Good job here, Keras! I agree completely.
Keras and lamad, I want to thank you both for your dialog. I'm getting to understand your prospectives better as we progress.
It's obvious from our previous posts our understanding on apocalyptic prophecy differ. The reason I think, is we are not using the valid rules of interpretation that God built into His prophecies.
It is my belief that everything God has created, which includes apocalyptic prophecy operates by way of His natural laws. These laws over time are discovered by individuals who spend much time in study or research in various fields of learning as the Holy spirit makes then know according to Gods timing.
Lamad, you seem to agree with Keras's method of understand the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, which is fine. However, I believe these rules are too general and will allow a lot of personal bias to override what that prophecies are intended to convey.
I hope we all can be in agreement on this at least, is that our individual pride in support of what we believe, should not take pressidence over the word of God, should we be seekers of truth.
So in this post I wish to expose you to what I think are God's four natural laws recently discovered within prophecy that have already reached their fulfillment.
The Intended Meaning of Apocalyptic Prophecy is Determined by Valid Rules of Interpretation.
By Larry Wilson
When it comes to interpreting Bible prophecy, it is true that one expert says one thing and another expert says something else. Prophetic expositors arrive at different conclusions because there are as many different methods of interpretation as there are people. Methods of interpretation is a phrase that defines a controlling set of ideas or views (baggage) that a person has in mind before he or she actually begins to interpret prophecy. Doctrinal beliefs, presuppositions, assumptions, concepts about the role and authority of Scripture, the use of external authority, and church traditions produce controlling ideas. Notice how methods of interpretation work: A Catholic scholar will interpret Bible prophecy so that his Catholic doctrines and his prophetic conclusions harmoniously align, and a Baptist scholar will do the same thing. In other words, two scholars can study the same passages of prophecy and arrive at widely different conclusions because they approach Bible prophecy with some kind of baggage. This baggage is called “methods of interpretation,” “presuppositions,” “rules of interpretation,” or hermeneutics. Perhaps the following parable will illustrate the controlling power that comes with this baggage.
The Parable of the Math Teacher
Once upon a time, there was a math teacher who surrendered his life to the Lord. Later, he felt called to serve as a missionary in a foreign land. Eventually, he was invited to teach math in a parochial college in a distant city called Overspent.
During the first week of college algebra, the teacher discovered a puzzling situation. His students could not solve a single math problem correctly. In fact, all of the students gave identical answers for each math problem that he gave them. He asked the students to explain how they entered college – given the fact they did not have the skills necessary to resolve basic math problems. The students said their high school teachers did not require them to work through math problems because highly educated and spiritually guided math teachers long ago had solved all math problems and all that they needed to do was to memorize the answers.The teacher was shocked.
The next day, the teacher set out to remedy the problem. He put this equation on the board: 3c + 5 = 20. He asked the students to solve for c. All of the students reported that c was equal to 3.
When the teacher asked how they arrived at 3, they said they had always been taught that c always equals 3. The teacher could not believe his ears. He demonstrated on the chalkboard how c was solved, and he proved that c = 5 using simple rules of substitution. The students became angry. They were insulted by this “outsider” because he showed no respect for their high school elders and their traditional way of solving math problems.
The students told the teacher that if he had written 3e + 5 = 20, their answer would have been 5 because “e” always equals 5. They had been taught that “a” always = 1, “b” always = 2, “c” always = 3, etc. The teacher responded by saying that when it comes to math, a variable’s name does not determine its value. It does not matter whether a variable is called “e” or “c” or “x.” When it comes to resolving a math problem, the process must conform to valid rules of substitution or the answer will be erroneous. The students could not bear to hear any more of this heresy, so they rose up as one man and stormed out of class. The math teacher was stunned. He wondered how he could help these students. They knew nothing about working through math problems or that math is controlled by four self-evident rules of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. He thought to himself, “They think they have been properly informed, and they are afraid to consider answers that are contrary to traditions of their elders.” Perplexed by their hostility, he wondered what he could do to get the students to put aside their traditions so that they could consider the truth.
The next day, the teacher plainly said to his students: “Please hear me out. You have been misled. Your knowledge of math is worthless. Memorizing the answer to a math problems is not to be confused with properly working through a legitimate process to find the correct answer. If you follow the four rules that govern basic math, you can test and validate your answers in many different ways. More importantly, others who know nothing about you or your elders can also test the validity of your answers because accurate math solutions are not a matter of opinion, they are a matter of fact. Accurate solutions are true because they can be proven true by self- evident rules!” Immediately, the students became hostile. The teacher had condemned their traditions and their beloved elders. He had insulted them and their exalted high school teachers. They threw desks and chairs at the teacher and in a riotous frenzy, they beat him to death.
When the bell rang, the students went away happy. They were relieved that the offending teacher had been silenced. They petitioned the dean of the college to provide a math teacher who would teach according to their elders and their wish was granted. Years later, many of these students graduated from Overspent City College and some of them went to work for the elders of the city. Later, the city faced an enormous financial crisis and all of the elders and college graduates could not stop the city from going bankrupt. When the auditors showed up, no one in the accounting department could figure out what went wrong – literally.
