| Jesus and the End-Time The Interpretation of the End-Time Rightly Handling the Word of Truth |
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15Speculation, needless and otherwise, is almost always fun and sometimes sensational. But it is almost never profitable. The example Paul cites following his famous words of 2 Timothy 2:15 is of two brothers named Philetus and Hymenaeus who had a speculative notion about the resurrection of the dead and were thus "upsetting the faith of some" (2 Timothy 2:18). In Paul's terms, if they had rightly handled the word of truth, they would not have gotten into this predicament. Because the study of the end-time deals with events that have only partially taken place, it has tended toward speculation ever since the unhappy example of Philetus and Hymenaeus. One tool for such speculation in modern times has been the King James rendering of 2 Timothy 2:15, which reads "rightly dividing the word of truth." This has been taken to mean that the Bible should be divided up according to subject, sorted out verse by verse or passage by passage. Unfortunately, the King James Version is a mistranslation of the text, so it is not a very good "proof text." Of the ten English translations of the New Testament in my library, King James is the only one that speaks of "dividing." All of the others point, in varied wordings, to the right use or handling of the word of truth. The Greek text, literally rendered, would be something like "guiding the Word of truth along a straight path."1 If we are not commanded to divide the word of truth but to handle it rightly, how are we going to go about it? Nothing is more important to a discussion of the end-time then setting forth the rules of interpretation. The ghosts of guesswork and speculation loom all about us. The first rule is to respect the Bible as literature. This guarantees that we will show at least as much respect for the Bible as we show to Shakespeare. The tools of study and insight that we use to understand the best words of men we will also use to study the Word of God. Specifically, we must avoid treating all Scripture the same-that is, as a series of propositions. There are propositions in the Bible-flat declarations of fact or principle in the indicative mood; we depend on them to give us light on those passages that are not propositional. For much of the Bible is, like all literature, indirect; we can misread it badly if we take an indirect expression of truth-such as a parable or a vision-as a proposition. For example, in Luke 7:35,36 Jesus says, "But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful." That clearly is a straightforward proposition concerning the character of God and our responsibility to be like him in his mercy and patience. But then in the same Gospel of Luke, 19:11-27, Jesus tells a parable to his disciples "because they supposed that the Kingdom of God was to appear immediately." The story is about a nobleman who goes away from his lands in order to be crowned king, leaving his servants behind to busy themselves with his affairs while he is gone. Then, when he returns as king, he demands an accounting from his servants, dealing harshly with one particular servant who was too cowardly to act as the nobleman desired. Then the nobleman enunciates the principle: "To every one who has will more be given, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away." Further, he requires that all those who do not want him as king be executed before his eyes. The story illustrates Jesus' point about the delay of the Kingdom. Luke tells us clearly that this is the reason for the story. But the nobleman is like Jesus only in relation to that one point; to invest his words and acts with the authority of Jesus is gross misinterpretation. Consider: his words "from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away" directly contradict Jesus' own words "lend, expecting nothing in return." In the context of the story as story what the nobleman says and does makes sense, but it would make no sense at all if it were taken as an example of Jesus' own teaching and character. So it is worse than useless to declare "the Bible says" in defense of an opinion unless you are also prepared to show how the Bible says it. If the saying is in a parable, for what purpose was the parable told? And who in the parable is speaking, and for what reason? Is it the main purpose of the parable, or is it peripheral? Does it merely contribute to the story as story (as does the bloodcurdling detail that the new king will not be satisfied until his enemies are killed before his eyes), or does it clarify the purpose of the parable as stated? Again, if the saying is in a poem when you declare "the Bible says," do you refer to the impact of the poem as a whole, and are the lines you quote consistent with that? For poems, such as the Psalms and certain prophetic passages, are not so much series of propositions designed to state a fact as they are units of literature designed to convey an impression. More at issue in the interpretation of the end-time is the handling of visions. A vision is a form of revelation in which God arranges a series of pictures in which the receiver of the vision is a witness, a participant, or both. God reveals what he wants the viewer to see, not all there is to show-much as a master filmmaker edits his film. Biblical visions are crammed with symbols; what is seen has meaning deeper than its surface appearance. The only really sound explanation of a vision is one that appears in the context of the vision. Some visions include these explanations, others do not, and still others include explanations that time has obscured. Let me cite three examples of what I mean. First, a vision with an interpretative clue. In Acts 10 Peter has a vision of a sheet full of unclean beasts that he is commanded by a heavenly voice to kill and eat. We are provided with an understandable clue to the vision in the events immediately following, in which Peter is sent on his first mission to Gentiles. "What God has cleansed, you must not call common" (Acts 10:15). Peter understands that he is to call no man common or unclean, and the