Wallace G. Smith

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

The Inevitable End

The crazy old guys in the cartoons that used to wear signs saying “The End Is Nigh” were right—the end of the world IS coming upon us! In fact, the Bible describes the end of the world IN DETAIL. Hollywood always gets it wrong—but we’re going to get it RIGHT. Join us RIGHT NOW on Tomorrow’s World as we reveal HOW THE WORLD WILL END!

Seven Signs of the End Times

The end of the world has occupied the fancies and fantasies of human beings for ages. Movies sometimes paint pictures of asteroids striking our world and wiping out all of humanity like the dinosaurs of old, or else send earth off in a blaze of glory as the militaries of the world duke it out with aliens from afar—or zombies, or intelligent machines, or whatever else is in vogue at the time. In early 2022, director Roland Emmerich, always looking for a new way to destroy the world, smashed the moon into us. Even our science programming has gotten into the act, with quasi-documentaries detailing how our vulnerable planet could be wiped out by climate change, disrupted by a passing black hole, or eventually eaten by our swollen sun.

But none of these things are going to happen—at least not exactly.

Let me be clear: When we speak of “the end of the world,” we’re not talking about the end of the planet. God says through King Solomon in Ecclesiastes,

One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever (Ecclesiastes 1:4).

No, God has plans for this planet, as the Bible reveals.

Rather, we are speaking of the END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT. The end of our world’s civilizations, societies, economies, institutions, and systems; the end of this age in which we now live, and the destruction of everything we consider familiar. THAT is what we mean by “the end of the world.”

And today, we will discuss seven ingredients to the end of the world—some of which are happening in the world right now before our very eyes.

The first element of the world’s end we’ll discuss would surprise most of our Hollywood and scientific doomsday planners, since it is something that rarely shows up on their radar. It isn’t an asteroid or a physical threat, at all. It is entirely SPIRITUAL.

The first ingredient of the end of the world is RAMPANT WORLDWIDE IMMORALITY AND GODLESSNESS.

Ultimately, any civilization stands or falls in connection to its relationship with its Creator. And the beginning of the end of the world lies in an utter abandonment of that relationship.

We read of the conditions that result from that rampant immorality and godlessness in the Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy. In 2 Timothy 3, starting in verse 1, we read:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power (2 Timothy 3:1–5).

In Matthew 24:12, Jesus Christ described this element of the world’s end, as well, saying, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”

This “lawlessness” is not just an abandoning of, say, traffic laws, or tax laws, but a pervasive spirit of casting aside the laws of God. And, frankly, we see that growing today, don’t we? The morality and guidelines of the Bible are increasingly cast aside as archaic and out-of-date—even as the world grows all the colder, crueler, and more loveless for it.

It is this moral and spiritual dimension of the end of the world that enables all the others. Yet, for all of our worries concerning the environment, or nuclear war, or health regulations, it is our devotion to God that goes neglected. And it is our lack of devotion to God that will initiate the end of the world.

Global Consequences for Moral Collapse

The next ingredient to the world’s end is UNPRECEDENTED PESTILENCE, FAMINE, AND NATURAL DISASTERS.

Of course, we live with these concerns in our lives today. Pestilence, or disease, has plagued mankind from its earliest days, and the nightmarish years of COVID-19—both the disease itself and our governments’ fumbling attempts to deal with it—will not be soon forgotten. Famine has long ravaged various populations of the earth, sometimes due to weather or soil conditions, but also due to human cruelty or incompetence—such as the forced starvation of Ukrainians by the Soviet government in the early 1930s that killed millions. And natural disasters are ever with us. The day I began working on this program, my wife and I were at a friend’s house when news alerts warned us of a potential tornado, causing us to quickly consider where we might take shelter.

But the diseases, famines, and natural disasters coming at the end of the world will be unlike anything humanity has ever seen. Jesus Christ predicted these events in His famous Olivet Prophecy, as we see in Matthew 24, beginning in verse 7:

For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows (Matthew 24:7–8).

