Godmindbody, Part 3, Chapter 1: Introduction to Prophecy

The Holy Trinity

Godmindbody: The Bible, Prophecy, Miracles and TMS Healing Explained

By Robert Ensor

Copyright © 2025 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.The author’s moral rights have been asserted. First Published September 2025.

All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible, which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist – merely a concerned layperson (!) – and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious and get proper care. This book is available free from this website. The paperback and ebook versions are not free and are (or soon will be) available at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ6MNZ2N. For the full title, see the pdf below. For part 1, see the following link: https://www.robertensor.com/post/godmindbody-a-book-about-tms-and-christianity-part-1

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Part 3: Godmindearth

Chapter 1: Introduction to Prophecy and Eschatology

The individual is a microcosm of the macrocosm; a cosmos in miniature. Due to the connection between spirit, soul and matter, you can’t have inner transformation without outer changes, and developments in the external environment impact inner states. Just as Christ resides within – and becomes the king of – the bodies and souls of those who turn to him in order to guide them towards sanctification and glorification, so it is that when his sheep return to the fold, he shall come back to the earth and rule for a thousand years in an intermediate phase that will prepare them for the deathless new world. As within, so without.

There are two overlapping meanings of prophecy. Prophecies are divinely inspired messages for humanity, and they are also predictions of what is going to happen in the future. God speaks and acts through the prophets, who are mediums for his word and his will. Eschatology is the part of theology concerned with the End Times and the ultimate fate of humanity. The ‘End Times’, the end days and ‘the last days’ are broad terms, encompassing the tribulation, the wrath of God, the Second Coming, the millennial kingdom, the Last Judgement, and the New Jerusalem. In some definitions, the last days and the End Times began with the incarnation of the Word (1 John 2:18); in this book, I generally mean a future period. I discuss eschatology here, which some may see as unrelated to the rest of the book, because the unification of God’s Spirit, mind and body is the golden thread running through the whole book and as previously mentioned, salvation has implications for healing, the title of this book promises to describe how to be saved, salvation entails the soul’s admittance to God’s kingdom at the Last Judgement and to remain saved one must not allow oneself to be deceived in the last chapter. Therefore, Christianity and the Bible are largely concerned with the End Times, which actually spans several different stages or dispensations in God’s plan. This book is a foretaste of the next dispensation, in that it reveals what was present in Scripture, yet hidden to those who were unwilling to work at discovering meanings. As such, it is addressed to the elect, the remnant and others who must endure the tribulation, as well as the Age to Come, when the knowledge of God will be common.

The tribulation, or the Great Tribulation, is a future period, corresponding to Daniel’s 70^th week (Daniel 9) or most of it, and therefore approximately seven years, during which people will endure great suffering and tumult, including divinely ordained natural disasters, earthquakes, wars, famine, and the oppressive rule of a tyrannical Antichrist figure prophesied to persecute Judeo-Christian saints (Daniel 7:25), as well as everyone who will refuse to worship him and take his mark (Revelation 13). Although the seven years will be generally characterised by crisis, peril, strife and suffering, it is not true that every moment of the period will involve suffering for everyone everywhere.

The key texts when it comes to End Times prophecies are Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Minor Prophets (especially Zechariah), the Olivet Discourse in the synoptic gospels, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and the Revelation to John the Evangelist. To fully comprehend prophecy, it is necessary to examine all of the above, because each text only contains part of the puzzle and was intended to be read in light of the other prophets, and the Bible authors frequently reference each other. For example, Revelation refers back to Isaiah and Daniel numerous times, in ways that reveal new information about those earlier prophecies. So as I go through each prophecy in detail, there will necessarily be some repetition, which serves as an aide memoire. These are not easy books; anyone who believes that Christianity is not an intellectual religion is in for a surprise if they actually try to understand the Bible.

It is necessary to define the theological schools of interpretation before embarking on an analysis of the prophets. Premillennialism is an eschatological belief in a future thousand-year reign of Jesus and the saints on earth, and that this millennium-long rule of the righteous will be inaugurated by Christ after the Second Coming and will be followed by the Last Judgement. It is relatively niche within today’s organised Christianity, being held by Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostals, but it is thoroughly scriptural, in that Christ is described as ruling on earth for ‘a thousand years’ in Revelation 20:4. Generally, premillennialists believe that End Times prophecy, including The Book of Revelation, is mostly unfulfilled as yet, and awaits future fulfilment. As such, they are called Futurists. When regular Christians read the Bible without preconceived notions, many of them come away from the experience as premillennialist Futurists.

