We are finally starting this class. It has been in the works for quite a while and it's also been just kind of a personal dream of mine to teach a women's Sunday school class. And our topic too is very near and dear to my heart because I'm sure some of you sat under my dad's teaching for years about end times prophecy. So I feel a little bit too like I'm picking up the torch that my dad had carried before. So I'm excited. I hope you're excited. I apologize for the projector. I know that's annoying, that flickering up there. Apparently it is in the works that we need to be ordering a new projector for the youth room. Hopefully no one has epilepsy, just, you know, hopefully that doesn't freak out too much there. And the youth group is gone today, and they took some of the equipment that's normally in this room, so I can't even advance my slides, but Bethany's back there helping me out, and so I'll just have to tell her when we need to move on to the next one. So let's pray and we'll get started. God, we thank you so much for this day. Thank you for bringing us all here safely. The winter's here and the roads can be slick and thank you for safety and coming to church this morning. Thank you for these ladies and bringing us all together and the chance we have to learn from your word. a topic that is just more and more relevant. Every passing day we are getting closer and closer to your return. We're getting closer and closer to end times events that are predicted in your word. There's a lot of misunderstanding and false teaching out there in regard to these things. And I just pray that you would help me to always say what is true and what is right, what is what your word is saying to us that I would communicate clearly and just pray that you would help us to learn today about how you want us to handle your word and how we can better understand it. We give all this to you and we pray this in your name. Amen. If you did not get notes, there's a sheet on the counter over there and some pens. Feel free to grab that. People have already been up here. I've got books up here that we're going to use them in the class, but it's going to be quite a while until we're even in Revelation. So don't worry if you don't have that book yet. It's going to take a while. I have on this list everybody, as far as I know, who had signed up to want me to order a book for you. The cost for that is $13. I've been asked not to really pass the book out until payment has been made. So if that works for you, I would appreciate that. If you want to come at the end, if you haven't already done it, just mark your name that you've taken your book and I'll make sure all that payment gets to the office. And I have seven extra books. So in case you've decided that you want one and would like one of the extra ones, then fill in your name. And if you're the, no, six extra books. So if you get first come first serve. Okay? So I'm going to say that this Sunday is going to be our most boring class. So I apologize in advance. Because we're really not going to dig into necessarily the Bible at all, which sounds horrible for a Sunday school class. I guarantee your Bibles are going to get workouts the rest of the week. So bring them and make sure you're ready to open them and use them. But this week is really kind of our intro class because I felt like It was important to establish some foundations about kind of the basics of prophecy, which is why we're calling this Prophecy 101. And while I know many of you have been under really great teaching in this church and other places about prophecy, there might be some that this is all kind of new. So I just want to make sure we're all kind of starting on square one and with some basics in place. Plus I also knew there were going to be some people gone this week for youth retreat and I think we're going to have some college gals joining us, but they're not quite back from their break yet. So I didn't really want to start in too much to the prophecies that we're going to look at. So on your sheets, I'm going to grab some notes to make sure I'm keeping an eye on that. So I define prophecy on your sheets as a specific message that's received directly from God. And just so we're clear, the gift of prophecy does not exist anymore. You won't hear that in other churches. Sometimes there will be people who say prophecy does exist. No, it doesn't. The miraculous gift of prophecy does not exist. Once God has given us his revealed word, he doesn't need to send prophets. If you have someone say, I have a new message from God that he specifically gave to me, directly gave to me, and I'm supposed to give it to you, be skeptical. Because God has given us his word. We don't need prophets to tell us. And all of us as believers with the Holy Spirit within us, God can speak to us. I'm not saying we'll hear a voice, but God uses his word to speak to us. And yes, he uses other believers to speak to us, but when somebody says they have a specific prediction or a specific message that they've heard directly from God, I would be very skeptical about that because that miraculous gift of prophecy has ceased in that regard because we have the word of God now. You'll see on your sheets there are two aspects really about prophecy. So this is the prophets we're talking about, the Old Testament prophets. John the Baptist was a New Testament prophet, so there were some prophets in the New Testament as well. But these prophets had two aspects to their prophecy. And one part was forth telling, which means that they would be proclaiming instruction from God, which often included warnings about consequences of sin. if the people refused to repent and obey. But again, often these prophets had a special insight. So one example would be Nathan. Nathan went to King David and said, gave him this whole story about a rich man who stole poor man's sheep. And all this is pointing to the adulterous affair he had with Bathsheba and that he killed her husband so that he could have her as his wife. And Nathan comes and says, God knows what you did, David. You need to repent. And David did, but he still faced consequences. So this was a prophecy to an individual. There were also prophets to the nations. An example of that would be Jonah. Jonah went to the city of Nineveh. He came with a message that said, repent or be destroyed. So this was the fourth telling of prophets, giving specific instruction. God wants you to do this. And it often involved repentance or consequence if you're not going to repent. Then there's also the aspect of foretelling. And foretelling