As promised, here is my follow up post on the apocalyptic imagination of second temple Judaism. 

A common assumption found in Tim Lahaye’s Left Behind series is that the ultimate aim of apocalyptic texts like Revelation and Daniel is to provide a detailed, if coded, blueprint of future events.  Prophecy has no other purpose than this.  This becomes problematic when we start reading both prophetic and apocalyptic texts.  The major and minor prophets in the Hebrew scriptures seem to have a different goal.  The aim of these texts is not primarily in providing a detailed forecast of events, but to present a possible future based on Israel’s repentance or lack thereof.  The goal of Biblical prophecy is to encourage the faithful and challenge the wicked to repentance. 

If you are fans of the Left Behind series, you may interject here that this is indeed what Tim Lahaye is trying to…