But within the premillennial school of thought, there are pre-tribulation dispensationalists and post-tribulation dispensationalists. These two groups differ chiefly on the timing of the rapture. Pre-tribulation dispensationalists believe the Church of true believers will be raptured out of the earth to meet Christ in the air before things get nasty, then descend to earth with him at the end of the tribulation period to rule the Messianic kingdom with him. Post-tribulation dispensationalists believe that the Church must endure the entire tribulation before Christ returns. There are also prewrath rapturists, who believe that Christians will be raptured before the day of God’s wrath, which they think will be somewhere in the midst of the final 3.5 years of Daniel’s 70^th week (I will explain Daniel’s weeks in a later chapter).

Most early Christians, including the ante-Nicene fathers Polycarp, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Clement and Justin Martyr, took premillennialism and a post-tribulation rapture for granted. (By contrast, pre-tribulational rapturism was first taught in the 1830’s by Church of Scotland pastor Edward Irving and the Brethren leader John Darby).[i] Then, at the Council of Nicaea (325 AD), which codified Christian dogma, the Church had the backing of the Roman state, which did not take kindly to all this talk among Christians of a kingdom on earth. Henceforth it became less popular to believe in a millennial kingdom in this world. The amillenial teachings of Augustine, Dionysus, Clement and Origen were used to reinforce this new agenda. Many have misinterpreted End Times prophecy out of wishful thinking, fear or expediency, but the will of God cannot be altered, nor can the word of God.

Amillennialism holds that there will be no thousand-year reign of Christ and the saints on earth, but that they will reign in heaven for an undefined period, until the Second Coming on earth, which will usher in the new heaven and new earth that will be ruled by Jesus in a literal sense. Amillenialists see the events of Revelation not as literal prophecies of specific events, but as symbolic pictures of the Christian life and its struggles. This symbolic approach to interpreting the Book of Revelation is called Idealism.

Amillenialism is the most popular eschatological approach in organised Christianity, having been adopted by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, many big modern Protestant denominations such as the Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist and Anglican churches, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, which officially believes that premillennialism is not safe to teach. [ii]

Progressive dispensationalists, another recently developed school of thought, believe that Jesus began his heavenly reign when he was resurrected, and the kingdom age was thereby begun, but awaits the Second Coming to bring about its full realisation here on earth. According to them, the prophecies in the Olivet Discourse and Revelation are already partly fulfilled by the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 70 and are not yet completely fulfilled.

Postmillennialism is the belief that Christ will return to judge souls after a thousand years – or an undefined yet lengthy period of time – that some postmillennialists believe has already begun. Accordingly, these postmillennialists do not see the rule of Christ as a physical reign, but as a time when Christ rules from heaven and Christian ethics prevail through the Church. They tend to be Preterists, in that they believe End Times prophecy was mostly fulfilled in the past, especially during the time of the Roman Empire. Postmillennialism is quite common amongst the Presbyterian, Reformed, Baptist and Evangelical traditions, although no single denomination is exclusively postmillennial.

Historicism is a method of interpretation that sees Bible prophecies as fulfilled throughout history, from the past and present to the future, with symbols standing for nations, people and events. Most Protestant reformers until the 19^th century were Historicists. These different interpretive schemas should be borne in mind as I explain the prophets.But before moving on to the texts, it may be necessary to clear up some modern misconceptions. Just because someone predicts something, does not mean that they want it to happen or are looking forward to it. The bittersweet experience of the prophet was summarised by Amos, who wrote, ‘“Woe to you who desire the day of Yahweh! Why do you long for the day of Yahweh? It is darkness, and not light.’ (Amos 5:18). Personally, I look forward to the Parousia (the Second Coming), the thousand years and the New Jerusalem, but am not overjoyed at the prospect of what humanity must undergo in order to get there. My interpretations of Bible prophecies should not be misconstrued as threats from me. Nor are they necessarily expressions of what I would like to see happen; in many cases, I am saddened by the events forecasted and wish they could be avoided, but I understand that they cannot, due to the nature of the world. The prophet and the exegete are analogous to a weatherman who is absolutely certain that a storm is coming, followed by a prolonged spell of excellent weather. He doesn’t enjoy the prospect of bad weather, but he knows that it will come anyway, and he just reads out the information the meteorologists have provided him with. These meteorologists have in turn merely interpreted the data that their machines gave them, and the weather patterns analysed by the machines were set in motion by God.

