The History of the Future

What is Bible prophecy? Prophecy is not primarily the prediction of future events. Most simply, it is God’s message brought to God’s people through God’s prophets. Much Old Testament prophecy was delivered to rebuke Israel for her sins, to call her to repentance and to proclaim the blessings that would accompany repentance and obedience. It also warned of the devastation that would follow should Israel ignore the warnings. Too often, they did ignore the warnings, and the threatened punishment followed. Many of these prophecies were both declared and fulfilled long ago, and we can read them in the Old Testament. We can see how the whole story worked out. Often, though, the predictions seem to transcend the times and places of those historical events. They have a grander scope, reaching to nations surrounding Israel, and sometimes to all the nations of the earth. There are also prophecies of a time when God would pour out great blessings, both upon Israel and upon all flesh. The New Testament contains many similar prophecies. But coming as they do, long after the historical judgments of the Old Testament, the New Testament prophecies must be about events that were still in the future of its first-century writers. Were all these New Testament predictions brand new prophecies? Are they repetitions of the Old Testament prophecies that still had not been fulfilled? Or perhaps both? How are we to understand all these things? My wife and I have been to many churches over the years, and have observed that one frequent characteristic of conservative, evangelical churches is an intense interest in Bible prophecy. In some churches it appears to be the only thing that otherwise sober Christians ever get excited about. Their excitement is focused on prophecies whose fulfillment they expect in the very near future, within their own lifetimes. They are events that the Bible predicts, but whose fulfillment seems not yet to have come to pass. As amazing as they were, the Old Testament prophecies that were already fulfilled in Biblical times fail to bring about the same enthusiasm; they are just “Bible stories.” This is understandable, though, because our attention is drawn to the events that accompany the return of our Savior Jesus Christ, our blessed hope. In fact, the Bible exhorts us to anticipate them eagerly. We are still left, though, with the task of sorting things out. What do the Bible’s prophecies mean? Which biblical predictions have been fulfilled and which are yet future? And even more fundamental, what is the relationship between the Old and New Testament prophecies? This is a difficult task, and the church has come up with many futuristic scenarios down through the ages. Today’s popular prophetic books, radio messages and even movies belong to the newest of these scenarios, proposed by a system called dispensationalism. Its advocates tend to describe coming events in great detail. However, there is something these preachers and authors often neglect to tell you, something that many of them may not know themselves. It is that the church’s understanding of Biblical prophecies has changed repeatedly and dramatically over the centuries. Today’s dispensational program is just the most recent scenario. The differences among all these schemes are not just in minor details. They relate to the whole systems, and even to the very purpose of prophecy itself. My hope is that this book will bring clarity. How did the current, evangelical understanding of prophecy come about? Why does it differ so dramatically from the church’s understanding earlier in history? Is there any way to figure out who is right? We are going to examine The History of the church’s understanding of the Future. Let’s start with a brief look at some events leading to the widespread acceptance of today’s most popular prophetic scheme, dispensationalism. Enthusiasm for end times studies has been high for more than two centuries, but the most recent surge can probably be traced back to one book — Hal Lindsey’s first book, The Late Great Planet Earth. It was published in 1970 and quickly became a best seller. It eventually sold more than 35 million copies in dozens of languages. In this book, Lindsey examined Bible prophecies in light of current world events. He wrote that so many prophecies matched the state of world affairs of the 1960’s, that the return of Christ was very near. This influential book was followed by an explosion of other end-times books by many authors, including sequels by Lindsey himself. Many of you have read Lindsey’s book, and almost all Christians with an interest in prophecy know its message — the soon coming of Christ based upon the apparent fulfillment of Biblical prophecies in current world events. Its publication resulted in a firestorm of fascination with Bible prophecy that continues to this day. While dispensationalism had existed as a theological position for over a century, Lindsey’s book, and the many copycats that followed it, turned prophecy into a pop-cultural sensation that was a tremendous commercial success, but left its theological roots in the dust. Lindsey’s book, of course, was not the first to be written about dispensational eschatology. His was not a scholarly work. It flourished because it was written for a popular audience, and it tied Bible prophecy into events which his audience saw and heard daily in the news. It made prophecy personal, almost tangible, and this was profoundly appealing. The return of Christ is a subject near and dear to the heart of every Christian. To think that after two thousand years, our own generation would be chosen to see the culmination of history was electrifying! We ourselves were participants in the Bible’s story! In the more than half century since its publication, the message of “The Late Great Planet Earth,” (also fueled by the success of the “Left Behind” series), has permeated the American evangelical psyche. And it’s not just the church, but even American pop-culture has absorbed it as well.