Blog Series Intention Recap
Why Prophecy Matters: Promise, Fulfillment, Hope
Bible prophecy often gets treated like a puzzle for decoding the news. This four-week Theology Thursday series steps back to ask why prophecy matters at all. We'll look at what prophecy is, how Psalm 22 pointed to the cross centuries ahead of time, what Christians mean by prophecy today, and how to read the promises God hasn't fulfilled yet.
Along the way, we'll keep seeing that the God who spoke through the prophets keeps His word, and that He kept it most clearly in Yeshua (Jesus).
Because God has faithfully fulfilled His Word in the past, we can trust what He has promised about the future.
This page is a post in the series “Why Prophecy Matters: Promise. Fulfillment. Hope.” Click here to see the rest of the posts.
Let’s jump into Week #4:
"What About Prophecies That Haven't Happened Yet?"...
Some of the Bible's promises are already history. Micah said the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, and He did. Zechariah said Israel's King would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, and He did. Psalm 22 described the mocking crowd and the soldiers casting lots for a dying man's clothing a thousand years before Calvary.
Other promises are still waiting. Yeshua said He would come back. The prophets said God would restore Israel. Revelation describes the dead raised, the world judged, and a new heaven and a new earth.
What do we do with those? This is the question the rest of this series has been building toward.
Why it Matters:
The same plain, normal reading that recognizes fulfilled prophecy should guide how we read prophecy still awaiting fulfillment.
Romans 11 shows that God's promises to Israel still stand, and that His faithfulness to Israel tells us something about God Himself.
Scripture promises that the Messiah will return, Israel has a future, God's kingdom will come, the dead will be raised and judged, and creation will be made new.
Yeshua told His disciples that the timing belongs to the Father. Our job is to trust the promises without speculating about the calendar.
Prophecy fuels hope, not speculation, and that hope shows up in faithful living now.
Go Deeper:
Christians handle unfulfilled prophecy in two unhelpful ways. Some treat it as a code to crack, matching verses to headlines and guessing at dates. Others quietly set it aside, as if the promises about the future were too uncertain, too symbolic, or too controversial to take seriously.
Both approaches miss the point of the prophecies we have already seen fulfilled. If God kept His word about Bethlehem, the donkey, and the cross, then His record gives us a reason to read His remaining promises with the same confidence and the same care.
Read the Future the Way We Read the Past
Many of the Bible's clearest fulfilled prophecies were fulfilled in a normal, recognizable sense. Bethlehem meant the town of Bethlehem. "Mounted on a donkey" meant an actual donkey. "They divide my garments among them" happened with real soldiers and real clothing. Prophetic books use poetry, symbols, and vivid imagery, and careful readers notice that. But behind the images were real places, real people, and real events.
Bible teachers call this the grammatical-historical method: reading a passage according to the ordinary meaning of its words, in its own historical setting, while recognizing figures of speech for what they are. It's how most of us read the fulfilled prophecies without thinking twice.
Here is the question that matters for this week. If that's how God fulfilled so many of His promises in the past, why would we switch to a different method for the promises still ahead? When God promises something to Israel, the plain reading is that He means Israel. When He promises that the Messiah will return to the earth, the plain reading is that He will. Consistency means beginning with the same grammatical-historical approach for future prophecy that we use when reading the rest of Scripture.
This is where the dispensational approach this blog takes comes from. At its core, it's a commitment to read God's unfulfilled promises with the same normal sense we use to recognize the fulfilled ones.
"Has God Rejected His People?"
The clearest test case is Israel. By the time Paul wrote Romans, most of the Jewish people had not accepted Yeshua as Messiah, while Gentiles were coming to faith in large numbers. It would have been easy to conclude that God was finished with Israel and had moved His promises somewhere else.
Paul raises that question directly: "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!" (Romans 11:1, ESV). Then, near the end of the chapter, he explains:
"Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, 'The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob'; 'and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.'" (Romans 11:25–27, ESV)
Paul says Israel's hardening is partial, since there has always been a believing Jewish remnant, and he says it is temporary, lasting "until." He looks ahead to a day when "all Israel will be saved," and he grounds that hope in the prophets' own words.
Then he says why:
"As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:28–29, ESV)
That last sentence is the heart of it. God's gifts and calling can't be taken back. The promises He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still stand, because God made them.
