God would not include prophecies in the holy writ unless He wanted people to read them and not fear them or be caught unawares when they come to pass.
I see your point, but it is all so subjective with each party claiming truth. It has become humanly impossible to legitimately lay claim to absolute accuracy - ESPECIALLY when you start quoting Revelation with all it's imagery.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that every understanding of prophesy you just mentioned above is wrong. When the prophesies begin to be fulfilled in some other way, it will constitute an "aha!" moment for us, but not necessarily catch us off guard or fearfull... because we knew SOMETHING was coming.
I believe the argument the author was making is that Jesus gave prophesies about his second coming that could reasonable be applied to every generation that has lived over the last 2000 years, having the affect of keeping every generation sharp and on it's toes. He reasons that THAT was the purpose of the prophesy - not the actual, factual, absolutist identification of a pinpoint in time.
In your earlier post you said: Jesus used prophecy to show the people that God knew all things from the beginning and to show them the signs of his [second] coming, which all the prophets looked forward to.
But the information provided could be broadly applied by several generations... and he knew it.