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Bible Prophecy 101

Introduction

Reading and understanding Bible prophecy can be a lot like trying to put together a 500- or 1000-piece puzzle without having a complete puzzle photo to guide you. There can be any number of pieces that appear to fit in various places, and it can be tempting to try to force together pieces that don’t quite fit. This can be due to our preconceived idea of what the prophecies reveal based on the doctrine and theology of various churches we may have attended. Now imagine two very similar puzzles getting mixed together, and trying to separate them to construct two different pictures, again without a clear photo as guidance. Errors are bound to be made, and you have to be willing to remove some pieces that you thought fit, when it becomes clear they don’t.

This challenge with understanding Bible prophecy is not a new problem. In the days of Yeshua’s first coming, most of the Biblical scholars and church leaders missed Him. They were making two mistakes:

First, they didn’t recognize Him because they were studying the wrong prophecies — those that told of His future status as a King instead of the ones that showed Him as a suffering servant.
Secondly, they didn’t recognize Him in the sanctuary services typology connected with the festival calendar. Despite centuries of rehearsals, they didn’t understand that the Passover lamb symbolized the Passover Lamb who came exactly when prophecy foretold, to take away the sins of the world.

Today, as we await the Second Coming, many of our brethren are doing the same things – studying the wrong prophecies, and misunderstanding the festival typology. This is why knowing how to rightly divide (2 Timothy 2:15, literally means to “dissect correctly”) prophecy is more important than ever.

It can be helpful to have some guidelines about general concepts that need to be considered in our study of prophecy, in order to have an accurate understanding of prophecy. This includes seeking answers to a number of questions. First, we should begin with the basics, such as who said it, when, to who, and why. Then, we need to ask less obvious, but equally important questions, such as:

Were there conditions attached to the promised outcome, and were the conditions met?
When God declared the end from the beginning, was it given to His prophets in such a way that they believed the prophecy would happen during a certain time period, when, in fact, it may be pointing forward several thousand years?
Was the prophecy a shadow picture, and additional [progressive] revelations were made that clarified it?
Does it fit the festival calendar and typology?
Was it deliberately hidden or sealed for a specific purpose or time?
What can we learn from the context?
Is it in alignment with the words of Yeshua?
Would it have happened as written if Yeshua had been accepted, or did His rejection cause Yehovah to make other provisions due to that rejection?

Let’s examine some of these questions to see how it impacts a correct understanding of prophecy.

Alignment with Festival Typology and Timing

“When” or “how long” are questions that were often asked in Scripture, and it continues to be a common question today. People want to know how long it will be until Yeshua returns to redeem His people from the earth. The key to knowing the timing of future events are given in God’s festival cycle. His calendar contains seven holy days, all of which are prophetic. Each individual day has a meaning, as shown in major Biblical events in both the past and future. Knowing this calendar, and using the types involved with each, are paramount to understanding Bible prophecy, especially in respect to timing of events.

We know that Passover typifies deliverance: deliverance from bondage in Egypt, deliverance from sin at the cross, and it most likely points to deliverance from this world at the Second Coming. The Passover is the only feast day with a special meal, and upon Yeshua’s return, we see a special meal – the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. These two typologies help point to the time of year when we should expect the Second Coming.

Similarly, Firstfruits typifies resurrection: Joseph (a type of Yeshua) gave instruction for his bones to be dug up to be moved to the Promised Land. It was fulfilled on the day of Firstfruits. Yeshua also rose on Firstfruits. No other feast days have any hint of resurrections. We know that there are two future resurrections: the dead in Christ at the Second Coming, and the wicked at the end of the millennium. Again, this should be considered a significant clue as to the time of year when these events will occur.

Pentecost was the timing for the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai shortly after the exodus, and the timing for the giving of the Holy Spirit shortly after the resurrection of Yeshua. A future outpouring of the Holy Spirit (“the latter rain”) is also promised, and would need to occur prior to the final judgment. Pentecost is the festival just preceding the festivals that point to judgment.

