The author would strongly deprecate the false and foolish popular notion, that all study of prophecy is unpractical — a notion too often propagated by passing, but mischievously-influential allusions to the subject, from pulpit, platform, and press, made by those who know little either of it, or of its effects. It ought to be a sufficient rebuke to the levity that hazards such an assertion, or admits such an idea, to recall the facts, that one-third of the Bible consists of prophecy; and that our Lord and Master said, “Search the  Scriptures," not a portion of them. The apostle Peter expressly tells us that we do well to take heed to the “more sure word of prophecy," as to a light shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise. Is it unpractical to make use of a good lantern on a pitch-dark night, in traversing a dangerous road? Or is it not rather impractical and unreasonable to attempt to dispense with it? And further, a special and emphatic blessing is attached to this  study in the closing book of the Bible: “Blessed is he  that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy,  and keep the things that are written therein, for the time is  at hand."
 
--Henry Grattan Guinness (The Approaching End of the Age: Viewed in the Light of History, Prophecy, and Science [1], Preface, 1879).