Tuese: APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE - PROPHETIC SYMBOLS Pt. 1

APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE - PROPHETIC SYMBOLS Pt. 1

March 15, 2014 at 10:41pm

APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE - PROPHETIC SYMBOLS
http://richardwaynegarganta.com/propheticsymbols.htm

A Document That Will Help You Understand TheProphetic Symbols And Apocalyptic Language Of The Bible By Comparing SymbolsFrom Old And New Testament Prophecies
For the most part this was taken from ChapterSix from - ProphecyFulfilled — God’s Perfect Church by by David P. Crews - TeleiosBooks - New Light Publishing Austin, Texas and this document was originallyfound at tentmaker.org.

Symbol: HEAVENS and EARTH
Interpretation: HEAVENS: Religious orpolitical authorities. EARTH: The place or nation involved in the prophesy.

O.T. Ref.:
Isaiah 24:1-5 - “See, the Lord is going to lay waste the earth and devastate it; hewill ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants... The earth will be completelylaid waste...The earth is defiled by its people; they have disobeyed the laws,violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant.”[NIV]

This passage is a prophecy of the comingattack and conquest by the Assyrians over the Jewish people. It should beobvious that the word EARTH is used as a symbol here, representing the place ofthe peoples or nation involved. The Assyrian army, used unwittingly as a toolof retribution by God, would come and destroy cities, and burn and loot theland, taking the people captive and killing many of them. The “inhabitants” ofthe earth would be “scattered” - that is, scattered abroad in captivity. If theearth is meant to be the literal globe, utterly devastated and made empty byGod, then the scattered inhabitants would have been instant astronauts!
The EARTH, here, is a symbol of the promisedland of Palestine that had become defiled due to the disobedience of Godschosen people. They had violated the Law, and now they would reap theretribution of God.

ISAIAH 1:2 - “Hear, 0heavens! Listen, 0 earth!....”[NIV]
This vision was to serve as a warning to thenation of Judah. It was not given to all of humanity, nor was it published ormade known universally to all mankind. HEAVENS here refers to the religious andpolitical authorities of Judah, and EARTH refers to the place and the peopleinvolved, and so to all the inhabitants of Judah.

ISAIAH 34:1-8 - “...Hearken, ye people: let the earth hear....All the host of heavenshall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll....Formy sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold it shall come down upon Idumea, andupon the people of my curse, to judgment....For it is the day of the Lordsvengeance.”
This passage is a prophecy of the destructionof Edom (Idumea), a prophecy so literally fulfilled that this land is barrenand waste even today. The EARTH was the peoples of Edom, who were to hear thisprophecy against them. God was angry with them and this was their warning ofthe coming destruction (“the day of the Lords vengeance”). This prophecy wasnot intended or designed to be heard and attended to by peoples of other lands.
The HEAVENS that would be “dissolved” and“rolled together” (like a discarded scroll of parchment), were thepolitical/religious authorities of Edom - its government and armies and thosewho led that nation away from Gods path (v.2.). Gods bloody sword would bebathed in HEAVEN. The symbol is explained within that very passage in verse 5:“it shall come down upon Idumea.” Gods sword was not bloodied in Gods ownheavenly spiritual realm, but rather in the “heaven” that was the worldly realmof the Edomite leaders.

JEREMIAH 22:29 - “0 earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord.”
Here, the prophet Jeremiah is warning thenation of Judah to repent from their idolatry or face destruction and captivityby the Babylonians as a punishment from God. In verse 25 preceding, God tellsthem:
“I will hand you over to those who seek yourlife, those you fear - to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Babylonians.”[NIV]
The EARTH here is the nation involved in thisprophecy: Judah. Neither the planet Earth, nor the combined inhabitants of itwere being addressed in verse 29. This is a symbol. Incidentally, the NIVtranslates this passage as “0 land, land, land..., which is a more literalrendering indicating more directly the intended audience.

JEREMIAH 51:25 - “I am against you, 0 destroying mountain, you who destroy the wholeearth, declares the Lord.” [NIV]
Here, Jeremiah is voicing Gods warning to thenation of Babylon, which he would destroy by bringing the Medes against them (v.11). The Babylonians were certainly warlike, but they did not destroy theentire physical earth, nor even the entire peoples of the then known world.They did destroy the nation of Judah, which is the proper use of the symbolEARTH in this context.

