Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
10/11/2022
Prophecy is Meant to be Understood
Prophecy is Meant to be Understood
At the recent Tipping Point Prophecy Conference of Jimmy Evans, he asked Mark Hitchcock about the Amillennial view of prophecy. He said, “Part of the answer has to do with the proper method of interpreting the Bible. After all, the watershed issue in understanding all Scripture, including Bible prophecy, is the method of interpretation one adopts. Scholars call this “hermeneutics.”
That’s a big, scholarly word but it’s important. The basic principles of interpretation that a person uses about Scripture is central to how we figure out what a specific text means. Since more than one in four verses of the Bible are prophetic, every reader of Scripture will eventually ask, “How should I interpret prophecy?”
The answer is simple: Take it literally!
Prophecy is Meant to be Understood
Biblical prophecy does contain many symbols, which often makes interpreting it seem difficult, if not impossible. But remember—prophecy was given to be understood. The first verse of the book of Revelation declares that this book is a “Revelation from Jesus Christ.”
That word, “Revelation” (apokalupsis), means “to unveil, reveal, or remove the cover from something.” This presupposes that prophetic truth can be understood. It’s not a mystery! The Lord has given prophecy not to confuse us or hide the truth but to help us understand it and be transformed by it.
Unfortunately, many today assume that prophetic passages should be spiritualized or interpreted in a purely figurative manner. For instance, they might say that all the numbers in the Book of Revelation are symbolic.
The obvious problem with this is—then what do they mean?
If we abandon a literal approach to understanding numbers in Revelation, or numbers in any other aspect of prophecy, then we have opened the door for people to read their own ideas into the text rather letting the text say what it means. Professor Dr. Roy B. Zuck, an expert in hermeneutics, wrote an influential book called Basic Bible Interpretation. It includes this statement:
“Nowhere does Scripture indicate that when we come to prophetic portions of Scripture, we should ignore the normal sense of the words and overlook the meanings of words and sentences. The norms of grammatical interpretation should be applied to prophetic as well as to nonprophetic literature.”
In other words, whether we are reading Scripture literally or symbolically,
our method of interpretation must be consistent.
The Golden Rule of Interpretation
Of all the rules of biblical interpretation, a literal interpretation is the crux. But it’s often misunderstood or misstated. So we need to carefully clarify and define both what it means and what it doesn’t mean.
Literal interpretation does not refer to “wooden literalism,” that is, failing to take into account figures of speech and symbols that are common to all languages and communication. For instance, if I were to tell someone that my dog “kicked the bucket,” no one familiar with the idiom would take that to mean that my dog literally kicked a plastic bucket. Everyone knows it’s a figurative way of saying that my dog died.
Literal interpretation is not wooden literalism. It’s an umbrella term that encompasses how we understand language, including figures of speech.
In an influential book, Dr. David L. Cooper stated what has come to be known as the “Golden Rule of Interpretation” related to the Bible:
“When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning, unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.”
This is excellent advice for interpretation. Another expert, Paul Lee Tan, has put it this way in The Interpretation of Prophecy:
“Literal interpretation of the Bible simply means to explain the original sense of the Bible according to the normal and customary usages of its language.”
How is this done? It can only be accomplished through these three methods of interpretation:
1. Grammatical: according to the rules of grammar
2. Historical: consistent with the historical setting of the passage
3. Contextual: in accord with its context
The Pattern of Fulfillment
Another confirmation of the literal interpretation of prophecy is examining how past prophecies were fulfilled. Paul Lee Tan writes that at “the first coming of Christ, over 300 prophecies were completely fulfilled.”
He also writes this:
“…every prophecy that has been fulfilled, has been fulfilled literally. On the basis of New Testament attestations and the record of history, the fulfillment of Bible prophecy has always been literal.”
In the best-selling book Dispensationalism, acclaimed theologian Charles Ryrie also argues that the literal fulfillment of past prophecy means that we should interpret future prophecy to be fulfilled literally. He writes:
“The prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the first coming of Christ—His birth, His rearing, His ministry, His death, His resurrection—were all fulfilled literally. That argues strongly for the literal method.”
And in another classic book, Are You Ready for the End of Time?, pastor and theologian J. C. Ryle states it clearly:
“It is high time for Christians to interpret unfulfilled prophecy by the light of prophecies already fulfilled. . . . At His first advent the least predictions were fulfilled to the very letter: so also will they be at His second.”
Plain, Normal, Literal Interpretation
If Zechariah 14:4 says that Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives, then we take that prophecy to mean exactly that. John says that when Jesus comes, armies will be gathered at Armageddon in northern Israel (Revelation 16:12). We also take that literally.
We should learn from the pattern of fulfilled prophecies as we interpret those passages and consider what is still to come.
We have no more license to spiritualize Scripture’s clear words about the end times than we do to say that Bethlehem was only figurative when Micah made that prophecy. The essential key to accurately interpreting biblical prophecy is to consistently use
a plain, normal, literal system of interpretation.
When you do that, I believe you will hold to a literal Rapture of believers before the seven-year Tribulation (the “Pre-Trib Rapture” perspective), a literal Antichrist who rules over a literal global empire, a literal return of Jesus to earth, and a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth (known as Premillennialism).
God has spoken clearly, and we have no right to “spiritualize” what He has said. Too much is at stake. Keep studying the prophetic Word. And always remember: Take it literally!”
Casting Crowns Voice of Truth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcuiuIwtpa4
Excerpts are taken largely from Tipping Point Prophecy Conference by Mark Hitchcock
