I had been intending to write about the removal of the Church (the rapture) for quite a while now. What galvanized me to do so now was a couple of entries by Ben Witherington and Roger Olson about the pretribulational rapture. These men, (like them or not), do not usually write poorly, but their articles attacking the concept of the pretribulational rapture are pretty lame ducks, rehashing the same old populist presentations of Dispensationalism by sniping at Clarence Larkin’s charts, …
Category: Hermeneutics
Review of The People, The Land, and The Future of Israel, edited by Darrell L. Bock and Mitch Glaser, Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2014, 349 pages. The book under review is the result of a conference that was held in New York in support of the special place of Israel in the Scriptures. Seventeen contributors put forth various articles under the headings of New Testament, Old Testament, Hermeneutics, Theology & Church History, and Practical Theology. A Forward is provided by …
Part One 3. Allegorical Interpretation continued. But what we must keep in mind is that allegorical interpretation was not foreign to Jewish understanding of their Scriptures in the first century. Maier can say, “Jewish interpreters of the first century were convinced that the Holy Scriptures contained more than what the sensus literalis offered.” – Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, 68. Thus, we should not yield to the naïve temptation to think that the Jews held to single-sense literal hermeneutics. So what did …
This is a note from a book I am trying to write. We must too be aware that a prophet foretells. The term “prophet” (nabi) basically means “mouthpiece” or “spokesman” (Cf. Exod. 7:1-2 with 4:16; Deut. 18:17-18). They were preachers, proclaiming the words of God to their contemporaries. But in the Bible the most prominent function of a prophet was to proclaim God’s word about future events (see e.g., Jer. 1:7-16; Amos 7:7-9, 14-17; 1 Ki. 1:22). As we shall …
This is one which came out a couple of years back. Thought it deserved a rerun: When one is associating a belief with the text of Scripture it is never wise to choose texts from obscure, debated or overly figurative portions of the Bible. Why go to a vision of Zechariah when you can go to an epistle of Paul for the same doctrine? When tying a doctrine concerning the Church to Scripture we find good men like F. Turretin …
Part Five C. Phinehas (‘Priestly’) Since I have treated this covenant elsewhere in some detail I shall just briefly rehearse the salient facts. Owing to the zeal of Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, a devastating plague was stopped and God’s wrath appeased (Num. 25: ). Although Phinehas could have had no idea what God would do next, his honoring of God’s holiness elicited a quite un-looked-for covenant between God and Phinehas’s offspring (Num. 25:13; Psa. 106:28-31). This covenant stands behind the promise …
Part Four As I have said, at the most rudimentary level covenants are for the purpose of reinforcing plain speech about specific momentous things. They do this formally in the terms of the covenant and its obligations upon specified parties. God holds human beings to the very words of their covenant oaths (Jer. 34:18; Ezek. 17:15c). The Bible also indicates that God “keeps covenant” (Deut. 7:9; Neh. 9:32; Dan. 9:4). We would expect no less from Him who cannot lie …
Part Three If it were up to us… If the Lord had relied upon men to fulfill their duties before fulfilling His oaths there would be no reason at all to make covenants in the first place. He was on the safest ground possible, and could have promised the universe without having to concern Himself about fulfilling anything. We all fail. Christians know that unless God is faithful to stand behind His promise in the Gospel, we are all done …
Part Two In the Bible there is always a correspondence between God’s words and His actions. You see it in the Creation narratives – “God said”…”and it was so”. You see it in the Gospel, – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” You see it in such well known places as the curing of Naaman, or Jesus’ healing of Jairus’s daughter. When God says He is going to do something, you can bank on it. …
PART ONE The subject of this article has to do with how covenants clarify and underline specific terms about certain important (indeed central) theological topics. If we all spoke the truth and we all could hear it unimpeded by sin’s effects there would be no need of covenants. Covenants presuppose subjects (at least one) who have a propensity to diverge from an important truth. (It is for this reason that any pre-fall covenants, which are exegetically weak and empty in …
