Prophecy Made Clear: Understanding God’s Word About the Future

God gave prophecy—not for fear, not for speculation, but to reveal who He is and to give His people comfort and confidence about the future. If we know what the Bible says is coming, then we can calm our anxiety and start focusing on our mission.

But if we don’t know how to understand the common parts of the Bible, how are we going to know the prophecies in it? Especially when we start hearing about beasts with four wings, wheels full of eyes, and countless other symbolic imagery.

It is vital that we understand how to read the Bible before we can properly understand it. We talked about this in Unit 1:13.

Now it’s time for a refresher. With what we are going to cover in this unit, it is going to take attention to detail. Most confusion in prophecy does not come from the text itself. It comes from how people choose to read the text.

Prophecy Was Meant To Be Understood

God did not give prophecy as a puzzle that only scholars can solve. He gave it to regular believers. In fact, He gave it to fishermen not likely to be mistaken for a rabbi.

I’ve heard people say, “Yeah, but they had been with Jesus personally.” But I have to ask—have you not been with Jesus? The Holy Spirit dwells within every believer, guiding us into all truth.

If God had not intended us to understand prophecy, He would not have given it in the first place. But He did give it to us. And in many places, He literally says, “He that hath an ear, let him hear.”

Sometimes God does conceal things from the world. He hides them in symbolism and metaphor. But Jesus didn’t want His disciples to be ignorant. He didn’t want them to be lost in the metaphor. He gave them the interpretation.

This is how God operates with prophecy as well. Those who seek to know the truth can find it. It is Jesus who can open our eyes and ears, and He has told us that He will guide us.

Through a Glass, Darkly

When Jesus gave His parables, He gave the information that was needed. He didn’t tell people which mountain faith could move. He didn’t tell us what the floor plan was of the man who built his house on sand. He just told us the important things.

That’s what God does with prophecy. He doesn’t generally tell us when something is going to happen. He doesn’t often give details about how it is going to happen. He just tells us what is going to happen. He tells us what we need to know.

Part of the reason Bible prophecy can be hard to understand at times is because we may know what is going to happen, but not how or when. We see part of the picture, but not all of it. What we need to remember, though, is that what little we can see is actually all we need to see.

God has given us His word like a lamp to shine the way, not to wander recklessly. Speculation happens when we step beyond the boundary of that light and start trying to make our own way. So while everyone wants to be an explorer, we should explore only within the boundaries God has given us.

That may be the most important principle in understanding prophecy: let it reveal itself, rather than trying to force something into it that doesn’t belong there.

Sometimes what that means is that we have to throw out what we think we already know. That’s why, when we go through this unit, I urge you to drop everything you think you know at the door. It will be there for you to pick up once we are done, if you want to.

Literal Interpretation of Prophecy: The Default Rule

The Bible should always be interpreted literally first, unless the text itself clearly tells you otherwise.

Literal interpretation simply means this:

• Words mean what they normally mean
• Sentences mean what they normally mean
• History is treated as history
• Promises are treated as promises

This is how we:

• Read the creation account
• Read the life of Jesus
• Read the crucifixion
• Read the resurrection

Even when Jesus used symbolism, He built it on a literal foundation. The woman searching for the lost coin was not an abstract idea—she was a real person performing a real action. The spiritual meaning existed because the literal scene existed first.

So many things in prophecy should be taken literally. For example, when Isaiah said a virgin shall give birth to a child, it could easily have been thought to be a metaphor, because that’s not possible. So if we tried to interpret what he said, we might assume in our own wisdom that he was not talking about an actual virgin giving birth.

Yet that’s exactly what happened. How could we have expected such a thing? Simple—he never told us he was speaking in any way but literal. So it’s important that we don’t assign meanings to things that the Bible doesn’t give us permission for.

When it speaks in metaphor, it will let us know.

The Bible Reveals the Metaphor

In Scripture, when God gives symbolic dreams and visions, He either identifies them as such in the passage itself, interprets them directly, or has already defined the symbols elsewhere in His Word—so that Scripture interprets Scripture.

