Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Reading)
The Biblical Case for the Second Coming as Accomplished Fact
(Book Installment 38)
Part Three – The Nature of the Second Coming
Chapter 7 – How the Bible Describes Truth
Flesh and Spirit…and the Second Coming (continued)
The kingdom of God is a simple, yet immeasurably profound, reality which requires multiple images to convey its many facets. If the kingdom is described in a series of parables in Matthew 13, is it not consistent that Jesus would describe its coming by a series of parables in Matthew 24-25? For in the latter passage He says the arrival of the kingdom will be like, among other things, “a master returning to his house servants,” “a bridegroom coming for his bride (actually ten of them), “a master returning to his commissioned servants,” and “a king separating nations like sheep and goats.”
Now if we take these parables of Matthew 24-25, and, instead of regarding them as parables, treat them as if they were descriptions of physical events, then shouldn’t we be required to go back and do the same with the parables of Matthew 13? That is, if we interpret the parable at the end of Matthew 25 as requiring Jesus to physically appear and physically separate the
physical nations to His physical right and physical left, then should we not also go back to Matthew 13 and re-interpret the final parable as requiring angels to appear physically and cast a physical dragnet over all human beings? Since this would be patently silly, let’s just regard the series of parables in Matthew 24-25 in the way we’re accustomed to regarding parables – that is, as conveying spiritual truths through figurative expressions.
After all, though some spiritual speech can be misinterpreted as physical, there is a way to make it more difficult. And that is by making it incongruous or physically absurd. This is done over and over in the book of Revelation. When John describes, and thereby asks us to picture, Jesus as riding a white horse in the sky wearing a bloody robe and lots of crowns on his head with a sharp sword coming out of his mouth, has not John not practically begged us to take him spiritually and not physically? And doesn’t it glorify Jesus to understand this image spiritually, and, by contrast, trivialize Him by preferring a physical fulfillment (which would make Him into some sort of science-fiction version of Don Quixote)? Why then are people
afraid that a spiritual interpretation of the Second Coming will diminish or minimize the Second Coming of Christ…when actually the reverse is true!
(This section of the chapter will be continued tomorrow)
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