The study of Biblical prophecy should be a great help to any believer who desires to seriously follow the Lord. The Apostle Peter tells us:

We have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
— 2 Peter 1:19

The Apostle John tells us that our hoping to see the Lord will cause us to purify ourselves so that we may be ready to meet Him (1 John 3:3). And the book of Revelation begins by telling us God gave that revelation to Christ so that He could show His servants “the things which must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1).

Surely, then, as those who love the Lord, we should seek to have a basic grasp of what the Scriptures reveal to us concerning the second coming of Christ. And yet, as G.H. Pember states in the opening lines of his 4-volume Great Prophecies series:

The Supreme God has deigned to give revelations whereby He seeks to communicate His purposes to men, and thus, by a gentle process, to bend their minds to His mighty and irresistible will. Nevertheless, myriads of professing Christians are content to reach the end of life in total ignorance of these gracious disclosures, while accredited ministers of Christ are too frequently unable to expound them.​
— Great Prophecies Series, Volume 1, from the Preface, page v.

He goes on to state that many Christians,

….Refuse to look beyond the first principles of Christ [cf. Heb. 6:1];…will not study, meditate upon, and suffer the Holy Spirit to mould their minds by the revelations which God has provided for that purpose;…vainly strive to excuse their indolence, and want of appetite for heavenly things, by affirming that the simple Gospel is enough for them.
— ibid., page vii

In Pember’s view, one great frustration to this has been the different schools of Biblical interpretation that have worked, as he states,

…To prevent men from receiving the predictions of God in their plain and natural sense, and so to deprive those predictions of their spiritual power.
— Great Prophecies Series, Volume 2, from the Introduction, page 15.

The fundamental problem with all of these different schools, Pember indicates, is the same for which the Lord admonished the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

“O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!”0
— Luke 24:25

Lord, make us those who believe in Your prophetic word!

One very good book of the Bible to study, to see the proper way to view Biblical prophecy, is Zechariah, because this short book contains extensive prophecies of both the first and the second comings of Christ. And when we see how the prophet’s words were fulfilled in the first coming of Christ in an exact and literal way, we should realize that in the future his prophecies concerning the second coming of Christ will be fulfilled in an exact and literal way as well.

For a study of Zechariah’s prophecies concerning the two comings of Christ, click here:

The Two Comings of Christ in Zechariah

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— 23 July 2022 —