is revealing the future plans of God. And for our purposes in this class, in these next coming weeks, that's what we are talking about. The prophecies in the Bible that reveal the future plans of God. Linda, there are notes on the counter if you want to grab a sheet. And then there's lots of seats over here. So the future plans of God, it's like a movie trailer. God's given us a sneak preview about what's to come. We could refer to this as history written in advance because God knows it all. To him, the end is the same as the beginning. So God has given us, for him, what is history written in advance. And knowing the future can be pretty fascinating. There's really exciting stuff. But also when we're dealing with prophecy, it can trip up many believers. because they don't always know how to handle it. They don't always know how to understand it. They don't always know how to respond to it. So we're going to go through some common mistakes that many believers can make when it comes to this area of prophecy. And just to give credit where credit is due, I used this book a lot for this lesson. It's a book by Jeff Kinley. By the way, he's one of my favorite prophecy authors. So he's a solid guy that you could find other books. He's written several. But I used his book, Uncovering the Secrets of Bible Prophecy, a lot for this lesson. So the first mistake we're going to talk about is sensationalizing prophecy. That's your first blank there. Sensationalizing prophecy. And that is when we're trying to predict what is unpredictable, or we're trying to fit every news headline into a biblical prophecy. And often people who like to sensationalize prophecy, they're often ones that tend to be neglecting other parts of the Word of God. Not always, but often. Now admittedly, prophecy is naturally a topic that ignites interest, and imagination, and intrigue. The Bible predicts that mankind's future, it really will be full of some pretty sensational stuff. So I'm not saying that prophecy isn't sometimes what you read, you think, wow, that's pretty sensational. But sensationalizing prophecy, like I said, is when you're trying to predict what you can't predict, or you're looking at current events and saying, oh, that's the fulfillment of this. Without the benefit of some hindsight and studying this a little more, Often these people who sensationalize they seem to run from one prophetic conference to another from one prophetic teacher to another From one prophetic book to another which again those things in and of themselves aren't necessarily bad But they're often that's all they're interested in and and don't really show any interest in other areas of the Bible These are people who are fascinated with doomsday preachers and They get wrapped up in things like blood moons and celestial alignments. They are into these numerology experts who have somehow cracked the 666 code, or they figured out the date of the rapture or Jesus' return. They love their elaborate conspiracy theories about the identity of the Antichrist. or about how there are even now clandestine secret societies meeting in dark, smoke-filled rooms who are working towards creating a one-world government. They love pamphlets that are entitled, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, which was actually a legit thing that was published. Clearly, it was mistaken because the rapture did not happen in 1988. But they love the sensational. I like this quote from Jeff Kinley. It's from this book, Uncovering the Secrets of Bible Prophecy. He wrote, quote, I don't believe it's wrong to promote Bible prophecy or even reasonably speculate how some of scripture's end times claims could take place in our lifetime. Speculation is OK as long as it's communicated properly. However, we have to avoid creating a prophecy circus where unfounded predictions are made and where people's minds and emotions are manipulated. We should always major on what the Bible does say and tread cautiously in those areas where it doesn't." End quote. And while we're at it, I'm just going to get on my soapbox here for just a minute about conspiracy theories. My advice to you ladies, just stop. Please, just stop with the conspiracy theories. Ever since the popularity of social media, and I think really especially since COVID a lot, there has been an explosion of conspiracy theories. on everything. And I have seen people, they argue their points, they present their so-called evidence, they are passionate about wanting justice, right? Because the elections are rigged. COVID was released on purpose. Certain people have been bought off to do certain things. And round and round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows. And I've watched as many believers get passionately worked up over conspiracy theories. And I've sometimes had this thought. What if rather than passionately wanting to get people from their side of an issue to our side of an issue, we instead passionately wanted to get them from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light? What if rather than being highly motivated to seek justice for those who seem above it, we instead were highly motivated to seek God's mercy for those who don't know Christ? What if rather than having an overwhelming desire to win an argument about all those hidden evils out there in the world, we instead had an overwhelming desire to win souls for Jesus? What a much better use of our time and energy. And those conspiracy theories can just suck you dry emotionally. They can stress you out, cause you fear. Just stop. Now, ladies, listen, I am not saying that there's never a grain of truth to some of these conspiracy theories. I am sure that some of them are going to prove to be spot on. I am also not saying that we need to be gullible or naive. That if a politician says something, or a healthcare professional says something, or a news reporter says something, then we're automatically supposed to be like, oh, well, then I guess that must be true. I'm not saying that. We need to do our best to discern the truth. But unfortunately, even though we're living in the information age, I think it's harder and harder and harder to actually discern what the truth is. Because with artificial intelligence, all the things we can do with technology, you can create evidence for both sides of an issue that looks legit. How do we even know? And I think sometimes we just won't. But the majority of those conspiracy theories out there They either don't affect us personally or those that do, for example, was COVID released on purpose? That affects us