The Good News!

Daniel prophesied about a then-future period for Israel totalling seventy “weeks” – or seventy sevens, that is 490 years, or ten Jubilee-cycles – beginning from the date when the rebuilding of his Temple and City was decreed. Within that time-frame God’s promises for Israel were to be fulfilled. But Daniel also saw that afterwards great trouble would again come to his people, the Jews, and to the Temple and city.

Isaiah’s prophecies also included those dual themes, when he foresaw both “the acceptable year of the Lord”, the “day of salvation” – and also “the day of vengeance of our God”.

Jesus quoted the first theme of Isaiah’s prophecy, and said, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” He began to preach, saying, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent, and believe the Gospel.”

What of the latter theme of the prophecies? Jesus also referred to the latter theme of the prophecies, when He later told His Apostles that all that remained to be fulfilled of the prophecies – such as “the days of vengeance”; “the time of Jacob’s trouble”; and “great tribulation” – would also soon be fulfilled in Jerusalem – within the Apostles’ very own generation, so “that all things that were written might be fulfilled”. Jesus wept at the thought of it. And it all came to pass in Jerusalem, exactly within the time-frame which Jesus specified.

As for how much time would transpire after that – before the second coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead – Daniel didn’t know, neither did the angel know, and neither did the Son of Man know. Only the Father knows, and it wasn’t for the disciples to know, Jesus said. They were told only that it would be a time of preaching the Gospel to all nations.

So Bible Patriarchal-Promises and Bible-Prophecy has been fulfilled – in full. We’re not still waiting for it.

Every blessing we experience now, can therefore be experienced precisely because the Patriarchal Promises and Prophecy have been fulfilled. It’s simply a matter of hearing, believing, claiming, saying and receiving it, which we can and must do now, because behold, now is the day of salvation.

It also means we needn’t be waiting for Prophecy to be fulfilled in Israel either, before Jews too can be blessed – because the Promises, having once already been fulfilled on Israel’s behalf, were never repealed, and could therefore always at any time have been experienced through faith.

(Jewish history is therefore to be understood and explained in those terms. The prophecies are not only now in our generation beginning to be fulfilled in Israel. Rather, it’s just that to one degree or to another, Israel has always either enjoyed, or fallen short of continuing to enjoy, her already-fulfilled promises. The determining factor for Jews, as well as for all of us, was faith).

The old rituals of Moses’ Law which once were to be observed, on strict dates, by the Jews under the Old Covenant, were made to cease forever as an obligation – for them, for us, for anyone, anywhere, for all time. In accordance with fulfilled Bible-Promises and Prophecy, the blessing of salvation is obtainable freely, by all, simply by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ.

That’s the Apostles’ doctrine – the Good News – which is witnessed also in the Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets.