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Advent Productions

Benjamin Ng

The Bible and Prophecy- Futurism, Preterism and Historicism

Father in heaven, thank you so much for this time of study that we have.

Thank you Lord that we can come together and study your Word especially.

And Lord more than anything else, we want to ask for a blessing of your Holy Spirit.

That you'd be with us, that you'd guide us, that you lead each and every 1 of us to understand the truth that we're about to look at.

And even as we look at some history and some different areas of study, I pray that you'd guide each and every 1 of us and help us to see the truth very clearly Lord.

This is our earnest plea and prayer for we pray in Jesus name, Amen.

So the title of the Samu School lesson this morning is the Bible and prophecy.

Now we're not going to really look into prophecy.

What we're really looking at is interpreting prophecy.

But you know, the question that I have to start this morning is, how can you prove that the Bible is true?

You know, if you're Meeting someone on the street that doesn't believe in Jesus, that doesn't believe they're not a Christian, they've never been to church before.

How do you prove that the Bible is true to them?

It's pretty difficult to start with creation because that will cause more questions and debate rather than give evidence that God is the 1 that created the world and because He's the creator of the world, you can trust the Bible and what it says there right there in Genesis chapter 1, you know.

You can't really start with Jesus Because some people are different, you know.

So you can't just say Jesus is the Son of God, right?

Even John the Revelator, the 1 who wrote John the Gospel did not do that.

To really prove that the Bible is true, you've got to start with prophecy.

So please grab your Bibles, turn with me in your Bibles this morning to John 14 and verse 29.

Let's start there this morning, shall we?

John 14, 29, the Bible says, and now I have told you before it come to pass that when it is come to pass, you might believe.

So what establishes our belief in the Word of God?

It is Jesus telling us things or the Bible telling us things before it happens and then when it actually happens, it's easier for us to grasp the truth, the Word of God, and to hold on to say, okay, I believe this.

Let's also go to John 13, 1 chapter before.

John 13 and Verse 19, the Bible says this, Now I tell you before it come, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He.

So once again, pretty much repeating the same principle that we saw in John 14.

Jesus tells us before it comes to pass, so when it actually happens, it establishes faith in what Jesus is talking about in the person himself, that whatever else he said is true.

So this is why many times as Bible students, and you will notice that when we go into seminars that we present publicly, Daniel 2 is always probably 1 of the first presentations or near to the first of presentations that we present because it is prophecy, but it's also history that has been told in advance.

Because then it proves the validity of the Bible and it's much easier to accept everything else that the Bible has said because all these things it said before has already come to pass.

And even, you know, in our modern day and age, we have prophecies that have been fulfilled in the recent history of the past 200 years.

So there are things that the Bible does talk about that has come to pass or that is coming to pass that helps us to establish our faith, the importance of prophecy.

Let's turn our Bible to John chapter 20 and verse 31.

John 20 and verse 31, still the same book.

John chapter 20 verse 31, the Bible says, But these are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through His name.

You know, John the Gospel was intent on proving that Jesus was God.

He came, yes, as a human, but He was the Son of God standing right there before their very eyes.

And he did this to prove his divinity and that through that we can understand that his blood is sufficient to wash away all our sins.

The whole Lamb of God that taketh away all the sins of the world.

So prophecy is very important in the Gospel of John.

But then we go over to Revelation chapter 1, same author, and you know John was written after the book of Revelation.

But let's go to Revelation chapter 1 and verse 1.

No coincidence that the author is the same and what they're trying to prove is really important areas that we need to understand.

And unless we grasp the validity of the Bible and its truthfulness, it's very hard for us to accept what is also written in there.

Revelation 1, verse 1, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass, and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant, John.

So John received these things from God and it was about things that were shortly to come to pass.

So the book of Revelation really is a book about prophecy.

And really, Revelation is a book that helps us to establish faith.

And that's the important part of studying prophecy, especially the book of Revelation in our time.

Many people sometimes they like to take the Word of God like a buffet.

But you know friends, if the God of the Bible, He wrote that part at the end there, He also wrote the part that maybe you're not accepting as well.

So it's important to establish faith, not in just you as a preacher or in your denomination or wherever you come from, it's important to establish faith in the Word of God.

You know, how did Jesus prove His divinity to Nathanael back in John chapter 1?

Let's go back there, John chapter 1, And look at what Jesus did to establish faith in Nathaniel, in him, from Nathaniel's perspective.

Because Nathaniel, he was a bit, he was a bit skeptical that Jesus really was the Son of God.

When Philip came to him and says, Nathaniel, look, we found the Messiah.

And he's like, can any good thing really come out of Nazareth?

And so Nathaniel came, but he was doubtful that Jesus really was the son of God.

Nathanael answered and said unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.

Jesus answered and said unto him, because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believe us thou, thou shalt see greater things than these.

He told Nathanael, I saw you praying under the fig tree.

And we don't have those sort of instances today that Jesus says, oh, I saw where you were over here and what you were doing over there, even though no 1 else knew and no 1 else saw.

But what we have in our hands today in the Scriptures is prophecies and events that are fulfilling that help us to understand and establish our faith in the Word of God and the Scriptures alone.

Now look, this is all well and good, but you know, Satan, he's gone back and even tried to destroy prophecy.

And what I mean by this is he's gone back and he's tried to destroy how we interpret prophecy.

Satan, he's left no stone unturned, okay?

I mean, we've already studied about Bible translations and how there are so many translations out there and some of them, they say very different things and the differences between the translations are so vast and great.

We see that even some messages come out differently from Bible translations.

And Satan here, he's gone back and he's tried to destroy the Bible through and through.

In the French Revolution, during the Dark Ages as well, the burning of Bibles, killing off of those that spoke the truth and calling them heretics, Satan's left nothing unturned.

And even here, how we interpret prophecy.

And so what we want to look here and see this morning is how do we interpret prophecy?

There are 3 schools of thought, 3 schools of interpretation.

The first is futurism, the second is preterism, and the third is historicism.

And The Sabbath school does bring this up, okay?

And this is the reason why I decided to dive into this, because I thought it was very important for us to understand these 3 schools of thought.

Look, we as Protestants, and I say this in terms of Protestants, we as Protestants, this is not specific to Seventh-day Adventists, okay?

We as Protestants believe typically in that third 1, historicism.

But look, Before we look at these different schools of thought, what we have to understand is this.

Both futurism and preterism are 2 false alternatives of prophetic methods of interpretation that was developed by the Roman Catholic Church in order to counter the Reformation of the Dark Ages when people like Martin Luther began to preach up and against the Catholic Church and pointed out and said, everybody, that Catholic Church that you're seeing there, right there, it is the Antichrist.

So in order to get people to not believe what Martin Luther was saying, they went back and they developed methods of interpreting the Bible and saying, no, no, no, what Martin Luther is preaching is wrong.

And what I'm really saying here is Martin Luther, he believed in historicism.

So we're going to go through these 3 schools of thought and especially methods of interpretation and what is it all about.

Futurism was developed by Francisco Riberia, however you want to pronounce his name.

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The Bible and Prophecy- Futurism, Preterism and Historicism

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