personally, right? What can we do about it anyway? What can we do about it anyway? Was COVID released on purpose? I would not be surprised. Have we had elections in our nation rigged? Quite possibly. Are high-ranking people in our government guilty of criminal offenses? Undoubtedly. Are evil people with evil agendas pulling the strings around the world of governments, economies, healthcare systems, et cetera? They definitely are. Will these people ever be held accountable for these things? Yes, they will. They may never face justice in a human court of law. But ladies, we have a righteous, perfect judge who is coming. And he is going to right all wrongs, and he is going to settle all scores. So stop worrying about it. As my dad would say, stop getting your U and a B. Do we know what that means, or is that just a Yoderism? Don't get your underwear in a bundle. That's what that means. Don't get your underwear in a bunch. My dad used to say, don't go near you and me, about things that potentially are happening, quite possibly maybe are happening, but we can't control them anyway. And I found myself, when I'm getting engaged in conversations with people who like to go on about their conspiracy theories, I found myself trying to shut it down. But I often just, I just try to always bring it back and say, aren't you glad God's in control? Aren't you glad God knows? He's got it, I don't need to worry about it. That's my advice anyway. Stop with the conspiracy theories. Do with it what you want. Our second mistake when it comes to prophecy. On your notes there. Number two, scoffing at prophecy. Daphne, if you could go to the next slide for me. Oh, my reference was chopped off. 2 Peter, does it say on there? Oh, it says up there. Guess I got it up there. OK, it's 2 Peter 3, verses 3 and 4. First, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise of this coming? Forever since the fathers fell asleep all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation People who scoff and say you guys are dumb You guys have been talking for thousands of years about how Jesus is coming back how the church is going to be raptured. It hasn't happened Stop the stupidity. It's not going to happen. Everything's just always the way it's been and it's not going to change and And this is no surprise coming from unbelievers who are stubborn in their sin. They refuse to believe God. They regard people like us as complete idiots who think that this stuff is actually going to happen. And while hopefully we don't have that degree of scoffing among believers, there still can be among believers these attitudes of doubt or skepticism in regard to prophecy. Because unfortunately, church history has been marked by wrong predictions, been marked by things like 88 reasons why the rapture is going to happen in 1988. And so when these things don't happen, people automatically become doubtful and skeptical and say, well, is that really going to happen? So it's caused me to either scoff or to doubt whether they can trust biblical prophecies that are yet to be fulfilled. The third mistake is ignoring prophecy. When I was in my mid-20s, I had the opportunity to live and work on a mission ship. And on the ship, I went to different countries around the world. This is where I met my husband, in case you don't know, my husband's from England. And on board the ship were people from about 40 different countries all around the world. And I was sitting out on the deck one day reading my Bible, and one of my shipmates came by, his name was Wolfgang, and he's from Germany. Wolfgang is how he would say it. And he came by and he saw me reading my Bible and he said, oh, what are you reading? And I was reading Revelation. So I told him that, and he said, oh, you should not be reading that. That's just terrible stuff. No one should read that. It's too complicated to understand. It's just full of bad things. Don't read that. No Christian, you are not supposed to read Revelation. Now clearly he did not know that that is not something you say to a daughter of Cecil Yoder. Because he may have gotten an earful about how wrong he was. And the very first words of the book for crying out loud are, the revelation of Jesus Christ. Why would you not want to read that? Personally, I want to know what Jesus is revealing to me. But I think this is an attitude, Wolfgang's attitude belongs to a lot of believers, that they ignore it for several reasons. I listed just a few. And by the way, all these lists that are in your notes, they are not exhaustive by any means. I just kind of had to stop somewhere. There's other things that could go in some of these lists. But I think they ignore it because they're intimidated. You know, they feel like this is something that really only Bible scholars or seminary professors, theologians, only they can understand. Some are confused because they've heard so many different views of interpretation that they just kind of throw up their hands and think, well, I guess nobody can really understand it anyway. Some are fearful. Because they feel like when they hear prophecy, all they think is about God's wrath. They think that words like Armageddon or the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse comes to mind. They think of epic natural disasters and worldwide diseases and wars and famine. global death on this unimaginable scale, and it's like a Hollywood movie about the end of the world, and it makes you want to put your fingers in your ears like, la la la, I can't hear you, I don't want to know, all that bad stuff. And they think that's all prophecy is about. And there are those who are just apathetic. Kind of this, que sera sera. What will be, will be. I mean, God's ordained it. God has it all planned out. It's all going to happen anyway, whether I know it or not. And really, when you think about it, it's all future. So what's that got to do with me today? Does it really have any application to my life today, if it's something that's going to happen in the future? I'll just stick to my Old Testament stories and Psalms and Proverbs and all the books of the New Testament except Revelation, because those are the ones I like to highlight and underline and make me feel good. And I get those, and they're more applicable to me. And so they ignore prophecy. Number four, another mistake is being slow to believe prophecy. You know, ladies, if God, which he won't because he's promised he won't, but if God came and revealed that he was going to send a global flood, it would be one thing to say, wow, that sounds epic. That's gonna be pretty amazing to see. But