Short Answer
Biblical prophecy often includes both a near (partial) fulfillment and a future (ultimate) fulfillment. A passage may refer to a historical figure like Solomon while also pointing forward to Christ, who fully completes the promise. This approach is supported by how Scripture itself—and especially Jesus—interprets prophecy.
The Overview
Understanding biblical prophecy requires recognizing that many prophecies operate on multiple levels. Some aspects are fulfilled in the immediate historical context, while others extend beyond that to a greater, ultimate fulfillment. This explains why certain passages seem to describe more than one person or event at the same time.
A clear example is found in 2 Samuel 7. Parts of the prophecy apply to Solomon, such as references to discipline for sin. However, other elements—like an eternal throne—cannot be fully satisfied by Solomon or any human king. These point forward to Christ, whose reign is everlasting and perfectly fulfills the promise.
This pattern appears throughout Scripture. Some prophecies begin with a historical figure but then include descriptions that go beyond what could ever be true of that person alone. For instance, passages may shift from describing an earthly ruler to language that fits only a divine or ultimate figure. This indicates both a near and a far fulfillment within the same prophecy.
Jesus Himself confirms this approach. In Matthew 24, He refers to the “abomination of desolation” as both a past and future event, showing that prophecy can unfold in stages. When all of Scripture is considered together, it becomes clear that some promises were partially fulfilled in history but will only be fully completed in Christ and His future reign.
Key Takeaways
- Prophecy Often Has Two Fulfillments
Many passages include both a near (historical) and far (ultimate) fulfillment. - Some Promises Exceed Human Fulfillment
Elements like an eternal kingdom point beyond figures like Solomon to Christ. - Context and Comparison Are Essential
Interpreting prophecy requires looking at the whole of Scripture. - Jesus Validated This Pattern
His teaching shows that some prophecies have multiple stages of fulfillment. - Christ Is the Ultimate Fulfillment
All incomplete aspects of prophecy are ultimately fulfilled in Him.
The Source — The Speaker Transcript
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You’re on the air with Pastor Mike. How can I help? >> Yes. Hi, Pastor Mike. Um, so I’m wondering how we should approach interpreting biblical prophecies. Um, particularly, um, the one that I’m thinking of because I was reading it recently was 2 Samuel 7:8-16. Um, so initially it seems like it’s referring to Jesus due to the promise of an everlasting throne, but then God mentions disciplining David’s son in the prophecy for this, which obviously doesn’t fit Jesus because he was
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sinless. So then it led me to think that it was referring to Solomon, but then again the everlasting throne. So this conundrum. So and I’ve heard of the idea of a quote unquote lesser and immediate fulfillment and a quote unquote greater and uh like greater fulfillment in Jesus. Um, so like how do we determine this? And is there a scripture like supporting this approach and um like how can we even address like a skeptic who might kind of see this as convenient? Um, so sorry it’s kind of like multiple.
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>> Yeah. No, no, no. It’s it’s helpful. And here’s the thing. There there is in all these biblical prophecies, not all, I mean all that I would say are legitimate biblical prophecies oftentimes a near field and a far field fulfillment. And you can skeptic and say, “Well, you know, I don’t I don’t appreciate that.” Well, [snorts] here’s the reality. You cannot in many of these passages say, “Well, this this only can apply to the near field focus.” [snorts] Because they
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don’t. I mean, think about even this child that was to be born in Isaiah and you start calling him, you know, mighty God, wonderful counselor, everlasting father. How in the world can you can you jive that with the reality of a human baby? Well, you can’t. Now, when Christ comes on the scene and he starts pulling all these things to himself, he talks [snorts] about him, right, being the bread of life, right? The showbread was to represent something and he says, “No, I’m I’m that.” Or [snorts] on the day
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that they’re pouring out water in the ceremonies as they’re going through all that they do at the feast of of tabernacles, he says, “No, I’m the living water, and if you drink from me, you’ll never be thirsty.” He keeps making the connections of biblical analogy, biblical symbolism, and applies it to himself. And when you look at 2 Samuel 7 or let’s go to the other side of the of the street, Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, these are statements about Satan, but they start out talking about
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the prince of Ty, right? Or or some figure that has a historical precedent. And you can read that and go, “Oh, yeah, prince of Ty. He’s a mess.” Yeah, but he’s not calling him the king, but he was the king. But now we’re going to talk about the king who stands behind the prince that was described as human in the first 10 verses. And then the next 10 verses we’re talking about he was in Eden, the garden of God and he was a cherub and it says on the holy mountain and he you know all how in the
