___The best approach to reading Biblical scripture, especially prophecy, is to understand that it had to be expressed in the language of the prophet and the prophet’s era, incorporating figures of speech into its application to the real world.
This applies especially to those visions of future technologies that they had to express in their own language.
Nahum 2:3-4 is an example of this, unmistakable a description of a modern interstate or autobahn (at night) in the prophet’s vocabulary. Nobody in his right mind can “spiritualize” it to anytime before the 20th century at all, because chariot travel did not change until the internal combustion engine got manufactured en masse. It had to be a view of a modern interstate or autobahn, at night no less:
Nahum 2:3 The shield of his mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet: the chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation, and the fir trees shall be terribly shaken.
4 The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.
That said, it is still important to understand that sometimes prophets did NOT understand some of their own prophecies. Also, it depends on “how much” understanding is meant when you say “understanding”.
Daniel 12:8 And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
Daniel no doubt understood that after Greece (which he named) conquered the Medo-Persian Empire, there would be another great empire that would take over, but did not have a name for it. Zechariah described the effect of a nuclear explosion on a person at a certain distance from the center, but did he “understand” it? Daniel said (in chapter 12) that “knowledge shall be increased” but could he have any idea about the knowledge that is getting multiplied every year after the advent of cheap information storage and literally lightning-fast communications?
–trutherator
Truebook 
February 23, 2010 at 2:53 am |
[Web items are getting more exciting. Here’s a recent one! Ashford]
PRETRIB RAPTURE SECRECY
by Dave MacPherson
The word “secrecy” when applied to Christ’s return can refer to two different things: time and visibility. Before 1830 the only coming Christians looked for was the “every eye shall see him” second advent to earth – secret only in point of time.
Enter Margaret Macdonald in 1830. She saw “the one taken and the other left” before “THE WICKED” [Antichrist] will “be revealed” – and added that her pretrib rapture would not be “seen by the natural eye” but only by “those who have the light of God within.” Her rapture was doubly secret: at an unknown day and hour and also invisible to “outsiders.”
Desperate to eliminate Margaret as the pretrib originator and the Irvingites as the first public teachers of pretrib, Darby defender Thomas Ice foolishly claims that they taught a secret POSTTRIB coming even though he knows that when Hal Lindsey teaches “one taken” etc. before the Antichrist “is revealed” Lindsey is expressing the kernel of the pretrib view – what MM and the Irvingites clearly taught before Darby did! Google “X-Raying Margaret” and “Edward Irving is Unnerving” to see why they are properly labeled “pretrib.”)
As early as June 1832, Irving’s journal taught that only “to those who are watching and praying…will Christ be manifested…as the morning star. To the rest of the church, and to the world, this first appearance will be…unintelligible.” (“Present State of Prophetic Knowledge” etc., p. 374)
Always trailing and “borrowing” quietly from the Irvingites who in turn had “borrowed” from Margaret, Darby in 1845 finally sounded like them when he wrote that “the bright and morning Star…is the sweet and blessed sign to them that watch…And such is Christ before He appears [at the final advent to earth]. The Sun will arise on the world….The star is before the [Sun], the joy of those who watch. The unwakeful world, who sleep in the night, see it not.” (“Thoughts on the Apocalypse,” p. 167)
And Lindsey’s “Late Great Planet Earth,” p. 143, says that “the second coming is said to be visible to the whole earth (Revelation 1:7). However, in the Rapture. only the Christians see Him – it’s a mystery, a secret.”
My bestselling book “The Rapture Plot” (available at online stores including Armageddon Books) has 300 pages of such documentation and proves that Margaret was the first to “see” a secret, pretrib rapture, that the Irvingites soon echoed her in their journal (which Darby admitted he avidly read), and that Darby was last on all of the crucial aspects of dispensationalism.
Shockingly, all of the earliest pretrib development rested solely on unclear OT and NT types and symbols and NOT on clear Biblical statements. Margaret’s rapture was inspired by Rev. 11’s “two witnesses.” And her “secret visibility” rested on the “types” of Stephen, Paul, and John – all of whom saw or heard what others couldn’t see or hear.
For 30 years Darby’s pretrib basis was the rapture of Rev. 12’s “man child” – actually his plagiarism of Irving’s usage of this “pretrib” symbol eight years earlier!
As I said at the start, the “second advent to earth” is secret in point of time with its unknown “day and hour,” as Christ stated. Pretribs assert that if Christ returns for the church after the tribulation, we could count down the days and figure out the actual date of His return – which would contradict Christ’s words.
But pretribs deliberately ignore the fact that Christ said that the tribulation days will be shortened – and He didn’t reveal the length of the shortening!
Our opponents also assume that the “watch” verses prove the “any-moment imminence” of Christ’s return. But do they? II Peter 3:12 says we are to be “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God” which all premills claim is at least 1000 years ahead of us and therefore hardly “imminent”! What’s the difference between “watching for” and “looking for”?
You have just learned a few of the many secrets that the Secret Rapture Gang has hidden for a long time. Evidently they have forgotten Luke 12:2’s warning that “there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed”!
PS – For the ultimate in uncovered secrets, see engines like Google and type in “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty.”
February 25, 2010 at 4:22 am |
Thanks for your comments, Ashford.
Actually Christ’s words to those present with him on the earth were “ye know not when”. Well, they didn’t. That was then, this is now. He also told his brothers in John 7, “Go ye up” to the feast. But none of the “any-minute” pretribbers think that means they should “go ye up” to the feast when they read it.
It’s true that “no man” in his day knew either the day or the hour.
But of course we can see plenty of signs today all around us. And even they talk about the seven year period that leads up to it.
–trutherator