Pulling back the curtain on today’s headlines

Have you ever watched a magic trick which has left you scratching your head – only for the penny to drop once you saw how it was done? What initially looked impossible became relatively straightforward once the mechanism behind it was revealed.

The past few years have been a bit like that, for me.

Since 2017 it has been my privilege to write and speak about Israel and the Jewish people – mostly to draw awareness to the rising moral vacuum that has given oxygen to a massive jump in the ancient stain of antisemitism that we’re seeing around the world; and to the moral and the legal right of the Jewish people to their own land.

So, for some, I’m sure that my recent excursions into the topic of bible prophecy have seemed a bit strange. And it’s not just the odd mention here and there – I’ve gone in boots-and-all and even published a book on the topic (Prophecy Shock, which, somewhat to my surprise, has just reached number one on Amazon in New Zealand and Australia).

I’m not oblivious to the fact that this is an uncomfortable topic for many people. Some find it hard to take a faith-based worldview seriously, and others recognise just how fractured and confused the field of prophecy interpretation actually is. Talk to ten people about what it means and you’ll get ten different answers.

So why am I now making it the basis of my worldview? Why am I risking giving away a loyal audience and consistent readership for something that some may regard as ‘flakey’?

Many, many people have written on this topic over centuries – do I think I’m smarter than they are/were? Have I had some new spiritual revelation?

Not at all. I pale into insignificance relative to these heavyweights and, in truth I haven’t introduced anything ‘new’ to this study at all. But I don’t need to. Everything I need to understand what prophecy actually means is right there in scripture for those who are prepared to stand back and see it. The many interpretative systems that we’ve inherit can be complicated, but the text itself is not.

What looks like confusion isn’t coming from the text, it’s coming from how we’ve learned to interpret it.

Strip that back, and the picture becomes much simpler: Prophecy is overwhelmingly about Israel and the Jews.

Not occasionally, not symbolically, and not as something that can be replaced – but as a central thread running through both the Old and New Testament.

So my writing hasn’t taken a detour – it has just become more explicit about the source from which I draw most of my views. The events taking place in today’s headlines are the consequence of prophecies that were written over 2,500 years ago, which were fulfilled within living memory – and which speak to what’s happening right now. Not next week or in a future seven year sequence of calamities – but right now.

The implications of that understanding are staggering…..