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April 22, 2026 |
| Why Are These Things Never Clear? | ||
The title of this study comes from a quote from the "philosopher" Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. When he says these words, he is looking at a voodoo map and lamenting the fact that it's all written in confusing words and symbols that don't seem to make any sense. That part doesn't directly apply to us, but the question does apply to Bible prophecy because it's a valid question there as well.
- Why is prophecy always never clear?
- Why can't these things just be written down clearly, and why can't we just be told what's coming up in the future?
- Why do we have to have all of this symbolism?
- Why is it such an effort to try to understand all of it?
- And maybe even the best question of all of these is, what is the point of giving us end-times prophecy that we can't
understand?
It seems like we get little value from prophecy before it happens, and after it happens, and we understand it, it's only value is that it shows that God knows the future.
That has certainly been true of a lot of Bible prophecy that has happened. The people didn't recognize the prophecies while they were happening, and never did until they were fulfilled.
There were rare exceptions where a person understood the prophecy and, more importantly, took steps to fulfill it. But for millions of people, the prophecies blew by them without noticing.
These are all really good questions to ask and therefore a good topic for a study.
The reason we have prophecies at all is that it is God's nature. Many things are hidden from us, but he desires to reveal things to his people. He wants us to know, but he also wants to conceal them somewhat. Later, we'll talk about why he also wants to conceal.
This nature seems to connect with the joy that we feel when we've understood something that was hidden. There are many people who strive to understand prophecy. Most of them never understand much, but when they understand something, that is a success for them.
This joy doesn't only come from understanding prophecy. We love to watch mysteries about people and figure out "who done it." That is our nature.
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. (Proverbs 25:2)
We see that God glories in hiding things and finding people to whom he can reveal them. That's the nature of God. We love to figure out things that are hidden. That's the nature of man, and especially kings.
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever. (Deuteronomy 29:29)
That tells us God has certain things that he keeps secret to himself, and until there is a person or a time when he wants to reveal them. When he wants to reveal them, he makes those things manifest in whatever way suits him.
The things that he has given to us to understand are available to us, and we understand them because they've been given to us to understand. God likes to hide things and reveal them in their time. He likes to have people search for those things, and we like that too.
God also does this hiding and revealing for those who seek after him.
Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it is opened. (Matthew 7:7-8 similar in Luke 11:8-9)
God wants us to be the kind of people who desire him enough that we are going to seek out his word, seek out his ways, and look for him.
More than that, he is a rewarder of those who seek these things. They will receive what they seek. He says: If you seek after me, you will find me. If you knock and you want to get in, I will let you in. If you ask, I will give you things. This too is God's nature.
However, seek the Kingdom of God, and all these things are added to you. (Luke 12:31)
This verse is saying the same thing in a different way. Seek after me and my ways, and all sorts of other things will be added to you. Again, God wants people who desire him, and that desire will naturally be followed by seeking. That's the right kind of desire. Many people understand this verse to be promising cars, houses, and other things. That's the wrong kind of desire. If you have the right kind of desire, God may give you those things, but your desire should be for the Kingdom of God.
Prophecy is symbolized, which makes it hard to understand, but it's selectively symbolized. For example, there are parts of Revelation that are very heavily symbolized and largely unreadable to the beginner, but the rest of it is very lightly or not at all symbolized. A beginner can understand much of those and get a lot of value from them.
After reading Revelation, what beginner would think that taking the mark of the beast was a good idea? He wouldn't because there's so much discussion about it that isn't symbolized. You may not understand what the mark is, but you certainly understand that you don't want to take it because God is not going to forgive you for doing so. Who, after reading Revelation, would not be comforted to know that there's a better time coming? Near the end of Revelation, it speaks, without using symbols, about how things are going to be much better. There will be no more sorrow, no more sadness, and no more death.
The prophetic books vary in that way. Some books are lightly symbolized, some heavily, and some, like Revelation, are a mix. Therefore even the beginner who searches can find things, and as he matures spiritually, he can continue mining these books for precious insights.
Yes, unfalsifiability is a word. It describes something that cannot be shown or caused to be false. In the sciences, falsifiability is a good thing. A falsifiable idea makes predictions that someone can test to see if the idea is correct. That's part of the method for determining which ideas are true.
