversation with a human, the first woman who was called Eve. According to Genesis 3:1-5, this is what transpired:

“Now the serpent proved to be the most cautious of all the wild beasts of the field that Jehovah God had made. So it began to say to the woman: “‘Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?’ At this the woman said to the serpent: “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But as for eating of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it that you do not die.’ At this the serpent said to the woman: “You positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.” (NWT)

Many find the report that a snake talked difficult to accept, especially in view of the evidence from science that tells us that snakes cannot engage in human conversation today and very likely did not in the past.

It is of interest that apparently some have concluded that a literal snake did, in fact, talk with Eve. None other than the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who lived from 33 C.E. – 100 C.E., composed these words as found in his work The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1 and Chapter 1:

“God therefore commanded that Adam and his wife should eat of all the rest of the plants, but to abstain from the tree of knowledge… But while all the living creatures had one language, at that time the serpent, which then lived together with Adam and his wife, showed an envious disposition, at his supposal of their living happily, and in obedience to the commands of God and imagining, that when they disobeyed them, they would fall into calamities, he persuaded the woman, out of a malicious intention, to taste of the tree of knowledge… [Later God] deprived the serpent of speech, out of indignation at his malicious disposition towards Adam. Besides this, he inserted poison under this tongue, and made him an enemy to man.”

This paper proposes that the literal snake did not talk to Even in the Garden of Eden but that a rebel spirit son of Jehovah orchestrated the snake’s actions. Several arguments primarily from the Hebrew Scriptures will be submitted to make the case.

According to Genesis 1:26, 27, only man and woman, not animals, were made in God’s image. There is, at least, the suggestion in this passage that only man was an intelligent, rational creature and that animals were not. If this is included in the notion of imaging God, then it means that animals, including snakes, were not, as now, intelligent rational creatures capable of processing and relating information on the level of humans. This argument seems to be buttressed by the fact that God tested the obedience of only Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden – not the obedience of animals, who, if they were intelligent creatures, would have been, it seems, candidates for testing as well. (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-5)

The only other account of an animal talking is found in Numbers 22. Here we are told that an ass conversed with a man named Balaam who lived in a town called Pethor. This time the Biblical account lets us know that an angel of God was the cause of the animal’s behavior. Years later, the Christian Apostle Peter referred to this event and made it plain that animals do not of themselves have the ability to converse with humans:

“Abandoning the straight path, they have been misled. They have followed the path of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the reward of wrongdoing, but got a reproof for his own violation of what was right. A voiceless beast of burden, making utterance with the voice of a man, hindered the prophet’s mad course.”

Another, perhaps less obvious, evidence is pictured for us at Exodus 7:11, 12. The man, Moses, and his older brother, Aaron, appeared before the Pharaoh of Egypt to request that the enslaved Israelites be released to celebrate a festival to Jehovah in the wilderness. The Pharaoh was resistant. To make the point more forceful to Pharaoh, Aaron threw down his rod which metamorphosed into a large, living snake. Earlier, the Bible account had told us that the ability for Aaron to do this came from Jehovah. Undaunted, Pharaoh summoned his men. Verse 12 of Exodus 7 tells us what they did:

“So they threw down each one his rod, and they became big snakes; but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.”

Now, the value of this account, in the context of our question, is that it delivers to us an event involving animals, and snakes at that, where demonic forces against Jehovah employed them to serve their purposes. It is not less reasonable to see that this could have been the case at Genesis 3 as well.

