Spurgeon was cautious that prophecy, when misused, would be a detriment to the proclamation of the gospel; that it was foolish at best, and wicked at worst, to delve into such speculation. Yet in Spurgeon's day, like today, silly arguments over things like the number of the feasts, beast, and the identity of the anti-christ were topics of deep discussion.
During his ministry there was a great deal of prophetic speculation that Jesus would return in the year 1866. When Christ did not return in that year, the very thing Spurgeon feared began to happen. Unbelievers began to ridicule all Christian preaching. Regarding this Spurgeon stated, "I am afraid of that spirit —'where is the promise of His coming? etc. etc.' And to pronounce 'all prophets as liars' came to me exceedingly harsh; yea, more than that, it was calculated, I feared, to influence thousands of minds, and lead them in a wrong direction."
It's not that Spurgeon didn't value prophesy, quite the contrary. He just saw it as a secondary matter to the Gospel; a valuable endeavor, but one which should never "overlay the commonplaces of practical godliness," or start before "first you see to it that your children are brought to the saviour's feet."
Salvation is a theme for which I would fain enlist every holy tongue. I am greedy after witnesses for the glorious gospel of the blessed God. O that Christ crucified were the universal burden of men of God. Your guess at the number of the beast, your Napoleonic speculations, your conjectures concerning a personal Antichrist —forgive me, I count them but mere bones for dogs; while men are dying, and hell is filling, it seems to me the veriest drivel to be muttering about an Armageddon at Sebastopol or Sadowa or Sedan, and peeping between the folded leaves of destiny to discover the fate of Germany. Blessed are they who read and hear the words of the prophecy of the Revelation, but the like blessing has evidently not fallen on those who pretend to expound it, for generation after generation of them have been proven to be in error by the mere lapse of time, and the present race will follow to the same inglorious sepulcher.
Source: Spurgeon, Lectures, 100
And it goes on like that to this very day.
To me, Revelation is predominantly a book of worship. I would rather showcase the worship and basically ignore the prophesy. Like Spurgeon, I would rather be guilty of too little emphasis on the timing of the prophesy than too much.
If we Christians are to be like Jesus, then shouldn't the emphasis on certain topics follow the examples Jesus gave? For example, Jesus talked about taxes more than eschatology. So it stands to reason, especially in this day of over-taxing, we have a perfect opportunity to be biblical and speak on this topic more often than the end-times.
Please understand, none of this means Jesus' return is unimportant. I just means the timing is unimportant.
Only fools and madmen are positive in their interpretations of the Apocalypse.
Source: Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel, review on B. C. Young's, Short Arguments about the Millennium
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