Wednesday, May 27, 2009

5-27 Prophetic Interpretation

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I just love the look of freshly spread beauty bark. I came home last night and Susan had spread bark in all the front flower beds. It looked beautiful. She had a “free ticket” from a year ago. When she bought bark back then… either it wasn’t a full load because they ran out, or it had some white wood mixed in with it so they gave her a ticket for a free load. She used it yesterday. And then I went into our back yard. She had half the back yard barked as well! Whoa! Now you must understand we live on a hill! Susan had to load the bark into the garden cart and pull it up our hill before she could put it on the flower beds! Her face was red! Her hair was matted from sweat! She’s crazy! What a hard working gal! They don’t come any better than that!

Today's Scripture reading is 1 Samuel 29; Amos 1; Mark 8
To Listen to Today’s Reading http://timewithgod.podbean.com - Archives can be found at http://timewithgod.mypodcast.com

Today’s thought comes from Lu 24:44 Then Jesus said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."

When God makes a prediction it always comes to pass. About a dozen times throughout the Bible the formula is used “God spoke… It was fulfilled.” There is a cause and effect principle in prophecy. The wheels of God’s government may seem as though they grind slowly, but you can bet that sooner or later you will feel the rumble on the tracks… and when you do, you better look out because the freight train called prophecy will come steaming into town. There’s no stopping the prophetic freight train. But prophecy can be puzzling, shrouded in symbols and dragons and beasts and strange sayings. How are we to understand it? There are a few very important principles that must be applied to gain a right understanding of prophetic Scripture. #1 We must ask “who is this talking about?” That seems elementary, yet it may be the most abused principle of interpretation of all. Jesus explained the prophecies to the disciples that were written “concerning ME.” If we tried to apply them to someone else or some other event, we’d have a problem. The most abused application of the prophetic Scriptures are those explicitly aimed at the nation of Israel. A large cross section of Christian interpreters want to take the future predictions made about Israel and apply them to the church! This causes enormous confusion. In fact it completely changes the future! At least it changes what we believe about the future. Here’s how… If Israel is the church then the 12 tribes in the book of Revelation aren’t Jews they’re Christians. And what about the Jews being back in the land of Israel as predicted? It must be symbolic of some Christian blessing! Such confusion! #2 A second principle of interpretation, perhaps subjected to as much abuse as the first is that prophecy should be interpreted according to “normal literary means.” If the plain sense of Scripture makes good sense, seek no other sense! But take every word at face value unless there is some reason in the context to indicate otherwise. Many interpreters want to take every prophecy and make it “symbolic” of something else. While some prophecy is unquestionably symbolic, the Bible has the right to tell us what those symbols mean. We should not see symbolism where there is none! If we do, we can make the Bible say anything we want! So when God’s word says there is a Tribulation coming… believe it! When it says that there is a Millennial Kingdom coming… take it on simple faith. Jesus IS coming soon. In fact I can feel the rumble of the prophetic freight train now! “All Aboard!”

Dear Father. I believe Your Word is Truth. I will take it at face value and I will not try to second guess what You are saying. I know You are coming again soon. Lord Jesus, come quickly.

You are the temple of the living God.

Posted by Dennis Kreiss at 11:09 AM |  MAKE A COMMENT  

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