It is important to understand how God revealed himself in the Bible. To quote Charles Hodge “The progressive character of divine revelation is recognized in relation to all the great doctrines of the Bible. One of the strongest arguments for the divine origin of the Scriptures is the organic relation of its several parts.”

God revealed Himself progressively, not all at once. This may seem fairly obvious by looking at the diverse authorship of the sixty-six books of the Bible, and the many years that God’s words took to be written down. This is a critically important starting point to understanding the way in which Endtimes prophecy is revealed in the Bible. The Endtimes.org pages work closely within this same framework by considering some big picture subjects found in the Intro section, and then by working through the Bible chronologically, exactly as the writings were revealed, from foundational teachings to the fullness over time. From partially revealed to fully revealed. Or, in some cases we still don’t have a complete understanding, but will sometime in the future.

“By progressive revelation we mean that the Bible sets forth a movement of God, with the initiative coming from God and not man, in which God brings man up through the theological infancy of the Old Testament to the maturity of the New Testament. This does not mean that there are no mature ideas in Old Testament nor simple elements in the New Testament. Progressive revelation is the general pattern of revelation.”
Ramm, Bernard. Protestant Biblical Interpretation

Things the OT Jews didn’t fully understand

• The Trinity and the Person/Identity of the Messiah
• Expanded truths pictured in the Jewish Festivals
• The Times of the Gentiles – The Church parenthesis – foretold in the Abrahamic Covenant.
• The specificity of a 1000 year Messianic Kingdom
• Types in the OT

Probably the best example of progressive revelation in the Bible is the doctrine of the trinity. The Old Testament only alluded to this truth, but the New Testament explains it more fully. In Genesis when God said “Let us make man in our image”, He doesn’t go on to explain why He would speak as if to Himself in this way, but it is evident that He is speaking with Himself as if there were more than one person there. We know that He wasn’t speaking with angels, as some would say, because Genesis goes on to say in 1:27 “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” He went out of His way to tell the reader that man was created specifically in the image of God.

So at this point there is somewhat of a question mark about how much one could know about the personhood or nature of God. Not everything about His being was revealed. The revelations into the person of God continues over time through references to the Angel of the Lord. Many times deity is assigned to this angel. The Psalms begin to make this clear as well. Psalm 45:6 says “Thy throne O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee.” The NT book of Hebrews 1:8 tells us that this was God the Father speaking to God the Son. The complete understanding, as much as possible, of the triune God is spelled out in the New Testament. It seems that Jesus had to explain this for years to His disciples. They understandably couldn’t seem to grasp it, and I’m not sure they did grasp it until after the resurrection. We have more revelation then they did after the resurrection since the Apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit tells us in Colossians 1:15 that Jesus “…is the image of the invisible God.” What better way could there be to describe a being that is equal with God than to call one the image of the other. Of course He was speaking of the second person of the trinity, who became a man, Jesus.. No person or angel can be called the image of the invisible God, or as it says in Hebrews 1:3 “the radiance of His glory, and the exact representation of his nature”. God is so far above His creation that only a very small view of God can allow for a lesser created being to be said to be the image of the invisible God.

Colossians 1:16 tells us that Jesus created all things, everywhere, in heaven and earth. Interestingly it also says this… “all things have been created by Him and for Him” You have to jump through a lot of hoops to not see the uniqueness of Jesus here.

Hebrews 1:1 says this… “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.”

Now we know that God the Father, Yahweh, made the world through Yahweh His Son and Yahweh the Holy Spirit. They are distinct persons in the Godhead, and yet one. Now we have a more full revelation about the person of God through the  books of the (NT) New Testament. It’s nice to know that God held the Jews responsible for the revelation that they had, and not what they did not have. There is yet more to know about God that we just can’t understand in our current state.

Endtimes related prophecy is revealed in the same way, over time.

Has salvation always been by faith?

This subject might raise a question about the method of salvation in the Old Testament. According to the book of Genesis, and the book of Romans, Abraham was justified by faith, and he was called righteous. He had peace with God. Moses wasn’t born yet, so there was no Jewish law to obey. He was declared righteous and therefore right with God by faith. The mystery is that God wiped out the penalty of Abraham’s sins based on what his son Jesus would do thousands of years later on the cross. God owns time – he is not subject to it.

As we explain in the section on Dispensationalism, God worked in different ways during different ages, requiring different things from man, based on the amount of revelation that man had at that time, or through General Revelation. Now that Jesus Christ His Son has been revealed, man is responsible to believe in Him. Of course the plan of salvation has never changed. It has always been faith in God through His revealed truth.

Acts 4:12:

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.

Conclusion

Prophecy is revealed in much the same way as described above. At the early points in the timeline of human history, and especially Jewish history, people had a mere glimpse of things to come, like the mystery of the Messianic revelation in Genesis 3:15. and the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. Later during the times of the Jewish prophets much more of God’s previously unrevealed plans began to be revealed. The NT closed the loop on the Old Testament glimpses and types.

Jesus helps the Disciples understand the Old Testament Messianic prophecies

Luke 24:25 – “And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶“Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”