Prophecy

The Exact Day

Valerie Cullers 4 Comments

This coming Sunday, the church will celebrate Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people were praising him, saying , “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest.” Matthew 21: 9 But did you know that Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was predicted almost five centuries before?

The Book of Daniel was written around 530 B.C. In it, many prophecies were given to Daniel about the people and land of Israel. They are so accurate that many don’t believe he could have written it. Some scholars believe it was written in the second century B.C. I, for one, believe it was written exactly when it says it was written.

Daniel had been studying the book of Jeremiah to try to figure out how long his people would be in captivity in Babylon. He realized that Jeremiah had spoken about seventy years. As he was praying for his people the angel Gabriel interrupted him and gave him more prophecies concerning his people Israel. One of these prophecies specifically speaks to Palm Sunday. “Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty two weeks; the street shall be built again , and the wall, even in troublesome times.” Daniel 9: 25

Prophecy experts know that each week is a week of years, i.e., sixty-nine weeks equals 483 years. The Jewish year has 360 days, so the total days would be 173,880 days. These numbers are certainly staggering. The decree went forth to restore and build Jerusalem by Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 B.C., and Jesus rode into Jerusalem on April 6, 32 A.D., exactly 173,880 days later. This includes 116 leap days and 24 days between March 14 and April 6. (Information in this paragraph provided by Koinonia House, Chuck Missler 2004)

When you celebrate Palm Sunday this year, know for a fact that Jesus the Messiah’s entrance had been predicted centuries earlier to the exact day. Even though the people didn’t realize what was happening at the time, Messiah the Prince, did come to them on that very day.

This is just one example of predictive prophecy in the Bible. There were over three hundred prophecies that were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus. You can be sure that the over two hundred prophecies that pertain to his second coming will be fulfilled in the same way. Nothing is random with the Lord. They will be fulfilled at the exact time; and on the exact day, they are supposed to.

Illustration courtesy of the Orthodox Church.

Prophetic

Valerie Cullers 12 Comments

On Sunday morning, October 8th, I woke up and looked at the news feed on my phone. I read about the Hamas attack on Jewish settlements on the border of Gaza. This attack looked much different from the attacks Israel has faced from Hamas in the last 15 years. I then thought about Bill Salus and how he had written a book about Psalm 83 and a future war Israel would be fighting with the diverse ethnic groups around its borders. Bill just happened to be at a prophecy conference that morning and was giving an impromptu talk that I listened to. He said we must wait and see how it will develop to see if this war fits Psalm 83 in the Scriptures. Since then, I have listened to Amir Tsarfati, a Messianic Jew who is also an Israeli. He is convinced that the Psalm 83 war happened in 1948 when Israel fought its War of Independence. He feels the current events might possibly be a prelude to the war of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

So who is right? Well, we must all wait and see if this particular war has any prophetic implications or not. You see, when thinking about prophecy, we don’t make Biblical prophecy fit the events that are happening. The events must fit the prophecy exactly in order to be true. Also, many times, prophecies have more than one fulfillment, one closer to the time it was written and one further down the timeline.

Recently, Jack Hibbs said, “The world is catching up to the Bible.” Thousands of years ago, a couple of hundred prophecies were written about the return of Christ. Others were written about Israel and what would happen to it in the last days. I believe that just as over three hundred prophecies were fulfilled about Jesus’ first coming, so the remaining prophecies will be fulfilled about what will happen to Israel in the last days. But they will all be fulfilled in God’s good time and not our own.

In the gospels, Jesus talked about what the world would look like immediately before his return. We see that the world does look very close to what He said it would be like. We were also instructed to watch and pray. What we can know is that time is getting short. As we watch nations aligning against Israel, we know it will have to defend itself against a larger host of armies at some point in the future.

So does this particular war fulfill any prophecies in the Bible? At the moment, we must wait and see and not jump to any conclusions.

Thanatos

Valerie Cullers 25 Comments

The other day, I was asking the Lord about the things that were happening in the world. The world seems like it is in a desperate state at the moment. I was lying in bed that evening, about to go to sleep, when I heard the word Thanatos. I knew the word was probably Greek, and so I looked it up on the internet. Ancient Greeks believed that Thanatos was the bodily incarnation of Death. “Hm-m-m,” I thought. The next morning, I looked up Thanatos in my New Testament Greek dictionary, and it was the word Death.

I thought about it for a moment and looked in Revelation 6, 7-8. “When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name on him who sat on it was Death (Thanatos), and Hades followed him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”

Many believers don’t believe the four horsemen of the Apocalypse will be released until the church has been taken to heaven in the Rapture. They believe that the seal judgments will not start until after that event. For me, I don’t know.

Could the horsemen be riding now? I have thought about it this past week. When I look around the world what do I see in Mariupol, Shanghai, Chicago, New York, Yemen, Africa, etc.? I see Thanatos. Is he riding on his pale horse or just walking the streets? That’s for you to decide. For me, I can see him riding through the world bringing death and destruction. Perhaps it is later than we think on the prophetic timeline.

Painting by Gustave Dore

Predictive Prophecy

Valerie Cullers 26 Comments

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Anyone who has gone through the University system has met many a professor who does not believe in a Supreme Being. They can be quick to denigrate the Bible and tell you that it is just an ancient book that has no relevance in today’s society. When they say that, you may go back to your dorm room and look at your Bible and think, “Is that really true? Does it indeed not have any relevance for today?”

So what makes the Bible unique? What makes it different from any other book that has been written? How can it stand the test of time and still come out as a best-seller even in modern times? Why can we indeed depend on it as a source of truth and inspiration? Two words…predictive prophecy. The Bible claims to be the very words of God. What authenticates it and has authenticated it through centuries past? Predictive prophecy; that is what makes it different from any other source of wisdom and verifies the authority of its words.

What is predictive prophecy? Throughout the Bible, there are hundreds of prophecies about Jesus, Israel, the nations, and specific people. Hundreds of these prophecies have already been fulfilled accurately. They are so accurate in their fulfillment that they cannot be denied. For example, there are hundreds of prophecies about Jesus, the Messiah. During the course of his birth, life and death, he fulfilled over two hundred of them. The odds of that happening are astronomical, to say the least. We know that if these were fulfilled at his first coming, the remaining prophecies will be fulfilled during his second coming and reign.

The nation of Israel strayed from God, and there were many prophecies predicting its judgment. Over and over, these prophecies were fulfilled. They were scattered among the nations, and the prophecies concerning their regathering are happening right to this very day. Even the prophecy in Isaiah 66:8, “Can a nation be born in a day?” was fulfilled on May 14, 1948. 

The ruler, Cyrus the Great, was named in the book of Isaiah one hundred and fifty years before he came into power. Is that some sort of coincidence? I don’t think so. In the book of Daniel, the eleventh chapter encompasses a brief history of the wars and ensuing intrigues between the Seleucids of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt. It is so accurate that historical scholars have a hard time believing it was written hundreds of years before the events took place.  

These are just a few of the examples of predictive prophecy in the Bible;  there are many more within its pages, too numerous to count. One thing we can be sure of is this; if the previous prophecies were fulfilled, the future prophecies will be also. How could this happen? I believe that God sits outside of time and sees the end from the beginning. He inspired the prophets of old to write things that they themselves did not see or understand, things that would come to pass in the future. We can rely on the truth of the Bible, and know that its predictive prophecy is the proof of it.