2014 End Times Coincidences Matching Prophetic Times (Video)

Modes of Interpreting Revelation

a. The “Past History” view.

These previous profiles of current New Testament scholarship on Revelation show what is the dominant view of how to interpret the work in its historical context. This approach is sometimes called the “preterist” (or “past history”) view, meaning that the events described in Revelation all took place in the past and the work must be read in that ancient historical context. It is almost universally followed in both New Testament scholarship and by scholars of Christian history. It is also the view taken within many Christian denominations, although it is often amended to suggest that all the historical events are past and that Revelation was describing a situation in the Roman empire, but that the final judgment in some literal sense is still to come as a future event.

On the other hand, religious interpretations of Revelation throughout Christian history have not always followed this approach. We shall here profile some other ways that the book has been read by those who want to apply it to their own times. In each case, the difference is how the “historical content” of Revelation is understood.

b. The “Symbolic History” View.

This view holds that while the precise historical circumstances of Revelation pertained to the Roman world at the end of the Ist century CE, that it nonetheless has a kind of universal and timeless message for God’s dealing with humanity in all generations. Thus it looks for symbolic elements that may apply across the ages. This symbolic or allegorical view is what lay behind St. Augustine’s reading of Revelation, in which he argued that the 1,000-year reign was not a literal number at all but a figurative way of describing the “age of the church” on earth. This view has been the dominant one in most mainstream Christian interpretation, especially in Catholic tradition. It has also been influential in some philosophical appropriations of Revelation in western thinking.

c. The “Continuous History” View.

While the “symbolic history” view (above0 was more-or-less the official view of Revelation adopted by the medieval church, there continued to be literalist readings throughout the Middle Ages. In general, these views took a literal view of the 1,000 years as being the current age of the church. As a result this way of looking at Revelation led some to look to it for ongoing events in the history of Christianity. This mode of interpretation, which sees later events in Christian history as fulfilling “predictions” in the Book of Revelation, is known as the “continuous history” view.

The first major interpreter to develop this view into a system of reading Revelation with current predictive value was Joachim of Fiore (1132-1202 CE). Based on the number 42 months (Rev. 11.2), the duration of the “trampling of the temple,” Joachim concluded that this was period equal to the 42 generations in Matthew’s genealogy from Adam to Jesus (Matt. 1.17). So, he said that these 42 generations (or 1,260 years) marked the period from the birth of Jesus until the end he saw predicted in Revelation. He then looked identified particular events and individuals in Christian history as fulfilling elements in Revelation in a continuum from the days of Jesus until his own time. So, for example, the beast with seven heads (Rev. 13.1), which are explicitly identified as seven kings (Rev. 17.10) he identifies as evil rulers beginning with Herod the Great and continuing to Saladin, the Turkish leader who had only a few years earlier repulsed the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Joachim thus saw, a figure of his own day, as predicted in Revelation’s unfolding of history from ancient to contemporary times.

From Joachim’s day down to the mid-XIXth century, this pattern of calculation became the most common form of literalist interpretation of the “predictive” capacity of Revelation. It is therefore the most common mode of interpretation within literalist postmillenial expectation. It was a prominent feature of many end-time calculations and interpretations during the Reformation period in Europe. It was also used by Cotton Mather and others in colonial America and England; they regularly looked for current events that might be fulfillment of Revelation within this scheme, inevitably looking for elements that pointed toward the nearness of the end of time.

