How to Understand Prophecy
[COLLEEN TINKER]
I’ve just completed my notes for our next Former Adventist Podcast which will cover Daniel 8:15–27. In fact, I’ve been dreading Daniel 8 since Nikki Stevenson and I started studying and discussing this book. After all, Daniel 8:14 is the badly-mutilated text that has traditionally been Adventism’s central passage for “proving” that Jesus, instead of coming to earth as the supposed fulfillment of the “2,300-day prophecy”, went into heaven’s Most Holy Place instead, where He started to review the records of professed Christians to see if their sins were actually confessed. This “investigative judgment” would end only when He finished reviewing every heavenly record of sins, applying His blood to those confessed, and placing the unconfessed ones onto Satan the scapegoat and thus “cleansing the sanctuary”—heaven itself!
The book of Daniel, however—including chapter eight—has been a revelation. Literally.
Two things have become more and more clear to me as I’ve studied through this book with a depth I never would have thought I’d pursue. Those two things are the reliability and unfailing consistency of the language if I read it at face value, using the normal rules of grammar and context and vocabulary, and the discovery of details that illumine not just Daniel’s accounts but passages throughout Scripture.
Trust the Words
We’ve often talked, here at Life Assurance Ministries, about the fact that the words mean what the words say. “Words matter, and context is everything,” I often quote Elizabeth Inrig as saying.
Observe the details. Who was the first audience? What would the words have meant to them? What was the time period? What are the normal meanings of the words? A passage cannot mean something completely different to me than it meant to the first audience even though its application might be somewhat different for me than, for example, for a Jewish prophet serving a pagan king in Babylon.
Yet these rules often seem to crumble when we start reading eschatological passages.
“Oh, this is prophecy,” people are quick to cry out. “We can’t read prophecy literally; it’s full of SYMBOLISM! We can’t even know exactly what it means. Do you believe there will LITERALLY be a beast with teeth of iron and claws of bronze with a violent little horn that has eyes and a blaspheming mouth?!”
This argument is a straw man. When we talk about interpreting Scripture literally, we mean reading it using the NORMAL rules of grammar and punctuation and context.
This argument is a straw man. When we talk about interpreting Scripture literally, we mean reading it using the NORMAL rules of grammar and punctuation and context. For example, a normal reading of poetry recognizes that figurative language is part of the normal structure of a poem. A normal reading of a novel or even of a biography often includes figurative language that we recognize as literary devices for description that we all know are not “literal”. We read those things in context, recognizing their purpose.
I want to illustrate what I mean with a Carl Sandburg poem that I loved when I was in high school:
FOG
The fog comes
on little cat feet.It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
When we read a metaphorical poem such as this one, we don’t try to imagine how fog walks on four paws and then sits on its haunches, watching the harbor and the city.
No! Instead we understand that Sandburg is describing the silent approach of fog—so silent that we might not notice that it has arrived unless we look out the window and see that, cat-like, it has come into our space. We finally see the fog when we realize that we can no longer clearly see the city lights or their glint on the water in the harbor—and then, just as silently and surreptitiously as it came—the fog drifts away and disappears.
What we DON’T do when we read a poem such as this is to dismiss it by saying, “Oh, that’s symbolic language. We really don’t know what it is describing because the writer is using symbols. He could be speaking about a dream, or post-viral brain fog, or a bad smell coming from the kitty-litter box.”
Quite the opposite: we understand that the poet is using metaphor to describe the soft silence and even the cozy comfort of discovering a blanket of fog has descended over our view.
In other words, the literal reading of this poem understands the intentional use of figurative language to describe what is indescribable. This is a description of literal fog using metaphor to evoke an emotional and sensory response.
Metaphors may be used to describe indescribable things, but the context tells us the basic outlines of meaning.
This idea is what we mean when we say that the same hermeneutic using the normal rules of grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, and context should govern the reading of apocalyptic Scripture just as they govern the reading of the rest of the Bible. Metaphors may be used to describe indescribable things, but the context tells us the basic outlines of meaning.
Therefore, when Daniel sees a vision of a fourth indescribable beast that will “devour the whole earth” (Dan. 7:23) and will have ten horns, and an eleventh horn will rise up and take out three of the previously existing one, and that new little horn will have eyes like a man and speak dreadful blasphemies, he isn’t sure what he is seeing. But then the angel tells him the meaning of what he is seeing.
The fourth beast “will be a fourth kingdom”, and it will be different from the previous kingdoms. Ten kings will come out of this kingdom, the angel continues, and then another king will arise and destroy three of those kings that had preceded the newcomer. This new king will speak blasphemies and attempt to change even the laws of nature and physics and reality, and it will have power to do its dreadful deeds for three and a half years (Dan. 7:24–25).
A normal, literal reading of this passage is that the angel is telling Daniel what the beast and the horns represent: a kingdom and kings. But we only get the briefest description of the kingdom and the kings. Instead of details we get figurative language: iron teeth; claws of bronze, a horn waging war with the saints, devouring the earth and crushing it, attempting to change the fixed laws of nature and being given free reign to rule in evil for three and a half years.
Like the Carl Sandberg poem, we do get the big picture: a dreadful kingdom and a dreadful king will come. And then we get the general “feeling”, the nature and character and illustrative picture of how that king and his kingdom will function on the earth. We don’t know details at all. We just know the essential nature of what is coming—and it will be dreadful, disregarding the fixed laws of God and His creation, and only those who are safe in Christ will be secure!
