How to Understand Prophecies
Prophetic visions and predictions are often difficult to understand, when the prophets describe them in symbolic language and do not tell us the exact time and place where predictions will be fulfilled. They often don't understand the meaning of their visions, they may not want to influence the course of history too much, or, perhaps, they don't want to be proved wrong.
For the translation of such prophecies principles should be applied, which will abolish the traditional conflict between the theological way of obtaining knowledge and the scientific approach. Theologians tend to believe in divine revelations and their traditional explication while scientists want to gather evidence and prove theories of being right or wrong. This conflict between theology and science is obsolete, because many outstanding scientific theories have been realized by intuition, while on the other hand many prophecies and their interpretations from the past have been proved wrong. fulfilment is therefore the crucial test in favour or against a certain prediction and its interpretation.
We should therefore examine, understand and apply prophecies and predictions as follows:
Mechanism to Produce Prophecies
According to textbooks of occult science symbols and pictures people repeatedly look at have some sort of life on the so-called Astral Plane, the world of thoughts. This existence seems to be independent of time and place, which means certain gifted individuals can obtain visions about the past and future from the Astral Plane, when they are in trance. This is the mechanism which often makes heraldic symbols appear in these visions, and it is also the reason why Princess Diana, the most photographed person of all times, appears in Revelation chapter 12. Spirits can make people hear voices. Bible prophecies contain visions combined with texts dictated by spirits and there is also a divine purpose of influencing history through these prophecies.Using modern media and traditional mail we can send messages through space. Prophecies and the Astral Plane are a method for some people to send messages through time. Obscure language may encrypt this message like an envelope covers your letter to make sure the right person understands it at the right time.
Sender and recipient of these messages influence each other: Thousands of people who have read this electronic book and looked at its pictures have already made a lasting impression on the Astral Plane, which is getting more influential every day. And this impression has an influence on the vision in the first place. When you read this book, your brain is also transmitting the message 1900 years into the past getting into contact with the prophet John who is slaving away as a political prisoner on the Island of Patmos.
Interpretation
We should interpret a prophecy in much the same way as a doctor makes a diagnosis and a jury convicts a criminal: The more matching symptoms can be detected the more probable a diagnosis becomes. The more pieces of evidence fit together the more likely someone is guilty. The more statements in a prophecy can be linked to a certain situation or person, the less doubt is justified about the prophecy and its interpretation. There may always remain a small uncertainty, whether perhaps someone could find a better explanation in the future, but at a certain point it must be accepted that the interpretation has been established beyond every reasonable doubt, which means the prophecy itself has also been proved.Evaluating Interpretations
The more literal a prediction can be understood the more probable and better is the interpretation. For example: Revelation 16:3: The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, it became like blood of a dead body, and every living thing in the sea died. Traditional interpretations understood the sea to be a symbol for chaos, disorder and the rebellious mass of humanity alienated from God. For more recent commentators it has now become obvious that this vision predicts sea water pollution. Polluted water has a brown colour like the blood of a dead body. By definition we should regard the second interpretation as the better one, because it is more literal. Likewise commentators have always understood the Woman (and the Dragon) from Revelation chapter 12 as a symbol rather than an actual female person. Now it is possible to show that Princess Diana's personal details and experiences can be recognized in chapter 12.It is therefore wrong to copy traditional interpretations of Bible prophecies without considering current persons, facts and events. This dogmatic practice has made it possible for people to fulfil prophecies in our time without them or any theologian realizing.
Application
The famous medieval theologian Irenaeus wrote, "Every prophecy before it is fulfilled is a riddle, but when it is fulfilled, it has a plain explanation and can be understood."If the prophecy is about a particular person, the interpreter will not understand the prophecy, if the predicted person has not been born or is not known to him for other reasons. Every premature interpretation will therefore be wrong. This also applies to predictions about modern facts like environment pollution, cars, radios, atomic bombs, etc. If these things have been predicted long ago, attempts to understand the predictions before the time of their fulfilment were futile.
So what is the point of looking into prophecies, if we can only understand them afterwards? Will they not tell us only the things we already know anyway?
My explanations to the Prophecies in the Book of Revelation show that some of them have already been fulfilled today, while others have not. Some prophecies in the Revelation can give you a different perspective on history and present time, some prophecies (e.g. Revelation 13) mainly define the time and place of other predictions. And there are also those crucial prophecies (e.g. Revelation 18-22) which will make you see into the future, its dangers and opportunities.
Conclusions
A prophecy will be fulfilled at a certain place in a defined time or not at all. A statement that applies to various places at repeated times may be a law of nature or a philosophical principle, etc. but not a prophecy. Nevertheless prophecies have different meanings to different people at different times. For example the Puritans in 17th century England wrongly expected to create the Kingdom of God, and this belief inspired the English Revolution. Higher beings we usually call God want to influence human history, and they speak to us through prophets. God can even make people get wrong expectations about the future, in order to make them fulfil his purpose as happened with the Book of Revelation in the Past. If you take action and influence history according to a valid prophecy, and if your expectations about the future turn out to be wrong, this does not mean your action was wrong. It can also mean that God had to deceive you in order to make you do what he wanted.- An interpretation which leads to non-action is wrong.
An interpretation which leads to progress in history is valid.