Hermeneutics: What's That?

Introduction

On January 20, 2021, Joseph Biden was sworn in as 46th president of these United States. This marked the end of a very contentious political season. Two grown men clamoring for the votes of one nation, that nation long since having lost its mantra of being “under God.” Instead, that nation heaved and rocked back and forth through a lurching battle for supremacy.

Perhaps what was most intriguing for a Christian observer such as myself was the way in which this countries citizens sought to support their parties platform by using the Word of God. Multiple times throughout the last months, candidates and voters alike attempted to persuade those on the other side of the aisle that their own side was the more Christian one.

This is the country that we have become. This is the church we have become.

Into this worldview comes that thundering words of the Apocalypse.

Four Views on Revelation

READ Revelation 1:1

Preterism

Historicism

Futurism

Idealism

Critique of Historicism

• “Modern commentaries presenting [historicism] are rare to nonexistent, though an abbreviated list of the luminaries of the past who took this view would have to include John Wycliffe, John Knox, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon, Sir Isaac Newton, Jan Huss, John Foxe, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Finney, C. H. Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, E. B. Elliott, H. Grattan Guinness, and Bishop Thomas Newton.”

Historicism was the means by which scholars from even before the Reformation looked at Revelation. This led to the Reformers, when looking at the abuses of the church in the Middle Ages, to conclude that the pope himself was the antichrist. But I want to read to you a quote from one of the most recently published commentaries on the Book of Revelation. It was written by a biblical scholar who follows the hermeneutic of Futurism. This is what he writes about historicism.

• “It is more difficult to find legitimacy in the historicist approach despite its attractiveness to the Reformers in their polemics against the papacy (utilized also by earlier church leaders who resisted corrupt popes or clerical practices). Revelation simply does not follow the pattern of other ancient apocalypses in tracing the course of the history of God’s people or of the world across the centuries up to its own day and into the eschaton (e.g., the animal apocalypse in 1 En. 85–90; the apocalypse of weeks in 1 En. 91 and 93). In comparison with the periodization of history found in Daniel 2 and 7 (four kingdoms) and Daniel 9 (seventy weeks), Revelation chooses to focus only on the culmination of God’s kingdom coming to earth . . ., not the centuries-long sequence of events that lead to it.”

The obvious question that presents us today is why did the Protestant world reject historicism as the key to interpreting Revelation? The answer seems clear to me in this author’s own admission. Let me read the opening line of this quotation one more time.

The Protestant church has by and large, ceased to speak against the Catholic church. What is even more amazing is that Seventh-day Adventists, in following the historicists method of interpreting the Book of Revelation, have always predicted that the Protestant world would do just that, cease to point out to the church where the church itself has come to stand in the place of Christ and thus has become like the biblical antichrist.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Unintended consequences: Short selling by institutional hedge funds on GameStop led to the members of a reddit subgroup wallstreetbets buying at such a rate that the price of the stock of GameStop went up instead of down. This caused the institutional hedge funds to lose their investment as it drove the value of the stock from $17 per share at the beginning of the year share up to $330 per share. What that means is that if you had invested $1,000 at Christmas in the shares of GameStop, you could sell them now for a return of almost $20,000. That is a return of almost 20 times the value in just one month.

But all of this has come with unintended consequences. The day-trading app used by many of this individual investors, named robinhood, stop allowing the trades on GameStop. The users have quickly filed suit in court over this. In addition, other stocks that seemed headed down have seen a resurgence. AMC, the countries leading movie theater chain, has been saved by all of the craziness of the last month. Even Blackberry, the long forgotten “smartphone” of choice by former president Barak Obama, has seen a significant increase in its stock. So much that its own CEO sold off a large investment of his own. In addition, the federal government has now taken notice of all of the turmoil caused by these day traders and Congress is now scheduling hearings on what to do about all of this.

Meanwhile, the crazed individual investors who started all of the trouble are now hold stock that everyone knows is completely overvalued. What are they going to do with it? Unintended consequences.

