Prophecy Besides

When Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, sought to persuade Jehoshaphat, the righteous king of Judah, to accompany him into battle against the king of Syria, Ahab paraded before Jehoshaphat the false prophets of Baal. Of course, all the prophets of Baal preached the same sermon, predicting to a man that the alliance of the two kings would result in certain victory over their Syrian adversary. Jehoshaphat, suspicious over the parroted prognostications of all of Ahab’s handpicked prophets, asked if there was not “a prophet of the Lord besides.” In other words, Jehoshaphat wanted to know if there was any prophet of the Lord in Israel who dared to be different by proclaiming something other than the same old ear-tickling sermons of the ever-popular prophets of Baal. Ahab reluctantly admitted that there was one such prophet in Israel. In addition, he publicly confessed his personal animosity towards this particular prophet.

When Micaiah, “the prophet besides,” was summoned to appear before the two kings seated on their thrones in regal robes, he was warned by one of Ahab’s officials not to dare speak truth to power, but to parrot all the other prophets’ positive prognostications. In spite of the warning and the personal risk any prophet takes when he points his finger in a king’s face, Micaiah broke ranks with the false prophets of Baal and predicted defeat rather than victory. Even more infuriating to Ahab than the prediction of his army’s defeat at the hands of his hated enemy, the king of Syria, was Micaiah’s further prediction that Ahab himself would be numbered among the fatalities of this ill-fated war. For so bold a prophecy, Ahab sentenced Micaiah to a bread and water diet in his dungeon until he returned from battle. Apparently, Micaiah was never released from the dungeon, since Ahab, as Micaiah predicted, never returned from the war.

At Time For Truth Ministries we’re offering “prophecy besides”; that is, a different take on Bible prophecy than the popular and traditional interpretations of our day. We’re shouting from our housetop that the divinely ordained and biblically predicted end-time scenario is starting to manifest itself right before our very eyes in these contemporary times. Still, many fail to see the clear signs of the times due to the fact that they are looking for the end-time scenario to play out differently from the way it is occurring. Make no mistake about it; your preconceived ideas about Bible prophecy and refusal to rethink what you’ve always thought and been taught can blind you to the actual fulfilling of Bible prophecy currently taking place right under your nose. Just as many missed the signs of Christ’s first coming, due to the preconceived and prevalent ideas of their time (see: John 7:25-27, 41-42, 52), many today are missing the signs of Christ’s Second Coming, due to the preconceived and prevalent ideas of our time.

By breaking ranks with the popular preachers of our day and daring to proclaim something different from the commonly accepted teachings of our time, especially teachings that tickle the ears with positive prognostications like a secret rapture of the church that snatches us out of the world to the safety of Heaven before the commencement of any end-time tribulation, we are putting ourselves at risk as “a prophet besides.” We’re being blackballed by evangelical churches, renounced by their pastors, and even accused of heresy for our refusal to parrot the talking points of premillennial dispensationalism, the most popular school of eschatology among modern-day evangelicals. Still, like Micaiah of old, we are constrained by God to break ranks with the popular and preferred teachings of our day in order to warn others of impending judgment. Instead of promising the imminent deliverance of a secret rapture, we’re being constrained by God to issue a clarion call to our fellow-Christians to prepare for the unprecedented persecution and tribulation about to befall us in the perilous times of these last days. In addition, our ministry is desperately attempting to educate the church about end-time lies and to equip the church to confront and combat them with the truths of God’s Word.

With this initial issue of Piecing Together Bible Prophecy we are beginning a new publication. It will be emailed to all subscribers with our permission to further its circulation by any means possible. Feel free to forward it to others, download and copy it for distribution to anyone desiring a printed copy, and to share and promote it on social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Your help in getting this critical teaching out to others in these critical times will be greatly appreciated.

In this publication we will endeavor to properly piece together Bible prophecy so as to show you the parallels between today’s headlines and biblical timelines. While the subject of Bible prophecy is unavoidably sensational, we will attempt to avoid over-sensationalizing it, which is a prominent problem we believe many a present-day prophecy pundit is prone to fall prey to. Whereas we will continue to send out our Time Capsules―short reports on daily events that are pertinent to Bible prophecy—we will utilize this publication to offer you in-depth studies of the Bible’s most important prophetic passages. These studies will be offered in issues of this publication piece by piece in order to present them to you in concise and digestible portions. By providing this commentary on the Bible’s most important prophetic passages in series of short segments you will be able to piece it all together one piece at a time. In the end, you should have a fairly thorough panorama of Bible prophecy that will not only serve as a scripturally sound summary of this most intriguing and important topic, but also enable you to become one of “the children of Issachar,” who “were men that had understanding of the times” and knew “what [they] ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32).

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