In last month's issue of the Biblical Worldview, I included a letter that I wrote (with some modification) in response to Gary Hedrick's article that appeared in the September-October 1999 issue of the Message of The Christian Jew magazine. This article is the concluding installment.

When speaking of prophecy, Hedrick writes, "When the Lord speaks prophetically, He means what He says and He says what He means." I agree. But how do we determine what He means? The Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible as former Dallas Theological Seminary professor S. Lewis Johnson insists:

Since [the biblical authors] are reliable teachers of biblical doctrine, they are also reliable teachers of hermeneutical and exegetical procedures. It is just this that is lacking in so much of our biblical interpretation today. Failing to examine the methodology of the scriptural writers carefully, and following too abjectly and woodenly the limited rules and principles of human reason's presuppositions, we have stumbled and lost our landmarks along the pathway toward the understanding of the Holy Scripture. Scriptura sui ipsius interpres [Scripture is its own interpreter] is the fundamental principle of biblical interpretation."1

Hedrick works hard to avoid this biblical methodology. When he comes to the time texts, he abandons his standard "when the Lord speaks prophetically, He means what He says and He says what He means." "What our preterist brethren fail to understand," Hedrick writes, is that [the Greek word] tachus ['near'] is very much a relative term." And this from a literalist! In support of this claim, Hedrick quotes from Second Clement 20:3, a non-biblical source, rather than from the NT. In another place he writes, "When Jesus said He would come 'soon,' or 'quickly,' He used terms that did not lock Him into any specific time frame." Unbelievable! I wonder if the same "no-lock" time frame applies when Jesus told His disciples, "Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, 'The Teacher says, "My time is at hand; I am to keep the Passover at your house with My disciples"'"? (Matt. 26:18). It is very easy to determine how to interpret the time words: See how they are used in the New Testament in other contexts. Get out a concordance and look them up for yourself. They mean what they mean in everyday speech.

Gary Hedrick wants us to believe that Jesus' coming is "near." He's not alone. Prophecy writers continually point to contemporary events as evidence that Jesus is coming "soon." For example, a letter written to Christianity Today (Dec. 6, 1999) claims that "Signs of Christ's return are increasing in frequency and intensity." Where have we heard this before? I don't have enough time or space to show how this claim has been made by hundreds of prophecy writers throughout the centuries. The letter writer continues by asserting, "All of these signs indicate that the sand in earth's hourglass will soon run out and that a literal fulfillment of God's final prophetic book, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, is shortly at hand."

This writer uses "soon," "shortly," and "at hand," time words that also appear in the Bible. What do you think he means by them? Do these words mean what they mean in ordinary speech? Of course they do. Then why don't they mean the same thing when they're used in the Bible? Jack Van Impe says that "Jesus is coming soon" in his latest book, Millennium: Beginning or End? (81, 1999). Chuck Smith made the same prediction in The End Times (65, 1978), also published as The Final Curtain (46, 1984): "It is later than you think. It is time to wake up from your lethargy and realize that the coming of the Lord is at hand!" Again, why do these authors use these time words? They want us to believe that Jesus is coming "soon," that the "time is near." But this is what the Bible said nearly 2000 years ago!

A similar approach is taken by Hedrick when he gets to "this generation" (Matt. 24:34). He admits that the "this generation" of Matthew 23:36 "refers to the Jewish people who lived when certain events took place (specifically, the first-century persecution of the Jewish nation)." When he gets to 24:34 he claims that Jesus' "reference was not to the generation of believers alive in the first century, but to the generation living when 'all these things' (i.e., the prophetic signs and trends delineated in Matthew 24) begin to be fulfilled." Look what Hedrick has to do to get Matthew 24:34 to mean this: First, he has to dismiss the way "this generation" is used elsewhere in the gospels: It always means the generation to whom Jesus is speaking. Second, he must add words to the text to get the interpretation he wants: The generation living when all these things take place. In effect, he doesn't use the Bible to interpret the Bible. Like the time texts, Hedrick scrupulously avoids showing how Scripture ("this generation") interprets Scripture ("this generation"). Since Jesus was telling His disciples that they would see these things, Hedrick has made Jesus out to be a liar. That generation did see "all these things" because Jesus said they would.

This brings me to the next point in my response. Hedrick futurizes Matthew 24 beyond the first-century because he believes that "the end of the age" has not taken place. We'll continue our critique from where we left off last month:

Fourth, when did the "end of the age" take place? Paul writes to the Corinthians: "Now these things happened to them [OT Israelites] as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come" (1 Cor. 10:11). The first-century church was living at the end of the Old Covenant age. They were living in the "last days" (Heb. 1:2) of the Old Covenant. Similar language is used in Hebrews 9:26: "but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Peter describes this period of redemptive history as "these last times" (1 Peter 1:20) and "the end of all things" (4:7), an event that he maintained was "at hand." John told his first-century readers, "Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18). How much more clear could the New Testament writers have been? The "end of the age" was a first-century event.