We see His words reflected in the vision He gave His servant John in the book of Revelation. There, in chapter 6, John describes the third and fourth of the famous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—the rider on the black horse, with scales in his hand, picturing devastating famine, and the rider on the sickly, pale horse, whose name was Death, picturing unrelenting disease. Revelation 6:8 tells us that these Four Horsemen, together, have an almost unbelievable impact on humanity:

And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth (Revelation 6:8).

If the population of the earth is around 8 billion people by that time, then Christ inspired John to write that these forces would kill around TWO BILLION PEOPLE—one-fourth of mankind. We are talking about devastation on an unimaginable scale.

As the end of the world advances, we will see another ingredient added to the mix: THE COMPLETE REORDERING OF GLOBAL POWER.

For now, most would agree that the United States maintains a grip on its position as the most powerful nation in the world—though that grip is increasingly tenuous. Great Britain remains a relatively strong ally to the U.S., as does Canada. Europe struggles to remain united to fulfill its leaders’ visions of greatness, China strives to dominate its region and seize superpower status, as Russia pursues plans of its own. Meanwhile the Middle East remains a fractured collection of individual states, often sharing common enemies, but not always a common purpose.

Yet the end of the world will see all of these power relationships reorganized and reordered into something far different.

Daniel 11 speaks of a King of the North, which represents a powerful and united European entity—one we will come to again later—and a King of the South—a unified bloc of nations in the Middle East and North Africa. Verse 44 of Daniel 11 points us to a power bloc east of these, and the book of Revelation describes this eastern power as possessing an UNIMAGINABLY vast army of 200 MILLION men, as well as weapons of mass destruction.

The conflict between these end-time powerhouses is said in Revelation 9:18 to be responsible for killing ONE-THIRD of mankind—a toll no war has ever taken throughout the annals of time.

What you DON’T see among the great powers at the end of the world are the United States or Great Britain and the nations that descended from her. Those nations will already have fallen—their cities devastated, and the survivors scattered among the nations as captives and servants, as described in Ezekiel 5:12:

One-third of you shall die of the pestilence, and be consumed with famine in your midst; and one-third shall fall by the sword all around you; and I will scatter another third to all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them (Ezekiel 5:12).

My colleague Gerald Weston has covered this aspect of Ezekiel’s prophecy thoroughly in our program “Ezekiel’s Message Unlocked.” I encourage you to visit our website or YouTube channel, where you can view that powerful message and come to understand the fate of the United States, Great Britain, and English-speaking peoples of the world.

Yet, in all these rearranged political powers and alliances of the world, the end of the world will feature one particular power that will tower over all the others.

The Rise of a New Superpower, and World War on a Massive Scale

That is the fourth element we’ll examine today: WORLDWIDE DOMINANCE BY A NEW SUPERPOWER.

This superpower is the entity known in prophecy as the BEAST OF REVELATION. This political, economic, and military powerhouse will be headed by a singular individual, the Beast, and it will stand out amongst all others in that day in an astonishing way. We read a description of this man and the power he wields in Revelation 13. After describing the strange creature he saw in vision—providing details that help to IDENTIFY this entity in world history, past and future—John writes:

… all the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” (Revelation 13:3–4).

Now note: The whole world follows this Beast, and the military capacity of this entity is like none the world has ever seen.

You’ll notice that Revelation 13 said that the Beast was worshiped. This worship is enabled and enhanced by the next ingredient of our “end of the world” mixture: THE RISE OF AN ULTRA-POWERFUL FALSE CHRISTIANITY.

Later, in Revelation 13:11, we see in John’s vision a SECOND beast arising, different than the first beast:

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men (Revelation 13:11–13).

This second beast looks like a lamb—that is, he APPEARS to be Christ-like. Yet John says it “spoke like a dragon”—that is, he teaches the subtle twisted truths of Satan the Devil. This False Prophet is the infamous Antichrist, foretold in numerous passages of the Bible. He will come working miracles and wonders and the false Christianity that he preaches will dominate world religions and provide support for the European Beast of Revelation. Together, these two will form an unholy alliance of Church and State and will persecute the small flock of true saints of Jesus Christ.