READ Proverbs 16:18 Being right also has unintended consequences.

How do Adventists relate to being right? Having the truth? Being the remnant?

Fearful of not passing on the faith of our fathers so we instead turn to a catechism.

Confident that if we are members of the “Remnant” church, that is all that matters.

Let me ask you a question however. If God’s people, the Israelites born from the seed of Abraham, ultimately rejected God’s Son and sent Him to a Roman cross. And if God’s church, lured by the seductive power of greed and luxury, left the mission to which it had been tasked and instead, became that which prevented people from finding Jesus instead of leading people to Jesus and lead the church even to kill those who studied their bibles and preached the truths that they found there. And if the Reformation, which grew up to call attention to the ways in which God’s church had ceased to become patterned after the life of God’s Son and so God raised up another group, the Seventh-day Adventist church, to point the way back to God’s house, God’s sanctuary, and to the salvation that was freely offered there. What makes us so sure that we also will not fail to live up to the calling that has been set before us.

I know, you will quote to me the statement from the pen of inspiration, written by Ellen White over 100 years ago, that though it seems she will fail, the church will go through.

“The church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall. It remains, while the sinners in Zion will be sifted out—the chaff separated from the precious wheat. This is a terrible ordeal, but nevertheless it must take place. None but those who have been overcoming by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony will be found with the loyal and true, without spot or stain of sin, without guile in their mouths. We must be divested of our self-righteousness and arrayed in the righteousness of Christ.”

But remember, the same pen also wrote, “It is a solemn statement that I make to the church, that not one in twenty whose names are registered upon the church books are prepared to close their earthly history, and would be as verily without God and without hope in the world as the common sinner. They are professedly serving God, but they are more earnestly serving mammon. This half-and-half work is a constant denying of Christ, rather than a confessing of Christ”

Being right means nothing. Being a part of the “remnant” church is something that exists only on paper.

Application

As you begin your study of the book of Revelation, you will find that it it’s focus is on Jesus, all the way through. The Revelation of Jesus is what this book is all about. But too often we forget what that even means. So Revelation reminds us. Jesus is the Lamb that was slain. This is forever his image, even in the end when he comes as a conqueror with His robe dipped in blood. He is the Lamb that was Slain.

What image is brought to mind by this focus on Jesus that can guide us through our lives in this world where we constantly clamor for power and influence, desperate to prove that our side is right, that our team will win, that our party is the most Christian, that we have the truth.

The Lamb that Was Slain. That is the picture, that is the antidote, that is the vaccination that is sure to inoculate us against the wiles of the devil and our own stubborn pride. The Lamb that Was Slain. He will forever carry that title. The Lamb that Was Slain.

While we clamor for titles full of superlatives like the GOAT, the King, the Great One, Jesus bears the title, The Lamb that Was Slain.

If your church has the truth, if you are part of the remnant, then that must mean one thing and one thing alone. You have discovered the heart of the Lamb who cast all glory aside because He was interested in giving it all to you.

Conclusion

Please. Do not look at another church and think, “They are the harlot because they worship on the wrong day.” And please, do not look at this church and think, “This is the Bride of Christ be it worships on the right day.”

The key distinction between the two is between real freedom and what looks on the outside to be freedom, but ultimately is about fear and coercion.

While God’s Day of worship is of paramount importance to Him, it is not the basis of your salvation. You are saved, if you are, because of something free. Not something you can work for. Sabbath is a sign that your salvation is free. Never allow yourself to think that you are saved because you keep Sabbath. That is salvation by works.

What will cost you everything you have but is free. Matt 13:44

Additional Material

Unintended consequences: only 23 cases of flu reported this year’s flu season. Seems like a good thing but experts warn that it can be dangerous as well. Since less people are infected, when the flu comes back, as they know if will, it has a good chance of being much more deadly because fewer people were infected in the past and fought it off.