d. The “Future History” View.
(NOTE: After 1900 YEARS of reading this book one way, scam artists and JUDAS GOATS “reinterpreted” it to suit their self-enrichment plans.
(1) The “rapture” Prophets for PROFIT are ANTI-Christ DEATH CULTISTS. God/Jesus put you in this LIFE to learn “soul lessons”, to increase your consciousness to the point of Redemption. Hagee and his Ilk REJECT the LIFE God gave you, and dangle a “shortcut” in front of people, just as SATAN dangled Temptation in front of Jesus. Do not follow the ANTI-Christ lies of FALSE prophets. Their “shortcut” of cheating God’s lessons does NOT lead to Heaven, any more than cheating on school work teaches you the subject. Hagee, Robertson, the whole group, do NOT believe in anything except the MONEY they collect for leading their Flocks astray.
(2) The Greatest Fraud of all in the History of Christianity …. “The Incredible Scofield and His Book” written by Joseph M. Canfield, reveals the following:Cyrus Scofield is a small time politician and career criminal. In 1873, he is forced to resign his position as a District Attorney because of crooked financial transactions that include accepting bribes stealing political contributions, and securing bank notes by forging signatures. Scofield then serves jail time for forgery charges. A heavy drinker, Scofield later abandons his wife and two daughters. His wife finally divorces the drunken crook in 1883. As so many con-men do, Scofield will then claim to have “found Jesus”. He is ordained as a Minister and then claims to have a Doctor of Divinity degree, but this degree is never verified. After several mysterious trips to Europe and New York, Scofield publishes the notated reference Bible that bears his name. The added side notes in Scofield’s Bible inject a very weird “End Times” prophecy into Christianity. Because of Scofield’s altered Bible, many Christians today believe that Jesus will return to save his followers from the “end times” (The Rapture), after Israel is established, and that “God will bless those who bless Israel.” This biblical alteration, at the hands of a known criminal, marks the beginning of a powerful force in American politics known as “Chirstian Zionism” Many millions of “Evangelical” Christians have been mentally infected with Scofield’s poison.

A new mode of interpreting Revelation beginning in the early XIXth century. It grew mostly out of Protestant theology with a strong reforming element, both in Britain and America. It also drew on the strong tradition of literalist interpretation of Revelation as predicting contemporary events that had become popular in these areas through the “continuous history” view. But this new mode began to look at the past history of Christianity from the New Testament through the Middle Ages and down to its own time in a different light. From this perspective, it was hard to compute how the 1,000 years, if taken literally, could refer to the past history of the church, since that would place the inauguration of the Millenium within the timeframe of the medieval Catholic Church. The new view, therefore, began to argue that none of the events described in the Book of Revelation after chapters 1-3 (i.e., John’s vision and the letters to the seven churches of Asia) had yet come to pass. All the florid images of Revelation 4-22 were instead considered to be predictions of future events that would come to pass in literal terms as the return of Christ and the end approached. Thus, this view looks at Revelation as prediction of “future history.”

Central to this mode of interpretation is the view that Revelation, along with most of the rest of the Bible constitutes a similar type of “prophecy” of the future, and it often refers to this overall scheme of interpretation as “Bible prophecy.” Much of the interpretation that comes from this perspective involved linking various passages from different parts of the Bible to form a composite that fits current and future expectations. This mode of interpretation is also directly connected to the rise of pre-millenialism, the view that the 1,000 year reign of Christ will be a literal event that will occur only after Christ returns. Thus, the emphasis on interpreting Revelation, lies in equating its images with those events surrounding the return. Several different versions or systems have been proposed for how the actual events will work out.

The most popular has been that of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), which is known as Dispensationalism, a view made popular in England and America in the early XXth century through the publication of Cyrus Scofield (1843-1921). First published in 1909, it came to be known as The Scofield Reference Bible. On each page it printed the King James translation of 1611 alongside of Scofield’s own copious “notes” on how to read each passage of the Bible in conjunction with other “prophecies.” It thus provided a chainlink interreferencing system to the Book of Revelation, by which one could jump from passage to passage to follow the “true” meaning. The Scofield Bible continued to be popular among certain Protestant Christian groups. From 1909 to 1967 it sold more than 10 million copies; reprinted in 1967, it is said to have sold another 2.5 million copies by 1990. More than any other “future history” interpretation, this one has had the most impact on current literalist interpretations of Revelation.