The Day of Trumpets marks the beginning of judgment, and the Day of Atonement marks the end of judgment. The judgment scenes found in end times prophecy should be seen in accordance with the timing of judgment in God’s calendar. It is the date when sins were cleansed from the sanctuary. This is especially important to help interpret events linked to specific dates on end time timelines, as found in Daniel. He specifically links a date on his final timeline to “then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (2300 evenings and mornings) and does the same with respect to Daniel’s promised resurrection (Day 1335). It “just so happens” that these dates Daniel gave for the cleansing of the sanctuary and the resurrection is a perfect match to the number of days between the Day of Atonement and the Day of Firstfruits. But without the understanding of the festivals and their typology, this very important information is lost to the reader.

The final judgment at the end of the millennium (the Great White Throne judgment found in Revelation 20) can also be expected to occur on festival timing. Similarly, the typology in the Feast of Trumpets and the fulfillment of the Jubilee match the events at the end of the millennium, when the earth is made new, the land is returned to the rightful owner, and eternity begins. However, without understanding these typologies, it is impossible to correctly put the corresponding events into their proper timing.

Unmet Conditions Alter Method of Fulfilling Prophetic Promises

Obedience, or lack thereof, to Torah is clearly identified as to whether or not God’s people would receive the blessings that He had promised. Deuteronomy 28:1 “now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of Yehovah your Elohim, to observe carefully all His commandments…” a list of blessings will flow. But, Deuteronomy 28:15 “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of Yehovah your Elohim, to observe carefully all His commandments …” a list of curses follow.

Many other times throughout Scripture, there are very clear “if/then” passages. The promises given were conditional upon obedience. A good example can be found in the direct quotations of Yehovah as given to Solomon at the time of the dedication of the temple.

2 Chronicles 7:14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:17-18 As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David walked, and do according to all that I have commanded you, and if you keep My statutes and My judgments, then I will establish the throne of your kingdom, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man as ruler in Israel.’

2 Chronicles 7:19-20 But if you turn away and forsake My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you, and go and serve other gods, and worship them, then I will uproot them from My land which I have given them; and this house which I have sanctified for My name I will cast out of My sight, and will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples.

Whether you are a nation or an individual, all of God’s promises (and curses) are conditional.

Jeremiah 18:7-11 The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, [then] I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it. “Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” ‘ ”

Ezekiel 14:13 “Son of man, when [if] a land sins against Me by persistent unfaithfulness, [then] I will stretch out My hand against it; I will cut off its supply of bread, send famine on it, and cut off man and beast from it.

Ezekiel 18:21 “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, [then] he shall surely live; he shall not die. Ezekiel 18:24 “But when [if] a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, [then] shall he live? All the righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die.”

Logically speaking, it has to be this way. How could Yehovah covenant unconditional blessings on nations or individuals who use their free will to disobey Him? Disobedience is, in fact, listening to the promptings of a wrong spirit. If we insist that Yehovah keep covenant with people who choose, or are deceived, to be led by the enemy (wrong spirit), is that not essentially insisting that Yehovah keep covenant with the enemy himself?

The only way that we can be assured that affliction will not rise up a second time (Nahum 1:9) is by recognizing that not only can Yehovah break covenant with a disobedient people, He must do so. This is not to say that He will not keep every one of His promises, but it is to say that He may need to graft in a people who are willing to obey Him before He can do so. His promises are for a righteous people, not for the unrighteous.

What this means is that when reading a Bible prophecy, you need to determine if all conditions, specified or implied, are met. If not, the prophecy will not be fulfilled as written, and Yehovah will use other people or means to bring about the end of sin so that He can reunite His family on earth with His family in heaven (Ephesians 1:10, 3:14-15).

Declaring the End from the Beginning

In Isaiah 46:9-10 we are told how Yehovah declared, at the beginning, what would happen at the end.

“Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things that are not yet done, Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, And I will do all My pleasure.’”

Many times in Scripture, we will see prophecies where Yehovah encouraged His people by giving the final promise, “the end from the beginning”, even when that end was thousands of years yet in the future. Had He not done this, for the past 6,000 years some of His people would have been tempted to stand down, knowing that they would be long sleeping in their graves before these things come to pass.

Here are some examples of prophets not understanding the end time timelines:

Yeshua called John the Baptist the greatest prophet (Matthew 11:11), yet John did not understand that there would be another 2000 years before the millennium, or even that there would be a millennium. This is evident when, in the span of two verses, John puts several events that hindsight and new revelation show are 3000+ years apart as though they were all going to happen imminently.

