Also, there is a mention of the sun, moon and stars experiencing specific phenomena.

Are we meant to take this literally, as futurists insist we do, or is this a metaphor that every first century Christian readily knew about? If we take this as a metaphor, does that mean we diminish God's supernatural ability to do these things? Let us answer those questions with proper hermeneutic.

"the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken"

We do find this sort of language used in the Old Testament prophecies, especially when kingdom were foretold to be destroyed.

Isaiah 13:1 KJV The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see.

Isaiah 13:9-13 KJV Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. (10) For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. (11) And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. (12) I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. (13) Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.

Notice the terminology used. Verse 10 mentions the celestial phenomenon, and claims it is the reason for the information mentioned in the verse prior to it. The first word of verse 10 is "For". This means we are going to read a reason for the actions mentioned in verse 9. Let us read it that way. "The reason the day of the Lord will come , with cruelty of fierceness and wrath, to lay the land desolate, and destroy the sinners thereof is because the stars of heaven and the constellations will not give their light. The sun shall be darkened and the moon will not shine." It sounds as though God would judge Babylon because the stars, sun and moon would stop giving their light. If one is not careful, one might consider God surveying the stars in order to let the stars determine what He should do with Babylon. If the stars, sun and moon stop shining, is that a signal to God to judge Babylon? Of course not! That is astrological nonsense. The Bible speaks strongly against astrology and the zodiac.

Now, this sort of celestial phenomenon is mentioned more than one place where a kingdom was going to be judged.

Egypt's judgment:

Ezekiel 32:2 KJV Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers.

Ezekiel 32:3 KJV Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will therefore spread out my net over thee with a company of many people; and they shall bring thee up in my net.

Ezekiel 32:6-9 KJV I will also water with thy blood the land wherein thou swimmest, even to the mountains; and the rivers shall be full of thee. (7) And when I shall put thee out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. (8) All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord GOD. (9) I will also vex the hearts of many people, when I shall bring thy destruction among the nations, into the countries which thou hast not known.

Idumea:

Isaiah 34:3-6 KJV Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. (4) And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. (5) For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. (6) The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.

Idumea is Edom. And Edom was Esau's name after Esau lost his birthright. Esau's descendants became known as Edomites and they lived in the land of Edom. It was also called Mount Seir and Idumea.

The prophecy not only spoke of the host of heaven being dissolved upon Idumea's judgment, but God's sword would be filled with blood and made fat with fatness. Is this literal? Will all the stars dissolve? Did the sun DISSOLVE? The moon?

The Edomites experienced great judgment during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. This was fulfilled in the Old Testament times. History records:

Five years after the taking of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar humbled all the states around Judea, and particularly Idumea Jer 25:15-26; Mal 1:3-4.

During the Jewish exile, it would appear the Edomites pressed forward into the south of Palestine, of which they took possession as far as to Hebron. Here they were subsequently attacked and subdued by John Hyrcanus, and compelled to adopt the laws and customs of the Jews. (Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible).

Did the sun, moon and stars dissolve back in those days? Evidently not. They still exist today!

With the celestial phenomenon, we read of God's sword eating blood and gorging itself until it becomes fatter than its original state. Is this literal?

However, we know the difference. Nobody would claim the Lord has a sword that literally eats blood and becomes fat. And if someone accused us of diminishing God's supernatural ability by claiming the celestial phenomenon are symbolic, then we can argue that saying the sword is not literal and does not actually eat blood and grow fat is diminishing God's supernatural ability, too.

Not only that, but we have seen several instances now where the stars and sun and moon become dark when a kingdom is being judged. Could it not be that these pictures are also metaphors and not literal events? It seems awfully coincidental that every time a kingdom is judged, the stars start falling and the sun and moon stop shining their light. However, it makes much more sense to say these events are poetic metaphors for "lights out for the kingdom."

So, the proper hermeneutic in reading passages like Matthew 24 is to consider whether or not the writer, and the speaker whose words are recorded in the writing, used metaphors. This can only be proved by discovering whether or not they are found to clearly be metaphors in other passages of similar prophecies of judgment and doom as well. It will be consistent in the bible in more than one place if such pictures are indeed metaphors. Since the celestial phenomenon is mentioned alongside obvious metaphors of a sword eating blood and growing fat in Isaiah 34, then the answer becomes clear. This is especially so since so many references to a kingdom's demise mention the celestial phenomenon as well.

This is not to say that we doubt God could perform supernatural events in the celestial bodies if He wanted to. Yes, God could do that. However, he could also create a sword that actually eats blood and gets fatter the more it eats it. But I highly doubt God would do that. He can even manifest Himself as a Lamb with seven eyes and seven horns if He really wanted to. But all readily agree this picture in Revelation 5 is symbolic. So it is not diminishing the belief in God's supernatural ability when we say the stars and sun and moon will not literally stop shining when Jesus comes in judgment according to Matthew 24, but rather these are proved metaphors commonly used in Old Testament style of poetic imagery in order to signify the demise of a kingdom.

