THE END IS HERE
By Mike Donald
Chapter 1: Notes on Prophecy
This is a book about Bible prophecy. Specifically, this is about some of what the Bible has to say regarding the end times. Events in the world today have more and more people showing an interest in end times Bible prophecy, so there are a large number of initiates to the subject who don’t fully understand what Bible prophecy is or how to interpret it. For this reason, a discussion is in order that focuses on the topic of “what is prophecy?” Also, since we are focusing on end times prophecies, we will be looking at prophecies that regard future events. Since we do not have 20/20 hindsight, these prophecies must be interpreted to the best of our abilities. That means we should really have a discussion about two things, “what is prophecy?” and “how does one interpret prophecy?” After investigating these two related concepts, we can then begin to look at what end times prophecy says is in our near future.
Prophecy is Not Just a Foretelling of Events
I remember sitting in church one Sunday morning, and hearing a young child in front of me ask her mom, “What is a prophet?” Her mother’s response was sadly disappointing: “Someone who knows the future.” Unfortunately, this child was misled. That description more closely fits the definition of a fortune teller than of a prophet. A prophet is so much more! A prophet is someone who receives revelations of information directly from God. Sometimes those revelations are descriptions of what will come, sometimes they are a revelation of knowledge of what someone has done when no one else was around, and sometimes they are an explanation of a thing that has already happened which no one yet knows about. Prophecy is not just a foretelling of future events. It is usually a specific revelation from God to man of something God wants known.
In 1 Samuel, chapter nine tells the story of a boy named Saul who has gone out to look for some missing donkeys. He ends up at the prophet Samuel’s residence, where Samuel anoints him king of all Israel. When he arrives there, before Saul tells Samuel of his search for the donkeys, Samuel says, in verse 20, “… But as for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, do not be anxious about them, for they have been found…” This information is something Samuel, the prophet, received directly from God. It is not a prediction of a future event, but is rather information regarding something that has already happened. Nonetheless, this is a prophecy.
The important message here is that while prophecy often does tell of future events, it is not just a predicting tool. It is a revelation from God of what God wants man to know.
Prophecy As a Foretelling of Events
With that in mind, God often wants man to know certain things that are going to happen in the future. The problem then becomes, how does God describe a computer to a man living in the year 1000 BC? Or an airplane? Or a nuclear bomb? Another issue arises when there is some information that, for His reasons, God does not want us to know, but it is integrally related to something that He does want us to know. What we end up with is a description of future events that, without foreknowledge, can be difficult to understand.
As an analogy, consider the game of charades. The person acting something out knows exactly what they are acting out. They do their absolute best to convey this information to those who are guessing. But look at how much difficulty they have getting the guessers to figure out what it is they are portraying. Likewise, God knows what will happen, and He tells us. But like those guessers, who don’t have all the information, we do our best to interpret the prophecy to figure out what it means.
We who live after the crucifixion have an advantage: God has given us a key to understanding prophecy. We have literally hundreds of Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah that we can compare to the New Testament description of the Messiah after He arrived. There are also other Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled before the arrival of the Messiah which can be used to help us in our understanding. These keys teach us how to interpret prophecy. So let us investigate some of them, so that we can apply what we learn to end times prophecies.
The first thing we find is that there are two basic classifications of prophecy: Literal and figurative. Figurative prophecy only and always comes in the form of dreams and visions. Any prophecy outside of a dream or vision falls into the category of literal prophecy.
Literal Prophecy
The easiest way to delve into literal prophecy is to take a look at the twenty-second Psalm. This Psalm, as will become evident, is a prophecy of the crucifixion. When King David wrote it, he is said to have been writing about his own difficulties, but for reasons that will become apparent, it is clearly not about him. Before we get to the Psalm itself, there is one thing that must be understood. The form of execution known as crucifixion was invented by the Persians. When the Roman Empire overtook the Persians, the Romans adopted it for themselves. After a time, Rome outlawed crucifixion as being too inhumane. As an official form of execution, crucifixion lasted only about three hundred years. King David is believed to have lived c. 1040–970 BC, about a thousand years before the crucifixion of Christ. There is no possible way that King David, the author of the twenty-second Psalm, ever saw, or even heard of, a crucifixion. So, with that understanding, let us take a look at the twenty-second Psalm.
Psalm 22: An Analysis
Some of the verses of the Psalm are descriptive of feelings, and help the Psalm to be what it was intended to be: A song. For that reason, we will not be looking at every line. However, I do encourage reading the entire Psalm to get a full sense of what it says. Here and now, though, we will look at select verses and compare them to New Testament descriptions of the crucifixion.
Psalm 22:1
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why are You so far from helping Me,
Matthew 27:46
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
It may be a strange coincidence, But Y’shua (Hebrew name of Jesus) calls out the first line of the Psalm from the cross. While the New Testament was originally written in Greek, of special note is the fact that Y’shua’s words are first written in Hebrew then translated to Greek by Matthew. The Hebrew version is word-for-word identical to how King David wrote it, in Hebrew, in the Psalm. We know from this that there is no translation error causing similar phrases to be translated into the same phrase. Instead, it really was the exact same phrase. Okay, so Y’shua was familiar with scripture, maybe He just remembered that line and quoted it to apply to His predicament. That is possible, but the fact remains it was written about a thousand years earlier, and it is exactly what Y’shua said.
