A visitor wrote to ask, “When do you predict that Jesus will return? On what date?” The only answer I can give to that question is, “Soon,” and that is just my personal opinion and hope, not anything based on interpreting a specific Scripture that reveals a specific time period.
As exciting as it would be for some of our readers and the media, we don’t do date setting or predict the future here. We don’t believe that the exact fulfillment of a predictive prophecy in the Bible can be understood, other than in a general way (e.g., “There will be wars and rumors of wars,” or “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven”), before it is fulfilled in real time.
As we understand it, the purpose of predictive prophecy in the Bible is to testify to the authority of the Bible and to demonstrate that the God of the Bible is in control of the affairs of mankind, not to entertain the masses with specific predictions of future events. Accordingly, we do our research with that principle in mind. We look for instances in which the Bible’s predictive prophecy has been precisely fulfilled in history, and then we report on the fulfillment. We are reporters, not prophets.
That’s the basis for the exposition in Daniel Unsealed, our popular commentary on the chrono-specific prophecies found in chapter 4 and chapters 7-12 of the Book of Daniel, as well as the exposition in our other books (all available in the bookstore).
We wholeheartedly believe that God will reward those who diligently seek to know him through the Bible (Heb. 11:6), which is the way God spells out how we are to relate to him, and that the reward is knowledge of himself.
We also believe that the promised reward includes understanding the prophecies in the Bible that testify about God’s providential care. However, we also know that God has his own timetable, and it is not ours to know ahead of time. Thus, we read and study the Bible, meditate on its words, ask God to give us insight, and then we wait for his answers.
When we have resting peace that God has given us understanding of previously revealed Scripture (the sixty-six books of the Bible) to share, we share it. For those with itching ears and lusting eyes who seek after signs, such as precise dates and predictions of future events, ours is not a very satisfying approach. But we believe our way of doing Bible research and interpreting predictive prophecy is the way it should be done.