Church, when he reports to them, understands also: "Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance unto life" (Acts 11:18). Second, a vision without an explanation. We have already alluded to it: the vision Daniel was given which even he did not understand. The explanation is as cryptic as the vision (Daniel 8). It is true that this has not stopped interpreters, but the interpretation in the very nature of the case is bound to be speculative. That this is so shown by the fact that the interpreters of Daniel are hardly unanimous in their understanding, while the interpreters of Acts 10 do not have that problem. The reason is that Acts 10 provides an understandable interpretative clue, and Daniel 8 does not. Third, a vision with an obscure explanation. In this case the clue apparently had meaning for the original readers, but it is lost to us. As reported in Revelation 13, John saw a beast arising out of the earth. It is a fearful, obscene creature. Then John lets his readers in on the identity of the beast-at least he thinks he does. "This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon on the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred sixty-six? (Revelation 13:18). However obvious this may have been to John's original readers, all it explains to the modern reader is that the beast refers to a man. You can do a great deal to interpret it, but no matter how reasonable an explanation sounds, the fact is you can come up with any number of similarly reasonable explanations. A number like that can be made to mean almost anything. It certainly means something; we just do not know what it is.2 I will not attempt to interpret visions unless an understandable interpretative clue is given within the context of the vision. The first rule, respecting the Bible as literature, leads to the second: we must respect the diversity of the Bible. Not only does the Bible contain varied literary forms-stories, poems, visions-but it is also the product of many authors over a long period of time. We must not violate that diversity by, in effect, taking a scissors to the Bible, cutting out passages that belong hundreds of years apart, and gluing them together in an arrangement that suits a preconceived scheme of what the end-time is. Rather, we must let each book and each complete passage speak in its own way, after its own fashion, and in its own intention; if we do this faithfully, we will find it speaking to our own situation more honestly and accurately than if we try to force it into another pattern. But respect for the diversity of the Bible will not distract us from the third rule of interpretation: we will respect the essential unity of the Bible. There are underlying assumptions in the Bible which are general in nature and of enormous consequence. The Bible is a collection of literary material, but it is not a random collection; we claim the Bible as the inspired Word of God. These assumptions, as they directly apply to the interpretation of the end-time, are as follows:
These assumptions are the bedrock of common Christianity. All those who are concerned with a biblical understanding of the end-time assume them, including those who disagree violently with the way this particular scribe of the Kingdom brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. I point them out not because of a need to defend them (those who do not accept them will hardly be interested in what the Bible says about the end-time anyway) but in order to underscore the essential unity of the Word of truth. The Bible is one because it is a book about God as well as a word from God. It bears a remarkable consistency within itself as to what it says about God. Our fourth rule-and this is where that large dash of humility I mentioned is to be thrown in-is that we must respect the mystery of the Bible. Even though we will be doing our best to keep the first three rules, we must not pretend that the Bible in all its parts is an "open book" to us. We must respect its mystery. I will try to stay with what I understand, but from time to time I will trip over mysterious thins that will not yield to ordinary study. And since I have made a vow not to speculate, these mysteries will remain mysterious. They will remind us that God knows more than we do. Of course, what is mysterious to me may be plain to another scribe who is better trained than I for the Kingdom of heaven. But he will not escape mystery. At places beyond my depth he will find still deeper mysteries. For if we suppose that we understand everything, we do not explain nearly so much as we explain away. So we enter into the interpretation of the end-time with these principles-respect for literature, respect for diversity, respect for unity, and respect for mystery. We also enter suspicious of our own intentions, suspicious of any inferences we draw from a given text that is not as clear as we pretend it is, above all, suspicious of explanations that explain too much and do not take into account the mystery and diversity of our biblical sources. 1 Apparently the KJV translators divided the compound verb orthotomeo into its component parts (ortho=straight, tomos=cutting, sharp) and derived "divide" from "cut sharp." Perhaps they would have chosen differently if they had known the use to which their word choice would eventually be put! For a critical discussion of the practice of "dividing the word" see George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope, Eerdman's, 1956, pp. 130-136. For a favorable presentation see C.I. Scofield's The Word of Truth Rightly Divided. Scofield takes 2 Timothy 2:15 as proof for his method, but he acknowledges no translation other than KJV. The booklet is in print (Back to the Bible Broadcast, 1971). 2 Nils W. Lund, Studies in the Book of Revelation, Covenant Press, 1955, pp. 151, 152, discusses several alternatives for 666. Another novel interpretation is in Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth, Zondervan, 1970, p. 113. The various explanations lead to the inevitable conclusion that no one really knows what it means. » Next Page — The Imminence of the End-Time: He is Coming Soon » Table of Contents » Home |