STAND FIRM: Spiritual Prepper Rewrite: Prophecy is the Word of God
Okay, I’ll do it. In my last article, I shared that I was thinking about rewriting my book, Spiritual Prepper, according to what I’ve learned from sharing its message over the last several years. I appreciate it because a few people actually reached out and said I should. So, here we go. We can make it a group project.
The short “introduction” in the book looked at the idea that there are prophecies that are overlooked in Scripture. These prophecies explain why our culture is the way it is and why the church struggles as it does. All of this is true and something we need to realize. We often say the answers to life are in Scripture, but we don’t often continue that discussion to the point of getting those answers.
Even when we do search for answers to our world and struggles, we often skip over prophecy. In the 10 years of Stand Firm Ministries, that has been one of the most shocking things I’ve encountered. I’ve been shocked at how much we neglect prophecy or treat Bible prophecy as a completely different concept than any other Bible passage. Unfortunately, it is often done by those who regularly study and teach. We do this to our own peril.
A reason (notice I didn’t say “the” reason) our churches are in the shape they are is that we avoid Bible prophecy. We know what was done for us through the incarnation of Jesus and on the cross. We know we should live for God, but we don’t know why. We leave out the motivator, which is the age to come. We leave out the warnings of what challenges we face. We leave out the blessed hope.
I know it appears I’m pointing fingers, but I'm comfortable doing that because I did the same thing for most of my Christian life and ministry. I treated the Gospels and Epistles as real Bible study. Then there was the crazy end-time stuff. I saw Bible prophecy as a circus and prophecy guys as clowns. I was wrong to do that.
I was actually fulfilling Scripture because in I Thess. 5:20, the Apostle Paul warns us not to despise prophecy or treat it with contempt. Many churches in America are guilty of that.
Why do we do that? The Apostle Paul encourages us to imitate him and teach the “whole counsel” of Scripture, including Bible prophecy. If we ignore Bible prophecy, we ignore a quarter to a third of the Bible. We’re also missing out on the blessing the writer of Revelation relays we will have for reading it.
Avoiding prophecy is going into the day without knowing the weather report. We can know what is going to happen and understand why. We don’t have to be surprised by the wind and storms.
Unfortunately, in our day and age when we hear the word “prophecy,” we instantly jump to conspiracy, controversial or hokey. That’s not how it was intended to be received. Instead, prophecy was meant to be a treasure — we’re hearing directly from God about what will happen. We have the inside scoop. Because of Bible prophecy, we can navigate this life safely because we know what lies ahead and why things are the way they are now.
What if we heard Bible prophecy with that attitude? What if, instead of thinking Bible prophecy was confusing, we took it at its word? What if we went with what it said rather than seeking a secret meaning? We have something precious in Bible prophecy.
With the value of Bible prophecy in mind, how should the claim that there are overlooked prophecies hit us? I believe it should grab our attention and our hearts. Not only do we have this incredible gift in Scripture where God tells us what will happen and why, but there have been some of those treasured passages we have glossed over, maybe even missed. That should be received as if we found an ancient treasure map or were given the winning lottery numbers ahead of time. We should desperately want to lean in and see what has been missed and what will happen. That would be insider information to help us understand this world and walk closer to God.
— Jake is a state missionary and would love to share about the work in Northwest Arkansas and encourage your church to stand firm. (standfirmministries.com)
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Jake McCandless
Jake McCandless authors a weekly column titled, Stand Firm and Live Epic, through which he seeks to encourage the modern church to not just survive, but thrive in current times. He also addresses many end-times topics.
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