AMOS 5:7 “Ye who turnjudgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth.”
This was a lamentation against the nation ofIsrael. It was Israel who turned judgment bitter and ceased being righteous inGods sight. The EARTH here is the nation of Israel.

MICAH 1:2-3 “Hear, 0 peoples,all of you, listen, 0 earth and all who are in it, that the Sovereign Lord maywitness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. Look! The Lord...comes downand treads the high places of the earth.” [NIV]
This prophecy is against Samaria and Judah,which are the subjects of the EARTH symbol in this passage. In verse 5-6, Micahmakes this plain by saying:
“What is Judahs high place? Is it notJerusalem? Therefore I will make Samaria a heap of rubble....”
The EARTH and ALL WHO ARE IN IT, are thepeoples of the land or nation involved in the prophecy, in this case thepeoples of Judah and Samaria.

ZEPHANIAH 1:2-3 “I will sweep away everything from the face of the earth, declares theLord...The wicked will have only heaps of rubble when I cut off man from theface of the earth”[NIV]
Zephaniah prophesied against Judah prior tothe Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. God did not destroy theplanet in this event. The EARTH here is defined in the next verse (v.4.):
“I will stretch out my hand against Judah andagainst all who live in Jerusalem.” [NIV]

N.T. Ref.:
MATTHEW 24:29-35 “...The stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavensshall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven,and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn. Heaven and earth shall passaway, but my words shall not pass away.”
Obviously, Gods heavenly realm was not to passaway. This HEAVEN and this EARTH were symbols within this great prophecy. Theystood for the Jewish national/religious government and the peoples of theJewish nation that stood in the way of the Church.
The STARS that fall from HEAVEN are symbolicof the leaders and high priests of that decayed nation. Their powers were“shaken” indeed, by the appearance of the power of God, the SIGN OF THE SON OFMAN, in the form of the Roman army. That great destroying force appeared inHEAVEN, that is, God brought its might to bear directly against the Jewishnational powers in Jerusalem. These men were the HEAVENS symbolized here.HEAVEN and EARTH passed away in great violence in AD. 70.

ROMANS 9:27-28 “Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: Though the number of theIsraelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. For theLord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”[NIV]
In this passage it is very obvious that theEARTH symbol is being used to refer to the Jewish nation. Only a remnant of theold chosen people would be saved from the coming destruction. Only those whoaccepted the Christ would be saved.
The Lord did carry out his sentence with speedand finality. He carried it out on EARTH - the place of the people involved inthis prophecy. This EARTH was the Jewish nation.

ROMANS 10:18 (quoting PSALMS19:4) “their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends ofthe world.”[NIV]
The word of Christ, the message of the gospel,was preached into ALL THE EARTH by the time Paul wrote this letter, thusfulfilling the Old Testament prophecy. It did not go out to the far and unknownlands of China or India or America. The EARTH here is symbolic of the peopleinvolved in this prophecy - the Jews. The Jews were scattered all over theRoman empire by the time of Christ, and all these diverse regions were representedwhen Peter spoke the gospel message on Pentecost. Acts 2:5 tells us:
“And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews,devout men, out of every nation under heaven.” Miraculously, each Jew heard thegreat sermon in his own particular language. Thus, the message was heard andtaken back to their own regions, spreading to the very ends of the Jewishworld.

REV 1:7 “Behold, hecometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which piercedhim; and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him.”
In all of the passages in Revelation, theEARTH symbol and the HEAVEN symbol refer to the same thing until they arereplaced by the NEW EARTH and the NEW HEAVEN. The old EARTH and HEAVEN are theJewish peoples and their errant leaders. They were replaced in the favor andsight of God by the new holy people, those who follow and accept his Son.
In this passage, the KINDREDS were the Jewishtribes, the once set-aside people of God, depicted as kindred because of thestrict laws against Jews marrying Gentiles. They were kindreds then, of theEARTH - the land of Palestine, where they dwelt. They wailed because ofChrist’s coming, for that coming meant their utter destruction by the Romaninvasion. Every Jewish eye “saw” this great event, because they were all caughtup in it.