it's quite another thing to spend 100 years of your life building a boat. You know, it's one thing to read prophecy and kind of be like, oh wow, that sounds pretty epic. But it's another thing to live as if you actually believe it. But if you do live like you actually believe it, I guarantee that at times you're going to be treated in ways that were similar to, I'm sure, how Noah was treated at times. Like a nut job. You know, I sometimes sub in the school system, and sometimes I was working in one of the school offices, and I've got some downtime when I've got everything done, and I'm just kind of answering phones or watching the door, but I really don't have anything else to do. And so I bring some books along to fill some time. And I was actually sitting there reading this book, One of the teachers came in and just making a photocopy quick in and out and she said if she's a big Reader, you know, this always has her book list. She's like, oh, what are you reading? and I said a book about Bible prophecy and I could tell that she just was already kind of backpedaling from the conversation like oh I was just wanting another good book to read but your kind of And maybe I was misreading her, maybe I was misjudging, but she just seemed to kind of shut the conversation down pretty fast and, you know, be done. And it just, to my shame, I felt a little bit like, I don't know if embarrassed is the right word, but I felt a little bit like I was supposed to be in the loony bin, just for telling her that this was the book I was reading. Sometimes that's how it can feel because honestly there is some process especially when you get to revelation It definitely lends itself to being pretty unbelievable Like if you say this is going to happen people will think you're crazy but we should be just as quick to believe prophecy as we are to believe any other parts of the Bible and And I believe that's one of the reasons, if you can put up the next one, Bethany, I believe that's one of the reasons why Revelation is the only book in the entire world. Man, I'm going to have to adjust my slides because its reference is gone, but that's Revelation 1.3. You can take a look at the back screen if you ever want to see the references. But Revelation is the only book that promises blessing for those who read it and obey it and believe it. And I think part of the reason for that, not that you wouldn't be blessed by reading and obeying other parts of God's Word, we know that, but there is a specific promise in Revelation. And I think a lot of that reason is because it's so unbelievable. Like, if you will actually obey and listen to it, you're going to be blessed. Our fifth mistake when it comes to prophecy. is misinterpreting prophecy. And misinterpreting prophecy or misinterpreting any part of the Bible means when we are believing or claiming that the Bible teaches things it doesn't, and we reach conclusions that are not based on a reasonable understanding of Scripture. Now, certainly there are Bible passages out there, many of them are prophetic in nature, that are a bit up for grabs when it comes to interpretation. However, when we're interpreting the Bible and even when we're interpreting prophecy, it may not be as complicated as you might think. And you really just need to know some basic solid principles on how to correctly interpret scripture. So we're going to jump to the next one. We'll get back to number six, but we're going to look at the keys to interpreting Bible prophecy. So your first point there is literal interpretation. Literal interpretation is the best, it's the correct method, and thankfully, it's the easiest method for understanding what the Bible says. Because literal interpretation basically means that we're taking the Bible at face value. It's not complicated. But literal interpretation is in contrast to how many approach the Bible. They approach it with an allegorical or symbolic method. Which that method sees the Bible as always pointing to something deeper and spiritual. Like there's always some deeper meaning to it. Now I'm not saying there aren't layers of meaning sometimes in the Bible. There are. But it's kind of like this. Let's say that, I'll pick on Jessie, she's sitting here. Let's say Jessie had just come in from outside, but she comes running in, and she says, guys, there's a tornado outside. Now, nobody is gonna stop and ponder what she symbolically means by that statement. No one's gonna, I'm not gonna be like, Jessie, do you mean by tornado that there's like emotional turmoil? And when you said outside, did you actually mean inside? So are you having some kind of problems right now that you need to talk to me about because you're having emotional turmoil? No one's going to do that. We all know how to communicate as normal human beings. And if Jesse comes in here and says, there's a tornado outside, we all know that we better seek shelter because there is a whirling mass of potentially deadly wind outside and we need to be careful, right? We know how to understand that. And yet so many people read the Bible this way, constantly looking for allegory, constantly looking for symbols that aren't there, constantly looking for deeper meaning. That there must be some deeper, spiritual, mystical, hidden meaning that we need to find. And this approach is basically, people can use it to explain away verses they don't like. So if this verse says something and I don't like it, well, it doesn't actually mean what it seems to say. It's an allegory. That means something different. Or we can take it to explain away miracles that we think are stupid and we don't want to believe in, like a talking donkey. Really? The donkey didn't talk. You're stupid if you think that. I mean, it's probably that Balaam and the whole talking donkey thing, that it was, I'm sure that donkey was a symbol that Balaam's conscience was speaking to him. And so that's very dangerous because then you get to make the Bible say whatever you want. Like, fill in the blank. I think it means this, you think it means this, and who's to say who's right or wrong? Well, nobody, if it's just something, you know, deeper that we need to figure out. And it means that it leads us to multiple possible meanings. And instead, we are to approach the Bible with the mentality that God says what He means, and He means what He says. It's not rocket science. Like I said, basically the normal rules of human communication are the rules that we use when interpreting scripture. Now that being said, number two, although we take the Bible literally, we do recognize symbolic