In this book, I agree with the Bible’s prophecies that a remainder of the Jewish people will return to inhabit the Promised Land – along with Gentiles who are permitted to enter – after the Second Coming, when it will be the Kingdom of God. Scripture makes it plain that the millennial kingdom will be closed to unrighteous Jews (Matthew 8:12) and unrighteous Gentiles, but open to the righteous from all nations. That does not necessarily mean that I agree with everything the current State of Israel does or has done. The coming kingdom will be very different, because it will have different borders, it will be ruled in person by Jesus, with a government co-administered by saints with immortal bodies. The Kingdom of God will be God’s Kingdom, not humanity’s.

There is an even deeper misunderstanding to be addressed, in that the modern scientific worldview does not believe that events can be predicted in advance without some recourse to the scientific method. Accordingly, many modern people don’t believe in prophecy, at least not in its literal fulfilment, except perhaps by chance every now and again. Ideas about free will, stemming from the Christian tradition, also seem to contradict the concept that events can be known many years in advance through supernormal means. However, nowhere in the Bible does it clearly state that people have free will, defined as the ability to choose between competing courses of action, without the constraint of necessity or fate. This was a later theological addition, used to justify suffering, by blaming it all on sin. There’s a lot of sin, to be sure, and that comes with consequences, but people cannot really be blamed for it in the sense that they could have acted differently. The Hebrew concept of chet reflects this reality.Indeed, regardless of what Christians think, the Bible and science are in agreement that free will does not exist. Neuroscientific experiments have found that brain activity associated with a movement or decision begins before the subject is even conscious of making a decision.[iii] These results suggest that decisions are initially made on an unconscious level and are subsequently perceived as conscious choices. But that doesn’t mean we are at the mercy of the exterior physical universe and its laws, quantum randomness and neurochemistry. The truth goes deeper than that.

People rebel against God in exchange for the illusion of freedom, but if people do not serve God, they are ruled instead by their emotions and we have witnessed the negative effects of these feelings on behavior and health in the mindbody section of this book. Indeed, it is implied in the Bible that pagans worship ‘elemental spirits’ (Colossians 2:8). But what are these elementals, really? They are emotions and personality traits. Hence in the Greco-Roman pantheon you have Venus, goddess of lust and love, Mars, god of aggression and anger, Jupiter, god of joviality, thunder and travel, etc. Supposedly ‘rational’ types are driven by irrational feelings, especially those which are repressed, and their logical thinking is directed towards, and limited by, objectives that are ultimately determined by those feelings, regardless of how impressive the rationale may sound on a superficial level. Even those who have shaken off the influence of archetypes and emotions must have subordinated their will to God to have reached such exalted planes. Life is a case of choose your master. It therefore makes sense to choose a master whose ‘yoke is easy’ (Matthew 11:30).

But the choice of master itself is predetermined. As Christ said, his sheep are fated to hear his call and follow him (John 10:27), even if (like Saint Paul) they started out as wolves. The prodigal sons were always going to change their ways, and this changeability was always latent in them. These are the exceptions. In most cases, people don’t change much, which makes their fate more predictable.

The supposed contradiction between free will and predestination (the belief that all events have already been willed by God) in Christian dogma is seized upon by atheist critics, who ask, ‘if God knows the outcome in advance, how can we be free to change it?’ In reality, will necessitates determinism, because will determines. It is better, therefore, to speak in terms of predestined will than free will or predestination. Character is destiny. Due to the creative power of the mind over matter, we get what we will – even if that is the opposite of our conscious desires – and that is a function of our personalities, including the unconscious and the spirit. In other words, we may choose between different options, but those choices are predetermined by who we are. It is obvious from the Bible and everyday experience that people are made in such a way that they are ‘free’ to flout God’s commandments, but whether they obey or not is an inexorable consequence of their innermost nature. This freedom to defy God has been confused with the mainstream concept of free will. Our souls – the choosing agent – were made by God. Hence human outcomes are determined by will, without infringing on the omnipotence and omniscience of God, who gave them that will. Therefore, future events can be known if and when God wants to inform us of them.