REV 6:13 “And the stars ofheaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, whenshe is shaken of a mighty wind.”
This is a fulfillment of Christ’s own prophecyin Matthew 24:29. The symbols stand for the same thing. The Jewish religiousand political authorities, the STARS OF HEAVEN, certainly did fall to theirdoom along with the people of their EARTH and the very land of Palestineitself.

REV 11:6 “These have powerto smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.”
In verse 2 preceding, the angel tells John:“it is given to the Gentiles, and the holy city shall they tread under foot forforty and two months.” “These” who had power, were the Roman armies coming tosmite the EARTH, which was the peoples of Palestine. During their prophesied 3½ years of power over Judea (42 months), they caused whatever war acts anddesolations they found necessary to subdue the Jews. The Romans did not smitethe entire planet earth with plagues, only the symbolic EARTH of the Jewishnation with the plague of war.

REV 11:18 “The nations wereangry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for destroying those whodestroy the earth.”[NIV]
The “nations” meant the Gentile world, and inthis specific prophecy it refers to the Roman army which was “angry” (which, ofcourse, was Gods own anger made manifest - “your wrath has come”). The time hadcome for the destruction of those who had, through their sin, destroyed theEARTH - the Jewish world. Those were the leaders and the apostate peoples ofthat world. They were once the holy people, now they had sinned and would bedestroyed. If, according to a futurist interpretation, the EARTH is the planetearth, then there would not be anyone left for God to destroy!

REV 19:2 “[God] hascondemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries.”[NIV]
Here, too, the EARTH is the land and peoplesof Jerusalem and Judea. It was the Jewish state that was corrupted by the sinand unbelief of the Jews, committing spiritual adultery against God. Thiscondemnation simply does not fit any other nation or people. Neither Rome, norany other people, were corrupted by a betrayal of God, for, until Christianitybroke the Gentile barrier, they never knew God at all.

REV 20:9 “When thethousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go outto deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth - Gog and Magog - togather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. Theymarched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of Gods people,the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” [NIV]
Here, the EARTH is more generally referring tothe place of the nations involved in the prophecy. The Romans were the forcesthat occupied the “four corners of the earth” - they completely occupied andruled the land of Palestine.
Although God used the Roman armies as hisdivine tool to cause destruction upon the Jews, they were not his people by anystretch of imagination. The Romans were the forces of paganism, represented bythe symbolic names of “Gog and Magog,” seemingly overwhelming in their numbers.
They were persecutors of the people of Christ,thus they are pictured as surrounding the camp of Gods people and his belovedcity, which is the Kingdom or the Church. The Romans, too, would be devouredafter their short “season” or “short time” (vss. 3 and 7), by the power of Godthrough the words of the Gospel (John 1:1; Hebrews 12:29).

REV 20:11 “And I saw a greatwhite throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavenfled away; and there was no place found for them.”
The self-righteous and sinful Jewishauthorities (HEAVENS) and the unbelieving Jewish peoples of Palestine (EARTH)would “fly away” from the presence of God, and there would be “no place foundfor them” in the new system of grace through the Christ they had rejected. If“heaven” meant Gods abode, then it fled away from him and he is homeless!

REV 21:1 “And I saw a newheaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passedaway.”
The old worldly authority and nation ofJudaism (FIRST HEAVEN and EARTH) were no more after the Roman destruction, andtaking its place was a brand new spiritual authority and nation, established onthe day of Pentecost, and now redeemed from its enemies. It was the Church orKingdom of God (NEW HEAVEN and NEW EARTH), which would last forever.

Symbol: WORLD

Interpretation: People of the nationinvolved in the prophecy.

O.T. Ref.:
ISAIAH 13:11 “And I willpunish the world for their evil.”
What world was this that God was going topunish? Verse 1 tells us this passage is a “burden” or a prophecy of punishmentagainst the land of Babylon. The evil Babylonian people were the WORLD, whosedoom Isaiah foretold. God did not destroy the entire planet or even all thepeople of the planet. Here, the WORLD is a symbol referring only to the peopleinvolved in the prophecy - in this case, Babylon.

N.T. Ref.:
REV 3:10 - “Since you havekept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour oftrial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on theearth.”[NIV]
Here, God is speaking to the faithfulcongregation at Philadelphia, promising a reward from the persecutions theywere all enduring at the hands of the Jews. They would be spared from the “hourof trial” - the war actions that would be soon taking place in Judea. Thepeoples of that land, the Jews were the WORLD who would experience Gods greattrial. Those who lived on that EARTH (see previous symbol discussion) would betested by their heeding or ignoring of the warning signs prophesied by Jesus(Matthew 24, etc.).

