December 2021 Update from Phil - a podcast by Phil Fields

Hi friend, I’m so glad you’re listening to this update. I will share a very useful tip today.

Before I tell you about that, I want to ask for your help: Are you one who made a New-Year’s resolution last year to read the whole Bible? Well, how did that go for you? Would you be willing to share a word of testimony from your year reading the Bible to encourage others? If so, please use your voice memo app on your cell phone to record your message. You might share a verse that meant a lot to you this year, or share some way God used his Word in your life. I will post your comments at the dailybiblereading.info website. I will tell you how to make and send your audio file to me at the end of this episode.

If you are one of those who made that decision a year ago and have kept up your reading since January 1, you know that we are now in the big Prophecy binge-reading time at the end of the year, reading minor prophets, Isaiah, and Revelation. The possibility of seeing correspondences between your three daily readings goes up to about 95%.

Some people find the prophetic genre difficult. Recently I had a conversation with one of our church’s elders. He had undertaken to do a thorough study through the book of Jeremiah, and found it very difficult. More than that, he complained about his frustration in understanding the book of Revelation. I want to offer a little help in this area that I re-discovered recently. Here’s the tip I mentioned: Dr. Bob Utley’s Free Bible Commentary (http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/) Note the word Free!

What you get in Utley’s commentary is expert information that is gleaned from a lifetime of research. Dr. Utley has dedicated himself to making a high-quality commentary on every book in the Bible. His work is scholarly, yet written so that it is easy to understand.

So, in view of our current prophecy-reading binge, I would like to share some thoughts on the prophetic genre, which is also called the Apocalyptic genre. Many of us recently read the book of Daniel. You may recall that chapter 11 is filled with incredible details prophesied to Daniel by an awesome angelic messenger. I am not going to go into any of the details now. What I will do is to give you some introductory material from Bob Utley’s commentary on Daniel 11. I will summarizing some general points about the prophetic genre that Bob Utley quoted from D. Brent Sandy’s book Plowshares and Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic.

1. From Daniel 2, "What Makes Prophecy Problematic?"
   1. "the question is whether emotional language is necessarily exact language," p. 41
   2. "hyperboles, in effect, stretch the truth in order to increase the impact of the words," p. 41
   3. "a prophet's intent may be to express emotion more than exactness," p. 41
   4. "at what level are readers supposed to understand the prophetic visions—every detail? The overall picture?" p. 48
2. From Daniel 3, "How Does the Language of Prophecy Work?"
   1. "if we fail to grasp the inherent metaphorical nature of language, we fail to understand prophecy," p. 59
3. From Daniel 5, "How Does the Language of Apocalyptic Work?"
   1. Are the details in the vision allusive and symbolic or precise and explicit? Generally, the images lack precision," p. 117
   2. "anticipating the details of political events of the fourth through the second centuries raises the issue whether the point of the vision is the details or the overall impact," p. 119
   3. "but we must not begin with the specific lest we fail to grasp the global!" p. 122
   4. "it is also expected with the nature of apocalyptic language that some details may simply be for effect; stated another way, some details may be make-believe," p. 124
   5. "details may have no particular significance other than to give the account more emotive power," p. 126
   6. "there is a certain amount of futility; therefore, in trying to determine the significance of all the details of apocalyptic visions," p. 126
   7. "to read the Apocalypse with a microscope, even striving to decipher the significance of the most minute detail, defrauds the genre of it intended function," p. 127
   8. "understanding the orality of the Apocalypse underscores the point that correct interpretation pays more attention to the overall impression of the visions than to the individual details," p. 127
   9. "from the vision in Daniel 8 we learn that while apocalyptic may seem on the surface to describe the future in detail, in point of fact, it does not. Some details may in the end match up with a precise event, but it would have been impossible to see that in advance," p. 128

       

      1. From Daniel 6, "How Have Prophecies Been Fulfilled?"
         1. "the already fulfilled prophecies demonstrate a pattern of translucence rather than transparency. The intent was apparently not to give specific information about the future," p. 146
         2. "figures of speech abound in the poetry of prophecy. That should suggest that correct understanding of prophetic poetry is often not possible until after the fulfillment," p. 150
         3. "if we grasp the intent of prophecy as primarily prosecution and persuasion, we will not expect it to reveal details of the future," p. 154

             

            1. Daniel 7, "How Will Prophecies Be Fulfilled?"
               1. "because prophecy is poetic, it is inherently ambiguous and in some ways less precise," p. 158
               2. "given the nature of prophecy, we should probably deduce that it offers panorama, not close-up details," p. 163
               3. "prophecy and apocalyptic: it is a stained-glass window, not a crystal ball," p. 184
               4. "the function of the prophets' language was to draw attention to basic ideas about the future, not to reveal precisely what will happen and when it will happen," p. 184

