The text can't be bent and wrenched to say "anything one wishes", at least not for the objective unbiased readers.
That would be yet another strawman fallacy, for I never asserted that the text can be reasonably manipulated to say anything one wants it to say - logic and reason (important because Christ as the Logos is Truth, Logic and Reason incarnate), the Creed, the meaning of the words, and their historical context are all constraints on interpretation. Rather, I merely asserted that there is insufficient evidence to say that the interpretation being advocated in this case is definitely what will happen; what is more, based on 2 Peter “no prophecy is of any private interpretation” there is a clear warning about the epistemological dangers of individual attempts at interpreting eschatological prophecy.
In this specific case, there are a number of factors to consider that would have the effect of negating your interpretation:
- There is a clear historical event St. Jeremiah prophesied (the Babylonian captivity of the practitioners of Judaism at the end of the Solomonic Temple era)..
- There are multiple alternative eschatological and soteriological interpretations.
- The specific interpretation you are advocating appears to be very heavily dependent on both pre-Tribulation and Chiliastic interpretations, which are disputed on Biblical grounds by many, and I would also note none of the great dogmatic or systematic theologians in carefully studying the entirety of Scripture came to a Chiliast interpretation (neither St. John of Damscus, nor St. Gregory Palams, nor the great scholastic doctor of the Roman church St. Thomas Aquinas, who I will recognize as a saint as a courtesy to my Catholic friends although I do not entirely agree with the Thomistic interpretation, but I do admire his intellectual rigor, for example, his logical proof of the existence of God is one of the strongest known, nor Martin Luther and Philip Melancthon nor the other Evangelical Catholic reformers, at least so far as I am aware (@MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis @Ain't Zwinglian correct me if I’m wrong on this point), nor John Calvin, whose Institutes are exhaustive, nor, most notably, Karl Barth, who engaged in a superb if technically supererogatory study of the entirety of scripture, starting from scratch without reference to ecclesiastical history or church tradition, and arrived at basically the same conclusions as historic Calvinism with substantial parallels to the theology of the early church (his interpretation became known as neo-Orthodoxy and challenged more liberal voices in Calvinism due to its thoroughness). Indeed even John Nelson Darby did not come to this specific conclusion concerning Jeremiah.
- We also see no trace of it among ancient early church fathers who embraced Chiliasm prior to that interpretation being excluded by the Greek fathers at the Council of Constantinople*, St. Justin Martyr, St. Papias of Smyrna, and St. Irenaeus of Lyons (who you previously cited as authorities until I pointed out the vast difference between their Chiliasm and Adventist pre Millenialism, including their belief in worship on Sunday and on the authority of the bishops and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist) nor among other early church Fathers nor among any sectarian leaders outside the Church, even those inclined to think in this direction such as the Ebionites.
Rather, it appears that this interpretation is specifically Adventist, because it doesn’t really work with non-Adventist interpretations, being closely connected with the idea that at the time of the Desolation, the faithful will be in Heaven reviewing the results of the Investigative Judgement with Christ, if I am reading Adventist doctrine correctly (if not, my apologies, but either way this belief is uncommon outside of a Seventh Day Adventist context.
The idea that we must interpret it in the manner indicated is another recurrence of the SDA idea that Adventist interpretations of Scripture are the only reasonable interpretations, and that people who disagree with the Adventist interpretation are disagreeing with Scripture or are trying to force an unwarranted interpretation, which doesn’t really hold water in this case, since in my reticence to accept the Adventist interpretation, I am not excluding it entirely, since I cannot know what the future holds, but rather am reserving judgement on the definite interpretation of the passage eschatologically speaking, while at the same time seeking to adhere to the faith of the 150 Holy Fathers at Constantinople. One could hold to a doctrine similar to this without embracing chiliasm and if one did that, well, it seems to me that would be a matter of what we Orthodox call a valid theologoumenon or the Lutherans call a matter of adiaphora; most eschatological details pertaining to timing and the exact nature of what will transpire are Quaestiones Disputae by their very nature, since no prophecy is of any private interpretation, and we can only definitely assert what the Creed declares, that Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, that His kingdom shall have no end, and that we believe in the life of the world to come.
And to reiterate - saying that the exact interpretation of a passage is a matter of adiaphora, where one can find a range of acceptable theologoumemna, is not saying that any interpretation of the pericope in question is acceptable, since a legitimate theologoumemnon is still constrained by the words of Scripture and the relevant doctrine of the Church as expressed in the Creed and other authoritative sources, which vary slightly between denominations, for the Orthodox it would chiefly be Patristic writings, but most especially, the ancient Patristic hymns and liturgical texts we use*** (in the case of the eschaton, the Divine Liturgy or Holy Communion service in particular, which is celebrated on all Sabbaths and First Days throughout the year, is assembled from scripture and makes a clear, general assertion about our future salvation in Christ).
*Regarding Constantinople, I must remind everyone that this council was initially a local Greek Orthodox council which was subsequently adopted on a Church-wide basis - it is unique among the ecumenical councils in that no Roman or Latin fathers were present - Constantinople isunique among the ecumenical councils in that it was very specifically attributable to what we would now call the Greek Orthodox Church, albeit the Roman Catholics and the Syriacs/Assyrians, the Mar Thoma Christians of India and the Far East, and the Armenians, Copts, Georgians, Ethiopians, Nubians and all other local churche agreed with the decision of the 150 Holy Fathers at Constantinople and adopted their revised version of the Creed.
In this respect it can be regarded as the opposite of councils expressly convened to be ecumenical which were not universally received, notably the Second Council of Ephesus, which was widely decried as a “latrocinium” and led to the unfortunate events at Chalcedon and the unnecessary schism between the Chacledonians and the Oriental Orthodox which we are only now recovering from, and the Quinisext Council in Trullo, convened by Emperor Justinian to issue new canon legislation for the entire church, but which issued canons which the Roman Church refused to accept and which angered them to the point where the hymn Agnus Dei was added to the Western liturgy partially in opposition to Quinisext doctrines (also other aspects of the council targeted Armenian praxis but in so doing inadvertently precluded what would become normative Western practices, such as prohibiting the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.
Thus it cannot be said that the Council of Constantinople and its attempt to preclude Chiliasm by adding the clause “whose kingdom shall have no end” to the Nicene Creed was a Roman Catholic conspiracy; if anyone is to be blamed for the prevalence of amillenialism, it should be my denomination, the Eastern Orthodox (I regard the propagation of amillenial theology as one of our greatest accomplishments as a denomination).
*** The average age of hymns in the Orthodox Church is around 1200 years, with most hymns of more recent origin being minor variations on the hymns of the General Menaion for the veneration of saints glorified in recent years. Like most traditional churches, the current recension of our liturgy is around 500-600 years old, with the Russian Old RIte being around 800-900 years old, although the differences between the two versions are very slight.