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world is he covering cherub the prince of Ty you could write a biography on him if you were there in Ezekiel’s day. So you [snorts] you’ve got something that’s impossible to read as something that if you’re going to take the words literally [snorts] and you have that in the Davidic covenant that you can’t just read at all and look at it as Solomon because it doesn’t fit. It’s a lot like what you have in all of the late prophecies at the end of the of the time frame of Judah. Everything before 586
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when [snorts] Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, took him away in three three deportations. You could see all these promises of reassembling and they did reassemble under Zerubbable and Ezra, Nehemiah, but never to the extent that he talked about the reassembling like that that Jerusalem would be the head and the whole world would be its tail. that everyone would bring their riches into Jerusalem, every king of every nation. Well, that’s not happened, right? So Jesus, I think, gives us this
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precedent not only in saying all these things are talking about me, but he even takes some that you would say like in Daniel when Daniel speaks uh in chapter uh uh 11 about the idea of uh this abomination of desolation. I’m sorry, Daniel 9 about the abomination of desolation. And um he says, you know, if you read that in that day and then you lived from the time of Daniel in the in the fifth century BC to the 2n century BC when Antiochus Epiphies did exactly that and everyone understood that as the
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abomination of desolation. Jesus comes and says in Matthew 24, well there’s going to be another one when you see the abomination of desolation that Daniel spoke about in the pro. Well, wait a minute. What does what does that mean? It’s not really the ultimate abomination. Jesus is giving us the key to the fact that there are near near field and farfield fulfillments. And we often call them the ultimate fulfillments. And if you read everything literally, carefully, normally, you’ll have to say Solomon could not have
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fulfilled everything spoken of in the Davidic covenant, [snorts] just like everything in the Palestinian covenant in Deuteronomy was not fulfilled at any time in Joshua’s day or any time even in David’s day. I mean, the world did not bow to David. Now, his surrounding nations did, but the world didn’t. And so, when is that going to be fulfilled? And that’s where in the New Testament, Jesus says, “There’s more to come.” And he says, “One day, you’re going to see
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the son of man coming on clouds in glory, right? And all eyes will see it and every nation will be subject to me. I’m going to separate the peoples as a shepherds.” So, I think just you got to get everything in view. You can dive into a passage like the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel and you can say, “Well, wait a minute. He it sounds like he’s talking about Solomon.” Well, he certainly is, right? Because he’s talking about someone that’s going to commit sin, right? That’s where it goes and got to
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be disciplined. Well, Jesus didn’t sin and we know that. Well, the rest of it though, like a neverending, you know, reign, we didn’t even finish the Old Testament without knowing. We don’t have a king. There’s no king in Israel by the time we get to the end of the Old Testament in the in the time of of Haggi, Zachchariah, and Malachi. Well, where’s this this eternal king? Well, now we have the prophecies in the New Testament. Here they come through Zachchariah. They come through the
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angel. And now there’s a the one being born where the government’s going to rest on his shoulders. All the quotes now back to the prophets who spoke toward the demise of the end of of the time of Judah there in the fifth and sixth century BC. And now the New Testament picks it up, says now it is. It’s going to happen and we’re going to start with the birth of the king and he’s going to bring in justice and the light’s going to dawn among the Gentiles. Okay. Well, all of those are
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all statements about the Old Testament promises and we thought they were fulfilled when Zerubbabel came back after the the Babylonian captivity, but it didn’t. It did not fully. It kind of did. But there are hints throughout the Old Testament. Even when the here’s Ezekiel talking about the temple that’s going to be rebuilt, he gives very specific uh uh measurements for all of it. And you can lay those out. All of them are known. All of them are there. And you can say, okay, uh this is what
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we’re going to build. This is what God is going to have built. Well, it wasn’t built. Zerubbable built a temple that was smaller than Solomon’s temple. And it said the people that were old enough to live through the Babylonian captivity saw it and they wept because of how small it was. and the others were rejoicing because they finally had a temple. And he says, “You couldn’t hear the difference between the wailing and crying of the old men and the cheers of the young men.” Well, they knew this