Suffice it to say for now that the actions they stir upon the earth lead humanity to the brink of utter destruction—to the potential destruction of ALL LIFE ON EARTH. As Jesus Christ Himself described this time,

And unless those days were shortened, NO FLESH would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened (Matthew 24:22).

Yet, those days WILL be shortened! They will be interrupted by the next element of the end of this world: DIVINE INTERVENTION DURING THE DAY OF THE LORD.

The sins of mankind will have reached their fullness, and God will declare that He has had ENOUGH! The announcement of the Almighty’s intervention in world affairs is described in Revelation 6, beginning in verse 12:

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:12–17).

This begins a year-long period of divine intervention known as the Day of the Lord—when the powers of this earth learn where REAL power truly lies!

God’s Supreme Intervention and the Beginning of a New World

We’ve been through cataclysmic moral degradation; experienced unprecedented natural disasters; and witnessed the rearrangement of world powers. We’ve seen that one power will rise above the rest, and that this power, in conjunction with a false global religion claiming the name of Jesus Christ, will seek to destroy those who bear His name truly as they seek to worship Him in spirit AND in truth. And we’ve seen the Creator of All Things step into history to put the powers of the world in their place and to send His Son Jesus Christ back to earth to set things right.

And amidst the rubble of all that had gone before, we finally come to the last ingredient in the end of the world as we know it: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A BRAND NEW WORLD to take its place!

Once Jesus Christ and His heavenly armies have rid the world of the Beast power, the Antichrist, and all the worldly forces who foolishly sought to oppose Him, He will send His angel to lock Satan the Devil away from mankind for 1,000 years.

Then, Revelation 20:4 tells us that, in his vision, the Apostle John saw

thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years (Revelation 20:4).

Yes, the resurrected martyrs, and ALL who have lived and died in Jesus Christ before His return will be resurrected, joining those who are alive at His return to rule by His side in power, glory, and majesty.

This period of 1,000 years will be a time when the Kingdom of God will reign on earth, beginning at Jerusalem and spreading over the entire earth, utterly replacing every element of the old world with the joys and glories of the new! The saints, together with Jesus Christ, will work to make this world what it SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALL ALONG: A place of beauty, peace, order, and love. The ultimate cause of that new world is described in Isaiah 11:9:

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

As the true knowledge of the way of God grows to cover the world over 1,000 years, the world as we have known it so far will truly have come to an end. And a brand NEW world will have begun—a world with joys and wonders that will last not just for a time, but for eternity.

Thank you for watching our program today. All of us here at Tomorrow’s World—the folks in the control room, the handsome guys here behind the camera—all work hard to help you understand your world through the pages of your Bible, and we appreciate your attention. If you’re interested in today’s offer, there should be a link there in the description below for you to be able to click on, and if you did enjoy the program please do click on subscribe. And, if you’d like to be notified, click on YouTube’s bell. Thank you very much!

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

God Has a Purpose for Prophecy

Millions of people all over the world claim the Holy Bible as their sacred guide to understanding themselves and the world around them. Yet, most of them ignore one-fourth to one-third of that Bible: The portion made up by prophecy.

You might wonder why God placed prophecy in the Bible in the first place. Can’t we just ignore all of those weird chapters in Revelation, Isaiah, Daniel, and other books of the Bible and just focus on the parts we find easy to understand?

In short, no. If we want to be people who follow Jesus Christ in word and deed, and if we want to benefit from the entirety of God’s word and the full store of instruction and blessing that He has prepared for us, then Bible prophecy needs to be on the menu of our spiritual diet.

Join me right now on Tomorrow’s World, where together we will answer the question “Why Does God Use Prophecy?”

How Much of the Bible IS Prophecy?

Greetings, and welcome to Tomorrow’s World where we help you make sense of the world through the pages of the Bible. I’m glad you’re here.