Fifth, what about the sun, moon, and stars in Matthew 24:30? Again, LDM has a complete discussion of this subject. The OT is loaded with sun, moon, and stars language. National Israel is pictured as the sun (Jacob), moon (Rachel), and stars (sons of Israel) in Genesis 37:9-11 and Revelation 12:1-2. Even dispensational commentators take this interpretive approach (see LDM, 146-47). Jesus quotes from Isaiah 13:10 which describes the destruction of OT Babylon as "the stars of heaven and their constellations" not flashing "forth their light." The sun is said to be "dark when it rises," and "the moon will not shed its light." Did this happen? All the commentators say it did. Babylon was judged by God. But you would have to say these things did not happen because "there were no supernatural signs in the heavens."

Charles L. Feinberg, writing in the dispensational Liberty Bible Commentary on Revelation, concludes: "The sun, moon, and stars indicate a complete system of government and remind the reader of Genesis 37:9. God had caused royal dignity to rest in Israel in the line of David."2 He nowhere indicates that the real sun, moon, and stars are in view in the passage. This "complete system of government" under judgment is depicted as sun, moon, and stars falling and going dark. Jesus applies the same language to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Did it happen? Jesus said it did: "This generation will not pass away until all these things take place," as understood against the biblical imagery of sun, moon, and stars going dark and falling.

Sixth, Gary North and false prophecy. As you note, Gary North and I have written books together. We've had long discussions over the years on numerous topics, including Y2K. On no occasion has he ever tied his views on Y2K to an appeal to specific texts in the Bible. He wrote the following answering the charge that he is just like every other Bible prophecy writer, something Tommy Ice tries to prove in order to get dozens of dispensational date setters off the hook:

I am an anti-premillennialist (anti-apocalypticist), and I have spent about a million dollars to publish books against apocalypticism. For this reason I am distrusted by the fundamentalist leadership. I am what is known as a postmillennialist, a position that is anti-apocalyptic to the core. For this reason, my stand on Y2K is not understood by my many fundamentalist critics. They regard my views on Y2K as too apocalyptic. My views sound far more like what they believe. . . . Y2K has nothing to do with the so-called end times promoted by fundamentalists, because those end times are a misrepresentation of what the New Testament teaches. For saying this for over 30 years, I have gained considerable opposition from fundamentalists.

Gary North has many critics, even among preterists, when it comes to his Y2K views. Since LDM deals with biblical predictive arguments, I did not include North's analysis of Y2K since he does not link his analysis to the Bible the way dispensational date setters do. When Dave Hunt writes a book with the title How Close Are We?: Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ?, his appeal is to the Bible. He claims the Bible tells him these things.

Based on his previous predictions on gold and silver, AIDS, and nuclear war, Gary has probably overstated his case. (I've written this on December 1, 1999). If he is wrong on Y2K, then only Gary North's reputation will be questioned. If someone quotes the Bible and predicts the certainty of a prophetic event, then the Bible's integrity is called into questioned. Gary North has never said "Thus saith the Lord" only "Thus saith Gary North" and a lot more Y2K analysts.

Seventh, the "coming of the Son of Man." Every reference to Jesus' coming is not a reference to His second coming.

"I am coming to you [church in Ephesus]. . . unless you repent" (Rev. 2:5).
"Repent . . . or else I am coming to you quickly . . . to make war against them with the sword of My mouth" (Rev. 2:16).
"If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you" (Rev. 3:3).
Even non-preterist commentators agree that these passages do not refer to Christ's second coming even though the Revelation 3:3 passage describes this judgment coming as "like a thief" (cf. 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10; Rev. 16:15).

The Ephesian Christians were also sharply warned that if they did not heed exhortation, they could expect sudden judgment and removal of the candlestick. As [Henry] Alford comments, this is "not Christ's final coming, but His coming in special judgment is here indicated."3

If the church does not repent, Christ will come and remove their lampstand from its place. The reference is not so much to the parousia as it is to an immediate visitation for preliminary judgment. Christ, after all, walks among his churches (2:1).4

The words "I will soon come to you" [2:16] should be understood as a coming "against" the congregation in judgment, as in v. 5, and not as a reference to Christ's second coming.5

"This coming of Christ is not the Second Coming. It is a special coming of visitation, in judgment and discipline."6

There are a number of Old Testament comings of Jehovah. Were these visible manifestations? Not one commentator I consulted concluded that they referred to a bodily coming of Jehovah.

"Behold, the LORD is riding on a swift cloud, and is about to come to Egypt; the idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them" (Isa. 19:1).
"For behold, the LORD is about to come out from His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth [land] for their iniquity; and the earth [land] will reveal her blood-shed, and will no longer cover her slain" (Isa. 26:21).
"For Behold, the LORD is coming forth from His place. He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth [land]" (Micah 1:3).
The coming of Jesus on clouds in Matthew 24:30 is a direct quotation from Daniel 7:13 where the Son of Man comes "up to the Ancient of Days." This cannot be the Second Coming! Daniel's description best fits the first century where we know Jesus is presently sitting at Jehovah's right hand (Acts 2:34). Dispensationalism must divert people away from the clear teaching of Scripture to make its case.



NOTES

1. S. Lewis Johnson, Jr., The Old Testament in the New: An Argument for Biblical Inspiration (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1980), 83.

2. Charles L. Feinberg, "Revelation," Liberty Bible Commentary, 2 vols. (Lynchburg, VA: Old-Time Gospel Hour, 1982), 2:820

3. John F. Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ: A Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1966), 57.

4. Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 70.

5. Alan F. Johnson, Revelation: The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 46.

6. Steven J. Lawson, Final Call (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), 86.

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