Matthew 3:11-12: I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me [FIRST COMING] is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire [FIRST PENTECOST]. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn [SECOND COMING – start of millennium, 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17]; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire [THIRD COMING – hellfire at end of millennium, Revelation 20:9].”

Other examples, from both Isaiah and Jeremiah: Isaiah 11:1-4a is first coming, 11:4b-5 is second coming, 11:6-9 is post-millennium; Jeremiah 25:1-33 begins with the coming captivity in Babylon [500s BC], and carries through right to the Second Coming (verse 33). We have to ask ourselves: would Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as the people who heard their words, have understood that thousands of years were transpiring in those passages? Not likely. It is only with hindsight that we see it now.

This continued in the New Testament. The disciples obviously didn’t understand the timing, or they never would have asked Yeshua, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) We see it again in Peter’s message on the Day of Pentecost, when he said that this was the fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32, a prophecy for “the last days” (Acts 2:17). Peter obviously believed that the Second Coming was imminent, not 2000 years in the future, and he gives no hint of a 1000-year period after that. Many of Paul’s writings also convey his belief that the Second Coming could happen quickly, or he wouldn’t have made comments such as “then WE who are alive and remain…” (1 Thessalonians 4:17)

The important concept for prophecy students to grasp is that many prophecies were written as though everything foretold was all going to happen at the First Coming, something the prophets likely expected centuries before it occurred. We must take this hidden timing of events into consideration when reading these prophecies, so that we can seek to discern for exactly what time period they were properly written.

Not only was the end declared from the beginning, but we also know that Yeshua, Himself, is the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13). This means that we need to take all of His words from all four gospels, and all of the book of His revelation (Revelation chapters 1 – 22) into consideration when seeking to understand prophecies that were written before His first coming. Any application of prophecy that differs from His words must be rejected.

Progressive Revelation

In addition to hidden timing, Yehovah did not give every detail to His prophets. When it comes to prophetic understanding, we are on a “need to know basis”. Yeshua made statements such as “it is not for you [the disciples] to know the times and seasons” (Acts 1:7). By Him saying that, it does not preclude that at some time it would be for us (His disciples at the end of the age) to know. In fact, Paul assures us that we would not be in darkness and overtaken without understanding (1 Thessalonians 5:1-4).

We can’t take writings from the days of Moses to Malachi and assume that they stand alone for all time. We need to continue our study on any given prophecy to see what clarification Yeshua may have given. But we can’t stop there. After His death and resurrection, the giving of prophetic understanding continued. Mysteries were revealed to the Apostle Paul. Dreams and visions were given to Peter and others. The entire book of Revelation was given to John after Yeshua’s ascension. It is impossible to put together a complete understanding of end times prophecy without incorporating these additional insights and the book of Revelation.

When the question was asked about the time of the end, the only prophetic book that Yeshua referred us to was Daniel (Matthew 24:15), yet many people today are teaching their understanding of end time events exclusively through Old Testament prophets such as Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah. By doing so, they are cutting off the very prophecies that Yeshua Himself told us to study, and they are also cutting off thousands of years of additional revelations and ideas that were never revealed to, or fully understood by, those early prophets. While these prophets never mention the millennium, for example, the temptation is to throw every part of the writings that did not happen into that time period. In so doing, doctrines get created that are in complete opposition to later words of Yeshua and John the Revelator. It is imperative to include into all interpretations the other keys to understanding Bible prophecy, including an understanding of the impact that the rejection of Yeshua played on the unfolding of end time events.

Rejection of Yeshua

What would have happened if Yeshua had not been rejected? Is it possible that these prophecies COULD have all happened at His first coming, just as they are written? Not only is it possible, but probable. For example, we see a prophecy in Malachi 3 that Yeshua would come suddenly to the temple, and would refine and purify the sons of Levi (vs 3). In an attempt to fulfill this prophecy upon His people, Yeshua came not once, but twice, to do this work of cleansing as portrayed. The first time He was rejected by the Levites (John 2:13) and the second time He was rejected by, among others, Caiaphas, the High Priest (Luke 19:45-48).