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wasn’t the temple. God didn’t do what he said he was going to do. It’s not the temple of Ezekiel. Well, then there must be a temple that’s yet to be built. And that’s why I think we have to take the Old Testament seriously. Some of it was fulfilled in the first coming of Christ. There was a son of David that sat on the throne in Luke and Matthew. were careful to trace his lineage both through Mary and through Joseph back to David to say here he is and he was called that the son of David. That’s who he was. And I
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guess that’s a fulfillment of Daniel 7. Well, it’s a fulfillment of Daniel 7 of everything that spoke of the eternal prince. And he left and said he’s going to rule the world. I’m going to leave you. I’m going to come back the way you saw me. Zechariah 14 says he’s going to come back. And when he come back, he’s going to come back as a victor. as Jesus says in the book of Matthew especially, I’m going to come back and rule the world. And so we tie all these prophecies together and say, “Okay, some
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of it was fulfilled, like in in 2 Samuel’s case, in Solomon’s life, and some of it is yet to be fulfilled.” Same thing with Ezekiel and saying, “Well, yep, Ty and and the leaders of the uh of Damascus, they were um enemies of God, but they were not the enemy, the ultimate enemy that walked around in the Garden of Eden.” And that’s, you know, some of it applies and some of it doesn’t. And this is the nature, I think, of Middle Eastern prophecy. And here we are as Westerners thinking in a
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western way. And there are some good commentaries being written today that try to help us look at all of scripture through the eyes and the lens of easterners. And I think that does help us to not treat it like we would read the New York Times or, you know, the Wall Street Journal and say, “Well, why doesn’t it just say this?” Well, that’s not the literature we’re reading. I mean, when we’re reading Second Samuel, think about it. You’re reading something that is 3,000 years old. It was written
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3,000 years ago. So even the nature of prophecy as a literary genre is going to be different than we might expect if we’re reading something, you know, today that Gene Dixon predicts. She’s going to write differently than what we have. So that’s why understanding the literature of the Bible, looking at everything and knowing that God is communicating what he means. And at the end of the day, some of it applies to the near field, some of it applies to the ultimate. And we make that distinction. And I don’t
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think honest scholars have a problem with that. We recognize that. Someone can dive into one passage and go, “No, no, no, no, no.” But take it all, look at it all, and recognize that everything that was promised about David’s son was not fulfilled in Solomon. You follow all that, Laura? I know [clears throat] I was blabbing on. >> Sorry. Sometimes it’s a little it’s a little hard to hear, but I I did. But uh I guess what it sounds like too is is Jesus is the one who kind of uh points
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to prophecies being in this nature because he said he talks about it in Matthew 24 about the what is it the abomination of whatever desolation right >> yeah so that kind of helps us go oh okay that so but there are these two different um like you said the near and the far or the ultimate correct >> fulfillment of prophecy because that was my other thing it’s like well how do we even know that how we’re supposed to approach it. But I guess you’re right. Jesus does say that
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in Matthew 24. So >> yeah, and think about everything that was promised. This is why I’m a premillennial Christian is because I see everything that was promised for the reassembling of Israel with the northern tribes and the southern tribes. Just think of uh the dry bones prophecy of of Jeremiah, right? They’re going to come together and it talks about, you know, joining together the north and the south and two sticks and they become one in in in his hand. And it’s like, okay, well,
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that didn’t happen with the coming of the church. But then we get a ending book to the New Testament called the book of Revelation that by the time we get to chapter 7, we learn about the 144,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel. And everything that we saw in the book of of of Jeremiah looks like it’s still yet to come. And we didn’t see clearly that the coming of Christ would come in two installments, but we’re stuck with that because we live in the interim. And as he left, he promised he’s coming
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back. And then all of those promises are going to be fulfilled to Israel, including 12 tribes in the land leading the world. And that’s why we expect a millennial kingdom because it says six times in Revelation 20, it’s going to be a thousand-year period where [snorts] all of this is going to be played out. So, yeah, it’s all about assembling all the promises, laying them out, systematically figuring out which ones have been fulfilled, which ones haven’t, and then you look at Christ’s teachings,
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and he said precisely that. Some have and some haven’t. He didn’t come to rule the world with a rod of iron yet. But he says I’m coming back to do that. And he says, “My wrath is going to be kindled and I’m coming.” Well, he didn’t do it on his first coming. He’s coming again to fulfill all that is not yet fulfilled. >> Yeah. I hope that helps, Laura. Good question. It did. Thank you. >> Okay.