Predestination sheds light on the workings of prayer. There are so many moving pieces involved, such a long and elaborate chain of causation is necessary to bring the desired outcome to fruition, and sometimes, the manifestation occurs so rapidly, that the answer to your prayers must have been waiting just around the corner before you even asked. It follows that the urge to ask when you did was motivated by the same force that manifested your wish.

Critics of Christianity wonder why our Lord would exhort us to pray, when he is in control of the outcome. Prayer demonstrates the existence of God and his benevolence to the supplicant, as well as showing the power of faith and thereby strengthening that faith to the point of knowledge. It is also a way of satisfying the human need to connect and communicate with God.

The unconscious, uncertainty and the fallacy of time keep people from understanding the question of predestination and give rise to the illusions of randomness and total freedom. Just because you could not foresee an outcome does not mean it wasn’t predetermined. In other words, you do not know your fate in all its particulars with total certainty, so in practice you must act as if you had free will regardless, rendering the question somewhat academic. It is not so academic, though, if it influences your mentality and actions. You are better off operating on the assumption of freedom – whilst noticing the power of emotions and unconscious forces to sway your thinking and behaviour – than allowing fatalism to make you passive and defeatist, as it tends to. Defeatism is a fallacy that does not logically follow from determinism. You don’t know if it is your fate to transform yourself and change your circumstances for the better, so you might as well be optimistic and try to improve your situation, especially when the creative power of belief is taken into account. If you subscribe to this outlook, you do however know that the past could not have gone differently. There is, paradoxically, a certain ‘freedom’ in that. Predestination also enables one to be more forgiving, of oneself and others. Although that doesn’t mean there should be no punishments – a mad dog needs a leash – it just diminishes the retributive aspect of punishment and makes it more about practicalities.

The deterministic nature of the universe explains how the phenomenon of synchronicity occurs. A synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence, like seeing a ladybug before a stroke of good fortune. How else can symbols appear before us that so accurately reflect our mental state or situation, at precisely the right time? How else could our dreams literally come true, as some of mine have? How else to account for the numerous prophecies that have come to pass?

Indeed, the best proofs of the doctrine of predestination, and for that matter the validity of prophecy and Holy Writ, are the many, many Bible prophecies that have already been verifiably fulfilled. Events cannot be foretold centuries or even millennia in advance, down to the smallest details, if the people involved in them are free from fate, and the outcomes are not predetermined by God.

This book will outline and analyse some of these fulfilled or partially consummated prophecies, including Jesus’ birthplace, the date his ministry began, his death, the mode of his execution, the Babylonian captivity, the conquests of Cyrus the Great and his edict to allow the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, the once thriving Babylon’s becoming a wasteland, and Judas’ betrayal. In science, a theory is judged by its predictive validity. What then are all of these fulfilments, if not scientific proof of prophecy?

I will give a brief background to the various prophetic books that are summarised and interpreted here, but due to space considerations and my focus on the meaning of the Bible, Godmindbody is not an exhaustive work when it comes to the dating and provenance of the manuscripts, and should not be regarded as such. When I am not sure about an interpretation, I use the words ‘may’, ‘could’, ‘likely’ and ‘probably’; with regard to prophecy, there’s only so much we can know with certainty in advance. ‘For we know in part and prophecy in part’ (1 Corinthians 13:9) in this era.

Read the next chapter here: https://www.robertensor.com/post/godmindbody-part-3-chapter-2

[i] Hultberg, Alan. Blasing, Craig, Moo, Douglas. 2018. Three Views on The Rapture: Pretribulation, Prewrath or Posttribulation (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Zondervan Academic; Second edition.

[ii] Tract. The Rapture, https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-rapture

[iii] Libet, Benjamin; Gleason, Curtis A.; Wright, Elwood W.; Pearl, Dennis K. 1983. "Time of Conscious Intention to Act in Relation to Onset of Cerebral Activity (Readiness-Potential)". Brain. 106 (3): 623–42.