Not to insult the sensitivities of animal rights activists, but there certainly is a message in the Bible that animals are less valuable than humans, and in a restricted sense, dispensable. Even in the Garden of Eden this is suggested in that, to clothe Adam and Eve, God gave them garments of skin. (Genesis 3:21) Later, Abel, the second son of Adam and Eve, presented animal sacrifices to Jehovah. (Genesis 4:4) So, the moral tone of the Bible argues that, if animals were functioning at the level of humans, then making clothing of their skins and sacrificing them would not have been acceptable to Jehovah, notwithstanding the later human sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Our last argument arises out of what may be labeled a puzzling passage from the book of Ezekiel. After the prophet and priest Ezekiel had been swooped up with other members of the Judean upper class and leadership in 617 B.C.E. at the hands of the Babylonians, he was privileged to represent Jehovah among the Jewish captives and to write prophecies against Ammon, Edom, Moab and others. He was also used to convey God’s judgment against the King of Tyre. Part of the message against the King of Tyre is now the focus of our interest. In Ezekiel 28:11-17, the subject passage, we read:

“And the word of Jehovah continued to occur to me [Ezekiel], saying: “Son of man, lift up a dirge concerning the king of Tyre, and you must say to him, “This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: “You are sealing up a pattern, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.¹ In Eden, the garden of God, you proved to be. Every precious stone was your covering, ruby, topaz and jasper; chrysolite, onyx and jade; sapphire, turquoise and emerald; and of gold was the workmanship of your settings and your sockets in you. In the day of your being created they were made ready. You are the anointed cherub that is covering, and I have set you. On the holy mountain of God you proved to be. In the midst of fiery stones you walked about. You were faultless in your ways from the day of your being created until unrighteousness was found in you. Because of the abundance of your sales goods they filled the midst of you with violence, and you began to sin.² And I shall put you as profane out of the mountain of God, and I shall destroy you, O cherub that is covering, from the midst of the fiery stones. Your heart became haughty because of your beauty. You brought your wisdom to ruin on account of your beaming splendor. Onto the earth I will throw you. Before kings I will set you, [for them] to look upon you.”

There is no doubt that the King of Tyre was the object of Ezekiel 28 but there appears to be incontrovertible evidence that someone else was also the target of this pericope. What is that evidence?

Firstly, although the King of Tyre may have been surrounded by an Edenic palace, he was never in “Eden the Garden of God”. Indeed at this point in time, it was a few thousand years downstream from the time of Adam and Eve, and no fleshly beings alive in Ezekiel’s time had been in Eden.

Secondly, no human living at this time had been “created”; all had been generated from their parents.

Thirdly, no human living or dead had ever been a “cherub” since a cherub is an angel.

Fourthly, no human living at this time was “faultless, in his ways from the day of being created”. All humans had been born imperfect.

Fifthly, if the “fiery stones”, among which the cherub of Ezekiel 28 lived, represented the holy angels pursuant to Psalms 104:4, Hebrews 1:7, 14 and Ezekiel 1:13, then it is certainly clear that no human had ever lived in such a place.

The second party of Ezekiel 28 was in Eden, was a cherub, was created perfect, was a member of the angelic community and turned against Jehovah due to becoming enamored with himself. This places this angel in the story of Genesis 3 and by deduction identifies him with the talking serpent. No, the literal serpent did not speak to Eve.

1.  The New English Bible renders this part of verse 12: “You set the seal on perfection; full of wisdom you were and altogether beautiful.” The New International Version says: “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.”

2.  The New International Version renders this part of verse 16: “Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence and you sinned.” Byington’s The Bible in Living English says: “In the vastness of your trade your core was filled with foul play, and you sinned…”

UNEQUALLY YOKED

http://bible-truths.com/yoked.htm

L. Ray Smith

UNEQUALLY YOKED

[Marriage and Unbelievers]

Many have read the passage in the Bible where Paul admonishes: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” and have then assumed from it, all kinds of restrictions on Christian marriages. What constitutes an unequally yoked together marriage, or for that matter, an equally yoked together marriage?

Many will be shocked to learn that this verse is not referring to “marriage” at all.

The phrase “unequally yoked together” is not a phrase that signifies a “marriage.” Nonetheless, in principle it certainly applies to marriage.

First, let’s read the entire Scripture:

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty” (II Cor. 6:14-18).

The phrase “unequally yoked together” is the translation of just one Greek word, heterozugeo, which is a compound word that means, “to yoke up differently; to associate discordantly; unequally yoke together.” It is used but this one time in the Bible.

