Biographical Information, Neal Fain

Born in Georgia, went to High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, and converted to Christ in Dallas, Texas in 1962. He attended Harding University preaching as a student, graduating with a degree in Bible and Biblical Languages. He lived in Alaska for over 30 years, both preaching and teaching, and much of that time self-supporting. He retired from a major oil company in 1999, followed by preaching in North Carolina. He is now retired to Tennessee, preaching, teaching, researching and writing.

Mr. Fain, while considering himself a conservative, early took a rationalistic view of prophecy (as indeed, many do), and only slowly realized its importance to the entire Christian age, not as an “accidental” extra, but as something needed for both conduct and preparedness, “a lamp shining in a dark place,” 2Peter 1:19. He realized that all Scripture was inspired and was profitable for doctrine, 2 Tim 3:16-17, and thus that if we were neglecting the Old Testament (or really any of the Bible), then we had no assurance of being “adequate … for every good work”! Also he knew we would use the Old Testament differently from the way we use the New Testament, and for a long time he just pondered these things. Then in the 1970’s he was doing some lessons on Christian evidences, and decided to do a lesson on the crucifixion of Christ as foretold in Psalm 22. He figured, rightly, that these were irrefutable evidences for Jesus of Nazareth. As he proceeded to analyze the psalm line by line, he was astonished to discover prophecies in Psalm 22 which had irrefutably NOT been fulfilled, and which were indeed repeated in the New Testament as not yet fulfilled! That was his wake up call, and the rest was just following the insights and trails of evidence which proceeded from there, and trying to figure out by what mistakes we had come to such a serious neglect of so much that was intended to be a “lamp” for our age, 2 Pe 1:19.

That original study material from Psalm 22 is included in the Prophecy Principles, in the section on “Time and Image in Prophecy.”