50 Failed Predictions? – #7
31. The remnant of Israel still practices iniquity (Zeph. 3: 13).
Drew was right. Some of these really are weak. Zephaniah denounces Judah for her indulgence in idolatry and luxury while she presumed the Lord would protect her. He predicts a new Jerusalem without these sins. All fulfilled. Ripping the prophets out of context and applying them to modern “Jews” is not only infantile exegesis, it removes most of the Bible from the real world so it can apply to some future Jews. God doesn’t work that way. He warns, waits a generation, then judges. Always. Same thing goes for the Revelation.
32. The man of sin wasn’t destroyed by the “brightness of Christ’s parousia” the day the temple caught fire. See 2 Thess. 2:8.
Good point. This is where most preterists go wrong. The man of sin was a wannabe Solomon. When the Temple and Jerusalem were gone, so was his dominion—and most likely his life. See The Man of Sin.
33. Desolations were not poured upon the desolator of the temple (Dan. 9: 27).
Only God’s priests can desolate the Temple. There are two kinds of priestly sins: desecrations in the Temple, and abominations in the Land. (Unfortunately, English translations often use the word abominations for both these Hebrew words.) Those who made the Temple desolate were God’s priests. The Gentile “flood” (Dan. 9:26)—just as it was in Noah’s time—was the punishment, not the crime. See Jordan’s The Abomination of Desolation.
34. All nations still don’t keep the feast of tabernacles (Zech. 14: 16).
The last part of Zechariah is a 7×7 cycle. Each cycle follows the heptamerous Feasts pattern (Lev. 23) and then the entire cycle also does. This verse is the “Tabernacles” of cycle 6. It predicts the actual fulfilment of the Feast of Tabernacles, a celebration of a single Jew-Gentile body, the “new man” Christ founded, the apostles constructed, and which was consummated at the end of the Temple worship in AD70. See Totus Christus for more detail.
35. Nations who refuse to keep the feast of tabernacles are left unpunished (Zech. 14: 17-18).
This begins the final cycle. It starts with a new Sabbath, then works through the firmament (rain)/Passover, hence the references to “Egypt.” Those nations who do not obey the gospel fall under its curses. This describes the age in which we live. This accounts for the blessings of western (particularly Protestant) civilisation, and the possible loss of these blessings we are witnessing today. Christ reigns from heaven and smashes the nations like pottery.
50FPDZ