language. The Bible is full of symbols, of metaphors, of parables, figures of speech. But that doesn't mean that those things don't still have an intended literal meaning. Just because they're symbols doesn't mean they don't have a literal meaning. For example, if I was going to say to you, I'm going to hit the road. All of you know that means I'm going on a trip. None of you think that means I'm going to go break my hand on the concrete out there because I'm going to go hit the road. Now, somebody might think, I don't know, let's say English isn't their first language. And for some crazy reason, when I say, I'm going to hit the road, they think that means I'm going to do laundry. Now, they might think that's what I said, but it's not what I said. And therefore, we have failed to communicate. They did not understand what I wanted them to understand. And it is the same thing with the Bible. When God puts symbols, when God puts parables in the Bible, He has a meaning behind it. And if we don't understand that meaning, we have failed to communicate. We have failed to understand what God wants us to understand. When you see a symbol in the Bible, it's not just some kind of permission to fill in the blank. I mean, God didn't give us Mad Libs in the Bible. He didn't give us these parables with all these symbols so that we just all get to fill in what we want it to say. You know, just one example would be that the Bible calls Jesus the Lamb of God. That doesn't mean he's a fluffy white animal. And we all understand that. What he's talking about is that lambs were used for Old Testament sacrifice. They had to be perfect lambs without blemish or spot in order to be acceptable. and that Jesus is ultimately the perfect sacrifice, the perfect Lamb of God when he paid for our sin on the cross. But if you take that symbol of Lamb of God to mean anything other than the fact that he was the one perfect sacrifice to atone for sin for all of eternity, then you've taken it wrong. You don't just get to fill in the meanings. That's why the disciples were often asking when Jesus would tell a parable, Jesus, what did that mean? Because they wanted to know what it meant, not just fill in the blank. And there's a lot of prophecy that's communicated through symbols, metaphors, and figurative language. And we need to be careful with that. Because if we take that prophetic symbol to mean anything other than what God intended for it to mean, then we have misunderstood. Now, it is true that even among Bible scholars who have studied well and done their best, there is sometimes disagreement about what certain things symbolize. But they've still done their best to study, to interpret scripture as accurately as possible. They're not just throwing out random guesses. Because we don't need to, we don't get to decide what scripture means, because that means we become the interpreter. And that's never the right thing, because the authority on the word of God is God. So he tells us what it means, and we do our best to find out what that is. Number three, we need to consider history and culture when we are reading our Bibles. Because when we consider things from those perspectives, it often gives a deeper meaning, or it gives a depth of meaning that we maybe wouldn't have understood. You know, just quick example, like Jesus was constantly interacting with women and children. And in our society, we wouldn't think too much about that. We have all kinds of interaction with women and children, and women are treated well in our society as equals to men. But back then, that was radical. That was totally cross-cultural. Children and women were the bottom of the totem pole on the society scale. And so when you understand that, when you actually get the history and the culture, it just adds a depth of meaning, doesn't it? That Jesus really did love people. He had compassion on people. He cared more about people than society's expectations of what a Jewish man should act like. And so when we understand history and culture, it helps us to understand more of what scripture is saying. Point number four, which I know you've heard if you've been in Adam's class and other places, let scripture interpret scripture. God's word will never contradict itself. And often it helps us out by clarifying itself in parallel passages. When we compare passages that talk about the same types of words or the same type of idea or the same event, it's like we're putting together these puzzle pieces and help ourselves understand what the full picture looks like. And we're going to see that several times in the next coming weeks, that certain Bible passages will often help us more fully understand other ones. We get a bit of information from this one that we didn't get in this one, and it helps us put it together. And number five is be aware of the mountain peaks and valleys of prophecy. And I know Adam's talked about this too. If you've been in his class, I know dad talked about it. Um, the prophets recorded prophecies about their present day. Often they were about their present day, but they were also about in time events or future events. And we call those things mountain peaks. The prophets saw many mountain peaks. So they saw things like the fall of empires. They saw things like the birth of Jesus. They saw things like the reign of the Antichrist. But they often didn't see the valleys, meaning the gap of time that goes in between those things. So if you're looking at those mountains from the front, it looks like they're really close together. This event and then this event, bam, bam, right next to each other. But you look at it from the side, you realize, oh wait, there's kind of a gap. And I put that in your notes, these different ways that we can phrase that. Some will say a near and far fulfillment, a reference to time, meaning part of a prophecy was fulfilled in the past, while another part is going to be fulfilled in the future. There's partial and complete fulfillment. talking about the degree of a completion of a prophecy. It's been partially fulfilled, but it's still awaiting complete fulfillment. And those are kind of basically the same way of saying something near and far, or partial and complete. One example for that is Isaiah 9.8, or 9.6, if you can go to that one, Bethany. This is one that comes to our minds at Christmas time. This is Isaiah 6, 9. It also should have Prince of Peace at the bottom, but this is a very familiar verse. In one sentence, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, first coming of Jesus, and the government shall be on his