The word “yoke” means a coupling as when two oxen are coupled or yoked together by a pulling beam to do work such as plowing a field or pulling a wagon.

And so Paul is telling the Corinthians congregation which was steeped in paganism and their cities peppered with pagan temples, that they should not be “unequally” yoked with those that practiced paganism or any works of darkness. They were to avoid: “unbelievers, unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, infidels, and idols.” There it is. That’s the list Paul gave them, exactly as we read above. Nothing is mentioned about marriage, but it does apply to marriage.

So what did Paul mean by all these? Well, first of all it is not possible to live in a country, state, county, city, or village without constantly coming in contact with just such persons. Even Jesus Himself prayed and specified to His Father exactly how He desired for us to live under such circumstances in this life:

Joh 17:15 I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil.

In a sense Jesus was requesting that His disciples would “not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.”

So how do we apply these verses to marriage? Was Paul suggesting that members of the Corinthian Church congregation could not and should not marry other members of the congregation? NO. He was very specific: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with UNBELIEVERS.” Were they all spiritually converted? NO. Could a spiritually-minded Corinthian marry a carnal-minded Corinthian? Good question. Are not all “believers” spiritual-minded and all “unbelievers” carnally-minded? Let’s back up to Paul’s first epistle to these same Corinthians:

1Co 3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

1Co 3:2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.

1Co 3:3 For ye are yet carnal…”

Remember that the word “ye” does not mean the singular “you,” but “ALL of you.” Not that there wasn’t maybe a single mature, spiritual-minded one among them, but as a group, they were carnal. So if they wanted to marry within their faith, most of them would have had to marry someone carnally-minded.

Now we need to understand what’s important in this teaching. Paul did not say they could not marry someone if they were “carnal.” He did not even say that they could not marry someone if they were an “unbeliever.” He warned against being “UNEQUALLY yoked with unbelievers.” It is the “UNEQUALLY” yoked aspect that is most important.

Next let’s notice that “BE ye not…” is not the best translation, for if that were the case, then Paul would be saying in effect that anyone who was already unequally yoked in marriage with an unbeliever, SHOULD DIVORCE THEM. But we know that Paul never suggested such a thing, but just the opposite:

1Co 7:12 But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.

1Co 7:13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.

So much for the King James, “BE ye not unequally yoked…” The proper translation is “Become ye not unequally yoked…” or “Don’t you be getting unequally yoked…”

What did Paul mean by “unbelievers?” We just read that the “ye” of the Corinthians were “yet CARNAL.” But, were they “unbelievers?”

1Co 3:5 Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

1Co 15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

1Co 15:11 Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.

From what we have read, we can clearly see that the Corinthian Church was a congregation of “carnal BELIEVERS.” Of course, you can be a believer and yet be carnal. Listen, the entire two billion member Christian congregation around the world ARE BELIEVERS. That is they believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah and Christ, and that there is salvation in Him. That is what makes them believers. Now from there, the fall into all kinds of categories and doctrinal differences, but nonetheless, they are believers regardless of how many of them are “yet carnal.”

I believe that the key phrase in all this is to not become “unequally” yoked. Now Paul said with unbelievers, which makes it obviously the wrong thing to do. First you would be “yoked unequally” and to make it worse, to an “unbeliever.” Now Paul tells us that this admonition came from him personally under God’s inspiration certainly, nonetheless he adds: But to the rest speak I, not the Lord” (I Cor. 7:12).

And so I will take a little liberty myself and suggest that when it comes to marriage (remember Paul is not specifically speaking of marriage here), and say that we should neither become unequally yoked together with BELIEVERS. In other words, we should not become unequally yoked with another, but especially Unbelievers.

The word translated “unbelievers” is apistos and it means “without [Christian] faith, a heathen, incredible, faithless, infidel, unbeliever.” It is the same word translated “infidel” in verse 15, although infidel usually signifies something a little stronger than just lacking faith.

