They Predicted...

They predicted…

• 09/23/2017—The beginning of the end times.
• 05/14/2019—The rapture begins no later than this date.
• 01/06/2025—Notice received that ‘end time’ event is dead ahead.

Many other dates from the past with similar results could be added.

Many other future dates will likely be able to be added to this list.

There seems to be an unending parade of predictions by today’s self-proclaimed prophets. Yet another prediction came to our church email account on August 15, 2024 predicting “OUR Strange FIERY TRIAL.”

After skimming dozens of pages of difficult writing (because of excessive use of multi-colored text and highlighting, and other formatting features), I finally discovered what he meant by ‘Our Strange Fiery Trial.’ Piecing together numerous parts of prophecies in the Bible he concluded that the United States was in trouble with God and would fall on February 17, 2026.

I decided not to spend any more time trying to understand his calculations. Rather, I followed the advice God gave to Israel when they encountered people who prophesied about the future:

Whenever a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the oracle does not come about or the word is not fulfilled, then the Lord has not spoken it. The prophet will have spoken presumptuously, so you need not fear him. 

--Deuteronomy 18:22

I marked the date on my phone calendar app with a notice appearing the day before. That date, 02/17/2026, has come and gone with no change.

The man took snippets of passages from all over the Bible and then joined them together to make his prediction. He justified his method by using a prophecy in Isaiah that suggested that God’s word was given “line upon line, here a little, there a little” (28:13). In other words, the interpretation of God’s word is not based on the context of the passage, but discerning how to piece clues together from many disjointed passages.

Though citing New Testament verses that emphasized that we do not know the date and time of God’s judgment, he reasoned that God’s people should be able to discern dates and times while others cannot do so. And yet, Jesus did not single out one group that would know when a warning was to be fulfilled while another group would not know. We simply do not know when God’s judgment will come. Rather, we are taught to be ready.

If the U.S. had fallen on 02/17/2026, I might be reading his papers more carefully to understand how he arrived at his conclusions. But his doomsday forecast failed. He is yet another false prophet.

The Apostle John wrote, “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1) Do you know how to test the spirits? John was referring to the things people speak in the name of God. Some things spoken are truth and some are error. The only way we will know the difference is by comparing the things spoken by man with the things God’s has revealed in His holy word.

A person who claims to speak for God is trustworthy only if the things spoken accord with the things God has already revealed. That is how we know truth from error. If someone claims to know something about the future that is not clearly revealed in Scripture, just wait. Time will reveal whether they have spoken from God. So, don’t be deceived by the false prophets of our day. Keep your focus on God’s word. It is relevant still today.

Mark Stinnett

March 15, 2026