shoulders, second coming of Jesus. It's all smashed together in one sentence. There's no wonder there are people in Jesus' time who thought he was going to overthrow Rome, because it says the government will be on his shoulders. Why isn't the government on his shoulders? They didn't see the valley. They saw the near fulfillment, or they saw the partial fulfillment instead of the complete fulfillment, which is coming, but it is future. We can also refer to it as dual or double fulfillment, which means there can be two events separated by time that fulfill the same prophecy, and the one that's already been fulfilled serves to foreshadow the one that is coming in the future. So an example of that, if you can go to the next one, Bethany, is, we'll see what's up there, that is Daniel 1131. These slides look so much better on my computer, man, they're just chopped off here. This is an event that Daniel predicted. He says forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress and shall take away the regular burnt offering and they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. That prophecy has been fulfilled. It happened in 167 BC when a nut job during the Greek empire named Antiochus Epiphanes came into Jerusalem, forced the Jews to stop worshipping, ceased their sacrifices, and he desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar, which was a huge abomination to the Jews. Antiochus Epiphanes, the word he gave himself that title, the Epiphanes part, means God manifest. The dude had a pretty high opinion of himself, because he was saying that he was God. But this prophecy has dual fulfillment. It has a double fulfillment. Because while we've seen it fulfilled, it is yet to be fulfilled because that is what the Antichrist is going to do. We're going to talk about the Antichrist a lot, so we're not going to get into it too much. But the Antichrist is a guy who is yet future, who is coming. He's going to say he's God. There will be a Jewish temple and he's going to go in there and he's going to stop Jewish worship. He is going to set up the abomination of desolation. He is going to set himself up as God and demand to be worshipped. He's going to desecrate the temple. Two events fulfilling the same prophecy. The one foreshadowing the other. So I think this is important to understand because we're going to talk about this a lot, this near and far, partial, complete, or this double fulfillment. We'll see this a lot in prophecy. And I like this quote from Dwight Pentecost. He said, quote, two events widely separated as to the time of their fulfillment may be brought together into the scope of one prophecy. This was done because the prophet had a message for his own day as well as for a future time. It was the purpose of God to give the near and far view so that the fulfillment of the one should be the assurance of the fulfillment of the other. And now that we have God's entire written revelation, we're in a lot better position than those prophets were. They longed to see some of these things that we have gotten to see because they only got to see like a peak or two of the mountains. And now we see a bit more of the mountain range and we can understand that there's some valleys in between and have a better understanding of what this is like. And all of this is to say these keys to interpreting prophecy is that the gold standard is the literal, simple, reasonable method of studying God's Word. All past prophecies concerning Jesus, all His first coming prophecies, they were fulfilled literally. That means the future ones are going to be fulfilled literally. And God gave us His Word because He wants us to understand it. He wants us to understand even prophecy. It doesn't mean we're going to necessarily understand every single detail of future events. We're not going to understand necessarily how everything plays out. I'm hopefully going to make it very clear in this class, like, this is my opinion in this part. This is how I think it might play out. We don't know for sure, but this is what I think. That doesn't mean there won't be some varying views. I've got some varying views with pastors here at the church, and our leadership has varying views with each other when it comes to certain details and how things are going to play out. But the bottom line is that if you don't have a literal, historical, grammatical, and contextual interpretation of prophecy, it's really not going to make much sense at all. Like, then you might as well not bother, because you can't make heads or tails of it. But when you are literal, historical, grammatical, and contextual, it can make more sense than you might think. I like this quote from David Cooper. He says, when the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. Therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unless the facts of the immediate context, like a parable or something, studied in the light of related passages, indicate clearly otherwise. And then our sixth mistake when dealing with prophecy is misapplying prophecy. So that's back up on your previous list. Misapplying it. Ladies, there are many sensible and reasonable responses to Bible prophecy, but none of them include selling all of your possessions, barricading yourself in a bomb-proof shelter, climbing to the top of the highest mountain so that you can be the first one to be raptured, or carrying around a sign around town that says the world will end tomorrow. And I'm fairly certain none of you would apply prophecy in that way. But how might we misapply it? Well, for believers, we misapply prophecy if we respond with feelings of fear, if we respond with panic, anxiety, dread, or despair. You know, for unbelievers, that is absolutely a proper response. Hopefully they're fearful enough that they will study the Word of God and put their faith and trust in Jesus as their Savior, because that's the only way you're going to avoid these horrible things that are going to happen in the end times. And I suppose at a certain level, it could cause us, maybe rightly, to have a bit of fear, but only if it's for those that we care about who don't know Christ. And hopefully that would then motivate us to be more and more sharing the Gospel and taking opportunities to tell people about it, because we fear for them. But we should not fear for ourselves. We should not fear and have anxiety and panic and dread. There are an abundance of right responses to prophecy, and we'll get to that in a moment. But first we'll go through these quickly, these reasons why every believer, not just theologians, not just scholars, but