We do not need to totally avoid unbelievers, but we are not to become unequally “yoked” to them either. Paul permitted a certain amount of socializing with unbelievers:

1Co 10:27 If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.

Probably most of us have some relative in our family that is not a believer, but with whom we could have certain social intercourse with.

For sure Paul is not forbidding interaction with “The many called and the few chosen.” However, even there, we should not become unequally YOKED with them, or how can we say we came out of her as God’s people (Rev. 18:4).

I have personally seen marriages between a believer and a non-believer that were more loving and equally yoked than some marriages between two believers. So we need to pay close attention to ALL the words of these profound Scriptures.

We can advise and try to help people see different aspects of a situation. We can relay our own personal knowledge of such things. But we should not get involved in being overly righteous in these matters lest we be guilty of “forbidding to marry” (I Tim. 4:3), which is a doctrine of demons (Verse 1).

The key is becoming “unequally yoked.” And that can mean marriage, but it can also mean which church one attends; of which clubs one is a member; which establishments one goes to for entertainment; which TV shows become a regular habit; with whom one becomes business partners; Etc.

Never become unequally yoked with anyone, and always avoid: “unrighteousness, darkness, Belial [an epithet of Satan], infidels, and idols.”

We’ve all seen matches made in heaven that didn’t work out, and conversely, we’ve seen marriages doomed to failure from day one, that are still going strong (or maybe not so strong, but still going, nonetheless) after 30 and 40 years. Only God knows for sure how marriages will turn out. Birds of a feather flock together, but then again opposites attract. Marriage is an area best left up to the bride and the groom.

Dating the Book of Revelation

Dating the Book of Revelation

Part One

We are going to explore the topic of when the book of Revelation was written. The first question that may pop into your thinking may be: Why be concerned over such a fine point about the Bible? The answer to this question is that the date the book of Revelation was written is a major factor in the interpretation of both the book of Revelation itself and many other passages in the Bible!At the time of my writing of this, there are two camps of scholarship of the dating of the book of Revelation. One camp places the date at around the year AD 95 in the later years of the reign of the Emperor Domitian (AD 81–96). The second camp places the dating in late AD 68 prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.

The late dating (AD 95) of the book of Revelation has its roots hanging on a very slender and precarious thread. This dating is determined from a single source statement by the Bishop of Lyons by the name of Irenaeus (AD 120–202). The statement he makes is not an eyewitness testimony, but is his recollection of what was said (verbal transmission) by an earlier man, Polycarp, who is supposed to have known John (who wrote the book) personally (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chapter 20, AD 324). The Irenaeus statement appears in his book “Against Heresies, 5:30:3″ dated AD 175–180.

Irenaeus spent his youth in Asia Minor, but his manhood and Christian work took place in Gaul, which is modern day France. It would not be a far fetched idea to think that for Irenaeus to remember a conversation from such a distant time in his life and at such an early age could have led to confusion of names and dates. This, however, is not the only basis for my personal doubts in this situation as you will see later in this material.

It appears that Irenaeus’ statements, as they were understood, shaped the opinions of Eusebius and Jerome on this question, and this view was passed on to later authors and authorities. It is my belief that it is not good scholarship to accept a dubious statement from the Bishop of Lyons that was orally transmitted to him when he was a young man. This does not appear to be adequate and compelling evidence to cause a person to set aside the overwhelming weight of evidence, both external and internal to the book of Revelation itself, as proof that the Revelation was written during the AD 95 window.

It is important to examine not only where and how Irenaeus came by his opinion, but also what Irenaeus said because as you will shortly see it is possible that his testimony has been misunderstood. The statement that Irenaeus makes consists of a testimony about the number of the beast, 666, in Revelation 13:18. A translation from the original Greek is as follows:

“We therefore do not run the risk of pronouncing positively concerning the name of the Antichrist [hidden in the number 666 in Rev.13:18], for if it were necessary to have his name distinctly announced at the present time, it would doubtless have been announced by him who saw the apocalypse; for it is not a great while ago that it [or he] was seen, but almost in our own generation, toward the end of Domitian’s reign.”