What Israel Teaches Us About God
Romans 11 also tells us about the kind of God we trust.
Paul wrote Romans 11 to Gentile believers, and he warned them not to become proud (Romans 11:18–21). If God could set aside His promises to Israel because of Israel's unbelief, what would that say about His promises to us? Every believer depends on God's faithfulness rather than his or her own. Israel's promises are not our promises, but the God who made them is our God. His faithfulness to Israel gives us reason to trust His faithfulness everywhere else.
The prophets saw it the same way. Through Jeremiah, God tied Israel's future to the reliability of creation itself:
"'If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.'" (Jeremiah 31:36, ESV)
The sun still rises. The moon still keeps its schedule. God's faithfulness to His promises concerning Israel demonstrates something about God, not merely about Israel.
The Promises Still Ahead
Israel's future includes many promises still waiting to be fulfilled. Scripture tells us plainly where history is going, and the closing chapters of Revelation gather many of those promises together.
The Messiah will return. When Yeshua ascended, the angels told the disciples, "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11, ESV). Revelation 19 shows Him coming in power:
"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war." (Revelation 19:11, ESV)
His name in that verse fits this whole series. The One who returns is called Faithful and True.
Israel has a future in God's program. Paul says "all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26, ESV). The prophets describe a restored nation, and even the New Jerusalem has "the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel" written on its gates (Revelation 21:12, ESV), alongside the names of the twelve apostles on its foundations (Revelation 21:14).
God's kingdom will come. Revelation 20 describes the Messiah reigning, with His people sharing in that reign "for a thousand years" (Revelation 20:4, ESV). The prayer Yeshua taught, "Your kingdom come," will be answered.
Resurrection and judgment are coming. John saw "the dead, great and small, standing before the throne" (Revelation 20:12, ESV). Every life will be answered for, and a righteous Judge will deal with every wrong.
Creation will be restored. Then John saw "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1, ESV), and he heard this:
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'" (Revelation 21:3–4, ESV)
And then the One on the throne adds a sentence that could summarize the whole series: "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true" (Revelation 21:5, ESV).
Hope, Not Speculation
If God's promises are this certain, why not try to work out exactly when they'll happen?
The disciples asked that very question. Just before His ascension, they asked Yeshua, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6, ESV). Notice what Yeshua did not do: He did not correct their expectation that the kingdom would be restored to Israel. Instead, He told them that the timing wasn't theirs to know: "It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority" (Acts 1:7, ESV). Then He gave them a job to do, to be His witnesses to the end of the earth.
That's still the right posture. Unfulfilled prophecy is given to make us confident about what God will do, not to give us a calendar. Every generation that has tried to set dates has been wrong, and the damage to people's faith has been real. The promises are certain. The timing belongs to the Father.
Prophecy fuels hope, not speculation.
How Does This Help Me Understand, “Why Prophecy Matters?
So what should we do when we come to a prophecy that hasn't been fulfilled yet?
We read it the way God's fulfilled prophecies teach us to read: carefully, in context, and according to its normal meaning. We take God at His word about Israel, because Romans 11 tells us His gifts and calling are irrevocable. We hold firmly to what He has promised about the Messiah's return, His kingdom, the resurrection, judgment, and the renewal of creation. And we leave the timing with the Father.
That's the big idea of this series, carried all the way forward: Because God has faithfully fulfilled His Word in the past, we can trust what He has promised about the future. Bethlehem, the donkey, and the cross are already part of the record.
Living Toward What God Has Promised
Paul shows us how this hope is supposed to shape daily life:
"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works." (Titus 2:11–14, ESV)
Notice that waiting and godly living go together. The hope of what's coming trains us for how we live now.
Read the promises with confidence. When you come to a prophecy that hasn't happened yet, start from the assumption that God means what He says. The God who kept His word in Bethlehem will keep it again.
Stay away from date-setting. Enjoy studying prophecy, but hold every timeline loosely. If a teacher claims more certainty about the calendar than Scripture gives us, be careful.
Let God's faithfulness to Israel strengthen your faith. When you see that God has not abandoned His promises to Israel, let it remind you that He won't abandon His promises to you either.
Live like the promises are true. The hope of Messiah's return should make us more faithful, more holy, and more eager to tell others about Him. Waiting for Him is never passive.