Twice, the religious leaders of His day did not accept Yeshua’s refining and purification, which was purposed “so that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3). Wouldn’t that imply that their offering was not in righteousness prior to this refining? Would it have been the act of a righteous God to continue to accept their blood offerings after they rejected His Messiah, as though their offerings were equal, or superior, to Yeshua’s blood?

Recall that the original plan was for all of Israel to be a nation of priests (Exodus 19:6). When only the Levites remained obedient at the golden calf incident, they were selected to be the priests (Exodus 32:26). Now even the Levites had become disobedient. They earned their position by obedience, and they lost it by disobedience. Because of their rejection, the honor of priesthood passes to those who are raised in the first resurrection (Revelation 20:6).

When Yeshua was rejected, by necessity, Yehovah had to fulfill His promises through another means. He could not move forward with the end promises of His covenant with a people who were being led by the enemy and rejecting the provisions that Yehovah had designed. Murdering their Messiah fell outside of being obedient to the covenant. This kind of rejection demanded He renew the covenant with those who accepted Him. Those who rejected Him were broken off and new branches were grafted in. God’s end plan, the mystery set forth by Paul in Ephesians, His eternal purpose, was to unite His family on earth with His family in heaven. But to do that, He first had to bring forth a people who were adopted into His family who were one in His Messiah, Yeshua. (Ephesians 1:9-10, and as laid out completely in the entire book of Ephesians.)

Some may challenge this concept by referring to the prophecies that the Messiah would be rejected (example: Psalm 22). God had hidden these prophecies so well that it took Yeshua expounding on the law, prophets, and Psalms (Luke 24:44-45) to open His disciples understanding. It was not until hindsight after His resurrection that they were able to see these prophecies had applied to Him. Furthermore, just because these prophecies are recorded does not mean that it had to happen this way, only that God in His foreknowledge knew that it would happen this way. While these prophecies seem obvious to us in 2020, they are written in such a way that His disciples didn’t understand them on their own, and modern Judaism still doesn’t see them as applying to Yeshua.

Had Yeshua given His life in the same manner as every other Passover lamb had foretold, the hidden prophecies concerning His rejection would have remained hidden. Pause to think on this for a moment: How could we consider Yehovah a righteous Elohim if His plan of salvation depended on His chosen people breaking the commandment against murder in order for Him to be able to save them?

For a closer look at how the rejection of Yeshua impacts the writings of the major and minor prophets recorded before the first advent of Yeshua, consider the following examples:

Isaiah 2:2-4 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days That the mountain of the LORD’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.

This passage begins with the ultimate promise that will occur post-millennium—the establishment of Yehovah’s house. This is ultimately fulfilled in Revelation 21, but not as Isaiah and his readers would have expected it to happen. Then Isaiah speaks of going up to the mountain of Yehovah where He will teach His ways and we will walk in them. This is fulfilled in Revelation 22, but again, not as Isaiah and his readers would have expected. They would have expected all of this to happen on earth at the First Coming. In verse four of this chapter, it does end with judgment and eternal peace. We see this final judgment at the white throne in Revelation 20, and the final war over evil ending with fire from heaven in Revelation 20:9.

Isaiah did see the end from the beginning, he just didn’t see the timing or fullness of details. These things that Isaiah prophesied in chapter two will indeed occur, but differently than Isaiah and his readers would have expected, and differently than it could have occurred had Yeshua not been rejected. Instead of these things happening at His first coming on earth, they will happen at the Second Coming, or even the Third Coming (end of millennium).

Jeremiah 25 begins with the prophecy of the seventy-week captivity in Babylon, and by verse 33, he is showing the destruction of the wicked at the Second Coming (or possibly at the end of the millennium). Jeremiah was only shown the “what” without a complete understanding of the “when”. When it came to timing, God almost never revealed any extended periods of time. Daniel 9 was an exception. This text exists solely due to Daniel’s searching and praying for understanding of Jeremiah’s prophecy. The explanation by Gabriel to Daniel did point to the correct timing of the First Coming, but nowhere in the seventy weeks prophecy do we see a 2000-year period after the First Coming and a 1000-year millennium. At what point at the first coming was there the finish of transgression and an end of sins, and the bringing in of everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24)? It did not happen as Daniel was shown, at the conclusion of the 70-week prophecy, but it will happen. Could it have happened all at once? To answer that question, we need only ask if the church at the First Coming had the free will to accept or reject their Messiah. Because Yah gave us all free will, and the majority of His people freely chose to reject Him, He had to revise His original plans by building on the minority who did choose to accept Him as Messiah.

