August 15, 2017 @ 8:00 AM
Henry Grattan Guinness, who was known as the Irish "Spurgeon," acutely asserted that history was the interpreter of prophecy. According to him, "the sufferings and glories of our Lord, foretold in the Old Testament, remained [incomprehensible] until their meaning was revealed by the [historical] events of [the New Testament]." Since "prophecy is history written in advance," Guinness argued that "history...takes the place of prophecy" as "the foretold [becomes] fulfilled."
As the biblically foretold end of time begins to unfold before our very eyes today, many evangelicals are shutting their eyes to how current events correspond to biblical prophecy. They refuse to acknowledge what history is unveiling because they insist upon clinging to their preconceived ideas about Christ's Second Coming. Preferring what they've always thought and been taught to the way prophecy is actually playing out right under our noses, many contemporary Christians insist upon clinging to an increasingly untenable end-time scenario rather than conforming their beliefs to the interpretation of biblical timelines by today's headlines.
Unfortunately, many evangelicals today are making the same mistake that blinded God's people in the first century to the signs of Christ's first coming. I guess you could say that we not only doom ourselves to repeat history by failing to learn from it, but we also blind ourselves to the signs of Christ's Second Coming by failing to learn from it.