Today, we’re going to answer the question, “Why Does God Use Prophecy?”

And let me be clear here at the beginning: When I say, “God uses prophecy,” I’m not talking about the modern-day proclamations of many who go around claiming themselves to be Christians and calling themselves “Prophet This” or “Prophetess That.” I guarantee you, they are no prophet in the sense of the biblical title. Now I know that may upset some, but here at Tomorrow’s World, we’re not here to make people happy—we’re here to clear away the fog of confusion and shine the light of God’s word in a world darkened by the Devil’s deceptions.

No, I’m here to talk about Bible prophecy. Many preachers and teachers ignore it, and you don’t often hear Bible prophecy proclaimed and explained from the giant stages of the megachurches of the world—at least not in any meaningful or significant sense. And many study guides claim to “explain” prophecy, but they do more to “explain it away,” and minimize the vital impact it should have on our everyday life today.

And we need to be honest with ourselves: How many of us make reading and studying Bible prophecy a significant part of our spiritual diet? After all, so many other parts of the Bible seem so much more straightforward and beneficial. Uplifting even. But Revelation—with its weird images of multi-headed monsters, blood-drinking harlots, and other strange sights and descriptions—seems almost out-of-place and unnecessary for living the “Christian” life, doesn’t it? And when you wander from the stories of the lion’s den and the fiery furnace, the book of Daniel just seems to get weird, with visions of strange statues, monstrous beasts, and vague references to Kings of the North and South.

Yet, think about it. It’s estimated that one-fourth to one-third of the Bible is prophecy. So pick up a Bible and estimate how much one-fourth of that Bible would be. In this Bible, here, if you look at the first fourth, it would be about this much. Imagine ignoring or cutting out and throwing away that much of your Bible—in this case, you would be cutting out Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and 1 Samuel—possibly some of 2 Samuel, too. Or take the final fourth. Now, you’re cutting out the last four books of the Old Testament and the entire New Testament. Can you imagine cutting out all of that and throwing it away or burning it? Yet, if you never read and study Bible prophecy—at least one-fourth of your Bible—that is essentially what you’re doing! That 25% may as well not be in there.

In 2021, I wrote an article for the Tomorrow’s World magazine detailing how many elements of today’s cancel culture are working overtime to cancel the Bible, one idea at a time, removing the words of Scripture from our lives in whatever ways they can.

But my friends, if you and I don’t even bother to read one-fourth to one-third of our Bible’s pages, we’ve effectively canceled those parts of the Bible ourselves.

And, frankly, we violate the teachings of Jesus Christ and are robbing ourselves of the benefit of His instruction when we avoid prophecy.

Look for yourself in Matthew 4 and verse 4. When fighting against Satan’s temptations at the beginning of His ministry, the Savior shot back at the devil,

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD.”

My friends, “every word” means “every word,” not “three out of every four” or “two out of three.” “Every word” includes the recorded words of biblical prophecy.

When you think about it, Christians should be the most motivated people in the world to read and study biblical prophecy. Revelation 19:10 says that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” and the very beginning of the book of Revelation, the very first verse of the very first chapter, tells us that Jesus Christ revealed the contents of that book under God’s instructions, “to show His servants—things which must shortly take place.”

And just two verses later, God gives us a promise:

“Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.”

My friends, prophecy is important, and God places it in the Bible for good reason. In fact, in the remainder of today’s program, we are going to detail four reasons God uses prophecy in the Bible.

A Call to Repentance—and a Warning

The first of those reasons is this:

Bible prophecy warns people and nations to repent so they can avoid punishment.

Most of you viewing today’s program at home or on your computer or smartphone probably look at today’s world and feel like I do: Something is very wrong. At the most fundamental of levels, the very fabric of civilization is tearing asunder. The Bible explains in clear detail why we are coming apart: sin. The world is increasingly turning its back on everything God commands, and we are suffering the consequences—consequences that will climax in the most horrific time the world has ever known or will ever know: The Great Tribulation, followed by the Day of the Lord. We read of the times prophesied to come in Matthew chapter 24, beginning in verse 21:

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.”