                   

                  1. Conclusion
                     1. "the fundamental question is, does the language of prophecy intend to give us details from which we can preconstruct how the future will unfold?" p. 206
                     2. "biblical prophecies were generally not understood before they were fulfilled," p. 199
                        This perspective has helped me as I struggled with Dan. 9:24-27. It is less helpful with chapter 11 because there are so many corroborated historical details from Dan. 11:2 to 11:35. Daniel 11:36-45 parallel Dan. 7:7-8,11,24-25 and 9:24-27. These seem to fit into Jesus' words in Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; Paul's words in 1 and 2 Thessalonians; and John's words in the Revelation. However, as the NT authors saw fulfilled OT prophecy only after Jesus' life, these end-time events are not all literal, historical predictions. Only time will tell. But for those last generation of hurting and dying believers, many (but not all) of them may be very literal to encourage them to faith and hope (which is the purpose of all apocalyptic literature).

It was actually my Bible translation team in Indonesia who re-introduced me to the Free Bible Commentary series. They described the commentaries like this: “Utley doesn’t promote only his own interpretation of a passage. Instead he equips the reader with all the information needed to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of differing opinions, giving you the tools needed to make good interpretive decisions.”

My wife, Gale, has been leading two groups of women at our church every week in studying Isaiah 40-66. It used to be that I would find post-it notes on the dining room table with questions for me to answer. Ever since I showed her Bob Utley’s commentary, I seldom find post-it notes on the breakfast table.

Now, to let Bob Utley help us with the book of Revelation, I would like to read a couple of paragraphs from his Introduction to that book:

Most of my adult academic/theological life I have had the presupposition that those who believe the Bible take it "literally" (and that is surely true for historical narrative). However, it has become more and more obvious to me that to take prophecy, poetry, parables, and apocalyptic literature literally is to miss the point of the inspired text. The author's intent, not literalness, is the key to a proper understanding of the Bible. To make the Bible say more [than the original writer intended] (doctrinal specificity) is as dangerous and misleading as to interpret it in such a way as to make it say less than was intended by the original, inspired writer. The focus must be the larger context, the historical setting, and the intention the author expressed in the text itself and in his choice of genre. Genre is a literary contract between the author and the reader. To miss this clue is surely to lead to misinterpretation!

The book of Revelation is surely true, but not historical narrative, not meant to be taken literally. The genre itself is screaming this point to us if we will only hear it. This does not mean that it is not inspired, or not true; it is just figurative, cryptic, symbolic, metaphorical, and imaginative. The first century Jews and Christians were familiar with this type of literature, but we are not! The Christian symbolism in The Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia might possibly be modern parallels.

…

These apocalyptic works were never presented orally; they were always written. They are highly structured, literary works. The structure is crucial to a proper interpretation. A major part of the planned structure of the book of Revelation is seven literary units, which parallel each other to some extent (e.g., the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls). With each cycle the judgment increases: seals, 1/4 destruction; trumpets, 1/3 destruction; bowls, total destruction. Within each literary unit the Second Coming of Christ or some eschatological event occurs: (1) sixth seal, Rev. 6:12-17; (2) seventh trumpet, Rev. 11:15-18; an end-time angel judgment in Rev. 14:14-20; (3) seventh bowl, Rev. 16:17-21 and again in Rev. 19:11-21 and still again in Rev. 22:6-16 (also note the three-fold title for God in Rev. 1:4,8 and Christ in Rev. 1:17,18, "who is, who was, and who is to come," notice the future aspect is left out in Rev. 11:17 and Rev. 16:5 which means the future has come [i.e. second coming]). This shows that the book is not chronologically sequential, but a drama in several acts which foresees the same period of time [expressed] in progressively violent OT judgment motifs (cf. James Blevins, Revelation as Drama and "The Genre of Revelation" in Review and Expositor, Sept. 1980, pp. 393-408).

There is so very much more that I could share. Here again is the link to Dr. Utley’s commentary on Revelation: http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/new_testament_studies/VOL12/VOL12.html

Once again, if you have been blessed by reading the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan this year (no matter where you are in year’s readings), please share your blessing by recording a voice memo for me. This request is for anyone who has been following the Digging Deeper Daily plan, no matter if you have been reading in a Bible, or listening to the daily podcasts. To send your audio file, use the contact button at dailybiblereading.info. Please write a short message to me saying that you have recorded a message for me. You won’t be able to attach the file. But I will reply to that email, and then you can attach your audio file to your reply to me.

May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

Phil & Gale

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