DISCERNING THE TIMES
The way we see it, there is much misunderstanding by both Jews and Christians about time. For lack of a Godly view of time in its various labels (e.g. hours, days, weeks, ages, etc.), Jews still believe that the Messiah is yet to come. Christians have a similar problem in their belief that the Messiah came once when Jesus was born but will return again in some future dispensation. Both religions err in applying literal interpretations of time to their understanding of God’s existence and how he works in time and space.

What makes time so difficult to understand is that it is among an almost infinite list of measurable, observable things that God uses in the Bible to represent invisible spiritual truths discussed in the FIRST THE NATURAL, THEN THE SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE.

Understanding time as God does is difficult for mortal humans because we constantly deal with time in our physical, natural lives. Even though we are told clearly that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day, and that a thousand years are like yesterday in God’s sight, we still have trouble avoiding the tendency to think about time in literal, everyday terms by which we manage our natural lives. If we do not make that adjustment, however, literal interpretations of time will greatly hinder our understanding of spiritual truth. Here are the basic principles we need to apply:

Nowhere is the necessity for accurate interpretation of time more critical than with respect to prophecies which always anticipate future events in terms of hours, days, weeks and the age to come. Many have tried to make sense of these prophecies by setting exact dates for prophetic Biblical events, but they have all failed for lack of understanding of how God uses time to represent spiritual events. They wrongly look for signs of spiritual times in natural phenomena and in terms of chronological time.

STUDY TIP: See Signs, Wonders and Miracles for more about what God says about looking for signs.

Confusion about God’s use of time makes it easy for most people to ignore prophecies about past or future events. In our human way of thinking, either the prophecy has already been fulfilled for others, or is yet to come at a time that we are pretty sure, and hopeful, will not directly affect us anyway. This perspective makes it very easy to minimize the application of any prophecy to our own lives today.

The problem with this perspective is that it ignores what God has said about all scripture being able to lead us to salvation and train us for righteousness. If we trust that this is true, we should want to adjust our understandings of time and prophecy to God’s spiritual understanding so that we can apply references to to our lives today. Lack of willingness to change our lives today means that we are content with our religion. This means that our pride excludes the possibility that there is any reason for us to change in any way.  This is not the heart of a disciple who wants to learn so that he/she can be transformed into God’s likeness.

People who do not make this adjustment will remain Old/First Covenant religionists who are created in the likeness of the religious leaders they follow. People who do make this adjustment have learned to interpret the Bible spiritually because they are New Covenant disciples. Religionists will be content with their human understanding of time, but New Covenant disciples who are eager to be trained in righteousness, will want to learn how to interpret references to time spiritually.