Thursday, April 26, 2012

Rubik's Cube

Amils, premils, and postmils disagree with each other on how to sequence the various endtime prophecies of Scripture. Indeed, there are variations within each camp. This reminds me of gospel harmonies.

There’s a related reason why we can’t always agree on the best way to harmonize the gospels, or the best way to intercalate Matthean or Pauline eschatological notices into the framework of Revelation. And that’s because we can’t compare our reconstructions to the past or future. We lack direct access to the past or future. Indeed, in many instances, selective biblical accounts are our only or primary source of information. So there’s no larger frame of reference to tell us what comes before something else or after something else.

By contrast, take the relation of the OT to the NT. Some (but not all) OT prophecies are fulfilled in the NT–in some cases an inaugurated fulfillment. Because we not only have the prophecy, but the history, we can see how they fall into place. How they fit into a sequence of events. But for some other NT prophecies or outstanding OT prophecies, we lack that context. We can propose different combinations, but which one is correct may not be testable ahead of time.

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