Prophetic Timing

 

If an event was soon to happen

Could it be two thousand years away?

And if the time of it was at hand

Wouldn’t that mean it is near?

 

What if you were in the audience

That heard such a prophecy

Would you not regard the same

As a matter of urgency?

 

So why do we treat to Bible prophecy

As always in the distant future

When words like at hand and near

Should paint a different picture?

 

This is the challenge I have

With our biblical interpretation,

Particularly as it relates

To the book of Revelation.

 

Now I do not mean to upset you

Or knock what you believe,

But maybe to take another look

At what you always perceived.

 

 

Jesus is speaking to an audience

In Matthew chapter 24

And he says to them,

“When you shall see these things,

Know that it is near, even at the door.”

 

Yet we have read into that

More than a thousand years

And I ask again, how could that be?

If it is at the door, it is near.

 

This must have been the understanding

Of the audience to which he spoke,

And that should be our interpretation

If we are right thinking folk.

   

In the book of Revelation,

In the first chapter and the last,

John was to show to God’s servants

Things that must shortly come to pass.

 

They were to hear these words of prophecy

And be encouraged in their stand,

And the phrase for its imminence was,

“For the time is at hand”.

 

 

So I urge that we be thorough

 When studying Bible prophecy,

The Bible was written to be understood

And not with an air of secrecy.

 

Pay special attention to the timing

Given regarding a prophecy:

Some relate to the end of time

Others were regarded as imminently.

 

Stewart Russell © October 2019