Symbol: HEAVENS ROLLED TOGETHERLIKE A SCROLL
Interpretation: Earthly authoritieslosing dominion or power.

O.T. Ref.:
ISAIAH 34:2-4 “...The indignation of the Lord is upon all nations....The mountainsshall be melted with their blood, and the host of heaven shall be dissolved,and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shallfall down, as...a falling fig from the fig tree.”
This passage is a prophecy of the downfall ofthe land of Idumea or Edom (v. 5.), where the Idumeans are symbolized as a“host” like the host of stars in the sky, which would “fall down” like a figfalling from a tree. This host of Idumeans was the host of HEAVEN, symbolizingthe Idumean leaders or authorities. These men would be ROLLED TOGETHER LIKE ASCROLL. They would lose their dominion, their nation, and their powers as nationalleaders. Their “book was closed”!

N.T. Ref.:
REV 6:13-14 “And the stars ofheaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, whenshe is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it isrolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.”
Here, again, we see the STARS OF HEAVEN as thepersons who hold the authority or power over the nation involved in theprophecy - this time Judea. These Jewish leaders (collectively the HEAVEN) losttheir dominion and power when “shaken by a mighty wind” of God working throughthe actions of the pagan Roman armies. The unbelieving Jews of the Sanhedrinfell from power. Every MOUNTAIN and ISLAND, or every powerful person, was movedout of their accustomed place by the acts of war that were executed in AD.67-70. They “departed” from their place of power and their SCROLL was ROLLEDTOGETHER - like a scroll of parchment discarded and “ rolled up.” Theirdominion was over.

Symbol: DAY OF THE LORD
Interpretation: Destruction of a nationby the power of God working through human armies.

This important symbolic phrase is found manytimes in the Bible and usually referred to the impending destruction of theHebrew nation for apostasies they committed against God. Occasionally, itreferred to the destruction of a pagan nation that had harmed Gods people. Inevery case where it is used in the Old Testament, it signifies a spiritualcoming of God in power, but manifested in physical human armies.

O.T. Ref.:
ISAIAH 13:6,9 “Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destructionfrom the Almighty....See, the day of the lord is coming - a cruel day, withwrath and fierce anger - to make the land desolate and destroy the sinnerswithin it.” [NIV]
Verse 1 preceding tells us that this passageis a “burden” or “oracle,” meaning a warning prophecy, against the land ofBabylon. It is the destruction of the nation of Babylon that is being foretoldhere and being referred to as the DAY OF THE LORD. How would God accomplish thedestruction of the Babylonians? Verse 17 tells us:
“See, I will stir up against them theMedes....”
This is the pattern that is followed each timeDAY OF THE LORD is used to denote a nations punishment by God.

EZEKIEL 13:5 “in the battle onthe day of the Lord.”
This DAY OF THE LORD was to occur some fouryears after Ezekiel wrote this prophecy. It was the destruction of Jerusalem in587 B.C., caused by God because of their great sins, but carried out by theactions of the Chaldean (Babylonian) army. It is notable that in this passage,God warns them not to heed false prophets!

EZEKIEL 30:2-4 “Wail and say, Alas for that day! For the day is near, the day of theLord is near - a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. A sword will comeagainst Egypt.” [NIV]
Here, the DAY OF THE LORD was a destruction ofthe Egyptian nation, which occurred in 572 B.C. In verse 10, God spells outexactly how he would accomplish this on his great DAY:
“I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt bythe hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. He and his army - the most ruthlessof nations - will be brought in to destroy the land.”
Here again, the method used by God toaccomplish a DAY OF THE LORD is to use pagan human armies to destroy the nationsubject to the prophecy.