Things are different for God. He can only give us prophecy about the future that no one is able to make false. There's another player in the game, Satan, and he would like to make God into a liar. He would like to do this by making even one of God's prophecies not come true. Then God would be a liar, and everything falls apart. We don't want that. God doesn't want that.
Therefore one of the reasons why prophecy has to be obscure sometimes is so that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. That gives God more than one way to fulfill the prophecy, making it unfalsifiable. Satan would have nothing to gain by trying to falsify it. If he could falsify it in one interpretation, there's still another interpretation where it can be true. This is complicated, so here's an example.
If God appeared to you and told you that you're going to die tomorrow while driving your car, what would you do tomorrow? Would you stay at home and not get in your car? Or would you just do your normal thing and go drive your car to work like you normally do?
If you decide to avoid driving your car, you are trying to save your life, which isn't normally a bad thing, but you are also trying to falsify the prophecy, which would make God a liar.
This talks to the character of the person. There are people that God can trust, and there are people that God cannot trust. God won't reveal something to you that you're going to try to falsify. This limits what God can reveal, and especially the detail he can provide in prophecy. Little details are easier to falsify, but broad statements like "a king will arise out of 10 countries" are much harder to falsify.
There are people God can trust with prophecy and others he cannot. There are also people who are blind to prophecy. When you look back at prophecies that were fulfilled during Jesus' first coming, you can see that there are people there who were fulfilling prophecy, but they had no idea that they were doing that.
Judas is one example of that. When they offered him 30 pieces of silver, that seemed like a natural amount to him because it was the price of a slave, and he was happy with that. He didn't realize that he was fulfilling a prophecy. Similarly with Joseph of Arimathea. He didn't realize that in giving his tomb for Jesus' burial, he was also fulfilling a prophecy, but he was. People like this can be trusted with prophecy because they are going to be oblivious to it when the time comes.
There are very few people in the game who can be trusted to knowingly fulfil prophecy. Jesus is one of them. The only regular person I've noticed who is like this is King Jehu from 2 Kings 9:25. He knows he is fulfilling prophecy and is careful to do so.
Jehu is fulfilling prophecies of death and destruction about others. It's different for Jesus. He knows that he must die a terrible death. He doesn't try to avoid that when the time comes. The most that he does is to pray that this cup pass from him if it's at all possible, but it isn't. He must go through this, and he submits to that.
We've seen that there are two classes of people: those who can be trusted with prophecy, for whatever reason, and those who can't be trusted. Because of those who can't be trusted, the details of prophecy and the awareness of prophecy must be limited.
Another reason prophecy is unclear is that it is intended for the right time and right person. God reveals things when he wants to, and to whom he wants to. He is that kind of God. He likes to reveal things to people, and he can reveal more to people that he can trust with the knowledge, and he reveals what he wants, when he wants.
Symbolism in prophecy is one way to hide things in prophecy. Others will never see what's there, but when the right person (or people) read it at the right time, they will see it. Many will think that they understand it, but they don't. They will have confused themselves by trying to achieve what God does not want. But God will open the eyes of those he has chosen, and they will see what the verse is saying. I'm quite sure that one of these is in this verse.
those sitting upon [the horses] had breastplates of fire and Chalcedony brimstone (Revelation 9:17)
In prophecy, breastplates are like team shirts; they describe the character or nature of the team. This is telling us something about these people, but the time is not yet, and we are not able to understand it.
There is a good verse where God opened eyes to see something they were not permitted to see before. It comes from the Road to Emmaus trip after Jesus' death. Jesus has joined the travellers, but they don't recognize him.
At once their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he ascended from them. (Luke 24:31)
Luke doesn't mean that their eyelids were uncovered from covering their eyes. He means that their perception of what they were seeing changed.
Jesus had been "blocking their eyes". They could see a person, they could talk to him, have discussions with him, but he had blocked them from recognizing who he was. When he breaks bread, he removes that block, as the Bible calls it, "their eyes were opened". He knows that they've recognized him, and he ascends from them.
God does this frequently. We like to think that we are only limited by our own abilities and experiences, and we can perceive (understand) all that we see. God keeps us from understanding things that he doesn't want us to understand. At the right time, for the right people, he opens their eyes to "see" what they couldn't before.
That's the nature of God. That's how he works.