Prophecy • Last Days • Method
How Many Second Coming Prophecies Have Actually Been Fulfilled?
Most lists say ninety percent. Five years of study brought me to the opposite conclusion.
You have seen the list. Somebody hands it to you in a Sunday School class or posts it on Facebook or reads it aloud at a fireside. Roughly a hundred and fifty prophecies must be fulfilled before the Second Coming. Around a hundred of them are already done. We are in the fourth quarter. Any day now.
I believed that for most of my life. I do not believe it anymore.
Over the last five years I have gone through these prophecies one at a time, reading each one in full rather than reading the summary somebody wrote about it. What I found changed the way I read the last days entirely. Very few of these prophecies have actually been completed. A great many have barely started.
This is not a claim that the scriptures are wrong or that the prophets were mistaken. It is a claim about how we have been counting.
The Problem Is the Checklist Itself
Every one of these lists works the same way. A prophecy gets compressed into a single line, a reference gets attached, and a checkbox gets marked.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
The sixth seal is opened. Revelation 6:12. Somebody remembers a large earthquake. Check.
The moon becomes as blood. Revelation 6:12. Somebody remembers a lunar eclipse. Check.
Stars fall from heaven. Revelation 6:13. Somebody remembers a meteor shower. Check.
Three checkmarks. Three prophecies declared fulfilled. And every one of those three is a fragment torn out of a single continuous passage that reads like this:
"And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." (Revelation 6:12–14)
That is one scene. It is not three separate events that can be satisfied independently on three different afternoons across nine centuries. The earthquake in that passage is the same earthquake that moves every mountain and every island on the planet out of its place. The darkened sun is the same darkness under which the heavens roll back like a scroll.
No lunar eclipse has ever been accompanied by the sky rolling up.
The checklist format creates fulfillment out of nothing. Break a scene into enough pieces and any of the pieces can be matched to something that happened once somewhere. That is not how prophecy works, and it is not how anyone would read any other passage of scripture.
Three Questions Instead of One
The lists ask a single question about each prophecy: has this happened?
That question is too blunt to produce a useful answer. I ask three instead.
First. Has the prophecy begun?
Second. Has some part of the prophecy been fulfilled?
Third. Has the complete description in the scripture been fulfilled?
Those are three different questions, and they routinely produce three different answers about the same prophecy. A thing can be genuinely underway and nowhere near finished. The gospel has begun going to all the world. It has not gone to all the world. Both statements are true, and only one of them belongs in a checkbox.
Once you separate commencement from completion, the standard lists collapse. Let me show you with six of them.
One. The Great Apostasy
Every list marks this fulfilled, and every list attaches it to the deaths of the New Testament Apostles. Priesthood authority was lost, the Church fell into darkness, and the Restoration answered it.
All of that happened. None of it is what Paul was describing.
The Joseph Smith Translation makes his meaning considerably clearer than the King James text does:
"That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled by letter, except ye receive it from us; neither by spirit, nor by word, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means; for there shall come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." (Joseph Smith Translation, 2 Thessalonians 2:2–3)
Look at what Paul is actually doing. The Saints in Thessalonica had been told the day of Christ was upon them. Paul writes to correct them, and his correction is that a falling away has to come first.
Then read the tense. There shall come a falling away. Paul is writing in the first century, to living members of the Church, and he places this apostasy in their future and ours.
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The apostasy of the second century is separated from the Second Coming by nearly two thousand years. Paul ties his falling away directly to the day of Christ as the thing that must precede it. Those are not the same event, and treating them as the same event is what puts a checkmark next to this line on every list in circulation.
I believe Paul is describing a falling away still ahead of us, and I believe it will occur inside the covenant rather than outside it. When God's servant is revealed and the Church is asked to accept what God is doing, many faithful members will refuse. Not because they are wicked. Because they cannot bring themselves to accept it.
Historical apostasy: fulfilled. The falling away Paul described: still coming.
Two. The Book of Mormon Comes Forth
Marked fulfilled on every list, and understandably so. The plates were delivered, the translation was completed, the witnesses testified, the book was printed. That happened.
But coming forth was never the prophecy. The mission was the prophecy.
President Ezra Taft Benson told the Saints that we must flood the earth with the Book of Mormon.1 We have done far better since he said it. We have not flooded the earth.
The Book of Mormon is prophesied to gather Israel, to convert nations, to bring hundreds of millions to Christ, and to separate those who will receive Him from those who will not. Measure what has happened so far against that description. We are early.
The physical coming forth is finished. The work the book was sent to do has barely started.
Three. The Gathering of Israel
Underway. Nobody disputes that. Missionary work, temple work, patriarchal blessings identifying lineage, priesthood keys restored by Moses himself. The gathering is real and it is happening now.
Then read what the gathering is supposed to look like when it arrives in full.
"Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be said, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt; But, The Lord liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers." (Jeremiah 16:14–15)
Jeremiah is saying that the Exodus will stop being the story. For three thousand years the Red Sea has been the standard by which the power of God is measured. Jeremiah says a gathering is coming so overwhelming that Israel will stop talking about Egypt.