If we cannot find any proved example of a metaphor Jesus used by finding similar instances that are obviously metaphors and not literal, and surrounded by other metaphors, then we cannot claim Jesus used a metaphor in any given instance of His prophecy. That is a good and logical hermeneutic to stand by.



Let me pause to comment more upon the Dispensationalist accusation that preterists spiritualize things too much, and dispensationalists use the Historical Grammatical method of interpretation which is to read all at face value unless it is obvious it cannot be taken literally.

Martin Luther debated Zwingli about the Eucharist, and claimed when Jesus said "Take, eat; this is my body, " as He handed them bread, that the bread was literally the body. Not symbolic, but literal. Zwingli argued and said "IS" means "REPRESENTS".

We all agree Zwingli was right. However, there is nothing grammatical that can tell us if Luther or Zwingli were right. It really depends upon one's theology. You cannot get the truth from grammar.

So the grammatical historical approach is a farce.

H.A. Ironside said no one ever stated the Old Testament prophets overlooked the church until Darby's writings. That shows that Dispensationlaists believe for 1600 years the church did not properly understand Old Testament association with the Church in its writings. So what is so historical about Dispensationalism?

They claim we spiritualize everything too much. Charles Ryrie said Dispensationalism provides the key to consistent literalism. He said Israel in the OT is always literally Israel. But they say when other nations are mentioned, it is not actually those nations, but whoever lives in that land now.

For example:

Ezekiel 38:2-5 KJV Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, (3) And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: (4) And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: (5) Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:

Tubal is long gone. Meschech is long gone. Dispensationalists claim these places are changed into modern names like Tobolsk and Moscow. Where is the scholarship for that claim? There is no PERSIA any more. It is Iran. Are we going to be literal or not?

So there is no real consistent literalism in dispensationalism.

Dispensationalists claim the prophecies of the first coming of Jesus were literal, so the second coming prophecies must be literal as well. I already proposed the thought before that said the Lord was not a literal branch or root, but we read:

Isaiah 11:1 KJV And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

And what about this prophecy of the cross?

Genesis 3:15 KJV And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Why did Jesus die on a cross if we were to literally thing He should run around and chase a serpent and step on its head?

Nicodemus took new birth literally and was mistaken to think Jesus meant entering one's mother's womb and being born a second time. Dispensationalism is doing the same thing the Jews did in the first century and literalizing too much.

The woman at the well was told about rivers of living water, and mistook Jesus to mean she would literally get water from Him.

Consistent literalism is not possible.

Dake of Dake's Annotated Bible, said God in the Old Testament actually had a body, since the bible mentions his legs and arms. He would accuse dispensationalists of being too spiritualizing since they disagree with this idea. It works both ways!

Charles Ryrie said much of prophecy is figurative. And yet disp teaches say they are consistently literal.

The fact is there is indeed a literal meaning behind the figure or type or symbol. But we're not to take a symbol literally and remove its symbolism. All symbols have a literal meaning, but we don't take them literally. The figures and symbols are not any less truthful than they are if we were to take them literally.

We all believe in symbols, but question is WHEN do we take things literally and when do we not? No one is absolutely always literal. So it is really just a sham to say we over-spiritualize things.

Dispensationalism claims that a rule to use in interpretation is when plain reading makes common sense we are to seek no other sense. But what I may think is common sense may not be so to someone else. What may mean one thing to a person across the world 2000 years ago may not mean what we think it does today, since they may have used metaphors that are involved in those statements that we do not use today. That would leave us reading at face-value, since we would not see a metaphor when we never used such a metaphor in our culture, while the first century reader would not take it at face value.

So, how do we decide what is literal or figurative? One rule to remember is that the New Testament is the expansion and fulfillment of the Old. The New is unintelligible without knowing Old Testament. The New fulfilled the Old.

Colossians 2:16-17 KJV Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: (17) Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.

You would never understand that passage above if you were unfamiliar with the Old Testament. This passage stated the Old was a group of shadows of the New. Paul listed several elements of Old Testament ceremonial laws. Those Old Testament shadows merely gave hints of future good things to come.

And other rule is to remember that Christ and His apostles are preeminent in interpreting scripture. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament infallibly.

Let me give another example of consistent literalism:

Malachi 4:5 predicted the return of Elijah before Jesus would come in the great and terrible day of the Lord. Taking this literally, like the Pharisees did, would mean this could not refer to John the Baptist like Jesus said it did.

John 1:21 KJV And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No.

John knew they literally thought Elijah would come, and he indicated he was not literally Elijah. But Christ said John was Elijah, since the prophecy was not about Elijah literally coming.

Matthew 17:10-12 KJV And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come? (11) And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. (12) But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

Dispensationalism is actually the same error of the pharisees in the first century, and they missed Jesus back then. Dispensationalism is missing scripture even now.

The New Testament understanding of the Old Testament is the true understanding of the Old Testament.




Continued... (click here).