16 Jul 2012
I once believed Bible prophecy was like a jigsaw puzzle; if you got it right, every piece would fall perfectly into place. No piece would have to be forced or pushed into place; no piece would have to be trimmed to fit. Instead, every piece would fall effortlessly, naturally, and perfectly into place. When it did, you would know that you had it; that is, you would know that God had given it to you (John 3:27)
Through the years, my problem with the major schools of eschatology—the study of end-times or last things—is that none of them have all the pieces to the prophetic puzzle in place. All of them are guilty of pushing some pieces in place and trimming others to make them fit. Although each school may have some of the pieces, none of them have worked the prophetic puzzle.
Despite this, many proponents of today’s major schools of eschatology promote their eschatological views as a true test of orthodoxy. They view any disagreement with those views as tantamount to denying the truth of Scripture. Apparently, it has never dawned on these eschatological masterminds that it is possible to disagree with their interpretations of apocalyptic texts without denying the truth of the texts themselves.
Although I once believed Bible prophecy was like a jigsaw puzzle, I now believe it’s more like a Rubik’s Cube. Whereas jigsaw puzzles may be worked from start to finish without requiring you to undo what you have already worked out, a Rubik’s Cube demands that you be willing to undo what you’ve already done in order to work it. It’s this undoing of what we’ve already worked out—at least what we think we’ve worked out—that prevents so many from being more successful in solving the prophetic puzzle. Too many Christians today refuse to rethink anything they’ve painstakingly hammered out on the anvil of personal study. Therefore, whatever they’ve hammered out is permanently hammered into them, even if it happens to be wrong.
I’m old enough to remember when the Rubik’s Cube first came out. Some of my smart-alecky friends would take the puzzle into another room and shortly thereafter emerge with it worked. According to them, the reason they insisted on working the puzzle in private was to keep the secret to solving it concealed from the rest of us. We later learned, however, the real reason why they never worked the puzzle in public. It was to fool us into believing they had worked the puzzle, when, in actuality, they had secretly peeled the colored stickers off so as to stick all of the same-colored ones on the same side.
Many who claim to have worked the prophetic puzzle remind me of my old smart-alecky friends. Rather than work the prophetic puzzle, they actually peel Scripture off the sacred page and out of its context so as to stick it wherever it needs to go to corroborate their end-time hypothesis. Instead of changing their eschatology to fit the Scripture, they change the Scripture to fit their eschatology.
My smart-alecky friends were finally found out when someone carefully examined their handiwork. On careful examination, it was apparent that the colored stickers had been peeled off and reapplied where they did not belong.
When it comes to today’s major schools of eschatology, each should be carefully examined. On close examination, it will become evident to all open-minded examiners that some scriptural texts have been peeled out of their context and misapplied to shore up some supposed end-time scenario.
While we should never give up on working the puzzle of Bible prophecy, we should stop using our current suppositions as standards of Christian orthodoxy. Furthermore, we should all acknowledge that none of us have solved the puzzle; therefore, we must be ever ready to redo what we have supposedly already worked out. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to solve the Rubik’s Cube of Bible prophecy.
Don Walton
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