There are four lessons to be learned from this silly parable. First, for most of us, traditions are more important than truth. Traditions are familiar and predictable, whereas the truth can be disruptive, humiliating and socially divisive. Second, it is impossible to be “a defender of the faith” and at the same time, be “a seeker of truth.” These two mindsets stand in opposition to each other. Third, if someone exposes the folly of a tradition, he or she will surely suffer for it. Last, if we reject or ignore the truth, failure cannot be avoided. We may arrogantly defend our ignorance, but ignorance will not save us from the results that truth demands.
Can the Bible Tell Us Things We Don’t Want to Believe?
Experts widely disagree on Bible prophecy because knowingly or unknowingly, every expert uses a set of rules to support his prophetic conclusions. Of course, every expert believes his conclusions are true because they are in harmony with his baggage (or rules). The problem, of course, is that false rules cannot produce valid conclusions. A rule is a statement that is always true. For example, 2 + 2 equals 4 because the law of subtraction says that 4 - 2 = 2. When it comes to Bible prophecy, a rule cannot have an exception, for if it does, no one has the authority to speak for God and tell humanity when the rule should be applied or ignored. To illustrate this matter, consider the following rule: “A day in Bible prophecy always equals a year.” If we accept this rule to be true (that is, having no exception), the 1,000 years in Revelation 20 have to be translated as 365,242 years. (365.242 days per solar year x 1,000 years = 365,242 years)
For reasons that will be presented later, the day/year rule described above is faulty. There are time periods in Daniel and Revelation where a day should be translated as a year (for example, the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 are translated into 490 years), but there are other time periods where translation is not permitted. For example, the 42 months in Revelation 13 and the 1,335 days in Daniel 12 are literal time periods. Because some time periods in prophecy are translated a day for a year and others are not, a valid rule is required to tell us when time periods should be translated and when they should not. Here’s the critical point: If we use a rule that requires us to translate every time period in Daniel and Revelation into a day for a year, the Bible will be put in a position of internal conflict. The Bible will not be able to speak for itself because the chronological order given in Daniel and Revelation will be broken!
Today, millions of Christians have embraced prophetic concepts that have no truth in them. A prophetic concept can appear to be true – if flaws rules, that is, certain presuppositions are used. For example, many Christians believe that the role of modern-day Israel is prophetically important during the end of the world. They also believe that a pre-tribulation rapture is imminent, but the underlying presuppositions that hold these ideas together are faulty. The New Covenant teaches that the Israel of God is not biological! Everyone in Christ is now the heir of Abraham. (Galatians 3:28,29)
Logic and reasonableness do not alone ensure validity. For thousands of years, people believed Earth stood still and the Sun traveled in its orbit around Earth. In fact, everyone could plainly see that the Sun traveled across the sky! Then, along came an obscure mathematician who said the Sun stood still. Even worse, Copernicus proved that the Sun was not moving and he was severely punished for speaking out against the traditions of the elders and telling the truth. History demonstrates that advocates of truth are frequently punished. (Wasn’t Jesus crucified for speaking the truth?) Nevertheless, for the honest in heart, great joy occurs when greater truth is found! An ongoing discovery of greater truth is the process that enables the Bible to tell us things that we do not want to believe, but unfortunately, many people do not want or have a working knowledge of Scripture. Most people are content with their traditions (the familiar) and they are quick to discredit the truth (which is divisive). Perhaps the greatest problem for human beings is that we can’t know what our response to truth will be until greater truth arrives and it challenges our sacred traditions.
Faulty Interpretations until Daniel Is Unsealed
The book of Daniel contains 533 sentences. It was written about twenty-six centuries ago, but unlike the other sixty-five books in the Bible, the book of Daniel was sealed up “until the time of the end.” The angel, Gabriel, said to Daniel, “. . .Go your way, Daniel, because the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end.” (Daniel 12:9) What does “closed up and sealed until the time of the end” mean? It means that God hid something in the book of Daniel that would remain “top secret” until the time of the end arrived. I am convinced that the book of Daniel has been unsealed and the time of the end has arrived for the following reasons:
The secret information that God encoded into the book of Daniel is something like the “Rosetta Stone.” The Rosetta Stone was accidently discovered and unearthed in 1799 near Rosetta, Egypt, by French soldiers. The marvelous thing about this buried rock is that it bears a message written during the second century B.C. in two forms of Egyptian script – demotic and hieroglyphics. When archeologists examined the rock, they were thrilled because the inscriptions would help solve a very perplexing mystery. Prior to 1799, archeologists could not read the clay tablets bearing Egyptian hieroglyphics because no one could decipher the language. When the Rosetta Stone was discovered and translated, the demotic inscriptions on the stone enabled Thomas Young (1773-1829) and J.F. Champollion (1790-1832) to decipher the hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians.
In a similar way, God buried a set of four self-evident rules in the book of Daniel 2,600 years ago. By God’s grace, I accidently stumbled into this buried treasure. (Of course, the passage of time will prove or disprove the validity of my claim.) Four rules of interpretation have shattered centuries of prophetic exposition and tradition, because by definition, all prophetic interpretations are faulty and incomplete until the book of Daniel is unsealed. These four rules cover chronology, fulfillment, language and God’s use of time. God put these things in the book of Daniel to dethrone our traditions because greater truth is God’s gift to the honest in heart. Notice how this works: God separates people who hold to traditions from people who love truth by sending greater truth on the Earth. When greater truth comes along, the honest in heart rejoice to see it while those defending the traditions of the elders will rise up and punish those who embrace it. Yes, the parable of the math teacher is silly, but the moral of the story is painfully true.
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