Psalm 22:7-8
All those who see Me ridicule Me;
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
8 “He trusted in the Lord, let Him rescue Him;
Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him!”
Matthew 27:39-43
39 And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads 40 and saying, “You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”
41 Likewise the chief priests also, mocking with the scribes and elders, said, 42 “He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He is the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. 43 He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’”
There are a few things to point out here. The Psalm tells of the ridiculers “shaking their heads” (translated from Hebrew to English). Matthew mentions that the ridiculers were “wagging their heads,” which is another way of saying the same thing (translated from Greek to English). Whether the difference between shaking and wagging results from the vagaries of translating between languages, or from the author choosing to use slightly different words doesn’t matter, they both mean the exact same thing.
What is really interesting here, though, is what the chief priests, scribes and elders say. These are people who spend their lives studying and teaching the Old Testament scriptures. As familiar as they would have been with the Book of Psalms—and that would be very familiar—they didn’t even realize that they were quoting word-for-word what King David had written. If they did realize it, they would also have realized that the twenty-second Psalm was a prophecy of this event, so they would have realized that this was their Messiah on the cross, and they would not have been so disrespectful to Him. So without even knowing what they were doing, they said exactly what King David predicted they would say a thousand years beforehand!
Another thing to note is this: Some have claimed that the New Testament Gospels are a fiction, where the authors used the Old Testament prophecies as a guide to describe what happened. While there are many solid proofs that this is not the case, if we were to assume for argument’s sake that it is the case, then Matthew would have made every effort to describe every detail that was prophesied, to prove that Y’shua really was the One the prophecies were talking about. He would not have left out the detail from the Psalm, “They shoot out the lip.” The fact that this particular detail is missing actually lends credence to the Gospel, albeit in a small way.
Psalm 22:14
I am poured out like water,
And all My bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It has melted within Me.
John 19:34
But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out.
An analysis of the crucifixion written by a physician once mentioned that as Christ was dying on the cross, His pericardial sac, an envelope around the heart, would fill with a clear fluid that was mostly water. Should this sac be punctured, even if He was still alive, there is no way Y’shua’s heart could continue beating after having been compressed by the excess fluid and suddenly decompressed by the puncture, and He would die instantly. This physician continues on to point out that when Y’shua’s side was pierced by the soldier’s spear, the tip of the spear would likely have been pointing straight at Y’shua’s heart. If the tip of the spear then pierced the pericardial sac, which was over-filled with fluid that was mostly water, then water, mixed with blood, would pour out of the wound made by the spear. So, in a very real sense, Y’shua’s heart melted like wax and He was poured out like water.
Psalm 22:15
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And My tongue clings to My jaws;
You have brought Me to the dust of death.
John 19:28-30
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” 29 Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. 30 So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
A tongue clings to a person’s jaws when that person is extremely thirsty. The Psalm is saying that His strength is gone, He is desperately thirsty, and He is brought to death. Crucifixion on a cross is a slow and terrible death. Because of the position the victim is in, he must lift his body up to exhale. Eventually, the victim uses up all of his strength doing so, and he cannot lift himself up anymore. Once his strength is gone, he suffocates to death. Y’shua was thirsty, He was given sour wine to drink, He said His final words, and was at the end of His strength. He couldn’t lift Himself up anymore, and He died of asphyxiation. As the Psalm said, His strength was gone, He was desperately thirsty, and He was brought to death.
Psalm 22:16
For dogs have surrounded Me;
The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me.
They pierced My hands and My feet;
John 19:17-18
And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha, 18 where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.
Remember that King David wrote this Psalm about 700 or 800 years before crucifixion had even been invented. Then reread, “They pierced My hands and My feet.” There is no record of anyone ever piercing King David’s hands and/or feet. He is clearly not talking about himself. But he also could not have known about crucifixion apart from a revelation by God.
And now for the real kicker…
Psalm 22:18
They divide My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.
John 19:23-24
Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took His garments and made four parts, to each soldier a part, and also the tunic. Now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top in one piece. 24 They said therefore among themselves, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be,” that the Scripture might be fulfilled which says:
“They divided My garments among them,
And for My clothing they cast lots.”
Therefore the soldiers did these things.
These were Roman soldiers. Unlike the chief priest, scribes, and elders mentioned earlier, they knew little or nothing of the Hebrew scriptures. It’s not like they were repeating a phrase that they might have learned through their studies. No, they had no idea that a thousand years before, King David said they would be casting lots for Y’shua’s clothing.
Notice that in every detail, the prophecies are fulfilled in a very, extremely literal sense. The events happen exactly the way they are foretold. Now, as just an interesting bonus to this quick study on the literalness of how prophecy is fulfilled, let’s also read Zechariah 11:12-13.
Then I said to them, “If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.” So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver.
13 And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter.
Matthew 27:3-7
Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”
And they said, “What is that to us? You see to it!”
5 Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.
