Making naive assumptions

The world is full of naive assumptions about God and what He might do, or say, or speak, or like.

For instance, some “assume” that all prophecy is strictly linear. That God always talks first about what will happen first. Second He will talk about what will happen second, and so. So they claim, if a passage has a dual subject, then God must first finish talking about Subject A, before He talks about Subject B. Oh?

Take an admittedly difficult passage like
Matthew chapter 24.

There are clearly two subjects in Matthew 24, which was first spoken by Jesus around 30 AD. The first is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. So Jesus speaks of the stones on which the Jewish temple was built, and says,

“… “Don’t you see all of these things? Most assuredly I tell you, there will not be left here one stone on another, that will not be thrown down.””
Mtt 24:2

That literally happened in 70 AD, and almost all acknowledge that Matthew 24 does talk about the war that drew to its conclusion in 70 AD!

But also Matthew 24 clearly talks about the end of this present universe. So Jesus says,

“and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky. Then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.”
Mtt 24:30

The issue for most is, where does the first subject stop, and the second subject begin?

Suppose we are talking about two boys,
Bobby and Billy.

We may say, well Bobby is really good at math. Yes, but Billy is really good at sports. That is true but also Bobby is good drama. Yes, and Billy is good at history and geography. And so on. So may go on talking for hours about Bobby and Billy, in a perfectly normal discussion of two normal little boys, or say two perfectly normal politicians running for office, going back and forth between two subjects! Such is not strange in human discussions.

And the answer for Matthew 24?

I think it is that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD is symbolic of the end of our present universe, and Jesus is in Matthew 24 talking back and forth about both subjects. This is in fact a common device used in Bible prophecy. So to see what might apply to 70 AD, we might read the Jewish historian Josephus. And learn more about the end of this universe, we might consider how 70 AD happened.

The bottom line?

God can talk to us back and forth about more than one subject at a time if He wants to. It is for us to listen carefully and follow the conversation.

So what should we do?

The best way to avoid naive assumptions is first study fulfilled prophecies and see how they work, and then trying to derive our principles from what we see working in fulfilled prophecy. This is done in some detail in my first book, Prophecy Principles.

Scriptures are from the World English Bible (WEB), a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901