Experimental exegesis with Daniel and Revelation

 

The word “experimental” means that one tries an interpretation because it appears to be the likely outcome but when history proves it to be otherwise, it remains experimental and thus failed. The rule for a sober Adventist, is to keep your own private experimental interpretation for yourself and not to advocate it from a pulpit, Sabbath-school class even in table talk discussions.

The reason for that is the way the Holy Spirit works with unfolding truth. Unfolding truth happens when the Holy Spirit opened-up the mind of a person to see an interpretation that was not seen before but which according to all counts, has the right to be the only interpretation originally intended for a passage.

Rambam or Moses Maimonides was a datesetter and so was Luther and Calvin, although people never thought of that, William Miller of course after many in between, even the Lutheran scholars Hengstenberg who had a very conservative commentary on Daniel, were all datesetters. And then myself also.

My errors are online at Academia and I left it that way to indicate how one can make predictions in Daniel 11 based on knowledge and how it proves wrong in history since what I thought may inaugurate in 2008 never did and we are now in 2019. However, not all my predictions were off the mark. But, I do not want to get into that.

If the Holy Spirit opens the mind of one person, it is never only to one person. Truth is shared and not secretive or secret codes. It is normally very visible, clearly available and simple to explain. It is also revealed to someone else even in another culture and continent at the same time. So the secret of so-called “New Discoveries” are this: wait for others to also come up with the idea.

There is a difference between a preteristic interpretation and futuristic interpretation of prophecy and a historicistic one. The first two interpreters are standing with their faces to the future horizon, but the preterist has his/her Bible behind his back on the ground or on the shelf since all data was exhausted already in the days of the historical prophets mentioned in the Bible. Thus, they are just using brains and feelings to wonder what the future may bring.

The Futurist also faces the future and stand with their Bibles in their hands. They of course look for word or phrase cues in modern events around them now, and look for antichrists from evil labels that they place around them in immediacy. They expect normally the Spirit to miraculously outline the connection with today and tomorrow’s events for them from the words and phrases that they read.

The Historicist ironically, do not face the future but the back since he/she is standing with their Bibles in their hands but they are looking on the ground at newspapers and history books to find clear, simple, globally evident and easily available information to be prove for the data, words or phrases in the unfulfilled prophecies. Their minds are on the future but their eyes are on the ground and in the biblical text in their hands.

Thus, for a historicist, tomorrow is not predicted, it is called-off or announced as it already happened and can be proven to be so. The frames of prophetic charts are known to the historicist but their timing is a matter of waiting before they are explained in specific detail.

It is not the case of a one-man show interpretation. It is a consensus of many continents that came to the same view after considering the data in the newspapers of history books.

La Rondelle was clear that the last part of Daniel 11, from verses 40-45 is a “grey area” in interpretation in SDA circles. Rightly so. And when Smith et al speculated about these passages, and came in controversy with James White, he cautioned everyone to be careful and wait until the events happen before they make utterances as to the fulfillment of these verses.

The interpreter needs to move forward, on the knees, citing the SDA interpreters on Daniel and Revelation from the pioneers to present on a verse, without trying to rewrite the history of interpretation in the remnant on prophecy. The Holy Spirit does not reform the remnant with new ideas, the remnant reform the history of interpretation of less known to more known confirmations of the already revealed interpretations. Continuity of truth is a very important tool of the Holy Spirit. One will for example find that when Adventists came to their full understanding of a doctrine, others came near it in a similar way before but never as perfect in quality as the Adventists. Truth is not divisive it is harmonious. In harmony with the pioneers or some pioneers and continuing with the same principles of interpretation that they used for their historicist interpretations. Better sources will bring better results but most of the time the pioneers were not that far off the mark. When they became sinfully dogmatic about their own opinion, or opinionated, or jealous in political wars with their peers in the work of the Lord, then they made gross errors, and the funny thing is, they worked themselves out of the Adventist church. They admitted that in their publications later then.

This is not how the Spirit works with prophetic interpretations of aspects that is still to unfold to us. We need to be humble and wait almost silently until history or the newspapers announce the case.

 

Koot van Wyk, Chongni, Sangju, South Korea, 15th of May 2019