6 But the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because they are the price of blood.” 7 And they consulted together and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.
In Zechariah’s time, the wage he should have been paid was about 8 pieces of silver. But notice that even though he is describing an event he went through, it turns out he is also very literally describing a prophecy regarding the Messiah. In both passages, thirty pieces of silver are paid as the price for a prince, the thirty pieces of silver are thrown into the temple by the one who was paid them, and the thirty pieces of silver end up going to the potter. It can’t possibly get any more literal than that!
The lesson here is that whether the prophecy is a word spoken by God directly to the prophet, or a song the prophet was inspired by God to write, or an action or activity that God instructed the prophet to engage in, the prophecy will be fulfilled in its most literal sense. The only times prophecies are not this literal is when they are a dream or a vision.
When Prophecy is Not Literal: Dreams and Visions
Note: Visions are essentially dreams that are experienced by someone who is awake, and sometimes sleeping dreams are also referred to as visions.
The only times we see prophecies that are allegorical or symbolic is in dreams and visions. And in those cases, the symbolisms remain strictly constant from one prophecy to another. To understand these symbols, we look at dreams and visions that have been interpreted within the Bible, and that have been fulfilled. For this purpose, one of the most enlightening chapters in the Bible is Daniel, Chapter 7. In this chapter, Daniel recounts a dream in which he watches four beasts rise up out of the Great Sea. Afterward, he watches some legal proceedings that take place in Heaven. At the end, he is quite confused, so he asks for an explanation from an angel who is standing nearby. The angel then interprets the dream for him. We find out that the beasts, which are not exactly normal animals, represent empires that rise up out of history. By inference, we can also decipher that the Great Sea represents all of history.
In the next chapter, Daniel recounts a similar experience, in which he first has a vision, then an angel interprets the vision for him. From these two chapters, we learn that the following symbols represent certain things.
Specific, Common Symbols
Beasts rise up out of the Great Sea. Each beast represents an empire or a nation. But, the beasts are not exactly normal animals; there is a distinction between animals and beasts. One beast “was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle,” (Daniel 7:4, NIV) another “looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads.” (Daniel 7:6, NIV) Some are very similar to normal animals, but are only subtly different: ““And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear.” (Daniel 7:5, NIV) By implication, the beast was clearly not a bear, even though it “looked like” one, otherwise Daniel would have said “…a second beast, which was a bear.” Then there is “a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal, and the horns were long. One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later, “ (Daniel 8:3, NIV). A ram normally has two horns, but they are both the same size, and they both start growing at the same time and continue to grow at the same rate. If one horn should get broken off, then it will grow back at the same rate, so it will always be a shorter horn. Having a horn that “grew up later” and is “longer than the other” is not possible on a normal animal.
But, we may ask, what about the cows in Pharaoh’s dream in Genesis 41? We are told that they represent years, not empires. The difference here is that the cows are completely normal animals, with the exception that seven of them are well fed, and seven of them are starving. These are animals, not beasts.
So, returning to the beasts, we gather a key detail in Daniel, chapter 8. The horns of the beasts represent rulers of the empires that are themselves represented by the beasts.
These are the most significant common symbols in figurative prophecy, beasts—not animals—represent nations or empires, horns on the beasts represent the leaders of those empires, and the Great Sea represents all of history. There are other, less significant, common symbols, but these three begin to give us the necessary basis to understand much of what prophetic dreams and visions are telling us.
There is also a deeper representation here. For instance, each nation uses an animal as its national symbol. The United States of America uses the bald eagle as its symbol, while Russia uses the bear. Likewise, ancient nations did the same. So the beasts in Daniel represent specific nations that might possibly be identified by the animal that the beast most closely represents. So from Daniel 7:4 (NIV), “The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off,” this lion might represent Babylon, whose symbol was a lion, and the wings could represent a swiftly moving, conquering nation. Or, the lion might represent England, the United Kingdom, and the eagle’s wings could represent the U.S.A., the action of them being plucked off representing the U.S.A. gaining its independence from England. The beauty of prophecy is that this vision of Daniel’s could have two equally correct interpretations such that both representations of the beast are accurate interpretations. History is known to repeat itself, such that certain prophecies regarding ancient Babylon could also refer to modern England and America doing the same or similar things.
So, whether this particular beast represents Babylon, England/America, or something else entirely is up for conjecture. This is where we don’t have all the information, and we are guessing at what the charades actor is acting out. That is not to say these are uneducated guesses, there are a lot of complimentary prophecies that fit together and explain details from each other to aid us in this endeavor. But ultimately, until a prophesied event actually happens, we can only interpret the prophecy to the best of our abilities. And an interpretation is just that: An interpretation. Continuing the game of charades analogy, when an actor is acting out a four word phrase, the guessers could have three of the words, but still not guess the correct phrase. Likewise, an interpretation of prophecy could be mostly correct and still not have all the details worked out properly. We only know for sure after the event has passed, and the prophecy can be applied to the event. Even King David probably had no concept of the workings of a crucifixion when he wrote the 22nd Psalm.
Chapter 2: https://usa.life/read-blog/3615
