Prophecy Update #823 – Dust Men Tell Their Tales

We reserve a few minutes to discuss current trends that you’d expect from reading Bible prophecy.

I’ve been talking more about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in caves near Qumran by the Dead Sea.^[1] They include over 900 ancient Jewish texts, dating from about 250BC to 70AD. Among them are portions & fragments from every book of the Old Testament (except Esther), the writings of a Jewish group known as the Essenes, and other manuscripts. The scrolls confirm the accuracy of the Hebrew Scriptures and provide valuable insight into Jewish beliefs during the Second Temple period.

Ken Johnson is a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar. I came across the following in his book, Ancient Prophecies from the Dead Sea Scrolls:

“It is interesting that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to have been prophesied by Isaiah, and the very first Dead Sea Scroll to come into Israeli hands was the Great Isaiah Scroll. A professor purchased that first scroll on the very day that Israel became a state in 1948AD. Also amazing is that the Temple Scroll and the Damascus Document^[2] came into Israeli hands during the Six Day War (1967). That was the war which resulted in Israel taking control of the Temple Mount! These facts cannot be a coincidence.”

The passage in Isaiah is 29:1-7. We don’t have time to look at it in depth, but here are a few points:

• Isaiah 29 begins with God pronouncing judgment on Jerusalem, siding with her enemies to bring her low – a prophecy fulfilled in AD 70-135 AD with the destruction of the Temple and Jewish dispersion.
• During this time, the Essenes hid the Dead Sea Scrolls in caves.
• Isaiah then says the dead “speak from the dust.” There is only one way the ancients, who are dead could speak to us today. That is by finding their records in the dust of the ground where they buried them.
• Isaiah 29:5-7 describes a future war where God defends Israel against enemy nations. This aligns with Israel’s rebirth in 1948 and the recovery of ancient scrolls, restoring long-lost knowledge.

Both Daniel & the apostle John wrote portions that the Lord told them would be kept hidden until the Last Days.^[3] The angel told Daniel, “Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”

How can writings from Daniel & John be “closed & sealed,” but then be revealed in the Last Days? By them being discovered!

The Bible predicts ancient writings will again speak from the dust, and we are discovering ancient writings that speak from the dust.

Revelation 3:10 is foundational to what we believe about the Last Days. Jesus wrote, “Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.”

• “The hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world” is not just a time of intense persecution. It comes upon the “whole world” at once.
• It is “THE hour of trial, the Tribulation, predicted in the Bible.
• “Those who dwell on the earth” is not the way God would describe believers enduring the Great Tribulation. He doesn’t see us as one group.
• Each of the letters of the seven churches is for all the churches.

We are going to be gone before this hour of trial begins. Jesus will return the clouds, resurrect the dead in Christ from the church age, then we who are alive and remain, shall be changed, raptured to heaven in glorified bodies.

Are you ready for the rapture? If not, get ready stay ready keep looking up.

Ready or not Jesus is coming!