We set aside a few minutes most Sunday mornings to identify connections between unfulfilled Bible prophecies and current news & events.
Occasionally it is important to explain why we do this. I want to do that today.
You may have heard someone use the word, Hermeneutics. It is derived from a Greek word that means to interpret.
Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret the Bible. What principles & methods do we follow? Why do we follow them?
Our ‘hermeneutic’ emphasizes a literal, grammatical-historical approach to interpreting the Bible. Here is what we mean.
First – We read the Bible in its plain, literal sense, considering the normal meaning of words and phrases. We acknowledge the use of literary devices like metaphors and symbols but we seek to understand them within their literal context.
Second – Reading the Bible this way we conclude that there is a clear distinction between ethnic Israel and the Church they are separate entities with distinct roles in God’s overall plan.
We can reduce all that to one word: Normal. We read the Bible the way we normally would other literature, taking into account its genre and setting and the author’s intent.
One of the political commentators coined a term for voters with common sense. She calls us Normies.
Bible characters read the Bible as Normies, and that includes prophecy. For example, Daniel was a captive exile in Babylon. One day while he was reading the Daily Bread, he said, “In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans – in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the LORD through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”
When Daniel read that the Jews would be able to return home after seventy years, he understood the phrase “seventy years” to mean “seventy years.” Daniel was a Normie!
Jumping way ahead, we read in the Revelation that a Kingdom on Earth will be established by Jesus and will last for one thousand years. You’ll find that prophecy in chapter twenty. The number is repeated six times.
In an article Making Sense of the Millennium, Kevin DeYoung states, “And it goes without saying by this point that I don’t believe that the Millennium is a literal 1000 years… The numbers are symbols.”
How about a group identified as 144,000 Jews, 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel? A Reformed writer says, “The 144,000 is a symbolic number of redeemed drawn from all peoples, not simply the Jews.”
There it is in a nutshell. One thousand is symbolic, not literal. 144,000 is symbolic, not literal The fact they come from the 12 tribes of Israel – not Jews.
We disagree. Daniel would disagree. Jesus disagrees!
When you read the Bible normally, and understand the distinct plans for ethnic Jews & the Church, you discover that Jesus will return in His Second Coming to establish the Thousand Year Kingdom after the Great Tribulation, and before the Kingdom. You also are inevitably led to understand the resurrection & rapture of the Church is before the Great Tribulation – it is PreTribulational.
And you get pretty excited about the more than 500 prophecies still awaiting fulfillment. You start seeing the stage being set for the events of the End Times culminating with the return of Jesus.
Jesus promised to resurrect & rapture His Church prior to His Second Coming, and before the Great Tribulation would come upon the whole Earth.
We will not see the revealing of the Antichrist.
The resurrection and rapture of the church is presented as an imminent event. It could happen anytime. Right now, for example.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, get ready, stay ready, and keep looking up.
Ready or not Jesus is coming!