Imagine a man who exists in the first century, a student of the scripture anticipating the coming of the Messiah. He is familiar with the words of the prophets so he knows that the Messiah will give sight to the blind, as the prophets have foretold by the Spirit. Now, this man hears of Jesus so he goes to investigate. He finds Jesus in a crowd, and as he approaches he sees Jesus standing before a physically blind person, and he sees Jesus put His hand over the man's eyes and *SIGN* the physically blind man receives his physical sight! The student is now sure that Jesus is the Messiah because he saw the prophets fulfilled (or, did he?); but this man never hears the teachings of Jesus; he never hears the words Jesus speaks to the people. All he knows is that he saw prophecy physically fulfilled, and he goes home confident he now has seen the Messiah.

But think about what this man has missed. He has not perceived the spiritual fulfillment of the prophets- that the very teachings of Jesus, by sound doctrine, is restoring spiritual sight to the spiritually blind. The man has seen the physical sign (curing physical blindness) and mistaken it for the spiritual fulfillment toward which the sign points. He has seen the carnal sign but has completely missed the spiritual fulfilling of that sign.

A sign in itself only points-> at the real thing: you see an EXIT sign, but the sign is not the exit- the sign-> points at the exit.

If all you see is the physical sign you will miss the exit, and turn your car into the guardrail as you confuse the sign with what the sign is pointing, signaling, toward. The carnal mind sees Jesus give carnal sight to the carnal blind and confuses a carnal sign with fulfillment, when the carnal only-> points toward the spiritual fulfillment: just as the carnal passover rituals point-> toward the cross, and the sacrifice of Messiah.

I write this naturally because we are about to enter into a course with a lot of signs and almost everyone on the earth is going to confuse the carnal sign to be the fulfillment of prophecy, when it is not a fulfillment but only a sign which points-> toard the spiritual fulfilling of the sign. That is to say, the visible are not the image, but the visible point-> toward the invisible.

Example, the coming tetrad:

the scripture speaks of the sun being darkened, the moon to blood, the stars falling. If you look up and see with your eyes these eclipses, and even a meteor shower of unprecedented proportions, many will cry, it is fulfillment of prophecy: but do not be deceived, signs are not fulfillments, but point-> toward fulfillment to come: the sun, moon and stars are symbols of Israel in fullness; the darkening of these things, and the falling of the stars, is speaking of the fall from grace that a great number of Christians will experience because they were not taught how to understand the scripture; and they will see eclispes and confuse the sign for the fulfillment

and when the King of Babylon comes on Tevet 10 he will come as Jesus to end "the great tribulation" destroy "the antichrist" and "the beast" and all of the people of the world, all having seen the carnal signs and yet being ignorant of the times and seasons, will believe he is Jesus because of the signs they have seen. But the truth is that the signs are not the fulfillment, but only point-> toward the following invisible fulfillment of the Spirit.

In the end, like the man above who saw the carnal blind receive sight, but missed the REAL fulfillment in the teachings of Jesus which give spiritual sight to the spiritual blind; all of the world will see signs, confuse them for fulfillment, and be unable to recognize the actual fulfilling of the prophets. So if you find yourself seeing great things with your eyes, and have one standing next to you saying "It's prophecy fulfilled" then realize he is wrong, it is not prophecy fulfilled, it is a carnal sign that spiritual prophecy is about to be spiritually fulfilled.