I recently received an email from Mike Rogers. It is fitting to our discussion. Most of the below is from his email but altered by me to stress certain points. Please give it a read and may you receive ablessing:
The existing prophetic models—historicpremillennialism, dispensational premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism—are inadequate. They do not explain the Bible’s entire prophetic message adequately and without conflicts. One problem involves prophetic time statements. For example, Jesus said, “There be somestanding here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of mancoming in his kingdom” (Matt. 16:28). And, he placed his parousia—which current prophetic models call his second coming—in His generation (Matt. 24:3, 27, 34, 37, 39). Such statements present problems for all current prophetic models.
C.S. Lewis, one of thegreatest defenders of the Christian faith, once stated:
“Saywhat you like, we shall be told, ‘the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He saidin so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things bedone.’ And He was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the worldthan anyone else.’ It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.”
This is really sad because the Master was correct. The fault isn’t with Him; the fault lies with us and our inability to comprehend what was taught and what was to be expected, and when. What you,and others (collectively I will call “you”), do is frankly embarrassing. You do the very things you accuse me of doing. You perform various mental gymnastics to prophesyin an attempt to get it to fit into your preconceived eschatological view. You invent things like “Dual Fulfillment” and “This didn’t happen so let’s put it in the future” which I call, “Elastic Time,” a mis-use of Peter’s “one day is with the Lord as athousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8). You add gaps, sometimes of thousands of years, calling it “metaphorical” where no gap is taught. You also employ “Prophetic Perspective”meaning when a prophet uses words like, “soon,” “quickly,” “nigh,” “thisgeneration,” “near” etc. you imply that it only appeared near to the prophet because he could not see intervening time periods. When all else fails, you use one of these above qualifiers.
Instead weneed to approach the Bible in these 5 ways which I try to do:
Authority: I assume the verbal, plenary inspiration ofScripture (2 Tim. 3:16). The Bible is God-breathed and authoritative. “The OldTestament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek are immediately inspired byGod.” What He says, goes.
Hermeneutics: Authorial intent—human and divine—iscritical to the proper understanding of a passage. Context is the mostimportant factor in determining that intent. Previous usage often determinesthe meaning of prophetic images.
AudienceIntegrity: Who was the author writing toand did the message apply to his audience or some distant future audience? Were words of comfort, advise and prophesymeant for them or someone else?
Perspicuity: God intends for his people to understand theScriptures. God hid some mysteries until the Messianic Age. He has now revealedthem “unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph 3:5). Some thingsare difficult to decipher (2 Pet. 3:16). With study and the illumination of theHoly Spirit we can rightly divide the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).Understanding prophecy is possible.
And finally,and this is the big one. If you cannotdo this, you will never understand.
The analogyof faith: To discover the propheticmodel built into Scripture, we must risk something. We must acknowledge our preconceptions andbiases. A text’s meaning cannot rest onits conformity to our previous assumptions. Scripture must interpret Scriptureand tradition must give way to the Word of God.
Do this,and perhaps I can help you.