As an example, in Revelation John sees a woman clothed with the sun standing on the moon. But he lets us know this is symbolism in the passage itself. The word translated “wonder” (Greek: sēmeion) literally means sign, symbol, or signal.

So before the woman ever does anything, the text tells you what follows is symbolic. This is the pattern in every case. The Scriptures themselves tell us what to take as literal and what not to.

The symbols are explained by Scripture itself, not by private imagination. The danger, when people stop letting the Bible define its own symbols, is that prophecy becomes whatever the teacher wants it to be.

What Causes Confusion Over Prophecy

Sometimes we miss things. Small key words can be overlooked. The little details matter, so we must pay close attention.

A great example of this is when Jesus said that immediately after the tribulation the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light. We typically glance over that section and skip right to Jesus returning. This changes the order of events without us even being aware that we have done it.

If we miss something at one point, we will end up with a brick missing from the foundation needed to understand the rest of the prophecy. That leads to false information and confusion.

Another important thing to note is that prophecy does not always unfold in an unbroken sequence. A prophecy can be fulfilled in stages.

For example, if I told you a certain president would serve two terms, and after his first term he was voted out of office, that would not make the prophecy false. It would simply mean the prophecy had not yet finished being fulfilled. That same president could later run again and serve a second term, completing what was spoken.

In the same way, some biblical prophecies are not fulfilled all at once, but progressively over time. If we assume everything must happen immediately and without interruption, we will often conclude—incorrectly—that a prophecy has failed.

This does not mean we are free to stretch prophecy indefinitely to fit our expectations—only that we must allow Scripture itself to tell us when a prophecy is complete.

Which brings me to the next thing we need to be careful about: we should not set dates for things which God specifically tells us we are not to know. Speculation here has always been a cause of trouble. If it says we can’t know something, it may sometimes be fun to take a guess—but it should never be taught as if it were all but certain.

So the bottom line is this: what we really need to be careful about is that we do not insert into or take away from the text itself. When we redefine words, add our own understanding, and treat the Scriptures without carefulness, we invite confusion.

Prophecy in the Old Testament

Another key to understanding prophecy is knowing that what is written in the New Testament has already been foretold in the Old Testament. The New Testament gives us certain details, but the overall story was already given in the Old Testament.

So we should be able to connect the prophecies to their Old Testament counterparts. Jesus didn’t give new information when He told us about the end times. He told us what the Father had already revealed to those able to see and hear it.

Knowing this comes in handy when trying to understand some of the symbolism, because some symbols already have their meaning explained in the Old Testament.

As We Continue

Everything in this course has been designed to lay precept upon precept. From the beginning of the course explaining that there is a God, to the end of the course explaining the end times, it all builds on each other.

That is how we are going to continue in the following studies. I am going to lay the foundations, then I am going to take you bit by bit through it. What I encourage you to do is test the roof by how well it sits on the foundation, not the foundation by how well it holds the roof.

What I mean by that is you may be tempted to say something is wrong because it doesn’t support another doctrine you may already hold. But the reality is that the doctrine being supported may not fit what is in the Scriptures in the first place. So if you are going to test a doctrine (as I encourage you to do), make sure you test it based on its foundation and its own merit, not based on whether it supports what you already believe.

I will divide this unit into sections. First, I will give you a history of the books of prophecy themselves. This will help you understand why they are certainly given by God. You will see why they cannot have been written after the fact.

Then I will begin with prophecy already fulfilled. I will take you event by event, showing you where the prophecy was given, then when and how it was fulfilled. The goal is to list every prophecy in chronological order of fulfillment.

So this course will unveil the timeline of prophecy as it unfolds. You will be able to see each prophecy in order just by looking at the order in which I speak of it in this unit. In the end, you will have what I believe to be the most biblically grounded and certain interpretation of prophecy you have ever known.

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