Those times are coming due to man’s accumulating sin against his Creator. Frankly, biblical prophecy tells us that suffering will begin with divine punishment on the United States and Great Britain and those nations around the globe that have descended in one way or another from the British people.

Yet, God the Father and Jesus Christ do make a way of escape available. In Ezekiel 33 and verse 11, God tells us that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He would rather that the wicked see what is coming and repent. Change to avoid it and accept the opportunity for escape. Turn earlier in the book of Ezekiel to read His passionate words to Israel—words that I assure you are meant for nations and peoples today. We begin in verse 30;

“‘Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For WHY SHOULD YOU DIE, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,’ says the Lord GOD. ‘THEREFORE TURN AND LIVE.’”

In the free DVD we’ll send you today, “The Power of Prophecy,” we will explain that one of the keys to understanding prophecy is to be able to identify modern nations in the prophetic words of the Bible, and the identity of those nations is not always clear. When you do understand that, then you understand this warning is for many nations of the world—and you understand why we here on Tomorrow’s World are unrelenting in our constant admonition to the nations of the world to cease their sins, repent, and turn and dedicate themselves to Jesus Christ and His Father, lest all that is prophesied to take place come upon them.

Now, before we move to Reason #2, we have to be honest with ourselves about Reason #1, about human nature, and about our nations and their leadership. Personally, I’m an American, and let me be frank with you about my country: With every day that goes by, I see nothing in my nation’s government, its politics, its culture, its educational systems, or my fellow citizens at large that gives me any real hope that the United States, as a whole, will repent, turn, and embrace Jesus Christ and the commandments of God.

I’m not trying to be a pessimist, and believe me, I—as well as all of us here at Tomorrow’s World, the members of the Living Church of God, and the many around the world who voluntarily support us—all of us are throwing all we have into reaching the whole world with God’s warning and Christ’s Gospel of the coming Kingdom. And we pray like Paul did, that God might use us to save from the times to come as many as He will.

But we also know that some will go into punishment and captivity. And when they do, we see the second purpose of prophecy come into play:

Bible prophecy encourages those in captivity to repent.

We see this hope of God concerning prophecy in passages such as Deuteronomy in chapter 4. There, God speaks to Israel in words that today’s free DVD explains have great meaning for many of today’s nations as well. He tells them of the punishment they will receive for their national sins and how they will respond then in a way they did not before. Let’s look, beginning in verse 27:

“And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice (for the LORD your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.”

God’s words and prophecies will serve as a witness to those being punished in captivity, who will remember and begin to seek God in a way they did not before their punishment.

For those of our viewers today who will not turn to God and change their lives and who will find themselves under the punishment of the Great Tribulation, it is our prayer that you will remember these things and remember to seek God with all of your heart, with all of your strength, and with all of your soul. Cry out to Him when that time comes—with a sincere and willing heart—and He will hear you.

Ironically, the third reason God uses prophecy is ignored by most who claim the name of Christ today, even as it explains why His disciples, above all people of the earth, should care passionately about prophecy.

Prophecy and the Gospel Message

The third reason should matter most to all who claim the name of Jesus Christ, but sadly it matters to relatively few of them:

Bible prophecy announces the good news of the coming Kingdom of God.

Many think Jesus only came with a message about how all can be forgiven their sins by accepting Him as their Savior. But, my friends, that belief is an incomplete and shallow one that denies the rich, full message God sent His Son to bear to mankind concerning the coming Kingdom of God and God’s plan to transform this world and mankind for all eternity.