Yeshua stated this concept specifically in Matthew 21:43 “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.” We must take His words into consideration when looking at prophecies for those from whom the kingdom was later taken away due to their disobedience and rejection of their Messiah. The fulfillment of those prophecies will happen, but not with the same people as originally prophesied.

The Intended Audience for the Prophecy

It is clear from Scripture that Yehovah gave prophecies that were directed to specific people in their day. This is found throughout Scripture. A simple example of this is Peter and the vision of being told to eat unclean foods, to prepare him to accept the Gentiles sent by Cornelius (Acts chapter 10). Another example of this is found in 2 Chronicles 18. Ahab was seeking to know if Yehovah would be with him in a particular battle in which he was requesting Jehoshaphat’s assistance. Hundreds of false prophets spoke the words that Ahab wanted to hear, but the one true prophet spoke the words that Yehovah was giving him to say. That was a present time prophecy specifically for Ahab, and it would be wrong to draw an end-time reference into it. (It does give quite an interesting peek into the heavenly throne and how false prophets operate, which is a principle that does apply for all time, as the principle in Peter’s vision also applies for all time. We can always draw principles and understanding of our Father’s character through each of these stories, even if the exact prophecy was not directed at us.)

This is also true of the prophesies given to Ezekiel. We know from the context leading up to the prophesies of the dry bones and two sticks that the children of Israel were twelve years into a 70-year captivity. Put yourself in those shoes for a moment, to get a thorough understanding of this book. Imagine that you had served the first twelve years of a seventy-year prison sentence. Not just you, but your entire nation, family, and friends were in this prison. Your new grandchild born last week would live to age 58 before ever even hoping to see freedom. How would you feel right now? Perhaps as though you have no hope and your bones are dry (Ezekiel 37:11)?

Proverbs 17:22 A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones.

The promises in Ezekiel 37 were meant for those captive people, to assure them that they would be brought back to a place of freedom, and the two sticks was a promise to reunite the divided house of Israel and Judah at the end of that captivity. These chapters were hope for a particular people at a particular time. They never once indicate that they are for the latter days, yet we hear them applied to our time regularly. Under what reasonable theory do we now carry them forward 2500 years and say they apply to us today? Those who claim the dry bones are a prophecy of the return of Israel to the land, or the resurrection of the saved at the end of days, are overlooking that the dry bones in this prophecy had no hope. Would the long-awaited return to the land, or being resurrected to live eternally with Yeshua, lead people to say “Our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off”?

Ezekiel continues on with instructions for a new temple and the blessings that would occur when it was completed, but the people did not do as they were instructed. Although they built a temple, it was not to the specifications they had been given. They doubled down on their disobedience when they rejected and killed their Messiah. The tribal list in Ezekiel 48:22-28 is not the same as the tribal list in Revelation 7:5-8. That fact alone is evidence that the end result, a fulfillment of the promises, will be carried out differently than was originally promised, had the people chosen obedience. Again, Yehovah will fulfill His promises, but in a different manner than covenanting with unrepentant sinners.

There are many today who miss that this prophecy was for a specific people at a specific time. They believe that we can now, 2500 years too late, build Ezekiel’s temple, and Yehovah will turn back to His original plan. This interpretation ignores the progressive revelation from Yeshua and from the writer of Hebrews. Yeshua declared that, because of their rejection, their house is left desolate (Matthew 23:37-38). In the Book of Hebrews, we are told that in Jerusalem we have no continuing city [on earth], but we seek the one to come [down from heaven] (Hebrews 13:14), and that those who were serving the temple sacrificial system before the temple destruction in AD 70 had no right to eat from the [heavenly] altar upon which Yeshua’s sacrifice was made (Hebrews 13:10).

The lesson in this is that for every prophecy we study, we must look at the context to see if it was written for a specific person or group at a particular time, or if it was given for those of us upon whom the end of the ages have come. It is a mistake to assume that all prophecies can apply to all people in all times, especially as we saw earlier, if they never happened when given due to situations such as unmet conditions or rejection of the Messiah.