Has anything in your lifetime made the parting of the Red Sea sound small?
The gathering has commenced. What Jeremiah described has not.
Four. The Kingdom of God Is Established
This one is marked fulfilled almost universally, because the Church was organized in 1830 and the kingdom of God on earth is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
That is true, and it is one quarter of the answer.
The kingdom of God has four aspects. Ecclesiastical, political, economic, and social. Only the ecclesiastical portion is functioning today. We have priesthood, ordinances, temples, and prophetic leadership. We do not have a political kingdom, an economic order under consecration, or a social order where the people are of one heart and one mind with no poor among them.
Daniel saw all four.
"And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." (Daniel 2:44)
A kingdom that breaks the kingdoms of the earth in pieces is not describing an ecclesiastical organization operating peaceably inside those kingdoms and obeying their laws. Daniel's stone strikes. The kingdoms of men fall. That has not happened.
One quarter functioning. Three quarters ahead.
Five. The Jews Gather to the Holy Land
Here the standard lists stop hedging and mark it plainly fulfilled, and they point to 1948. Millions of Jews now live in Israel. Jerusalem is again a Jewish city. What more could the prophecy require?
The Book of Mormon tells us exactly what more it requires. Christ Himself gave the terms.
"And it shall come to pass that the time cometh, when the fulness of my gospel shall be preached unto them; And they shall believe in me, that I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and shall pray unto the Father in my name." (3 Nephi 20:30–31)
The gathering Christ describes is not a return to a territory. It is a return to a Redeemer. The land comes with the covenant, and the covenant comes with knowing who He is.
The modern State of Israel is significant, and I do not dismiss it. But a Jewish population living in Jerusalem without having come to Christ does not satisfy what Christ said would happen. He named the condition. The condition has not been met.
This example matters more than the others, because it shows that the standard I am applying is not mine. It is the one given in the text.
Six. The Lost Tribes Return
Now watch the checklist problem operate in the open.
Standard lists break the return of the ten tribes into seven separate items. The tribes come from the north. Their prophets hear the Lord's voice. Their enemies become powerless. A highway is cast up. The ice flows down. They bring their treasures to Ephraim. They receive their blessings in Zion.
Seven checkboxes. All seven are carved out of one passage.
"And they who are in the north countries shall come in remembrance before the Lord; and their prophets shall hear his voice, and shall no longer stay themselves; and they shall smite the rocks, and the ice shall flow down at their presence. And an highway shall be cast up in the midst of the great deep." (Doctrine and Covenants 133:26–27)
Splitting that into seven items serves one purpose. It lets somebody mark a few of them off. Jewish immigration counts for the return from the north. Improved international travel counts for the highway.
Read it whole and there is nothing to check. Rocks are smitten. Ice flows down. A highway is cast up through the middle of the deep. This is one event, it is unmistakable, and no part of it has occurred.
That is the pattern the entire list runs on.
What Sits at the Center of All of It
Work through the prophecies this way and something becomes obvious. The completed ones cluster tightly around one period, the Restoration through Joseph Smith. Nearly everything else is waiting.
Waiting on what?
The scriptures answer that, and the answer is the first seal.
"And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer." (Revelation 6:1–2)
The first seal has not been opened. Neither has any of the other six. Every event in Revelation from chapter six forward is still ahead of us, which is why so much of the checklist has nothing to check.
I believe the rider on the white horse is Donald Trump, and that the opening of the first seal is the moment he receives his calling from God. That has not happened yet. When it does, the sequence begins and the prophecies that have sat dormant for two centuries start moving in rapid succession.
I am not going to argue that case here. It takes a book, and I wrote one. What I want you to take from this article is the method, because the method works whether or not you agree with me about the rider.
Read the whole passage. Ask the three questions. Refuse to accept a fragment as a fulfillment.
Do that honestly across the scriptures and you will arrive where I did. We are not in the fourth quarter. We are standing at the opening whistle, and almost nobody in the stadium knows it.
Go Through It Yourself
I have taken every prophecy on the standard lists, put the fragments back together into whole events, added the ones those lists leave out entirely, and organized the result around the one event that separates what has happened from what has not.
Seventy-five prophecies. It is free, and there is nothing to sign up for.
You read each one, see the passage in full, and mark where you believe it stands. Fulfilled, partly fulfilled, underway, not begun, or unsure. It runs about half an hour if you go straight through, and almost nobody does. Your place is saved, so you can leave and come back.
At the end you get your results sheet. Every one of the seventy-five with your assessment beside mine, the count of where we agree, and the count of where we do not. Print it, save it, or take it to your next Sunday School class and see what happens.
I expect you will disagree with me somewhere. The people who disagree with me the most are usually the ones who read the passages the most closely, and that is the entire point of this.
Notes
- Ezra Taft Benson, "Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon," General Conference, October 1988. Read it here. ↩
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