JOEL 1:15; 2:1-2,11 “Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come likedestruction from the Almighty.”
“let all who live in the land tremble, for theday of the lord is coming. It is close at hand - a day of darkness and gloom, aday of clouds and blackness...”
“...The day of the Lord is great; it isdreadful. Who can endure it?” [NIV]
The dating of Joel is uncertain and severaltheories have been advanced to interpret this book. Joel uses a great deal ofimagery concerning a plague of locusts that destroy the land of Judah’s cropsand cause great distress. Many think Joel is speaking only of a literal locustplague and using it as a metaphor for Gods general displeasure towards andpunishments of his people. However, if we look at the imagery closely, we cansee that it matches in many ways the same imagery John used in Revelationconcerning the LOCUSTS (Revelation 9:3-10). The last part of Joel makes itplain that the prophet was looking on to the final events of the Jewish nation,prophesying of the Roman invasion of A.D. 67-70, just as Daniel, Zechariah, andother Old Testament prophets did.
The locust hoard is characterized in 2:4-11 inthese terms:
“They have the appearance of horses; theygallop along like cavalry. With a noise like that of chariots... Like a mightyarmy drawn up for battle...They charge like warriors; they scale walls likesoldiers....The Lord thunders at the head of his army.[NIV]
This is the same way John characterizes theLOCUSTS in Revelation as an army of horses and chariots.

In 2:28, Joel states: “I willpour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, yourold men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” [NIV]
This very passage is quoted in Acts 2:16-17where it is plainly stated: “This is that which was spoken by the prophetJoel.” The event was the Day of Pentecost. In the subsequent verses of Joel2:30-31, he speaks again of the terrible judgment of God against the Jewishnation as a DAY OF THE LORD:
“I will show wonders in the heavens and on theearth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darknessand the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of theLord.” [NIV]

AMOS 5:18 “Woe to you wholong for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That daywill be darkness, not light.”[NIV]
Amos was a prophet for or of the north kingdomof Israel, although he was from Judah. In this book, written about 765 B.C., heis Prophesying the doom of Israel during what seemed like a time of Peace andsecurity. His prophecy was from God, however, and the sinful people of Israelwere destroyed and taken captive by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. (about 40 yearslater - and within one generation).
In verse 27, God says throughAmos:
“Therefore will I cause you to go intocaptivity beyond Damascus.” (Amos 5:27)
and in Amos 6:14, he says: “I will raise upagainst you a nation, 0 house of Israel....”
That nation was Assyria, and the violent andevil Assyrian army was Gods tool of punishment in this particular DAY OF THELORD

OBADIAH 15 “For the day ofthe Lord is near.”
Obadiah spoke this prophecy against the landof Edom, paralleling similar warnings from Isaiah. This DAY OF THE LORD wouldbe the utter destruction of the Edomites (or Idumeans) by the Assyrian armies.The Edomites (descendants of Esau) had participated in the destruction ofJerusalem in 587 B.C., and this, along with their prideful and disdainfulattitude toward God, was the reason for Gods anger and vengeance.
Isaiah refers to their destruction as the “Dayof the Lords vengeance (ch. 34:8-10) and tells them their land would lie wastewith no one passing through it. Obadiah says in verse 10 - “Because of theviolence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame; you willbe destroyed forever,”
That land lies in desert waste even today.

ZEPHANIAH 1:7,14 “The day of the Lord is near....The great day of the Lord is near -near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter.”[NIV]
Zephaniah wrote this prophecy in approximately626 B.C., about 40 years before the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. by theBabylonians. Verse 14 goes on to say:
“the shouting of the warrior there. That daywill be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trumpet andbattle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers.” [Zep1:14, NIV] and in chapter 2:1-2, hepleads for them to “gather together, 0 shameful nation, before the appointedtime arrives.” It was the idolatrous nation of Judah that was the subject andrecipient of the DAY OF THE LORD in this instance.

N.T. Ref.:
All of the references to a DAY OF THE LORD inthe New Testament refer to the same event - Gods final destruction of theJewish nation in AD. 70, through the agency of the Roman armies. Not all of thereferences will be listed here, but major occurrences will be shown toillustrate how the symbol is used and how it applies to the Jewish/Roman War.

ACTS 2:20 “The sun shall beturned to darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable dayof the Lord come,
How do we know that this does not refer tosomething in our future? This passage in Acts relates the events on the day ofPentecost, and Peter has just told them in verse 16:
“But this is that which was spoken by theprophet Joel”
These events were the fulfillment - right thenon the day of Pentecost - of Joel’s prophecy (Joel 2:28-32). All the thingsthat were happening then, including the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles,the receiving of special gifts of prophecy and the appearance of supernaturalsigns, were to be the events that would immediately precede the event Petercalls the “great and glorious day of the Lord” (NIV). Peter concludes histhought with the words:
“And everyone who calls on the name of theLord will be saved.” [Acts 2:21, NIV]
All the Christian believers would know of thesigns to heed and would flee the war zone and be physically saved, and moreimportantly, all the Christians, whatever their physical location, would besaved from spiritual judgment and from the ongoing persecutions upon theremoval of their persecutors.

