Some want to
impose styles which
are not there.
They may try to make the prophecy to only speak of things which a man of that time could know, or see, or think. Without saying so, they are assuming that God is not real, or He would never care about or communicate with His creation, and would never reveal the future to us. That, all in all, is tall group of assumptions about a God whom we can all clearly see exists from His creations. Compare Rom 1:19-20, and Psalm 19.
Others, of many stripes, want to insist that God only speak this way or that way, but indeed, God the Maker of All, can speak any way He wants.
Think about how ordinary human conversations work.
People may meet each other, ask how the other one is doing, ask about our relatives or friends or mates. They may bring up some big goings on at the time, drop back to talk about the weather, or the crops, or the financial markets, then come back to bring up their mates or their children again. Then they remember what the weather man said about next Tuesday, and talk about a worrisome financial report that some supposed experts put up, or the problem with a child or a mutual friend. Such conversations may go on for a few minutes, or a few hours, in living room, a park, a bar, or a street corner, all with no precise format or structure.
Prophecy often has a conversational syntax.
Sometime we may try to impose some rigid structure that we think it surely must have, but when we look at details we know about here or there, we often have to acknowledge that it is not a rigid format, even though it may irk us. Assumed subjects, dropped verbs, are everywhere.
An easy overall illustration is Isaiah 9
Isaiah 9:1 starts by speaking of the darkness in the land of Zebulun and Naphtal, and then says they will see a great light. That is when they see Christ some 700 or so years later. Then it says all the armor and weapons and garments soaked in blood will be burned, Isa 9:5. When did that happen? Has it happened to “all,” even yet? Then it speaks in dazzling terms of the Christ coming as a child in Isa 9:6-7. Then it drops back to discuss mess in Jacob in Isaiah’s day. Such is common.
Another common technique
is when the topic under immediate discussion, is related to the end of this world. For instance in the letters to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation. The letters start by speaking of where these churches were in the first century of our age, and end up saying something like, “He who overcomes, and he who keeps my works to the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.” Rev 2:26 WEB. Thus in time it jumps, how far? Over 2,000 years! All with little or no notice. It is easy to see such in the letters, but really that is a common device all through prophecy.
WEB
is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the
original ASV American Standard Version 1901