simple Iowa farm girls like me, why we should study prophecy. Reason number one, Prophecy is in the Bible Reason enough You don't need anything else. It should be obvious but as God Included something in Scripture. He wants us to know it and In fact, it's a pretty big deal because prophecy makes up 28% of the entire Word of God That's a lot. If you don't know that that's a lot that you don't know. I Bethany, if I could have the next one, just kind of some stats here about prophecy. You'll have to go to each sentence. So there are 8,000 prophetic verses in the Bible. One out of every 30 verses in the New Testament contains prophecy. Out of the 27 New Testament books, 23 of them mention the second coming of Jesus. We've got the next one. For every time that the first coming of Jesus is mentioned, his second coming is mentioned eight times. I mean, we're pretty familiar with the first coming, right? Like he'll be born in Bethlehem, he'll be buried with a rich man, his bones won't be broken. Those are all first coming prophecies. There are eight times more about a second coming. There are 333 prophecies concerning Jesus, and of these prophecies, 109 were fulfilled at His first coming. 224 yet to be fulfilled, and none of it is mentioned. Maybe I misworded that. So it's not necessarily prophecies, but His second coming is mentioned that many more times. Obviously, the 224 isn't eight times the 109. Does that make sense? And the last one, the very last book of the Revelation, 95% prophecy in that book You know God could have concluded he could have wrapped up his written revelation any way he wanted to and yet he decides to give us the book of Revelation Which is a heads up on what's going to happen in the last days last words are lasting words Clearly God wants us to know what the future holds Second one there Fulfilled prophecy and you can just write the word proves if you want to squeeze it in I would write proves beyond a shadow of a doubt That God's Word is true When it comes to the Bible's credibility Nothing is more compelling or convincing than fulfilled prophecy So I'll read you this part in this book Which I can't really wrap my head around if you guys can your Better ladies than me. So this is just talking about some statistical probabilities of Jesus fulfilling all the prophecies that there are about him in the word of God. Professor Peter Stoner famously estimated that if you take 100 quadrillion silver dollars, so that's a one with 17 zeros behind it, you take 100 quadrillion silver dollars and you spread them out over the state of Texas, They would cover the entire landmass two feet deep. Okay? That's a lot of silver dollars. Entire state of Texas, silver dollars two feet deep. Then you mark just one of those coins. You toss it into that mass of money and you mix it up thoroughly. Blindfold a man. Have him walk throughout the entire state. Stop at any point. reach down and randomly select one coin. Stoner says that the mathematical chances of that man choosing the marked silver dollar on the first attempt are the same mathematical chances that one man could fulfill just eight messianic prophecies. Jesus has already fulfilled 109. I mean, that wouldn't even happen in this room. If we filled this room two feet deep with silver dollars and had someone randomly pick a coin. I mean, imagine the odds of somebody getting it. The state of Texas? And they get it on the first shot? And that's somebody fulfilling eight prophecies. Jesus has already filled 109. He's going to fulfill 333. God did this on purpose. People who say there's no evidence that God exists or there's no evidence that the Bible is God's Word, they're not paying attention. They're not studying. They're not figuring it out. There is so much evidence. God purposely stacked the odds astronomically against Himself so that we would know that His Word is true and that Jesus is who He said He is. It's just there for those who will see it. It proves beyond a doubt that God's word is true because God is batting a thousand. Not even one prophecy from the past has turned out false or unfulfilled, and therefore we can be confident that all prophecies regarding the future will also come true. Number three kind of goes with that. Prophecy is a powerful tool for evangelism. Because if we are able to explain some of the details of fulfilled prophecy, I'm not saying you have to be a prophecy expert, but if you can at least say to some people like, you know, there's these fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, the Old Testament about Jesus, or know maybe what books to refer people to. It is a powerful tool for evangelism to convince people the evidence for the Bible and thus for the gospel. Number four, Jesus commands his followers to keep watch for his return. If I could have that next slide, Sean, thank you. Again, and then this is Mark 13, 33. Jesus talking, he says, be on your guard, keep awake. You don't know when the time will come. But how do we know what we're watching for? By studying prophecy. Jesus has told us what to watch for, but we're not going to know what we're watching for unless we know what prophecy says. Number five, prophecy reveals the plans and purposes of God. Who likes to know the plan? Anybody like going on vacation or, you know, anything like who likes to know the plan? I know that everybody does, but at least for the future of the world, I certainly would like to know the plan. It reveals the plans and purposes of God. Number six, prophecy reveals the character of God so that when we study prophecy, we actually get to know him better, which should be a primary goal of every believer. We should want to get to know who God is, what he's like. When we study prophecy, we see things like his wrath, but that reveals his holiness, how much he really does abhor sin, how offensive it is to our holy God, how we should take it seriously. It also shows us his love because he gives opportunity after opportunity after opportunity for people to escape his wrath because he doesn't want that to happen to anyone. We see the character of God. And prophecy also promises many personal blessings. And these personal blessings, they're all on the back. I didn't have any fill in the blank there. They're all there listed for you to be able to read when you get a chance. I'm just going to talk briefly about number eight, which says that prophecy keeps us centered in an age of doctrinal error, heresy, and apostasy. Ladies, be careful. There are churches out there. There are books out there. There are podcasts out there. There are social media