Internal Connections
Besides my increasing conviction that a normal, literal reading of prophecy is the only way to understand what God is saying to us through His prophets, I am surprised and a bit overwhelmed by some of the connections I’m finding in Daniel.
For example, the phrase “son of man” is used in the Old Testament only in Ezekiel (93 times when the transcendent God addresses the prophet and thus emphasizes his humanity) and twice in the book of Daniel. In Daniel 8:17 Gabriel calls Daniel “son of man” when he begins to explain the vision of Daniel 8 to him. The only other place this phrase is used is in Daniel 7:13, and it is used in the judgment scene where “one like a Son of Man” is presented to the Ancient of Days. In this verse the phrase is prophetically describing the Lord Jesus, and Jesus takes this description on Himself when He stands before Caiaphas and affirms that He is the Son of Man who will come in the clouds. This identification of Himself with the phrase in Daniel 7:13 enraged the high priest; he knew Jesus was claiming the identity of God.
Another thing I have learned is that the name Gabriel is first used in Scripture in Daniel 8:15. After this use, it is only used three more times. One of those times is in Daniel 9:21 where the angel again meets Daniel to explain a vision to him. The next place the name Gabriel is used is in Luke 1. In verse 19, the angel meets Zacharias in the temple, and Gabriel tells him he will have a son who will fulfill prophecy; he will be the Elijah who was to come and prepare the way of the Lord.
It wasn’t obedience to the law that qualified Daniel and friends for God’s blessing; it was their BELIEF and trust in God that set them apart.
The last place the name Gabriel is used is in Luke 1:26 when the angel reveals to Mary that she is to be the mother of her own Savior, the incarnate God the Son who would be the Messiah.
While I cannot draw any conclusions based on these four uses, I do find it interesting that Gabriel is mentioned twice in the Old Testament, and both of those appearances are to the Jewish prophet Daniel who was entrusted with prophecies outlining the future of the gentile world in general and of Israel more specifically. The last two appearances of Gabriel are both in the book of Luke—written, interestingly, by the only gentile New Testament author—and both of those appearances are to announce the fulfillment of the prophecies that a Jewish Savior was coming to save the world!
There are many other small details that have come together as I’ve studied Daniel, details that I had never noticed before including the fact that God specifically removed Israel from Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. This fact meant that God made it impossible for the Jews to actually keep the Mosaic law. They had no sacrifices available to them!
Yet the book of Daniel reveals that even in this extreme situation, the Jews were able to worship God and to be loyal to Him by trusting and believing Him. Daniel and his three friends, devoid as they were of temple worship and unable to observe the feast and sabbath days, nonetheless remained true to Yahweh and were blessed by Him throughout their lifetimes of exile. In fact, God delivered one of the most comprehensive revelations of His will for the world to the exiled Daniel serving a pagan emperor, and Daniel’s book records in God’s eternal word the prophet’s unswerving loyalty and our sovereign God’s faithfulness and mercy.
It wasn’t obedience to the law that qualified Daniel and friends for God’s blessing; it was their BELIEF and trust in God that set them apart. It has always been belief that has marked God’s people and has been credited to them for righteousness (Gen. 15:6).
God Isn’t Tricky
Finally, studying Daniel these past several months has only increased my awareness that God doesn’t trick us. He doesn’t hide His purposes, and His prophecies aren’t puzzles we are supposed to figure out.
Adventism made Daniel and Revelation nearly inaccessible to anyone who has an Adventist background. In fact, not only have those books been essentially inaccessible, but they have been post-traumatic stress triggers. I have one friend who had to drop out of her first Christian class on the book of Daniel because she became physically ill as they opened the book and began to study. Many others experience an internal shut-down or anxious avoidance.
Daniel is not inaccessible. To be sure, God hasn’t revealed all the details of His eternal sovereign plan, but He has actually REVEALED Himself and His will to us. The book of Daniel is a comfort. God has not left us without the knowledge of His eternal, sovereign control of all creation and of all mankind.
He has given us the assurance that He is in charge of all timing, and there is no nation or king that will surprise Him or upset His plans and His will. Furthermore, He has revealed that He will punish the evildoers who “wear out the saints” and who seek to destroy God’s people.
Evil cannot move beyond the boundaries Yahweh has set, and we are completely safe when we are in Him.
God reveals His plans to us through His prophets, and He doesn’t leave it up to us to find a secret code by which to figure out His meaning.
God reveals His plans to us through His prophets, and He doesn’t leave it up to us to find a secret code by which to figure out His meaning. The Word who was in the beginning with God and who Is God has given us His words. We read them just as we read any normal book, and His words (translated, of course, from the original languages) carry their normal meanings. We can read them and know that God has communicated to us, and His meaning and purpose are as certain as are His eternal nature and divine power.
I challenge anyone who still feels puzzled or avoidant—or even arrogant—at the thought of studying Daniel to get a notebook, and like my friend Cheryl Granger did years ago when she was in a women’s Bible study going through Daniel, literally copy the book, one verse at a time, into that notebook, praying to know what God wants you to know.
Like Cheryl, you, too may find the exercise “strangely comforting”.
At the very least, this much-ignored book will reveal the comforting truth which Daniel spoke to a Babylonian king: “Heaven rules.” We can rest in that confidence. †
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I liked Sandburg’s poem too. I got to thinking, what if Sandburg had lived in San Francisco. Maybe he would have written his poem differently! Something like:
Fog
By Darrell Sandbag
The fog comes running
like a lion.
It roars through the city canyons
and pounces on the harbor
and then runs on.
Darrell, I love your San Francisco version! Ha!
Colleen