Transcript: How Biblical Prophecy is Unclear and Why — Michael Heiser

This transcript is of a presentation given by Michael Heiser entitled “What You Know May Not Be So — How Biblical Prophecy is Unclear and Why.” My best guess for the date of the presentation is January 5th, 2012 given to the first “Future Congress.”

Copyright © 2013 Michael S. Heiser

The transcript is ~8800 words and includes 50 slides. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Dr. Heiser and please consider supporting his work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube.

The excerpts, below, are 1/8th of the entire transcript. They are a sample of the transcript, not a summary of the presentation.

What You Know May Not Be So

I’ve entitled this what you know may not be so. And the subtext here is how Biblical prophecy is unclear and why.

I should preface this by saying that the reason I proposed this topic and was interested in doing this, because I don’t really do prophecy, but I have a concern that there are a lot of believers who are sort of locked into one perspective and prophecy. And my concern is that if certain things don’t pan out the way you sort of expect them to, then it’s going to have a very dispiriting effect on the church.

The fact is that there is very little that’s self-evident when it comes to prophesy. Really, almost nothing. And I’m going to show you why that is. Why do people disagree so vehemently when it comes to Biblical prophecy? There are actually reasons for it, and I’m going to give you a few of those, by no means all of them, but a few of them.

So what I want to do is to illustrate the problems (by) plucking a few examples out and then apply the results of those difficulties.

So, illustrating the problem. Problem number one is something I call clarity of intention. Basically, this is the issue or the problem of how do we really know what the biblical writer of a prophecy intended as far as fulfillment or what was the intended meaning or the intended outcome. How do we really know?

Splitter or Joiner?

Why is it when we come to prophesy, instead of harmonizing, instead of joining, we split? It’s the only place we do that.

Here’s what I mean. Read 1 Thessalonians 4; a familiar passage. Again, the so-called rapture passage.

For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

A very familiar passage.

Then we look at this one. Zechariah 4, and they say: “Well, here it says, ‘on that day his feet shall stand the Mount of Olives and why that lies before Jerusalem the East, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two’ …blah blah. Hey, this doesn’t sound like this.”

Or I could put Matthew 24 up here, which has a lot of similarities with 1 Thessalonians 4. But, you look for differences, and then you split them.

Here’s the point: the reason you believe what you believe about the rapture is because you have decided. If we put all the passages about a second coming, a return of Jesus let’s put it that way. If we took all those passages about a return of Jesus and put them all right here in front of us, you would either harmonize them, or you would look for differences and split them into two events. If you’re a splitter, you have a rapture and a second coming. If you’re a joiner, you don’t have a rapture. It’s just a decision you make. Neither one is self-evident.

The Bible doesn’t have like an instruction appendix in the back that says addendum to the last chapter the book of Revelation when thou shalt encounter a prophecy passage, split or join. We don’t have an instruction book. We just make this decision. Usually, because we’ve read somebody who splits and then we decide what sounds great I’m going to split, too. Or we’re going to be a joiner, and then we read a split. They’re interpretive decisions that color, that dictates, that compel, where you end up when you come out.

Imminence?

Another one: Imminence. Again these are all problems with certainty, with what we do when we talk about prophecy. Imminence whatever that means now why do I put it that way? Well, people define Imminence differently. Some people say Imminence means Jesus could return in the next I blink. In other words, there’s nothing preventing it. Some other people say Jesus will return soon, that’s what Imminence means. It means soon. But there might be some things that still need to happen.

Okay, other people will say well it means Jesus will return unexpectedly. So those are these are the three most common definitions of Imminence that you see.

 Now, here’s the point. you go back to these definitions of Imminence how would you apply them to first Thessalonians 5? Well, the reality is that anything that smacks of a sign in the New Testament, heavenly portents, celestial things happening, the appearance of the Antichrist, you know. Jesus even said you know things like about even what’s going to happen to some of the disciples again talking about you know that is coming and how do we handle that now that we’re dealing with a distant future, all this kind of stuff. Signs are relegated to the second coming only if you presume a rapture when you read 1 Thessalonians 5. If you don’t, then you have no problem with things appearing before the actual return.

In other words, these are decisions you make. I’m not saying any one of them is bad. What I want you to see here is that a lot of what you believe about prophecy you believe, not because it’s just so plain from the Bible. You believe it because you’re filtering it through, again, things you’ve read your experience and the exposure you’ve had to certain things. As you study you develop again presuppositions, presumptions, inclinations to look at things a certain ways, it’s just a natural human thing. Because I don’t know which is right. I don’t know if we should split or join because there’s no instruction manual. And I’m not inspired, so I’m not going to tell you that you would have to pay for that. I can’t do that.

What I want you to realize is that a lot of this stuff is really here. It’s decision oriented. It’s about presuppositions. It’s about thoughts you bring to the text when you read it that it’s going to inform and guide the way you think about it. And someone else will bring another set of thoughts to the same text and come out totally different, and this is why. Because there are ambiguities, it’s going on in the text.

So conclusion. What I want you to get out of this is that you just be aware you just be aware that this is sort of the nature of the problem. There are things going on in the text. There are things God does conceal, he did it a lot the first time, and it could be significant points. Things are cryptic there’s the problem of how do I know what an author originally intended.