posts out there that aren't true. And we were warned of this. Shawn, if you could put the next one. Matthew and the end of the verse is chopped off But Jesus said Jesus answered them see that no one leads you astray for many will come in my name Saying I am the Christ and they will lead many astray Jesus told us that this is what was going to happen And you see this all the time. If you go to the next one, Sean, this is really not going to work. You might have to turn around to see this. But I saw this, right there for now. I saw this recently on social media. The top in the purple was what was written. When you see Israel surrounded by enemies on all sides, look up, your redemption is near. And I kind of thought, it just didn't sound right to me. Like, is that what it says? And I'm sorry this is chopped off, hopefully I can adjust this for next week if you just want to take a glance back there at the TV. What it actually says is, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is at hand. That's pretty different, right? That's completely different. And then I figured out Well, first of all, as I went through all the comments, you know, it was one of these posts that thousands of people were liking and commenting, and there were all these comments of, Amen, Jesus is coming, because they were talking about today. Look, Israel is surrounded by its enemies, there's war in the Middle East, that means Jesus is coming. And yes, I do think Jesus is coming soon. But they were saying, because this is happening, look up, it's coming. No, it said desolation was at hand. And then, to go to the next one, Sean, I figured out what they did, and you're really not going to see this because it's totally chopped off. But it goes on, Jesus goes on about all these things. When you see their front, he's talking about the tribulation. He talks about, you better run away from Jerusalem because it's going to be destroyed. Woe to women who are nursing their children. The Gentiles are going to be taken over. There's going to be signs in the sun, moon, and stars. There's going to be anxiety in the nations, perplexity in the oceans, all these things. And it says, then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory. And the next one, Sean, you're going to have to look back here. So I apologize for that. You see all those words that were crossed off? That's how they did it. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, skip to verse 28, look up and lift your heads because your redemption is near. That is not how you interpret the Bible. You don't chop out a whole chunk. Oh, we're going to skip all the bad stuff. We just see that Jerusalem is surrounded, so Jesus is coming, let's take out all the bad stuff. So just be careful because this was right there on Facebook. And all these people were saying, amen, amen, this is the word of God, amen. And I actually had to scroll several comments until anybody finally said, that's actually not what the verse says. Ladies, there's no substitute for knowing the Bible for yourself. I'm not saying we all have to be prophecy experts. I'm not saying we're all going to be able to, that you have to lay out a perfect timeline of the end times. I'm not saying you have to teach seminars or write books, but we should at least know well enough that we kind of have this, hold on, is that what the Bible says? Something to trigger us and be like, I'm not so sure. and to find out, to look it up ourselves or to talk to our pastors or other people we trust, to go to trusted authors and figure out, is that really right? And just a disclaimer on that, I'm going to be recommending several books and authors during our time because we have so much stuff to cover that we're never going to cover it all. And just know, ladies, and not just prophecy books, but any Christian living books, just remember, don't ever put this on par with the Bible. Because these are written by human authors. And they're doing, as far as I know, the authors I give you will be people who are trying to interpret the Bible accurately. If I could only recommend prophecy books to you that I've agreed with every sentence they've written, I probably couldn't recommend any to you. Because it's just one of those things. So if you read anything by these authors I recommend, I'm not saying that these are perfect. Just keep in mind that always take it back to the Word of God and know the Word of God for yourself. Preview of coming attractions. I was trying to let you get and it's in your notes and it's chopped off again. So our next Lesson is going to be the past and future kingdoms of the earth found in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 If you want to read those before next time it will be a while before we even get to our Revelation book So if you haven't snagged one or haven't decided if you want one You got a lot of time to get one because we're going to cover some other territory first and Then just a quick Vote. Yeah. No, I know mom. I know it's 1032. I know I Hey, we're not in the sanctuary. We could just keep going. You just all know you all come to first service and then we can hang out as long as we want. Would you ladies just quick vote? Would you like tables in here? Do you like the setup? I was asked if I wanted tables and I said just leave it as chairs because I wasn't. Anybody want tables? Maybe just set up a couple then? And then those who want the table that sits at the back and then rows? Yeah, I told my husband they've got like these skinny long ones that we could, but he said, doesn't it look too much like a classroom? I'm like, well, it is a class. Is that a bad thing? Okay, then I might tell them next week that we'll set up a few of those if anybody is wanting to sit there and we will wrap up. God, we thank you so much for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your word that you want it to be clear to us. You are so far above us and beyond us and there is so much depth to your word that we can study it forever and we will never discover everything that you intended for it to say. But the things that we do teach and the things we do learn in this class, I pray that it would be accurate to what you want us to know, accurate to what you meant to communicate to us. We thank you for your word and that we can know what is going to happen in the future, that we can be confident of it and help it to motivate us to live in a way that honors you every day and to be ready for your return. That could happen at any moment as you come back to the church someday. We pray all this in your name. Amen.