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 How hard can it be to read and understand personal correspondence?Principles for Interpreting Prophecy
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| səhifə | 11/17 | | tarix | 18.07.2018 | | ölçüsü | 1,91 Mb. | | #56220 |
| If the writer and his audience have not experienced the future, how can they meaningfully communicate about it unless they talk about it in analogical terms from the past? Furthermore, if God’s methods of operation have a consistency and a pattern about them, borrowing from the past in order to help us conceptualize the future is an eminently logical and natural way of proceeding.
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The Future1. Creation. The terms and concepts of Gen. 1-2 reappear in the depiction of the new heavens and the new earth in Isa. 65:17 and 66:22.2. Paradise. The Garden of Eden is used to describe the future paradisiacal conditions of the tree of life with its rivers flowing out of it in Isa. 51:3; Zech. 1:17; and Rev. 2:7.
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The Future3. The Flood. The days of Noah and the carrying on of life as usual in the threat of disaster in Gen. 6-8 serve as an analogy for what it will be like in the time of the coming of the Son of Man (Matt. 24:37-39). Even the scoffers of that day serve as models for that coming eschatological day (2 Peter 3:3-7).4. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. What God did to the five cities of the plain in Gen. 18-19 and Deut. 29:23, he will do to the ungodly in a future day according to 2 Peter 2:6; Matt 10:15; 11:24; Rev. 14:10-1l; and 19:20.
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The Future5. The Exodus. Just as God took the nation by the hand once in Pharaoh’s day, so he will do so a “second time” at his coming again (Isa. 11:12 and Zech 10:10-11). 6. The wilderness experience. The presence of the pillar of cloud and fire, along with streams in the desert, set up additional expectations as to how God will work in that day when he comes again (Isa. 4:5, 35).7. Achan’s sin and the Valley of Trouble. What had been nothing but trouble for Israel because Achan had sinned will one day be turned into a “door of hope” (Hos. 2:15).
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The FutureIn addition to these past events serving as models for expressing the future, the text likewise uses historical persons from the past to describe some of the future persons who will come. For example, Elijah, Joshua, Zerubbabel, and David are all “men of a sign” who help us to conceptualize what these future persons who are coming in their place will be like (Matt. 11:14; Hag. 2; Zech. 3-4, 6; and 2 Sam. 7, 1 Chron. 17; Psa. 89 and 132).
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The FutureA good illustration of this use of the past to depict the future can be seen in Haggai 2:20-22. It reads:- Tell Zerubbabel governor of Judah that I will shake the heavens and the earth, I will overturn royal thrones and shatter the power of foreign kingdoms. I will overthrow chariots and their riders; horses and their riders will fall, each by the sword of his brother.
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The FutureAt least three major historical allusions may be heard in this text about what God did in the past as a basis for understanding what he will do in the future:(1) just as he “overthrew” Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut. 29:23), so he will “overthrow” those sitting on royal thrones “on that day” (Hag. 2:23);
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyTerms Borrowed From Israel’s Past History May Be Used To Express The Future(2) just as the “horse and rider went down” in the Red Sea (Exod. 15:1, 5), so Messiah’s opponents will be conquered “on that day”; and (3) similar to Gideon’s marvelous conquest, wherein every man put his own brother to death by the sword in the camp of the enemy (Judg. 7:22), so will God’s victory be won “on that day.”
Principles for Interpreting Prophecy Principles for Interpreting ProphecyRecurring Prophetic Formulas Mark The Presence of Prophetic PassagesIn cases where the interpreter is not certain that the passage is to be understood as a prophecy, it is helpful to refer to a master list of expressions used commonly in prophecy. Most of these expressions have appeared so frequently that they have become technical terms for the concepts they represent.”
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