Prophetic Interpretation and Its Errors

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 21, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 24.

Prophetic Interpretation and Its Errors

It is a vicious system of prophetic interpretation which fixes a hypothetic fulfilment and then demands that the prophecy should meet it. Men thought that the wonderful career of Napoleon must be a subject of prophecy, and therefore he was made the great antichrist, and men saw in his name the mystic letters which make up the 666 of Rev. 13:18. But Napoleon died. He swept over portions of Europe like a storm, but he did not materially change conditions, and unthinking people thought the prophecy itself discredited because the interpretation failed.