Sealed Prophecies

Some prophecies specify that they are sealed, and others plainly state that they are for the time of the end. When reading these prophecies, it is imperative that we set aside prior attempts by our ancestors to understand them. Scripture was written in such a way as to make it possible for people of many generations to think that they were living in the end days. Circumstances in the prophecies may have seemed to fit, at least generally or partially, which only further encouraged earlier generations to apply them to their time. After all, if you are convinced that you are living in the time of the end, you would believe that these prophecies did apply to your time.

This happened even prior to Yeshua’s days, when people who had lived through Antiochus Epiphanes and the temple desecration believed that was the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet. Yet when Yeshua was answering the question of what would be the sign of His second coming, something that has not yet happened in 2020, He said “when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet” then His coming would be near. Obviously, He would not have pointed to an event that happened a couple of hundred years before His first coming as a sign of His Second Coming, which was still two thousand plus years after His words were spoken.

Similarly, well-intentioned prophecy students in the past have worked to apply the notable horn in Daniel 8 to Alexander the Great. But that prophecy is specified as being sealed for the time of the end. How reasonable it is that someone born 350 years before the birth of Yeshua was fulfilling a prophecy for the time of the end, as we look in hindsight from the year 2020? All attempts to understand Daniel 8 as including Alexander the Great therefore need to be re-evaluated and we need to “prophecy again” (Revelation 10:11).

Misunderstood or Out of Context

Some prophetic writings are incorrectly interpreted just because they are misunderstood or taken out of context. One of the more widely misunderstood prophecies that fits this concept is Isaiah 65:20.

“No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, Nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; For the child shall die one hundred years old, But the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.

We have an entire article that looks at this text in great depth, which we highly recommend if you have been taught that this text is evidence for a particular doctrine. Briefly, the bottom line of that article is that this verse is taken as a stand-alone proof text (a danger in itself) that people live to 100 years old during the millennium, when in reality it is just one comparison of many in a passage that is comparing and contrasting many different aspects of the new heavens and new earth (which are created after the end of the millennium – Revelation 20:15-21:1), with the present earth. There is no hint of a millennium anywhere in the prophecy.

Isaiah 65 compares and contrasts the following: (verse 13) eating with hunger, drinking with thirst, rejoicing with shame; (verse 14) singing with crying and sorrow; (verse 17) new heavens and new earth with the former earth that will pass away; (verse 19) rejoicing and joy with weeping and crying; (verse 20) eternal life with earthly death; and (verse 21-22) enjoying the results of our building and planting with others enjoying the results of our building and planting. Each of these verses follow the order of comparing the future new heavens and earth with the present sinful world. All that this text is saying is that when we reach the new earth, no longer will babies only live a short time or old men die before they have fulfilled their days; instead, they will have eternal life. His established pattern in the text of comparison then goes on by stating that in this earth that will pass away and not be remembered, we die at one hundred years old, accursed.

In the context, there is no indication of a millennium, nor is there any evidence that Isaiah ever saw a millennium, yet people claim that Isaiah 65:20 is proof that people will live 100 years during a millennium on earth. In addition to being out of context and used as a stand-alone proof text, this interpretation is in direct contrast with at least three things:

the red-letter words of Yeshua saying that where He is going, He will prepare for us and come back to take us there (John 13:36-14:3),
the direction we go at the Second Coming (in the air, 2 Thessalonians 4:16-17), and
the death of all the wicked at the Second Coming (Revelation 19:17-21) who are not raised until the end of millennium (Revelation 20:5).

What are the odds of finding truth by taking a single verse, isolating it from its context, applying a private interpretation to that verse, and ignoring all evidence to the contrary which was revealed elsewhere later?

Conclusion

We have an enemy whose entire goal is to deceive and destroy Yehovah’s people. Yeshua repeatedly warned of deception at the end of time. Only the wise virgins will understand, and only the elect can avoid deception. Those words are promises just as much as any other promises in Scripture. To be among the wise and elect, we must consider each one of the above concepts in order to form a complete understanding of prophecy.

All conclusions that fail to consider these concepts are bound to be partially, if not fully, in error.

–Written by Tom and Judy Stapleton

(Published 4/13/2020)