And focusing as it does on future events, that message of the Kingdom of God and the glorious return of Jesus Christ is inherently a prophetic message. In fact, many, many, many prophecies of both the Old and New Testaments point us to the beautiful times of restoration to come under the reign of Jesus Christ and His glorified saints—that is, under the Kingdom of God. For instance, Revelation 20 speaks of the 1,000-year removal of Satan the devil and proclaims that glorified, faithful Christians will reign alongside Jesus Christ during that time. Zechariah 14 explains how all the nations of the world will be required by God to assemble in Jerusalem each year for the Feast of Tabernacles. Isaiah 11 speaks of the transformed nature of the animal world, while Isaiah 35 tells of the transformed and beautified earth, and the healing of all who are blind, deaf, and unable to walk. Zechariah 8 tells of how both the elderly and small children will be safe to play in the streets.

Honestly, there is too much to encompass in one program—read the prophecies for yourself. There is a reason the Apostle Peter called the prophetic reign of Jesus Christ “the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21).

Of course, if you are a longtime viewer of Tomorrow’s World, you know that the prophesied Kingdom of God is a frequent topic of ours, as we are commissioned by Jesus Christ Himself to boldly preach that Kingdom to the world—without apology or compromise. And let there be no doubt: The Gospel message is a prophetic message, and ignoring the prophecies of the Bible is like cutting out vast portions of the message of Jesus Christ.

Finally, we come to the fourth reason God uses prophecy:

Bible prophecy demonstrates God’s total sovereignty and power.

We see this inspiring purpose reflected in the awesome words God inspired the prophet Isaiah to record for us in chapter 46 of his book. Read them there, beginning in verse 9:

“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,' calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.”

My friend and fellow presenter Richard Ames frequently emphasizes a powerful truth that our predecessor in this Work, Herbert W. Armstrong, described as the most important fact in the entire universe—a fact stated in three simple words: “God reigns supreme.”

And if you have noted Mr. Ames’ passion and intensity on this program over the years, you can know it is rooted in this vital truth. And God uses prophecy to help teach us that truth: Declaring the end of things from the beginning so that we may see and understand. Understand that He is faithful and can be trusted. Understand that all of human history represents simply the unfolding of His plan for all mankind—indeed, for all of reality.

Seeing God prophetically proclaim the outcome of affairs in the world before they have even taken place helps us to have confidence in the promises of God and provides an eternal perspective on the one who inhabits eternity. The Apostle Paul found such comfort in that perspective, as he illustrated at the beginning of his letter to Titus:

“Paul, a bondservant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledgment of the truth which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began…” (Titus 1:1–2).

Yes, when we read of the commands of God or the promises of God, we must always remember that He is Eternal and Almighty—the one who has the power to call those things which do not exist as though they did, as Paul says in Romans 4:17.

Prophecy teaches us that there is One who not only has the power to proclaim His will in the world, but the power to guarantee that what He proclaims will happen.

My friends, when we consider these four reasons God uses prophecy, we see that there is a purpose He intends to work in our lives through His written prophetic words.

Faith, Hope, and Love—And Prophecy!

God wants those who read His word to understand that He is a God who is acting in the world—and in their lives. As a God who loves us, He wants us to take His commands seriously, as the life and death matter they truly are. For those who refuse to respond to His warnings, He wants them to have the witness of His prophetic word in their punishment, so that they may remember, and respond to that punishment with repentance. He wants those who love His Son to commit themselves to spreading the message of His glorious reign to come and the prophesied wonders that Jesus Christ will bring at His return. And He wants us to see that He is a God who can be trusted with our lives. He wants us to see that, yes, He demands our absolute faith and obedience—but also that He is worthy of that absolute faith and obedience, because He truly does reign supreme.

His use of prophecy in His word helps to accomplish all these purposes. And now, it’s in your hands. Will you set a quarter or more of your Bible aside, to be neglected? Or will you allow God to work in you through what He reveals?

Thanks for watching! We make these videos to help you make sense of your world through the pages of your Bible. We hope you’ll take advantage of this offer. If you’d like today’s free offer of “The Power of Prophecy,” please click on the link below the description to get that free DVD. And if you’d like to see more of these videos, don’t forget to subscribe and if you want to be alerted, just click that bell. See you next time!