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Literalizing I John 4: 3 and Revelation 13: 11-18
Posted : 24 Aug, 2013 04:37 AM
Literalizing I John 4: 3 and Revelation 13: 11-18
On http://www.realapologetics.org/blog/...lism/#_ftnref3
"[Prophecy is] the ground of absolute literalness."[5]
"Jerusalem is always Jerusalem, Israel always Israel, Zion always Zion�Prophecies may never be spiritualized, but are always literal.[6]" Quotes from C.I. Scofield, the first classical American dispensationalist.
In 1936, Lewis S. Chafer, a classical dispensationalist who founded the Dallas Theological Seminary, defined Scofield's literalism as "The outstanding characteristic of the dispensationalist is ... that he believes every statement of the Bible and gives to it the plain, natural meaning its words imply."
From: L. S. Chafer, �Dispensationalism,� Bibliotheca Sacra, 93, October (1936), pp410, 417.
Charles C. Ryrie says "This distinction between Israel and the church is born out of a system of hermeneutics that is usually called literal interpretation. Therefore, the second aspect of the sine qua non of dispensationalism is the matter of historical-grammatical hermeneutics. The word literal is perhaps not as good as either the word normal or plain, but in any case it is interpretation that does not spiritualize or allegorize as nondispensational interpretation often does. The spiritualizing may be practiced to a lesser or greater degree, but its presence in a system of interpretation is indicative of a nondispensational approach."
Since dispensationalism has been popular in the churches since the time of the Niagra Bible Conference and the 1909 Scofield Reference Bible, the literalist "hermeneutic" has been influential even beyond those who are followers of dispensationalism.
For those influenced by dispensationalism, the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4, and other prophecies about an apostasy of the church, like II Timothy 4: 3-4, or II Timothy 3: 1-2, 4-5, 7-8, happens after the start of the dispensationalist tribulation period. And this happens after the dispensationalist church is raptured. It may be that dispensationalists also tend to think that what is called the New World Order will happen after the beginning of their tribulation.
Two literalized prophecies - on the one man super anti-Christ political leader in I John 4: 3 and the chip received in the right hand or in their foreheads of Revelation 13: 16-17 - are to occur when the New World Order has been established.
I John 4: 3 tells us that "And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."
Revelation 13: 16 says "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:"
But George H.W. Daddy Bush on November 11, 1990 announced in a speech before Congress that "Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order."
What does the New World Order mean? Much of what has been written or spoken about it is conspiracy theory, as seen by the media or most in the church. In fact, wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_%28conspiracy_theory%29
Says that "The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government�which replaces sovereign nation-states�and an all-encompassing propaganda..."
But following the book, The Power Elite, by sociologist C. Wright Mills, published in 1956, there has grown up an academic literature by professors on topics such as the Council of Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Neither sociologist C. Wright Mills nor the academics who followed him in studying some aspects of the ruling elite dealt with many of the other topics concerning the ruling elite and "The New World Order" that "conspiracy theorists" deal with.
Academic Antony C. Sutton in 1983 put out another book about the ruling elite - America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones. This one, however, did not spark as much interest among the professors in the ivy towers as did the book by Texas sociologist C. Wright Mills. Mills did not operate out of Texas; he attained to tenured professorship at Columbia University.
Making Bible prophecy that is in the language of metaphor into literal chips in the hand or forehead, or making the spirit of anti-Christ in I John 4: 3 into one super Anti-Christ as a political leader of the
"New World Order" is not likely to be put down by the media or the church as conspiracy theory. If you follow Paul, rather than man-made theology, literalizing Revelation 13: 11-18 into chips in the hand as the mark of the beast, or some similar literal thing for the image of the beast is making Bible prophecy into fables as he says in II Timothy 4: 3-4.
Revelation 13: 11- 18 is metaphor about the work of the second beast of Revelation 13, often called the False Prophet, who stands for the many false prophets of Matthew 24: 11. Revelation 13: 14 says, for example, that the second beast causes people to make an image to the beast which had the wound by the sword, and did live.
While literalizing the mark and image of the beast, the cues in Revelation 13: 2 about the first beast being like a leopard, a bear and a lion, which do have something to do with literal worldly governments in our time, are missed.
If the reference to the leopard, the bear and the lion are recognized as three of the four beasts of Daniel 7: 4-8, but these beasts are interpreted to be the same kingdoms as in Daniel 2, then this clue about the governments in our time, which might lead up to something like what is meant by the "New World Order" is lost because the four kingdoms in Daniel 2 all began before the Cross. The last kingdom of Daniel 2, the Roman Empire morphed into the first post-Cross empire, the Holy Roman Empire. The world empires of England, Russia, Nazi Germany and the fourth and dreadful beast of Daniel 7 do not exist in a Daniel 7 interpreted to be the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman Empires. So fables exist instead of some prophecy about a first beast of Revelation 13 which is a complex composite. It has some traits of the lion, bear and leopard, which is the order in Daniel 7, and also has that head which received a deadly wound but it was healed, and the whole world wondered after the beast. This is in Revelation 13: 3.
The head of the first beast whose deadly wound was healed is not the super one-man anti-Christ political world leader as the little horn which comes up among those four kingdoms in Daniel 7:8, which is also in Daniel 8: 9. Its the Little Horn, and related to the spirit of anti-Christ, but not The anti-Christ as a literal one man leader.
Then, in the scenarios about the conflict between the King of the North and the King of the South in Daniel 11, the King of the North can be seen as not only the office of the leader of the northern industrial nations under usury banking, but also that political, military, economic and cultural northern power itself. But many Christians will say that Daniel 11 has no relevance to modern events because it was totally fulfilled in the events at the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215 BC � 164 BC). So, again while Daniel 11 could be seen as having some relevance to the northern political or NATO power versus the Islamic power of the South - somehow with Vladimir Putin being a little critical in 2013 of that Northern Power and its current King of the North - many Christians cannot see the relevance of Daniel 11 to what is going on in the world in the 21st century.
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