Isaac Newton on Understanding Prophecy

Most people know Isaac Newton as one of the great scientific minds of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. He was also an astute theologian. I included an extensive quote from his writings on Revelation in the Foreword to my book, Right  at The Door. Newton believed that prophecy would not be understood “until the time of the end.”  He became frustrated with the wild predictions and assertions in his day, prompting him to offer some wise advice about interpreting Revelation.   

“Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy {i.e., Revelation}, that it should not be understood before the last age of the world… The folly of interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt. The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament [i.e., Daniel], not to gratify men’s curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event. [Then] His own providence, not the interpreter’s, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence… [and] will at once both turn men’s eyes upon considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them.”¹

Interpreters of prophecy throughout the church age have rashly conjectured and prognosticated what they thought the prophecies to mean. But God designed the prophecies to remain somewhat mysterious and undecipherable until the end of the age when they would become obvious. He did this by using apocalyptic visions, foretelling modern nations, events, and technology in terms that Daniel and John could see and describe pictorially. But even they couldn’t understand most of the visions, themselves.

The unfortunate result of such rash speculating is that the interpretations, which are guesswork, become accepted and enshrined as “gospel truth”. From the early church fathers on through the ages it was believed that the beast of Revelation 13 was describing the antichrist. And that belief has stuck around for nearly 2000 years, and it is still believed by most Christians. Around 1830 another interpretative theory was hatched. Someone discovered that the last week of the seventy weeks of Daniel’s great Messianic prophecy was intended to be detached from the first 69 weeks and placed at the end of the church age. This theory (might I call it a hoax) hatched several corollaries, misinterpreting other prophecies. The midpoint of the seventieth week was audaciously assigned to the Antichrist, not the Messiah. The temple must be rebuilt so that Antichrist could desecrate it during the Tribulation. The second coming of Jesus Christ was split into two events to accommodate the rapture prior to the Great Tribulation. Now tell me, where in the world, in all of Revelation or Matthew 24, do we see the second coming split into two events? That should be a really, really big deal, but it is not there. But we all believe the hoax. History will be prove it otherwise, I am quite certain. And one more corollary: the seven trumpet warnings were placed in the timeframe of the seven-year Great Tribulation, I suppose so that Christians could avoid God’s judgment. But that theory is already blown away by history revealing the true interpretation of those events.

And there you have it. That is my evaluation of the fine art of speculative interpretation of God’s prophecy. It’s so very, very unfortunate that most Christians are led to believe the false teachings as though they were “gospel truth”.

¹  Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (London: Murray, 1733) 305-306.