The Prophecy Puzzle
End Times teachings never made sense to me growing up. There were so many pieces out of place, but the further I dug the more the ball of confusion became unwound. I uncovered the fact that I'd been taught false eschatology (which means the study of end time events).
My first revelation was finding out where a 7 year end time Tribulation timeline came from. It was all based on one single obscure Old Testament passage - Daniel 9:27. It had been newly interpreted by Zionist John Nelson Darby who got it from a man named Edward Irving who got it from a Jesuit named Manuel Lacunza. They got a 7 year time period from claiming that the 70 week (of years) prophecy in the book of Daniel was mostly fulfilled, but then in the last week there was a pause and that last week was to be thrown thousands of years into the future with no scriptural instructions to do so.
I came to realize that there were other end times views besides the Dispensationalism I had been taught, which I must admit, never made much sense to me. Here are the three basic views: Preterist, Historicist and Futurist.
I realized I had been in the futurist camp choosing to be "Post Tribulation" (as within Futurism there are multiple positions on when the rapture will occur within the 7 year period: either pre, mid or post Tribulation).
I came to the conclusion that Historicism made the most logical sense. I found out that all the reformers had held this view and so did older commentaries such as the Matthew Henry Commentary, the Andrew Clarke Commentary and Andrew Robert Fausset, David Brown & Robert Jamieson. I also found some pretty interesting information by Historicists on line. The list below contains the websites of the Historicists that I had found. Disclaimer: their views vary amongst them and I am still trying to wade through the material at this point, but I did find they all had pretty good insight. In no particular order they are:
James Arendt - What early Protestants had to say about the 70th Week of Daniel
David Wilcoxson -The 70th Week of Daniel Decoded
Charles McCoy - Eschatology / "End Times"
PastorWagner- The 70 Weeks Prophecy (Dan 9:24-27)
Sam Storms - DANIEL'S 70 WEEKS
Steven Rudd - The 5-minute beginner’s guide to totally understanding Revelation
Now let's get back to the hack job that was done on Daniel 9:27 by the Dispensationalists. The video below explains it best-
After this stunning realization, the whole Dispensational mess started to become untangled for me. No wonder it didn't make any sense that a third temple would be rebuilt and animal sacrifices were to start over again only to have a supposed "Antichrist" break a covenant stopping the animal sacrifices. Why would that be such an outrage as to kick off a second half of a Great Tribulation that would be absolutely horrific? Why would God be mad that animal sacrifices were stopped? Wouldn't that be a good thing since Jesus was the final sacrifice and no more sacrifices would need to be made ever again? Aren't animal sacrifices an insult to God in the first place at this point? It makes no sense because it's wrong! Jesus was the one who stopped the animal sacrifices and he's the one who made a covenant with the many, with his own blood. They turned this prophecy upside down and did a sudden switcheroo of characters mid passage! They took what was about Jesus and made it about the Antichrist!
Also, because there's no 7 year timeline then all the pre, post, and mid Tribulation rapture arguments are moot! It never did make sense that Jesus would come to get a bride (the Church), and spend only seven years with her in heaven, then come back to earth to spend 1,000 years in his Zionist Kingdom. Or would the bride of Immortals come to live with him in the 1,000 years and mix in with the mere mortals? And why would Jesus Kingdom only be 1,000 years and then he'd have to hand it over? Isn't he supposed to reign forever and ever? These, and many more questions were answered for me. I can't think of a better video series to unravel this mess than the ones by Truth Cat Media. Please watch his series on Prophecy. They are very well done and entertaining besides. He is certainly qualified to teach as he's a Professor who has taught Christian theology for 45 years. For those of you who think a woman should not teach. I am not teaching, I am testifying about how I came to realize that what I was taught was a bunch of baloney. So please listen to what he has to say.
