Initially I sat down to write about the prophetic demonstration of the how and why we should know that we need to keep shabbat, but I got stuck. Stuck because as I’m writing the outline that’s intent is essentially to prove prophecy is important…
So let me just start there. Everything that exited the mouth of God is important for you to live (salvation), that’s what the Hebrew in the Bible says.
Deut 8:3
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.
2 Tim 3:15-17
and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Everything is important. That’s straight and simple Torah. And here’s a demonstration of how prophecy is instructed (aka commanded) from Genesis to Revelation.
Gen 26:5
“because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept [SHAMAR] My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”
It’s the same word here:
Gen 2:15 -Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it [SHAMAR].
שָׁמַר – Shamar – to guard – H8104 (link to definition)
And Yeshua (Jesus) says the same thing (in a book of prophecy):
Rev 3:3
“Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch (check the Greek), I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.
Rev 1:3
Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep (Greek definition guard) those things which are written in it; for the time is near.
Ok so maybe I’ve convinced you you need to be aware, careful, guarding, watchful… But is that prophecy? Let’s look at what God says is the reason for prophecy.
Isa 46:10
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things that are not yet done,
Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
And I will do all My pleasure,’
Eccl 3:14
I know that whatever God does,
It shall be forever.
Nothing can be added to it,
And nothing taken from it.
God does it, that men should fear before Him.
God is in control. Complete and absolute control. He wants you to know this, He wants you to have zero doubts in your mind. It begins the process of building faith.
Proverbs 9:10
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
People say that “fearing” Elohim is just reverence, but it’s not just reverence in Hebrew. It’s the trembling and falling to the ground type of fear (Isa 6:5). Remember John is the disciple who loved Yeshua (Jesus).
Rev 1:12, 13, 17a
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me.
And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle…
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) directly enforces the exact same idea.
Matt 11:20,23,24
Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent:
“And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
“But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.”
This is what happens. People see God’s miracles, but they just can’t let go of their worldly desires. This person might look really good to the world, but they want to keep back that 5-10% to “stay sane”, to be realistic. This is nearly every believer I know, some people doing some genuinely impressive stuff, but is that what matters?
Matt 7:21-23
Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
“And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
This was me until about 9 months ago. I knew lots about the Bible, I had become quite the evangelist even! But what I really wanted to do was whatever time-wasting pastime I could justify. I was in a way, very disciplined in how I went seeking my worldly desires.
The problem is that this is not faith (belief that changes action).
Deut 6:5
“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
Hebrew 10:38
Now the just shall live by faith;
But if anyone draws back,
My soul has no pleasure in him.”
It’s profound, it seems impossible but that’s really what your Bible says. You HAVE to give your all. It’s the only way to salvation.
And I can give you my personal testimony about this, about a year and a half ago, I had no idea about any of this. I would get to a prophecy section of my Bible, read it and understand close to nothing other than what is obvious from a quick read through. I was extremely sick, depressed and in pain, I had been in bed 6 weeks not walking. It was very hard to do anything except for things that helped manage my pain and suffering.
For some reason I started watching videos on the rapture, and then trying to square up what they were saying in verses. Learn something, try and square everything up. Over and over again. Eventually, I found a Youtube teacher who explained all the verses I was wrestling with and gave the whole picture to connect it up (verified in great detail).
It was a lot of work but the end result was that I started to see concrete details through what at first was just a weird old-timey literature. There’s a structure, there’s an extremely detailed plan. It is not at all random, it is all built on principles, patterns and demonstrations that track all the way back to Moses (and frequently even Genesis). Abba gives you what you need to succeed to learn it, if you show up and try.
God has access points that we can learn that allows us to understand Him better. Prophecy is one of those. I think it’s probably the main one because our Bibles so clearly call us to understand it.
Rev 17:1b, 5, 16
Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters…
And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
“And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
Kind of seems like Babylon just killed Babylon? The Bible is telling you to dig into this. The previous context and surrounding context don’t make it immediately comprehensible. But God is telling you, you should be able to read this and understand it, because otherwise it has no reason to be there.
And my faith is, the Bible always has purpose behind it. I believe God when He said everything out of His mouth matters, and this is just screaming to be understood.
Matt 7:7-11
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
“For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
“Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?
“Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?
“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!
Prophecy is Torah (instruction in Hebrew). It teaches you to fear God (Eccl 3:14). It teaches you how your Bible speaks, by going through it in the way it demands, it teaches and instructs you. It shows you what tools you need to understand Torah as a whole. The things that are written in prophecy are happening right now in our lives, the patterns, the images, the structure, the moedim (Hebrew for appointed times).
Once I could see that concretely (it’s not abstract despite how it might seem) I really became afraid, I said to myself, “I don’t know how much time I have,” and even though I thought I was “probably fine” for eternal salvation (in hindsight I’m not sure I did) I knew the people around me didn’t.
And when you see the end times happening in front of you, you stop worrying about your own pain, your own desires and start thinking about your judgment day, and the people that you love and their judgment day.
2 Peter 3:10a, 14
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night…
Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless;
And you might be thinking, ok well but how do we know these are the end times? What makes us special? It’s irrelevant. Your heart could stop tomorrow, the end times are a pattern, it’s not much different than death. Your personal “rapture” could be today.
Eccl 1:9
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
You don’t have time to waste. If you’re not serious about every word of the Bible, if you are trying to compartmentalize Torah (God’s instructions) into some sort of life advice, you’re missing the point.
The Word is your life. It’s what you do. There is nothing else. It’s how you get comfort, it’s how you solve problems, it’s your mission, it should be what you enjoy. It’s your health, it’s your food for both you and your family. It should be your truest most passionate love in life. Learning and applying it takes up all our time.
Am I saying you can’t spend time with your family or work? No, definitely not. But your reasoning, prioritization and how you go about it matters a lot. When you are complete, you will have nothing in common with the world in how you go about work and family.
2 Cor 6:14-17
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.”
Therefore
“Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you.”
The only promise of salvation comes from dedication. That’s exactly what happened in the end for me. During a year of learning prophecy with the majority of my effort, I stopped playing video games, I stopped wasting time watching pointless things on Youtube, I started spending whole days and eventually weeks avoiding my computer (and this was while I was frequently confined to bed) and not physically strong enough to read my physical bible all day. I spent all my time, energy and thoughts trying to serve Yeshua, who is Jesus, who is God.
And the result was, while I still had problems, in some way they didn’t matter much. I had another 5-day stint where it looked like I might lose my strength to walk again, but it didn’t bother me. I calmly waited through it, figured out something that the Father was moving me towards in my life, fixed it and received healing in the same hour. Complete 180 in 24 hours, back at it full strength.
Phil 4:6-7
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;
and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
And that’s my testimony to you, it’s all real. Every word is the Truth. It applies directly to your actual life. It is not an abstraction but a real and tangible instruction for you to put into action. And when you do, it truly is the best possible life you could lead in this life, and in the life to come (which is what matters). I genuinely regret every moment I wasn’t doing this.
If you aren’t seeing the direct applications of prophecy or deeper parts of the Bible, that should make you think. It should make you ask yourself if you are doing it. We’re all supposed to do that, because our Salvation is what matters and you should be “guarding” it.
2 Cor 4:5-7
For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake.
For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2 Cor 13:5
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
I originally wrote this for a friend and adapted to post here, this is an experiment by faith to see if this type of contribution is valuable to the body of Messiah (Christ). Please feel free to get in contact and give me feedback. Don’t take my word for it, verify everything I taught for yourselves.
I pray for repentance for the world and the peace of Israel, in Yeshua ha’Mashiach’s name.
Shalom,
Chris