1 COR 1:8 “So that ye comebehind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shallalso confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our LordJesus Christ.”
Here, the DAY OF THE LORD is associated withthe coming (literally, the “revealing”) of Christ in the war events soon tofollow. Paul is affirming the possession and use of special gifts during thistime, as these people were waiting for that great DAY to occur when Christwould be revealed in judgment to the Jewish nation. Thus, they themselves wouldbe “confirmed unto the end” - the end of the prophecies and the end of theirpersecution.

1 THES 5:2 “For you knowvery well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”[NIV]
In this well known verse, Paul speaks of theeffect of the destruction, coming swiftly and unexpectedly upon the Jewishnation, most of whom were bottled up inside the great fortress city ofJerusalem itself. They did not dream that their mighty citadel could actuallyfall to the pagan Romans. God would surely intervene. They did not realize thatGod had abandoned them and was actively working against them. In verse 3, Paulsays:
“While people are saying Peace and safety,destruction will come on them suddenly and they will not escape.”[NIV]
This is why Christ gave the believers a seriesof signs to watch for (in Matthew 24 and elsewhere) in order for them to escapethis event. So, in verse 4, again we read:
“But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, thatthat day should overtake you as a thief.”
The Christians knew the signs to watch for,and history records their flight to safety beyond the war zone.

2 THES 2:2 (through 12), and2 PETER 3:10-12 - Both of these verses contain important examplesof the use of this symbol, but the reader is referred to chapter 5 for detailedexamination of these involved passages.

REV 6:17; 16:14-15 “For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able tostand?”
“For they are the spirits of devils, workingmiracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, togather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come asa thief.”
These passages are obviously tied to the otherreferences of a DAY OF THE LORD in the New Testament, even to the reference ofit coming like a “thief”. It refers to the same event. No one who was caught upin that war would be able to stand against the might of the Roman army, whocame to them to “gather them to battle.” We should remember that the “kings ofthe earth” and the “whole world” are also symbols and should be interpretedproperly (see discussion above). It was the Jewish world that came to aterrible close under Gods wrath.

Symbol: TRUMPET
Interpretation: Consolidation of Godspeople.

In ancient times, the trumpet served a purposeduring battle. It could be heard over the noise and was used to call combatantsto the battle, or to regroup and consolidate their forces during the confusionof the fighting. We find a reference to this literal use of the battle trumpetin 1 Corinthians 14:8, where Paul states, “for if the trumpet give an uncertainsound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”. In symbolic form, it was Godscall to his people, to consolidate their spiritual forces in allegiance to himand against their common enemy, the unbelieving and persecuting Jewish nation.

O.T. Ref.:
ISAIAH 27:13 “And in that daya great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those whowere exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain inJerusalem.”
“Those who were perishing” were the Jewishpeoples who had been in captivity for 70 years. “That day” was to be the returnto Jerusalem in 536 B.C. by the edict of Cyrus. The TRUMPET was symbolicallyblown to call and consolidate all of Gods chosen people who had been punishedand were now being brought back together in their true home.

N.T. Ref.:
MATTHEW 24:31 “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet.”

1 COR 15:52 “at the lasttrumpet. For the trumpet will sound.”[NIV]

1 THES 4:16 “For the Lordhimself will come down from heaven with the trumpet call of God.”[NIV]
All of these verses use the TRUMPET symbol asthe call to action for the Christian believers. The upcoming war events weretruly about to occur, and they were to be alert and ready for the final battle- the Spiritual battle of God against the unbelievers and the physical battleof Rome against the persecuting Jewish nation. That trumpet sounded almost2,000 years ago. Today, we live in the era of eternal victory over the enemieswho were vanquished in that battle.

Tuese

Monday, September 8, 2014

APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE - PROPHETIC SYMBOLS Pt. 1

APOCALYPTIC LANGUAGE - PROPHETIC SYMBOLS Pt. 1

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