In this passage, it must be noted that the subject of the verb “was seen” is ambiguous in the Greek language and may be either “it” referring to the Apocalypse, or “he” referring to John himself. So the slender thread surfaces. If one chooses to select “it” meaning the vision, we have the Apocalypse being written at the later date. If “he” is chosen, meaning John, then the Apocalypse is written at the earlier date because he, John, would have been seen “almost in our own generation.” Quite a situation to base your entire “end times” prophecy doctrine on, would you not say?

I am convinced that what Irenaeus was attempting to communicate was something along the following lines. John would have announced the name of the Antichrist if he wanted to because he (John) was around during the reign of Domitian. Since John did not announce it, why should we (Irenaeus and his contemporaries) run the risk of announcing it! The reason for this approach would be that although Nero was gone, Domitian and the Roman threat was still present and quite capable of carrying out a swift reprisal in the name of Rome against anyone who spoke against Nero in such a manner as to identify him as the beast!

In another place in the writing of Irenaeus, again writing about the number 666, he seems to indicate an earlier date for the dating of Revelation. In his fifth book, he writes the following: “As these things are so, and his number [666] is found in all the approved and ancient copies.” Domitian’s reign was almost in his own day, but now he writes of the Revelation being written in “ancient copies!” His statement at least gives some doubt as to the “vision” being seen in AD 95 which was almost in his day, and even suggests a time somewhat removed from his own day for him to consider the copies available to him as “ancient.”

Several of the church fathers of the third and fourth century speak of John’s writing Revelation in connection with his banishment to the Isle of Patmos, which they fix as the reign of Domitian. Yet some of them are unclear between Nero and Domitian. Clement of Alexandria says John was banished by “the tyrant,” a name appropriate to either, yet in usage applies less to Domitian and more to Nero. Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the Elder, and the Roman satirist Juvenal, all of whom predate Eusebius, call Nero “the proverbial tyrant.”

Eusebius, who was the bishop of Cesarea from AD 314–340, writes of John as being banished to Patmos and of seeing his visions there in the reign of Domitian. The problem with this source is that he quotes Irenaeus, in fact, the very passage we have under consideration (this appears in his history, book 3, chapter 18). He also refers to a tradition to the same effect, which may have grown out of the same leading of Irenaeus.

Jerome [331–420] held the same opinion, apparently on the authority of Irenaeus.

Victorinus of Petavio, who died in AD 303, in a Latin commentary on the Apocalypse, says “John saw this vision while in Patmos, condemned to the mines by Domitian Caesar.”

Many others of a later age could be cited supporting this same connection between John and Domitian, but it would seem that this does no more than to continue a tradition which appears to have come from the language of Irenaeus. The conclusion most come to at this point is that the external evidence of John writing the Apocalypse at the close of Domitian’s reign rests on the sole testimony of Irenaeus, who wrote a hundred years after that date, and whose words were from a verbally transmitted second source during the childhood of Irenaeus. To make matters worse, the words he used can easily have two different meanings!

Unfortunately, the earliest church fathers such as Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Papias, Polycarp and Justin Martyr, the very testimonies that would be the most helpful to us, are silent on the dating of Revelation. They either omitted this point because it was understood without their testimony, or what they wrote perished along the way.

An ancient document known as the Muratorian Canon which comes down to us from AD 170–210 states, “Paul, following the order of his own predecessor John, writes to no more than seven churches by name.” The seven churches that Paul wrote to were: Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossi and Thessalonica. John, in his addressing the writing of Revelation, wrote to seven churches as indicated in Revelation 1:4. The implication of this statement in the Muratorian Canon is that John had written his book of Revelation BEFORE the completion of Paul’s writings to the seven churches he had written to. Paul died under Nero’s persecution. Nero’s rule ended in AD 68!

