Passover: Do You Take the Prophecies Seriously?
When Jesus came on earth, He didn’t fulfill some, but He fulfilled all prophecies in the Old Testament about the (first) coming of the Messiah. He provided irrefutable evidence that He was God’s anointed one. Now that we know, shouldn’t we ask ourselves what to do with the prophecies regarding the Second Coming? The scholars at that time didn’t connect the prophecies with the fulfillment by Jesus. Even though they had a lot of knowledge, their minds remained closed to this Truth. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the crowd that saw Him coming did sing the Hallel Psalms, the ‘Psalms of Praise’ about the Suffering Messiah. These were prophetic psalms about the Messiah, but did the people in the crowd actually make that connection? Many saw Him as a King, but they were expecting that He would deliver them from their foreign rulers. Therefore, they were disappointed when He was crucified a few days later. How about us? Today? How do we think about prophecies regarding the return of the Messiah? The foresights in the Old Testament also concern the Second Coming and the time of the physical and spiritual restoration of Israel. For some Christians however, that has become ambiguous and those prophecies are not taken seriously anymore. ‘They may only have a spiritual meaning,’ some might think. Others assume that most of the prophecies have already been fulfilled in the first century. As a result, there is hardly any concrete expectation.
About two thousand years ago Jesus arrived in Jerusalem and the prophecies about Him were hardly recognized. Jesus said to the disciples: you are slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken (Luke 24:25).
In our time we see many prophecies relating to the physical and spiritual restoration of Israel literally fulfilled. According to biblical prophecies, this is the sign that the return of Messiah is drawing near. We show in the book Wake Up! that there are still three Fall Feasts on God’s Calendar awaiting fulfillment. That fulfillment through Christ will be just as detailed as when He fulfilled the four Spring Feasts during His first coming; with precision on both day and hour. Let us pray that Biblical prophecy will awaken us and help us prepare for the Bridegroom as He is coming for His Bride. By the way, did you know that more than 25% of the Bible is about prophecy?