There is also in existence, a number of Syriac translations of the book of Revelation which have the following inscription: “The Revelation, which was made by God to John the Evangelist, in the island of Patmos, to which he was banished by Nero the Emperor.” Most of the Syriac translations, which are known as the “Peshito,” “Curetonian,” the “Philoexenian” and the “Harclean” are supposed to have been translated late in the first century or very early in the second, but the ones containing Revelation are not believed to be quite that old. The superscription on this manuscript does provide support that the dating of the Revelation goes back to the time of Nero. Moses Stuart, Commentary on the Apocalypse (1845), Vol. 1, p. 267; J. W. Mc Garvey, Evidences of Christianity (Nashville, Gospel Advocate, 1886), pp. 34,78; Milton S. Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics (1890), pp. 136, 138; James Murdock, Syriac New Testament, Peshitto Version, translated in 1852, published 1896. It is thought that the Peshitto Versions, which are dated at 150 AD, were based upon original autographs (original documents).

Clement (AD 150–215) makes the following statement supporting an early dating: “For the teaching of our Lord at His advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius. And that of the apostles, embracing the ministry of Paul, end with Nero” (Miscellanies 7:17). Clement seems to indicate that he believes that the Scriptures were completed by the end of Nero’s reign which ended in AD 68.

Epiphanies, AD 315–403, stated that the book of Revelation was written under Claudius [Nero] Caesar. This Roman ruler was emperor from AD 54 to AD 68.

Andreas of Capadocia, about AD 500, in a commentary on Revelation, dates the book as Neronian.

Arethas, about AD 540 assumes the book to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem and that its contents was prophecy concerning the siege of Jerusalem.

There is no shortage of those from the above date forward who support the earlier dating of the book of Revelation.

There is language in the book of Revelation itself that gives strong if not convincing evidence of its earlier dating. The Greek words that give us this evidence are “tachei” and “tachu.” These words appear in the following verses of Revelation.

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly [tachei] come to pass; and he sent and signified [it] by his angel unto his servant John” (Rev.1:1).

“Repent; or else I will come quickly [tachu], and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (Rev.2:16).

“Behold, I come quickly [tachu]: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown” (Rev.3:11).

“And he said unto me, These sayings [are] faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly [tachei] be done” (Rev.22:6).

“Behold, I come quickly [tachu]: blessed [is] he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book” (Rev.22:7).

“And behold, I come quickly [tachu]; and my reward [is] with me, to give to every man according as his word shall be” (Rev.22:12).

“He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly [tachu]. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev.22:20).

These words, in their various tenses, are translated as “shortly,” and “quickly.” The words do not mean “soon,” in the sense of “sometime,” but rather “swift,” “now,” “immediately,” “hastily,” and “suddenly.” The word meanings here are critical to understanding the “imminency” that is being communicated in the vision of the book! The vision is NOT something that would be expected to take place two thousand, or more years into the future!

Another word that reeks of the imminency of the revelation to John is the Greek word “eggus” which means “at hand” or “near.” This word is found in the following passages.

“…for the time is at hand (eggus). (Rev.1:3).

“…for the time is at hand (eggus). Rev.22:10.

Another word we should look into is the Greek word “mello,” and “mellei.” These words appear in the following texts.

“Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall [mellei] be hereafter” (Rev.1:19).

“Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall [mello] come upon the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Rev.3:10).

The meaning of these words are given to us as: “is about to come.” When these words are used with the aorist infinitive the preponderance of use and preferred meaning is “be on the point of, be about to.” The same is true when these words are used with the present infinitive. The basic meaning in both Thayer’s and Abbott–Smith is “to be about to” and the word “mellei” with the infinitive expresses imminence such as the immediate future. This causes us to understand that the word usage in Rev.1:19 and 3:10 portray an expectation of soon or quick future occurrence.

This kind of language should lead us to conclude that the prophecy in the vision was something that was to take place very close to its being revealed to John! I see this as being fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.